My Grandmother’s Eyes
By Beth IIiff My grandmother’s eyes were a deep shade of mossy green. Like the ivy climbing up her back gate. Green as the pine trees that covered the mountain where she lived. Or as green as the jade turtle she always carried in her purse. My mother’s eyes are just like my grandmother’s. And mine are just like my mother’s. I would sit between them in Grandma’s old pick-up truck. Three pairs of green eyes sparkling as we laughed and bounced down the mountain road into town. “You hold this fella for me,” Grandma would whisper in my ear. She would slip the turtle from her purse into my lap, “We’ll be ...
April 1, 2013The Gilded Cage
By Seema Chatterjee The pigeon waited impatiently in her gilded cage. She paced up and down, squinting in the sunlight, as the gold bars of her nest, alchemized to a burnished bronze. Glancing at her watch she sighed. Where was the baron her beloved crow? Where was her loved one? Orchards of mandarins, oranges, grapefruit and lemon, loomed before her. Listlessly, she sipped on some water, longing for a piece of orange to suck on. Her eyes scanned over bushes of hawthorns and hickories, high bush blueberry, wild grape and honeysuckle and her mouth watered uncontrollably. Did she dare to step out just for a bit? She could ...
March 15, 2013Two Ounces of Purring Resilience
By Marla Morrow McMullen Our most humbling lesson in resilience began on August 2nd, 2010 when my husband Bob called from work saying he found a newborn kitten that had been abandoned by its mother. One of his co-workers was willing to take the kitten but didn’t have the time for the constant attention it would need so Bob and I agreed to raise the kitten until it was old enough to go to his new home. The army depot where my husband works is teeming with wildlife such as cats, mice, snakes, coyotes and hawks. Bob couldn’t bear the thought of a newborn kitten being nourishment for a wild animal ...
February 1, 2013The General
By A & M Fuentes There is nothing as deplorable as riding the public transportation around this crazed, sprawling city. If you manage to decipher the cryptography of colored lines and numbers on the bus schedule brochures, I am certain you could also become a successful mathematical analysis or a respectable forensic linguist. Just to be clear, there is no reason why you should even trust those flimsy pieces of propaganda they call The Bus Schedule — all the buses arrive when they are good and ready, and that could be an hour from now, or three. Once seated on the bus the overwhelming odor of human run off, bitter sweat, musky ...
January 1, 2013When the People Cried
By Hazel Wesson-Peterson The journey was gruesome. To think of it is sometimes more than I can bear. Most every night when I close my eyes, the pictures in my mind are those of the tragic sojourn the People made during the autumn and winter months of 1838 and 1839. Oh that all Americans would come to know and understand what really happened and be forever changed by the truth. The day began like any other. Up at the break of dawn and out the door to milk the cows. Even though Father and I pretended to be bored by this morning ritual, we enjoyed our time together, taking in the smells ...
December 1, 2012The Friendship Store
By Seema Chatterjee The friendship store had opened a year ago and was the most colorful shop on the boulevard. An enormous caravan on wheels, so large was the shop that customers walked through it, as if in a dream. Silvery moons and golden suns glided through the sky, which stretched endlessly through the mock darkness. Stars buoyed through the horizon. Like children let loose in a candy shop, clients would stop in their tracks to survey a passing comet. Confetti in satin paper hung loosely on diabolical clouds, which mischievously collided with one another, dropping golden dust onto their visitors. Enticing friendships parceled in bright satiny paper were displayed by ...
October 15, 2012The Final Option
By Mike Shafto He was forty that year and his life was shot to pieces. He was probably dying and seemed to know it but not to care. He was often to be seen these days staring into space – a vast abyss, a dense impenetrable mist of emptiness. He had dragged himself out of bed twenty minutes earlier. It was already well after eight. He was in the kitchen of the cheap flat he rented in a rundown area of the Eastern Cape town where he’d lived for the past thirteen years. The last ten saturated with drugs, booze and women. It was a marvel how many of them threw themselves ...
October 1, 20121st Place Winner in Fiction: “His Brother’s Pants”
By Beth Iliff The twelve-year-old boy struggled into his jacket as he jumped down the stairs of the old school bus-turned-camper. He rubbed the sleep out of his blue eyes. Then he looked around the dusty farm camp in amazement. “Holy cow! Jerry! Jimmy! Ya gotta come see this,” he called to his two little brothers. “Last night there were only two tents and now there’s gotta be fifty!” He heard his brothers thumping and giggling in the bus as they got dressed. With one hand, Ma handed him some steaming flapjacks on a tin plate. Her other arm cradled his baby sister. “Slow down, Gene,” she cautioned as he gobbled the ...
August 13, 20122nd Place Winner in Fiction: Just for the Weekend
By Helen Cooney She peered over my shoulder as I pushed the carrots around the skillet. The meat was on, the veggies were there, my homemade gravy was simmering—the whole meal was right there in front of her. “Well, we can always order in if it doesn’t turn out, dear.” This was the type of comment I had expected. She delivered her insults underhandedly, a slow lob that flew through the air in her Minnie-Mouse voice but nevertheless landed squarely on my head. I forced a small laugh. “Hopefully we won’t need to.” I tried to sound cheery. “Yes, hmmm…” she mused, taking one last glance at the meal before walking away. A year ago, ...
August 13, 20123rd Place Winner in Fiction: “Not Today”
By Dennise Sleeper Thump, thump, thump. Kate's running shoes rhythmically slap the pavement. Long, black hair swats her shoulders and brushes over her pink jogging suit. Her nose and throat ache from the cool air. Breathless she slows and turns the corner. A gentle breeze rustles through the bright autumn leaves. She stops and checks her heart monitor. One hundred and thirty. Too close to the top end of the range her physician recommended. She takes a deep breath and relishes the smell of damp earth and rotting leaves. Autumn, she sighs, the season of color and cool morning jogs. She walks to slow her heart rate and marvels at the ...
August 13, 2012