An online journal for small literature
If god did not create
the universe, the thought
of him was at least enough
to call it to our attention.
Anthropologist Joel Savishinsky’s first attempts at poetry happened in the Canadian Arctic. While trapping and caribou hunting with native people, he contemplated his frostbitten toes, and began to write a few lines in his field journal’s margins. Since then, poetry has helped him to stay warm and ease life’s pain.
Found some old poems
written when I was a university student,
thought myself being smart
inside a dusty library,
where silence camouflaged loneliness
and ignorance. Books smelled
of aged pages, over thumbed-
nothing like my old poems
that reeked of a plastic bin,
which sat quiet as a coffin
for years, but no resurrection,
just a grave robbery
motivated by boredom
and a new interest in recycling paper.
Richard LeDue currently lives and teaches in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada, where the winter nights are long and cold. This is why he writes so much poetry in the winter months, but he also hates the heat, so the summer months also prove productive. It is almost a guarantee that any of his work that speaks of nature is based on pure hearsay.
She gazes upon an aperture unfolding, holy
Through walnut limbs,
the sun glistens
an unsuppressed view floats through an eyelet
a button for her thoughts
newly washed and drying just beyond the vineyard
their stays sway over sun-bleached decks of schooners
floorboards waxed in honey
mellifluous, ripe
waltzing…
her husband’s woody hands upon her hips
upon her lips
ripening mellifluous
she dandles infants from pedicels under the olive tree
through an aperture of a walnut tree
the scent of white cinnamon sands
and notes of jasmine
the aroma of bread, butter and buttons…
lingers
A Mexican-American poet residing in Fresno, CA, Kimberly Vargas Agnese loves walking barefoot and spending time outdoors. She believes that the sacred is as close as a human’s breath and enjoys playing the Native American flute. To read more of Kimberly’s work, please visit www.bucketsonabarefootbeach.com.
Never learned to play a musical instrument
like a drum in a marching band,
wasn’t good at following others
around, timing steps and beats
together, plus my parents were
lower middle class (a nice way
of saying “poor,” so we couldn’t
afford live music, even had to dub cassettes
borrowed from my mother’s friends.
Took us a while to catch up
to CD’s. Now, my child dances
instead of talking (made it to
upper middle class, which means
there’s enough money to keep
bill collectors from calling,
and songs on my phone, paid for
by a credit card that’ll take
eighty some years to repay),
his words few and out of context,
but reminds me that some of the best music
requires no lyrics.
Richard LeDue currently lives and teaches in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada, where the winter nights are long and cold. This is why he writes so much poetry in the winter months, but he also hates the heat, so the summer months also prove productive. It is almost a guarantee that any of his work that speaks of nature is based on pure hearsay.
Held within succulent stars, a sun beam flows
spritzing boughs of the willow oak
within its twigs,
a blue-throat bird
springs notes of aqueous hope
within this golden hope,
an egg laid amidst tiara’s twigs
an aqueous yolk
a sunbeam perches on the tree
held by succulent stars
A Mexican-American poet residing in Fresno, CA, Kimberly Vargas Agnese loves walking barefoot and spending time outdoors. She believes that the sacred is as close as a human’s breath and enjoys playing the Native American flute. To read more of Kimberly’s work, please visit www.bucketsonabarefootbeach.com.
There is something wholly immutable
in these simple auguries
I will tell you-
1.Walking round the same two aisles
though the breads are stagnant patches,
same rye, indelible wheat, silent buttermilk,
until my head floats above my body
all proofs and prices meaningless.
2.Orbitting steady as planetary fiction
from fridge to stove, from fridge to stove,
to find the gutted onion to fry
to grab another twin-bellied egg
to toss into the cheap, old skillet without care.
3.Cradling a grieving broth in a simple spoon
as it dances under heavy breathing,
readying itself bravely for the mouth.
They are so unhappily every-day-ish
and unremarkably colored browns and yellow-browns.
Though they make smiling secrets on the tongue,
though they make sleep and sex and laughter
and sorrow and sweat and sauntering too.
