We’ve been fortunate to have published both a previous work of fiction and some original fine art by Dory Fiamingo in the past. The woman is a creative maelstrom, and has finished another novel, Requiem for a Caged Bird. It’s a great read, it really is. We hope you get to read it in its entirety in the very near future (as we have), but for now we’re presenting a special Three Days of Dory excerpt, yes, you guessed right, for the next three days! Here is the first of three short tastes from this wonderful work of a contemporary fantasy fiction. Sebastian (“Bastian”) is an almost-immortal private eye able to leap from one world to another. Maggie, the love of his life, had walked out on him thirty years earlier. She shows up at his cosmic bookstore,…

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FRACTURED   The snow maids among us are idle angels too terrified to plumb the icy depths of murderous woe. Their eyes are thick with wax, smiles startled artifice, words unintelligible skeletons. Lovers cannot repair the distance; they are but shadows on the lawn, roosters who savage along. I shall be well again a hollow phrase they repeat in therapy where they dream someday it will ring sapphire true. Until then they lie in bleached valleys of waste and shame, fractured mirrors, aborted stars. * * * Lorie Adair is the recipient of several Norman Mailer Scholarships and Arizona Commission on the Arts Creative Writing fellowships. Spider Woman’s Loom was a finalist for the Southwest Writers Award and a semi-finalist for the Dana Award. She has written for NPR affiliate, KJZZ, and her fiction and…

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In Love with a Ghost It was a silent slipping away. They hadn’t just grown apart. That would make it seem like they could grow together if they had the motivation, but they had no compelling incentive to move together, or move on for that matter. They would rather be unhappy together than alone. It had been 15 years, after all. They became roommates who shared the same bed, mailing address, and monthly Sunday romp. She didn’t talk to her friends about her loveless marriage over coffee or her profound loneliness over lunch. Jesus, just finish already. I faked it ten minutes ago. I even finished my shopping list. Maybe you should lay off the pork rinds for a while. You shouldn’t have to work this hard. Do you have to pant and groan in…

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Thinking About Macaws The first time I rode in John’s brown minivan was on an afternoon in late August during our freshman year of college. There was a coffee-flavored e-cigarette in the cup holder between the driver’s seat and shotgun. I hardly noticed it at first, since I was too intent on listening to The Smiths, our favorite band. As soon as I got in the car, I took John’s CD case out of his glove compartment and started flipping through it. “Put in Louder Than Bombs,” John said. “It’s their best album.” I did. After “Is It Really So Strange?” started playing, I noticed the e-cigarette for the first time and asked John what it was. He explained, then offered me some. When I refused, John picked it up and began inhaling deeply. My…

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THE SPOT This is my spot. It’s been mine since I was a boy. The water’s choppy and the current’s swift, but I love it. This is where I come when I want to be alone or to think—or to fish, just for the fun of it, or sometimes just to drink my whiskey in peace. Of course, if I come out here and I find some joker’s got it, then I get upset, so I have to keep an eye on it. If someone gets too close when I’m out here, that’s just as bad. This is a mile offshore at Fort Monroe, Virginia, where the James River flows into the Chesapeake Bay and meets the Atlantic Ocean at Hampton Roads. It’s right on the edge of the channel, at the drop off, where…

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