by Russell Rowland Sketchy is the restroomin this ramshackle arcade—almosta closet, dark—still, she has to go.Granddaughter, eight, insistsGrampy accompany her. I do— softened at her own wayof being those years young, her faiththat an elder man, retired,unremarkable, divorced, can causethe world to seem a safer place. Once we’re both inside,…
by Robert Scott Because he was afraid, John Kirk Ormsby, the new managing overseer to that great patch of fertile North Carolina land known as Excelsior Plantation, had passed the night in his office and not at home comfortably in his wife’s good bed. The whitewashed mill office was dimly…
by Keryna Stutts Her hands were a blue-green map of work and tears of Sunday dinners of scrap quilts. She held the world when his pain became too much. Cracked then filled with weariness. Her hands became my world of fried pies after school, a cool softness on my brow….
by Libby O’Connor I raised my sword -a simple quill!- and poked each finger until the ink did spill upon the page, I swirled the ink and bent them to my will, and from the words upon the page, my inky callus did swell.