Featured Fiction by Mary Milstead: from Portland Review, Volume 54, No. 2 Louise Melroy was sitting in her green easy chair, leaning back, her slippered feet resting on the ottoman. She had a glass of iced tea on the table next to her, and the remote control within easy reach. The Price is Right was on. Just as they were about to reveal the first…
Beaches, Death, and Public Toilets by James Reinebold
Hell is a Venice Beach public restroom. It is dark and covered with the writings of a rambling madman scribbled in neon orange paint. A thick green sludge lives on the floor and can never be removed. Hell has no sink, only a square metal toilet. Sam did not see the dead man on the toilet until he locked the flimsy wooden door. The man…
Take up Your Quarrel with the Idea
I dreamt there was a fire in the study and I tried to put it out and she called me a fool saying save the fire and save the books; the child. We take up our quarrel with the idea that birth is some elegy sung to the page— (scenario in which there’s something in your hands as you run from the burning apartment. You…
Last Call by Kirsten Holt
For Michael Pandel In a pub toasting your too-late birthday, I imagine your eyes purpled and shut, unlike plums but yielding, spoiling into the hard ground of your cheekbones the rise and fall of the respirator, not your chest, the Morse code that divided your breaths; shortshort shortshort clicking like a spent film reel, and you swerving off the screen. A month later you stir…
The Stubborn Child by Gwyn Ruddell Lewis
We told our children he hadn’t listened to his mother. We said he played Chicken. With a train. His mother had told him to stay away from the tracks. The train braked, much too late. We told our children he was a boy although he was closer to a man. We said Chicken when we knew it was no such thing. Our children kept away…