An Online Literary Journal for Poetry and Flash
Poetry by Mark Jackley
the word ‘one’
contains an O
same shape as
a little black pill
I am talking
trucker coffee
talking Omaha
to Council Bluffs
no commas please this is
basic math
I mean
one highway and
one exit
one darkness
and one me
Mark Jackley is a poet living in northwestern Virginia. His poems have appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Talking River, Cagibi, Sugar House Review, and other journals.
Fiction by William Falo
You bought a house near Heritage Park, and after feeding your cat Rogue, you walked outside. There was an old man there walking a dog. He waved, and you loving animals walked over to pet the friendly dog.
“Sophie.”
“Yes?”
“I recognize you.”
“From where?”
“You lived here as a child.”
“Yes, ten years ago.”
“How is your mother?”
“Good, she moved into an assisted living place, and I bought the house from her.”
“Welcome back to Marlton and Heritage Village. Do you still have your cat?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Do you remember the war?”
“No.”
“I was there. After it happened, your mother told me what you said that you saw, and I believed her. Do you want to hear about it?”
“Yes, let’s sit on the bench.”
The cawing of the crows got so loud that you thought they were gathering right outside your window. When you looked outside, there were some in the distance, and you saw what looked like an army of cats in Heritage Park behind your house in Marlton.
“Mom, there are cats and crows in the backyard, and I think they are going to fight.”
Your mother mumbled about fever dreams. You were sick and always felt tired lately. They said it could be the flu, but you might need to be brought to the hospital if you didn’t get better. That scared you more than anything. When your mother was in the other room, you opened the window and put pieces of bread on the ledge. One crow always came and ate it. It was always the same crow because it had a damaged wing that hung down, but it could still fly.
You saw the cats coming into the park, and they walked with their heads up, for they knew no fear. Their large eyes saw everything, and their claws cut like knives. You wished there was a way to convince them to go elsewhere, but they never listened to anyone.
The crows ruled the air, but the cats were fast, and feathers floated down after some encounters. It looked like it would go on forever until the leader crow picked out a specific plant, then flew above the cats and dropped it; the cats went crazy and forgot why they were there. They couldn’t resist the catnip. Some ran off, others chased imaginary birds, while others grabbed anything they could find, curled around it, and then kicked at it with their back legs.
Eventually, they all left with a few hisses as a warning that they would be back. You
believed them. They had nine lives.
You saw a man walking a dog.
“You?”
He nodded.
“Your mother said you woke up, and the fever was gone, so you ran to the window and looked out.”
Later, you walked through the park, and the crow with the damaged wing circled above your head. You understood that she wanted you to follow her, and you did until it landed near a bush. Under the bush was a tiny kitten. It meowed and looked at you with sad eyes.
You brought the kitten home. The crow saved the kitten’s life; it would have died out there alone. Your mother was so happy that you felt better, she agreed to care for it and take it to the vet in the morning, and yes, you could keep it. It was a female, and you named it Rogue after your favorite Marvel character.
The next day, you walked through Heritage Park and thought of Rogue the kitten and how the crow saved it, which gave you hope for peace. Soon, you and Rogue were best friends.
Your eyes filled with tears, and you hugged the man.
“Please come for coffee later. I want to ask you more since my mother has dementia. I want to write it all down because I always thought it was a strange dream, and now that I have met you, it has all come true, and that is the most amazing and wonderful thing that has happened to me in a long time.”
“I’m happy I could finally tell someone.”
“Has there been another war?”
“No, but I keep watch, and now I hope you will help guard the park too.”
“I will.” You hugged him again. Above you, a crow cawed, and you wondered if it could be the one with the damaged wing. You knew you would put food out later.
You went home, and with Rogue climbing over your desk, you wrote the first line of a story nobody would believe. The war began in Heritage Park.
William Falo lives with his family, including a papillon named Dax. His stories have been published or are forthcoming in various literary journals. He can be found on Twitter @williamfalo and Instagram @william.falo.
Nonfiction by Clint Martin
1986
I’m a nine year old Clint. I’m on fold-down seat’s edge. Not just because scooching back risks being gobbled up by sticky, red theater chair. But also because Transformers: The Movie glows upon the silver screen. And that despicable Decepticon Galvatron has seized the matrix. He’s used it to summon the planet-devouring Unicron. This is indeed the Autobots’s darkest hour. With dozing dad at my side, I am understandably tense.
