Literary Brushstrokes

Literary Brushstrokes

©Mary E. O’Brien

From the Editor When we conceived this magazine and began brainstorming ideas for its name, we thought about all the things that make good writing great. We kept coming back to the idea that good writing paints a picture in the mind of a reader. Thus Literary Brushstrokes was born.

Welcome to the premier issue of Literary Brushstrokes. We’ve been actively seeking literary works that follow the original concept for this magazine. Though this issue is small, it is mighty – filled with the work of talented writers from the United States and as far away as Greece. So we would like to give a big thank you to those who contributed their editing skills and the many talented writers who fill these pages.

Enjoy!

Mary Mary Chrapliwy, Managing Editor www.LiteraryBrushstrokes.com

Literary Brushstrokes ~~~~~~~ Premier Issue June 2012 Vol 1, No 1

~~~~~~~ ŠJune 2012

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Creative Nonfiction Unasked Questions by Hannah Lane – page 1

Flash Fiction Visiting an Old Friend by Jacquie Gray – page 4 Checkout Time by Tracy Hauser – page 5 Mr. Gribbles Eats a Beetle By Emily Glossner Johnson – page 7 Marrying Cain by Susan Phillips – page 9 Night Watch by Janet Yung – page 11

Fiction Wilson’s Farm by Albert Anthoni – page 13 Pretend Ghost by Chris Castle – page 16 Blown Away by Thomas Healy – page 18 Melissa Phones Home by Paul Lewellan – page 21 The Arc of a Bird in Flight by Rhys Timson – page 25

Poetry Dressed in Black, Birdwise by William Doreski – page 28 More Regret by Conrad Geller – page 29 This Morning by Joan McNerney – page 30 A Mosaic of High Walls by Christina Murphy – page 31 Away in Compositionville by Lylanne Musselman – page 32 Remember by Evelyn O’Brien – page 33 Attention by Tom Pescatore – page 34 Searching by Michael Williams – page 35

Author Bios Begin on page 36 Literary Brushstrokes iii

Unasked Questions by Hannah Lane Creative Nonfiction I only recently learned at her funeral, this past summer, that she was a Sunday school teacher. She once chased another woman down the street who had stolen money from her March of Dimes fund for the church, and she returned triumphant, money in hand. Her son told the story, concluding that she was never really an outspoken person, but if someone messed with something she cared about, “you better get out of her way.” These are the types of things that I would have liked to know firsthand, not from a eulogy. When I was younger it was enough to know that we loved each other and had good times when we visited with each other.

My great-grandmother Madeline’s house was just around the corner a very short walk from my house. As kids, my sister Haley and I could have taken the “long way around” and walked the perimeter of the block but we preferred the “secret path.” Our houses were on the same block, and was a path that cut though the under growth connecting our back yard with hers. The vibrant green carpet of little saplings grew in the shadow of the massive pine tree, making the path through the yard stand out.

Haley and I would flail and whip sticks in front of ourselves to obliterate any invisible spider’s web that could block our path. It was an epic adventure that only lasted a minute before we were on her door step.

When we stepped into the little brown house, the smell of dust would tickle our noses.

My dad would exclaim that it was far too stuffy and open a window. Gram would always be sitting in her rocking chair by the window, doing what she would say was, “nothing in particular.”

We called her “Gram” because Great Grandma Madeline was too many syllables for a little tongue to trip over. Gram was a short plump woman, with large bifocals and a mole on her chin, who loved to laugh and could always find something to smile about. Her hair was her defining feature and it was pure white. I was glad she did not adopt what I would have considered the stereotypical old-woman-afrohair-do. It was short and nicely parted on the

side with a wave in her bangs. When I was little, I wanted to have hair like hers when I grew old.

The exciting part of visiting her house was always the toys that we would play with. I had my own toys at home like Barbies, doll houses, and easy bake ovens, but I really liked the things Gram had for us to play with. On her shelf in a small, shoe-sized green box, she kept her paper dolls. The little women were all made of stiff paper and dressed only in their underwear, which I thought was hilarious because the underwear was gigantic.

“Bloomers,” she called them, and I giggled every time. The hair styles were like nothing I had seen and the clothes were thin paper made to be folded around the dolls limbs. The little tabs stuck out of their backs so that they could stand like cardboard cutouts. I would mismatch their outfits laughing at the ridiculous combinations.

