The latest issue of Sally Port is here! Inside you'll find several amazing stories. So happy one of my own (Ill Blows the Wind) is among them. Here's an exerpt.

"Radio John stood over the dead body in a cloud of white noise emanating from the hand-crank radio in his coat pocket. A porcelain plate of food rested on Elmer’s lifeless chest. Fragrant steam filled the cramped bedroom. Baked chicken, corn on the cob, collard greens, and johnnycakes. Onlookers around the deceased, including Preacher Man, glared at him. Radio John picked up the fork in one hand and the piping chicken breast in the other and dug into the meal. 

High on this mountain, their town was a world away, and Radio John was a pariah among a people jettisoned by the rest of society. He glanced through his thick glasses to Maybel, the widow. She wiped back tears and clenched her hands at her waist. 

With each bite, a black anchor weighed down his spirit. Flashes of Elmer’s sins invaded Radio John’s mind. The visits to his boy’s room when the violet of evening had faded. Groping hands in inappropriate places. The steak knife Maybel drove into the fleshy parts of his shoulder. Radio John shook his unkempt brown hair, jarring the visions loose from his mind. What do I have to do to make them see me as a real person? Accept me as one of their own. He scooped the last bite of his greens on the fork and downed them. 

A gravelly male voice whispered from the radio in his coat pocket. “They’ll never see you as anything other than an outcast and a freak, sin eater.”

Radio John clutched it through his coat and glanced around nervously. No one heard. He whispered from the corner of his mouth. “Hush up. I’m doing God’s work. You have no authority here.”

The voice laughed. “We’re closer to each other than you realize, sin eater.”

Radio John backed away from the chicken bones and empty platter. “He is absolved of his sins.” He formed beautiful lines in his mind, but try as he may they all came out of his misshapen jaws and buckteeth as a jumbled mess. Maybel’s face showed a level of confusion, but she thanked him all the same.

Preacher Man bent his hefty torso as close to Elmer’s body as his midsection would allow. The day’s events left their marks on him. Tar-colored stains in the underarms of his white dress shirt. Fresh sweat ran down the rolls in his neck, soaking the shirt’s backside. He paused a moment with his Bible in his hands, then said, “Well, if that’s everything, I’ll show you back to the door, Radio John.” He passed out secret smiles to the others on his way past them. “I’m sure you’ve got more important things to do, and I have to prepare Elmer for his final resting place.” He stared at Radio John. The hardness of his brown eyes betrayed the grin on his ashen lips. “Good evenin’, son.”

To read the rest, get your copy here