October 11, 2023

“Taking Daddy’s Photograph,” Poetry by Gopi Kottoor

“Taking Daddy’s Photograph,” Poetry by Gopi Kottoor

Taking Daddy’s Photograph Daddy’, I said, ‘Stand by those shoe flowers, there are so many of them blooming this morning’. Daddy took a step back. There is a strange beauty, in the hibiscus sheen, when, from the fresh green the hundred shoe flowers mount red. Daddy now looked like he was some God coming to me in a dream of sacrifice. He puffed hard at his cigarette, its red butt putting all the hibiscuses to shame. Looking on into the camera eye, Daddy said, ‘Be careful, son, The sun is still in front of you. Don’t let in too much light’. I remember, I knelt down, so the lens could take the shade, holding him right. Dad smiled, as though in the camera eye Lay his only woman. And in that stained Hibiscus silence, Time…

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May 17, 2023

“Burial,” A Short Story by Peter Dellolio

“Burial,” A Short Story by Peter Dellolio

Leaves and twigs scattered suddenly, as if the last, hurried pat of her seven-year-old palm, hitting the flattened surface of moist earth that moments ago revealed a fourth hole, was somehow acknowledged by the secret watchfulness of nature, and the little whisking breezes, surrounding her finished labors, had somehow bestowed their blessing upon her task.  She had left the house as surreptitiously as her tiny form and sincere energy would allow, running down the old boards, almost jumping across the eighteenth-century backdoor steps of the farmhouse, charging into the woods like an infantryman rushing into battle, head held high with quiet dignity and deadly purpose, without even an atom of fear, soul impervious to danger, defying threats to life and limb, lying just ahead in the enemy’s midst.  She felt that if the subjects of her…

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December 27, 2022

“Stuckey’s,” by Michael Lloyd Gray

“Stuckey’s,” by Michael Lloyd Gray

His father had warned him not to go out too far.   “One step at a time, boy,” his father had said sternly. “No need to pop a gasket right off the bat.”  It was mid-summer on Lake Argus, Illinois, where Billy Ray’s family summered. He nodded at his father but stole glances at the motorbike, a 60 cc Harley. He didn’t know they even made them that small, but that was okay since he’d just turned sixteen and really had nothing to compare it with, certainly not the family Plymouth station wagon. His old man had taken the bike in on trade and fixed the fuel line, brakes, and patched the leaky tires. With the throttle thrown wide open, it might hit forty-five mph, but to Billy Ray, it was downright supersonic.  The motorbike was—freedom. …

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January 26, 2022

“A Sad Tale,” Poetry by Vera West

“A Sad Tale,” Poetry by Vera West

Editor’s Note: This is Vera West’s first full poetry post on The Fictional Café as our new Poet-in-Residence for 2022-2023. Please help us welcome her to the Café and be sure to read her haunting, heartbreaking trilogy of poems at the end, called “A Sad Tale.” loneliness It’s an odd thing to grieve in advance, to let your mind give you a sample taste of the things you fear; the most flavorful being: loneliness. I’m anxious about the day when my loved ones are all gone, and I’m truly alone. between sisters the first time I told her our father had killed our dog, she hadn’t believed me. Perhaps it was the way I’d said it; “he killed our dog,” was all I’d said. the second time I told her she asked our father and…

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October 5, 2021

“Architeuthis Considers the Sapiens,” by Katy Scrogin

“Architeuthis Considers the Sapiens,” by Katy Scrogin

Architeuthis Considers the Sapiens      Before, we could believe in their innocence  when they’d only seen us dead,  another limp tendril of sea-culled debris  delivered to dry land  in those in-between hours  when it was understood that nothing happened or arrived  outside the boundaries of their serene dreams    They had eons to build legends  upon our pale still limbs  to fill their need for fable  with splayed gray membranes  growing stale and sacred on the sand    But now their truth-seekers know  the cold-tingling thrill of penetration  into deep-dwelling realms        of untethered motion        volition  the stinging grasp of unstoried life.  What now, my unarmed soul,  now that they know?      * It wasn’t until 2006 that humans finally saw a living Architeuthis dux, or giant squid. Until that point, the dead specimens…

