New World Writing Quarterly

Your Sunny Day

 
My smart food­ie boyfriend Hans and I were work­ing side by side in his uncle’s Williamsburg restau­rant — Das Lokal with a k — a Euro-Southwestern farm to table nou­velle thing. And I real­ly thought I had it pret­ty good: a sweet lit­tle apart­ment, a lit­tle life. I admit it, at that point six months ago, I was enter­tain­ing thoughts: on my 27^th birth­day we would decide to move in togeth­er, even use the M word, you know, mutu­al­ly.

The Whore of Manzanita

 
Spring is hard in Manzanita. The sun comes out, the flow­ers bloom, the grass turns bright green, then a storm blows in off the Pacific and stays a week. We’ve been here all win­ter, lis­ten­ing to the water splash from the gut­ters at the cor­ners of our hous­es. The ocean heaves and sobs at the shore. We make soup. We walk the dogs on the wet beach or through the drip­ping woods, the green ferns and gray cedars. We make every­thing nice for the tourists, who won’t be here for anoth­er cou­ple of months. 

Four More Stories

 
MRS. TONNAGE

These three AM robins who go qui­et by six as if all that singing sends them back to sleep!

And the sounds dur­ing day­light: car noise, jet noise, deliv­ery trucks, and the ship horn from the riv­er. Why is it that her yard was qui­eter once, and she could actu­al­ly hear an entire episode of her favorite pro­gram with­out sim­ply watch­ing mouths mov­ing on the screen?

Questions like these keep Mrs. Tonnage upright. 

Niagara

 
The hus­band isn’t breath­ing beside me or else the bright snow falling at that angle against the wind­shield oblit­er­at­ing his chest heave and forc­ing his eyes closed is just how I see it— 

The Displaced Person

Four Stories

 
HIS TERRIBLE FEELINGS

Whenever he felt dead to his paint­ing, Theodore went shop­ping. Not down the street, but out where the grass strips still bub­bled and oozed. Ten min­utes atop the brown­fields and Theodore would feel alive again, he’d need to rush home. His can­vass­es, once stalled, had nerve, torque, solutions. 

Juleen

 
Juleen wants to punch Max in the face. 

Confinement

 
She wakes to the sound of beat­ing wings and a bit­ter wind formed by dark­ness. She is late, still tied to a dream about miss­ing him at a bus sta­tion, then at a train sta­tion and then at an airport.

Solid-rock is how she wants him. This is not about sex. It’s not about beau­ty or the late-night con­ver­sa­tions they used to have long ago. No.  It’s about famil­iar­i­ty, about putting her cheek to his bel­ly and feel­ing the tight warm skin of his thin body. 

Cold Hands

from a nov­el in progress

Most who pass by this stretch of high­way don’t notice there’s a town here.  Their eyes glaze over the flat, yel­low land of Central Montana that goes on and on. The only land­mark tall enough to see from the road is the vacant grain ele­va­tor, where the local kids like to play. But just as its sil­ver tow­er comes into view, the a.m. radio los­es its sig­nal. They look down to fid­dle with the dial, and there goes the town of Petroleum. 

Giant

 
The babysit­ter sets a plate of pan­cakes in front of the boy. She’s eigh­teen and wear­ing a short night­ie. Fingers of sun stretch across her freck­led face.

Three Stories

 
Appearances and Disappearances

George General patient­ly explained it to his pret­ty blonde wife:  how the sun instead of set­ting this evening had turned right around and rose with the full moon.  He was quite sure it hadn’t hap­pened before.  Never? she want­ed to know but only in a desul­to­ry way. 

Altitude

 
Worst part of work is the meet­ings, ask any­body, and I always seem to find myself in one of them with my col­league with the mile-high view.  If he’s not try­ing to edu­cate us he’s try­ing to sell us some­thing, main­ly the wis­dom of his ele­vat­ed view­point.  I don’t know why he wastes his time on us when it’s obvi­ous he believes we’ll nev­er scale the men­tal heights nec­es­sary to under­stand him.  It must be cold and lone­ly up there on the moun­tain­top, see­ing the rest of the world below bet­ter than the peo­ple who live there.

Bad Sex, Part Two

 
ONE:

“I want you to try on engage­ment rings,” Eduard said. “Just for fun.”

We were in San Salvador. He’d found us a hotel with a beach we could walk on. We woke ear­ly and walked along the beach for more than an hour. We climbed a hill cov­ered with vines and on the oth­er side there was a sea cave. We took off our shoes and our clothes and put them on a high rock and swam naked. We were in the water for half an hour and Eduard said, “Look!” and caught his own wal­let float­ing in the water. He found my shoes in the surf. There was no beach left by our cave and we had to swim out beyond and around the rocks with our clothes in our hands to get back to land. I had want­ed to make love on the sand in that cave.

We’ve just added anoth­er half-dozen pieces to our Fall col­lec­tion. Please check them out if you haven’t been by in a while. New pieces by Claudia Smith, Clancy Martin, Kathy Fish, Peter Ramos, Glen Pourciau, David Moolten and oth­ers. Click here.

New work from Mason and Lopez, along with Steven Wingate and Joan Wilking, just added to the Fall 2015 issue edit­ed by Kim Chinquee. Hit this link or Fall 2015 in the main menu above for a look see. –more

We’re pleased to have our Associate Editor Kim Chinquee select­ing and edit­ing the Fall 2015 issue of New World Writing. Kim has already tak­en sev­er­al pieces and will be read­ing through the mid­dle of December at least, so keep the work com­ing. –more

I Wanted To Sit Closer

 
On a cold morn­ing in January, my father showed up on our front porch. He said he was in town for a hair­cut; there was a salon he and his sec­ond wife went to in Bucktown, a neigh­bor­hood that hadn’t flood­ed. My hus­band and son and I had just returned to New Orleans to live togeth­er again under one roof.

We are pleased to report that Kim Chinquee, author of Oh, Baby and Pretty, and par­tic­u­lar­ly well known for her exquis­ite flash fic­tions, will be edit­ing the Fall 2015 issue of NWW. We –more