The story of the week for September 10 to 14 is…
Tripod Headstand by Jess L.
Category Archives: Top Stories
JESS L: Tripod Headstand
Squatting, thighs slightly burning, perched on your toes, hands in front of your shoulders, you place your head on the ground. Knees digging into your triceps, you tentatively lift one foot, then the other. Your left knee slips, so you try again, then again, until, one year later, you arrive.
Jess is a former scientist who maintains computational model code for current scientists. She occasionally gets the urge to write something other than lines of Python or Fortran.
JIM DOSS: I Close My Eyes to See the World More Clearly
Unspeakable darkness, slowly illuminating into an alley with dipping gutters. Tenement houses, three mismatched shoes on each doorstep. Girls hawk their wares, calling out over the cobblestones, flirtatious, looking for customers.
God is forever hiding somewhere among the gargoyles.
I fall in love a lot, always with the same woman.
Jim Doss has published two books of poems: Learning to Talk Again and What Remains. He also published a book of German translations entitled The Last Gold of Expired Stars: The Complete Poems of Georg Trakl 1908 – 1914. In his spare time, he is an editor for the Loch Raven Review.
DAVID HOLLOWAY: Face
I lost my face last night. No eyes so I looked by feel.
So many things feel like a face. A silk scarf, a mud puddle, a love letter, a string of kelp.
I found it and put it on. Then I saw it wasn’t mine.
I wore it anyway.
David Holloway lives, reads, and writes in northern Virginia. He’s had stories published in Gargoyle, The Mad River Review, and The Offbeat. His favorite invertebrate is the Nudibranch.
MARK FARLEY: The Recollection Collection
The lonely widower broke into abandoned houses. Careful overnight work pulled lines of wallpaper down whole. Safely home, he hung them up and rested his forehead against them—breathing memories of crayon scribbles, the height charts of those who’d grown, and frames of lost portraits burned by the fading sun.
Mark Farley writes novels, flash fiction and the occasional poem.
MAURA YZMORE: Pizza Night
Mom cuts a pepperoni pizza into eighths. “Your two slices together make a quarter,” she says, serving one slice to each of her young twins. “Still three quarters left. That’s almost a whole pie!”
The boys chew in silence. Three quarters of a family feel nothing like a whole one.
Maura Yzmore writes short-form literary and speculative fiction, as well as humor. Find out more at maurayzmore.com or @MauraYzmore on Twitter.
PETER VICKLAND: Utah
While smoking my second-to-last cigarette under a street lamp in the desert, I decided that life operated on bad metaphors and absurdist poetry.
As I was crushing the last embers, two jack rabbits ran pitter patter away to have their children and die among the sand dunes and salt flats.
Peter Vickland is a college student living and working in Sacramento, California. His hobbies, aside from writing, include reading and collecting books and not cutting his hair as often as he needs to, as he is frequently reminded by his loving girlfriend. See more at petervicklandwriting.com.
HARRY DEMAREST: Downhill Bike Ride
When I was young, I wished I could ride my bike around the block, coasting downhill all the way.
Since I got my degree in physics I know that’s impossible.
I now wish that the integral of the gradient of the gravitational potential around a closed loop could be negative.
Harry Demarest received a BA in physics from Reed College in 1969, and a PhD in planetary and space physics from UCLA in 1975.
BOB THURBER: Another Misadventure of The Broken Boys
In a place with no trees the boys built a forest of stone.
They chiseled and stacked, erecting one here, one there.
They carved branches and engraved leaves.
In daylight the fake trees looked ridiculous.
But at night, when the moon rose, forming long shadows, the world felt like home.
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.
MELANIE CRANENBURGH: Lepidop-Terror!
An acrid chemical haze blanketed the city wastelands. The noon sky glowed with an eerie crepuscular light. The Cataclysm proffered two choices: adapt or die.
In the fields we no longer chased butterflies. They now chased us, their flapping avian wings dusting us with fine powder that necrotised human flesh.
Melanie always feared her childhood obsession with catching butterflies would, one day, come back to haunt her.