Julia looked at me like I was crazy and then stared back at the oversized palm tree sitting in the middle of our living room decorated with Christmas lights, streamers, and little Styrofoam stars. Naturally she was confused; after all, a decorated palm tree isn’t a very conventional gift to give your wife on her first birthday since you were married.

My Bellybutton by Jonah Eller-Isaacs

My bellybutton is amazing. It is a mysterious gastrointestinal portal. It is beautiful, and shapely, and inward-looking, and it is powerful. My bellybutton is remarkable. It creates more lint than a dryer. I have no need for a lint catcher. Why would I need something I can create in my own time, with nothing but my body and the clothes on my back?
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“What would you do if I gouged my eyes out? Right here in front of you?”

He adjusted his wool hat as he awaited an answer. When none came:

“It’d be reeeeeal messy. Prolly ruin your suit, you’d be all bloody on the subway, no one sittin’ next to you. No way.”

There was still no answer from the man who sat very still with both feet flat on the cement.

Bud Oliver drove up in his old, much used Ford pick-up, parked and got out a little slow; Bud was no spring chicken.

Greeting the loafers in front of the general store with one of his sarcastic but friendly remarks, "well, I'll bet this bunch ain't hit a lick of work today and probably wont tomorrow ether," they all laughed and old man Hiram Baffle spoke up "you mighty right, not if we can get some idjit to do it for us, Bud, and speaking of that, why don't you just run over to my place and paint the back porch and while your at it go ahead and mow that little piece of grass I call a yard."

"30 minutes ‘til we're there right?" It’s a sign that really says, "Well I guess this is the end of the night right?"

So this is how it goes. “Take a deep breath,” he said. “Breathe deep cause this might be the last breath you take.” I closed my eyes and pictured my lungs inside my mind. I inhaled all the air my lungs could handle—it was the most thoughtful breath I have ever taken.

The young lovers fell in love and spent years wrapped in each others arms. The days blended together and time became rich parcels of memory. Pictures overflowed, each one a snapshot of emotion on their journeys through life. The tracks along which they traveled gradually began to lie across their brows, in furrows of yesterdays and mundane responsibilities. But the lines along their mouths told of happiness and joy. Theirs was a love unparalleled. But unbeknown to them there was a fallen tree in the road ahead and they drove unaware, staring out the window and glancing back at each other. They drove holding hands and enjoying the path they had chosen.

My bellybutton is amazing. It is a mysterious gastrointestinal portal. It is beautiful, and shapely, and inward-looking, and it is powerful. My bellybutton is remarkable. It creates more lint than a dryer. I have no need for a lint catcher. Why would I need something I can create in my own time, with nothing but my body and the clothes on my back?

Nine-Hundred Luv-Talk
by Aaron Case

Alex was maybe two the first time I saw him use a telephone. We were in my parents bedroom, all taking turns talking to my father who was in Frankfurt, Germany. Not for any Germanic reason, but because that was his job.
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Our man Dutch hated Missouri, but at least the weather, he thought, was warm enough. He stretched his arm out the short and narrow, concrete window; his slim, double-jointed elbow rocked backwards a bit to catch just a little of the sunset that couldn’t leak into his cell. He let his gaze saunter over the haunting stretch of orange sky outside. All that could be seen of the land was in his imagination. Missouri was there in some abstract form lying beyond a weave of metal fences and one very high and very thick wall. Prisons within prisons.

It's Williamsburg, the height of wedding season. Chaya hasn't been there in years, except for the occasional trip to visit to her mother. She, like most of the Jews, moved on to bigger and better things, like expensive cars, flashy jewelry, and big houses on Bedford Avenue. She remembers watching the shootings from the window of the apartment on Roebling, remembers her mother being attacked in the hallway on the way home from work, and in remembering all of this she's glad it's all behind her.

I was splattered on the walls and soaked into the carpet. I felt like a worm in a compost heap in hell. Everything was Slayer red and there was someone standing over me wearing a goat mask, and there was a kind of stygian fog coming off of the mask. There was no way to get a handle on the visage – it morphed evilly, by turns mocking, sensual, atramentous.

On my way to search a lost kingdom's home,
ramblers in a torch-buttered tavern
say that while the king slept,
the archers on the walls forgot about whetstones,

Alex was maybe two the first time I saw him use a telephone. We were in my parents bedroom, all taking turns talking to my father who was in Frankfurt, Germany. Not for any Germanic reason, but because that was his job.