Prep Time @ Citywide Lunch

“I wanted to write in a manner that was honest, yet, the word in my mind was, kind. It took me multiple drafts for each e-mail. I don’t know that any of those e-mails was either. I was a week past the deadline when I was done. I’d had to unpack a few items of clothing so I wouldn’t have to deal with my own odour. I’d also had to go out and buy groceries for another week, which I’ll admit: multiple times I’d had to hold back a loud, throat-jabbing sob that day: guilt about using a portion of all the cash I’d left for Mom and Dad, this chest-binding sadness I’d felt when I saw a father hoisting his frilly-frocked daughter up so she could pick out her choice of fruit juice, the cashier’s pitted nails, the fruit man calling out to me. . .”

~~ from “Prep Time” by S. Taufeequddin Azher

“A Separate Piece” Parts IX, X & XI

"That could have been that, as they say. Our lives had crossed again, but they would continue apart. But one day, I returned from work to find a brown package under the awning of the front porch. It looked like a book, although I had not ordered a book. None that I remembered, anyhow. Ripping open the paper exterior, I cut through bubble wrap and found his name on the cover of an azure and beige hardcover. A heavy tomb, an academic press.

"Against the title page, I saw it. Two pages in, an Evan Ferguson. An original doodle in pen and ink. It was a drawing of a phallus hovering near a mouth. A nose shared a likeness with mine. The kisser was open; the tongue was out."

~~ from "A Separate Piece," Parts VIX, X & XI, the fourth and final installment at Citywide Lunch.

"A Separate Piece," Parts VI, VII & VIII

“Fuck you, Evan. Fuck you. You scumbag. Calling thirty years later to get your rocks off on my misery. You’re tenured. You have a big house. A family. Suburban New England. Yeah, I have a wife and kid, but half the time, I’m on the road living in shitholes and extended stays. Contract labor. If it’s long-term substitute, it’s always special ed. Work no one wants, so they hire me. Empty towns where they need another adult in the building. Paycheck-to-paycheck. Gig-to-gig. Depressed. Lonely. Sometimes, I’m scared. And you want more of me now?”

~~ from "A Separate Piece," Parts VI, VII & VIII, the third of four installments at Citywide Lunch.

"A Separate Piece," Parts III, IV, & V

"From then on, Ferguson haunted my thoughts. No matter what daily tasks I attended to, Evan was in the back if not the front of my mind. A cluttered existence, it had always been, but this was worse. Sitting on the back porch after mowing our meager lawn—crabgrass, dandelions, irregular yellowish turf—I found myself remembering Evan’s hints of literary analysis. Although his focus was art and architecture with an emphasis on the ancient Romans and Greeks, he also knew contemporary novels. In fact, he’d introduced me to Gaddis, Barth, Pynchon, and DeLillo. He’d read Ulysses and The Recognitions. Even as an undergrad, Ferguson could evaluate Gaddis and what he said about art, forgery, American life, and so on. I wouldn’t have stumbled down a literary path had he not encouraged me to read good books."

~~ from "A Separate Piece," Parts III, IV, & V, the second of four installments at Citywide Lunch.

"A Separate Piece," I & II

"But Ferguson had the goods. In a racist, if post-racist, America, the toughest gene lines from Dehli, Seoul, Taipei, and Nanjing arrived to match wits with establishment Jews, Southern hemisphere scions, upper-crust Europeans, and others tough enough to survive freedom’s brutality. Evan could compete. I thought of his additional exploits: fucking girls in the library stacks and thesis carousels; offering sex to a reading room full of coeds past midnight during finals week; smoking weed with a circle of clever homosexuals who formed an airtight chamber with both palms while he alone applied his lips directly to the joint. Ferguson had no fear. Unlike yours truly—a mélange of depressed Slovak, Russian serf, Rusyn-Carpathian, and northern Ashkenazim from destitute shtetls—Evan Ferguson was built to last."

~~ from "A Separate Piece," Parts I and II, the first of four installments at Citywide Lunch.

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Twenty-Two Short Stories and One Poem by Alex Kudera

SHORT STORIES

"The Golden Snot," serious-lit, August 19, 2026 (forthcoming)

"Seven Twenty-Five," Loser IV, July 27, 2026

"Scout," Loser II, June 28, 2026

"The Waiter," Loser I, June 2, 2026

"Going to Hell," Russian trans. from Sergey Katukov, East West Literary Forum, Jan. 28, 2026

"A Separate Piece," Citywide Lunch, December 8-12, 2025

"A Day's Worth," Eclectica Magazine, July 2025

"Chinese Sun," Meniscus, Volume 12, Issue 2, pages 139 to 146, November 2024

"Going to Hell," Soyos Books, November 11, 2023

"An Amazing Turn," New Oxford Review, January-February 2023

"On the Plane," in Zeitgeist: Stories Capturing Different Eras in the Vast Expanse of Time, December 2022

"Early Morning Train," Humans of the World, June 2022

"An Old Friend Called," Lighthouse Weekly, March 2022

"A Thanksgiving," Eclectica Magazine, July 2021

"Bombing From Above," Heavy Feather Review, June 2020

"Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served," Eclectica Magazine, October 2019 "Awash in Barach and Bolano," The Agonist, July 2019

"About Your Status," Monkeybicycle, June 2019 "Free Car," Heavy Feather Review, September 2018 "My Father's Great Recession," Heavy Feather Review, March 2018

"Frade Killed Ellen," Dutch Kills Press, July 2015

"Turquoise Truck," Mendicant Bookworks, September 2015

"The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity," Gone Dog Press, February 2011

POETRY

"Conversation Slam," Deadbeat Anti Lit Magazine: Volume 1, July 5, 2026