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:
Back in 1978, Petey-Petey shook his tambourine at me. “Drop a buck in here,” he said. He was twenty-five and stood about five-nine, with short ashen hair, hazel eyes, milky skin, and gangly limbs. The tambourine made him seem like a musician when he was just another beggar.
“Petey-Petey” – Blood+Honey, 2026
Swimming through floodwaters that swirled in my street, I suddenly came upon a body: not swimming but floating there, bloated with moisture, eyes closed, already haunted by flies. I slowed down and then moved the body along to the dry part of the road where firefighters and rescue squads set up tents and inflated rafts.
“This one’s a goner,” I said to a woman in scuba gear.
“Flood” – Potomac Review, 2026
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
After the snow came ice. It thickened itself around tree limbs, strangled telephone and cable wires so they drooped and sometimes snapped. Several houses around ours were consumed in darkness as the storm wore on. The golf course shut down, leaving me stranded at home with dad. I shivered from the cold but also from dreading days inside with him, alone together, without any means to escape.
“Ice” – Potomac Review, 2024
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”
Michael Fontana 