All Autobot hope now rests on the red metal shoulders of Hot Rod. And Galvatron knows it. As Hot Rod charges, Galvatron blasts. Both bots go down. I pop up. Sticky chair snaps shut. My adrenaline-crazed heart rhythmically pleads for the good guy to rally as unadorned musical notes harken from an 80s synthesizer. Hot Rod spies the battle-flung matrix. The music, the tension pulls me up onto toes. Rocker Stan Bush croons, “You’ve got the touch.” My heart spills into a sprint. Hot Rod reaches the matrix. Lifts it. “You’ve got the power.” Hero’s hands fit the matrix’s handles perfectly. He pulls. Blue lightning streaks from the opening orb. Power chords pulse, and in that cinematic instant, Hot Rod grows. Grows. Does more than transforms. He evolves. I bounce and beam in the theatre, overjoyed for the silver screen’s new hero: Rodimus Prime.
2016
I’m a beaten Clint. I’m horizontal. Crammed into couch’s crevice. It’s the middle of the day. I should be at work. But I don’t have the energy. Or the desire. Depression blasts me. Has been for years now. So much so that yesterday my wife signaled surrender: she’s filed for divorce. I have until the end of the month. So I’ve transformed myself by getting stoned. Again. Avoiding reality. Again. Stoned and horizontal and ignoring my troubles by scrolling back to the beginning of Facebook. The phone screen waterfalls before me. Like the last reel of a slot machine. As it slows, before my thumb can flick it back into full-on reeling, an unfamiliar face catches my eye. I stop my roll. The woman in the post is sitting. Cross-legged. Her eyes are closed, but it’s her forehead I’m drawn to. Her forehead. It’s soft, unwrinkled, unstained by the strain of brain. It is the opposite of the pounding slab of creases above my brow. It’s not a post I’m looking at. It’s an ad. I tap the screen.
“You’ve got the touch.”
Wi-Fi whisks me to a site on transcendental meditation. I spend a few seconds reading about the power of silence. Oblivious that the final reel has landed on Jackpot. I sign up for an intro class. It’s tomorrow night. There’s no Stan Bush soundtracking this scene, yet years later I’ll see this clearly as the transformer type of moment that it was. I will see that this was the first step in saving my marriage. This was the moment I saved my own Autobot family. This was the moment that began the from-the-ashes evolution of Clintonimus Prime.
Clint Martin lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with his wife, two sons, and their yellow dog Waggie. When not writing, Clint enjoys transcendental meditation and identifying the birds visiting the backyard.
Poetry by Fredric Koeppel
I’m pretending that finding an owl’s feather
brings good fortune. When I dip the pointed end
into the inkwell of the moon’s dark side,
I’ll write the shrieks of fieldmice and the dumb
terror of the velvet-gloved mole. As for me,
I’m sewing the feather to one of my shoulder-
blades, so, like the village idiot, I’ll half-stumble,
half-fly through the rest of my life, looking
for another feather until my luck runs out.
Fredric Koeppel is a writer and editor living in Memphis. He has had stories, poems and novel excerpts published in a variety of print and online journals. He and his wife, who has a real job, rescue and foster dogs, maintaining a pack of nine.
Poetry by Sharon Whitehill
Laughter involves a “victorious tilting of uncontrol against control.”
Mary Douglas
You were there in my dream
for the first time last night,
its power derived from my laughter
at something so comic
I couldn’t find breath to explain it to you,
though you waited, expectant.
Twice I attempted to speak,
twice grew so tickled all over again
I couldn’t move air to make words.
You stood close, leaning in but bemused
as I tried, and failed, to get through.
What remains of the dream is the bliss
of those spasms of mirth:
how they left me as helpless, in my delight,
as a Laughing Buddha.
What remains with me still
is that visceral tickle
that left me still smiling when I awoke.
As if to pay tribute to laughter itself.
Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems published in various literary magazines, her publications include two biographies, two memoirs, two poetry chapbooks, and a full collection of poems.
Nonfiction by Robin Greene
We found a spot to park near the Moore’s Cove trailhead, along highway NC 276 that meanders through the Pisgah National Forest from Brevard to Waynesville.
Our plan was to take the short but rather vertical hike up to the impressive waterfall this autumn afternoon before returning to our home in Hendersonville, about forty-five-minutes away. We’d been out looking at raw land that day, thinking to purchase a couple of wooded, undeveloped acres for a second home, and we’d been previewing possibilities.
