Rusty Barnes's Blog: Fried Chicken and Coffee, page 40

Women Writers Wanted!

I suppose it shouldn't surprise  me that I get few submissions from women, as I have met few enough women who write the kind of literature I'm looking for here. But, I know they're out there, and it strikes me that I have not tried hard enough to find them. Relying on Facebook and the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Cooks, fiction by Ben Werner

After work, Clint and Danny rolled through the orange streetlights on Main Street and into the darkness on the far side of town. Danny thought about telling Clint to turn around and take him home, where his father would be asleep in front of the TV and his mother asleep in bed. Instead, he watched [...]

Poem by Mather Schneider

THE PITS They broke the apartment window and cleaned us out while we were at work. I feel violated but the worst part about it is all my bullshit about being on the edge of society seems pretty pale next to these criminals stealing to survive and surviving well putting me in my place smack dab [...]

Goodman at an Outhouse, fiction by Brian Tucker

Outside a dilapidated outhouse a man by the name of Goodman waited impatiently for his turn. He stood on his right toe with his left boot heel, trying to not think about the deep burn that was welling up from his loins. His forehead burst into a frothy sweat. He knocked on the door's driftwood [...]

The Old Place, fiction by Timothy Gager

They stood outside the open carport, not making a move toward the old house, his Oldsmobile covered in a thick layer of dirt and dust. "We have to go in," Robert told her. "I know. I don't want to," Penny said. "We need to try." "You always say that." "At first, I went it but [...]

Where Do Good Dogs Go When They Die?

Here's some interesting news. Stan Diel– Birmingham News Elvis sang about them — hound dogs — and most of us tend to think of them as being for the common folk, but those canines of the coon variety are actually pretty special. So special, in fact, that one coon dog has won its owner more [...]

New Fiction from Nathan Graziano

Not for Vegetarians I. I had never killed anything other than bugs, and I told Jay, who laughed and put me in a headlock. "You need to go duck hunting with me tomorrow afternoon," he said, and it wasn't a suggestion. So the next afternoon, we shoved off the lake shore in Jay's old aluminum [...]

New Poem from Mather Schneider

THE GUY WITH THE FEET You're a seventeen year old country boy and your girlfriend tells you she cheated on you. Some guy from Pekin felt her up at a party. Some big shot city kid, a senior. But here's the catch: he felt her up with his feet, not his hands. For some reason [...]

New Poem from Shannon Hardwick

Book of Gaigemon, II This morning you bought plants to praise your hands, stirrup leathers in case you decided to hang yourself. The heat of a body swirls when it enters another. You might go mad Wanting to resurface the dead, pull their bodies through ginning ribs, pick their shadow-bones, birth their children. A deer [...]

Rainbows, fiction by Mark Staniforth

Becky watched Ged hook a rainbow right out the lake and push it clean down his throat, still wriggling. Dusk smeared the sky up like fish grease. Ged wiped his mouth with his sleeve and slapped his lips. He laughed: 'it's just the way I like 'em.' Folk might have figured Ged had another thing [...]