is a retired activist, instructor, and fundraiser who lives in beautiful Bella Vista, Arkansas, USA. He traditionally published two novels, a chapbook, and more than 90 short stories. He also writes and publishes poetry and nonfiction. He has received support from The Ohio Arts Council, The Arkansas Arts Council, and The Speculative Literature Foundation. He earned degrees in English from Charter Oak College and Miami University. But he remains proudest of developing creative opportunities for homeless people and people with mental illnesses.
SOME RECENT PUBLICATIONS:
Jake grew tense as he scanned the convenience store’s racks with their candy and condoms and Coke cans neatly lined up. The lone straggler in the store was a ragged black man purchasing lottery tickets, scratchers that the clerk behind the counter offered him with haste. But the process bogged down when the man insisted on selecting his own numbers for the nightly drawings, staring as if at an oracle in the overhead lights for inspiration.
The tension in Jake’s body abated as he located the candy bar he wanted. He picked it up and palmed it before deftly dumping it in his jacket pocket.
“Shoplifter” – The Yard: Crime Blog, 2025
Elsie sat at the table in the dining room where she was assailed by Polly, the manager of the nursing home where we lived. “You didn’t finish your beets,” Polly said. She was in her thirties, with hair of straw and a face lined beyond her years.
“I don’t want them,” Elsie said.
“But they’re so good,” Polly said, rubbing her stomach as if proof of their goodness.
“I said I don’t want them.”
“You must eat, dear, to keep up your strength.” Polly leaned in, near Elsie’s face, as if a familiar, family, an old friend, when she was none of the above.
“A Kiss” – The Bookends Review, 2025
Dale selected his outfits to reflect the color of the sky, a kind of bruised plum at night. Connie was his lover, though he sometimes called her Bonnie, not only for the rhyme but for the meaning the word took on when used in Ireland, a compliment for beauty. Her body bore a labyrinth of colorful tattoos. Corpo iluminado, she called it, though that didn’t sound right to him. Her hair was a tangle of curls, amber like the sap in which history preserves past lives. Her eyes were like lighthouses, he thought, a strange image but one that made perfect sense when he considered how lost at sea he had felt before meeting her. One iris was blue and the other gray, each a different ocean into which he could dissolve.
“Space, Time, and Other Coordinates” – LandLocked, 2024
Read “Space, Time, and Other Coordinates”
That morning the flies were everywhere, blackening windows with their bodies, filling the air with their buzzes, flitting about my head, even landing in my ears and nostrils. I shooed them away with my hand and when that didn’t work, I chased them around the cart barn with a swatter, striking but missing constantly, each empty thwack a judgment on my abilities as would-be exterminator.
“Flies” – Subnivean, 2023
Read “Flies”
I noticed how the edges of things crisped with light and right away knew someone had slipped me the mickey. It didn’t take much in the early aughts, I was such a lightweight at seventy-eight, but it was nonetheless unnerving to stare at the curtains and see the contrast of flame on top with ash below. I smoked a Pall Mall, walked out the door, and sunlight accosted me like a mugger, rifling my pockets, kicking my shins, boiling my eyeballs blind. I leaned against a lamppost, crown of my head cold against the metal, hands gripping it with a force like to burst the rivets.
“Slipping the Mickey” – Midnight Chem, 2023
Read “Slipping the Mickey”
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Michael Fontana 