“The French Woman” by Deron M. Eckert


Why do you keep watching her? What is it that’s so appealing? Maybe it’s just that you can. After all, her curtains are open. Are the curtains usually drawn? They must be because you would have noticed her by now, someone that beautiful.

She must be getting ready for a date. Of course, she has a boyfriend coming over. How could she not? But maybe she doesn’t. There’s food out and some wine. Although, the table isn’t set and the only wine glass is the one in her hand. Look how gracefully she holds the glass, how she slinks and dances without spilling a drop.

How have you never seen her? Surely, you would have spotted her in the courtyard. Maybe even crossed paths at the coffee shop on the corner or the bar downstairs. Did she just move in? That explains it. You couldn’t miss someone that perfect, so she must be new to the building.

What could she be listening to over there? You can only imagine it’s something cool, some jazz you’ve never heard, or something French, like they play in Godard films. It’s probably something French. She looks French with her red lipstick and bobbed hair.

You open the sliding door and move onto your balcony to get a closer look, to maybe hear the music. How cool would it be to date someone French? Not just someone, but this woman, the one who looks so free and alive. You remember what that was like, don’t you? Before all the bills, being strapped with the mortgage on this cramped condo you can barely afford, and all the jobs with their slightly increasing salaries and corresponding increases in hours. You think she must rent. Could be that her parents pay for the place while she’s in school. No one with a house payment could be that full of life.

You’ve got to meet her. Someone with that energy and those looks is exactly what you need to pull you out of this rut you’re in. You can’t just keep going to work and doing the same thing everyday. It’s not healthy. You feel dead, but you’re too young to feel dead. You’re not that old. Plenty of people get married in their thirties. Why couldn’t you?

But how? How would you meet her? Can’t just wait downstairs on one of the garden benches. That would be creepy.

She’s drinking wine. That’s good. Maybe she’ll go to the bar after dinner. You can head down there now and get a few drinks in before she gets there to loosen up a bit. It’s Tuesday. Joe’s bartending, and there might be a band. She loves music.

There. The music from her place. You can hear it, but it’s not what you imagined. She’s still dancing, but it’s to “ABC” by The Jackson 5.

You’re watching her when you see something run down the hall of her apartment through the open window to the right. Was the window open this whole time? Could be a dog, but it’s not. It’s a kid, a boy. She grabs his hands, and they dance together until her husband puts down his wine glass and cuts in. You grab your coat and head to the bar. There might be a band.


Deron Eckert is a writer and attorney who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His poetry has appeared in Rattle Magazine, and his fiction has appeared in Sky Island Journal. He is currently seeking publication for his Southern Gothic, coming-of-age novel, which explores how personal experiences change our preconceived notions of right and wrong.

“Retreat” by Sue Alison


Every year I leave my work and my family and all the many distractions of my everyday
life behind and go on a five-day retreat in a remote monastery in the country to clear my mind by
doing and thinking of nothing. I take long walks in the mornings and in the afternoons sit quietly
reflecting on the essential meaning of life. The purpose of this, what I would in my everyday life
call being idle, is to rejoin the world renewed, refreshed, rejuvenated, restored.

But I can’t help noticing that the monks spend those same five days not in the idleness in
which I am engaged, the idleness I have been led to believe is essential to renewal, rejuvenation,
and restoration, at all. Not at all. No. They spend those same five days cooking, cleaning,
weeding the garden, harvesting the vegetables, and bottling the honey they sell by way of a lively
mail-order business. They spend their quiet moments not sitting in meditation, but mending their
own worn-out and wretched habits.



Sue Allison was a reporter for Life Magazine; her writing has also been published or is forthcoming in Best American Essays, Antioch Review, Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, DASH, El Portal, Harvard Review, (mac)ro(mic), New South, Streetlight Magazine, Threepenny Review, Flights, Fourth Genre, The Diagram, Isacoustic, Potato Soup Journal, Puerto del Sol, River Teeth, and a Pushcart Prize collection. She holds a BA in English from McGill University and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

“Lunch with Mother” By Gwyn Gorski


I watch you order your food
Your head slightly bent, expectant
Your soft black hair falling out from behind your ear
Your eyes focused on the awaited sustenance
I have never loved you so much in all my life
It hurts like hell
It settles in my neck like cold porridge
And scratches my eyes with salt
I love you so much that I wonder
If the God that you pray to could understand
What it is to have a love so hard and imperfect
So mixed with hate and hope
That it makes me want to drop to my knees in the food court
And sob it into something
You could touch


Gwyn Gorski is an amateur poet, inspired to write by the people and the salty, verdant scenery of her home on the North East Coast.