Another item that I loved to play with was a blue stained-glass owl that was perched on the middle window frame in her bedroom. It sat with a full view of the room looking with its huge oval eyes made of dark blue glass. Bubbles filled the glass giving it a foggy quality when light would shine though. I would take it down and look closely at the way it was put together.

The metal that framed the glass was a dull gray and was surprisingly malleable. I bent its twisted metal perch around and turned the head to face to the left or the right. My dad would always come in see me with the owl and tell me to put it back and wash my hands. He was convinced that it was made with lead because it was so old. It was not a toy for kids to play with. I never listened and took it down whenever I had the chance, always putting it back in its rightful spot as our watchful friend.

We ended almost every visit with a Hoodsie: a small cup of ice cream with a paper top that peeled off with a small tab, revealing the half chocolate half vanilla ice cream. Gram would ask me to get a few out of the fridge and we would eat them together. I remember her telling me that she saved the chocolate half of the Hoodsie for last because it was her favorite. I

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did just the opposite favoring the vanilla. It was a ritual that I looked forward to every time.

When I was older, around eleven, I would have days off from school and Gram would “babysit me.” She would laugh; we both knew it was really me doing the babysitting. She was around eighty-four then and the usual shuffling of the feet and poor balance that comes to some people with age. She also started to show signs of short-term memory loss. We would ask her a question and she would just smile or laugh, then we would have to ask again because she seemed to have missed the fact we asked her anything at all. She also would forget that she already said things and wind up repeating herself.

“Oh my land” was the closest thing that she would ever get to swearing or taking the name of the lord in vain. It was also her catch phrase, she seemed to always reply to a story with “Oh my land isn’t that something.”

“Ohhhh, my laaaand! There is a fire going across the street.” The neighbors would burn leaves in the fall and the strong smell would somehow permeate the walls. After a few minutes passed and she looked again out of the window, “Oh look there is a fire going over there.”

I look back on the days we babysat each other with feelings of happiness and sometimes regret. We spent the day sitting, each in our respective armchairs, watching the TV, not talking for hours at a time. The Game Show Network was a favorite channel. I remember the Weakest Link, a show where the host would most likely insult everyone at some point during the game, was not my Grams favorite. When the show would start and the host would come on screen my Gram would exclaim, “Oh, I don’t like that woman!” Surprisingly this statement was the closest thing to an insult I ever heard her say. The day would pass by quickly, filled with infomercials and health insurance ads.

When we did talk our conversation involved the weather, the temperature of the room, and the supposed answers to game show trivia. We never really talked. I remember that one day I was really hungry so I told Gram I was eating my lunch early. I was in the kitchen alone, while she sat in the living room.

Afterward she had eaten her lunch alone in the

kitchen, while I sat in the living room. We could have had a nice lunch together and we could have had a nice conversation.

I wish I sat down with her while we ate our sandwiches and asked things like: what was America like while she was growing up? What games did she play when she was little? Did the Great Depression affect her growing up? What kind of music did she listen to? What was it like to see the rise of The Beatles? Who did she look up to? I knew that she never got her driver’s license, but I never asked why. Was it because she was afraid or nervous? Or did she think that only men should drive? I don’t know.

I could have made connections with her and gotten to know her personality, what kind of person she really was. I blame it on my age; I was too young to think that these things were important. Only now that I’m older, do I have regret. I know I would not have had the maturity to ask these questions, but I linger on how great it would have been to talk about things with her.

I did now the little things about her. I knew she liked the convenience of instant coffee, and all of her good snacks, she kept in the oven. As she was older she used the oven more for storage, no one would ever suspect the cookies would be hiding in the oven. I knew she attended Church every Sunday and the historical society every Tuesday. I knew she used to sew clothes and knit quilts because her room was filled with buttons, pin cushions, and an old sewing machine. It was run manually with a peddle and rotating wheel, bobbing the needle up and down. I knew she never slept in the same bedroom as her husband; they always their own room. I knew that she had green eyes that changed color depending on what shirt she wore.

I knew that she kept a bottle of clear nail polish next to her rocking chair and painted her nails regularly.

When I was around thirteen we were forced to send her off to her first nursing home.

