Category Archives: Top Stories

KATHERINE DARLINGTON: Scent of Tears

Artistic, Poetry, Submissions, Top Stories, , , , ,

The market is busy
Lovers, arm in arm
Shop together

But She
Flirts with the flowers
Spilling over the corner aisle
Like her tears

She finds a delicate bouquet
With daisies and one rose
She’ll put them on her kitchen table
And pretend they’re from
Her Lover
(Who never
Was)

Katherine Darlington has articles in many publications including poetry anthologies, along with several published novels. When she isn’t riding horses or hiking on some mountain trail, she’s working on a story. See more of her work at katherinedarlington.com.

BOB THURBER: The Return

Adventure, Submissions, Top Stories, , ,

Eventually we went back. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. All the roads were broken. You could see where people had given up. Hundreds of abandoned cars and trucks without doors or wheels or anything inside them but a hard smell that would be difficult getting used to.

Bob Thurber is the author of six books. Regarded as a master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in Esquire and other magazines, been anthologized 60 times, received a long list of awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.

JOSHUA ADDISON: OBstacles

Submissions, Top Stories, Touching, , , ,

We left the building for the last time. All the pain, joy, tears and hope we’d experienced within its walls seemed suddenly distant.

I turned to take one more look at the infertility clinic. My wife gently took my hand and with tears in my eyes I held her close.

Joshua Addison always enjoys a good short story.

KATI BUMBERA: Gloom

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , , ,

Gloom is a thing with feathers, too: it’s perched over my childhood like a pigeon, flapping its dirty wings and doing that dull Sunday coo that means my friends are out of town, the library is closed, and it will be a decade before I’m old enough to move away.

Kati lives in France, writes short fiction and often thinks about cheesecake. Some of her stories are at vocal.media/authors/kati-bumbera.

LAURA DOBSON: Mummy, Daddy, and Samantha

Submissions, Top Stories, Touching, , , , ,

A riot of colour beams from clinical white sheets: pale as the bedding, swamped by rainbow pyjamas, and clutching a box of Crayola. Through intravenous tubes, she perseveres with her drawings.

You’re handed the latest. Three recognisable figures, the littlest a sort of butterfly hybrid.
​
Eventually, everything dims but this.

Laura is taking the first tentative steps towards sharing her work. This is her third 50-word story and she has a piece upcoming with The Phare Literary Magazine. She tweets at @laurarose_13.

CAROLYN R RUSSELL: August and All That

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , ,

White-nosed and Ray-Banned, the summertime soldiers stalk across the beach, resplendent in their neon orange swim trunks and gleaming neck whistles. They eye each other, keeping track, keeping score. One of them is kind, but not so kind that he can be bullied. From him, I’ll learn to stay adrift.

Carolyn R. Russell is the author of “In the Fullness of Time,” a dystopian thriller published by Vine Leaves Press in 2020. Her humorous YA mystery, “Same As It Never Was,” was released in 2018 by Big Table. “The Films of Joel and Ethan Coen,” her volume of film criticism, was published by McFarland & Company in 2001. Her poetry, essays and short stories have been featured or are forthcoming in numerous publications, including The Boston Globe, 3rd Wednesday, Litro Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Club Plum Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Orca: a Literary Journal, and Dime Show Review. Carolyn lives on and writes from Boston’s North Shore.

KATHERINE GLEASON: Storm’s Wake

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , ,

Pools of water glisten where tidy lawns once grew. Streams gurgle and rush along the roads. With the kids gathered close, we lean from windows and perch on roofs. The more fortunate propel themselves around town in dinghies. They hail us. “Neighbor,” they call to those they once ignored. “Friend!”

Katherine Gleason’s stories have appeared in journals such as Cheap Pop, Derelict Lit, Every Day Fiction, Gone Lawn, Hobart, Juked, Jellyfish Review, and Menacing Hedge. Her play “The Toe Incident” won the Christopher Hewitt Award for Drama in 2020.

MARIE LITTLE: They all Take her Photo in the Lounge

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, Touching, , ,

They take so many photos. Hold it up, down, wave it about! Nancy! Over here! Smile! A purple balloon, shiny as a sixpence, more beautiful than she has ever seen. She holds tight onto its string and the decades float away. She is six. She is happy. There is cake.

Marie writes poetry and flash fiction and plays with writing prompts on Twitter at @jamsaucer.

CHERYL SOMERS AUBIN: Grocery Shopping

Submissions, Top Stories, Touching, , ,

The son, his tie loosened after a long day, stands next to his dad who wears mismatched clothes. The dad looks at the grocery store shelves, then at his son.

“Dad, this is one mom used.”

The dad pauses, reaches for the can of soup, puts it in the basket.

Cheryl Somers Aubin has an MA/Writing from Johns Hopkins University. She is the former nonfiction editor for the Literary Journal Delmarva Review. Cheryl teaches memoir writing and is a featured speaker at writing conferences and workshops. She is the author of The Survivor Tree: Inspired by a True Story, which is available at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and online.

DEIRDRE SMITH: Takiwatanga

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , ,

He pushes his darkly scarred fingers into his ears. He spends most of the day like this.

He walks through the world inside his head.

He listens intently, to what or to whom we long to know,
but the fly on the wall of his mind will be trapped forever.

Deirdre Smith has dabbled in writing for as long as she can remember. She has recently started back to work as a teacher and Guidance Counsellor after a decade of being a stay-at-home mom to her three young children. She resides in St. John’s, Newfoundland.