This week’s artwork is “I Burn/Phoenix Rising” by Rachelle Olsen-Veal

The Small End of the Funnel
by Robert Scotellaro

P.S. Brenda’s doing Phone Sex. Can you believe it? I remember her saying the word ROBUST once. It was hot.
P.P.S. Kay’s into photography now. Close-ups of rusty staples in phone poles. A red spider on a yellow sponge. Artists. Christ.
P.P.P.S. I called Brenda last night. And man oh man!
P.P. P. P.S. Out of nowhere Kay says, “All cheaters should be pushed down a funnel with the small end in hell.” I looked at her like, that’s interesting. Like, there’s nothing in this fridge worth taking. Only began breathing again when she started taking pictures of the cat.

The Klutz
by Allen X. Davis

The low rumble sounded like thunder. The house shivered. A miniature teacup teetered off the hutch and exploded musically. She would have blamed it on him. “Earthquake, smirthquake. You’re a drunk. You don’t care about my stuff. You don’t care about me!”
He picked up a piece of the cup. On it was an image of the Eiffel Tower. “I did,” he said. “But not any more.” He picked up Hawaii—where they had made love in the honeymoon water. He held it high in the air and waited for the crash. Carefully he set it back on the shelf.

I’ll Visit
by Andrew Davis

I don’t bring Mom anything when I visit her grave. I sit alone in my car and smoke, and I think about Sara and me making out, gasping for love until we are too gross. I never told Mom about her. When Sara first saw my place, she told me it was barren and needed a “woman’s touch”. What else could I do but laugh? I think she wanted to fix me, so I told her I never wanted children, and that marriage was a social construct. I wished her the best.

Numbers Never Lie
by Jace Killan

He usually liked numbers. Numbers were safe. The numbers wouldn’t lie; they were set in stone, firm, constant. Unless the conspirers of these numbers were liars, he thought. But then you could hardly blame the numbers. It wasn’t their fault that they were now etched in stone by fabricators of reality. How dare they? The wretches! Blasphemers of righteousness. Was it incompetence? Negligence? Intentional fraud? Surely the latter. Lawrence breathed deep and squeezed the trigger. He scowled at the numbers of the gasoline pump, growing and growing and growing.

Out of the Dusk
by Kim Peter Kovac

One, two, three, four, two, two, three, four.
Dirt road, civil twilight, lime green Zoom Fly shoes, jogging past thistles and sword grass, racing from the coming-soon nervous night, nasty night that fills my room, night landing on places hiding blades (Balkan blades, vampire blades).
Stop, breathe, turn, breathe again. Then: run, two, three, four, one, two; for me.
I’m on the edge. So, breathe, one, two, three, set, ready, set, go.
At astronomical twilight, the crescent moon slices up through the horizon and gently lights on Orion’s arm. Not mine. The moonlight makes my Zoom Fly shoes glow.