Martín Cordero drove the spray rig in the vineyards where I grew up, a farmhand-for-hire who worked all over San Luis Obispo County, but in my memory he’s a storyteller first, held in the stage lights of my boyhood ...
Pretenders by John Carr Walker
Fiction, LAR Online
One Friday evening, Uncle Jim beat Aunt Linda bloody and knocked out her front teeth during an argument that started when she accidentally bumped her leg against the kitchen table and spilled some of his whiskey. ...
Closed Door Blues by Alec Kissoondyal
Fiction, LAR Online
There are no manta rays like on the brochure, and Divemaster Barry, tall and sitcom-handsome, is not your friend. He pretends to be your friend. He’s very familiar in a performative way. He says you can call him DMB, ...
Bob in the Deep End by Gurth Harper
Fiction, LAR Online
My mother was taller than me, I think. I’m not certain, because she died when I was seven, and I've never asked anyone how tall she was. I'm five foot eight inches. From pictures, I know she was around my height, but ...
Remember This Morning by Victor McConnell
Fiction, LAR Online
They are in the basement, sitting among the boxes of communion wine and sacrament. They had been halfway through choir practice when it began and now they sit here, on the ground, most ...
Scenario by Dave Housley
Fiction, LAR Online
Dora texts, tells me to ditch J.R., says Rodan, the bar we’re going to, is trash. Gary’s band is playing at Berlin, that horrible cruise-y nightclub in Boystown. They’re booking punk shows now. We can hang ...
Gary Comes To Town by Matt Kessler
Fiction, LAR Online
The Boy was birthed into the world flush against rotted soil. The soil of the Shallows, that of our Township. The first soil to feel the feet of men, it is said, within the Township. But, old, ...
Amen by Makambo Tshionyi
Fiction, LAR Online
Next door Marjorie slaughters watermelon with an axe. It is summer, a smoke-stained June, and Melody is counting the days since her sister Val last left the house: eleven. Her record is one hundred and seven, and it ...
Watermelon Axe by Emily Pegg
Fiction, LAR Online
Bernadette’s husband came home late again last night. She’d been awake for a long time because of the rain lashing against the windows and her worry that the river might overflow. The February rains had brought the ...
Someone To Talk To by L.M. Brown
Fiction, LAR Online
