Cartoon Art Volume 2009-11

In This Issue

Fiction
Interviews
Nonfiction
Narrative Outloud
N30B Winners
Features
Poetry
Cartoons
Readers' Narratives
First & Second Looks

Trust

By Paula McLain

The Happy Ending was a dive bar out in the desert that had no address and no signage. Basically, you could go there only if you’d been there before. The logic of this appealed to me for some reason, and so I agreed to go with my friend Kendall after work one night, though an hour into our driving around finding nothing but vast stretches of desert that looked perfect for burying a body or two, I asked Kendall if she was sure she could find her way back to the place.

“I have a perfect sense of direction,” Kendall said, arrowing her Mazda into an empty cul-de-sac where, for a split second, her headlights illuminated the silver-yellow eyes of a coyote before it flinched away. “This looks familiar.”

“It’s a dead end.”

She put the car in reverse and then paused a moment to stare me down in the dark car, her forehead wrinkling prettily. “You, my friend, have real trust issues.”more

From The Book of Light

By Lucille Clifton

the girl fits her body in
to the space between the bed
and the wall. she is a stalk,
exhausted. she will do some
thing with this. she will
surround these bones with flesh.
she will cultivate night vision.
she will train her tongue
to lie still in her mouth and listen.

more

Narrative Store
Syndicate content