* Online lit mags are publishing some of the most intriguing writing available today. Every Monday, I post a pointer to a site that offers fiction and/or poetry either as free content or as samples from subscriber issues. Today’s pointer is to Prime Number.
Welcome to Prime Number: A Journal of Distinctive Poetry & ProsePRIME NUMBER is a new literary magazine featuring distinctive fiction (flash and short stories), poetry, and non-fiction, as well as book reviews, craft essays, and interviews. The magazine will be published quarterly online and in a print annual. In addition, issues will be supplemented regularly with our Prime Decimals, consisting of flash fiction and short poems. Contributors will include both emerging and established writers. The magazine’s goal is to publish distinctive work, regardless of theme or style. Prime Number is published by Press 53.
an excerpt from Another Little Piece by Kevin Wilson
My mother sent me a flyer for a self-help group. I’d come back from work, the dense, chemical tang of bug spray in my hair and on my clothes, and there was a small note attached to the flyer that said, “Give this a chance, Oscar. You can meet lots of people who work just as good as you, who do without and deserve to be happy.” I put it in the drawer of my desk and sat on the couch and tried to forget about it for a little while, though I knew I’d end up going. I was getting desperate.
The group was called Missing Ourselves, and it met every week at the community center in Birmingham, two and a half hours south of where I was living. The group was for people who had lost pieces of themselves, arms or legs or even just a finger, and were trying to cope with this as best as they could. It sounded like AA for amputees, but I memorized the address, time, and room number, and spent the next few days spraying houses for termites and trying not to get too excited.
Akopos 