The rich ripe smell of avocados in Portland market made me remember the sunny Sunday when I chased a butterfly. I took it on my middle finger, then let it fly away. Blue skies. A gentle breeze. The smell of over-ripe mangos. Cashews and avocados rotting on the ground. The strong smell of lilies and roses.

I tripped over my Daddy as he lay in the long grass. His khaki shorts around his knees. His penis was pink at the top.

His voice was coaxing.

‘Come give Daddy’s teapot a kiss.’

‘No.’

‘Aunty Mavis will leave, if you don’t.’

I began to cry as he reached for my hand. ‘No. Daddy. No.’

‘Time to say goodbye,’ Aunty Mavis called from the veranda.

I stumbled into the house. Aunty Mavis handed me a set of clay kitchen toys.

‘Give back those toys,’ my father hissed.

I felt pee run down my legs.

‘Get a rag and wipe up that pee,’ he said.

I got a rag. Wiped the wet tiled floor.

I took the rag into the back garden. Washed it under the tap. Hung it on the line to dry. I took off my wet panty. Washed it under the tap. Hung it on the line to dry next to the rag.

‘I know what you are doing to this child Baz. I can’t prove a thing but I know she’s scared to death of leaving you.

Aunty Mavis was my father’s girlfriend. Now she was leaving.

‘I want to go with you. Don’t leave me with Daddy.’

The door bell rang.

‘Answer it,’ my father barked.

It was Sidney. He was a friend of Aunty Mavis and the reason she was leaving. He smiled a wide smile.

‘Hello pet,’ he said. ‘Like your gifts? I made them especially for you.’

‘Thanks Uncle Sidney.’

‘Baz won’t allow her to keep them,’ said Aunty Mavis.

‘Be a sport Baz,’ said Sidney.

‘You are taking my woman. Stay away from my child.’ My father looked at Sidney with ice in his eyes.

‘She can keep the toys,’ he said. ‘But not as long as she is under my roof.’

I went into the back garden. I took my panty off the line. I put it on. I took the rag from the line. I went back into the house.

I looked my father in the eye. ‘I’m leaving Daddy.’

‘If you do, never let me see you in this house again. Remember that.’

I gathered up my gifts. I put them in a carrier bag. Aunty Mavis held out her hand. But, before I took her hand, I walked over to my father and dropped the rag at his feet.

Veronica Robinson is Jamaican/British. She started writing in Jamaica for the evening newspaper, producing stories, articles and an advice column. She also contributed in two short films and a flash fiction story to City Lit magazine ‘Between The Line’. For the past 10 years, Veronica has been attending a writers’ group focusing on writing short stories and flash fiction.

I forgot how to exist
without

picking up socks,
mittens,
putting away legos,
wiping uncapped
toothpaste squirts,
preparing eggs
for more than

one,

laundering four times
than what I wear.

A decade of dying to
myself –

A decade more and
I will walk through
rooms unchanged,
echoing

absence

forgetting these noisy,
cluttered days.

April Best is the writer and photographer behind stillsmallmomentsblog.com. Her pursuit of living wisely is a hopeful one, filled with dog-eared pages of books, and attempts to start and end each day in kindness. April studied English and French at York University in Toronto and has her Master’s Degree in English Literature.

“I’m here live on Tortuga Creek about two miles downstream from the train derailment and oil spill,” began Paula Periodista of Channel Seven News, “and as you can see this is a stream of oil now and will remain so until the railroad gets their act together and gets equipment out here to upright their overturned oil tankers. In the meantime all this black gold will continue to literally go down the drain.” Paula Periodista paused for effect, then with the camera still on her, she bent over and rubbed her two forefingers over a lily pad in the creek then displayed them for the camera. “As you can see the oil is covering all plant and animal life here as it goes on its rampaging path of unchecked death and destruction.”
Paula liked to dramatize her broadcasts a little bit.
“Now as to the good news. I’m here with Noah Gutermuth, age ten and his father. The two of them are here rescuing the poor animal victims of this devastating oil spill. Noah, what do you have in that box there that you’re holding?”
The cameraman focused on Noah. He held up a cardboard box about twelve inches square, the top open, and in it were three baby ducklings coated in oil. The cameraman shot, no he didn’t shoot them, he zoomed in on them for the TV audience at home.
“I have here some baby ducks I found,” answered the youth. “I found some dead ones too and I sacked them up to take home and bury.”
“What about the momma duck? Did you find Noah?”
“I found her dead over there on the other side of the creek covered with oil. It looked like a coon or coyote got her and tried to eat her but quit since she was so oily.”
“Oh how awful,” emoted Paula. “So what are you going to do with them now Noah?”
“Well since these babies are only a few days old, I’m going to take them home, wash them up with Dawn dishwashing liquid, keep them until they grow up, and then turn them loose back into the wild.”
“Well hopefully a new day will dawn for them then,” Paula said, having written that weak pun into the story. In fact, Paula had written all the lines for this broadcast, those for herself as well as those for the Gutermuths. The next one up per the script now was Bob Gutermuth, Noah’s father.
“We have here Bob Gutermuth Noah’s father,” began Paula, the camera focusing on him now. “You must be very proud of your son here for taking on this life saving project of his.”
“Yes I am Paula. My son loves animals. We live about two miles from here and have forty acres. Noah has his horse, a club calf every year for 4-H, his chickens, and rabbits too. Like I said, the boy just loves animals. When we heard about this derailment and oil spill we knew we just had to come over here and do something as quickly as possible to save God’s creatures.”
Paula sometimes waxed, well actually over waxed, poetic when writing her live newscasts. She always got God in there somewhere for all the Evangelicals here in Texas loved that.
“How noble of you. We certainly need more people like you two in this world to make things right.”
The camera now focused back on Paula as she turned back to Noah.
“Now Noah what do you have in that other box there at your feet?”
The cameraman zoomed in on the box.
“This is a turtle my father caught,” said Noah. “We found a lot of dead baby ones but this one was alive. He’s pretty dirty and we’re going to take him home, clean him up, and return him to his home here at the creek once the oil is gone.”
“Well he certainly is a big old fella isn’t he?” exclaimed Paula as the TV camera zoomed in on the hiddeous prehistoric looking reptilian creature. The turtle was about twelve inches long and weighed about twelve pounds. He was a big one as far as turtles go. “I understand that you’ve named him. Tell us what you’ve named him Noah.”
“I named him Don Tortuga since this is Tortuga Creek. Tortuga is turtle in Spanish and Don is mister so I decided to call him Don Tortuga, Mr. Turtle.”
“Well, aren’t you the clever young fellow?”
Paula had actually named him and written that into the script and told him to say that he named him not her.
Then suddenly Paula put her hand up to her right ear and adjusted her headset piece.
“Hold on folks,” she said.
Her hand came down from her earpiece.
“I have just been informed by Donna back at the station that the railroad has set up equipment downstream from here a couple of miles to suck the oil up out of the water. She also tells me that equipment is on the way to the wreck site to upright the spilled tankers. That’s certainly good news for Mother Nature now isn’t it.” Paula ad libbed this last line deciding to live dangerously for once in her life.
“We’ll that should do it from here for now. But we’ll be back and visit with Noah and his father with a follow up story next week sometime to see how these little cuties and Don Tortuga are doing.” Here the cameraman focused on the three baby ducks first and then Don Tortuga. “Back to you Donna.”
“That’s a wrap fellas,” barked Paula. “Load everything up and let’s blow this pop stand.”
She went over to and got in Mr. Gutermuth’s face. “I’ll need your phone number so I can call you when I’m ready to come back out and do the follow up story,” she squawked, handing him a pen and her empty cigarette package for him to write it down on. She lit up her last cigarette and not paying attention blew smoke in his face.
Mr. Gutermuth wrote it down and handed it back. She and her crew left without even a thank you to Noah and his father.
Noah and his father went home. Noah buried the dead ducklings in the backyard deep enough so the coons couldn’t dig them up and eat them and his father got the dish detergent, a bucket of warm water, and some paper towels. The two of them went to work cleaning up the baby Mallard ducklings. They were small fuzzy little things, about the size of a tennis ball, easy to clean, and they cleaned up in no time at all. Noah then put them in a chicken coop they weren’t using with a shallow pan of water for them to play in while his father went to town and got some duck feed at the local feed and seed store. When he got back Noah had put up a heat lamp to keep the ducklings warm at night, a tray feeder on the floor for the duck feed, and bedded the place down with fresh straw. The ducklings were now snuggly nestled in their new temporary happy home.