Holly Eva Allen is a writer currently living in California. She has a degree in linguistics and English from the University of California. Her work has been previously published in magazines and sites such as Levee Magazine, Blue Unicorn, and The Slanted House.
I spent nights writing you,
Not longhand but in the notes section of my phone.
Because I can’t bring myself
to tell you how much I miss
You. How you weren’t just a lover
But my best friend.
I still feel your lips lingering on my neck,
mostly at night.
That’s when you visit me.
Now I’ve taken to sleeping during the day
so I never miss you –
at night.
How can I feel so small,
in one of the biggest cities?
The city that suffers from overpopulation.
Yet somehow,
I always find myself alone.
Not exactly without you but instead
with phantom you.
Every song, every painting, every book
You keep coming back.
You were like a daydream
Now it’s left me wondering if you were even real at all.
I promised myself I wasn’t a half
But
Without you,
I don’t feel whole.
Brittany DeLuca is a NYC based poet who can be found in the darkest corner of a cafe. She writes about imaginary lovers and sometimes puts a twist of truth in there.
The dog barks on the other side of the fence. We can’t see it, but my brother and I think it’s big, the kind with drool forever swinging from its black lips. It growls deep and idle like the exhaust from our father’s car. My older brother kicks the algae coated fence, rattles it, and laughs when the dog goes berzerk. I laugh with him. I laugh with him because he is my brother, and the fence our father built was solid.
“Look, hurry,” he says.
A rabbit has found its way into the yard, and as soon as I see it, I try and hit it with a muddy rubber ball I found lying in the grass. It must have had one way in and forgotten where. The rabbit dashes from corner to corner, to the center of the yard, then under the deck. We try to hit it with pebbles. We can’t see him, but we can hear him.
“I have an idea,” my brother says, and grabs the garden hose, turns it on, sprays everywhere under the deck to flush the animal out.
The rabbit scampers out between us. We jump and shriek, pretend to be knocked over and roll on the grass. I grab the nozzle and chase it around the yard, never empathizing. The rabbit finds a spot to squeeze under the back fence and flattens itself, hind legs kicking in a fever, small brown plumes of dirt. Then he’s gone.
The dog on the other side of the fence erupts. We can only hear the beast chase him. The barking fades and returns and fades and returns until there is nothing but silence.
My brother presses his ear up against the fence and says, “I don’t hear anything.” I press my ear, as well. “He probably went inside.”
For a while, we walk the circumference of the yard armed with one branch each; a walking stick, a sword, a rifle, a scepter. Whatever it may be, mine is mine, and his is his.
When we navigate near the rear fence again, the dog bark returns. Its white paws dig at the ground where the rabbit had escaped. My brother grabs the garden hose and sprays the dog’s paws, trying to shoo it, but he only makes the animal filthy. He sprays again, and this time, the water washes the ground, and the hole deepens. The dog thrusts its head through the space. It is our first time seeing the animal, his long white snout streamlined with muddy snot. He growls and shows his teeth and gums matted with rabbit fur. My brother isn’t laughing, so I am not laughing. I don’t laugh because he is my brother, and the fence my father built might not have been as sound as we had thought.
“What do we do?” I ask him, and he doesn’t answer me. He always answers me. He always answers questions, my older brother does. But he stands still and numb, eyes fixated on the snarling animal working the hole in the ground. Its paws burrow for a while, and then it thrusts its maw farther in each time in revolutions. It shows us its teeth again, yellow crescent moons slick with saliva.
When the dog digs far enough to show us its eyes, we’re both surprised that its eyes are blue just like mine, not like my brother’s. The dog’s irises are black and focused. There’s a pause when eye contact is made. It seems forever. Then the dog thrashes in a frenzy, and my brother jumps backward, stumbles, and drops his stick on the ground.
“Pick it up,” I say.
He glances at me as if he hadn’t heard me.
I repeat it the way dad would, “Pick it up.”
