Stories
Fear of Flying
Stephen J. Lyons Before I even entered the plane’s cabin I could see disaster lurking in the boarding tunnel. This is the staging area where mothers and fathers gear up like wilderness backpackers at a trailhead, disassembling baby joggers and strollers,... More »
Sex, Lies and Voyeurs
by Jeffrey Meyers Family fights are the worst; they leave the deepest wounds and cause the greatest pain. Since everyone’s version of what happened was contradictory and self-serving, it was impossible to know what actually occurred. The clash of volatil... More »
Dinner at the Woke Street Café
By Martin H. Levinson When I entered the Woke Street Café—a hip new restaurant that caters to the woke, those wanting to be woke, and individuals curious about the idea of “wokeness”—I tried to check my privilege at the door but was told unless I agre... More »
The Parity Catastrophe
Danny had been randomly selected for incarceration duty by the Parity Algorithm. Of the men selected, a majority had at least one parent of Asian descent. More »
Corruption Therapy
“I have already done recovering alcoholic therapy, drug quitters’ therapy, and broken family therapy, but I think more people suffer from corruption,” the younger one replied. More »
Treasures from A Cluttered Midwest Road
By Stephen J. Lyons I found the following untitled poem while picking up trash in the city park near the picnic pavilion: “Our booze who art in mugs Hallowed be thy brew Our liquor come, we will be drunk In bars as it is in basements Give us this day our... More »
The New Normal
By Jessie Seigel It was eleven o’clock at night. I was sitting alone in the one-room office of the Podunk Herald. This newspaper’s one newshound (myself) had just finished yet another article on a recent rash of bank robberies in our fair burgh, and I was ... More »
The Dying Roar of the Lions
“Ladies and gentlemen, they and them and y’all, wives and wives, husbands and wives, husbands and husbands, significant others; I’m glad you, them, their, y’alls could be here this evening.” Inwardly, he breathed a sigh of relief. No one had called h... More »
Fear and Loathing in Alaska: Where Men Are Men and the Bears are Scary
Snow is falling, but I am not in a white world. At the Anchorage airport, broad-faced natives move through the lobby with the weary look of the world’s indigenous; Pacific-rim Asians with deal-making cell phones dial home; and an Afr... More »
Out with the Old, In with the Newspeak
I pour myself a mug of hot steaming Victory Coffee, light up a Victory Cigarette and daydream about getting off work here at the Ministry of Truth . . . home to my apartment in Victory Mansions and a glass of Victory Gin. The apartment, I should mention, is a ... More »