by Michael C. Keith Everybody is dealt a hand of cards. It’s the way you choose to play them that matters. …
Posts Tagged writing
Butchery
by Marilee Robin Burton I trekked to Glendale to retrieve a copy of Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips, an intense and dark writer. The book was a collection of stories I’d been wanting to read and had even ordered from Amazon but was too anxious to await the money-saving secondhand…
The Fourth Husband
by Saramanda Swigart Julia used poison the first time. She’d been married to the senator for almost six years. There was a scandal involving a minor tribute, and even though it was easy to cover up, the senator’s reputation suffered. They had a child, but he died. After that, bitterness…
A Weed in the Garden
by Cathy Krizik Keandra placed her napkin in her lap. “Can we pray?” Oh shit. Lunch was supposed to be soup and salad. Not this. I clenched my teeth and dropped my knife, the clang reverberating like a spade hitting rock. Here? Now? Really? “Pray—right. Yes, of course.” Keandra and…
The Abandoned
by Elizabeth Ivey I didn’t always know what I was, but I knew I was different. It was as though I had simply sprung into existence, sprouting from the gritty front steps of St. Agnes’s. The matron found me pounding on the dense oak door in the driving rain, drenched…
Hermits of Bethlehem
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…
Good Wife-Bad Wife
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…
Washing You
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…
Death by Design
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…
Blue Recliner
by Teresa Burns Murphy As Tom Langston drove up the street where he lived in the suburban neighborhood of Kennerly, Arkansas known as Hawk Hills, he saw his recliner sitting on the curb in front of his house. He pulled his car into the driveway, jerked the gearshift into park,…