As to Don Tortuga, well that was a different matter altogether. He was going to have to live in the other half of the chicken coop until it was safe to release him back into the wild. The chicken coop consisted of two pens being seperated by chicken wire with a door between them. Don Tortuga was a snapping turtle and they had to handle him with care for if he bit you he could take your finger off. So they taped his mouth shut first before they began scrubbing him. Because of his reptilian scales and cragged shell it was hard to get all the oil off him. But after many tries it appeared they got the job done, so they quit. Noah got out his old plastic swimming pool from when he was a kid, yes it was a Mr. Turtle brand pool of course, put it on the floor on Don Tortuga’s side, filled it with water, built an earth ramp up to it, and put some rocks directly on the other side so Don Tortuga could easily get in and out. For turtle food at first they fed him some lettuce but since they knew he was a wild animal and that as such he ate other wild animals, they got some small minnows from a local bait shop and put them in the pool so that the Don could catch his own food as if he were still in the wild.
So everything was in place and everyone got settled in for the night. The ducklings cuddling together under the heat lamp and Don Tortuga sleeping on top of the rocks in his pool. Next morning Noah checked on them before he went to school and told his father everything was fine. Therefore his father didn’t bother checking things out and went off to work.
But things were not fine when Noah checked on them when he got home from school. Oh Don Tortuga was fine resting on the rocks in his pool but the baby ducklings were nowhere to be found. No trace of them anywhere was visible for they were in the belly of Don Tortuga.
When his father got home from work Noah told him the baby ducks were missing. His father went out to the chicken coop with him, looked the crime scene over, and then announced, “Here’s where I blew it, Noah. See the door there between the pens. There’s a three inch gap there under it. The baby ducks went under it and got in the pool with Don Tortuga and he ate them. I should have caught that and blocked it off. I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”
Noah didn’t say a word as they went back to the house. His father sat down in front of the TV and watched the news waiting for his wife to call him when supper was ready. Noah went and got his twenty-two rifle, went out to the chicken coop, and shot Don Tortuga in the head. He had to shoot him in the head for he knew a .22 couldn’t penetrate a turtle’s shell and would ricochet and might hit him.
His father came out upon hearing the shot, said not a word, picked up the dead turtle, took it outside, doused it with gasoline, and set Don Tortuga on fire. The next day he scattered the ashes to the wind.
True to her word Paula Periodista called next week to announce that she would be out to do the follow up story that she had promised her viewers. Mr. Gutermuth told her the truth as to what had happened but that didn’t deter Paula any. She told him not to worry. That she’d take care of everything and still do her follow up story. Told him she’d go over everything with the two of them when she got there and tell them what to say just like before. Mr. Gutermuth tried to talk her out of it but after he was told by her for the umpteenth time that she was coming and that was final, he gave up figuring the sooner he got all this nonsense over with the better.
Paula had a plan. She gave her intern her company credit card and told her to go buy some baby ducks at Tractor Supply. Well the intern when she got there found out she had to buy a minimum of ten ducklings. So she charged them to the station, didn’t even look at the amount due, and signed Paula’s name. She bought ten Pekin ducklings, Pekins are an all white breed, and called Paula.
“Bring them to me at the Gutermuths at one p.m.,” Paula ordered.
The intern did so and handed Paula the box of ten white ducklings. Paula had already gone over everything with Mr. Gutermuth as to what she would ask him and as to how he was to answer. She decided it best not to ask Noah anything under the circumstances because sometimes kids say the darndest things.
Things got set up and they were ready to roll.
“Well today I’m back here with the Gutermuths with that follow up story I promised you as to their animal rescue efforts concerning the Tortuga Creek oil spill. And as you can see the ducklings cleaned up quite nicely.”
The camera then focused on Noah holding a baby duckling to his cheek, cuddling it, smiling, all as he was instructed to do in order to get that heart warming effect.
“Who’d have believed these little ducks were white under all that coat of oil we showed you last week. You guys did a great job cleaning up these babies. Thank you.”
“Thank you Paula,” said Mr. Gutermuth right on cue. But then Mr. Gutermuth decided that he had had enough of this charade and decided to go off script. “A lot of work went into all this Paula. A lot of work if you know what I mean. Don’t you think our viewers at home would want to know the story behind the story, the rest of the story?”
Paula, knowing what he was driving at, instructed the cameraman to get a shot of the ducklings. The camera then zoomed in on the ducks still in the box with the Tractor Supply label clearly visible on it, then realizing his mistake, zoomed back to Paula.
“Tell us Mr. Gutermuth how is Mr. Turtle doing?,” Paula asked, trying to get things back on track. That being the next line of this TV docu-drama.
“The Call of the Wild got him Paula. He’s gone back to Mother Nature herself.” That line was per the script and Mr. Gutermuth said it because it rang ever so true.
“Well good for him. That’s where he belongs.” That was part of the script too.
“Let me tell you all about it Paula,” said Mr. Gutermuth. That wasn’t part of the script.
She didn’t let him say anything further and cut the interview short. “That raps it up from here, back to you Donna.”
Paula unhooked her microphone. “That’s it fellas,” she screeched to her crew. “Get everything packed up pronto. We got ta get back to Houston and do another heartwarming gut wrenching animal story about some goddamn crippled up cat for the five o’clock news. Chop chop. Hurry up. Let’s get a move on people.”
Noah brought forth the box of ducklings and presented them to Paula.
“You keep ‘em kid. I don’t want those god damn messy poopy things.”
She turned her back on him and left. She never heard him say, “Thank you Ma’am.”
Later that month when the station’s credit card bill came in, Paula was called into her boss’s office and asked to explain the $89.95 charge for ducks.
“I had to have them to do the story,” she explained.
“What happened to them?” asked her boss.
“I gave them to the Gutermuth kid. He was a nice boy and I thought it would be good public relations to do so.”
“Good idea and that was good reporting too Paula,” complimented her boss.
Paula got a raise shortly after that.

