I recently lost my job. With nothing much to do, I sneaked the other week into an exhibition at the Galerie der Moderne. The walls were hung with paintings by people who didn’t seem to know how to paint. However, I did enjoy the complimentary wine and the cubes of cheese on frilly toothpicks. I would have stayed longer, only there were these police around. In the old country, my great-grandfather went to fetch a ration of bread, and the loaf was sticking out of his coat when the SS officer who shot him for sport rolled his corpse over.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of Famous Long Ago, a forthcoming prose poetry collection from Laughing Ronin Press.

The smell of quality cheese and the clinking of wine glasses told Mark he was at the right party. He was feeling good. That is, until they came in.

She was holding Nanette. One look at the poodle and Mark knew two years of therapy was not enough.

From Guest Contributor NT Franklin

NT has been published in ​​Entropy, ​Page and Spine, Fiction on the Web, 101 Words, Madswirl, Postcard Shorts, 404 Words, Scarlet Leaf Review, Freedom Fiction, Burrst, ​Alsina Publishing, and Fifty-word stories, among others.

Once the lawn chairs have been folded and stacked inside the shed, the plastic wrap stretched across rows of cheese glistening with sweat to be stuffed into the fridge and forgotten, the shrieking of grandchildren and boozy chatter of distant relations swept out the front door and down the driveway, and the candles—slabs of wax carved into a 7 and 5 and crusted with cake—tossed into the sink to be dealt with later, the man lifts legs snaked with purple veins onto the recliner and makes his annual wish: that he won’t be here this time next year.

From Guest Contributor Doug Koziol

Doug is the Fiction Editor for Redivider, a journal of new literature and art. His work has appeared in CounterPunch, Driftwood Press, and theEEEL.

We hoped the bad dog was gone. We couldn’t put off seeing our daughter’s family in upstate New York but they had a mean pit bull who they said was as gentle and loved kids.

“Isn’t my Bruno cute?” She said. “He’s smiling at you.”

From Guest Contributor Paul Beckman

Hell is the worst place you can imagine, because if you could imagine something worse than Hell, than Hell would become that.

Edgar’s secret consolation was that Satan hated cheese. Even Satan suffered in Hell.

“Once you can get by the smell, you have it licked.”

This sign was posted on the blue-veined cheeses in Uncle Kenny’s delicatessen. Other signs adorned some of the exotic cheeses and meats in the shop. “Check out our rump,” “Squeeze this pork butt,” and so on. Kenny thought he was a comedian, but he made his customers uncomfortable. He vowed to lighten things up a bit, and quit using the coarser texts. He made some signs and posted them above the cheese: “What happened after an explosion at a French cheese factory? All that was left was de brie.”

From Guest Contributor, Thomas Pitre