Luck’s Run wasn’t a city so much as a refueling stop, a name on a sign on I-79 about halfway between Charleston and Morgantown. The air soured and stank from natural gas wells and corpses of skunks struck by coal …
Desire
Plus keeping an eye out
Equals what we call
The opposite of fictional
We only hear a few decibels
Nothing high-pitched you know
They talk about molecules
That never really show
Woe to the puppets
With solid views…
Only impoverished lunatics spend Christmas eve at the Original Mitchell’s restaurant. My boyfriend Scott and I had five bucks to our name. Santa had shunned us. We’d been extra bad, and there was no redemption in sight.
We sat at …
Last Thursday I got a run in my stockings and told Doctor Mayer about my fascination with Lenora Ashworth. I’d seen her photograph in a newspaper clipping at the reference library downtown and hadn’t stopped thinking about her since. Thin, …
Columbarium photo: once handsome face, stroke gnarled. Flowers. Hello, Uncle.
Annie Bien is author of two poetry collections, Under Shadows of Stars (2017) and Plateau Migration (2012). She translates Tibetan Buddhist scriptures into English through 84000: Translating the Words of …
Adam took a long swig of the potion and scowled. He’d changed the combination of herbs which had only served to emphasis the pungent taste. He had no choice but to drink it as it helped him summon the dead. …
I study the pile of debris. “How long has this been sitting here?”
“Week, few days, time’s a blur at this point.”
“Well, I’m not touching it, anything could be living inside.”
George hands me a rake. “Give it a …
Again.
She tries on her closet. Nothing fits.
She throws out her clothes. She’s done this before. And twice before that.
With nothing to wear, she is glad she has no lover, no places to go.
But first, there will …
The Assembly ball was the last time she truly felt well. She recalled the night with perfect clarity, each detail clear and colorful, down to the color of her perpetrator’s eyes.
They were not brown, as everyone around her assumed, …