by Judy Richardson Emma pushed open the door to the university bookstore and paused, allowing her eyes to adjust to the artificial light. Shades on the far wall dimmed the sun. Inside quiet and calm blended with the ticking clock and buzzing lights. A clerk perched behind the counter, scribbling…
by Rich Ives In the village of Arriving there was a man who had the gift of sadness. He lived with a knobby woman with ponderous calves. At the tavern this man frequented, each of the women decorated their noses with bent fishhooks, and there were more women than there…
by Tunisia Squire Stormy nights have come and gone but this night seemed to last forever. It feels as if the storm is getting worse by the second. Rain falls down from the sky with lightning and the thunder combine. There is a house, a pleasant house with a white…
by Martha Phelan Hayes It’s the summer of 1989, and I am thirty-five years old. My son is twelve. He just finished his all-star baseball season. I worried (I am a young mother who’s yet to learn the futility of such angst) that he wouldn’t make this highly competitive team….
by Lynne Shaner After what seemed like ages of leisurely kissing, days lingering in the garden, and hours leafing through piles of papers on slow, sexy Sunday mornings, he left. Sure, we had argued some—sometimes loudly—but who hasn’t? I had even been wearing my hair down, mostly for him, nearly…
by Sarah May Wilson Eyes are staring at me from the rearview mirror. Almond shaped and haunted, coal black pupils with flat, sea green irises reflect back. The days have taken their toll on them as each hard year has passed. These eyes have seen too much, endured too much….
by Carla McGill The First Memory—The Last Day of Fourth Grade It was the year that President Kennedy was shot. We were at different schools, but they were just a few blocks apart. When my teacher found out what had happened, she sobbed, her head on the desk, while Barbara…
by Melinda Butler The sun was a yellow ball in the sky, dipping its toe in the purple lake that was the mountain range. Below, a green ocean of grass that ran for miles. Samuel stood in line to get branded by his new employer. The Circle Bar X was…
by Laurelann Easton Jennifer tugs her blouse over her stomach, a part of her that has never rounded, and twists the peridot ring she’d put on in place of her wedding band. The band had barely lasted her and David a year, and now they sit together in an iron…
by Caroline Bruckner He had no name and no place to stay. They called him The Hood sometimes, after Robin Hood, because of the way he lived. Not that he ever stole anything. Nothing worth much, anyhow. If he ever had stuff, he gave it away. He wanted nothing. He…