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September 9, 2021

“Party Time,” Poetry by Shoshauna Shy

“Party Time,” Poetry by Shoshauna Shy

            PARTY TIME      Everybody’s laughing at you  because you’re swinging a stick  like a fool at nothing  and because it’s June Fest   but moms made them come  h e r e.  Even Bobby Ferrell, your classroom  “book buddy” jeers.  The cake your mother served was lemon coconut for your sister  who missed out on her own party  in April when sick.  You trip on your own feet.  This makes the pitch of laughter rise –  and then ka-SHAB! – the stick  makes contact, the string snaps,   and the piñata tumbles to the ground.  Nobody understands, least of all you,   why you keep whacking and whacking   that jackass flat even after it spills  the goods. CHOOSING THE BEST TIME  TO STAGE YOUR OWN ABDUCTION      Not while your dorm mate is in Connecticut  and won’t notice how you aren’t there  but your purse and cell phone are.  Not the day…

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August 15, 2021

“Sandy Ajax, We Hardly Knew You,” by James Hanna

“Sandy Ajax, We Hardly Knew You,” by James Hanna

The World Baseball League was born in the sixties in our suburban home in Virginia.  My kid brother and I invented it on a sweltering Fourth of July. It was a heroic invention—a vehicle by which two nerdy kids might share the aura of champions. Armed with dice, meticulously drawn charts, and a cardboard baseball diamond, Robbie and I commanded the destinies of twenty baseball teams. We played daily throughout the long hot summers—up to six games a day—and we tweaked team standings and player averages after every game. So absorbed were we in horsehide heroics that we rendered the summers neither long nor hot.      Our rosters consisted of four hundred individual players each represented by a 2” by 2” square of cardboard. Batting averages, fielding percentages, slugging potential, and base- running speed were recorded on each of these squares along…

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May 27, 2021

“Never Never Land,” by Michael Summerleigh

“Never Never Land,” by Michael Summerleigh

At some point in the evening he turned around and realised he was somewhere he’d never been before; that he couldn’t remember any of the people with whom he’d been in that wherever it was he thought he had been before ending up where he was. What it boiled down to was that he was alone, when at some point in the near past it had been otherwise . . . and now he was lost . . . which had not always been the case in that same shifty construct of reality he had assumed was his normal everyday life. Mostly he stayed on top of things.  What frightened him was that it was, nevertheless, familiar; that the sudden crushing weight of what-the-fuck was not new; that he had been there in the Nowhere a thousand times since the day/night/whatever when Timothy Thomas Garmin had woken up screaming because in…

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April 18, 2021

“Rat Road,” A Short Story by Paul Negri

“Rat Road,” A Short Story by Paul Negri

Because I had no father, no brothers or sisters, no aunts or uncles, and no friends, and was scared of everything, Mom was worried about me.   “I’m worried about you, Tommy,” she would say, and she looked it. And that worried me. She was all I had, my lifeline, and even at nine I knew a frayed rope was not the best lifeline, though I did not think of it in such fancy metaphoric terms, as being a child I had no need for metaphors. What I knew was instinctive, a heightened sense of risk that permeated my day to day and night to night life.   Like me, Mom’s father left before she was born and her mother (who I later came to call the Unknown Grandma) gave Mom up for adoption, which launched her into a carousel of foster care for several years. But unlike me, Mom was not afraid of anything, as far as I could tell, and I imagined she never had been.  …

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December 17, 2020

“Squid Eyes,” A Short Story by Lisa Sita

“Squid Eyes,” A Short Story by Lisa Sita

Every time Amanda cried black ink, people thought it was her mascara running. Sometimes a concerned fellow female, in trying to be helpful, would recommend that she try a waterproof variety, since there were so many on the market and were actually quite effective at preventing embarrassing smudges. She always tried to explain after politely thanking these women that she was not wearing any makeup, but they never seemed to believe her.  Amanda’s parents first noticed the color of their daughter’s tears when she came slipping and sliding out of the womb at Lenox Hill Hospital one early winter morning. As soon as the cord was cut, little Amanda’s eyes spouted like tiny oil wells that ran and dribbled into the creases of her new baby flesh. The doctor who delivered her and others who were consulted could find no reason for it. Thinking first that the black tears…

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