Call for Submissions: August Reading Period Now Open!

I Almost Got to New York Once—by Ioana Cosma Was on Broadway and all, and my play was gonna be produced,and I was going to waltz into New York as if I was Elliott Smithon Waltz no. 2. Or a supernova woman on the first moon. Instead, I stayed, as the Killers would say,in this … Continue reading Americana Stories: Poetry

Coming Home—Thomas Johnson Miller went back to the bar after his discharge from the Army. Going home excited him with memories of his friends sitting around a table filled with pitchers of beer. He enlisted in the Army two years after he graduated the university and he did not return until his hitch ended. His … Continue reading Americana Stories: Prose

Coming Home—by Thomas Johnson Miller went back to the bar after his discharge from the Army. Going home excited him with memories of his friends sitting around a table filled with pitchers of beer. He enlisted in the Army two years after he graduated the university and he did not return until his hitch ended. … Continue reading Americana Stories: Fiction

Supermarket Sweep, 1994—Jeffrey Hecker    Abundant and considerate, first starlight, so why on earth, as Mom races to fill her cart with Tomahawk steaks and slips, does no solitary bystander assist her oblique fractured patella? Not host Mark Ruprecht’s wide neck tie.  Not shopping partner Uncle Jerry, stuck in console at storefront.  Jerry can smell only … Continue reading Americana Stories: Poetry

Saga of Mike Fink—Thomas Piekarski Some of you baby boomers may well remember when Disney gave us Boone and Davy Crockett portrayed by the faithful and fearless Fess Parker. Many a boy back in the day wore a coonskin cap and buckskin suit with his eyes glued to the TV. Nobody could outshoot nor outsmart … Continue reading Americana Stories: Poetry

Walking Directions to Dunton’s General Store—Sara Epstein From our house on Beaver Pond, walk past the Murdaughs’ house. On the dirt road, kick the stones and watch the dust swirl. Cattails rise from the edge of the pond behind the four identical cottages. Next pass the Silvas, and then the fourth house.Can’t remember who lives … Continue reading Americana Stories: Poetry

Family Legend—Cassandra Whitaker Great great great great uncle once wore a dress to upend the union supplies around the swamps of Vicksburg, what he saw as the wolf lurking in his pasture. When the story is told, it is/a joke, the dress, my uncle/wearing a woman to out/do and out do./ How funny the union/troops, … Continue reading Americana Stories: Poetry

ON THE OCCASION OF TRACEY’S 54th BIRTHDAY, AND THE 175th BIRTHDAY OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN—Kim Roberts     “The most popular words used in the pages of Scientific American are displayed here by     frequency, from 1845 through 2020…Each year is represented by a single word, selected     through a text-analysis project that started with all 5,107 … Continue reading Americana Stories Web Feature: Poetry

The Aquanaut—Fiction by Francis Felix Rosa Nightmarish shades of darkening blue cascaded into one another, moving continuously downward. The slosh of ocean clanged through iron girders, creating a bedroom echo in the corrugated steel cabin, like a leaky faucet. Crayola-colored fins, sparked outside the porthole beside blankets, shag carpeting, and stuffed toys in their jellyfish … Continue reading Americana Stories Web Feature: Prose

Elliot’s Story—Fiction by S. Blair Jockers Looking back, I realize I had a serious crush on Joe. People didn’t think that way in 1949, but I should have figured it out the day he told me he was leaving Pensacola as soon as his enlistment was up at the end of the year. “I’m sick … Continue reading Americana Stories Web Feature: Prose