JOSEPH GARRETT Taos, New Mexico, 1959 Sarah climbed the terra cotta steps, her footsteps echoing in the stairway like the hooves of horses on the little street below. She struggled with the key to her apartment; the key was the duplicate of many duplicates, and the people who had lived there before her had come … Continue reading A PLACE THEY’D NEVER BEEN
Category: Fiction
BENEATH THE INOCULATOR, UP MAIN STREET
Sam Asher Half-way into the forest is the centre for disheartened educators, full of supply teachers, and superintendents, and janitors who cleaned up too much heave. Once, our CEO got them passes to our park, and they wandered cautiously around the exhibits, being very careful to obey all the rules. The interaction from them hardly … Continue reading BENEATH THE INOCULATOR, UP MAIN STREET
The Knack
Bruce Johnson I once had a friend who could tell you where you were from. This was a hell of a trick for social gatherings. She’d be in the corner, sipping something with gin in it, and I’d be beside her drinking beer. Inevitably someone would approach. This was Las Vegas, the best place for … Continue reading The Knack
Advanced Humor
Andrew Gretes It sounded like a joke. The university didn’t even offer Introduction to Humor or Intermediate Humor. Just Philosophy 421: Advanced Humor. No prerequisites. Intrigued, Jason signed up. Lovesick, I followed. It was our last semester before graduating. My plan: to slide witty, ostensibly-improvised notes to Jason for four months and then seal the … Continue reading Advanced Humor
Pizza
Eric Van Hoose Gene likes the sequence—placing the order, undressing, waiting. He likes the suspense almost as much as the moment when the deliveryman arrives (it is, usually, a man). His phone is angled against a piece of his mother’s pottery on an end table in the living room, its camera pointed at the front … Continue reading Pizza
Mary Rosenthal
Stacy Lee My periods left me two years ago. The last was dark brown. This morning, I went to the market to pick up sea salt and laundry detergent. The lighting in the store was a murky white, tint of green. A woman and her daughter shopped in the aisle. The daughter wore a bow … Continue reading Mary Rosenthal
Red City
Ashley Kunsa January Tonight I’m eating fish sticks alone. Cod probably, or haddock, something white with flimsy breading that sticks to the foil. Ginger can’t worry about food right now. Or the dripping sink, or my paycheck, which is about to stop coming. All she can worry about is Warren’s sperm. How much he’ll produce, … Continue reading Red City
WISH YOU WERE HERE by Claire Vaye Watkins: An Excerpt
by Claire Vaye Watkins It begins with a man and a woman. They are young, but not so young as they would like. They fall in love. They marry. They concieve a child.They buy an adobe house in a small town where all the houses are adobe. The McDonald’s is adobe. The young man is … Continue reading WISH YOU WERE HERE by Claire Vaye Watkins: An Excerpt
THE DUCK: an excerpt of the 2011 Wabash Fiction Prize story
by Joe B. Sills Little by little I am entering into a fantastic world. -Chekhov The first snow of winter falls on The Taganrog Gymnasium for Boys. Students exit from a wide doorway, each of them uniformed in a dark blue tunic with a long row of copper buttons. A first-grader removes his cloak and … Continue reading THE DUCK: an excerpt of the 2011 Wabash Fiction Prize story
ITEMS FOR EXCHANGE: Excerpt and Author Response
Conor Broughan, Fiction Editor Many readers of Sycamore Review are also writers. So we wanted to pose a few craft questions to contributor Naomi Williams that might illuminate her process and techniques when writing “Items for Exchange” which can be read in its entirety in Issue 23.2-Summer/Fall 2011. *** by Naomi J. Williams PLAUSIBILITY He … Continue reading ITEMS FOR EXCHANGE: Excerpt and Author Response
