When I am an old woman, I will be a milkweed seed pod drying in the sun, wrinkled and spotted.
You will pull me open on the seam until my silver-white floss pushes through, and you’ll blow my sweet, tender seed to the wind until I am an empty shell.
Laura J. Frantz is not yet an old woman. See more at laurafrantz.com.
It’s all left hand turns. Flaps. Slats. Landing gear. Hook. All down. As you make the last turn, you acquire the lights.
Make your corrections. Roll wings level.
Eyeball the third wire.
Wheels slam into the deck. Throttles slammed to the limits.
The hook holds.
Okay. Ease back the throttles.
Jim Purdy is a retired engineering manager who lives in Oregon and spends his day with his faithful dog who never gives him disparagement. She wags her tail as he reads her whatever he has just written.
Editor’s Note – some context from the author:
While I doubt many people know an arrested carrier landing is actually called a trap (and every trap is graded by the LSOs, with a perfect third-wire trap getting a grade notation of simply “OK” in the logbook), most folks will get the idea behind a 50 -word description of what it’s like to stick a thirteen-ton airplane onto a runway shorter than a football field which moves about 60 feet every second (assuming the carrier is making headway at 30 knots). Oh, and the runway is at approximately a 10-degree angle as well, just to keep you on your toes. It’s even more special if it’s pitch-black dark and the sea is roiling in fifteen-foot swells and you’re at the end of a four-hour mission.
Limited point of view poses a challenge for writers.
Ouch! I just experienced a sharp pain in my shoulder.
I need your help—you, the viewers.
I’m dying to know who stabbed me in the back.
I’m exaggerating, I hope. Should the wound be fatal, I’ll stop my narration immed—
John H. Dromey has had short fiction published in Black Denim Lit #7, Gumshoe Review, Plan B Magazine, and elsewhere.
“Apparently she wasn’t coping with the divorce,” said the lady from 19B.
The man across the hallway put it down to drugs.
Even the postman had an opinion.
But when looking upwards, the uninitiated passerby would see only the billowing nightgown, a strange flightless bird moving wordlessly, determinedly towards death.
Megan has just started a PhD in Writing at Murdoch University in Western Australia. Despite the vibe of this particular submission, she’s moderately funny, and she’s got the blog to prove it.
The story of the week for November 3 to 7 is What Passes by Jennifer L. Freed.
Beautiful prose packed with emotion. I think we’ve all come to expect nothing less from Jennifer!
She placed the baby in the kitchen sink.
“Oh, the soap!” She walked quickly to the bathroom. “There it is,” she said, smelling the soap’s cool fragrance.
She heard the baby crying
and ran
so slowly it seemed.
The hot water was gushing cold: she’d forgotten the laundry was running.
C. Jenise Williamson is the founding coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at Bowie State University. She has published in Painted Bride Quarterly and other literary magazines as well as in the anthology Enhanced Gravity: Washington Area Women Writers. She lives in Greenbelt, Maryland.
He knows
his wife has gone
not by the altered sounds
of the machines
meant to drip and breathe and ease and tease
the life back into her
but by the loosening of the nurse’s
shoulders,
her small step back,
the breath
in that moment before her eyes meet his.
Jennifer L Freed writes mostly poetry and, sometimes, some very short stories. To learn more, please visit her website, jfreed.weebly.com.
She asked me to catch her a squirrel. It was a crazy idea, but I got her a squirrel.
Now she loves me. She even kissed my cheek. I know it sounds insane, but maybe she’ll even marry me now.
She’s happy; I’m happy.
Wait, is that squirrel’s mouth foaming?
John Mark Goforth lives in rural Pennsylvania, where he spends his time writing and being enamored with the blonde girl at school. One of these things is bad for his mental health, but he is not sure which one.
The jury started to walk out one by one, ready to deliver their verdict. Their eyes were straight ahead, their expressions were clueless.
They did their duty to the letter of the law, and they had to abide by that law.
That is what law is all about.
Blind obedience.
Fred Hernandez reads and writes, and writes and reads. He has one published e-book, Yukon Tenderfoot.
The control room breathed a deep sigh of relief. They’d succeeded in venting the noxious gas from the room.
The facility was safe.
A man sniffed, then another, and they turned. I reddened and pretended it wasn’t me as the alarm sounded again.
David scribbles stories and, when not unconscious from his dog’s fumes, he laughs.