by Angela LeBlanc The wind whistles hot against the dry red rock, lashing through dry leaves that cling. Words— gasping for life, suffocated and trapped. Talons scrape the clouded horizon: pinks invade yellows, slash purples. Desperate for distance—flight. Running, breathless and terrified from the truth. Arid color splashed across the…
by Keryna Stutts Barefoot, leaning over the counter she painted on her lipstick. She never wore shoes unless she was going out. The bottoms of her feet stained black, she could run across gravel as if it were carpet. Lips pursed carefully around a menthol, so as not to smudge…
by Norman Belanger “Oh for cripe’s sake, would you look at that!” Her first sip of soup ends up mostly on the front of her Easter blouse. She daps the tip of her napkin in a water glass, blots at the red stain on floral silk. “For Christ’s sake!” Nearly…
by CG Fewston The old man stood in the haze of China’s greatest city with two certainties on his mind: one, the haze (caused by contaminants, such as Sulphur dioxide, from Beijing’s industrial district) warmed the December day and the good earth to a magnitude when snow must retreat from…
by Anne Eston I hold my head the way I held that robin’s egg when I was six. Unsafe in the nest Grandpa stole (he said it fell out of a tree), the egg sat. I took it, was careful… I couldn’t take care of it. Didn’t think it would…
by Bethany Veith You haunt the notches- breeze through the birches, soar through the pines, shake through quaking aspen, and echo through the intervals. Your spirit rises from the evaporator, sap swirling, thick with sweet fog sugar water dripping down the rough pine walls and onto my pages, comforting me…
by Michael Christopher Cole I walk into ‘The Golden Derby’ and look around before the hostess has a chance to greet me. Alec stands from his chair and waves to me. I walk over to him. He has a sport coat and tie on, which is fairly ‘decked out’ from what…
by Bethany Veith Exhausted, she arranged her hands upon the pink flannel blanket wrapped around her silent bundle dressed in grandmother’s ancient white lace Christening dress. Her misty wide eyes flashed and contemplated the absolute miracle and beauty of life and the cruelness of nature. Cradling her angelic daughter one…
by April Garcia Could fear be the invisible culprit hiding— like a Copperhead in dead leaves —waiting, to poison me before ink meets paper? Even now, it slithers unseen— though the recesses of this busy mind.
by Bethany Veith We fought against the cold sweat dripping in August as we split hardwood and stacked it just so upon wispy grass and purple asters. The summers vanished like a dream. Wood smoke settled into the valley stippled with red and orange maples silhouetted against the frosted White…