John McCaffrey His name was Crawford Norris. We’d spent more than an hour talking and drinking before he introduced himself. Crawford was tall and husky and looked to be on the long end of seventy. He finished the story he was telling me with a salesman’s smile, his lips parting to reveal a neat row of lime-white teeth. I drained my Jack and Ginger, making sure to wince as I swallowed. “Still hurts?” “Yeah.” My pain...

Ryan Millbern Taylor sat in the corner of the bar at the Holiday Inn in Galvin, talking to a man who called himself Sydney. Her pockmarked legs were crossed, her top foot bouncing to the beat of “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.” A strobe light pulsed in one corner and shot up into a rotating disco ball that covered the empty dance floor with tiny shards of fragmented light. Sydney was getting drunk fast, gulping doubles of bourbon and...

Terry Sanville I hadn’t seen him for days. The seat next to me on the bus to San Fernando Junior High stayed empty. There were rumors: a fiery car crash, a crippling polio attack, the Russians kidnapping his whole family. The Sanders’ Studebaker was missing from their driveway. My mind conjured fantastic tales. But on Saturday afternoon, something bounced against my bedroom window and I saw him climbing our walnut tree. “Aaron,...

Aesthetic Rejection - The artwork of Francis Raven

he World Without Us is Beautiful, but Requires an Explosion - The artwork of Francis Raven