Affair

I parked across the street and put the car in park. I had the radio low and gulped a beer, hoping a cop wouldn’t catch me in the act. Fortunately, no cars were in sight.

Deep down I knew something was amiss, so when I found the texts on her phone, I wasn’t surprised. But my best buddy, that’s unforgivable on both sides.

Her car just pulled in. When she reached the porch, he came outside and smiled. They embraced, lips locked together, hands in each other’s hair, before shutting the door.

I knew then what I had to do.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Bird With A Broken Wing

One day a bird with a broken wing showed up on the back porch of the old man’s house. He tried nursing the bird back to health. He bought birdseed and he put out water. He took the bird to the vet, and the vet told him there really wasn’t anything they could do for the bird; the wing would never heal enough for the bird to fly again. The man took the bird back home, but the vet was right. One day the man looked out at the porch and saw a single feather, but the bird was gone.

From Guest Contributor Dan Slaten

First Time

I have waited for this moment since childhood. Now as an adult in my car with the engine running, I’m thinking of excuses to put my foot to the accelerator.

I remove my sunglasses and shut the radio in the middle of “You are the Wind Beneath My Wings,” and turn the car off. This song brings back memories of my wedding. I wish Melinda were still alive.

As I approach the porch and knock on the door, I hear footsteps stomping down the stairs.

Would it be my mother or father who’d I’d be meeting for the first time?

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

A Ladder To The Stars

For him the past was a story trove, for me it was a series of embarrassments that woke up and lingered like morning phlegm.

My brother tells another story on our porch. I notice how night falls earlier in mid-August. How the North Star rises off the horizon. How it calls me like a conjurer in an epic fantasy.

My brother will stay in this town and rise. He’ll talk about how the band played Forever Young at his graduation and he knew he was destined. But who will tell the story of that morning when I woke and wandered?

From Guest Contributor Dave Nash

First Meeting

At first glance it appears to be a normal home with a wraparound porch and swing.

The windows are open, and the curtains blow in the warm breeze. Still, I can’t seem to move. Now, I must wonder why I insisted on this meeting. My life is fine. I have a wife and two boys. I don’t need to meet my mother.

She abandoned me, yet I need answers. Even as an adult, I feel as if I’m a child not understanding.

I exit the car and walk to the front door, take a deep breath, and ring the doorbell.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Camaraderie

Quibble believes the Paterson boy is getting a little close to his daughter. He has seen how tethered they sit when allowed to linger together on the porch. Three school dances in a row they have been each other’s primary partner. Quibble’s wife has taken to complimenting for no reason, with fanfare, the boy’s taste in clothing. The conspiracy grows. Quibble is sure, if he had a mind to intercede, he could find the couple parked in the graveyard, innocently – so far – bobbing for lumber. He likes the boy well enough. He has to find a way to warn him.

From Guest Contributor Ken Poyner

Magnolia

Pink Patsy’s throne was her porch, where she roosted like a proud poodle through the better part of a century. She was all pretty pastry and puffball in oodles of swaddled satins and mega bijoux, with cloudward curls as epic as her jewels. Her communal vat of ice cubes and iced tea was legendary among heat-struck fieldhands and thirsty children alike: there was more gin than lemon or sugar, and we fished out ice with silver tongs that looked like chicken feet. They said she kept a tiny pearl pistol in her pom-pom mules, and she only used it once.From Guest Contributor Lorette C. Luzajic Lorette is a widely published writer of flash fiction and prose poetry, with recent appearances in Tiny Molecules, The Citron Review, Ghost Parachute, Dillydoun Review, and more. She is the founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a journal of literature inspired by visual art.

Dreams

"What'd you expect? I am who I am."

With a scowl she looked down at him sprawled across the weathered porch, a cigar box guitar across his lap. He knew to say more now would elicit a sharp slap across his perspiring jaw.

"You got chores, Bo. Get off your butt and get out in that field."

Slowly he rose, put the instrument down gingerly, and peered at the rich delta loam between his toes. He reached for a gunny sack and turned toward endless rows of cotton shimmering in the heat.

I'm gonna be somebody, he thought. I am.

From Guest Contributor Fred Miller

Fred is a California writer. Over fifty of his stories and poems have appeared in publications around the world in the past ten years. Many may be seen on his blog.

Neighbors

Everett was swinging back and forth on his porch enjoying a glass of iced tea, sweet tea, watching the annual 4th of July parade make its way past the little house he’d lived in all his life.

Everything he understood about history he’d learned watching that parade go up that road.

Here came local girls twirling pretend wooden rifles in front of the marching band from over at the white high school.

Back when Everett was young, girls, black and white, twirled batons. But the world today was meaner. Neighbors didn’t even try anymore. Or so it seemed to Everett.

From Guest Contributor Brian Beatty

Brian is the author of four poetry collections: Borrowed Trouble; Dust and Stars: Miniatures; Brazil, Indiana: A Folk Poem; and Coyotes I Couldn’t See. Beatty lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

I Bring Her Diamonds. My Hands Are Full Of Them

I bring her diamonds. My hands are full of them.

“Please,” she sobs heavily, “stop coming back.”

I had no money for diamonds, once.

When my car crashed, the exploding windshield sent diamonds rushing deep into me – my eyes, throat, hands – all shining in the moonlight. The pain was overwhelming. And then it stopped. And all I could think was I finally had something to give her.

Every full moon I come to her porch at midnight, to show her how they shine in my open hands. But every time she only holds her head and softly cries.

From Guest Contributor Eric Robert Nolan