She had what the doctors suspected was a small stroke but it was a sign for us and we knew she should not be alone. A few of her things were taken from the house and moved over to her room in the home. We took things like her bible, diary, word search puzzles and family photos.

The women who took care of her in the nursing home nicknamed her “Giggles.” The ladies said

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that she was one of their favorite patients because she wasn’t a pain in the butt and would always laugh. She was not aware of what was going on around her, most likely because of a combination of her deteriorating senses so she didn’t let it bother her and just smiled and laughed.

My grandmother Jackie, Gram’s daughter, organized all of Gram’s belongings to bring from home. When we delivered them to her I sat and talked with her about some of her things. I wanted to know if she needed anything else, but she said “Oh no I’m just fine.” I remembered the stained glass owl that sat on her middle window frame in her bed room.

“Gram, do you remember that owl you have in your room resting on the window sill?” I brought it up to her hoping that she would remember what I was talking about.

“Yes the little blue one,” she said after looking at me for a moment. She did remember!

“Do you want me to bring it back for you?”

“No, I think he would like it better if you took care of him for me,” she said.

“Thanks Gram, you didn’t have to. I’ll take good care of him for you!” I smiled. I was glad I brought it up.

It was comforting to have the owl, now on the middle window sill, keeping an unblinking watch over my room. Even though the owl never blinked, it missed seeing everything we did outside my great-grandma’s house. It missed when skinned my knee on the pavement while leaning to ride a bike. It missed Gram’s appreciation award she received at her church for being a faithful member for so many years. The moments we shared in her house were special ones but they did not reveal everything about us.

I was happy to have the owl. It was something of her that I could keep, because she was no longer a quick walk away, though the secret path behind our houses.

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Visiting an Old Friend by Jacquie Gray Flash Fiction “Sorry it took me so long to come.” She shrugged, “But I made it here just like I promised.”

The wind blew a little bit stronger for a moment.

“Is it weird without me at school now?”

She laughed, “Yeah, it’s weird not seeing you every day. Sometimes I forget and think I see you.”

A squirrel ran down a tree and stopped in front of her. “How’s my mom?”

“She’s good. She started gardening again. Her flowers just began to bloom too.”

There was a rustle from a nearby bush.“You need to go before you’re missed.”

“Okay. Oh, by the way, I brought you something.” She left a single flower on her friend’s headstone and walked back to her car. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

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Checkout Time by Tracy Hauser Flash Fiction

I sat with my palms face down on the sand with my big sunglasses across my face from the glare. He sat near me too and we were watching the girls jumping in and out of the water, skimming the sea soap and charging for their boards.

“Do you love him?” He’d asked.

“I don’t know,” I’ d said.

He’d been asking me questions like these all day, at the hot dog sand, in the beach shop where we’d rented boogie boards and towels for the sand. I kept going in and out of the water walking through it up to my ankles and watching the girls at my legs swim like little fishes. I looked up at the dock and behind me at the kids scooping sand into red plastic buckets in their swim shorts. I could feel his eyes on me from where he sat from the shore. He just kept starring.

We’d been at it like this all morning.

I’d tried to change the subject when we’d gone out to lunch by playing around with the radio dial in the car. I’d rolled down the window and commented about how lucky all the seascapers were with these two-car garages. But then I’d looked across at him and he’d had that serious look in his eye which struck me as him using all his energy for staying focused.

I talked about popsicles in the backseat with the girls and I opted for reading the next Mazey book they’d gotten in the series. But then after a while my neck started hurting from trying to keep it twisted towards the backseat.

So I looked forward and I asked Jerry how his day had gone on Friday and if they’d met with the merger like he’d said that they would. He’d stayed late on Friday so I knew that he’d been somewhere; if not with them then maybe with a lady.

“No. Don’s gonna do all that work.

He’s gonna fax it to me sometime Monday.”

When I’d opened up about it with our marriage counselor, Jerry seemed nonplussed at first, like he’d just expected it. Maybe it was that he’d expected nothing less from me. He’d

called me “flighty”, “unable to make up my mind”, “wishy-washy”, and “cynical”. But I’d made up my decision and I’d said that to our counselor Dr. Burns and Jerry; there was nothing that they could say or do to make me change it. I’d said out in the open that I’d been dating someone else and that it was time I moved on.

This was our last trip, just the four of us.