Three Short Poems by Carson Pierpont


-Drench-

Rainy day
Sketch

The dogs
Are so unhappy

They look human.


-Sermon-

The rain
Now falling harder,

At the mention of God.


-Thief-

Where’d the moon go
She said
And slipped her hand,

Into a coat pocket.


Carson Pierpont is a writer living in New York City who enjoys strolling Washington Square with the ghost of Mark Twain.

Two Poems by Susan Wilson


Pij

Matted.
Down and out.
The dust of crumbs
threaded through the sweat of rain,
preened out by an idle beak.
No matter that
the child kicked you,
the hawk hounded you
down and out.
You were Nelson’s friend
and you’re still mine.


The Worth of Words

Terse reply traded for verses
deemed mediocre laments
and lame attempts affirmed
in critique. Poetic powers weak
in designs drawn and quartered
among throngs of others’ work
executed with equal expectations.
Yet, failure
fans the heat of expansion
in mind where liberation
succeeds inane inspiration
freeing worthier words from a hand
then lacking but now intact
ready to be read again.


Susan Wilson is looking for people who not only hear what she is saying but are also listening. From East London, UK, she began writing poetry after her mother died in 2017. That loss opened the door to inspiration. She has been published by Lucy Writers, Snakeskin, Runcible Spoon, Dreich, Areopagus, Streetcake, Rue Scribe and Amethyst Review and her debut chapbook is “I Couldn’t Write to Save Her Life” (Dreich, 2021).


 

“Cowboys” by Don Niederfrank


On a horsehair sofa next to my Uncle Bud
watching Westerns on his old RCA.
He starts laughing at a cowboy in a bathtub.
When I ask him why, the old man says:
Your great grandpa told me the horsemen of the plains
didn’t want a soak after a hard day’s ride.
They’d wait for a night when there was a summer rain,
then they’d all get naked and go outside.
One would play a fiddle, and one would start to sing.
Young men being young men, they’d all dance around
tossing soap back and forth and getting themselves clean
in the fresh downpour stomping on the ground.
Far older now than Bud was then,
I still dream of cowboys dancing in the rain.


Don Niederfrank is a retired clergy person living in Wisconsin and delighting in the companionship of his wife, the wit of his friends, the forgiveness of his children, and often commutes to Chicago to enjoy the growth of his grandchildren. He is usually a very grateful and happy person.

“La Brea Tar Pits” by David Radford


These are asphalt pools with placid surface
Bubbles emerge in a slow graceful dance
Traps for large creatures in bygone ages
Who weren’t careful enough at pool edges

Just a few steps in and the seeds were sown
For the creature’s fate to be set in stone
To slowly sink into a toxic glue
Finally pass completely out of view

Though La Brea pools are a hazard no longer
There is a pool posing immediate danger

An expanding pool with seething surface
Bubbles emerge in an explosive dance
A trap for all things in our current age
Which do not evade its dynamic edge

Just a few yards in and the seeds are sown
For the victim’s fate to be set in stone
To slowly sink into a toxic glue
Finally pass completely out of view


David Radford is a retired college professor who loves gardening and the great outdoors. Creative writing has been a welcome change from the technical writing his career demanded.

“Here’s That Map of the World Again” by Kate Bowers


I handed you a map of the world.
“Been there. Done that,” you said.
But what do you remember of those
Jewel dark caves, the green drip of moss
Across trees?
“No one ever asks me that,” you said.
“Not once in all this time.”
Maybe you should tell them,
Let them see where the waves touched
You.
“Here’s a map to the heart,” I said,
“Start with this.”


Kate Bowers is a writer based out of Pittsburgh, PA. She has been published previously in “The Ekphrastic Review,” “Rue Scribe,” “Sheila-Na-Gig,” and in the anthology “Pandemic Evolution: Poets Respond to the Art of Matthew Wolfe,” edited by Hayley Haugen.

“The Turning Point” by Veronica Robinson


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.

“Memory Loss” by April Best


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.