By: Gary Beck   (a one-act play) Scene  (The kitchen of the Rawlins, a blue-collar family struggling to make ends meet in the economic downturn. The apartment is low-income. Enter Fred, carrying laptop, logged onto a site. He starts to…

It is usually our anticipation from any book that it will entertain us, take us on an exotic ride where varied emotions of life—surprise, love, desire, hatred, happiness, etc—can clash together and become alive through unheard anecdotes, tales, stories and…

By: Richard D. Hartwell   She’d been plying him with gifts for a month or so. He started to stay over about halfway through the month. A few of his uniform things hung in her closet, but mostly the new things…

By: Robert S. King Among clouds of attacking crows he spots the white bird and fires. That will put it out of its misery, he says. The bird dog waits below, pointing downward as the dove falls. The blue-collared dog…

‘Writing is like going back to dark places’ is a recent thing that fell into my ears. A renowned author has said this in an interview to a newspaper. He’s not the one to voice the pains involved in writing…

By: Richard D. Hartwell  Not for the first time, Perhaps for the last, I note this is no monologue, Rather a continuing, one-sided dialogue. You, Sitting there embalmed On your judgmental stool. You, Calling yourself a person of discourse Are…

By: Richard D. Hartwell Suffer anguish of memory, family close as sticky-rice, grain to grain, gene to gene, coagulated and congealed. Cannot un-remember psychological molestation, brutality of hidden scars, rage of emotional rape. Dark memories filled with white lies, spoiled…

By: Richard D. Hartwell  It must have been about 1955 or ‘56 when I was first a procurer for my cousin Jocelyn. I don’t recall whose idea it was to sell from door to door, but it fell to me…

  By: Ruth Ann Hixson I wish I had a friend To cry with when I’m sad. I wish I had a friend To laugh with when I’m glad. A friend to be there for me When the sunshine turns to…

By: W. Jack Savage   I woke up, having planned to go in a little late and had told my employer so the night before. My son’s birthday was coming up and I knew what he wanted. It was a T-shirt…