An Online Literary Journal for Poetry and Flash

Tag: gratitude (Page 3 of 3)

The Package

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.

Mud Season

Poetry by Emily Donaldson

A scrambled egg breakfast,
a pocket clementine, tea.

Heavy boots pulled over wool socks,
knowing each step will be unsteadied
by the hungry latch of mud season.

Resident red breasted robins dart in undergrowth.
Crows call to each other from the wood.
Steam rises from the tea, curls like frost smoke
above the last vestiges of snow.

A wrack line of melting ice gravid with topsoil, softening.

The mud-stirred rush, sharp and sweet.
The ovary of a former flower, pulled first from its branch,
and then from my pocket. Clementine peels dropped as eggshells,
as petals. Pulling spongy ribbons of pith from half-moons, as fine as root hairs,
jagged as lightening.

A striking vision of seasonal return, this jeweled orbit:
ruby-crowned kinglets, blue-headed vireos,
yellow-bellied sapsuckers reclaiming their home
amidst black capped chickadees and wheeling starlings.

Calling the promise of nests, of precious eggs cradled in
loose twigs, chaos ordered with care. Their nocturnal flights
under cover of darkness like glittering comets,
bringing new life to beloved ground.

Showing us to make home in the dead wood.

And I, having devoured the world in a morning,
wingless, nursing citrus sting on cracked lip,
whisper thanks.


Emily Donaldson writes as a way to connect with everything around her, and to explore the relationship between the natural and our inner worlds.

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