Volume 2, Issue 3 (2018)
CONTEST WINNER: SHORT FICTION
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"It came one day as she sang in the choir. Or maybe it came after, when she was alone in the vestibule. Or the chapel. Or the corner store with the caramel chews she liked so much. It came in the meadow with the blue winds that tousled her hair. Or it came between the tussocks and cattails as she dipped her sooty fingers in the creek, fishing for mudbugs. It came with the chains that clanked and the horses that whinnied, the goats wanted nothing to do with it. It was plucked and pulverized and jammed with the jams that lined the cellar walls. It came stuffed in her father’s knapsack, but did not leave when he did. It came with the wood blocks and bits of string and stuffed toys and all the infinities of childhood. It came in a cloudy reality. It came and it came and it came and it-"
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SHORT FICTION
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"Rosalie swinging back and forth inside the glider. All by herself. The empty chair on the opposite side. Forward and back along a flat plane. Unnatural not to swing in an arc. Why doesn’t it swing like swings in the park?"
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PROSE POETRY
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"...Night bleeds into more night and I stare at evening’s walls. There is a dialogue between the parts of my body keeping me up. Eyes try to lullaby but worry sings the nightingale’s song. Faith departs my belly and eventually thoughts swallow me whole. When I finally sleep I dream the Red Sea parts but everyone forgets how to walk so all the fish die for nothing. My hands awake and remember to look for the morning. My back is an endless desert filled with cacti in the shape of saints. Dear bed, who prays for me?..."
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SHORT FICTION
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"Something swoops down towards me from the milky sky, snatching me back from the aimless mental eddying: a pigeon bangs its body and flaps its wings against the window pane of the winter garden. Is that us, banging our bodies against the actuality of life? I ask. Another shadow rushes past on the left, then turns with a spin like a gyrating dervish: ‘What would You like?’"
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POETRY
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"we
burn ourselves each day on the smokescreens of sphinxlike sacrifice. the fall never far from mind. nothing, of course, can come from nothing-- lest your fortunes be marred. What shall Cordelia speak? too much and not enough. " |
Customized illustrations for all published pieces are provided by Evgenia Barsheva.