At the car, my husband decided to take his hiking stick, leave his phone and his jacket, while I decided to take nothing. I usually carry my phone to snap photos, but my pants pocket wasn’t deep, so I left it in the car.
On the trail, we met people, families mostly—kids scampering up the trail or complaining about the difficulty of the hike. There were babies in carriers, and moms and dads loaded down with backpacks. Late October, the leaves were turning and falling, and already the forest offered more winter than summer views.
Then, arriving at the waterfall, there she was. Very pregnant and almost naked. Barefoot, standing on the slippery stones just in front of the waterfall. She had a woman photographer snapping photos, and a man, probably her partner, stood out of frame, but by her side.
She wore a sheer robe and some kind of thong that didn’t cover her backside. Her large breasts bulged from what appeared to be a bikini top. Her dark skin was smooth over her enormous belly, and I thought she must be eight or even nine months along.
Then, I noticed the crown, a gold-colored tiara on top of her head.
Behind her, the large waterfall cascaded dramatically across the rocks, and hikers gathered in small groups to admire the spectacle of her. They also snapped photos. Something I, too, would have done—and, at that moment, I regretted not having taken my phone.
What had inspired her to do a photo-shoot here? What had inspired her to be so naked, so vulnerable on the wet slippery rocks? And the crown—what was her thinking about that?
I had no answers. But I, along with the crowd, watched her for a long time. A black woman, a pregnant woman, a woman barely dressed on a cool fall day, standing against the wild backdrop of a large and powerful waterfall.
As I stood there, I thought back to my own two pregnancies, which resulted in two boys, now grown men. I thought about this woman’s upcoming childbirth, imagined her struggling through contractions, and then nearly exhausted, finally pushing her baby out, into the hands of a doctor or midwife or perhaps her partner. I thought about the next decades of her life as a mother. Like the waterfall behind her, they would be an onslaught, an unstoppable rush.
She had paused to capture the moment. She probably felt like a queen—like so many women about to become mothers.
On the hike down, I found a quiet place to sit and think about this woman, this stranger, who was not a stranger because I recognized her. How she felt like royalty, something special. How her nearly-naked pregnant body was part of the larger naked world. How a woman might feel that the momentous events of her pregnancy and upcoming childbirth might shift the universe.
And now, at my desk, thinking back at the image of her, I feel both joy and sadness at my own journey of motherhood. As women, we are powerful—opening our bodies to allow another human being to enter the world. And we are powerless, as there’s so much about this human being that we won’t have the ability to control.
And after giving birth, our lives are never the same.
So, I take this moment to pause and to thank this anonymous woman for reminding me of the powerfulness and powerlessness of womanhood, of motherhood, and of the inevitability of change. And although I’ll probably never know her identity—and even without a photo to remind me—this woman’s image remains.
Robin Greene is the author of five books, and she regularly publishes her short work in journals and magazines. Greene is co-founder and current board member of Longleaf Press, and she now teaches writing and yoga in Western North Carolina.
Fiction by Alison Arthur
Her eyes are close-set, small, appearing to sink into the sides of her nose. “Hmm,” thinks Lilibeth. “Problematic”. Perhaps some foundation will make her nose appear narrower. That might relieve the piggy quality of her eyes. Good big ears, though. A definite plus. And, they don’t protrude overly. Her mouth is unremarkable.
Lilibeth has a theory about the size and placement of facial features and how this relates to the intelligence of a person. The larger the facial feature, the greater the intellectual capacity. And, of course, the reverse is also true. Perhaps her big ears and small eyes cancel each other out and the net result is average ability. Of course, close-set small eyes are a particularly bad sign. Difficult to say; perhaps a bit of a dim wit.
“Are you finished?” he calls from the adjoining room.
“Just a minute. Almost,” Lilibeth puts a few more dabs of contour powder on her cheeks and expertly blends. Good enough, she concludes. Ready. She closes the casket lid in preparation for transfer to the chapel.
Once the casket is in place, Lilibeth opens the lid to reveal her handiwork. Not her best, but adequate, she decides. The first mourners are arriving now, and she discretely slides into a seat in the back row as is her habit. She always attends the services of those she has prepared. She likes to listen to the eulogy to see if it validates her conclusions. Her version of field work.
Alison Arthur is a a retired Counselling Therapist living in rural Nova Scotia. She is new to flash fiction and is excited about this new adventure in her life.
