Category: Side A

Fiction for Side A: “Feast” by Andrea Marcusa

Feast The double-wide steel door clanks shut. I stand next to the man who collected me from the waiting room. We are the only people in the huge elevator. I am naked except for my thin gown. The man barely looks at me. He rolls back on his heels and digs his hands into his…
Side A Short Story: “Adults Told Me” by Mark Benedict

Adults Told Me 1. My science teacher told me that life was slapdash. I talked to him after class sometimes; science was one of the few subjects in high school I was interested in. “God’s plan my butt,” Mr. Burke said, slurping coffee. “Evolution is flukier than the weather. Would a divine plan really include…
Poetry for Side A: “Dear Cut-Glass” by William Erickson

Dear Cut-Glass, It’s been longerthan I thoughtthis trail of bloodwould go, butthe mountain isso much smallerat its peak thanwhen we drewthose picturesinto the duston your windshield.Do you still have it,the baby we madefrom all thoseleftover dinnerconversations?Remember, wenamed it Alice andcalled your parentswith the news butno one answered.The sky is fallingis a thing we’d saywhen it…
Side A Fiction: “Before All That” by Lauren Woods

Before All That In the end, she sells me for only a hundred dollars. “Women in this market usually go for larger karats,” the woman at the pawn shop with the nails filed down to pink nubs tells her without blinking. She doesn’t stop to think it over, doesn’t caress my head a last time…
Side A Fiction: “To See the Moon” by Marlene Olin

To See the Moon What she hates most are the lights. There’s no dawn. No dusk. No silver sliver falling through the slats. Instead a light as bright as a photographer’s flash burns day and night. She’s almost sleeping. She would die for some blessed sleep. Instead she hears the squeak squeak squeak of a…
“Pennies on Train Tracks,” a Side A flash fiction by Catherine Chiarella Domonkos

Pennies on Train Tracks You taught me to lay pennies on tracks to get flattened. Smooth brown ovals we stowed in this Skippy jar we buried under the house like pirate treasure. You showed me the brightest places on the tracks are best to get really flat pennies because that’s where the wheels make the…
Side A Flash Fiction: “Causality” by Anita Goveas

Causality When my placid younger brother scalded himself on his sixth birthday, the first time he ever cried, my mother declared it was inevitable and cultivated a hobby of having accidents. She could no longer touch a newspaper or our dog-eared copy of 1001 Nights without a papercut that rendered her helpless and table legs…
Side A: “the cinder path,” a poem by Zach Savich

the cinder path harder to writemyself a noteon the back of the eulogythan the eulogyit takes a long timeto tune and longerto trust sometimesthe captions say“[gentle minor melody]”sometimes “[windactivates the motionalarm]” the fantasyat thirty-nineis a hamburger inthe parking lot by the squatlighthouse scrap beachif you touch me herebelow the throatit smells of rainthere isn’t roomon…
“Black. Star. Pieces.”: Side A Poetry by Matthew Cooperman

Black. Star. Pieces. —for Rosmarie Waldrop 1 The gathering of parts to their parts, will there be gathering of parts? Time, in a word, reading. As in, where did the song begin? Go on. Singing the terrible truth of the world, a griot through an open window. Something happened on the day he died, I…