Summers I spent beachcombing, overturning shells, picking up crabs’ legs, poking under seaweed, looking for interesting driftwood. Always hoping for a ukidama (Japanese glass float) or some other treasure, but I never found anything of value—until the day we simultaneously reached for the pretty bottle now gracing our mantlepiece.
Robert Carlberg loves beachcombing and long walks on the beach.
I step off the train.
The streets empty out as dusk sets in. I count sixteen blocks with no light. The noise from the business side of the tracks also fades. The city has turned into a tomb.
Luckily, the wise edicts of the Supreme Council still guide my way.
J.S. O’Keefe has published short stories, creative essays and poems in print and online literary magazines worldwide. More at his website, szjohnny.net.
My dog likes to chew on people’s fingers. The vet says this is an affectionate form of playing and we should disregard it.
My dog has assembled quite a collection by now, gnawing on each until the flesh peels from the bone, but I ignore them, per the vet’s request.
Ran Walker is the author of over 40 books, his most recent one being Fragments of the Afroverse. He teaches at Hampton University and lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.
I lost my way in Freedom Park, amid Cedars, Palmetto, Cabbage Palms, and pink water lilies floating on black water. The buzz of data in my head was gone, replaced by the hum of a dragonfly’s crystalline wings. I lost my way in Freedom Park and found a morning’s peace.
Marc Simon’s short fiction has appeared in over fifteen literary magazines. Five of his one-act plays have been winners in new works contests. His debut novel, The Leap Year Boy, was published in December 2012. His novella, According to Isaac, is now published on Amazon.com. See more at https://marcsimonwriter.com
I watched as Mom-Mom made her bed.
She raised the sheet corners like four strong sails. Plumped embroidered pillowcases until the roses bloomed. Leveled her handmade quilt with an engineer’s precision.
And I felt such sorrow for this woman, who’d always warned me that girls shouldn’t have too much ambition.
Emily Hall is a freelance writer whose prose appears, or is forthcoming in, places such as Passages North, Portland Review, Blood Orange Review, 100 Word Story and Cherry Tree. She has a PhD in contemporary Anglophone novels, is a prose reader for West Trade Review, and lives in NC with her husband.
The tower clock counts sonorous hours while I sit on this gravestone, watching the moon wane and recollecting past misdeeds. Tonight’s certainly colder, a bone-pincher spiked with frost. Stars glitter overhead: crueller than any diamonds, but infinitely easier to ignore.
I thought death guaranteed eternal rest.
Seems I was wrong.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
Four tanned old women sit on a wooden bench. Friends in shorts and colorful tops. No conversation. Each is working on a generous, diet-breaking, double-scooped ice cream cone on the sweltering day. They are happy, engrossed in the cold pleasures of their choices. No worries but the race against drips.
Lynn Kozlowski’s writing has appeared in such places as The Citron Review, The Zodiac Review, Molecule, 50-Word Stories, Every Day Fiction, The Dribble Drabble Review, and Friday Flash Fiction. He has a volume of short pieces, Historical Markers.
The story of the week for October 13 to 17 is…
My Mom by Sarah Flick
Passing through our peanut butter and jelly kitchen, she’d shoot some words at me before grabbing her movie star sunglasses and hurrying off to someplace more glamorous. A petite woman, vodka lover with sleepy cat’s eyes and hip-switching walk, poured into high leather boots, forever waving goodbye over her shoulder.
Sarah Flick is retired from the US Forest Service and lives in Colorado. She has published in 101 Words, Flash Fiction Weekly, and a Modern Love column in the New York Times.
Colonialism and decolonisation. All her committees begin and proceed that way now. Emily can’t remember when they stopped discussing teaching, research, and students – how quaint, like her. She takes a moment balancing social justice with economic sensitivities in this decision. Is it equitable? Inclusive? Defiantly, Emily snatches the last muffin.
A once (and still, somewhat) Professor of Drug Metabolism, Abby lives in Ladner BC, with two elderly horses, one senior man-cat, and the love of her life.