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Flying Lessons
by Richard Bader
Noah took great care with the cage, as Mrs. Talbot had instructed. It was heavy and his nine-year-old arms were exhausted, so he stopped every block or so to set it down. He carried it out in front of him like she said, not in one arm by his side where it would bang against his hip. “Don’t jostle it,” she said. “That would be bad for the bird.”...
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Flash Fiction
by Robert Paul Cesaretti
with a touch of hope we die;
only to live and be touched
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Approaching the Shoals
by Joseph Conlin
I stood along side the bus at the upper level of BWI's terminal, avoiding eye contact with Bailey and Father Donovan. I had been told that there were planes leaving for New York from the C and D concourses. The bus idled high, and the fumes from its diesel engine floated along the curb as the driver searched for my bag in the belly of the bus. My attention darted, a car honking, people shouting, the faint roar of a jet. I squatted and looked for my red tube bag as the bus driver pushed around the luggage ...
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Off the Grid
by Paul García
I came to the United States with my brothers Ramón and Filadelfo when I was fourteen. My name’s Alejandro, but everyone calls me Ali. Our village in Guatemala is two hours from Tuxtla by car. People are poor there in a way that’s hard to understand here, where everything is big—the cars, the meals, the houses, even the people! I left school in third grade to work our field of beans, tomato, corn, squash, chilies... In my prayers, I didn’t pester God too much for favors, just asked Him to take care of my parents. Sometimes people go without a doctor and die for no reason other than poverty. I thought of our mother and father when ...
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Broken China
by Patrick Goggins
She was a slip of a girl, barely twelve. Her tiny feet barely reached the floor, sitting alone on the sofa as she did. Hands folded softly on her lap, her tiny calico dress clung to her bones as she breathed softly, in and out. The morning sun had just risen but she was wide awake. It occurred to her that it was time to make the tea.
She glanced to her left. He shook his head “no.” She returned her visage and continued breathing. There he sat, legs at forty-five degrees, his scrotum forming a bag in the gusset of his chinos. The tattered cloth chair he sat in had always been “his” chair. She knew it. She got the sofa...
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Imitating Life
by James Noguera
I can hear the other children in the park below, the same as yesterday, as the day before: shouting, playing, having fun. The sounds are always there, always the same. And I am always here, the same, to hear them. I listen every day, trying to understand the sounds. But I know I can’t; I don’t make them.
I’m alone in a small room in a small apartment, surrounded mostly by off-white walls. Maybe they’re actually white. I can never tell. ...
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To Be Happy
by Riley H. Welcker
It is autumn. Jack is jogging up Bristlecone Pine Trail in Bryce Canyon National Park. He is holding his iPod. White strings dangle from his ears. The trail slithers off the Rainbow Point parking lot, climbing up and down, winding through the trees. A lone, cinnamon-metallic, Ford Edge SUV diminishes behind him. The scent of Douglas fir, juniper, and ponderosa pine is heavy and thick. The smell of rain hangs on the air. Gray clouds converge from the west. The muscles in Jack’s legs flex and release. Flex and release....
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Black Adder
by Karen Christensen
He wouldn’t tell me where he was living.  He wouldn’t even give me a phone number where I could reach him.  He would call me late at night and ask me to meet him in the parking lot of a small strip mall, and like a fool, I would go - hoping that I would glean some piece of information to help me understand what was going through his mind.  We would climb into the back of his truck, make love (though “screwing” is probably a better way to characterize what we were doing) - and then I would drive back home in tears...
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Raising Death
by Keith DeBlasi  
A few weeks after September 11, 2001, to a query in the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Question Man” column on the effects on New Yorkers of the recent attacks there, the most memorable response came from a maybe forty-five-year-old black brother from Hunters Point, an S.F. neighborhood known largely for its poverty and violence. 
Now they know how it feels, he said. 
This is what young black men in America live with every day, all year round, for life, he said. 
They got what was coming to them.     
Appalling.  Absurd.  ...
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Unquenchable Bucket
by David Flynn
The Bucket was a legend to me even before I met him.  For months every man, it seemed, in Osaka State, Japan, mentioned him to me. 
"He can drink sake all night and not pass out," a school official said the first week I arrived in August.  "He is called The Bucket because that's how much he can drink.  You will lose to him."
"But I don't like to get drunk," I insisted.
"He will make you fall on the floor" ...
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The Media's Court of Public Opinion, Casey Anthony
by Keith Long
The Casey Anthony trial became the most sensational news story of 2011. The Orlando, Florida court where the trial took place issued 600 press credentials, and Time magazine dubbed it the first social media trial of the century. The 22-year-old single mom was charged with three felonies including first degree murder, aggravated child abuse and manslaughter. When pictures surfaced on the internet showing her at a nightclub in June, 2008, shortly after her two-year-old daughter, Caylee, went missing, the media and public went ballistic. Thirty-one days passed after Caylee's death before police were notified and then it was not mother Casey, but her family that called police and they were pointing fingers at her....
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The Question
by Bruce Steinberg
When the box arrived, I thought I had arrived. I tore off the packaging tape before the UPS truck left the driveway. The distinct smell of newly bound books, like packed library shelves, mixed with a hint of freshly applied glue. Not just any collection of books but a delivery of my book. A dozen author copies. My first published novel, with my name, my title, my cover design, my author bio, my photo−my arms smartly folded over my chest below a posed squinty-eyed look through glasses. …
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Robin Collins:
Sounds through Drywall,
Potential Lost,
Jimbo, Akimbo
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Colin Dodds:
Half the Pain,
The Ledger of Blessings,
Screws,
After the Teddy Bears' Coup,
Work Week
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Meg Eden:
The Hour of Death,
They would have been married.(photo prompt)
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Stephen Leonard:
Flyway,
Driving a Stick,
Awful
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Kenneth Pobo:
1963, Villa Park, Illinois;
Days of 1967;
Can Do
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On the Green Line
by Mattias Renberg
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Raj Sharma:
Autumn Tones,
The Seed,
On Havelock Island (India)
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Cheryl A. Van Beek:
Old Picket Fence,
Green to Gray
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Fall/Winter 2013-14 Issue of SNReview (SNR) ISSN: 1527-344X--SNReview (SNR) is a literary journal of short stories, creative non-fiction, and poetry, founded in 1999. Member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), Academy of American Poets (AAP). This work, meaning SNReview.org, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.