PHOTO KIOSK My parents will retire soon, their eyes too fuzzy, their hands too shaky to fill prescriptions, and this crusty old pharmacy will be my cross to bear. And…

In the Autumn 2021 issue we interviewed Jack Plotnick about his brilliant Science Fiction dramedy Space Station 76. A click on his name in the previous sentence will bring one…

1.       The Black Hole of Comedy I made my way down the dank, filthy stairs, into the darkness where jokes go after they’ve died. I descended into Ha-Ha Hell, like…

She smelled her first. Heavy musk perfume, sweat, stale lavender and smoke. Florence ordered her nose to remain unwrinkled and glanced around the dim tea room, balancing her tray. The…

Spiritual Mom Mom got spiritual in her late fifties,and we really had no patience for allthe forgiveness. It was disconcertingthe way she’d kneel down on the floorin the middle of…

Voltage Hymn Rise perfect voltage, pow’r and lightwhose majesty is unconfined,indwell this luminary nightthe shining darkness of the mind. Your inward speaking wakes the deadand by its tongue they understandthe…

After these festivities they all went to bed, but the next day the bride and groom woke up early and began to think of the beggar with the crooked neck,…

Tour I stand by a pond that reflectsthe golden light of late morning;my feet hang from the sky. Two men are swimming frantically toward meyelling with throats full of waterdesperate…

Nine-Ball When I take my drowned brother to the pool hall, we always get a table. Nobody likes to get dripped on. Not the Thursday night frat boys, with their…

My work demands the completion of many unpleasant tasks, but the most unpleasant are these quarterly visits to my grandfather. As the one who’d gotten him committed to the institution,…

The Library Carts and The Troubles She did it for the carts. Books were nice, as was the quiet and her self-inking date-stamp, but the two blonde oak library carts…

Evan Fowler, Seeing Thing, Atmosphere Press 2023. 79 pages Several poems from this book have already appeared in in 96, and this link will lead you to them. Needless to…

War stories? Now, a man like me is full of them, and some that can’t be told until I’ve had a pint. You’ve stood me three and so I’ll tell the best o’ them. Not that you’d be able to write it down and publish it. Some things are not ‘fit for print,’ you know.

The room in which I found myself was suffocated in decay. Its corners were blurred with concretions of dust and broken shards, or filthy black cobwebs saturated with