Tag Archives: love

SUSAN J NASSUNA: Destiny

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

The steel wheels of the approaching train
screech at me to jump.

This is it!

I move towards the platform’s edge
and surrender to the approaching light.

Excuse me!

A man’s voice calls from behind

Is that the train to Amsterdam?

I turn around, and I behold
my brown-eyed destiny.

Susan J. Nassuna is a Ugandan born writer and coach. She lives in the Netherlands, and when not working on her novel and a collection of short stories she guides others in using writing and storytelling as powerful tools for healing and growth. See more at writingforwellnessworkshops.com.

EILEEN McINTYRE: God is Laughing

Submissions, Touching, , ,

Dusty bounded into my life, like a golden bone lay hidden inside me. Our ritualistic greeting never failed to cheer my weary spirit.

Dusty is gone now but sometimes I picture God laughing, tossing that tennis ball over the Pearly Gates. Dusty pounces and returns with eyes full of adoration.

Eileen McIntyre is a writer from Northern California, who sometimes listens when voices speak.

CARRIE BACKER: A Fool’s Gold

Artistic, Poetry, Submissions, , ,

It wasn’t love – she’d caught a glint of gold in a moment of poverty.

The polished Seducer had built a bridge to Paradise.
It was a temporary one.

In the end she realized her surroundings were quicksand.
The pyrite she clutched didn’t compare to the genuine counterpart she had forsaken.

Carrie enjoys writing in her spare time. Two of her children’s books, Wayne’s Trip to the Moon, and Mr. Jacobs and the Serving Spoon, are available at backerbooks.com. She has also written a few poems and short stories which have not yet been revealed to the public.

SUSAN LOZANO: Old Friend

Amusing, Submissions, , , ,

It’s been a long time and I’ve missed you, my old friend.
The thought of you, your smell. The way you taste.

You’re always on my mind.

I know it’s been good to be away from you, but I want you back in my life.

Hello carbs, my old friend.

Susan is a Technical Writer by day and fiction writer at night. She adores her five grandkids.

GARY THOMSON: Love but a Moment

Submissions, Touching, , ,

“I followed your vision through the hellholes of northern France.”

Now, on a chateau hospital lawn near Ypres, she laughed beside him.

“Custance, nurse of my wounds, beacon of my desire.”

The purloined brandy, springtime lark song, and his idolatry bonded her heart to his.

Close by, field cannons rumbled.

Retired in Ontario, Gary Thomson has ample time to blow Satchmo’s and Beatles’ tunes on his Hohner harmonica.

JOEY TO: It

Artistic, Submissions, , , , , ,

The child always held It.

It had big eyes, long teeth, and a tail. To most, It was a monster.
But It was soft. And It never ran away, keeping her warm through cold nights.

As she grew, the nights became colder, longer. And she held It to the end.

Joey doesn’t collect plushies although he doesn’t mind them either, as long as it’s not a bear. Because bear plushies are lame. See more at joeytoey.com.

RICHARD DAY GORE: God in Skinny Jeans

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

God sits in a diner, wearing skinny jeans, developing universes on an old PC.

Nearby, Betsy gathers strength for a breakup, a traumatic severing.

Her apparent anguish moves him to abandon godhood, connect as a human.

He stands. She leaves.

Her Bible follows her empty coffee cup into the trash.

After chasing his muse from Virginia to Manhattan, Richard Day Gore settled in Southern California, where he spends his time pushing
around words, paint brushes, and guitar strings. See more at richarddaygore.com.

KIKI GONGLEWSKI: The Conservation of Mortality

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

I remember your eyes shimmering like constellations the night we fell in love.

They say when we look at stars, space is so immense that we’re seeing light broadcasted from bygone histories. And even after death, our lives go on, conserved by light, traveling perpetually across the soundless, glittering darkness.

Kiki Gonglewski is a senior at Albuquerque Academy. She was a finalist in the 2017 state-wide “NM Girls Make Movies” screenplay contest, has won national recognition in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and has been published in the 2018 edition of Navigating The Maze, an international teen poetry anthology. Her six great loves in life are art, movies, Kurt Vonnegut books, astronomy, writing, and Korean barbecue.

NATHAN ALLING LONG: Genre

Submissions, Touching, , , ,

This table, the wine, bread and cheese—that’s nonfiction; calling it “dinner” is, perhaps, a fiction.

Your silence, my tears, these trembling hands: nonfiction. Our last meal together: fiction.

Your attraction to someone else—OK, we’ll call that nonfiction. But the idea you no longer love me… must be fiction.

Nathan Alling Long lives in Philadelphia and can be found at blogs.stockton.edu/longn. His collection of fifty flash fictions, The Origin of Doubt, was published by Press 53 in March 2018.

BOB THURBER: The Eyelid Artist

Artistic, Submissions, , , , , ,

(For Trey, with everlasting love)

The last time the boy slept at grandma’s house he told her that portraits of her face had been painted on the inside of his eyelids, so that’s what he got to look at every night while he waited to fall asleep. He pinched finger to thumb. “Brush this big.”

Bob Thurber is the author of “Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel” and two collections of stories. A celebrated master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in 60 anthologies, received dozens of awards, and been used in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts where, despite severe vision loss, he continues to write every day. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.