The Couple at the Bus Stop
He wore an elbow patch blazer, pleated trousers, appeared google-eyed in horn-rimmed glasses, his timeworn fedora slightly askew. She donned a cropped Chanel tweed, silver curls tucked under a floral scarf, wearing pale pantyhose, no skirt or slacks. Worst of all—no panties.
The Couple at the Bus Stop stood statuesque, arm in arm, under the Pittsburgh’s Joseph Horne’s clock at Penn and Stanwix, looking satisfied with themselves, as if they might have just finished a quiet afternoon at the department store’s famed Tea Room sharing the Saturday Egg Salad Sandwich and Sponge Cake Special. But for now, like the rest of us, they were just waiting for the bus to take its route somewhere.
There was no rude finger pointing or brazen guffaws at this Couple at the Bus Stop, yet no one leaned in to whisper a polite alert in his or her ear, no one offered her some coverup for her apparent impropriety. Everyone did, however, avert their eyes, move away, or act as if they were just not there. The Couple at the Bus Stop remained staid, her arm linked in the crook of his, both staring off into a sea of nothing, or perhaps something one might only guess was misplaced, lost, forgotten.
The Couple at the Bus Stop didn’t take any of the packed buses that pulled in and out of the busy stop, but finally boarded the popular yet uncrowded No. 24 to Mount Washington’s Duquense Incline. He went first, holding her hand to help her up the steps as she wobbled in slingback pumps, The Couple at the Bus Stop leaving us behind as they disappeared with the smokey haze of the exhaust and our conflicting curiosity and indifference.
Andrena Zawinski is an award winning social justice poet and fiction writer who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has authored four full-length collections of poetry, most recently Born Under the Influence, and a debut collection of flash fiction, Plumes & other flights of fancy.
Acquiring a reputation
Natalie, and her generic boyfriend, looking for a place to complete the practicum from their sex education class, thought to borrow, while it was empty, McClellan’s seldom visited storage barn. Once committed, they found, to their horror, deeper in the barn a clutch of oboists nested. The clutch and the couple discovering each other at the same time, Natalie and her stiffened paramour instantly protected their ears and the oboists swiftly righted their instruments and began their musical assault. As Natalie ran from the barn, the boy already was forming the sharable story of Natalie striking sudden sunlight cleanly peeled.
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​​​Ken Poyner has ten available collections of poetry, flash fiction and micro-fiction, the latest “Science Is Not Enough”, speculative poetry. He has suffered ten Pushcart nominations without a win, and once taught on an NEA Poets in the Schools grant. He spent 33 years herding computers. www.kpoyner.com.
Logical Thinking
Grade 9 - Physical Education/Health
Student: Lilly
Assignment: Cigarettes
List at least 10 reasons why smoking cigarettes is not good for you. Use complete sentences.
1. You don’t really have enough money to buy cigarettes.
2. Your sister will kill you if she finds out you snuck more money from her coin collection, especially the silver dollar coins from Canada’s anniversary celebrations.
3. Even if you find other money for cigarettes your nosy aunt runs the closest store within walking distance and she’ll tell your mother if you buy cigarettes, so you have to walk a long distance to buy them, but it is healthy to walk, so I’m not sure about this one.
4. Your track coach will likely yell out and embarrass you if he sees you out there at the edge of the field where the smokers hang out, especially if you have a cigarette in your hand.
5. If your mom doesn’t smoke there won’t be any lying around the house to take.
6. It’s a pain if your dad did smoke at one point (but he never inhaled! so odd!) and then he quit and in the shed there’s a can of old tobacco, but it’s so dry that when you make a roll-your-own and light it, it burns really fast, tastes yucky, and you have to be really careful that you hold it up so the burning tobacco doesn’t just slide right out and burn your hand or something.
7. If your mom has a beagle nose she’ll go nuts when she smells smoke on you and you’re not a good liar so you can’t blame it on other people.
8. Smoking makes your breath smell, so you’re nervous when talking to people you like.
9. You can’t smoke in the school building, so in the winter when it’s really cold you freeze your fingers outside.
If all your friends smoke and they are still friends with You Know Who and he still smokes then you feel stupid when you go to hang out with them to smoke and he’s just ignoring you and you are ignoring him and it’s really uncomfortable.
Louella Lester is a writer/photographer in Winnipeg, Canada, author of Glass Bricks (At Bay Press 2021), contributing editor at New Flash Fiction Review, and is included in Best Microfiction 2024.
The Mysterious Mrs Cheng
After work, I went with my buddies to the pub around the corner. We had several rounds of drinks and laughed loudly, celebrating that we had been paid for the fortnight. It was good to indulge in male camaraderie, far from watchful eyes.
Five drinks later, I said goodbye to them and headed to the town fair. I was hungry as a wolf. I ate some Mumbai Burgers, Kathi Rolls and lots of Kebab, washed down with several glasses of beer.
I stopped at many variety stands and continued drinking. I was having a wonderful time.
I love town fairs on summer nights.
In the end, I went into the Mysterious Mrs Cheng's Cabinet, regretting having paid for a ticket to see a cheap fairground charlatan. But I had already drunk too much and failed miserably at shooting down the ducks in the target practice with the air rifle to turn back now.
I needed a break.
Amidst a curtain of smoke, while oriental gongs sounded, the Mysterious Mrs Cheng appeared, who wasn't even Chinese. She was an unpleasant middle-aged woman who seemed strangely familiar to me. I'm sure her hair was fake and she was wearing a wig.
She reproached me for my drunkenness, read my palm, predicted imminent calamities for me, and took the last few bucks I had left.
When I got home, I couldn't find my key to get in.
I knocked desperately until someone opened the door.
There she was, Mrs Cheng herself, identical to my wife, waiting for me to answer for my actions.
Marcelo Medone (1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominee fiction writer, poet, essayist, playwright and screenwriter. He received numerous awards and was published in multiple languages in more than 50 countries around the world, including several publications in India. He currently lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.