September: Happy First Birthday, NS.

Happy first birthday, Nailpolish Stories, my colorful, unpredictable, and growing baby.  To celebrate, I am re-running the first nailpolish story which went live September 5th, 2011.  Thank you, readers and contributors, for your trust, your enthusiasm, and your continued love of small sparkly things.  And for allowing this literary babe to become a toddler. 

Much love,

Nicole Monaghan

Posh Trash by Nicole Monaghan

We wrapped borrowed scarves around our curved hips, as if that were payment.  Mom snapped her gum, looked into our eyes, sorry, asked about lay-away.

Nicole Monaghan is founding and managing editor of Nailpolish Stories and editor of Stripped, A Collection of Anonymous Flash (PS Books 2011).  Her first collection of short fiction, Want, Wound is the 2012 winner of the Burning River Press Annual Fiction Contest and is forthcoming in spring, 2013.  Visit her at http://writenic.wordpress.com

Show Me The Ring by Bruce Harris

The payday was smaller than the town. Whatever. For the first time, I was clean. “You ready?” my trainer asked. I responded with four words.

Bruce Harris enjoys relaxing with a Marxman

 

Three pieces byAnnmarie Lockhart

 

Skin Deep

you made me

promises

like birth marks

or tumors caught early

unrooted

sitting on the

surface, superficial spots

covered

up with powder

or excised clean and quick

Pink Diamond

not a gem

but a base

on the field

beckoning

home after

a high fly

hit over the wall

through Mrs. J’s

bedroom

window

again.

Brandie Alexander

initials carved

on the tree

BT + AG

prom night

tipsy

on peach

schnapps and

midnight

beach

still sweet

on each other

a lifetime later

Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to bringing poetry into the every day, and the founder of unbound CONTENT, an independent press for a boundless age. A lifelong resident of Bergen County NJ, she lives, works, and writes 2 miles east of the hospital where she was born.

 

Up Front and Personal by Jody

He looks at me, I stare back.

He’s handsome. There’s tension.

I gasp as his hands touch my chest,

then shove me off the bridge.

Jody is a British fitness freak and inveterate procrastinator.  She spends her working days painting her nails, learning new words and never finishing what she . . .

Vampsterdam by Paul Lock

A child harmed?  The culprit found.  A beating pulse.  My claws expand.  A scratch to taste.  My eyes flash red.  And then I gorge… justice. 

Paul is a techno-geek with a love for language, who’s aiming to swap his day job in front of the computer supporting software, for a day job in front of the computer being an author… although he still won’t wear nailpolish J. He can be contacted at ‘paul.lock@outlook.com’.

Three pieces by Chad Greene

Blue My Mind

When her wealthy husband’s affairs turn her world upside down, the old trophy wife who was once a young gymnast starts walking on her hands.

Cuddle by the Fire

After we stomp down the freshly turned dirt with our white cheer shoes, we brush them with our pom-poms and bounce back to the bonfire.

Naked Truth

My husband served me with divorce papers because he thought I had aborted his baby. I signed them, though, because it hadn’t been his baby. 

A graduate of the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California, Chad Greene is an assistant professor of English at Cerritos College. His writing has appeared in the Journal of Microliterature, Nanoism, Southern California Review, The Southlander, and the flash-fiction collection Book by Authors. Earlier this summer, he earned an honorable mention in the Ninth Annual Ultra-Short Competition.

 

 

Two pieces by Charlotte Lock

Lucky Lucky Lavender

A four leaf clover.  A horseshoe upright.  A rainbow.  A pot of gold.  So I’ve been told.  Coins and lanterns.  Knocking on wood. Luck.

Hearts And Tarts

A glimpse of sweat.  The heart speeds up.  The smile lit so bright. It all felt right.  A tear of joy.  Somebody to love. You.

Charlotte Lock is from Bradford.  She is thirteen years old.

Two pieces by Erin Garlock

Pink Lingerie

English class is awesome.  I hate the teacher, I hate the subject, but Jenny Heinrich’s pants hang low and I can see her pink panties.

Wild Strawberry

Sunsets on Sundays bring closure.  Another weekend is spent, to our homes we must go.  On my pillow, her hair.  On my mind, our love.

Erin Garlock, having written far too much software using every character on the keyboard except the alphabet, enjoys escaping into the world of real words when the opportunity presents itself.  When not actually at a keyboard, he has a penchant for photographing churches with his wife Colleen.

