Fiction
Issue 48 Introduction to Fiction by Edwin Riddell
Inanimate objects spring into action, and vice-versa. There’s a nightmare incarnation of a Satnav turned vigilante, and some welcome outer space science fiction. All human life – not to mention animatronic, alien and tree forms – is here. As are many of the cardinal virtues of storytelling: suspense, dramatic tension and psychological insight. It’s harder [...]
Fiction
Ring, Ring by Warren R. Langlois
Illustration by Sue Babcock The moment I finished building my time machine, I couldn’t wait to try it out. Sitting at the control panel, I punched in a date two hundred years in the past. It would be interesting to see how my neighborhood looked in 1820. When I arrived, I exited the machine. Suddenly [...]
Fiction
I slid my Toys in the Attic CD into my dusty boom box. I’d never made a doll to Toys in the Attic. I was looking forward to seeing what would come of it. Illustration by Sue Babcock Most of the day, I’d been hunkered down in my cozy sewing room cutting black and white [...]
Fiction
Illustration by Sue Babcock Every summer during my childhood, the entire extended family would converge on Priest Lake, just south of the Canadian border in Northern Idaho. For three months pop-ups and RVs surrounded the tiny cabin my great-grandpa had built after receiving two acres, including three hundred yards of beachfront, as a Christmas bonus [...]
Fiction
Illustration by Sue Babcock On a summer evening I was helping myself to some honeysuckle cuttings from my brother, Matthew’s garden. My twelve-year old nephew, Oliver, was keeping me company. He’d been banging on about Ents ever since he read Lord of the Rings. “There are no such things as Ents, Ollie,” I said. “Tolkien [...]
Fiction
The Path Between the Stars by Toshiya Kamei
Illustration by Sue Babcock The alarm rang, and the twins dashed toward the veranda. As they stepped outside, the chilly night air on Mars brushed against their flushed cheeks. Between high-pitched giggles, they muttered their “excuse me”s and gently shoved each other to reach the brand-new telescope. “Ow! You little cheat!” Sayaka grabbed Hikaru’s arm [...]
Fiction
When I was a little girl, I had a Barbie doll. It was a gift for my sixth birthday. My mother had scraped together just enough money to buy it second-hand from the local thrift store. It was in pretty good condition, considering the circumstances of its purchase; the plastic blonde hair only slightly ratty [...]
Fiction
“Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”(Arthur C. Clarke) Sinatra sang Fly Me To The Moon and the magic began. Errol grinned at his old man’s awe at a technology unthinkable to a guy still dazzled by his smart phone. ‘The Voice’ warbled his anticipation of spring on Jupiter and Mars. “Amaze-ling!” Samuel Greene [...]
Fiction
I oversleep but it does not matter. I have no work hours. Or maybe, viewed another way, every hour is a work hour, even when deeply asleep. I am the lone inhabitant of Lookout, an artificial station on the fringes of the solar system. I am the furthest human from home. So it really doesn’t [...]
Poetry
they’ll hear me sing by Elizabeth Train-Brown
Narrated by Elizabeth Train-Brown next door through our too-thin walls hear me serenade the vodka croon through wisps of smoke that they can’t see (but they’ll smell outside). at night they’ll hear me scratch the walls hammer in time with my heart smash vases tables mirrors on the walls howl words they don’t know. whistle [...]
Poetry
Invitation by Anna Mae Perillo
Narrated by Anna Mae Perillo Illustration by Sue Babcock Think feeding, from your wet mouth. Drink from the cistern underground. Reach down through mineral earth with its fragrance of milk thistle, rust, lilacs and lilies. Think feeding. Open the shell, breathe into the mollusk inside. Read its library of muscle memory. Breathe [...]
Poetry
After ‘Art of Transgression’ by Pascaline Marti* In the pitch of night, poppies waved over her head—scarlet flags with fluted petals & inky centers & star-shaped pistils surrounded by grassy stamen. Daisies with buttercup discs & snowy rays bobbed against her waist while moon perched on a black horizon whose orbs cut sky’s canvas [...]
Poetry
Near Lake Superior by Gary W. Bloom
Narrated by Gary W. Bloom While the campfire burns We take turns Going as far as we dare Into the charcoal night How dark it gets Without city lights A sky full of pinpoints In a black blanket And fear only A few steps away And then such happiness When seeing your face In this [...]
Poetry
Tityus, In Black Chalk on Antique Paper by Dwaine Rieves
Narrated by Dwaine Rieves In this drawing, the aging Michelangelo gifted the much younger artist Tommaso dei Cavalieri with a drawing prompt. The vulture pecking at the man’s liver was a lesson imparting architectural knowledge. —Web Gallery of Art Bed-bound and approaching eighty, my father made passes at his nurses. The women were embarrassed [...]
Poetry
The Corvid-Human Alliance by Gerri Leen
Narrated by Gerri Leen I motion the crows out, two by two, keeping their Youngsters back with me because it's the bargain We've made with the group, if they fight for us in the air We'll keep their children safe from the angels on the ground Crows will mob an eagle or a hawk Angels, [...]
Poetry
A late autumnal sky frames us; Seems domed, perpetual, and dark, One might say sullen. It broods. Distant raggedy hedgerows obscure Our side of an elusive horizon, As beneath two separate trees We gather firewood slowly, Bundling twigs, and fallen limbs. Flocks of treetop birds protest— Reminiscent of your shrill objections At time spent scribbling [...]
Poetry
on the front lawn the robins hunt their prey, heads cocked, listening for worms while on the sidewalk people walk their dogs—a beagle, a border collie cross, and some kind of doodle—as the relentless April rain drizzles down, which makes my trick knee ache in a way I hadn’t imagined when I was young and [...]