Stories
Finding His Way Home
Finding His Way Home Michael Royce Constructed on the framework of a real bombing that occurred at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the entire plot and all characters of this story are fiction. Talbot sits in a booth at Kelly’s, a family restaurant in Morningside Heights and ponders the quest, which brought him there. Spring in…
Read MoreNorth Lake, I Remember
A Glass of Chablis in Des Moines
Doop
Doop Blue River Review, October 2019: http://bluelakereview.weebly.com/doop.html Michael Royce I sometimes dream of Peaceful Haven, our commune nestled in forty acres of tangled second growth at the foot of the Siskiyou Mountains, but I remain unable to fashion my past into a coherent story for others. My first strong memory…
Read MoreMy Marching Band
Essay; My Marching Band by Michael Royce
Read MoreKatydid
Katydid
Read MoreVilla de Leyva
Villa de Leyva, nestled between two fingers of the Andes, rests in a harmony of white stucco walls and red tile roofs: proof there is still peace in this troubled world. Ancient doorways line the street trailing bouquets of bougainvillea. On the sidewalk, an old lady displays jars of raw honey, fragrant with a hint…
Read MoreNo Bridge Home
No Bridge Home Officer Patrick McCormick peered at the cardboard shack tucked under the overpass. He worked the day-shift beat in Old Town, and buzz on the street reported a bad smell stealing from this isolated hideaway. Skirting a small pile of junk, he crawled into the tight space. His nostrils pinched shut,…
Read MoreAn Encounter in Kochi
Fishing nets fluttered on a light breeze whispering off the Lakshadweep Sea. Four men operated a complicated system of counterweights to dip for choora, the rich tuna they sold along the waterfront. Traders from the court of Kublai Khan had introduced these devices to the Malabar Coast seven hundred years ago, and they’d been used…
Read MoreWren’s Song
The Columbia, a thousand feet beneath me, snakes to its source through basalt cliffs, high prairies, and Canada’s Rocky Mountains. Elusive memories shift one direction, surge another. “Come.” My father summons after fifty years time. Did he always call this way when I was a boy? Not question, but command. I yearned then for the…
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