Author: Editor (Page 45 of 50)

The Package

4 May 2022 / Editor

Microfiction by Kenneth M. Kapp

Bob was a joker with a permanent smile. If asked, he’d answer: “Told myself a joke and it’s a corker.”

Now a widower he lived in a small Milwaukee bungalow. A sign on his mailbox pointed to a milkcrate below: Please leave all packages here. Old and still smiling, he made his final arrangements.

His time was up. His cremains were delivered to his home and left in the milkcrate. A curious neighbor checked and discovered the package he had preaddressed. A cloud enclosed the return address: If unclaimed return to SENDER (a large arrow pointed up).

Kenneth M. Kapp was a Professor of Mathematics, a ceramicist, a welder, an IBMer, and yoga teacher. He lives with his wife and beagle in Wisconsin, writing late at night in his man-cave. He enjoys chamber music and mysteries. He’s a homebrewer and runs whitewater rivers. Visit www.kmkbooks.com.

nephelococcygia

2 May 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Alyssa Harmon

you say
it is rare for two people to see
the same image in clouds.

we see each other’s hands
drifting away in the wind and
pretend the blue sky
is not dividing us.

Alyssa Harmon is working on her master’s degree in Creative Writing at the University of West Florida. Her poems have been published in Merrimack Review, Minerva Rising, Shaking the Sheets Magazine, and Odet Journal. You can find more of her work on Instagram @alyssa_harmon_.

arachnid artistic blur close up — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The Lost One

1 May 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Lisa Spencer Trecost

I look at the sky and see a cloud
So I talk to you but not out loud

You left me here on the ground
A place at times I cannot stand

I hear the noise as people speak
But for the one I listen I cannot see

I feel you in the vast blue sky
I feel you in the tears I cry

I taste salt air and remember when…
So I reach for you but touch only wind

You’re near but far, a heart without beat
While mine still races as I desperately seek
The one who is missing
Me.

Lisa Spencer Trecost is a heart-centered writer who loves to travel with her husband and dogs.

Two Pages

29 April 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Benjamin Leuty

When they found the alligator in the river,
The kids gathered crabs to feed it
while the elders plotted against it.
And nobody thought to leave it be.

In the days before the gator,
I’d cast myself into the current,
Let my body be a continent
Then a collection of islands
The air between shirt and chest ballooning
And then suddenly,
At the last possible moment,
fleeing in bubbles
Like a flock of birds
I’d sink.
From time to time,
A shoe of mine might bobble
Confused and surfing the ripples on the surface
Like the float that marks your fishing line
And assures you there’s a connection between
hook and line.

I’d climb from the pond,
Sopping wet,
And be a rainstorm
for a second
for just the square foot
beneath my body.

By then it might be dark,
Glass shards making stars of themselves
Under street lamp’s glow
Leafcutter ants still busy
Hauling the trees away
Bit by bit
As if to reconstruct somewhere else
Like Ikea furniture.
Carpenter ants,
Hauling houses away
Chunk by chunk.

In the sand,
A turtle might be dragging itself to sea
Flippers leaving a trail
Like jeep treads.
And I might find that nature
And my town
Are two pages of a book
Stuck together.

Benjamin Leuty is a high school senior at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco. His work has appeared in his school literary journal Umläut. In his spare time, he cycles, reads, plays video games, and hops up and down.

7:00 PM, JUNO

28 April 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Stephanie Buesinger

The turtle’s shell is plastic, his insides
spongy – we dug out the hard wires,
tossed out the batteries that made up his belly
left only the soft parts for you.

The first thing I bought from a TV ad,
his shell riddled with holes to project the night sky
you wanted only his squishy body, sweet face
even after I wash him, he smells like you.

They say – watch out
for alligators in shallow water
for poisonous frogs in deep grass, but you
always liked the roughness of shells.

Tonight, under the white moon, the mothers will crawl onto this sand to lay their eggs
Like me, sea turtles can hold their breath for a long time.

Stephanie Buesinger writes fiction and children’s literature and enjoys illustration and photography. With degrees from Wellesley College and the University of Texas at Austin, she has worked in corporate finance and economic consulting. Stephanie is the Blog Editor at Literary Mama. She lives in Florida with her husband, teenagers, and rescue pets.