We lived at the edge of the sea where sand and water lay and overlay, where quietly tectonic plates are grinding rocks to sand. Moonlight stippled tinselly on wavelets stirred up by the breeze. The scene topside, in darkness, was bright as by day — a blue sailboat, sea, and a sky streaked in silver, all danced underneath translucent clouds. Then purple and black came in and blurred the scene. It grew dark around, all up above and out to sea; shadows were revealing little, ghostly fragments set a mood. A little light came from the house but made no difference in the dark. My mind would not concede to darkness, though; so my thoughts assembled nymphs at play to suit—

Galatea, sea-foam blown in a wind surf,

Limnoreia, sad at the salt-marsh edge,

Psamathe, a sanderling’s sea-kiss. 

Dreams of loafing on the shore far from view and the whole of darkness and sea-blackness set me wondering. Out in the darkness, a sailboat’s rigging jingled and the yellow dot of  a lamp swung in an arc atop the mast, a silent metronome counting the sea swells. Were they getting ready to sail away? I imagined the boat’s blue striped sail unfurl in the same breeze that was bending the trees.

Charles Tarlton has a Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles and lives now in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. His work has been seen in Rattle, Blackbox Manifold (UK), London Grip (UK), Illanot Review (Israel), and 2River.

A butterfly floats across
the balcony. A bird flies
over the roof. Someone walks
a dog. Generators roar the pain
of darkness and loss.
The hurricane has died,
the sky is blue again.
The scars are deep and long;
nature has put us in our place.

Diane Elayne Dees lives in Covington, Louisiana, just across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. Though known as a poet, she has also written her share of fiction and creative nonfiction. Diane also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.

2021 was a tough year all around, but we made it through. Still, Covid caught up with us at the very end and, as a result, we lost most of the month of January. It is amazing how unproductive you are when not feeling well.

But we are stoking the fires and building up steam once more and should be back on track and reading, editing, publishing (and sometimes writing) this month of February.

Also, we have moved (albeit slowly) into filmmaking. Our first venture is a short film called “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.” The title comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson.

Take a look at our Indiegogo page: Because I Could Not Stop for Death

The campaign on Indiegogo only runs for 60 days. If you’re feeling generous, toss in a few bucks. We would be ever appreciative.

He wouldn’t give up now; there was no point. The smoke wound, blue and delicate, through the warm air. The bottle of rosé wasn’t quite finished. After the first sips of coffee, he knew it would taste bitter. Crumbs of fig cake stuck to the little dessert fork on the uncleared plate. He didn’t want the meal to end. He ordered a brandy; he’d sleep later.