Oh yes there would be other times when we were together, awkward moments like for middle school graduations, ceremonies, birthdays, competitions. But nothing where we’d actually have to pretend to be something glued together.

I breathed easier when we got to the fish restaurant. Normally I didn’t care for crowds, but now I found them reassuring, making up for the silent talk that pressed between Jerry and I. The girls ordered fish sticks, Jerry fried catfish, and me corn on the cob and a diet coke. I used lots of excuses to go to the bathroom, checking my text messages there to keep me from feeling claustrophobic. I sat on the toilet seat, listened to other women having conversations with each other from either ends of their stalls, and waited until they left to leave myself. I washed my face in cold water at the sink and I went back outside to the picnic tables inside the restaurant that gave it that in-house barbeque feel.

We’d gone for a walk afterwards on the boardwalk while Jerry gave the girls change to buy ice cream. I stared out at the sea by the Ferris wheel and I suggested that we all go for a ride. Jerry tried grabbing for my hand at first I let him but then I pulled it back and attempted to sound reassuring.

“We’ve always been friends hon. You know? It’s not like that’s gonna change.” I slipped on a penny in my bare feet and I continued to walk on the wood though I kept hitting splinters.

Jerry was silent for awhile before he’d said, “We can work it out. Every couple has kinks. This is just our time. Everyone goes through this.”

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I thought of that, of kinks and about what he’d said. It wasn’t exactly like I was dating another man because I was in love; it’s just that I felt suppressed in this relationship.

Like a balloon was getting bigger and bigger every second and that soon enough it would cut off all of my air.

That night after I tucked the girls in, read to them, got them tap water in paper cups from the bathroom sink, I joined Jerry on the balcony. All the lights were out in our room save for the tiny bathroom one with its fan-air still on. I put my feet up on the railing and listened to the sound of the waves. I tried not to be, but I was worn. I was all ready for bed and I didn’t want him to expect anything.

He was smoking a cigarette, “Dr. Burns told me that this one woman tried signing up for

a dance class at a local college. She had her first performance and her ex-husband was in the first row with flowers and champagne and everything.” He breathed out his cigarette smoke. Maybe if you’d take a class, get a hobby-.”

“A dance class?” I paused. I’d considered it. Anytime away would be better than nothing and the girls still didn’t know anything about this. “Maybe,” Was all I’d said.

That night I was the last to climb into bed. I’d dressed in long flannel pajamas bottoms even though it was summer. When he reached for my thigh I rolled over to the other side of the bed and I buried myself under my pillow so that I could finally breathe.

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Mr. Gribbles Eats a Beetle By Emily Glossner Johnson Flash Fiction

The young man has planted a row of pink impatiens next to a group of small hostas which will grow larger than the space they've been given. They're going to overpower the impatiens, and it's going to look awful. The man, with his tight jeans and shaggy blond hair, doesn't have a gift for gardening.

Mr. Gribbles watches the man from beneath a row of arborvitae. He peers out through fragrant branches, lying low against the cool ground. One ear swivels, keeping track of noises behind him, but his yellow eyes in his whiskered face remain fixed on the man.

Mr. Gribbles has black tiger markings on caramel-colored fur. He's a long-limbed, handsome cat and still rather slim for a neutered male at the age of six. He keeps fit, enjoys lurking inside and out, hunting, prowling, displaying his stealth to the beautiful, dimwitted Siamese next door who watches from her window ledge, her befuddled blue eyes reflections of her dull, inbred brain.

Mr. Gribbles takes pride in his dignified but scrappy roots. He's the offspring of a wellbred Abyssinian mother, the lady of a Manhattan loft, and a black tiger tomcat father, a rogue of the streets and climber of Manhattan fire escapes in search of love. When Mr. Gribbles was several weeks old, he was taken by Ms. Bess Barbara Marguerite to his spacious Westchester County home. Ms. Bess Barbara Marguerite, a big woman of ample lap and soothing voice, keeps Mr. Gribble's house well appointed with luxuries and delights. This is his native habitat, but still he possesses an imprint of streetwise cunning.

