For Yulia Navalnaya

Beware, murderer. I know widows. I watched my mother become one, imagined how my face would bend and darken in the shadow of the word that means shroud, dusk, ash. What lies inside the bones of a woman who does not crumble before you—who wears this word to war, vowing not to yield? Something heavy: iron, redwoods. Oak, like him: an oak among reeds who knew he would be uprooted, just as she knows she will be. No, it is light, hydrogen fusion in the belly of a star, howling life, dawn, freedom. Beware of this widow on fire.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook Bhagat (she/her) is the author of Only Flying, a Pushcart-nominated collection of surreal poetry and flash fiction on paradox, rebellion, transformation, and enlightenment from Unsolicited Press. Her work has won or placed in the top two in contests at Loud Coffee Press, A Story in 100 Words, and most recently, the Pikes Peak Library District 2023 fiction contest. It has been published in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror, Soundings East, The Alien Buddha Goes Pop, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Blue Planet Journal and a professor of creative writing Read her work and learn more about Only Flying at https://brook-bhagat.com/.

Charles’ Walk

Charles’ aide was fast asleep on the couch, television blaring. He slipped out the back door and walked not knowing where he was going. He watched the strangers pass and smile as if they knew him. Charles had been lonely, scared, and uncertain about where he belonged, so he walked and walked. It became dusk and he wasn’t sure of his surroundings and stared confused.

A woman with dark hair walking a small dog approached Charles. It was his neighbor of twenty years, Lily.

“Charles, what are you doing walking alone at this hour?”

Charles stared blankly at the lady.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Sexy Beast

The sky that bleeds at dawn burns at dusk. I steep in the blood and flames as a kind of penance, but not for doing a recognizable wrong – for doing nothing. The honey bees are diseased and dying. The birds on the wire shake as though likewise afflicted. From somewhere nearby comes a shockingly loud bang. “Was that a gunshot?” I ask the first person I see stumble out, a diminutive woman of indeterminate age with unnaturally bright red hair. She squeezes my arm and begs for help. But I also would rather do the tying than be tied up. From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest poetry books are The Horse Were Beautiful, available from Grey Book Press, and Swimming in Oblivion: New and Selected Poems from Redhawk Publications.

Rider Of The Wind

Daylight spills over the trees, onto bones in our yard. A wind rattles the forest. We tense with fear. Before, we tended gardens, chopped wood, prepared for the next season. Now, we turn our homestead into a church, with crucifixes everywhere.

The minister won’t come.

We string garlic from the eaves, board our windows.

The wind steals our breath.

Father announces a plan. At dusk, as bait, I stand among animal and human bones. Behind me, through the cracked door, father points his rifle, waiting to shoot.

Inside the house, mother mourns her dead children.

Overhead, something rides the wind.From Guest Contributor Russell Richardson

Russell has written and published many short stories, illustrated a book of poetry, and created children's books to benefit kids with cancer. His YA novel, Level Up and Die! was published in April of 2021. He lives with his wife and sons in Binghamton, NY, the carousel capital of the world.

Ignis Fatuus

HISTORICAL FICTION ENTRY:

The three sisters couldn’t spend their summer at home because of smallpox in the town. Their parents acquired the old farmhouse close to the boarding school and their favorite teacher agreed to spend her vacation taking care of them. She told them why the house was empty, of the little girl, who drowned in the cow pond. In time, the spirit came to each: in a dream; as a light over the field at dusk; and to the third sister, as the woman she spent the rest of her life with, from the age of twenty-eight, in a Boston marriage.

From Guest Contributor Jon Fain

Thus far in 2020, Jon's fiction has appeared in 50-Word Stories, Fleas on the Dog, City. River. Tree., and Blue Lake Review.

Heart On Ice

I was driving like I always do, as if I were transporting a heart packed in ice for a patient in imminent danger of dying, when outside Springfield, Mass., a bird that was also in an exceptional hurry crashed into my windshield with the boom of a gunshot, startling me about as bad as I’ve ever been startled, but the strangest part was that there were no cracks in the glass, no blood splatter, no feathers caught in the wipers, nothing to see, just the greasy crayon colors of dusk smeared all around and the cold stretch of road ahead.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

The Dead Chill

There I am on the down side of dusk. I stand stock still as the men drag her to the van. She used to be worth a look or two but now she is dead. Dead to me at least. Dead in the sense that I can't see her no more. Dead.

The sun is dead too and the chill is in me. I slink my way back to the house. They mean to ask more of me, but I am spent. What can I tell them this time I had not said times past?

I found her that way.

The Daily Theme from Figment for Feb. 9, 2012

This is a prompt I love to use when I first meet a new class. I tell them to take out their pens and write me a piece--the theme is up to them. It need not be long. But it needs to be a real scene. And the sole rule that frames what they write is this: You may not use a word with more than one syllable. It sounds hard, but "syllable" is the lone word used here that has more than one.