By Mary Kendig I’ve been an editor now for more years than I’d like to admit, and I believe I’m pretty good at it. I’m pretty good at it, I feel, because I am detail oriented by nature. Some people, especially those who don’t really comprehend how important it is…
By Meryl Healy My wavy red curls lie in a pile on the floor; my bloody gold crown lies in a small wooden bowl, and my new brown loafers were ripped from me—in the same way that the bastard Nazis took Mama and Papa. My forearm is crimson and throbbing…
By Debra Hanley We arrived before the hearse. Heads turned as the deafening sound of twenty motorcycles rolled through the cemetery. Dressed in jeans and t-shirts layered beneath our vests, many were decorated with military insignia. We parked with precision dismounted, and gathered our flags. Solemnly we took up positions…
By Dorothy Crawford Walking into the room was like walking into a box of kindergarten crayons – red and yellow, green and blue – but that was exactly what she’d wanted. She’d spent months searching for the perfect furniture and had finally found the crib at a yard sale and…
By Melissa Stanziale “It looks like a dried up snake,” said my seven-year-old brother William. We stood on the thin, dreary strip of beach, staring at the straight, four-foot-long silvery object. I knelt down to examine it. It was smooth, cool, and odorless. Was it the walking staff of a…
By Krista Johnson Lost in purchased imagery of foreign sights and sounds expressing voicing past thoughts silently suppressed. A flow of words across the eye of people, places, and emotions. A transformation transition moving picture of the mind. Hands anchor and trade with fingers at the ready to flip turn…
By Angela Carter It was a rainy Saturday morning. The kind of day that softens parents just enough to allow their children to wear pajamas until lunch and watch Fraggle Rock in numb silence for hours. Struck by the contrast of the utter stillness inside my grandparents’ home and the…
Thickly Settled By Christy Bailes Sadness blows west with air so dry I taste bitter dust mixed with tumbleweed and golden brush. What I lost has reversed direction, as if it were the last moment before death. Kneeling to tree roots in rich, summer earth, I inhale New England one…
Two Toos By Michael Williams Freddy the frog flipped a fish- Breaded and boiled was his wish. He heaved and hoed in a hurry To get wet on the set of his movie. Tiny tassels of tinsel tweaked his head, It was a wondrous weaved wig he said. The delirious…
By Carolyn Wright Enshrouded by the black chasm of night, my spirit awaits. The crackling of the grandfather fire and its wood smoke, intoxicate and call me to a time I no longer know. The scent of pine mixed with cedar surrounds my body as it wafts up on its…