He's heard Ms. Bess Barbara Marguerite speak of the new neighbor, this master of the garden and strangely haggard young man. His name is Jimmy Gemini and he was a rock star until, quite suddenly, he stopped writing songs and making music. No one knows exactly why, though likely it had something to do with substances the man abused, an unstable mental state, and a culminating incident in which the man was found wandering a subway station in

Queens, mumbling incoherently and wearing nothing but black bicycle shorts and a single flip-flop. There are those who believe that Jimmy Gemini is dead. Others believe that he's been committed to a psychiatric hospital. Few would suspect that he has quietly settled into the bungalow across the street from Mr. Gribbles’ property, and even fewer would imagine—or believe—that he's decided to plant a garden.

Whatever the circumstances of the man's demise and reinvention, Mr. Gribbles doesn't particularly care. Yet again he finds himself confounded by the interest humans take in matters which don't involve them. He thinks, my comfort and pleasure remain intact, so why should the story of this man's life compel me?

And yet there is the matter of Jimmy Gemini's garden. Since it lacks imagination and beauty, it may as well serve some useful purpose. Mr. Gribbles napped in a pool of sunshine for several hours prior to venturing outdoors, so he knows it will be difficult initially to find his voice. He lets out a few croaking meows and then attempts a word: "Catnip."

The man glances at the arborvitae.

Mr. Gribbles pushes out the word again: "Catnip." It's better this time, stronger and louder.

Frowning, the man gazes at the row of arborvitae. Mr. Gribbles positions himself more tightly against the ground to keep out of sight.

"Catnip in the garden," he says. "Catnip. Catnip in the garden!"

"Who's there?" the man says.

Mr. Gribbles doesn't move and keeps silent until the man resumes his planting.

"Plant it. Catnip in the garden!" Mr. Gribbles says.

The man stands up, wipes his hands on his jeans, and walks over to the arborvitae. He looks around it and into the yard beyond.

Mr. Gribbles darts out from his hiding spot and does a rabbit run across the street into his own yard. Once under his sugar maple, he

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stops and licks his left hip with precision and practiced nonchalance.

"Here, kitty," the man says. He is smiling stupidly, watching Mr. Gribbles. "Kitty, kitty." He whistles. Mr. Gribbles maintains an indifferent gaze, his eyes fixed on a spot just to the left of the man's face. The man, clearly suspecting nothing, turns away and heads back to his garden.

"Catnip!" Mr. Gribbles calls.

The man looks around, but with his inferior human hearing, he doesn't seem to realize that the word has come from Mr. Gribbles. He rubs his chin, thinks. Is he thinking about catnip? Likely he is considering whether to have a Coke or a Pepsi to slake his thirst, or pondering the effect of garden soil on his expensive jeans, or wondering if he should hire a landscaper to install the rest of the garden—this and that, his mind popping with bubbles of

trivia, tedium, second guesses. These humans, such inattention and lack of resolve. They would be intolerable were they not beloved for other reasons—their pliability and gullibility, but also their capacity for openhearted affection and unconditional love. An image of Ms. Bess Barbara Marguerite enters Mr. Gribbles’ mind; he meditates upon it with tenderness.

Jimmy Gemini continues with his planting. Mr. Gribbles waits, observes, then notices peripherally a small brown beetle climbing a clover plant. He pounces, his paws on the beetle in a flash. He looks, stomps again with one paw, one fast stunning blow, and eats the creature. Little brown beetles are delicious with their crisp outer shells and rich creamy centers.

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Marrying Cain by Susan Phillips Flash Fiction Cain left the presence of God and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. (Genesis 4:16)

He lies quietly now, at last. No more calling out in the night, no more disturbing dreams. People whisper about him as I pass by, but I ignore them. Despite their endless words, my husband was a quiet man. I learned more about him from his nightmares, from what he said during the night, than I ever heard from him during the day.

I was in my father’s field one day, tilling the soil. It was hot, and the dirt, red as blood, was hard. Try as I might, I could not dig holes to plant. It was frustrating work. Already the sun was going down. As I did most days, I turned to watch. The sun god was leaving us, maybe never to return. What if it remained dark and cold tomorrow? The old men laughed when we young women feared the sun’s departure, but we could not help it.

I turned and, sure enough, the sun god was on fire—so bright, so blood-red, that I wanted to run the other way. As I turned again, I heard a voice behind me say, “Please don’t leave. I won’t hurt you.”

And there he was—thin, ragged, the saddest face I had ever seen. He looked as if his young life had already left him marks of pain: the lines on his face, the faint stoop of his shoulders, the quiet way he approached me and spoke.

