By Susan Bono I’ve been rummaging around in already full closets lately, trying to find space for all the stuff I brought home when I emptied my parents’ house last May. It’s been rough going, but I stopped wondering why when I realized Mom and Dad lived in their house for thirty-seven years, only eight years longer than we’ve lived in ours. Our youngest son often encounters me staring into space clutching a quilt, wood carving, or photograph. I think my uncharacteristic attempts at organization are making him nervous. “What are you doing? What’s that?” he asks. “Oh, this is some of your Great Aunt Emily’s needlepoint,” I tell him a little too eagerly. “These are my Barbie clothes, and here are the baby rompers your great grandmother made for your grandfather back in 1925. You wore them once yourself.” I give him these family history updates knowing full well…
Moonpark Review
MoonPark Review is an online literary journal devoted to publishing compelling, imaginative short prose that breaks our hearts, haunts us, makes us laugh, or gives us hope. We love flash fiction, prose poems, and hybrid forms. We are currently reading for Issue 17, Fall 2021. If you send us a story with a happy ending, make us believe it. 750 word maximum. To get a sense of our aesthetic, read our previous and current issues. You could also check out our interviews at Six Questions For…, Duotrope, and Lambda Literary.
2021 Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest
Poetry Contest news from Alan Lowe:Inviting All to Enter 2021 Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest Wishing you good health and peace during these difficult and confusing times. Looking on the bright side, the 17th Annual Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest is open to young and old. Contest theme: If Life Were A Game Show, What Would Poets Say? The five contest categories: Let’s Make A Deal To Tell The Truth The Price Is Right Family Feud Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Poets may submit a maximum of three poems, no more than one in each of three of the five contest categories. Everyone is encouraged to enter the contest. Poets do not have to live in Lincoln, CA to be eligible. There is no entry fee. Young Poets, 18-years of age or under, are encouraged to submit poems and will compete in a special “Young Poets” category. “Rules and Entry Form” can…
Calm
By Kathleen Haynie I drive by her turn-out, roll down the passenger car window to greet her with my best whinny. I can see her whinny ripple through the flesh of her sorrel and white soft muzzle. That muzzle will soon be buried in the red wheat bran she knows is coming. This time it is laced with bute to ease her pain from her sprained right knee. I hope the alfalfa sprinkles camouflage the taste of bute.* She is not too distracted with the hay and grain to lift each foot in turn so I can clean out the V ruts of each frog. After seventeen years, we know the drill. The curry comb pulls off twigs of the white winter coat on her back and haunches. Somehow the earth tells her body that it’s time to start letting go as the days grow longer. Yet the nights are…
A Patch of Joy
By Christine Renaudin Slowly the idea grew from seemingly random pickings at the local thrift store a month or two ago, to design a painting along the seams of a small piece of patchwork discovered in the sewing notions section. Bold colors and markings drew me in, sharp contrasts, black acting as prevailing background: yellow on black, and vice versa, bright colors in between, the kind I have dreamed of playing with but never dared throwing first thing together on canvas. Circles and crosses, stars and stripes, straight and curvy, thin and think, flowers, abstracted and not, leaves, pink and red, bees and dragonflies, plain black on white: all patterns placed side by side in surprising, shockingly daring ways that made my mind bubble with joy, and my heart dance with the desire to play along. I bought the small rectangle of motley fabric and brought it home, where it sat abandoned in my grandmother’s…
The Seattle Review
The Seattle Review publishes long poems, novellas, and long essays through their submission manager year round. The Seattle Review is looking for exceptional, risk-taking, intellectual and imaginative poems between ten and thirty pages in length. The long poem can be: a single long poem in its entirety a self-contained excerpt from a book-length poem a unified sequence or series of poems They are also looking for novellas between forty and ninety pages long. Contributors will receive four copies of the issue in which their work appears, and a year’s subscription to the Seattle Review.
Fear. Comfort. Prompt #578
List five things you have feared and five things that have comforted you. Choose one and write.
Fruit Tree
By Camille Sherman I will plant a fruit tree and she will be my legacy. The neighborhood children will recognize her stature, her fullness, as a landmark. They’ll traipse over her fallen blossoms in the spring, ride past her on their bikes, see her from their windows. They will think she has been there forever, like the houses and street signs watching over their restless afternoons and summer evenings. They won’t know she was planted by someone who was once a child too. They will stand at her base and look up at her, thinking that she, like their mothers and fathers, has always been this tall. Camille Sherman is a professional opera singer from the Bay Area. She trained at The Boston Conservatory and the San Francisco Conservatory of music, and served as an Artist in Residence at Pensacola Opera and Portland Opera. She currently lives in Portland, where…
Too much or too little. Prompt #577
Write about having too much or too little.
Humor
By Karen Handyside Ely When the day is dark humor will light my way. When the world crumbles humor will shore me up. Tears will flow, not from sorrow, but born of laugher. Nothing is so bad that humor cannot soften it. Nothing is so sacred that humor cannot humanize it. When the only way “through” is a walk of fire, humor will insulate my path. As long as we can laugh at the absurdities of life, we can persevere. Humor cannot change our challenges, but it can grease the skids, shepherd us along, help us to survive. I will face each day with humor and the grace it provides. As long as I can laugh, I can breathe. Humor is my lifeboat, my safe space, the fuel my soul runs on. Karen Handyside Ely Karen was born and raised in Petaluma,…