The story of the week for February 10 to 14 is…
Still Life by Paul D’Arcy
RACHEL HAPANOWICZ: Chump Change
“This holiday is for chumps,” he says, without looking up from his laptop as I arrive home.
I hide the tulips behind me, lift the trash open, let the dumb card with the love poem I wrote slide, crumpled, into this morning’s uneaten eggs.
“Yeah,” I agree. Like a chump.
Rachel Hapanowicz may be a hopeless romantic. Or she may just be a chump. Either way, she enjoys Valentine’s Day chocolates, as long as there’s no red fillings.
ASHLEY E ENDERLE: Family
The playground hummed with laughter. “Who are you?” a girl asked.
“She’s my sister,” the eldest declared, gripping her sibling’s arm.
“No, she isn’t. You’re white. She’s black.”
A flicker of hurt, then resolve. “Families don’t have to match.”
A pause—then giggles. Princesses again, adventure-bound.
Ashley E. Enderle wrote this story.
MICHAEL NICKELS-WISDOM: New Year
Trash day. Left the garage with a bag in each hand and rounded the building, thinking only of the cold. On the way back, a glint of orange on the ground, maybe sunrise on a shard of ice. But it was a magnetic letter A from a child’s toy alphabet.
Michael Nickels-Wisdom has written very short verse since 1990 after discovering haiku in the public library where he worked for 38 years before retiring, and then very short prose since 2001. Some of the prose has appeared in World Haiku Review, A Hundred Gourds, and Scifaikuest.
HALLIE DOLIN: Grossing
It’s been a year and a half, but your hands remember. Move from the shoulder and the elbow, not the wrist. Keep the knife straight; my kingdom, you think, for detachable blades. The cucumber’s pliable skin becomes an inked margin. If you’d cut prostates this precisely, no one would’ve complained.
Hallie Dolin is a pathology resident in Cleveland, Ohio and has been writing for fun for nearly three decades. Her work has previously been published in The Case Reserve Review and the now-defunct Flashes in the Dark. When she isn’t trying to discover novel cures for frightening microbes, she spends her time working on an actual novel.
DEBORAH TAPPER: Winter Haiku
Winter clings tighter,
haloing the starlit moon
with glittering frost.
Trees become brushstrokes
sketched against uncertain skies,
their leaves departed.
Grey heron hunching
statue-like beside the ice
remembers swift fish.
Mist veils bare hedgerows,
spinning tangled stems into
lacy silhouettes.
One early snowdrop
braves this unrelenting chill,
promising the spring.
Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.
CEZAR LIMA: Queue
“Sir, it’s your turn.”
“Oh, so sorry!”
You know, sometimes I get so lost in my own thoughts that I can’t even keep track of the line. Internal voices are slightly louder than the external ones, like a badly equalized noir movie narration or even some… “ments?”
“Sorry?”
“Documents, please?”
Cezar Lima is a Brazilian Electrical Engineer who recently graduated. He’s been into creating and developing ideas since he was young, always curious about how big the world can be.
CHRISTA PLANKO: A Transformative Journey
Poisoned by my own blood, I lie there drained. Infused toxins coursed through my veins. Hair loss. Cell death. Sloughing off old self.
Then Transplantation Day arrived. One tiny IV bag of life-saving proportion. For three weeks, I cocooned in a hospital bed.
When discharge came, I unfurled my wings.
Christa Planko is in remission, surviving leukemia after undergoing a bone marrow transplant. She is happy to flutter about today, sharing the story of her life-saving transformation.
ROBERT LUDEMANN: I Dos
They had been at it for two days. Stony silences and rock-hard words. All over the number of throws and the placement of cushions; silly. A thirty-year journey from their childlike pillow fights as newlyweds. They shouldn’t have enjoyed it so much, laughing inside, adamant in their commitment. Eternally wedlocked.
Robert Ludemann is hppily retired and trying to say as little as possible.
PAUL D’ARCY: Still Life
Twenty-seven years.
You lean into your pencil. Learn shape, shadow, perspective.
Graphite grey, iron ore, steel shackles shatter in negative space.
Routine-etched canyons crease your skin.
Portraits come to life. Denzel, Biggie, Beyonce. Your cellie’s mother from an old, worn photograph. Your daughter from a news clipping. Celebrating. Without you.
Paul D’Arcy tells stories. All real. Most brief. You can read more at pauldrc.com.