“Let me help you,” he offered.

“The ground is hard today,” I said. “It’s usually soft. But today it feels as if blood has settled on it and hardened it.”

He winced, but then bent down to help me. “I used to be a tiller of the soil,” he said softly. “Now I’m a restless wanderer on earth.” I could hardly hear him, but I watched as he dug.

It was as if the blood from the soil recoiled at his touch. “Here,” he said at last, “plant your seeds now.”

I hesitated. Surely he had done all the hard work and would welcome the honor of planting seeds. “No, no, plant,” he insisted. “The earth no longer yields to me, but to you it shall yield.”

What was I to do? I planted most of the seeds; he put in the last few. I turned to go home. But what should I do about the stranger?

“Come,” I said. “Come meet my mother and father.” So I brought him home, this stranger. My parents fed him. Then they questioned him.

No, he said, he had never married. Yes, his parents lived far away, west of here. No, he had no sisters or brothers. “My name is Cain,” he whispered, in response to their last question.

When the autumn harvest came, I married him.

By then his words had proved true. All the seeds I had planted yielded much fruit. But where Cain had planted, only bare, hard, blood-red earth was seen.

We married, and then his nightmares began. At first I thought he was dreaming of me.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I love only you.

You were meant to be mine.”

“Yes,” I whispered back. But when he awoke, he was confused and stared at me as if I were a stranger. Then he began calling out names in his sleep—but never mine.

“Abel, Abel,” he cried out. “Why must you lust after my woman? I will have her because I am the first-born. You are a prosperous shepherd. Your sacrifices are accepted. All mine are rejected.” And then he cried out her name. “I wish I could see you one last time,” he whimpered. “To you I could tell all the secrets of my heart, but never to another.”

Little did he know, he never suspected, that I found out all his secrets during those restless nights.

Soon I gave birth to a son, whom we named Enoch. My pain had been great and I was tired afterwards. When I went out again to the fields, I could barely lift my hoe to till the soil. I could not bend down to plant any seeds. Cain came out to help me, and I smiled at him. It reminded me of our first meeting, when the soil was just as blood-red. He hoed, he tilled, he planted all our seeds. But nothing came of the

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crop—as he had indeed warned me before. He looked, if anything, even sadder then. “I cannot bear this great punishment,” he told the earth.

He stopped trying to farm. Instead he learned to build sturdy dwelling places for the people around us. He built roads and wells. He founded a city and named it after our son Enoch.

“Tend the city well, even after I die,” he frequently told Enoch. “If you do right, you’ll be rewarded. But beware. The urge to sin is everywhere, and you will be tempted to do wrong. And yet you can master those urges.”

Cain often spoke of his own death. He wondered what would become of us when he died.

Eventually, he grew weak and sick. “I wish I could sing a song of the Sabbath day,” he whispered on his deathbed. “It’s good to confess to God.” By then I had puzzled out all of Cain’s secrets—how he and his brother Abel had fought

over the same woman. How he had killed his brother and then watched his beloved run away from him.

I went to live in our son’s home, determined to keep Cain’s secrets. Maybe I, too, had nightmares and cried out his stories despite myself. I only know that soon everyone in the city of Enoch knew the story of Cain. If a man could be so punished, so lonely, so marked by what he had done, then surely, they decided, he had done wrong.

The day we buried him was hot. The sun was bright, blinding, so close to all of us that I felt sure the sun god would come down to carry me off. Now, I thought, bring me closer to you and to Cain. But, no, I stayed here on the earth.

And we all walked off, leaving Cain alone in the blood-red earth.

It was then that men began to invoke the Lord by name. (Genesis 4:26)

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Night Watch by Janet Yung Flash Fiction

You could see stars on a cold winter night and tonight didn’t disappoint. The sky was filled with bright dots framed by the bare branches of the old oak. A full moon rose above it all.

Rachel buttoned her jacket and pulled her hat down to cover her ears. She stuffed her gloved hands deep into the generous pockets of the camel duffle coat.

The coat had been rescued from her mother’s closet.

“Why do you want that?” her brother Charlie asked when everything was boxed and waiting for the charity pick up.

