All of the articles from the past month for people who like to savor their magpies’ tidings as an issue.
February Issue, 2024
An Anchored Friendship
Listen to this neo-noir short story that features the Iowa State Police, a displaced bounty hunter, a broken farmer, and his local cop acquaintance caught in a Mexican stand-off in a gasoline-soaked corn field.
My Afro-kwea diary: #2
My Afro-kwea Journal, entry #2: The Death of Vivek Oji By Akwaeke Emezi
Fiction: The Lost Man
New fiction from Dez Walker
The Mask
New fiction from Garner Behnke.
Fiction: Pandemons
I like the warm dusty tar soft on my feet. I like staring straight up into the vast reeling sky, into the fast wheeling birds. I like when the birds land and speak to me with gentle soothing voices. I like the soft sounds they make when they all settle together. I like to watch people from my roof, to see them washing over the sidewalk in waves—coming together, breaking apart.
When the plague comes I don’t go into the city any more, because it’s all shut down. The crowds on the sidewalk below are sparse and their waves veer away from each other.
A Letter to My Apologist
The late afternoon light was too beautiful for that moment; out of place in the dreariness of that corner of Abidjan, tucked away among the drab offices of the business district. It reminded me of summer nights in Cape Town when the sun is so seductive you can’t bear the thought of going indoors.
Better Things, Maybe
And suddenly we saw everything differently. The simplicity of the story seemed significant, even profound. The simplicity of the language seemed elemental, important. The repetition made beautiful, resonant little circles of words. And everything we’d learned about writing was bullshit.
Bootheel Blues
I wanted a come-to-Jesus-go-to-hell storm of biblical proportions to befall this God-soaked land. She didn’t want pennies from heaven. I wanted a cold, hard million-dollar blast to wipe out this so-called event.
Fiction: East of Kiowa
“That was Messing’s Horse at the water trough. Elijah recognized the blue pack roll on the back like the agent had described. Finally, he thought. The man moves fast for someone with nowhere to go.”
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