Giant Oaks

I sighed as my breathing slowed. The sun rose over my head, and I felt the power inside me waking, like the tree in the woods that had grown into giant oaks, covering the forest floor in the summer. I would sit in the shade of those trees until nightfall, waiting for the stars, reaching for the promise of sleep. The light in the sky became a distant memory, and I could almost feel the joy that the moon brought to those born in the middle of winter or during those spring showers that brought new life to the earth.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

The Origins Of Classic Nursery Rhymes

I didn’t grow up surrounded by art and culture. There were newspapers scattered around the house but few books on the shelves or paintings on the walls. One day I sat drawing in my room – I must have been 12 or 13 years old, just starting to figure shit out – when my mom stuck her head in. She watched me for a moment, then she said, “Why are you wasting paper?” I have had kind of a bad feeling ever since, like the farmer’s wife is still back there in the kitchen torturing three blind helpless mice with a knife.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's newest poetry collection is Heart-Shape Hole (Laughing Ronin Press), which also includes examples of his handmade collages.

Conditional Love

When you said, “I value your effort, not the result,” I believed you loved me; when you said, “Four students got full marks, why didn’t you?” I believed you tried to motivate me; when you said, “You are too stupid even to understand the simplest function,” I believed you were disappointed and didn’t see my pain; when I said, “I don't want to study. I just want to lie in bed,” you said you wished the boy next door who aced all the subjects were your child, and Mum, how could I believe you loved me and not my grade?

From Guest Contributor Huina Zheng

Huina either coaches her students to write at work or write stories for fun after work.

Papa

I slip through alleys to get to the resistance and relay the information I have learned. The black out starts and the only sound is the rustling of my dress.

I hear footsteps and then a voice. “Halt! Papers.”

“Certainly. My father is sick and needed medicine. I had to go across town to the only doctor available.”

There’s something in his eyes that I don’t trust. I stab him through the gut. I’m almost in the clear and then a shot rings out. Blood soaks through my dress, I gasp for air and then collapse.

See you soon, Papa.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Twisting Time

Twisting time. Watching all the quantum news, I ponder the latest statement about quantum religion. An attempt by corporations to combine the ideology of Hindoos into the quantum realm and do away with individual religions for a planet-wide religion.

Freaks me out three religions talk about this very topic. And the outcome is not good for humanity. The end result is a system of things or what people reference from movies as the matrix. Kind of wild to see the ending of humanity. The beginning of the terminator reality is just happening. Age becoming a battery. An end of humanity?

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

These Dogs

are barking, she says, as she kicks off her scuffed dancing pumps and falls into the couch cushions. What a strange word: couch. Now, the television remote. Later, a Marie Callender’s pot pie. Turkey. In between now and later, a man pounds at the door—Beverly, he says. I know you’re there. Answer me. Thirty years ago, she would have. She would‘ve let him convince her to come back home, to try again. For the children, now grown. For him. Instead, she pours tea and peers between the blinds. She watches his breath condense, useless, and spill into the night.

From Guest Contributor Carrie Cook

Carrie received her MA in Creative Writing from Kansas State University and is currently living in Colorado. Her work has appeared in The Columbia Review, Midwestern Gothic, Menacing Hedge, and Bartleby Snopes.

Strange Creatures

There is only one road from here to there, cutting through the hills of rolling greens with the occasional grove of trees breaking up the monotony. Soon, this too will be gone, in its place, parking lots and strip malls, housing offices that employ free thinkers selling ethically sourced products from other once beautiful patches of green.

As my electric car reaches the zenith of these rolling hills, I spot the strange creatures spinning hundreds of feet in the air.

We reminisce.

"Remember how beautiful that stretch of land was?"

"Where?"

"You know, that boring stretch between there and here."

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

The Grieving

The angel of death once thrust his face perilously close to mine. I can still smell his lurid breath when the wind blows across the green scummy water. Although it seems longer ago, it was only last year that he climbed into bed and cuddled with you. The survivors cope as best they can. One walks all around the car and carefully looks under it before getting in. And so I ask him, Whatever happened to the right to be lazy? An 18-month-old slipping under the water when her mother left her unattended in the tub for just a sec.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's newest poetry collection, Heart-Shape Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is forthcoming from Laughing Ronin Press.

Round One

It was the end of the first round between Rockcrusher Rocco, the favorite, and Lefty Louie. Rocco wasn't called 'Rockcrusher' for nothing. And not just for publicity's sake. He could really hit.

Louie's manager, Al, and cutman, Mel, were in the corner with Louie…

"Do you think you can go another round, Louie?"

"Huh?"

"A round? Another round?"

"Is that you, Sally?"

"No. It's me, Al."

"What?"

"Remember what I told you? When he jabs twice with the left, he throws his right cross."

"Sally, I can't believe you're here."

"It's me and Mel, Louie."

"I still can't believe it…"

From Guest Contributor David Sydney

His Majesty

The king sits on his throne with a large and excruciating chest wound. The room is filled with blood and lifeless bodies, his men.

The beautifully decorated hall is covered in blood and the delicately prepared meat and fruit sit untouched never to be eaten.

The king hasn’t much time. He can’t feel his legs and his body is cold. He reaches for his ring and struggles with his weak fingers to remove it. As he releases it, he slumps over and the ring drops to the ground, the noise echoing in the quiet.

His Majesty will soon be replaced.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher