Hermitage

Harvest missed, starlings busy with unworked seed, overripe corn, a laugh with the scarecrow - leave toward evening. Leaves of fall turn red like the blood fingering across the green linoleum kitchen floor after the thud of the back of your head, split like a too-ripe pumpkin. A widower falls in the kitchen, no one hears it, did it make a sound? The trees in the yard mourn the wood you stacked anticipating winter, as it dries, rots, quietly decays. Equinoxes later it splinters, skips off across tan, fallow fields in a cold wind, wet with the rustle of black wings.

From Guest Contributor Craig Kirchner

Craig thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus is being published and has work forthcoming in a dozen or so journals.

Stakeout

The house whose elderly owner didn’t believe in staging finally sold, for way below market value. The old man called Jane twice to back out, overcome by nostalgia. When it sold he moved in with his daughter. She lived nearby.

The excited buyers said it was perfect. A week after move-in they found him seated in a lawn chair, under the oak tree, sipping coffee.

The third time it happened the couple enlisted Jane. She talked him out of serial trespassing. The guy was ninety, a widower.

The buyers threatened to call the police if there was a fourth time.

From Guest Contributor Todd Mercer

Todd writes Fiction and Poetry in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His collection Ingenue was published in 2020 by Celery City Press. Recent work appears in Praxis, The Lake, Literary Yard, and Star 82 Review.

Mathematical Calamity

Calamity followed him everywhere. His primary school was destroyed in a tornado. His middle school suffered an earthquake. His high school burned down in an electrical fire.

As the catastrophes mounted, journalists and theologians began looking at the pattern and noticed him at its center. They speculated he was a malevolent hell-spawn.

It wasn't until his death at the age of one hundred and seven, a four-time widower and the survivor of several plane crashes, two world wars, and the nuclear holocaust, that a mathematician finally made the proper assessment.

Ralph Warner was officially the luckiest man to ever live.

Ghost Story

Jackson stumbled into the bathroom and flicked on the light. He jumped with a start. Samantha, his dead wife, was staring at him in the mirror.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I've decided to haunt you."

"Whatever you say." Jackson went back to bed.

Samantha started following Jackson wherever he went. People often caught him talking to himself, and decided he was crazy.

It was not long before Jackson's boss fired him. "You're behavior lately has been unacceptable."

"But my dead wife is haunting me."

"Why didn't you say so? You get used to it after a while."