Hooded Eagle by J H Martin

J H Martin is from London, England but has no fixed abode. His writing has appeared in a number of places in Asia, Europe and the Americas. 
Website: A Coat for a Monkey 
Instagram: @acoatforamonkey

 

HOODED EAGLE

I put on my hat
And take the last shot
Then pull up my hood
And drain the last glass

After five sleepless nights
I know I need more

More than these rats
I pass on the landing
More than these mice
Who scurry back to their holes

This endless hunger
That not even I can satisfy

A circling bird of prey

I will take any opening
That these pinned eyes fix upon
To feast my way out of this cage
And unfurl these damp walls
And head back up to that China white sky
Where reality fades

With all of its stained corridors
Of twisted emotion
All its grey blocks of clouded reason
And all its memory lined streets
Littered with nothing but abused promises

A hooded eagle

All I need and all I can see
Is in this void
That opens now in front of me

A space that will
Never ask questions
As I pass through its door

A place I can feed
Until it all disappears

This land of the dead

Sweet carrion
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Two by Catherine Jones

Language lover, art enthusiast, and tea aficionado, Catherine Jones is a college professor and writer of novels, poetry, and non-fiction. You can follow her writing adventures on Twitter @catjanejones.

Slam

Father used to slam things. Beers, doors, people, if they happened to get in the way. I’d hide in the bathroom, sitting on the cold tile floor with my head in between my knees. All the doors in the house were smashed off their hinges. Locks exploded into useless metal pins.

Slam. And again for good measure.

I’m angry. I curse at the top of my lungs. I climb out and slam the door to the car as hard as I can. I stalk up the stairs to the muffled sounds of my son’s cries and slam the front door. I move to the bedroom and slam that door too, even though there is no one inside the house to hear me. I open the door and slam it again and again, so hard that the door pushes out past its frame, the wood warped over the doorframe. I beat the door with the palm of my open hand and then with my fist. I grab the knob and find I can’t open the door. I’m stuck inside.

Slam.  I have a lot of things to say to my husband.  About him not listening to me, making me angry, and forcing me to get to the point where I scare our son. He could see I was losing control and he did nothing to deescalate the situation.  And now my baby’s crying.

When he finally pushes the door back into its frame correctly so I can get out I don’t say any of those things; instead, my eyes fill with tears and I whisper I’m sorry I got so angry.

“I just don’t want our son to tell his wife stories like the ones you’ve told me about your father,” he says, holding me limply, looking away as he says it.

Slam. Right between the eyes.

 

 

Woman

When she was eleven she felt something slide out of her like diaphanous jelly. When she checked her underwear, it was spotted pink. You’re a woman now, her mother said with a touch of sadness, handing her a thick white pad the shape of the lake in their backyard, folded up in a cotton candy colored wrapper. You can have a baby. And the girl-woman wept because she didn’t fully understand what that meant.

When she was thirty-nine she felt the world slip out of her like muddled paint colors. When she checked her underwear, it was rusty red. You’re not a woman now, the voice in her head said with a touch of horror, handing her a future that looked like a blank piece of paper. You can’t have a baby. And the woman wept because she fully understood what that meant.

 

 

I, Confidant

by Nina Armstrong

Nina Armstrong is a high school Junior in Southern California. She has been published in “Just Poetry National Poetry Quarterly,” “The Same Literary Magazine,” and “Genre: Urban Arts.” She hopes to continue with writing through college and life.

 

I, Confidant

With crooked teeth and a salmon smile
Clara Confessed of her rhinoplasty

People tell me their life stories sometimes
They say I have the face of a giver

Michael confessed his habit of cutting
That was under the bleachers at lunchtime

Jackie told me her friends left her alone
Michael uttered the name of his crush (June)

I’ve never made one of them feel better
Not even If I tried, so I listen
To Conner’s miseries and George’s swoons

They confide in me what I fear myself

 

Coal

by Anna Desourdy

Anna Desourdy is a pre-school teacher, wife, and mother to two boys and a miniature dachshund.  She and her family live on about ten acres in a small suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina. In addition to writing, Anna enjoys reading any and all genres, perusing Instagram and Litsy, contributing to the Wattpad community, cooking, gardening, traveling, and spending time with family and friends, particularly going out with her boys to explore the wonderful things their city has to offer.

It was such a trivial encounter.  It should’ve been meaningless really.  It was meaningless.  And yet she would find herself thinking about him quite a bit, sometimes constantly.  At first she had convinced herself it was some sort of collusion of the stars, fate, that good old meant-to-be feeling.  She’d seen him, been completely struck.  She’d thought about him all day, allowing her poor luck to weigh her down as though she were carrying an anvil in her pocket.  And then it had happened again.  It was as if her mind had manifested him to give her heart one last squeeze before sending it on its miserable way.  Then nothing.  One moment it was a monsoon in the desert, the tiny flower that grows in the city sidewalk, the baby turtle crossing the length of the beach.  And the next it was dry as it had ever been, crushed under a hurried designer wingtip, snapped up by a seagull flying overhead.

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Two by Amanda Tumminaro

Amanda Tumminaro lives in the U.S. She is a poet and short story writer and her work has been featured in Thrice Fiction, The Radvocate and Stickman Review, among others. Her first poetry chapbook, “The Flying Onion,” will be released through The Paragon Journal in the spring of 2018. 

