The story of the week for June 13 to 17 is…
The Green Goddess by Rosie Douglas
All posts by Tim
DEVIN OLDHAM: Feeding Time
This was the last place he’d seen the creature. The lake three miles off from their cabin. He supposed it was his cabin now. Since his father passed away, it only belonged to him. He spread the ashes into the black water as if salting a bland meal. “Eat up.”
Devin Oldham is a Canadian dark fantasy writer focusing on rural and small town horror.
DEBORAH TAPPER: Starting Over
Although she hasn’t seen her abusive ex-husband for years, she recognises that arrogant swagger instantly, the contemptuous sneer. He’s heading straight for her. She would’ve cowered and hidden once, but things are very different now. One leap and he’s a memory under velvet paws. She struts away, tail held high.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
DAVID GALLOWAY: 14B & 14C
I told her, “I’m the perfect traveler. I don’t get airsick. I pack light. I research the culture in advance. I’m not leaving you, because I always come back.”
She said, “I believe you, but this is a nine-hour flight, I’m not your wife, and I’d like to be reseated.”
David Galloway is a writer and college professor of Russian. Born and raised in Maryland, for the past twenty-five years he has lived in upstate New York. He is the author of poyms for people (Kelsay Books, 2021), and his poetry and essays have most recently appeared in Atlanta Review, the American Journal of Poetry, Typehouse, Permafrost, and Penn Review.
SARAH NASSAR: Crush
He’s tall, a full head taller than I am. And he’s handsome. I really like his laugh. For someone who doesn’t talk much, it’s surprisingly loud.
Today, I saw him talking to someone as I sat far away. With every touch, my heart broke. With every smile, my chest tightened.
Sarah Nassar is an English Literature student living and writing in Egypt.
GENE NEWMAN: Eye Wonder
It would be wrong to group “optimists”
with “opticians” and “optometrists”;
and tell me, what in the world are opthalmologists?
Each puzzling optical allusion
is bound to cause a great deal of confusion.
How strange the names and how much they vary.
And can one buy bifocals from a visionary?
Gene Newman is a retired old guy (90 yrs) and former New Jersey journalist and columnist. Read more at GeneNewmanImagineThat.com.
KENT OSWALD: Loser’s Lament
Few numbers short of a Lottery win
Six, to be exact
That deal I made with Satan?
He screwed me on the pact
I really thought him trustworthy
His eyes, they shone like gold
To be fair it might not be all his fault
As I sold him another’s soul
Kent Oswald teaches at CUNY and tweets at @oswalke.
STORY OF THE MONTH: May 2022
The Story of the Month is chosen from the Story of the Week winners announced from the past month.
The finalists for May were:
Handful of Gravel by Judith Dzierba
A Distant Hope by Jose Joel Robles
Trading Places by Stephen Tilden
The Guest by Jenny Logan
Bookworm by Stephen Gallagher
Kite-Flying by Sally Sadasivam
Blue by Alison Bernasconi
The winner of the May 2022 Story of the Month, and the $10 prize, is…
Bookworm
VERITY ALWAYS: Temptress
On the edge of crippling pressures, I find myself in contemplation, sailing towards another dilemma, in front of a glass and spoon. Remedy: fill them.
The percolation dissolves my island, my mind, melting swiftly. I savour the paradox. Finer moments when walls of worries disappear, mesmerised by spoonfuls of affogato.
Verity Always wrote this story.
ROSIE DOUGLAS: The Green Goddess
She is robed in green velvet, her tresses seaweed in the spindrift. Her lips pour forth songs and laments. Buffeted by storms and bathed in blood, still she welcomes strangers to her door to share peat-warmed poetry, potatoes, stout and good craic. She is gentle generosity. Her name is Ireland.
Rosie has been writing for fun all her life. She is from London, England, a city she hates – yet she is continually drawn back there.