By: Rimli Bhattacharya She loved to dream an outlier she was Ink ran through her veins. She believed in love as love gave her locution to fill the void with string of words. Yes she was a dreamer – She had…

By: Douglas Cole News came—Bruce had died.  It was not shocking news.  He had battled Big Death in his bones for the last three years, come out victorious in that fragile way a war survivor emerges with radiant clarity and…

By: Denise O’Hagan Pine nuts at lunchtime It was in the way of things That a casual sighting in a supermarket trolley In front of me of a packet of nuts And I was a girl again Delighting in that…

By: John Smistad “Settle down, big guy!” The four-legged ball of enthusiasm had made at least a half-dozen attempts to leap onto his owner’s chest now. And the guy was standing. The guy has a name. William Kuntz. “Billy” for short….

By: Gerri Zimmerman Mars—2175 A.D. Abrasive Martian winds slam into the ancient Martian statue situated on top of the Face on Mars. Neither wind nor heat can damage this statue created by the Martians a long time ago. The statue,…

By: Janis Butler Holm Karen Leick’s Gertrude Stain and the Making of an American Celebrity (Routledge, 2009) refutes the persistent notion that Stein, as a high-modernist aesthete, labored in relative obscurity, unknown to the American public, before the wildly successful publication…

By: Will Jones Great smelling food made my mouth water. I kept my eyes closed for a little longer. The spices reminded me of holidays I had been on. The smell of the meat took me to barbecues we had had…

By George Zamalea THE RIPPLING WIND It well may be part from the tall-grass county Disappearing into the Corn Belt, The furious echoes were still hearing Through the rippling winds! Sea of Corn and laughs I must say, Where the feeding…

By: Niles Reddick After two cups of coffee, I went outside, opened the garage, plugged in my electric saw, and lugged the ladder to the Holly tree next to the house. In the three years we’d lived there, the tree…

By: Michael Mogel Summer time walks, any time of day. Summer weather rain, a place to stop and linger. A place with metal roof, the rhythm section’s tight. They’ve played this tune before. Now that we are here don’t let…