In The Shadow

Nighttime, people strode past him in pursuit of merriment at the city’s main square.

In a high rise apartment across the street, flamenco pulsed from an open window. Singing and clapping erupted. Smells of warm foods being prepared at tapas bars flavored the humid, tepid air.

He pulled a quilt over his head when a nearby nightclub closed and rowdy customers zigzagged into the light of a new day.

There’d be coins dropping into the cup by him on a bankrupt store’s doorstep he called ‘home.’

Someone would throw him an empanada. He sometimes found one, after footsteps scurried away.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction regardless of the season, although she prefers spring.

Raking Leaves

Raking leaves

is an exercise in the good-enough.

You will never get them all.

You come to prize

the strong, steady stroke of the rake,

the appropriate armful that you lift

into the waiting wheelbarrow.

The maple leaves which from a distance

appear two-tone, red and silver,

reveal a soul-satisfying palette

from crimson to lavender.

A leaf falls in your hair and tickles your neck.

You cover the lily beds

with their winter blanket,

a gorgeous quilt

in five-pointed patchwork.

You’re no good at quilting, but it doesn’t matter.

Raking leaves is an object lesson

in Lamott’s “shitty first drafts.”

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Caesar

Cheryl lived in Paris, Tuscany and Sligo for 25 years; she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and taught literature and phonetics. She now teaches writing at Michigan State University. Last year she published over a hundred poems in the U.S., Germany, India, Bangladesh, Yemen and Zimbabwe, and won third prize in the Singapore Poetry Contest for her poem on global warming. Her chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era is now available from Amazon and Goodreads.

Rain Vigil

Worn wooden arms hold me as I rock in my grandma’s rocking chair on the front porch of her old house. My grandma’s quilt keeps me warm in the cool fall air. It’s the first day it hasn’t rained in weeks. A mist of water rises over the treetops, and the grass is wet. I can’t stay here long. The house is already sold. All the rooms are empty. All that’s left is the rocking chair, the quilt, and me. I’ve kept vigil with the sorrowing rain. I pack up these last moments, get behind the wheel, and drive away.From Guest Contributor Tyrean Martinson

Tyrean is a writer, daydreamer, and believer at http://tyreanswritingspot.blogspot.com