|
|
|
|||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||||||||||
|
Photography Marius G. Sipa | bio |
|
||||||||||
The sky looks like it portends snow, and the maples are bare of all the brilliant fall colors they had just weeks ago. This morning, a woodpecker was busily drilling the tree in our yard, and like the woodpecker, I feel the urgent need to tidy up the winter supplies.... [more] |
Fiction
Lindsay Merbaum | bio
I keep taking pictures of nothing: on the street corner with a bum sifting carefully through the trash, sitting in the library among all the unloved books, standing outside my worn-out apartment building. Who knows how many other people have lived there, maybe died in there? If it was once a sweatshop, a brothel? Who knows about the history of this place? A woolly mammoth could’ve taken a dump on 3rd Avenue and we would never know. Did you ever think of that? [more] |
Paige Riehl | bio
The Fat Lady at the Dairy Barn
I ring up pop rockets, a Starburst, and a cherry dip cone for a little girl with blonde braids and sticky hands. While my fingers press the dirty numbers on the cash register, I watch her out of the corner of my eye. With her vanilla skin and that Smurfette shirt, no doubt the kid is cute. She kind of reminds me of myself when I was six. She struggles to unwrap a Starburst with one hand and licks the dip cone in the other. The cone tilts slightly to the left, not my greatest work, and she licks it into the Leaning Tower of Pisa ... [more] |
Gregory J. Wolos | bio
“It’s not the idea of a snake that bothers me—” Susan said when Michael pleaded their son’s case for the pet. “But what will it eat?” “Pinkies,” Michael said. “Pinkies?” “Frozen baby mice—the size of an eraser.” “They’re tiny, see?” Justin held up one of his new school pencils and tapped its end. [more] |
Nonfiction
Emily Adler | bio
The Summer of Our Unemployment
The sun rises and treads overhead, a 45-degree angle devastating the bedroom in brightness. It’s hot in here. The air conditioner is off. There’s the electric bill to think about. Also, the environment. On the earliest mornings and the coolest afternoons, we run. Five of us. Heart-healthy individuals. Sometimes there’s a sixth runner. Sometimes he temps instead. [more] |
Tom Molanphy | bio
It’s dark in my brother’s closet. Brian, my other brother, rummages through bathroom drawers, rattling painkillers in their bottles. He’s checking for used razors, combs, brushes—anything with hair or skin or “part of Paul.” My Dad, on his knees in the living room, jimmies the lock on a long, black trunk, a keepsake of Paul’s from our Uncle Jack. He clears his throat in the deep, rumbling way he does before diving into a tough job. We’re each looking for what to take and what to leave. [more] |
Click here to see our nominations for the Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses XXXVI anthology (2012 Edition)
Follow us for updates on writers, calls for submissions, and news from the editors.
All files © 2005-2012 Blood Orange Review