Category: Fiction
-
Two Women by Toshiya Kamei
The silence in their apartment was heavy, packed with twenty years of things they hadn’t said. Emi and Kenji moved around it like two practiced dancers, their choreography perfected by routine. He would read the newspaper at the small kitchen table; she would pour his genmaicha, the roasted aroma a…
-
Harvest Home by Sarah Das Gupta
Plates of newly baked cottage loaves,wooden platters of ripe applesgreen, brushed, touched with red,round, juicy, temptingas that fruit in Eden.Butter, freshly churned,a creamy, soft confection.Round, lunar satellites of cheesemimicking the full Harvest Moon,shining golden in the autumn sky. Laid out on trestle tables,flagons of foaming beer,eagerly poured into frothing tankards.Whole…
-
Finally Finding Thoreau by Jim Bates
When we were kids, my best friend Jerry and I spent as much time as we could walking the fields and woods a few miles from where we grew up in a small town in west-central Minnesota. We liked to pretend we were out there with our hero, Henry David…
-
Molten Memory by Jim Bates
The sun rose fiery on a hazy July dawnThe clouds were blood red the world silent in aweThe birds seemed wary and were quiet in their singingAs if in wide wonder at the spectacle they sawBut soon the morning cleared and the sunshine did pourAnd the sky like a volcano…
-
Jura by Iona Marcellino
Ebb and flowOf slate wavesOn pebble-stoned sandSoft calls of swans and sealsReclaiming their magicLandAncient bramblesTorn along edgesOf churches and fieldsFaithfully protectingThe hills, the lakes, the gin,The solitary yield.Final light on the sea,Otters whisper,Salt crests crash,Bending that grey skyBack to me. Iona Marcellino is a Scottish born poet, writer, and TCK…
-
A Joke Foretold by Nostradamas by Ricardo Quinones
The Duke bombarded Venice—the Doge cried, “God have mercy!”but cries no more—death is witless—and skiffs halt—abreast, our sea. The Emperor in Paris—in repose, sits he, unstirred.He dreams of fair Helen’s kissand consults the augur’s birds. “Three weeks more! Four’s too many.What am I taken for? A foolin full jest? It’s…
-
Background Noise by Michael Boss
I didn’t notice the fridgeuntil the power went out.And then I missed its steady faith—a presence that said: still here.The air conditioner’s wheeze,the neighbor’s dog at 3 a.m.,traffic bleeding through windows,a distant ocean—all of it,the unnoticed orchestrathat scores our sleep.We call it noise.It’s prayer.The drone of machinesthat keep us alive,the…
-
Cotter Pin by Martin Indars
Tibet’s oppressed. Arctic ice is getting thin. But all I need is a cotter pin.If not that a bolt or rivet may dofor my troubles now are small -their fixes are too. I know, I know Australia’s coral is bleaching while my countrymen celebrate science’s death. But first I’ll go…
-
It’s Hard for Me to Tell My Brother I Love Him, So Instead I Write a Story by Alice Kinerk
The word addiction comes from Latin. It means to surrender. A drug addict is a person who has given over his or her life to a substance, who has given drugs the helm. The first time my brother went to rehab, he was fifteen and I was six. I…