February
Two pieces by Bl Pawelek
China Glaze White
With teeth, I pull the white sheets tighter around wrists and hands. I don’t want them smaller like Chinese foot binding. I want them gone.
Deep Space
I taste my wife’s lips as the dawn sets. God’s love rests in my breast pocket. “Go on.” It does as instructed, my eyes closed.
Bl Pawelek is a dad, hiker and writer. He grew up on a small Japanese island (kinda true) and wonders if his Master’s Degree in Literature was worth it (still not sure). There are stories, poems and plenty of art (Google search). The Equation of Constants and Ten Everywhere and the unfirm line. He tries to show mad love to everyone, especially you.
Skinny Jeans by Brian Baumgart
She holds the line, long fingers on the doorframe, skinny jeans slung low. With pitch and scream, her daughter rails about the lack of fairness.
Brian Baumgart is the Coordinator of Creative Writing at North Hennepin Community College just outside Minneapolis. He holds an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from various journals, including Ruminate, Blue Earth Review, Blood and Honey Review, Tipton Poetry Review, and Blink-Ink.
Two pieces by Laura C. Alonso
Ballet Pink
Pale and lovely, these reliable shoes perform–allowing her to dance around all sorts of things you never see that take place behind the scenery.
Peach Skin
No sweet fruit to nourish the spirit, just a thin film that veils each day–velvet cheeks, never kissed . . . the souls of our unborn children.
Laura C. Alonso‘s work has been published in In Posse Revie, Linnaean Street, 3AM Magazine, SFWP, and other online literary journals. She is the former Senior Editor of Fictionline Press and former Fiction Editor of The God Particle (two sorely missed online venues), and she was was a finalist in the Santa Fe Writer’s Project’s Literary Awards Program in 2001, 2002, and 2010.
Dream-Maker by Joanna M. Weston
She sipped the wine; poured more into the glass. Pictured Tom, his hands on her shoulders, breasts. She lifted her glass again. ‘Dream-maker,’ she whispered.
Joanna M. Weston has two cats, multiple spiders, a herd of deer, and a line of prayer flags. Her middle-reader, Those Blue Shoes, published by Clarity House Press; and poetry, A Summer Father, published by Frontenac House of Calgary. http://www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com/
Lincoln Park After Dark by MM Wittle
“KAFKA ON THE SHORE” confounded two more theatergoers. Terrance sliced the salty, autumn air, “Molly’s?” Sasha tugged his hand. “Yes.” They craved normalcy and cupcakes.
MM Wittle is a Professor at Neumann University. MM has an MFA from Rosemont College in Rosemont, PA in Creative Writing. Her thesis, “Family Guidance” and “The Education of Allie Rose” are two plays that won Thesis of Distinction from RosemontCollege. “Family Guidance” had a reading at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, PA and was selected for honorable mentioned at the 5th Annual Philadelphia Theatre Workshop’s Playwriting Competition. “The Education of Allie Rose” was a finalist in the Philadelphia Ethical Society Playwriting competition. For the past six years, MM has been a fiction board member of the local non-profit literary magazine, Philadelphia Stories and has written many book reviews and countless blogs for them. MM has also written four book reviews for the creative non-fiction magazine, www.brevitymag.com.
Copper Coast by Helen Losse
The lake was drained to fix the bridge. Sky blue water gave way to brick-red, sun-cracked mud. Copper Coast is a misnomer for what’s yet-to-return.
Helen Losse is a Winston-Salem poet, the author of two full length books, Seriously Dangerous (Main Street Rag, 2011) and Better With Friends (Rank Stranger Press, 2009) and two chapbooks, Gathering the Broken Pieces and Paper Snowflakes. A reprint of Paper Snowflakes is forthcoming in March 2012 with the title Mansion of Memory. A part of the proceeds from this chapbook will go to the Joplin (MO) Bright Futures Tornado Fund to help poor children affected by the 2011 tornado in Helen’s hometown. Her recent poetry publications and acceptances include Main Street Rag, Iodine Poetry Review, Blue Fifth Review, The Pedestal Magazine, ken*again, Referential, and Literary Trails of the North Carolina Piedmont. Helen’s poems have been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and three times for a Best of the Net award, one of which was a finalist. She is the Poetry Editor for online literary magazine The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Helen uses nail polish to paint angel statues, so she looks for colors she wouldn’t actually choose for her nails as well as the ones she would.
Russian Roulette by Melissa Ann Goodwin
Yolanda loads one bullet, spins the chamber and slides the gun across the table. Grinning, but not in a good way, she says, “You first.”
Melissa Ann Goodwin is author of The Christmas Village.
Peach Lover by E.C. Norris
He kept her indoors, with dim lights, from flush eyes. A Creole love call shook the walls, window scraped open. Climbing out, winter flayed her.
E.C. Norris forgoes regular bedtimes, with mixed results.
Smoky Canvas by Dan Sicoli
The allure was bending her into shapes. At first I thought she did it with mirrors, until I realized I had walked into a fog.
Dan Sicoli is an editor with Slipstream Magazine and press. Car fenders, broken guitar strings, party dresses, and three-legged dogs have often made their way into his writing. He also oven dries his own garden tomatoes.
Two pieces by Bruce Harris
Dark Room
He removed the closet door and took pictures with his camera. The fire marshal found traces of him and the door, but not the photos.
High Maintenance
She was beautiful, but keeping her home was impossible. There were constant oil changes, carburetors, timing belts, tune-ups, you name it, and she needed it.
Bruce Harris enjoys relaxing with a Marxman.
Nailpolish Stories 