Shine: An Elemental Trilogy of Summer by M.C. Harris

Silver Elements

He stood alone at the shoreline, looked her way as a slant of sunlight reached her sterling necklace, the silver spark that caught his eye.

Golden Conduct

Intelligence, grace, generosity.  Her friends called him golden… “Golden Boy,” but only in whispers, as if there were shame in perfection, or in recognizing it.

Kinetic Copper

Suntanned wrap of her legs, copper warmth, is what he remembered long after she was gone, having convinced herself he was too good for her.

Well, nobody’s perfect, M.C. figures.  And we grownups know that, don’t we?  We know not to expect perfection from ourselves or from anyone else, because that’s just not fair, is it?  Not fair to ourselves or to anyone else.  Nope.  No, Sir.  Because perfection is impossible, and as grownups, we know not to ask the impossible, right?  In spite of the impending supernova, in spite of every stressful thing that makes us want to roll up into a big baby ball and cry, or makes us want to assume our most-practiced fetal position and just sort of, you know, stop for a couple of minutes, sometimes we just have to be grownups.  Am I right?  Hello?

Advertisement

June

 Castaway: A Black And White Story In Five Shades

by David Tomaloff  

 

 

 [i.] Her Intelligent Constellation

 

The word star in all its connotations; how summer sinks its teeth into waiting skin. Which boy is your favorite? she asks a faceless sky.

 

[ii.] Navigate Her

Answers hide their faces & fail to fall, neither as riddles nor as rain. The night sky is a con; of this, she’s become certain.

 

[iii.] Waltz

The word sea in all its connotations; how water caresses the tops of thighs. Which girl is the fairest? she asks of another passing ship.

 

[iv.] Carnival

She asks, but a passing ship is not a boy: her there wading in the water on the morning she left to join the sea.

 

[v.] Fiji

A young summer is rife with the consequences of prayers for certainty: we may ask a shark for directions; it might then follow us home.

David Tomaloff is a writer, photographer, musician, and an all-around bad influence. His work has appeared in several anthologies and in fine publications such as Mud Luscious, A-Minor, >kill author, PANK, and elimae. He is the author of several chapbooks, including 13 (Artistically Declined Press), and A SOFT THAT TOUCHES DOWN &REMOVES ITSELF (NAP and Red Ceilings Press). His book of collaborative poetry with Ryan W. Bradley, YOU ARE JAGUAR, is due out summer 2012 from Artistically Declined Press. He resides in the form of ones and zeros at: davidtomaloff.com

 

Porcini by Annmarie Lockhart

He preferred steak,

rare, with red wine,

but all she ever ate

was fungus that grew

along the tree roots.

They chose heartache

over stomachache.

Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to bringing poetry into the every day, and the founder of unbound CONTENT, an independent press for a boundless age. A lifelong resident of Bergen County NJ, she lives, works, and writes 2 miles east of the hospital where she was born.

 

No More Film

Anonymous

Too many moments lived through a glass lens and thrown in that musty drawer, she hugged her son as he blew out his seven candles.

 

Liquid Vinyl by Tracy Hauser

The needle scratched your spin back and forth, and sweatbands on wet hair pumped your choices.  The blue strobe flashes on your rises and falls.

Tracy Hauser is an MFA graduate student at the University of Baltimore’s Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program.  Currently she is the editor of the Strange Detours online magazine.  She has been published in the latest issue of Abandoned Towers Magazine, the Urbanite, Epiphany Magazine, Marco Polo Arts Magazine, Writer’s Underground, Trivial Typewriter, the Colonnades Literary Magazine, Literary Brushstrokes, Blood & Roses, The Rusty Nail, and for the 2012 4th edition of Welcome Hon, You’re in Baltimore!.  She is involved around the city in promoting writing through project-based learning activities for schools and organizations. 

 

Two pieces by JY Saville

Flight of Fancy

He rode in on a silver horse and took them by surprise. She’d said come in character but hadn’t specified whose. He used his own.

Naked Truth

I watch the petals fall and know with sudden clarity that this marks the end. With those bare stalks, the last of us is gone.

JY Saville writes in the North of England and blogs at http://thousandmonkeys.wordpress.com; the nails that tap at her keyboard are not always purple.

 

 

Blue Lagoon by Joanna M. Weston

A long shallow dive into the blue of sunlit water.  Reach up, grab her wrinkled old ankles.  Pull her down.  And the inheritance is mine.

