Genre: Fiction

ZYZZYVA fiction.

In the Black, With Jessica

by Christian Kiefer

Posted on 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

Posted on 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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A Curse on Chavez Ravine

by Lou Mathews

Posted on by Zack Ravas

I’m reading in the newspaper today and I see that Peter O’Malley wants to build a new football stadium, next to Dodger Stadium. Some of the neighbors are upset. ¡Que surprise! Some of them have been upset since the first O’Malley built the first stadium.That one was Walter. A big, smart, mean Irishman from Brooklyn.

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Ramiro

by Patricia Engel

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Ramiro will tell you himself he was just another slum kid from El Cartucho. He lived in a one-room apartment with his mother and another family of seven who let them take up a corner. They’d come from Pereira with Ramiro’s father when Ramiro was just beginning to walk, but his father got stabbed beneath

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In This Annihilated Place

by Wanda Coleman

Posted on by Zack Ravas
ZYZZYVA Volume 28, #1, Spring 2012

“Cast ’em out! For he deceives us all!”Some call him Preach, others call him Crazy John. We’ve called him out of his Christian name so much we’ve forgotten it. Most of us snigger at his ranting, sometimes to his face, daring the retort if he’s bold enough to make one. At those moments, he tightens

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My Brain’s Too Tired

by Wanda Coleman

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Mrs. Jackson, we’ve sat in silence for over five minutes. Perhaps you need additional time to gather your thoughts. Would you like to continue our session or should we reschedule?Continue. I’m sorry I stopped talkin’. But the mere thought of what I have to say exhausts me. It’s so heavy, Dr. Flowers. It’s as if

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Ini Y Fati

by Carribean Fragoza

Posted on by Zack Ravas

You would think that such an event, a bolt of lightning shooting out of the sky to strike a little girl in a vacant lot, would call immediate attention from the neighbors. But it did not. Only the dogs pointed their snouts to the sky and howled. Birds were startled into flight from their power

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Photisms

by Juan Pablo Villalobos

Posted on by Zack Ravas

It might not feel much like Halloween this year, but it is Halloween, so we’re celebrating with a spooky tale you can find in Issue 99. We promise it’s more treat than trick, so read on: The chubby little boy remains impassive. Mamá and Papá have left the consulting room now, leaving him on his own, but even so he’s not fazed by the situation, he’s over there, just quietly sitting like it’s no big deal, in total control of the moment. Suddenly, before the psychiatrist can say anything, he raises his right arm with the index finger outstretched, as […]

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Ring Around the Equator, Pockets Full of Acres

by Chia-Chia Lin

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Chia-Chia Lin is the author of the novel The Unpassing (FSG). Below is an excerpt from her short story “Ring Around the Equator, Pockets Full of Acres” from the Bay Area Issue, which you can purchase at the link. You can also apply to our Fiction Workshop with Chia-Chia Lin by submitting here. When Delepine first started running, the air shredded her lungs. Like inhaling powdered glass. After a run, she kept right on sweating and her face kept coloring, peaking at its maximum carmine hue when she was doing something embarrassingly low-impact, like sitting at her desk and rattling […]

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All the News That’s Fit to Be Normalized: Hilary Plum’s ‘Strawberry Fields’

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Posted on by me

Strawberry Fields (Fence Books; 224 pages), the breathtaking new novel from Hilary Plum, and winner of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose, opens with what might be the common denominator in humanitarian crises around the world: a nameless American at a refugee camp in a nameless country. “The children’s suffering has been unimaginable,” the American begins—as if we did not already know this. But soon, one of the children is telling the gathered reporters and NGO representatives at the camp what he learned in school: the towns of his country, the names of its leaders, even the locations of rebel […]

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Interoffice Memorandum 1/15

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Posted on by me

Date: ​January ​15​ To: All Quest Industries Employees From: Mid-Level Management Subj: Live Plant Policies in the Office A short note on office policy regarding potted plants and floral bouquets: a) If you enjoy the company of a potted plant on your desk, please water it as needed in order to keep it from becoming an unsightly and dispiriting brown heap of tendrils, leaves, stalks, stems, pistils, stamens, husks, pods, and/or roots. b) If you have received a bouquet and are keeping it at your desk, please do not, under any circumstances, balance it on the edge of your cubicle wall where it will inevitably be bumped and dislodged by a passing coworker and […]

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A Shared Madness: ‘The Grip of It’ by Jac Jemc

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Posted on by editor

The idea of the “haunted house” novel is at least as old as the Gothic genre itself, dating back to the late 18th century with The Castle of Otranto. But it wasn’t until Anne Rivers Siddons published her cult favorite The House Next Door in 1978 that readers learned a haunting, much like real estate, is all about location, location, location. While urbanites who migrated to the suburbs may have thought they were leaving behind the crime and blight of the inner cities for a more tranquil existence, the horror novels of the Seventies were there to teach readers that […]

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