Nonfiction by Debra Davis Hinkle Mom is blessed with four daughters. Some women in our church don’t have any children. So, Mom loans out her two older kids for the annual mother-daughter luncheon I am the third child, and Mom doesn’t loan me or my little sister out. I hate these functions because the food … Read More
“Falling” by Barbara Swihart Miller
I feel like I am falling. Surrounded by the darkest abyss, I am drowning. Weighted limbs are pulling me under, Aided by terrible foes: Worry Anxiety Responsibility Time. The inky blackness is closing in, Choking the life right from me. Above me is a light. Stretching my hands I long to touch the unreachable: Solitude … Read More
Devil Cut
Fiction by Robert Morgan Fisher Blaine’s father suggested they get a haircut together. Blaine couldn’t believe it when they pulled up to a civilian shop. A haircut was something they usually did on base and cost about five bucks. This was a men’s salon, where hair was styled. All the rage in 1975, getting your hair … Read More
“Inventor’s Domain” by C.M. Pickard
An inventor’s paradise—hand built, secluded down the shadowed track where the sun’s final rays caress overgrown foliage and dirt-streaked glass, fixed into the ramshackle shed. gray, plastic cord hung on weathered poles led to a sheltered engine, powered by oil that shook the walls and rattled its windows —embedded hinges above their panes hint at … Read More
An Arranged Marriage
Fiction by Tom Brauner Walking down the path into their lush back yard, gray pea-gravel crunching under his feet, Rex decides that today is the day to discuss his plan with Patricia. He has just returned from his appointment with his oncologist. Dr. Bell had stated that nothing remained in his treatment armamentarium; chemo, radiation, … Read More
The Antiquity of Youth
Poetry by Joe Amaral 1. I scry through ancient farm walls of warped scrap wood, rustic as concentric heart rings; a crenulated tin man. Unripe blackberries dangle off oxidized trellises. Emaciated figs, brazenly sour oranges. Along rows of blighted tomato vines I mire in stagnant trenches once irrigated by the leaking tank house. Sit astride … Read More
Eulogy for Pa Pops
Poetry by Joe Amaral There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot. —Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 He passed peacefully on an early spring afternoon, his fruit trees in full bloom, winter … Read More
The Potter
Poetry by Joe Amaral Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. —Zen proverb In the brooderhouse, the farmer stares at a digital clock whose red slashes smile 3:AM He finishes spinning clay, squeezing wet bricks out white barrels. Wheel-throwing mugs, vases, and candelabras. Come daylight he tends chickens, splits cords … Read More
Letter To Our Adorable Zygote Who Went Unrealized
Poetry by Scott Dalgarno I’m sure you’d have been a pistol. You’d be eleven now, just beginning to tell me you hate me. So bummed, I never got to bounce you on my knee. I was already heels-over-head in love with you like you might have been had you lived. We could have been two … Read More
in the only tall grass left to mow miguel ignacio naps after taking his lunch
Poetry by Scott Dalgarno it’s May and he’s working ahead of the summer wildfires ahead of june bugs ahead of palm trees springing up in Alaska ahead of the next insurrection ahead of a mile-wide asteroid ahead of the Big One in California ahead of the little one his fiancée is expecting ahead of his … Read More