First Time In Paradise? by Gary Berg
It was still dark when he pulled out of the truck stop and headed up Highway 99 to Chico, a toothpick out the side of his mouth and a belly full of coffee. The fucking [...]
Two Poems by Chelsea Eckert
THE ASEXUAL “I am sorry for your loss,” he said when I mentioned that after ten some- odd years of psychotropics, I was a sort of celibate Barbie doll. And I told him [...]
Two Poems by Meredith Maltby
Loophole At a party getting to know all the cute space time continuums, I wasn’t spiraling, just getting my name out there, testing the waters in bodies not my own. A cup [...]
How to Explain to Your Ex Why Their X-Ray’s Your Desktop by Margaryta Golovchenko
Her mother named her White Dahlia, the consequence of unplanned pregnancy while studying forensics. Or so she told the boy selling orchids in popcorn bags (he ran out of [...]
Duct-Taped Wedding Bells by Grace Montgomery
I haven’t told you I’ve been sleeping on the floor the past six nights in a row. It’s probably because three pages of your slightly-drunken handwriting are taped above [...]
Let He Who Is Without by Kevin Brown
She carved my sins in soil we left untended, remains of a garden from the previous owners, letting time and wind wear them away in a week, maybe two, at most, while her [...]
Vending Machine Press Issue #6
Dear Readers, Welcome to the new issue of Vending Machine Press. We would to thank everyone in the writing community for being so kind to us in our rookie year. I hope you [...]
Cardboard City by Paul Tristram
The Winter winds blow cold and hard under the desolate railway bridge but at least he won’t be waking up to a policeman urinating upon him this far out from the city [...]
Patience, Dear by Ira Herbold
I am waiting in a darkened room, facing the door, hands on knees. I am waiting for Christianity to seem plausible. I am waiting for certainty, for it to wake me in the night [...]
South to Savannah by Chris Campanioni
The sun came through the dashboard and died under another overpass, air as thick as dreams, wanting as you might sometimes consider just about everything: a crimson sunset [...]
Driving Through Fog by AJ Huffman
Highway markers tick by, blurry sentinels barely breaking the monotony of trees, their black skeletal arms directing me onward. My mind gives them life, watches them rise [...]
New Place by Rebecca Guest
The promise of newly painted walls lining empty rooms, a kind of hubris that sings up your arms, popping goosepimples of possibility Moving and heaving and labor, the cutting [...]
Loss is by April Salzano
not the contact paper on broken walls, the hammock no one used, the black strap that didn’t seem able to stop the badness. At forty, I finally understand—loss is not not [...]
The Silver Birch by Vincent O’Connor
In the garden of my deceased dad there stood a single tree. It bore no fruit, offered no druids’ code, brought forth no metaphors of use. It gave us only shade and aerial [...]
Example 52 by JD DeHart
That lack of response to my chance Good Morning, the stare when I wave hello, yet another example of why I dislike most examples of our species, another reason to say, as the [...]
Queen City by Richard Luftig
If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later. – Attributed to Mark Twain. This is the town that turned its back to the [...]
Two Poems by Daniel Wallock
Barren Walking in, the hallow, whites of, the moonlight, my heart beats, silent hums. My eyes, shed frozen, tears, and my mind, wanders over, her lips. Her touch, sweeping, [...]
Vending Machine Press Issue #5
Dear Readers, Welcome to the new issue of Vending Machine Press. The quality of the writers we have encountered so far pleases us greatly. It keeps exceeding our [...]
Photophobia by Bobbi Lurie
I pray he will eat. I know he won’t let me make him food. His fear of wasting water overwhelms him so he rushes to turn off the kitchen faucet. He won’t drink [...]
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