ZYZZYVA Genres Archive: Fiction

May 17th, 1974

by Dagoberto Gilb

October 3, 2022

Posted on October 3, 2022 (October 2, 2022) by Zack Ravas

“Slauson,” Sherry said. “Doesn’t that sound…maybe Watts, like that, to you?”“What?” Danny said making the word shorter than it already was.“It’s kind of a ghetto name, right?”Danny might have looked up and away irritated if he wasn’t driving her car. Slauson was the name of the street they were on, wide and industrial, gigantic warehouses

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The Murmuring Killed Me

by Peter Orner

September 15, 2022

Posted on September 15, 2022 (September 14, 2022) by Zack Ravas

Every few years or so I go to visit my dead at Beth El Cemetery in Fall River, Massachusetts. It’s across the street from a Cumberland Farms. My grandfather always said that being dead didn’t seem so bad if he could run over and grab a pack of cigarettes and the Fall River Herald. On

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Part of a Deer

by Lucy Corin

August 10, 2022

Posted on August 10, 2022 (August 9, 2022) by Zack Ravas

Here it was suddenly ninety degrees, and across the country it was suddenly frozen. I’d been texting about it with Basil all morning, getting my stuff together for running errands. In the car, I swapped into my sunglasses, setting everything up to follow the driving instructions I’d texted to myself by trying to balance the

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The Bully of Columbus

by Tom Barbash

March 29, 2022

Posted on March 29, 2022 (March 28, 2022) by Zack Ravas

“You’re gonna get your ass kicked,” the greasy haired bully said.He said it every time I saw him, which was once or twice a week when I was coming back from therapy, or on my way back from school. I was 16 then.“Ass kicked,” he called out once I’d passed him on Columbus Avenue, like he

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The Third Daughter

by Vanessa Hua

March 15, 2022

Posted on March 15, 2022 (March 14, 2022) by Zack Ravas

The Chairman is dead. Outside, the people of Chinatown are cheering. They light firecrackers and beat pots and pans, chanting as they march three floors below the window of my apartment. Their signs say, “Smash the Emperor!” Drips of paint spoil the sweep and curve of the calligraphy, the characters bleeding as if shot.Shouts and

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Love Story, With Cocaine

by Tom Bissell

December 7, 2021

Posted on December 7, 2021 (December 7, 2021) by Zack Ravas

Maarit’s father had given her a dog because he hoped it would provide her with something to do. It was true that Maarit did not have much to do, though she always felt busy, which was, perhaps, a natural consequence of waking up daily at 3:00 p.m. Most of her activities involved spending her father’s

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Alabama Funeral

by Kristen Iskandrian

July 20, 2021

Posted on July 20, 2021 (July 19, 2021) by Zack Ravas

The sitter arrived with a Ziploc bag of brightly colored string.“For friendship bracelets,” she said, one eye veering off.“Yes,” Bette said. The sitter’s eye was particularly lazy today; Bette had never gotten used to it, although she herself, when extra tired, had an eye prone to drifting. Bette was aware that she could be, in

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Good With Boys

by Kristen Iskandrian

July 9, 2021

Posted on July 9, 2021 (July 8, 2021) by Zack Ravas

I was going to sleep in a museum—with any luck, next to Esau Abraham, a boy so gorgeously Jewish he held the entire Old Testament in his name, in the perfect contours of his face. I had this theory about boys, that if they just got close enough to me, and sort of focused in,

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The Wedding Visitor

by Elizabeth Spencer

June 8, 2021

Posted on June 8, 2021 (June 8, 2021) by Zack Ravas

It seemed a good thing to do and because he hadn’t come there in so long, he went slowly. Approaching the house from the road before it spiraled up the drive, he sat for a while and gave it a long look.Like many Southern houses, the original structure was almost lost among the many extensions.

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Anyone Can Do It

by Manuel Muñoz

May 20, 2021

Posted on May 20, 2021 (August 30, 2024) by Zack Ravas

Her immediate concern was money. It was a Friday when the men didn’t come home from the fields and, true, sometimes the men wouldn’t return until late, the headlights of the neighborhood work truck turning the corner, the men drunk and laughing from the bed of the pickup. And, true, other women might have thought

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In the Black, With Jessica

by Christian Kiefer

April 20, 2021

Posted on April 20, 2021 (April 19, 2021) by Zack Ravas

The sound of a car gearing up the ashen road. Chuck thought at first that it had to be someone from Cal Fire or another crew but then the radio crackled and Bob told him it was a civilian. “Copy,” he said, and then, after releasing the button: “Fuck.”No part of him that was not

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Three Windows Onto Rome

by Kirstin Valdez Quade

April 6, 2021

Posted on April 6, 2021 (April 5, 2021) by Zack Ravas

Santi Quattro CoronotiOn the right wall of the basilica is a fragment of a fresco of San Bartolomeo. He’s a bearded old man, mouth obscured by damage, his eyes suspicious. His own wrinkled pelt is thrown over his shoulder like a traveling cloak.No longer the cheerful dandy, dressed in white with swinging purple tassels. (He

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