All posts in Writing

July 23, 2020

“Captain,” A Short Story by Zach Piggott

The pulsing woke him up from his deep sleep. He hated those blaring alarms and had opted years ago for the pulse. It did him wonders back then. Now he hated feeling it. He hoped for a morning where he wouldn’t feel it. He groaned, moving his body under the covers. His fingertips grazed the cool metal that had become familiar to him over the past weeks. He swung his feet over the side, his weary green eyes half opened. Where a partner should’ve been had been empty for six years. Too committed to the military. It was just another excuse. The routine was the same since he had gotten home from his deployment: breakfast, shower, shave, dress and wait. Sometimes he waited all day with nothing happening. Other times he received phone calls. Once or twice he was ushered…

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July 21, 2020

Kira Rice-Christianson — Six Poems

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Little White Lies I started carrying around these little white lies; they live here on my face. Like when I ask you a question and your answer seems ingenuine but I smile at you softly, anyway. Or when I fix you a plate and you give me your thanks, and I kiss the side of your head. While inside I scold the woman who does as she’s told, though I lay with her each night in bed. Or when you don’t come home for three nights in a row and I lay awake cracking my knuckles and toes. I picture her holding your body, unclothed. The thought leaves me paranoid, and I look through your phone. I shouldn’t have done that, now I can’t sleep. My body is filled with anxiety and heat. I…

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July 16, 2020

“Knowing,” A Short Story by Jarrett Mazza

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

SOMETIMES I WAKE UP AND forget where I am or how I arrived. We often wonder about our personal truths, our pilgrimages that help us to see who, what we are. At night, when I’m sleeping next to her, I sometimes roll quietly out of bed and stumble into the kitchen to shake off the nightmares I’ve had. I’m bleeding in each one. I can assemble so many pieces of my life and merge them meticulously together and take some time to assess how it’s all going to work before I get back to bed. But we can’t change overnight. We just need time. I suppose the lowest moment, the moments where you could say I wish I was saved became increasingly more frequent. Alone in my two-bedroom loft, before I met her, I found…

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July 14, 2020

“Another Day of Quarantine,” Poems by Michael P. Aleman

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Another Day of Quarantine The morning sun bathes our bedroom with soft light on a morning more than serene, a real gift on another day of quarantine. Cool March air via a slightly opened window drifts in. I welcome the freshness of the air and the sunlight. They bring the end of night, and assurance that darkness won’t prevail. The true blessing, of course, is being quarantined with you, having you beside me, the halo of your silver hair soft upon your pillow. The morning air billows the window curtain, offering a badly needed certainty that normalcy remains, will sustain us to the end. I abhor the thought of living through this quarantine alone, for you are bride, lover, companion and friend, and if the end is at hand, we’ll weather it together. I will, however,…

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July 8, 2020

“Traffic Report,” A Novel Excerpt by Eric D. Goodman

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Editor’s Note: “Traffic Report” is an excerpt from the novel, Setting the Family Free, published October 2019 by Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press. Copyright, © Eric D. Goodman. This excerpt is reprinted with the permission of the publisher. Traffic Report This is your eye in the sky, the WCHL Traffic Copter. If you’re just now tuning in for the first time today, here’s a word of advice: stay home. You heard me right, folks: authorities have advised everyone in the Chillicothe area to remain indoors today and to stay off the roads. If you’re already driving to work, go back home. It’s a zoo out there—literally. Lions and bears, wild cats and wolves have all escaped from a local animal reserve here in Chillicothe. If you leave your house today, you’re walking into a danger zone….

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July 6, 2020

“The Life and Death of Arthur Miller,” by Andrew Lafleche

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ARTHUR MILLER or, Damnationem Vita et Humani Conditione Fourteen days after Arthur Miller’s sixteenth birthday, both his parents were killed in an automobile accident when a drunken driver swerved into their lane as they returned home from a night at the theater. Their deaths occurred instantly, and to that effect, neither were able to be presented with an open coffin at their post-life nuptials. The last time Arthur saw his parents alive was in the moments following Sunday dinner, his mother in a dress, glowing, his father dressed handsomely, saying, “When you finally meet the woman who makes the world stand still, son, don’t ever quit doing for her what you did at the start. That way there will never be an end.” Arthur clung to these words in the weeks that followed. He clung to everything…

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June 28, 2020

“Countdown to Romance,” by Glen Donaldson

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Amid the din of busy Grinders Coffee Shop, silence like the centre of a hurricane enveloped them both. “Could this honestly get any suckier?” Fergus wondered to himself as he grasped his own sweaty, nervous fingers under the table, yanking then releasing them one after the other. Sitting opposite him was his first meeting date, Willow. She’d said she was 27. She was not only wearing “awkward” like it was her own exclusive fashion label but by this stage had taken to incessant hair-twirling in an effort to get through the dead air and lumbering silences that felt by now to them both as long as a freight train. Fergus commenced quietly tapping his Ray-Bans on the marble coffee table, being careful not to disturb the two polished silver stir-stick containers that rested in the centre; the same ones he’d positioned and repositioned more than a dozen times. Like a finger-drumming leopard straining on…

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June 22, 2020

“Up There” — Three Poems by Chad W. Lutz

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Up There this one goes out to anyone that’s ever made me feel I wasn’t enough or felt they were too good & drifted away I remember we fucked in the auditorium your idea & how carnal & playful you were wore a skirt and it hurt but I’ll admit I wasn’t ready here’s to the loves that didn’t last couldn’t last it’s all in the past now but I still daydream time to time Acan Glaske big border you know what that means government shutdowns partisan bickering sniveling banter back and forth we go the first settlers built walls around their encampments wanted to keep the threats out the Lakota the Apache the Comanche they lived on the open range in communion with nature …

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June 18, 2020

Poetry and Prose to Honor Juneteenth

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

We at The Fictional Cafe are shocked, dismayed and angered by American policemen gunning down American men of color. We assume you feel similarly. Times of great stress, like the COVID-19 pandemic, bring out both the best and the worst in people. It is a time in which we must be patient, calm, understanding, even forgiving, even while we protest for change. We have no way of knowing what strife and pain, or growth and joy, await us in the endless days of this pandemic. All we have is today to be the very best humans we can possibly be, and that today, today, is Juneteenth when the world bows its head to remember the end of slavery in America, circa 1865. Of course, we know it wasn’t the end and that racism still runs…

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June 18, 2020

“Ave Maria on the Moon,” by Frank Diamond

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Desperation birthed the plan, if you want to call it a birth, and if you want to call it a plan. NASA threw us at the Moon; a Hail Mary pass for world peace, of all clichés. Look how that turned out. I, Chuck Dunn, now sit at the entrance to the cave-complex at the base of the Marius Hills, behind the screen—or the veil, as we on the mission nicknamed it. The Moonscape stretches before me like an addict’s vision of the Arizona desert: rock formations back-lean as the dinosaurs might have while gazing at the arrival of their extinction event. Further beyond, the cloaked range dead-stops at the horizon. The Earth hovers between two cupped peaks; a raised blue Communion host. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,…

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