by Lauren Leatherman

Those Things, PART TWO

by Lauren Leatherman 

FOR the Fourth of July, the three of us filled a kiddie pool and cooled our bare feet in the water. We sat that way, on Liz and Keith's deck, for hours, drinking hard lemonade and watching the fireworks. Liz sat in the middle. Keith kept his hand on her muscled thigh, and I wasn't jealous. Liz was almost her normal self or what I guessed was her normal self. ...READ MORE

"Take it from me, kid" by Oliver Lee Bateman

1. “Berkman, how long have you been working here?”

The Story of Albert Jameson by Horace Brickley

Albert Jameson was a young man of indomitable will. He was a part-time adventurer and a full-time storyteller. The only things more fantastic than his exploits were the exaggerated tales of his escapades, which were first told, and first exaggerated, by none other than Albert Jameson. Everyone in Longmont had heard the story of how he wrestled a cougar on Haber Hill, or the yarn about his date with the Oil Baron's daughter, wherein he bested the “World's Second-Largest Samoan” in fisticuffs. His most famous story, however, is the one that he never got the chance to turn into a legend.

The Joke by Russ Porter

I was smiling. I could sense it. The pain is no longer a concern. The urgency that had been present is now just an afterthought, replaced by a calm realization of it all. Questions from the past echo from afar. The warnings, once easily dismissed, come to me again, perhaps an answer as to why this might have all come about. I’m ready now, I swear.

"In Defense of Young Artists" by Michael Patrick McSweeney

Have pity on us--the young farmers--
for we toil against and within deeper soil than you
remember, cracking our boots, sundering our minds
when we reach an immortal stone

The Days After the Train Hit You by Georgia McCandlish

Most days I taste incorrectly. Everything chews wrong. Peaches are soft and cottony and freshly laundered. I write on small cards about the things that I put in my mouth to remind myself of the seasons, because I don't have anyone to tell. I drink tea and it is like someone's bed sheets. Beverages are mostly of dryer lint and compost.

Microwaved Stuffed Animals by Zak Block

Frozen sleet kisses the fey murals that line the southern facade of the school building under ancient asbestos awnings suggesting long abandoned projects for the revivification of said facade; scuzz mixes with icy water and shoescuzz, carried in spiderveins of streams along the curbstone, past makeshift industrial matting now bleached salt-white and slushy, past metal detectors and a security station to the end of discouraging truants; black rivulets that engender manifold galosh, sneaker and workboot shapes which branch out into four directions; the first: to the awakening cafeteria reeking of sawdust, vomit, ammonia, cereal, rotten foodstuffs: early morning haven to the children on breakfast plans—these consisting primarily of cereal, but on some days, hot synthetic oatmeal; and others: eggs produced from floppy Mylar sacks of pre-whisked imitation-egg unloaded into massive troughs, micro-zapped and once cooked, sliced, by what appear to be rusty miniature harrows, into vaguely scrambled chunks; parceled out to yawning, panging childrens' guts—the remaining three rivulets divided between three doors, which lead to two stairwells, leading to three separate schools—rather, programs, the word school implying first a uniform pedagogical module, then a physical structure. By a quarter of noon have these streams converged into nothing, into a murky shallow puddle; soon the footsteps are retraced,—a Turkey-necked, puke-smelling Janitor arrives from the guts of the building in his dark green jumpsuit—“Hey, Turkey, see the sign?!”—and so the day begins at the Pritchard School, at P.S. Nine Forty-Two, where Beryl Diamondstein has received thus far two years of a three year-education.