Our story, poetry, and visual art competition titled The Symmetry of Flaws, is presently underway.
Writing accepted in the following categories: short stories - fiction or non, poetry, one-act plays, and scenes from screenplays. All must encompass the theme - and be capped at 5000 words. Continue Reading »
by Robert S. King
Always my feet are a split second behind my heart,
almost winners. My chest is nearly
thick enough to reach the tape
and snap it louder than the gun.
Imagine me wearing the magic number,
running toward the award of a woman
who would change her name for me. Continue Reading »
by Mark Jackley
In print
your death convinces.
Already
smaller you
slip over the transom, two
by three column inches. Continue Reading »
by Saskia Sansom
In them hollering trees
donny dolland,
he lived alone
in one of them
old tin homes
in the bush
surrounded
by black sand and
blue gums
he’d nothin
but a few
gas bottles
fishin rods
and a pot belly stove
at night time, he’d
walk to the place
where they met
dressed in nothin
but his hard yakka shorts
and blundstones Continue Reading »
by Gary Beck
When Roy Cafferty got to Paris for the last part of his European trip, he needed an inexpensive room. He walked the streets, stopping and inquiring at small hotels and pensions, but they all cost more than he could afford. People looked at the tall, blond haired young man, dressed in a rumpled, baggy old green corduroy suit, but he didn’t notice the attention. Tired and hungry, he stopped at a seedy outdoor café and ordered the cheapest item on the menu, a ham sandwich and café au lait. The waiter, who looked like an ancient gray parrot, was a dirty old man candidate, leering at the passing women and making salacious comments, which were all contemptuously ignored. Continue Reading »
by Mariana Sabino
She was still with me as I stood outside the house. A house, the house, not my house. Before long its door swung open and a woman appeared, sausaged into shape by a dark red dress. The color reminded me of expired ketchup.
Mouths flapped open, eyes searched, and Mom was already gone. “Here we are! Have to go to the bathroom. Give your aunt a kiss,” and dropping the suitcase at the foot of the couch, left me alone to see my last refuge dismissed by the shutting of the door to the light outside. Continue Reading »
Reviewed by Rachel Watts
In Heartsick For Country: Stories of Love, Spirit and Creation, a collection of essays by Aboriginal people from around Australia, one of the authors writes that Australia had had visitors from across the sea before. But neither the French nor the Dutch stayed for long, they introduced themselves, a little trading took place, then they left Aboriginal people to their lives.
When British settlers arrived in Australia in 1788, their relationship with Aboriginal people was similar for a short time. However, theirs was to become a permanent stay, and the western notion of land being a commodity, a means to an end, rather than the end in itself, was contrary to Aboriginal ideas about land. Continue Reading »
by John Grey
I don’t just open the window
to let the cool in
but to stare at the house
at the back of mine,
the woman also opening her window.
The stuffy weather is part of it,
the excuse part, Continue Reading »
by Luigi Monteferrante
The buoy bobs
I am free, free, free to bob
On the waves breaking by
To die on the shores
Of sand and weed Continue Reading »
by David Price
Cathy never understood the anger her older sister always seemed to feel.
“What’s wrong with you, Joy?” she would ask; but her sister would clam up and shut her out. It was always the same.
At fourteen, Joy ran away. For many years, Cathy would think of her sister and regret the fact that they had never really spoken. Continue Reading »