 

Portrait of Emotions

Emotions are as important as organs,
and just as susceptible to danger.
They are a jury and victim to words,
target to rocks and dagger.

So, the country of what I feel
is based on belief and not fact.
It all comes down to if it’s logical,
and if you shall believe the logic.

They are not subject to x-ray,
and can be distorted by convenience,
and morphed by time or theme,
traveling with me like a third ear.

 

Mother at a Concession Stand

Before the showing of the film,
I stand at the counter with my brood.
Which candy would suit me best?

The stand is lit up like a bulb.
Okay! I choose our destiny:
A soda, popcorn and Milk Duds.

I’m a few dollars short,
and now it’s like Sophie’s Choice;
Which child to sacrifice?

 

 

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

Well, actually we would prefer it if you did.  It’s not easy to fit a great story or poem into a tear drop.  But, if you can do that, it makes for some great storytelling.

So, go ahead and sweat a little. And submit the results to us.

Relationships

by Mia Carreon
Mia Carreon is currently working on her BFA in Creative Writing while still dabbling in directing plays and teaching theater to children and teens in El Paso, TX. She also has a love for movies and television that has helped fuel her creativity since she was a kid. 

A: Adrien is the bus boy at the local cafe. In high school we had three classes together. He’d always sleep. On graduation day he skipped out and didn’t walk. Turns out his grade average was a C-. People say that’s why he’s still a bus boy.

B: Bethany is my next door neighbor. Her arthritis acts up when it gets cold and she pays me $5 every time I help her with groceries. She has old ribbon candy in her front room and I tried it out of curiosity. It was disgusting.

C: Claudia sits next to me on a long bus ride to California. We discuss our families and friends. I tell her about visiting my cousin, Katia. She says she’s visiting her brother and his kids. They live on only $80 a week.

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What Do You See?

by Jamie Whyte
Raised in Miami, FL by Jamaican parents and a beloved older brother. Mr. Whyte has held many jobs but has been a teacher for well over 10 years. He desperately tries to remain positive as a way of coping with life. 

What do you see?
Am I holding up the tree or is the tree holding up me?
Understand that perspective is not always the same
some find things pleasurable while others only feel pain
I say it’s hot today, she says it’s fine
Kids are not ready for bed, Mom says it’s time.
People are all different, various details we see
It may be much older but the tree supports me

“Think Small”

It was the advertising slogan for the Volkswagon Beetle developed by the  Doyle Dane Bernbach agency in 1959.  Since then, it has been called the single best advertising campaign of the 20th Century.

We think it fits us perfectly.

We think small as in Small Literature

It’s been called micro fiction, flash fiction, tiny fiction and cigarette fiction.  Early on, these stories were called short shorts or even ultra shorts.  You may have your own name for it: bite-sized fiction or fun-sized fiction.

Call it what you will, it is a short story made even more so.  Flash fiction is to stories what haiku is to poetry: a world in a drop of water.

Get rid of any fluff.  Be ruthless in your editing.  Distill it down to its essence and then distill it again.  Get to the point.  Get to the point, now.

Fair enough.  Some people start with an ending or goal.  Others start with a great line or image and work from there.

However you do it, whatever your style, we are interested in seeing your work.  If you have a story to tell, consider sending it to us.  We will publish the best on our website.

We are also looking for short poetry and will even consider short plays for publication.

The Blue Towel

by Scott Hogan
Scott Hogan holds a BA in Philosophy from UC Berkeley and an MA in English from SUNY StonyBrook.  He currently teaches math at a big public high school.

My name is Bill.  I live with my roommate Chris in a senior housing apartment.  We have a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment.  I live in one room and have my own bath and Chris lives in the other room with his own bathroom.  Both are upstairs.

I was on a list for senior housing for over a year.  Of the 100 units available around the city, nearly 500 seniors are on a waiting list.  You get on a waiting list and only get an apartment when someone dies or someone moves out and lives with their relatives or family.  Senior housing takes 1/3rd of your income, whether you are on social security or something else.  My rent of $600 a month includes utilities and cable.

There’s a problem with Chris.  He’s a slob.  When I first moved in, I knew right away something was wrong.  I don’t go to bed without doing my dishes but Chris leaves his dirty dishes in the sink for days on end.  He sleeps on the couch downstairs.  He doesn’t sleep in his bedroom upstairs.  After a few months, I noticed the smell of his pillow on the coach.  It got so bad I put it outside and he kept asking me “Where is my pillow?” I told him I put it outside to air out the smell.

The blue towel.  Well, one day, soon after I moved in, I found a blue towel hanging in my bathroom.  It went well with the plastic blue dolphins on the shower curtain.  The blue towel was his.  I told Chris I didn’t want the blue towel in my bathroom and moved it out and put it in the linen closet.  The next day the blue towel was back in my bathroom.  Chris told me he liked the look of his blue towel in my bathroom.

A few days later I put the blue towel in the linen closet and locked it in there.  I locked my bedroom and the bathroom too.  I came home from work and found the blue towel back in the bathroom.  He had unlocked the closet and my bathroom.

I had had enough.  I took the blue towel and locked it in the trunk of my car.  Chris kept asking me “Where is my blue towel?” and I told him “Don’t worry, it’s in good hands.”

This is the same guy who asked me if they speak Italian in Italy when we watched a travel show.