283 December, 2020

Word Art

by Rita Pellegrini

new_releases Creative Nonfiction

local_library Poetry

pages Micro-Fiction

Clay Pigeon

by R. Bremner
Issue No. 283 ~ December, 2020

A DJ and a female convict were hypnotized by a scorpion that withers, and I can’t get sparks out of my head. It hurts so well when animals don’t let me be misunderstood. A Hamish hawk was unlucky and unlikely when a rocketship from Dixieland …

portrait One on One

A Conversation with Pamela Dionne

interviewed by Tristan Beach
Issue No. 283 ~ December, 2020

Poetry Editor Tristan Beach Zooms in for a conversation with Pamela Dionne, author of Paradox and Illusion (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Dionne and Beach talk about healing relationships through poetry, faith and vulnerability in publishing, and how to be anti-racist in fiction. Highlights of their …

person_pin Essay

The Yellow House

by Elizabeth Montoya Osborne
Issue No. 283 ~ December, 2020

The old Victorian house is surrounded by a chain-link fence, paint peeling, waiting for someone to gentrify her (to ruin her). I run my fingers across the yellow house on the computer screen. This is where my Mother lived in the life she had before …

On Day 63 I Went For A Walk

by Shreyasi Sharma
Issue No. 283 ~ December, 2020

Having been wary of the yellow funnel-like flowers of Cascabela Thevetia since 2003, the tree was looking radiant in the full strength of its lime-green and honey-yellow on the 53rd day of lockdown. During those days of summer’s arrival, purple sunbirds would frequent the neighborhood …

Freedom

by Andrle H. Ward
Issue No. 283 ~ December, 2020

Oh, how they pound, raising the sound. We are winding on a road in the mountains somewhere in southern California. I’m too young to know which mountains or what road, but I know where we just came from and where we are going. We ride …

map Macro-Fiction

Long Range Forecast

by Kathryn Mayer
Issue No. 283 ~ December, 2020

Loneliness approaches slowly. Often you don’t notice it until it’s already smothering you from every direction, cornering you in the dirty fly-infested kitchen at three in the morning while you are drunk and vulnerable, feet aching from walking all the way home in borrowed shoes. …

Syon and Me

by Kay Smith-Blum
Issue No. 283 ~ December, 2020

A New York Times editorial by seems-like-a-smart-guy, Syon Bhanot of Swarthmore College, urges me to tamp down my desire to return to normal socialization. No one has to convince me to stay at home. My nails look terrible. Syon—I feel we are close enough after …

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