Below Beach Sands

26 April 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Ed Higgins

feeding sanderlings rush
along the tide’s wet sand

sand-colored mole crabs
burrow quickly below the swash

maximizing their escape—
like the burrowing crabs

I sink below sloshing surfaces
backward into ovid breathing holes

barely remembering which way
is up, wanting protection,

leaving few marks to reveal
my fears, eyes alert

as predatory birds plunge
their digging beaks

Ed Higgins‘ poems and short fiction have appeared in Monkeybicycle, Danse Macabre, Ekphrastic Review, and Triggerfish Critical Review, among others. Ed is Asst. Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction. He has a small farm in Yamhill, OR, raising a menagerie of animals—including a rooster named StarTrek.

Meeting

25 April 2022 / Editor

Poetry by David Goad

There was a time
I took the train to see you in the outskirts of the city,
And from the gray
Disjointed sprawl of life,
You formed somewhere just beyond the line –
Past black and white
Nooks and crannies
Framed in trash along the tracks –
In the world’s singular course,
there comes the hammers, the ties,
The earth piercing nails
Laid by dead hands of men
Whose sweat formed the communion
Of your light
As you waited
Under the crooked streetlamp.

David Goad is an attorney who currently lives in Washington DC. He resides with his lovely partner and little puppy, Pennie. When not working, David enjoys writing poetry that touches on the nature of memory and the human experience in the modern world.

gray train — Photo by Vinícius Pimenta on Pexels.com

Next Stop

23 April 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Alexis Pearson

I drop down into the
underneath of New York
City
where stairs wear toil
like magic tricks –

where devotion is absolved
of its commitment
to disaster
to us
to everything –

the men in suits,
women in long jackets
that tempt stained concrete
with their reaching
and the homeless man
hunched over
as if he must bear the
troubles of each passenger –

what do these skyscrapers know about
clouds
and salvation,

the dirt of the ground
and dimly lit newspaper
stands, the
quiet blue of stoplight
dwellings and crosswalks

the contemplativeness
manifested on strangers’ faces
as if there is too
much going on in city
windows to ever fully
understand what unfolds
along walls and
inside doorways,

but still we try –

the subway lurches,
people move
quickly on the concrete,
I forget that my feet,
too,
can take me places,
as I wonder
where they are all
going
and why.

Alexis Pearson lives in Minnesota where it’s cold most of the year – perfect writing weather. She enjoys a good cup of coffee and will read just about anything. She has been published in Upper Mississippi Harvest and Sonder Midwest, among others.

Night’s Turning

22 April 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Robert Okaji

If I am the leaking valve, you are the whisper
tugging me back, the hummingbird’s nectar.

When you speak, the thunder listens.
When you brush your hair, stars erupt in the mesosphere.

Your gravity transcends all others, tethers me to life.
In this frame, on this bed, at this instant, I melt.

I relinquish the green beetles, the rodents of destiny and all the little
trees. I relinquish my sorrows, my secrets, their bluest songs.

You are the storm’s respite, the eye of the world at the night’s
last turning, the bridge between hands and the healing stone.

Robert Okaji lives in Indiana. His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Night Heron Barks, Vox Populi, Exilé Sans Frontières, Salamander Ink Magazine and elsewhere.

shallow focus photography of bird — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Earth’s Joy

21 April 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Stacie Eirich

Reach out your hand, that you may stroke the silk
of a butterfly’s wings, know the delicate beauty
which grows from the strength nature brings.

Stretch out your fingers, that you may feel the feathers
of a songbird as she sings, sense her delightful dance
where upon the branch her melody rings.

Lift up your voice, that you may join the chorus
of a springtime serenade, perceive her playful passions
when Earth’s Joy is born in colorful promenade.

Stacie Eirich is a writer, singer & library associate. She holds a Masters in English Studies from Illinois State University. Her work has appeared in Ariel Chart International Literary Journal, Auroras & Blossoms Anthologies, Scarlet Leaf Review & Potato Soup Journal. She lives near New Orleans with three cats, two kids and one fish (www.stacieeirich.com).