Scoundrel Time

Entertainment

Three Letters of Recommendation

I will grant you anything you want, the Genie of the Lamp said. Three wishes…but first you must provide three letters of recommendation. The villa in Italy where they serve you bonbons hourly, while you gaze at the...

Lettuce All

  _____ Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York’s Bronx Zoo. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the flash fiction collection, Hunger...

Hi, This Is Your Neighbor

    Attention Volunteers: Due to ____________, we have updated the Get Out the Vote script as follows. Further changes will be uploaded to this site weekly daily hourly on the minute. Please note, we have...

Doors are Killing Our Kids

Doors are Killing Our Kids, Along with Books, Tables, Chairs… (or) The Answers to School Shootings Are Right in Front of Us “There are too many entrances and too many exits to our over 8,000 campuses in Texas. There...

Food & Drinks

Four Poems by Ellen June Wright

Angola Angela, from the African region known as Angola, grower of figs, keeper of pigs, recorded as Angelo. Watched over by angels for whom she was named, survived the crossing in a ship’s bowels, survived pirates and...

Four Poems by Denise Duhamel

MY MOTHER’S COVER-UP I bought one for her at Walgreens—teal blue with sparkles. She was so hunched over and short by then, it flowed almost to her ankles. I kept it here in Florida so that when she visited it was one...

Protagonist Syndrome

my girlfriend’s best friend is convinced she has covid. I’ve heard all her stories – I admit, there’s a good chance she has. but last week, when her housemate was sick with a fever, she had said it was...

Lifestyle

Ned Rorem (1923-2022)

“Do not go, Gentile, into that good night,” I murmured, reading of Ned Rorem’s recent death. It’s hard to imagine what a shock, in 1966, when religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation were still taboo, the self...

Real Names in Real Clothing

Translated from Farsi by S. Ganjbakhsh 1 In 1850, during a religious civil conflict, a sixteen-year-old girl called Zaynab who was skilled in martial arts had to cut her hair and fight in men’s clothing. She was even...

It’s Hard to Be Housed

I’m at Meth Park on a balmy day, and all the homeless meth users are spread out on blankets like it’s a picnic.  Behind us, I see mothers with toddlers on the way to the playground.  They cast resentful glares toward...

Latest articles

ON THE WAY TO PARADISE

Jessie O’Neal is touring again. The Tribune printed another clever Jessie story. I’m sure she called the reporter. She knows them all by now. Maybe she needed to sell more tickets. The lady knows how to create interest...

The Desert

Translated from Kurdish by Basir Borhani Hashoush’s younger sister rushed inside and spat out briskly, “Mom…! Mom, the Kurds will be moved again tomorrow.” At that moment, Hashoush and I were sitting opposite each...

The Escape

Evin Prison, 9:10 p.m. Local time. October 15, 2022 She wanted to run…but she could only take one long step to every corner of the cell and: wall…wall…wall… she pulled up her chin on the rusty sill around a small...

Dead End

Our street ends at a guardrail, but there’s a right turn that puts you on a different street, for one block, before another right turn puts you on another street, parallel to our street. The shape is a U, a horseshoe...

No Separate Joy

I like it when a thing and its opposite are both true, so it is like holding your hand up to a mirror, and regarding both your palm and the back of your hand with a single glance.  I like it even more since I have...

Six Poems by Tomaž Šalamun

*Translated by Brian Henry   “I saw how the planet fell” I saw how the planet fell. Hands became bumblebees. Apples sharpened my teeth in the first age of gold. Bumblebees became foil. The foil is recorded as A, as...