I Keep
by Ian Hilgendorf
I doodled your name a thousand times a day. Even before I seen you, I knew you was made like on a potting wheel, formed together by the fires of my womb.
Wise Young Fool
by Sean Beaudoin
My room is tiny and dark and smells like sweaty sheets. The window is wide open, but there’s still no air. A heavy pre-lightning gloom overwhelms my clankity-clank fan.
Visitation Rights
by Dino Parenti
He’d pick me up from Mama’s early Saturday while she slept, always waiting in his truck down the street and staring down the sun while gnashing on a spicebush twig.
The Hollow
by Kathy Fish
Their mother works hard, but the girls are unkempt and secretive, given to a layered, sarcastic wit.
The Year Nobody Died
by David Jauss
It was March before anyone noticed. The first was Merlene Svensgard, whose husband Al had died on New Year’s Eve while he and Merlene were counting down the final seconds along with Dick Clark on TV.
Adultery
by Janice D. Soderling
One day he was cock-of-the-walk, full of jokes and juice, strumming his guitar, waxing the big fins on his red Chevy, knowing another woman in the biblical sense.
Closer
by Sarah Hina
Brake lights on a highway. Not her favorite sight. It must be an accident. Or road construction. Either way, it wasn’t right. Not when they were so close to home.
It all began around a campfire…
Beautiful language
is meant to be heard as well as read, and in fact words were vocalized eons before they were ever committed to clay or parchment. Storytelling began around campfires. We seek prose and poetry that continue the tradition.
Contributor Spotlight:
Love and Hot Chicken
by Mary Liza Hartong
Open Contests
by Stephen Parrish, with the editors of The Lascaux Review