The story of the week for November 3 to 7 is…
Staring Awake at the Bottom of the Top Bunk by Liam MacDonald
and
Faculty Assembly by Wendy K. Mages
All posts by Tim
GARY: Memory
Every time I come home I check on the dark stain in my bedroom, just to make sure it’s still there. It grows and shrinks, but thankfully never completely disappears. When guests come over, I cover it with old photographs I took off the wall when I first moved in.
Gary is an earnest man who tries his best.
HANNAH FLYNN: Last Supper
Under expensive, low amber lighting, and over rare, ocean-dark wine, you told me about your dead Dad.
About your Confirmation. About taking Holy Communion in front of your friends. How surprised everybody was to see you doing that.
How you liked me really, but you wouldn’t do anything about it.
Hannah Flynn explores liminal experiences and the ways our bodies are measured, controlled, and judged. Using restrained yet raw language, she examines power dynamics, bodily autonomy, and the interaction between our bodies and our environment. Through natural and domestic imagery, she reveals the weight of the unspoken and unseen. With a background in journalism and science, Hannah brings a precise, analytical lens to her writing, balancing lyricism with sharp observation. Her work interrogates the forces that shape identity, desire, and resistance. She is currently drafting her first chapbook. See her haiku/senryu-a-day feed at @hannahflynn-poetry.bsky.social.
THOMPSON EMATE: Outside of Time
Somewhere outside of time, beyond a door, through a meadow and against the trails of darkness, my mother found an elixir of youthfulness. However, it left her mind as turbulent as a restless sea and interrupted her sleep. She sits at the table writing. Her inner self communes with her.
Thompson Emate spends his leisure time on creative writing, particularly poetry and prose. He has a deep love for nature and the arts. He is trying his hand at every genre of fiction.
MIKE KEYSER: Moments of Impact
Driving home, work remains my passenger.
Time slows, and sound hollows. Glass floats before my eyes. What’s happening?
Another car striking mine.
Goodbye, my gentle daughter… another cup of tea, please.
Goodbye, my playful son… one more game of catch.
Thank you, my loving wife; this morning’s kiss still lingers.
Mike explores the fluidity between what was, what is, and what might be through speculative fiction.
KEN GOSSE: The Ebb of Saving Daylight’s Time
If I had power to save that hour
I wouldn’t be time’s slave.
Each hour is lost and time’s the cost
I’ll pay to reach my grave.
The hours accost and each has bossed
my sinews, heart, and soul
and each I’ve crossed left me time-tossed
within life’s salad bowl.
Ken Gosse usually writes whimsical, rhymed verse. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, later in Pure Slush, Home Planet News, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Spillwords, and many others. Raised in Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife live in Mesa, AZ, with rescue dogs and cats.
LIAM MacDONALD: Staring Awake at the Bottom of the Top Bunk
My cellphone buzzed unnaturally loud in the quiet cabin, making several boys stir. Grasping blindly, I muted it and held my breath until the room slowly returned to silence.
The next three hours crawled until reveille, when I could finally return my mother’s call and confirm my father had died.
A recovering lawyer, Liam MacDonald has written for decades. He finds some stories easier than others.
ROBERT LUDEMANN: Over the River
I pretended it was a museum, filled with the oldest stuff I had ever seen. Crowded and dusty behind smoke-stained glass. Relics from a world that no longer existed. No signs, but the rule was understood: “Do Not Touch”. Admission cost a kiss on the cheek and Nana’s cigarette breath.
Robert Ludemann is happily retired and getting better each day at not working.
WENDY MAGES: Faculty Assembly
The faculty’s all smiles, all compliments. Everyone chimes in. Everyone loves and admires our Administrators. Everyone is loyal. All is clean, shiny, bright. At least on the surface. Because everyone knows, or at least suspects, the new faculty hire, the “fair-haired boy” of the Board of Trustees, is a plant.
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 part of her investigation of 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 her Mercy University Faculty page and her website, Wendy Mages: Storyteller.
ZOE: Blink
The strangest feeling that somebody is watching. I glance back before opening the door, treading lightly, so as not to miss the disturbance of silence. I slink into the room and tiptoe to the bathroom, flicking on the white light. I stare at my reflection, and watch as she blinks.
Zoe is a passionate cinephile and bibliophile. She spends most of her time writing, reading, or thinking about films.