Lullaby for Two Little Boys
Irina swallowed hard on the lump in her throat as she walked through the early morning drizzle to the tube station. The red patent shoes she’d bought the year she arrived in England clicked loudly against the wet pavement, dotted with cigarette ends and stepped-on chewing gum. When she was on the train, she opened her Romanian-English phrase book and took out the little pieces of card that she had made for practising her sentences from inside its front cover. She read the words, sounding out each syllable in a whisper. “Could you tell me how to get to the sup-er-mar-ket? I have got a...
Read MoreBlue Angel
After the Blue Angels on Sunday bursting between buildings at North Avenue Beach, whipping sound like circular thunder around Lake Michigan, smooth and menacing as sharks, dipping jetwings like fins as they screech past each other from opposite sides of the lake almost colliding from where we watch but thin as sideways angel fish above the still boats, your behavior on Monday afternoon wasn’t so bad, talking a blue streak, gesticulating a wingspread in your yellow shirt ideas smooth as metal and mercurial, too slippery to refute. Tonight you will bike home from work, as usual, eat the...
Read MoreRachel
All night you dream of Rachel: her half-fisted fingers and pimpled cheeks, her sticky new lashes, her flannel-heavy bottom in the crook of your arm muttering the morning’s mess. Her mouth round as a fish’s, searching for a nipple in her sleep. Eyes blink, ears blush, day’s first pink flush touches the room and you, who measured the night by infant cries, now turn to feed her the moon, breast milk, a fleet of years, as she feeds you the tyranny of her...
Read MoreSibling Rivalry
A flame in my throat, so hot it scalds like cocoa, my breath a yelp, an angry stitch in my side, feet slapping the sidewalk, saddle shoes too tight, shorts too taut, my older brother so far ahead, cantering like a pony, all slim and horsehair sleek, John Wayne tall but spare in the chest, legs and body chestnut, racing to the roar of the sun. A flash at the corner, and he’s gone. I falter, hunch over, throb for air, sob in, gasp out, legs on fire, totter home, fall onto the porch. He hands me an ice cream sundae, a dollop of extra fudge on top. Bare arms barely touching, we let the...
Read MoreBaby
A small locked heart, webbed and half fish or a netted bird; swan and wings drinking brewed tears; unfinished as a jot, ready to shatter the cage, a shout locked in a box. The first chapter; a story full of air.
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of Nov. 3 (Grief)
While I was already planning to put together an issue of works related to mourning, in keeping with All Soul’s Day, a day of prayers for the dead held shortly after Halloween, the theme unexpectedly became even more relevant to me personally. I dedicate this issue to the memory of fellow writer Nathalie Cassiers, known on LiveJournal as agirlnamedluna, whom I met through the online writing contest/lifestyle known as LJ Idol. Nathalie would probably have preferred a gripping tale of black magick and intrigue, but I hope, if she’s reading this from her heavenly laptop, that she...
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