The sun flared from the dust jacket of the book lying on the table in front of him, obscuring most of the title, though he could still read the black words ‘…of Pain’. He’d nearly finished it. The descriptions of the author’s worsening condition were becoming more graphic, more terrible. He hadn’t known the disease existed in that particular form, the evolution of its crippling agony a new and yet, strangely, not unwelcome discovery. There seemed no reason now not to immerse himself in it, like a guidebook to an unfamiliar, impending destination. He felt more and more a creature of unchosen movement, surrendered to ancient currents.

The restaurant occupied the ground floor of a building at the end of a row jutting between the start of two streets. One disappeared back into the town, winding among tourist shops, dropping in steps and slopes down towards the river. The other shortly became one side of the main square, opposite the colossal old Holy Palace. At the far end the square terminated in a bluff overlooking the bend in the river half-spanned by the famous ruined bridge. Between the Palace’s river-facing flank and the first tumbling rocks of the bluff was the small park where he’d walked that morning, stunned by the white gold heat and the blueness of the sky and the pale bright Palace rising vastly behind him as he looked at the green and glittering river below.

Standing there, it had seemed so simple to him. Each of these things, each component of the day, bold and exact, combined around him with architectural sureness, its edges hard against the others’, its qualities unarguably displayed. These few expressions of place and quality and moment buttressed him with their certainty. Among them he felt calmer and reassured, something restored that had begun to drain from him in that surprisingly small office, two months ago and hundreds of miles away, as soon as the thin, immaculate, matter-of-fact specialist had begun speaking. Here, where a handful of elements supported the world with such beautiful authority, he breathed more easily, blessing every sight.

He blew smoke upwards; it drifted slowly, fragile and weakening. Above it, arcing like dark formulae against the lapis brilliance beyond, swifts screamed. He’d always thought them lucky. Soon he would pay and leave, tipping this happy day extravagantly. He would walk the short distance to the hotel, the alcohol thickening his senses as he moved between deep shadows. In his room he would lie on the sunlit bed, staring out at the crowding, red-tiled roofs. Vainly, he would try to read his book but, in the stillness, he’d drift off to the noises of the town and to the sound of the swifts overhead, increasingly high and far.

Craig Dobson lives in the UK and works for the local council library service, watching the books dwindle in number year after year but still pleased about how many people turn to them when it’s important. Aside from that, he ages and fattens spending much time staring into the middle distance, where he is sure that some revelation lies, waiting.

From here I watch a caravan of clouds pass by
Here in my familiar bed of dreams,
Fever spent, bereft,
Tucked inside fate’s ambivalent grasp.
I am quarantined,
Trapped within a version of me.

Within this burning version,
I am euphoric.
I divine the wisdom of the ages,
Trace a path across shifting pillowed gray skies.

And deep within, a glowing heat rises,
Expands inside my head, electric.
Thoughts ablaze. Senses scorching.
All the while this dusty world buzzes and spins
Leaving me breathless, and oh so empty.

And it is here that I realize that
Everything exists inside my head
From the rising clouds
To the wisdom of ages
To fevered epiphanies
To the great Empty.

And so I fall silent at the mercy of it all
Lost in an illness that elevates me
Beyond the lines of time and space
And leaves me vacant
As a cloud floating through
The boundless space
Of an entire universe.

Christen Lee is a certified family nurse practitioner in the Northeast Ohio, Cleveland area. Outside of health care, Christen enjoys immersing herself in words.

Everyone lies: he, her, they, them, you and I. We lie for our benefit, and that is it… They say that lying can provide you the best life or it can ruin it forever. It’s quite a great weapon for the good and the bad, it’s always great to have it on your side. But lying is also addicting, I am addicted to lying because I’ve been lied to all my life, I grew up with walking lies and soon enough I became one too. The lies I tell are prepared to my advantage and hurt or bless who I chose. Just the way others are vulnerable to my lies I am as vulnerable too. Lying is bad; they say, lying is a sin; they say, lying is pain and death; they say… but yet they are the lie; I say. But lying is key to survival, key to happiness too, it has become the new love and satisfaction. It is found in every ear, mouth, word, sound, and every corner. A lie is terribly amazing and beautifully flawed.

Samantha Edith is inspired by her life experiences as a young adult and which is what she bases her poems/ short narratives on. ¨They Lie¨ contains feelings about liars and lies in general.