The story of the week for November 14 to 18 is…
Phantom Pains by Deirdre Smith
DEIRDRE SMITH: Phantom Pains
I move the cart gently back and forth, trying to comfort you while I inspect the fruit.
Strawberries are your favourite.
I look down with a smile, expecting to see your wide eyes staring back at me.
Automatic movements from days gone by, still with me all these years since.
Deirdre Smith has dabbled in writing for as long as she can remember. She is a part-time Guidance Counsellor and all-the-time mom. She resides in the always colorful St. John’s, Newfoundland.
JUDITH DZIERBA: Artful Proposal
Six years we’ve lived together. Her creative energy, my lasting attraction. Her corner signature in every painting, my curiosity. Only her forename, the last letter extends as a straight line to the opposite side.
I finally ask why.
“I’m waiting for you to fill in the blank,” she says fetchingly.
Judith wrote this. Her writing has appeared in 50-Word Stories (sometimes only with her forename).
JANE FORWARD: Not Accidentally On Purpose
Her just-completed quilt billows up, then settles gently onto the floor.
Walking around it admiringly, she gives a gasp of dismay and crouches down.
There, trapped between trapezoids, one little patch stares up, accidentally upside down.
Her little mistake winks up at her. She smiles and blows it a kiss.
Like most writers and quilters, Jane is a bit of a perfectionist. She tries not to obsess about it!
JENNIFER L FREED: She Is Thankful
that if cancer had to come, it came
now,
after the harrowing months of emptying her parents’ home,
after masks and vaccines were easy to get, and hospitals
__________nearly back to normal,
after winter’s icy threats,
after her brother’s cancer
had shown her
__________how much worse
____________________her own could be.
Jennifer L. Freed ‘s book, When Light Shifts, A Memoir in Poems, which explores the aftermath of her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage, was a 2022 Finalist for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. See more on her website: jfreed.weebly.com
ED RIDGLEY: Gunfight at the Punctuation Palace
A period and two spaces walked into a bar. For a while, everything was fine.
The gun-toting period was itchin’ for a fight and looking for a killin’. One of the spaces took period’s pint and period ended him.
Now you know why there’s only one space after a period.
Ed Ridgley hiked to Everest Base Camp in Nepal in 2018, at age 57, also asthmatic, thus completing the number one item on his bucket list since age 10. At 17,500 feet, he wondered if any of those “you can accomplish anything” self-help gurus had ever done anything like this. But base camp was as far as he wanted to go, that was enough. Then again, who knows what enough really means?
Editor: Do one about the Oxford Comma next, Ed!
CAROL MURPHY: Mute
She was asleep when the poison prevailed. After months of stringent planning, despondency triumphed as hopeful self-control finally withered away. Silent lies rendered an unbearable silence. He was forced to this vile ending. Lifeless now, he searched her face for regret that would never come. If only she had spoken.
Carol Murphy, MA, has written essays, interviews, stories and poems about the ways language, or a lack of it, colors life’s experiences while often emphasizing themes of mystery and the unexplainable. Some of her many stories were Likely Story, published by www.specialeducationadvisor.com, Auricle published in Good Dogs Doing Good, and Whiffs by Reddashboard Press. Her first book, Slits, came out in 2017. She finds daily inspiration for writing through her experiences with the complexities of communication and the many ways lives can go awry, or be set straight, simply by a precise word at a pivotal moment. A favorite quote is “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein). Her website is www.carolmurphy.org.
JL MAIKAHO: Legend of Anna
Anna dances like she is weightless and the audience cheer with a standing ovation. They do not see the one behind the curtain controlling her bleeding feet. She gnashes her teeth in frustration but it looks like a confident smile. Hidden in the rain, her tears glow like diamonds. Legendary!
JL Maikaho is an emerging Nigerian poet, storyteller and essayist. Her works explore diverse themes from women’s rights, ethno-religious conflict and climate change; to romance, mysticism and surrealism. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Brittle Paper, Nnoko Stories, Kalahari Review and elsewhere. A SprinNG fellow (2022 cohort), she’s also a scholarship recipient of the SprinNG Advancement Fellowship, has been longlisted for the Bill Ward Prize for emerging authors and shortlisted for the MAFEELDA Essay contest. JL writes from Gombe, Nigeria and tweets @JLMaikaho.
PHIL TEMPLES: Cosmic Balance
“Give a man a fish, you’ll feed him for a day,” said Lao Tzu. But teach him how to set up a flash mob on social media to loot the local Super Stop & Shop—well now, he and his friends will eat high on the hog for a very long time.
Phil Temples wrote this story.
BILL COX: The View from the Bridge
From the bridge, I watch the fishermen that line the riverbank. I left you again this morning, battered and bruised as always. I think that this time I’ve left for good, but I wonder. Am I like those fish, pulling for freedom, but tethered to the mistakes of the past?
Bill lives in Aberdeen, Scotland with his partner Hilary, daughter Catherine and four-legged she-devil Peggy.