He picks it up. He waits for me as I have always waited for him. I have never seen him make the face he makes when I grin. It must have seemed a menacing expression soundtracked to the growl of the beast, a beast with both eyes now past the bottom of the fence. I grip my branch with both hands, baseball grip the way dad showed us, and I strike the animal between the eyes that are just like mine. The dog yelps and whimpers off. An old man yells at it from a distance. A door closes. I turn to my brother and raise the stick high above my head, a triumphant warrior, a field general, a guardian of our yard. And I laugh and then he laughs. He laughs with me because he is my brother and because these branches are strong.
Salvatore Sodano is a writer and member of the English honor society Sigma Tau Delta at Southern New Hampshire University, where he earned his BA in creative writing with a summa cum laude distinction. Besides being a writer of dark fiction, he’s a husband, father of two boys, and an FDNY firefighter since 2003. This flash piece “A Call to Arms” is inspired by his two small sons as they navigate the backyard during the quarantine orders from Corona Virus.
It was a screen door summer day in a sleepy Midwestern town. July came on like a blowtorch, augmented by enough humidity to form a small lake. And on this one day, nothing would have been more refreshing than a root beer float from the local drive-in.
And that’s where Steve and his Schwinn were headed. However, not for the float. Steve needed a summer job and needed it badly. His allowance didn’t get him through the week and he was getting intense pressure from his folks to get a job.
Walking into the drive-in, the smell of freshly baked doughnuts enveloped him in a sugary haze. That’s when he remembered that doughnuts were the other claim to fame of this establishment. They made the kind of doughnuts that doughy dreams were made of. Local legend held that the owner had some incredible machine in the basement and this machine produced the perfect doughnut.
Before he knew it, Steve’s ship had come in. The owner needed a doughnut maker and needed one now. Within minutes, Steve was donning an apron and following the owner downstairs to become an official doughnut maker.
Orders were being yelled. “I need 6 maple glazed!” Seconds later, “Gimme’ a dozen chocolate and two strawberry!” The place was way behind in doughnut orders and the frazzled owner soon had to run off to a meeting. So Steve’s learning curve on this giant, bubbling, burbling stainless steel doughnut birthplace was scary short.
“Kid, you get your batter into this big vat. Then just pour it in, like now!”
“While it’s pouring, press these three buttons in this exact order, Green. Blue. Red.
Do ‘em out of order and you got problems.”
“Make sure the fat stays above this line.”
“Get the frostings outta’ that fridge before ‘dem donuts come floatin’ to you like an armada.”
“Go back to the buttons and hold…I mean HOLD the blue button for 5 seconds. Miss that step and…well, you don’t wanna’ know what could happen.”
“I gotta’ go.”
With that, the owner scampered up the stairs and was gone. Meanwhile, the vat with the batter continued pouring a prodigious batch of batter into the boiling fat and one immense doughnut was forming. It was never Steve’s intention to create the world’s largest doughnut. That one weighed 1.7 tons and measured 16 feet wide. But this one was quickly becoming a strong contender for second place.
In full panic mode, Steve looked around for something, anything, he could use to rescue this fast-growing doughnut. He spotted a shovel and somehow hoisted a doughnut the size of an airplane tire out of the fat. Rolling it across the floor, he spotted a canvas drop cloth and covered it.
As the orders continued to be shouted down from above, Steve spotted an exit door, hopped on his Schwinn and spent the rest of the summer at his grandma’s house in a nearby town.
Once she heard his story, she raised his allowance.
With his years of working as an advertising agency creative director in his rear view mirror, James now enjoys the freedom of a freelance writing career. He also enjoys the relaxed dress code.
Roaming in the forest on adulthood’s eve,
are those whispering voices or do ears deceive?
An uneasy sense of being observed,
then fog rolls in and the path is obscured.
A drink from the spring, then lay down to sleep,
despite youthful strength, the body grows weak.
Pixies approach in the moonlit night,
whisper and sprinkle with wanton delight.
Make ready the chosen from youth to be freed,
empowering with potential and creating a need.
Dreams of fertility and a more fecund worth,
transformation, rapture and a glorious rebirth.
Awaken renewed in a feminine idyll,
endowed with the capacity to bear a child.
Bill Diamond lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and writes to try and figure it all out.