It’s been five years since Scintilla launched. What started out as a conversation on a sunporch in St. Louis continues as a thriving online literary magazine.
Issue 9
Front Matter
Staff
Publisher and Managing Editor: Tim Lepczyk
Senior Fiction Editor: Daniel Grear
Fiction Editorial Assistant: Lyndy Wibking
Poetry Editorial Assistant: Adam Nick
Fiction
Feral
I left, I was hunted.
I clung to comfort, I was hunted.
I returned and was eaten.
In Sickness and in Health
Floyd’s memory was like a hornet caught in a Mason jar. He stood in the hallway after lunch, still in his pajamas, staring at the residue of his former self.
Sweet Cheeks
“I’m lovely,” she says and pulls a jewelry box from under the coffee table. From the box she takes out a needle, a spoon, and a baggie filled with a dull white powder.
The Subtle Ghost
But the haunting continued to be steadfastly understated, the ghost unerringly subtle. A polite poltergeist. A polterguest.
Trials of Isaiah
The reality of his immediate circumstances was something he felt keenly aware of, and it came to him instantly. He was a middle-aged man, urgently summoned to a house he had not stepped into for six years.
What Is Sara Up To?
She didn’t carry a gym bag, yoga mat or even reusable bags for groceries. He would follow her home.
Poetry
All Day Protection
My deodorant boasts
“all day protection”
but it can’t halt a bullet,
Exhumation
“Take your father home,”
says the gravedigger, holding out
a sack of bones. In Mexico City
Fortune Cookies
Here’s a woman hired to write proverbs
Must be creative, inspired, concise
he who climbs a ladder begins at the first step
I Was in the Shower When the Rapture Happened
I stepped out, dripping wet in my fist-
cinched towel, and everybody was gone.
Opened the window: silent streets, cars
idling at stoplights, lonely blowing breeze.
In the Dunkin Donuts Where the Virgin Mary Appeared on an Apple Fritter
Every day since that report,
I’ve ordered a fritter
and sat by the window
Native Shapes
The tree detritus falls,
dry and oblique, into piles
on the road that from a distance
look like armadillos, possums, feral cats,
Pruning
The storm didn’t knock out our power,
but left twigs and leaves scattered.
Relative
Do we really need
another Liam, Noah, or Mason?
Emma, Charlotte, or Harper?
(I could go on…)
Robot Prom
The kids nowadays spend twelve hundred easy
dressing their robots for the senior prom.
All May and June, ballrooms shake as these lumbering
robots dance and cavort, flirt, sneak booze, and,
Simile
When I kissed
your clavicle, gooseflesh
popped like tiny
naked chicks peeping
What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?
Young misfortunes won’t sustain the narrative
of history. The why of it doesn’t matter,
just the waking up with clothes torn,
blood drying like heavy paint on legs, palms,
When
coyote, Cooper’s hawk, flattened feathers
lifting in the breeze. But now, just ahead
in a loud gale of traffic at next tight turn,
Nonfiction
A Toothless Landscape
Sometimes I imagine life as a sprawl of disjointed of photographs, a series of still-lifes in sepia that preserve some kind of timeline.
Chain-Link Fences and Barbed-Wire Regret
The first thing you need is a friend or family member who gets sentenced to prison.
Funeral for a Childhood
I remember the moment it clicked: The realization that everything I thought I knew, all my memories, represented a fantasy interpretation of events; untrue.
Girl on the Screen
In the summer of 2012, in my hometown in south Louisiana, I rolled burritos while waiting for college to begin. Just as my restaurant job neatly framed those three summer months, so did the search for Mickey Shunick, the big sister who never showed up to her brother’s high school graduation.
Back Matter
Thank You
Special thanks to Hendrix College and the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation for their support of language and literature.