They nestled in the branches of the dying oak out back – dark ink blots staining the bright sky. Only one had perched there at first, but another crow arrived each day to join the growing flock.
Watching them, he envisioned her, smiling grimly.
“Soon,” he thought, “we’ll have a murder.”
A recovering lawyer, Liam MacDonald has had many thoughts – dark and light – nest in his head. Writing them down is one way he enables them to take flight.
She pops back intermittently to check on the bulbs. Sometimes the new resident husband spies her hovering among the garden’s shadows, sometimes the wife. They seem unperturbed by her presence: both smile when the irises bloom. She guesses she’s one of them now, the bulbs—flowering, sometimes, from the dirt.
Linda Kohler lives on Kaurna land in South Australia. Her work has appeared in The Marrow, the Ekphrastic Review, Bracken Magazine, and Meniscus, among others. She can usually be found near water.
He dropped a single seed into the neighbor’s barren patch and walked away. He never saw the sprout or the red petal that eventually bloomed. He didn’t need to. The harvest wasn’t for his eyes; it was for the joy of a stranger. Some seeds are planted for the soul.
Caroline is a writer and creative artist based in Nairobi, Kenya. She enjoys exploring life’s deeper meanings through storytelling, digital art, and traditional crafts.
When I shot the mule deer dead, it fell straight into the snow like it was taking a nap. There was no blood. Something smelled sour. Daddy clapped my back and whistled me a song.
“Dying’s only the beginning for muleys,” he said. “Field dressing’s next. Then cooling. Then supper.”
Oliver Cubillos is a writer and filmmaker from Los Angeles, California. He holds a BFA in Media Arts Production with a minor in literature from Emerson College. His work is published or forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, BULL Magazine, Free Flash Fiction, and elsewhere.
Children were gone; husband might as well have been. But she still had her garden, lilikoi vines, carefully hoarded dried fruits and the 50th State Fair.
She smoothed wrinkled hands over her mother’s gingham apron as softly as if saying a childhood prayer.
This, almost certainly, would be her year.
Erin Gilmore has to imagine the stories her grandparents never told her.
“Fertile imagery, but NO marketable hook.”
She tossed the NO into a jar to compost down with the NAYs and NOTs – aerated with her sighs, moistened with her sweat – until an idea landed, cracked open and extended roots into the loam.
A shoot, a stalk and then a YES bloomed.
Joanna Norland is a playwright and a writing coach who treats rejections as a badge of honour.
You come home from school. See Mom and boyfriend Leroy sobbing on the sofa.
Leroy moans, “I killed Ted Stone.” Describes a bloody sidewalk.
Next day, you get home, find nobody there. Leroy on the lam. Mom too.
Later, you learn Ted Stone’s not dead.
No matter. You’re alone anyway.
Nick Di Carlo heard a person in a PTSD group say, “High School traumatized all of us.” Someone responded, “Things weren’t much better at home.” A third participant chimed in, “Then they drafted you.”
Nick nodded and said, “Amen, brother. Amen.”
We’re in the backseat. Smoke plumes burst from our nostrils and sockets. No cigarettes; only the boredom of immortality. That old sun pinks the drumlin, smolders us. Vintage leather gloves hit the floor. Our hands are flames. We singe. I bite my own lip. Our coffins are safe at home.
JR Walsh is the Online Editor at The Citron Review. He teaches creative writing at SUNY Oswego. Find his writing on itsjrwalsh.com.
At pickup time
after his first day of 1st grade,
Jason was at the very top
of that big tree
in the schoolyard.
At pickup time
after his last day of 8th grade
at the same school,
Jason was at the very top
of that big tree
in the schoolyard.
Trevor’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared it print and digital publications since the 1970s. He’s a mononymous, multiple award-winning, full-time entertainer who likes hyphens. See more at trevorthegamesman.com
The story of the week for May 4 to 8 is…
Vigil by Paul D’Arcy