Brantingham, John – FIVE SOUTH

Contributor

John Brantingham was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been featured in hundreds of magazines, Writers Almanac and The Best Small Fictions 2016. He has nineteen books of poetry and fiction including his latest, Life: Orange to Pear (Bamboo Dart Press). He teaches at Mt. San Antonio College.

Fiction

Side Gate by John Brantingham

September 27, 2021

You’re standing by the side gate of your place, waiting for your son to come home on the first day that he’s walking home from school on his own.

A Parisian Affair by Kevin Wranovix
My wife and I arrive in Paris and check into our hotel on the edges of the 2nd and 9th Arrondissement.
Our Theseus by Nathan Jefferson
Last week he was a dishwasher who his coworkers called Ricky. Today he’s a day laborer named Eddie, clearing a pair of fallen trees off a new build’s lawn and fixing up a large garden. Rotting plank ripped out, new plank inserted.
Robbing the Pillars by Marie Goyette
It wasn’t yet six o’clock when the mine supervisor of Shannon Hill called the Byrd household and woke Ruth out of a simmering sleep.
The Call by Eben E. B. Bein
Saturation by Claire Oleson
I am diving for my mother’s last working kidney.