– Marie Kennedy “Are you there ?” she says. “Yes – give me a second,”  I say as I open the door for the children I am babysitting that day. “I’m pregnant,” she says. The children glance at me as they rush by, their faces glistening with sweat and their eyes brimming over with joy….
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– Kenneth Duffy A dog is barking in the dump but dogs always bark in the dump. The smells drive them wild. I once saw a terrier go insane. It was all too much for it. . It started growling, snapping at nothing at all. We had no choice. It came at us. It was…
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– Deirdre Moran Judith was rummaging through the seed tin. That always meant trouble. Mammy had already left. She picked out a packet of peas and stared at the picture on the front of the packet. She flung it to one side and picked another. This was always a telling sign. If she treated the…
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– Matthew Cook When Angela and I finally went our separate ways I suddenly found I had no money and took pretty much the first job I could find, which turned out to be repairing dishwashers. Mr Dishwasher Ltd was based in a foul-smelling garage and operated by a hairy dwarf-like man, who hated all…
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– Tracey Parker I can’t help but think of Sarah while I’m listening to the album Out of Time by R.E.M.  It came out last month, and I’ve listened to it over and over. Sarah and I listened to the Green and Document albums repeatedly in high school in my car’s Sparkomatic tape player, laughing…
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– Amanda Saint Trudy sighs as the spoon fractures the top of her boiled egg and she jabs it into the crack that appears. Quickly pushes away the thought that she wishes it were a cleaver going through Hugh’s head instead. His bald pate is gleaming in the sunshine that’s pouring through the restaurant window….
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– Tamara Jones Now this is so weird, I can feel everything going down, it’s a real physical sensation.  Like everything in my body is being pulled down, down, down and I’m just sitting here watching it, as if it has nothing to do with me – like my head is still sitting up here…
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– Carina McNally Marie was born into the wrong era; the wrong place, or perhaps, into the wrong family. She knew that she had a place in the world; she just hadn’t quite figured it out yet. She looked up from her play corner to be greeted by the familiar dullness of her grandmother’s house;…
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– Stefen Styrsky Even though there was that Sunday you found yourself strung-out behind Whole Foods, banging on the metal service door you imagined was the entrance to a secret nightclub, and only took off when a stock boy called the cops, but not before grabbing an apple, waxy and glowing, from atop a pyramid…
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– Peter Hurtgen Jr. The elderly come in waves. Somehow they got into the gun pantry and are now fully armed and inching from the cafeteria to the gameroom, where some of us are barricaded behind a wall of recliners and golf magazine racks. (I was against having a gun pantry at all, but Dr….
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