Fiction
Introduction to Issue 46 Fiction by Edwin Riddell
Our contributors in this issue reside in places as various as Nova Scotia, the Czech Republic, North Wales, Ohio, Montana and Massachusetts It’s an equally eclectic bunch of stories, ranging in tone from Maria Greer’s dystopian but very witty Long-Distance Call to the disturbing yet plaintive childhood vignette Stolen Moment by J. M. Faulkner. The [...]
Fiction
Long-Distance Call by Maria Greer
Henry was sipping coffee and deleting unread emails when he got a call from his dead ex-girlfriend. “Hello?” he said, standard. He prided himself on being the type of person who always picked up, even if he didn’t recognize the number. He didn’t like to discriminate. “Hey, Henry,” she said, like she had not said [...]
Fiction
Stolen Moment by J.M. Faulkner
Rachel knocked and invited me to McDonald’s. It wasn’t for either of us to eat. The mum who employed her as a babysitter had sent her on an errand. What was her name? Susan? Another single mother from the council estate. I was eight years old in the summer of ’97 and my imagination interferes [...]
Fiction
The Taste of Pomegranate By Maureen Bowden
I was sitting on our garden swing while my mother, Demeter, goddess of fertility and the harvest, was brushing my hair. Hermes, messenger of the gods, descended beside us, his winged sandals flapping. “Lady Demeter,” he said, “Hera, Queen of Olympus, requests the presence of you and your daughter at an ambrosia and nectar soiree, [...]
Fiction
All Dissolved by Nicholas Stillman
Nolan still wouldn’t eat one apple from the mighty tree in his yard, even though his grays stood out like violin strings and the body beneath the tree had surely rotted to bones. His father had passed away quietly two weeks ago, leaving him the Victorian house and the niggling uncertainty about what lay buried [...]
Fiction
The Icewomen Cometh by John Mara
Saturday, December 8, 1:30 p.m. Submerged beneath the ice in a frozen New Hampshire lake, Tony clings to life. He presses his face against the ice to suck air in the thin space above the water. Hypothermia wages a battle against the weight of his sodden clothes to decide how he will die. Through a [...]
Fiction
I heard the footsteps of someone walking behind me. They seemed to be neither gaining nor falling behind. I glanced over my shoulder without breaking stride, but saw no one. Since the footsteps were so loud they seemed most likely made by a man. I stopped and turned. The footsteps stopped at the same time. [...]
Poetry
The Long Reach by Michael Gaspeny
Narrated by Michael Gaspenny Slouched for a nap in my reading chair, thinning arms spread on thick oak arms, I saw you striking a similar pose in the photo topping the TV cabinet, front legs splayed on the tan-carpeted porch where, gray-muzzled, you took the breeze and eyed the street, sometimes stirring to bark, but [...]
Poetry
I’m not going to lie, I thought you were a corpse when every spotlight was on you; a trick of their glow. But now, after hours, the visitors all gone my broom sweeping the peanut-covered floor I can see the truth of you: the only real mermaid among dead monkey torsos sewn onto rotting fish [...]
Poetry
No keening hymn or fevered prayer will ever wake you from that marble city where the dark hearse takes you. Can you feel the beetles gnawing at your skin? How long before the worms and maggots’ feast remakes you? I seek through yellowed codices by candlelight. I must resurrect you. My heart will never forsake [...]
Poetry
An Event of Sighs by Nnadi Samuel
Physics Crooked shadows leaking landmines, the breeze beneath is everything that pets a war. nature winks at us unarmed & a pothole waylays her cheek. we made every spray a yellow hit, no cash crop escaped a bruise. we have most of our cherished events this way, in places where we bend our virgin bodies [...]
Poetry
Narrated by Lee Nash For Jenny1 Every insignificant thing is now vital: I feel a muon pass through me hear the pause before a songbird loosens its throat – each window opens onto your face & your I-beam blinks forever … your paper cut is a mortal wound your spinning arms are a distant pulsar [...]
Poetry
Reincarnation by F. J. Bergmann
Narrated by F.J. Bergman Music by Fred W. Bergman In a past life, I was not a temple dancer, black hair braided with beads and bells, swaying behind veils, who died young. I do not remember being a foot-soldier whom the legions left behind when my feet froze in useless sandals spattered with elephant dung. [...]
Poetry
Layering the Past by Jean Colonomos
After Martha Graham, ‘Dancer of the Century’ (Time Magazine) It was a moment of grace, like a firefly lighting a moonless night when Martha told us in a voice that came from her toes, When two wolves fight, the one who’s losing bares its neck for the kill. Though my younger self lacked the reach [...]
Poetry
Come to Me to Nitro by Cathy Bryant
Narrated by Cathy Bryant Dearest, wildest Astatine, Let’s get hydrogen and folic. Oh, oxy, oxy, take off your chloride and get completely scandium, baring your barium. I will cobalt your bismuth in kinesis, so sodium that you rhodium. Oh, how you rhodium. Never has there been such potassium between two alloys - we will always [...]