by Aurora DePuy Gossip started brewing the day he arrived. It was to be expected in a town with just under a thousand people. He’d bought a shop and was cleaning the window the first time I passed. Our eyes met and his hand stilled on the glass. Sister Pfeiffer…
by Cecile Pecoraro My journey to the office each day begins with a drive around Jackson Park. After one block I must veer right to continue up the street, Park Avenue, that holds the 2.27 acre, two-block long park in its grasp. Despite its size, the park is home to…
by Stephen Mead 1 These berries seem candles within, their blue juice lucent, distilled right on the vine. Malleable hands shape supple bunches, the sun’s aristocracy. How pure is the fingered fruit, clear globes in palms! Could what they capsule be medicine? Multi-tongued? From country to country, healing is an…
by Nancy Gerber It was a perfect day for the beach, the sky a cloudless powder blue, sand like blanched almonds, sea the color of smooth, green silk. Rows of white lounge chairs stood side by side, shaded by large, turquoise umbrellas. In the distance a gull dipped toward the…
by William Meffert Lines of sand blew across the helipad beside the evacuation hospital. Beyond the helipad was a wide beach and beyond that, in darkness, the South China Sea, lit with white caps and foaming surf. Alex was the surgeon on call. Only a few weeks remained for him…
by Dawn Fryauff I have been told how to grieve by a dozen well-intentioned souls. I have watched friends Seethe with the anger that I seem unable to feel towards the man as innately part of me as my name; which no longer belongs to me. One he freely gave,…
by Dawn Fryauff No life bears forth from this desert. No seed takes root in this place. Be fruitful and multiply is Not A promise, but instead A command. Unfulfilled; My failure punctuated Monthly by Deep contractions of longing Birthing sand and scorched seed From this withered waste of a…
by Anonymous We wandered these plains before the civil war, before the prophets told of Nineveh’s fate, from God’s merciful hammer and our mules and camels drank this water long before the royal hanging gardens withered and died from neglect. Before the stateless caliphate thugs held our treasures for ransom…
by William Bortz I sit and count, in a midday sun, my troubles and woes the casted shadows of full limbs and branches poking through my kitchen window and stretching down the wall the blackened tips of my weary fingers- filing and sorting sight encumbered within my head; a cracked…
by Chris Ross Fade in: INT. GYMNASIUM HALLWAY- DAY The room is pitch black with the faint sound of rapid speech and sneakers squeaking against the floor. The door opens and the light from outside illuminates the hall. KEN “CASH” MCDONALD, 17, enters the room as the door closes slowly…