By: Ethan Goffman I was in the doldrums, unable to write, unable to conceive anything fresh or profound, anything worth saying in the least. My mind was blank, the computer screen was blank, everything was frozen, frozen and I wondered…

By: Dominic Tramontana. The heat of the desert was a harsh reality for the squad. Cuts and abrasions covered the men’s faces while the sand scraped against them in the sandstorm. Private Gilliard struggled through the loose sand behind his…

By: Elaine Lennon He drove until he ran out of road. It had taken almost twenty-four hours. He only stopped for gas. Twice.  Now he was here. The tip of the peninsula was fringed with dried out palms and jacarandas….

By: Dennis Vannatta When Rotary International held its annual meeting in Edinburgh, several members of the Rockaway Park chapter attended, all but Jeffrey Ward and Devin O’Day staying in one of the three big hotels virtually taken over for the…

By: Linda McMullen             In the final three years of our marriage, John argued exhaustively with the anonymous denizens of AITA Reddit.  “Goodnight, Tommy!” he’d call upstairs to our son, his keyboard clacking without pause.  So, last night – Thursday…

By: Ranjit Kulkarni At the open house of Vidya Niketan School, all students sat in uncomfortable silence. Most of them were with their mothers. Some of them were with their fathers. They waited for the class teacher to call them….

By: Anthony Ward The aged man sat aloft in his chair looking towards the fireplace. Flames danced ritually, stretching into the air, before being swiped by the wind that whirred down the chimney. The words his daughter uttered were not…

By: Bruce Levine The snow had fallen steadily for an hour, already completely coating the lawn behind their house.             The three little girls, Jane (age nine), Ellen (age seven) and Barbara (age five-and-a-half) stood at the long adjacent living…

By: Harvey Huddleston English came easily to Roman, as had the language of every country he’d lived in.  Moving in his youth from one country of the Russian Steppes to the next, he’d picked up the Tajik, Uzbeki and Kazak,…

By: Roliena Slingerland  “Can you come home for a bit?” Mother’s voice crackles on the other end of the phone. “I can’t.” The quickness of her lie startles even Gretta. Coming home is not the first choice these days. She…