Author: colleenflorafiction

  • The Seagull’s Harmonica by D.C. Houston

    The Seagull’s Harmonica by D.C. Houston

    On this walk, as with all days,I move,until the moon,usurps the sun.The songs of life ongoing,do their best, to fill the barren space,you once occupied.Is it hubris,to say, you are the best there ever was.Daydreams of our eleventh hour,what I could have articulated, differently.How life could change so irrevocably in…

  • Peas by Taylor Lyon

    Peas by Taylor Lyon

    β€œPeas””It’s a little past noon and church let out half an hour ago, the second service. The eight o’clock service is a little too early for fire and brimstone or the exaggerations of Revelations. That’s what Dad says, even though he didn’t come for the late service either. He hasn’t…

  • Drown the Clown by Gary Duehr

    Drown the Clown by Gary Duehr

    “Dats right, genius,” muttered Jeckles, flicking his cigar ash onto the gravel. “We iz a dyin breed, we iz.”             From the lawn chair beside his Winnebago, Jeckles eyed the bloody sun slipping down into the thin pines ringing the fairground lot. A red-and-white greasepaint target stretched across his sagging…

  • 1920 by DC Diamondopolous

    1920 by DC Diamondopolous

    A ray of sun strikes the copper’s badge and bounces off, lighting up the voting box inside H. L. Drugstore in me South Bronx neighborhood.             Now washed and mended, I wear the same once-blood-splattered and mud-stained dress, patched at the cuff, tattered β€˜round the collar. It shows the scars…

  • First Fire by Wilda Morris

    First Fire by Wilda Morris

    Maybe rain was comingin torrents, or snowpiled up outside the meagerlean-to the day maninvented fire.Maybe his legs were brokenfrom a fall down the sideof an icy mountain.The woman dragged himto his pine-bough bed.Confined, cold and hungry,he complained as the womannursed their insatiable babe. He drummed two sticksagainst a log to…

  • Rapture by Finnley Silveria

    Rapture by Finnley Silveria

    there is a short list of things you want right now:rest, comfort,a hand pressed against the small of your backpeace, rapture. but not the kind of rapture folks dream ofno final redemption hereno explosive joyjust his body next to yours it’s funny, you’ve decidedthat you seek rapture in the most…

  • it should have been a sign by McKenna Themm

    it should have been a sign by McKenna Themm

    what if the velvet curtains startedweepingwhat if the marble statue lifted herfingertips to her cheekwhat if the piano held a lowB flat and wouldn’t letit gowhat if each stone of the diamond necklacesoftened and turnedback into coal. when the woman locked in theyellow wallpaperpushed aside the barsand leapt out into…

  • The Dark Side by Tom Corboy

    The Dark Side by Tom Corboy

    Is darkness onlyAbsence of lightOr individual personaA personal night. Does it gather at duskAnd retreat at dawnOr is it a twenty-four hourCloud that is drawnA personal darknessPersonal absence of light? No amount of sunCan ease the frightOf not knowingIf anyone’s home. Do you see meAre you entirely alone? Tom Corboy…

  • Life After Death by Lynn White

    Life After Death by Lynn White

    Something has startled mewhere I thought I was safest,where I thought I belonged,so I will follow Whitmanin avoiding the still woods I lovedand the fields where I used to walk.I won’t emerge from my hometo meet my friends in the open spaces,or hug them and share a coffee,there are no…