John McCarthy's work appears or is forthcoming in RHINO, The Pinch, the minnesota review, Oyez Review, Salamander, Jabberwock Review, Briar Cliff Review, and Midwestern Gothic. He edited the anthology C[Ex]tinguished and [Ex]tinct (Twelve Winters Press, 2014). He is the assistant editor of Quiddity.
The quiver of prairie grass reminds me of birdsong, and all those mornings I rose from one life into another. From that life where I would run, feet callused from paspalum and rye out to corn silos I took for the end of the world, until I walked farther— until it shrank and shriveled like chicken wire. I cut myself… Read more →
This town could be a stage prop for Our Town. This house, a façade which can’t be torn down. It has been in the family too long. All of our fathers died here tipping brown bottles back, frosty from a General Electric Monitor Top refrigerator, plugged in since wars none of their sons or daughters even remember. Out of walls,… Read more →