The house is burning down around me and I never wanted to be the mom that tears through my son’s things, covering my tracks as carefully and pathetically as he does after going through my liquor cabinet, but here I am with my hand in his top-right desk drawer being poked by an army of…
[ Digital Edition Available on Request | Print Edition SOLD OUT ] Issue 15 of Neon features the work of Jane Flett, ME Silverman, Miranda Merklein, Martin Hayes, Craig Caudill, Luigi Monteferrante, Christopher Barnes, John Oliver Hodges, Tricia Asklar, Noel Sloboda, Howard Good, and Morris Collins. Neon is free to read. If you enjoy the…
Confronted by the dusty outline of a bird hitting the glass, wings spread into a wide quarter-moon, feather marks still visible where it struck—This is enough to ruin everything. This is enough to press “Stop” and rewind your song indefinitely, but then you start thinking: If you had to be a bird, you would be…
They rush into the chippie in the woozy rum hours after 3am, the hours of Formica and kebabs. They gather armfuls of greaseproof paper, pungent and vinegary, with small, scrabbled hands. Wee anteater hipsters, foraging. They resemble bug-eyed thyroid kids, expressions as huge as fists. Undoubtedly, their nails are dirty and feet unclean. They reek…
I vault, somersault and plunge, an anchor,into the wetness that tastes like mint. The back slap knocks my breath. My gasp obliges the lifeguard to yell at me once, as if I could catch enough air to answer. When I was drowning at Adventure Island in the wave pool deep end, I didn’t know how…
Such a nice boyIn flat sixteenDecent honest Even pleasant Go figure whyHe shot them deadWife and childrenAnd best friend For an inflatable dollFound in the closetFull of love Canadian author Luigi Monteferrante recently morphed into a singer/songwriter: www.myspace.com/mcmontylive. Previous prose/poems published in Chicago Quarterly Review, Happy, Yellow Mama, Word Slaw. First novel, At the Hearth…
[ Digital Edition Available on Request | Print Edition SOLD OUT ] Issue 14 of Neon features the work of Rupert Merkin, Jenn Koiter, Grant McLeman, Jonathan Greenhause, Lynn Patmalnee, Curtis Smith, Anthony Frame, Brent Fisk, Sarah Hilary, JA Tyler, Phil Gruis, and Jarod Rosello. Neon is free to read. If you enjoy the work…
Hyde Park is mined. There’s barbed wire on The Strand. Snipers line up London Bridge and watch the Underground. Through the miracle of modern genetics Christ the Redeemer is back on Earth to save us from ourselves. From the brown curly lock, locked around the Papal neck, we managed to grow Jesus in a tube….
I glanced back into our pickup’s bed. Light was fading, and I couldn’t fight the urge. Don’t, my father said. An unanchored end of our tarp rippled beneath the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Hammond. The Hammonds had worked the land alongside ours for five generations. Mrs. Hammond sang first soprano in the church choir….
The others tell their dreams at breakfast,luring wakefulness with coffee, buttered bread.But all day, something hoversjust beyond sight – you startat a touch on the shoulder, a tap at the door. At the park, at lunchtime, you hear schoolgirls whisper gravely to each other: You dreamedyou were falling? You know,you die if you don’t wake…