HERMITS OF BETHLEHEM Chester, New Jersey Beyond the threshold is silence. Stillness suffuses like light. The world outside is spinning. Summer flames at its height. Solitude is a boon companion. Self-knowledge climbs like a sloth. The bed is spare, a thin beard. The rocking chair is a moth. Dig in…
by Ree Davis I seize the rooster from his perch above the hens. They ruffle against the side of the coop and fill in around my skirts as I carry their cockerel outside. He fights against the fingers I wrap beneath the pointed feathers of his neck to hold back…
by Allyson Lewis How do I start again? That’s the question I kept asking myself. I had written a book, and like many others, my family and friends loved it. Toward completion of the book, I had readers begging me for the next chapter. Frankly, it was a five-year process,…
by Phyllis Carol Agins Five hours in the Mediterranean sun, and she’s not waiting for anything special. Not for finding lifetime love or even a quick affair after the end of her decades-long marriage. Hours walking and her feet hurt, even though she’s worn her sensible Birkies. She’s strolled through…
by Ashley O’Melia I squinted against the rain as I ran from the car to the old house. Thunder scraped across the clouds, hurrying me along. I fumbled with the key box on the front door, punching in the code my boss had given me. The code was easy to…
by G. K. Nickless Where do dreams go to die? From my place at the dining room table overlooking the back yard, I can see tips of multiple, wet, warped and abandoned stakes protruding from the snow, scattered at intervals four feet wide by eight, twelve, fourteen, or sixteen feet…
by Raj Davis The clanging of bottles and glasses sound like the perfect symphony. Is there any better way to spend the evening than sipping on a Budweiser, crunching on cashews, while hearing the collective chatter of dozens of cops on a night after a long shift? Bill doubts there…
by Doris Ferleger Your bent elbow juts out. It is stiff and light and feels easily crushable against my hip as I walk around you. My body jerks away. I circle you at a distance of eighteen inches plus eighteen inches, the distance of each of our auras. Though maybe…
by Nancy Shobe Mom told me only twice in 53 years she loved me and wrote it to me only a handful of times. Born in Detroit but bred British, she had adopted the stiff-upper-lip approach of our “over the pond” ancestors. She masked emotions behind a stoic face. When…
by Elena Kaufman Iris Katz’s neighbor returned from six months in Florida to hear suspicious sounds coming through her adjoining wall—incessant scratching, barking, yelping—and the stench of something rotten. The women didn’t know each other except to say hello on the front walk. Mrs. Lowther told the men she was…