The story of the week for October 2 to 6 is…
40 Acres Done Today by Dan Johnson
All posts by Tim
NELLY SHULMAN: The Last Day
Andrew swept the stone patio hidden under the green columns of cypresses whispering in the wind. Violet and yellow inflorescences danced in the clear air following his broom, and Andrew left the purple flesh of the fallen plums for chirping birds, who would soon accompany him on the last journey.
Nelly Shulman is a writer based in Jerusalem.
CAROL REEVES: Autumn Memories
It’s fall, and nature is strutting her stuff. “Look at me,” says the tree; “Carve me,” says the pumpkin; “Press me,” says the apple. I close my eyes, remembering the smell of burning leaves, the chill air filled with excitement—as though tomorrow I’ll be shopping for brand-new school shoes.
A prolific writer, Carol Reeves is loving the freedom and challenges of 50 word stories. Her memoir, “All the Little Miracles,” was published last year. She often writes of the privilege and vicissitudes of aging.
DAVID DEZELL TURNER: Lessons in Chihuahua History
“You’re so ornery, Zara,” said Emily, adjusting the chihuahua’s translator.
“It’s in my blood,” Zara retorted.
“Your ancestors were little brats, too?”
“Brats? They ruled the Ice Age! Battled saber-toothed cats! Hunted for—”
“Their own food?”
Zara sheepishly eyed the treat jar. “Some traditions are best left in the past.”
David Dezell Turner is an astrodynamics PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder. When he isn’t giving directions to real spaceships, he’s writing about fictional ones. Check out more of his work at daviddezellturner.com.
MIKKI ARONOFF: The Old Man Looks for His Wife
Where’d she go?
Could I have mislaid her?
Or did she, in a feint, blur from view?
Did she take wing on a milk thistle puff?
Or, pressing heels into rippling flanks, riding the mare’s chord of song, land born anew on childhood’s moon?
Perhaps I dreamt her all along?
Mikki Aronoff’s work appears in New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Tiny Molecules, HAD, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Gone Lawn, Mslexia, The Dribble Drabble Review, 100 word story, The Citron Review, Atlas and Alice, trampset, jmww, The Offing, and elsewhere. She’s received Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction nominations.
MICHAEL THEROUX: Smiles that Smell
There are smiles that smell; you can tell ’em for miles. A whale of a smile (you know the kind, stretched in an arc outside the mind).
A hand’s breadth below eyes where no light lies. A big one, that smile: points turned up and back like two ready machetes.
Michael Theroux writes from his cubby-hole home office in Northern California. He is presently shifting from decades of developing and publishing science-based socio-political works toward publication of poetry and fiction. Much more satisfying…
DAN JOHNSON: 40 Acres Done Today
Bound for the elevator, fifth trip today. Afternoon sun setting. Heads turn, alerted by horn blasts and seeing fate and fated meet. Cloud of bean dust over the crossing settles on the twisted grain truck remains. Miles away a combine sits, engine ticking as it cools. Forty acres done today.
Dan Johnson was born in California and grew up in Illinois. Now retired, he spent over twenty years as a high school physics teacher and school administrator, who also loved writing poetry.
WENDY K MAGES: Hornets Treat & Trick
Elsie, wielding a blue flyswatter, chases a hornet from her kitchen.
Escaping, it returns to the colony’s growing nest hidden in the ceiling. There, hundreds of angry hornets continue chewing through the drywall. The ceiling fan whirs, concealing their activity, until, bursting through, the swarm banishes Elsie from their kitchen.
Wendy K. Mages, a Mercy University Professor, is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an award-winning poet and author. She earned her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her master’s in Theatre at Northwestern University. As a complement to her research on the effect of the arts on learning and development, she performs at storytelling events and festivals in the US and abroad. To learn more about her and her work, and to find links to her published stories and poetry, please visit mercy.edu/directory/wendy-mages
JOHN SZAMOSI: Yogi the Instructor
Driving through Yellowstone I see a blackbear at the roadside trying to teach her cubs to stand on their hind legs and beg for food. The kids aren’t paying attention; they’d prefer wrestling, climbing trees, digging up ground squirrels.
Interesting: the smart teacher is wrong, her unruly students are right.
John Szamosi is a wordsmith who publishes short stories, satire and occasionally poems.
LUCAS HUBBARD: Checkpoint
From the evening’s last plane: a harried mother, two incorrigible toddlers. Once they behave, mom fumbles for passports—the other passengers grumbling, furious to delay their reunions, showers, sleep.
The passports aren’t there. All three start crying.
It’s ok, the agent lies. They are escorted away. The line moves swiftly.
Lucas Hubbard is a North Carolina-based writer whose work has appeared in Microfiction Monday Magazine, Defector, Maudlin House, INDY Week, and other outlets.