50 to 1

Posture by Stephen V. Ramey

Husam awaits his moment at the Karadah polling station while the men ahead of him are patted down. The vest, weighted with explosives and one thousand chromed nuts, pulls at his shoulders, yet he refuses to slump. "This is an instrument of jihad," the imam would instruct, "not poor posture."




Stephen V. Ramey's work is upcoming at The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts and flashquake and has been published recently in Pure Slush, Caper Literary Journal and Eschatology, among others. He co-edits the annual Triangulation Anthology from Parsec Ink.