October, 2018

Two pieces by Tracy Brooks

Beach Bum Blu

Pushed and swirled by currents, exhausted aquamarine ripples wash the coconut onto powdered sand. Travel-weary, it lies there; hot sunlight bubbling spongy flesh. Journey’s end.

Beach Bum Blu

Blue toes. Blue heart.
Pain swells with wave surges.
Her beach. Her baby. No more.
Snatched by the ocean, swept to the mermaids.
Greedy Neptune.

Tracy Brooks realised that turning 50 was a slap in the face – mortality didn’t merely appear on her horizon, it became measurable! It was at this point that she reinvented herself and began roaming in a completely new direction. After completing the SA Writers College Magazine Journalism course with distinction in 2012 and with her two fledged sons rather delinquent in their grandchildren-production duties, she began to fill the space in her empty nest with writing. Together with her husband, she travels in southern and East Africa, keen to see and experience everything she can before a Zimmer frame clips her wings. Her interests include the environment, travel, reading, the bush and outdoors, food, wine and gardening and she believes firmly that the joy of writing is better than botox.

 

Bikini with a Martini by Kimberly Osgood

That is how I got him and made him leave her.
Now there’s another Martini and a new bikini.
That is how I lost him.

Kimberly Osgood lives and writes in Miami, Florida with her fiance Ian.
Her work has appeared in Paragraph Planet and 50 Word Stories. Her preferred poolside drink is champagne.

 

Two pieces by Madeline Mora-Summonte

Relentless Ruby

She scours the stain, a scar crossing centuries.

Desperate, she weeps. Haunted, she scrubs.

Blood from a murder holds fast.

Especially if it’s your own.

 

Find Me An Oasis

The sun sets.

Tom stops pretending. This new world is barren, devastated.

He turns away from the mannequins wearing tropical shirts, bikinis.

The gun rises.

Madeline Mora-Summonte is a writer, a reader, a beach-comber and a tortoise-owner. She is the author of the flash fiction collections The People We Used to Be and Garden of Lost Souls. Visit her online at http://www.MadelineMora-Summonte.com.

 

Penny Talk by Suzanne Cottrell

“Penny for your thoughts.”

“Try a dollar,” she smiled.

“I’ll read your mind instead.”

Cheapskate. “Really? Good luck.”

This blind date can’t end soon enough.

Suzanne Cottrell, an Ohio buckeye by birth, lives with her husband and three rescue dogs in rural Piedmont North Carolina. An outdoor enthusiast and retired teacher, she enjoys reading, writing, knitting, hiking, Pilates, and yoga. Her flash fiction has appeared in Dragon Poet Review, The Pop Machine (Inwood Indiana Press), Dual Coast Magazine, and Nailpolish Stories, A Tiny and Colorful Literary Journal. Riding the writing journey waves as long as it lasts.

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