NS’s first quarterly issue: April.

Two pieces by Tori Bond

Not You

I can knit glittery skyscrapers, bake fresh new worlds, heal wounds with a tender touch, but the alchemy of my words can’t make you stay.

 Clawing the Carpet

She rocked on hands and knees, coddling pain with her thoughts, and prayed to the carpet gods, “please don’t let this tiny heartbeat slip away.” 

Tori Bond is a recovering housewife working her MFA in Creative Writing program at Rosemont College. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Every Day Fiction, Monkeybicycle, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Hoot.

 

 

Darkest Red Sunset by Colin W. Campbell

Christopher Columbus looked up and saw five Grumman Avengers heading east but he said nothing to the crew for they were already a mutinous lot.

Originally from Scotland, Colin is ever-so-lucky to live in the lovely green island of Borneo and faraway in southwest China.

Cotton Candy by Jeff Switt

Spinning saucers filled with feminine adolescence. Teddy bears and cotton candy. The carnival ride operator leers with impunity. He wipes his lips and looks again.

Jeff Switt likes to write.

Two pieces by Ami Allen-Vath

Cloud 9

Aaaah, closure.

Her heart, still shades of broken blue, finally breathes.

Snapping a photograph to see how it looks to feel beautiful

she floats away

24/7

Mary meets me at the bottom of my fall with warm arms

Then patches the bloody knee of my favorite jeans

The hug never fades.

Ami Allen-Vath lives and writes in a small town along the shores of New Jersey.  Her family is perfectly crazy and complete with a husband, boy, girl, and a dog called Yoda.  She has a handful of works in progress and is currently trying to keep calm and carry on while lit agents look over her contemporary YA novel manuscript. 

 

Two pieces by Joanna M. Weston

Ruby Ribbons

Flying down the hill on her bike, singing as loud as she could . . . her ponytail came loose, ribbons caught in her mouth, choked her song.

Demure

Wide blue eyes, blond curls, and the sweetest smile this side of heaven. She wears a frilled dress and Mary-Jane shoes: Grandmother as a child.

Joanna M. Weston is married; has two cats, multiple spiders, a herd of deer, and two derelict hen-houses. Her middle-reader, ‘Those Blue Shoes’, published by Clarity House Press; and poetry, ‘A Summer Father’, published by Frontenac House of Calgary. Her eBook, ‘The Willow Tree Girl’ at her blog: http://www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com/

Arm Candy by Kate Ramsey

My useless hands shake as if they knew a purpose.  As if they had a secret that they refused to share with the rest of me.

Kate Ramsey is a mother, artist, and bored housewife.

Two pieces by Lisa Nielsen

Baby’s Breath

The filler flower lasts the longest, but as usual you disregard what pulls the bouquet together–your nose in the bud pretending it is heaven.

 After Sex

Our bodies were trapped by the intimacy of words–and touching only brought back longing and silence.  I wanted to know you better than this.

Lisa Nielsen, though not a native, has made Staten Island her home and her inspiration.