Joanna M. Weston has had poetry, reviews, and short stories published in anthologies and journals for twenty-five years. 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/

 

 

March

Green Glow 84 by Nathaniel Tower

Signs warned me, but the glowing green pool sang Siren song. Burned like ocean water on papercuts. I prefer ocean, but radiant green is me.

Nathaniel Tower writes fiction, teaches English, and manages the online lit magazine Bartleby Snopes. His short fiction has appeared in over 100 online and print magazines and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His story “The Oaten Hands” was named one of 190 notable stories by storySouth’s Million Writers Award in 2009. His first novel, A Reason To Kill, was released in July 2011 through MuseItUp Publishing. Visit him at www.bartlebysnopes.com/ntower.htm

 

Birthday Babe by Kim Stump

Balloons deflate beneath pink banners; tears tip her lashes. “Where are they, Mommy?”

 “I don’t know, Sweetie”.

 Ding-dong. We jump, surprised. They’ve come after all.

Kim Stump lives inCharlotte,NC and writes fiction, memoir, and bible studies.

Three pieces by Caroline Coolidge Brown

 Louvre Me, Louvre Me Not

“Does that mean yes?” he asks me. One word can change everything. Whitewash a life submerged in shadows. I give him my Mona Lisa smile.

I’m Not Really A Waitress

Don’t let the grease-stained apron fool you. The Waffle House is not, I repeat, NOT my final destination. ‘Cause, Baby, I’m the next American Idol.

I’m Not Really A Waitress

The eggs congeal and turn cold on your plate as I watch the blood pool on the floor. You won’t call me that ever again.

Caroline Coolidge Brown writes, paints and teaches visual journaling in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bright green toenails make her happy. Check out her artwork at www.CarolineCBrown.com.

 

 

Forget Now by Madeline Mora-Summonte

He sold his mother’s tattered relics at a yard sale. Her favorite ashtray went for fifty cents. His memories weren’t worth much more than that.

Madeline Mora-Summonte (http://MadelineMora-Summonte.blogspot.com) reads, writes and breathes fiction in all its forms.

Two pieces by Annmarie Lockhart

Gettin’ Miss Piggy With It

red glitter against
green lace on white skin,
the sparkles made me do it,
click the photo, hit send
wait for your reply
and smile

Honey Bun

she could have told him
but he would have
thought her vain
so she let him find out
for himself how sweet
she really was

Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to bringing poetry into the every day, and the founder of unbound CONTENT, an independent press for a boundless age. A lifelong resident of BergenCounty NJ, she lives, works, and writes two miles east of the hospital where she was born.

 

 

Electric Blue by Lisa Nielson

Reflecting off the sand like the clash of every sky, and the beach out of place and for once not the center of the universe

Lisa Nielsen is a single mother trying to balance the mundane with the grooviness of writing.

Two pieces by Mary Struble Deery

 

Clear

Wheeled in, he’s inert, gray and without a pulse. Illuminated like a conductor on stage, Doctor Glass raises his paddles and hollers, “charge, clear, go!”   

Cosmo-Not Tonight Honey

The Russian vodka spill is sticky. Lipstick is smeared. Tripping on her dangling scarf she catches herself before stumbling out the door, into the cold.

Mary Struble Deery fancies herself to be an artist. Not a sculptor or painter, but a “Word Arranger.” She’d prefer playing Scrabble with words. Individual letters, even if they’re Z’s and Q’s, worth a whopping 10 points each, don’t satisfy. Mary worked in the media side of advertising, with numbers and dollars, so never had a chance to unleash her creative side. She’s now making up for lost time. If you want to find Mary, put her keyboard coordinates into your GPS. There you’ll find her fingers flying all over.

Three pieces by Lisa Otter

An Affair In Red Square

He met her at Saint Basil’s Cathedral just after he danced his last Troika. His hair gamboled in a kinky tangle, but she never detected.

Lincoln Park After Dark

Magic Slim’s riffs drift through Lilly’s. The blond messenger guzzles another gin and tonic and waits for the bandleader. Lincoln wants him at the zoo.          

O’Hare & Nails Look Great!

Whenever we knew that someone’s dad was flying out, we’d lie on our backs in G.G. Rowell Park making letters with our bodies. HELLO DAD.

Lisa Otter grew up across the street from G.G. Rowell Park in Lincolnwood, IL and now lives in Charlotte, NC where she dabbles in a great many things including rubber stamping, writing and photography. Her dream job?  Master creator of nail polish colors for OPI.  Check out her newest project, a 365 blog with help from her iPhone, at http://365iphonepictures.blogspot.com