Nonfiction by Lindsay Dudbridge
When I first visited Madrid, just three months before moving there, my Spanish partner and I crossed the central part of the city, erratically dodging and weaving our way through people like bats catching flies. Panicked, I said, “It’s like we’re in New York City. This is too big. I don’t know if I can live here.”
I grew up in the Adirondack Park—with six million acres to explore. I trained for my high-school cross-country team in the footsteps of deer, bear, and coyote and recovered in rocky streams or still lakes set to the soundtrack of loon calls. Born into a life of “forever wild,” I wondered how I could ever replace soft pine and mud with concrete and stone, forests with buildings, and rugged with landscaped?
By the time I was wandering the streets of Spain, I was no stranger to cities. I had been living in the Washington, DC area for nearly 20 years. Though I always sought the wildish spaces, no matter how tiny—running thin strips of trails between backyards and strip malls. The last several years, I lived in the city itself, next to the large, forested Rock Creek Park. I mentally mapped the Park’s trails in ways beyond their intersections and where they led. If I ran up a specific hill at dusk in the spring, I could see nesting owls. If I kept running a little further along the ridge just before dark, I would meet volunteers setting up nets to capture and study bats. I knew where to see the woodpeckers, which rocks to avoid stepping on after a heavy rain, and which trees had fallen with the last heavy storm.
Madrid feels so different—like chaos. It’s an introvert’s nightmare: people are everywhere and everywhere is loud. So I run at the quiet time—the cusp of sunrise—when it’s light enough to not need a headlamp but early enough that it’s not yet considered morning by many here. I start out along the paved, well-lit river trail and head into Casa de Campo, which was once the King’s hunting grounds. There are few people, just a spattering of other runners and dog walkers at the lake near the entrance.
The damp days are my favorite, as a light fog nestles in among the tall pinyon pines. These days, I crunch along the dirt roads because the trails are covered in a heavy mud that cakes the shoes. As I jog along, some of the many rabbits freeze and others bolt, zigzagging to safety. At first, I wondered why they ran. The park seemed so tame. But one morning, I stopped in my tracks as a rabbit came tearing toward me. The fox chasing it slowed to a trot when it saw me, reluctantly turning and heading back into the field in search of more prey. How lucky to see such a thing. I felt guilty for interrupting its hunt and relieved for the rabbit. I continued my run, holding those conflicting emotions and watching the carboneros, so similar to the chickadees of home, flit from branch to branch.
I often feel like I will never fit into this new culture—the late dinners, the lack of personal space, the constant conversation. But these mornings, I can at least immerse myself in this land and understand why the rabbits run and where the foxes hunt. So I run, I learn, and I listen to my footsteps patting a rhythm into the earth. I can almost follow it, like a thread across the Atlantic to the forest where I’m from.
Lindsay Dudbridge is a professional editor from the US who has been living in Madrid, Spain since 2019. When not manipulating the written word, she is outside running, mountaineering, caving, and climbing.
Poetry by Ann Ingalls
I walked along a sandy shore
And watched a curling wave.
It rolled right up between my toes,
And this is what it gave…
A small pink shell that curled up tight,
Was right in front of me.
I closed my eyes and then I heard
The whispers of the sea.
Ann Ingalls is a children’s writer with over sixty books in print or forthcoming. She writes both fiction and nonfiction, picture books, leveled readers, and teaches classes for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, The Writing Barn, local libraries, and universities in Kansas City area where she lives (http://anningalls.com).
Poetry by Suzanne Ondrus
Out of her black skin,
a three-inch by three-inch
pink square
rises
from her right calf.
The square’s white
puckered
periphery frames
this event
that happened a year ago.
Parked,
stretched out
from head to feet,
reclining over this stagnant metal beast,
with hands folded
over chest,
head
between handlebars
and feet hanging off the seat,
the driver sleeps
Author Note: Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso located in West Africa. The city is known as the premier motorcycle city in West Africa because motorcycles are the major means of transportation. In fact, Burkina Faso is called “the African capital of two wheels.” These poems were based largely on my time living in Ouaga from 2018 to 2020.
Suzanne Ondrus‘ first book, Passion Seeds, won the 2013 Vernice Quebodeaux Prize. She was a 2018-2019 Fulbright Scholar to Burkina Faso. Her new poetry book Death of an Unvirtuous Woman is available from Finishing Line Press. Hear her read on her YouTube channel Suzanne Ondrus and find updates on suzanneondrus.com.
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