There were better things folded for give away. Things her mother bought and wore a few times, but nothing that suited Rachel. Nothing like the coat, a hold over from college days. Lost in the back of the closet, her mother examined it annually when the seasons changed and then put back with the statement, “if this coat could talk.”

An expression that held no meaning for Rachel, who watched the ritual. Transfixed, as her mother sorted out what could be worn another season and what had outlived its usefulness.

“Is there something of your mother’s you’d like to keep?” her father asked before the sorting out began. Rachel pushed everything aside till she found the coat, hanging where her mother had placed it the previous spring when all danger of frost had passed.

“This,” Rachel replied and her father had nodded his assent without comment or suggestion the coat, slightly larger than Rachel’s still growing frame, would risk the chance of falling apart if sent to the dry cleaners. The jewelry, he said, would be saved for later.

The new school year began.

Summer held on as temperatures hovered around the ninety-degree mark into October.

Grandma commented she couldn’t remember such a fall and wondered, “Is it ever going to cool down?” as Rachel came through the kitchen door one afternoon.

Grandma was in charge since moving into the spare bedroom on the first floor.

“It’ll keep me occupied,” she told Rachel and Charlie when their father worked out the arrangement.

Rachel guessed grandma missed their mother as much as they did, and sometimes, Rachel caught her off guard in the middle of a mundane household task once performed by her mother, looking wistful and sad.

Rachel would pretend she hadn’t seen anything and grandma’s face would brighten when she spotted Rachel. Grandma would remark, “you look just like your mother in that top.”

“How long is grandma going to stay?” Charlie asked their father one evening when grandma had gone to the show with one of her friends.

“Long as it takes,” their father answered and went back to reading the paper. Their father rarely talked about their mother in the months following the accident.

The silence left Rachel with lingering questions about how he really felt and the gnawing fear he would disappear, too.

As the days grew shorter, the hot weather finally gave way to cooler temperatures, which lent a more seasonable feel to the month. The months inched closer to the end of most horrible year of Rachel‘s life.

“You’d better put on a coat,” her grandmother was telling her before long as

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Rachel set out upon her nightly ritual of star gazing. She remembered the coat and bundled up in it, found long forgotten mittens in the pockets. Only recently had the view overhead begun to shift.

Seated on the patio, Rachel gazed over the flower beds, her mother had last tended in late spring, just as school ended.

The brown stalks of sedum and black-eyed Susans stood frozen against the night air.

Rachel wanted to help with the gardening, but her inability to distinguish between weed and perennial caused her mother to suggest she might run into the house for a couple glasses of water or iced tea. As they sipped their drinks, seated on the freshly cleaned lawn furniture, Rachel listened raptly as her mother outlined plans for this year’s plantings.

“I’d really love a vegetable garden,” she smiled, looking at Rachel over the tops of the round framed sunglasses she wore.

Then, she swept her arm across an untilled section of the yard as if the motion could magically make her dream come true, described the precise way she’d lay out corn, lettuce, tomatoes and towers of beans.

“Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Fresh vegetables all summer long.” But the vast majority of the yard was dedicated to the lawn her father loved and had devoted so much time nurturing. “There’s always next year,” her mother concluded, a blissful promise until it was no more.

Sounds from the kitchen filtered out, and Rachel knew her grandmother would be settling down to relax till bedtime.

“Don’t stay out there too long,’ she told Rachel as she slipped out of the house

once dinner was cleared away and the last pot washed and dried.

“I won’t,” Rachel promised, grateful for the quiet that enveloped her in the dark.

Lights brightened houses on either side and across the alley. Rachel marveled how life went on in spite of how things change.

Almost as if it were expected.

“Nothing stays the same,” was the way grandma explained it.

The winter garden had held as much fascination for Rachel’s mother as the summer. “You can see all the seasons changing on the ground,” she said, “and in the sky.”

“But there’s not anything here in the winter,” Rachel replied, trees having shed their leaves, cold and snow following. A wasteland where things once bloomed, barren and difficult to imagine June in November.

“Look at the sky,” her mother told her that afternoon in the yard.

Shielding her eyes against the beam of sunlight that peeked through the clouds and stretched to the earth, she said “I don’t see anything except a few clouds.”

“You will,” her mother drained the last of her tea. “And, in the winter it will be the best.”

Huddled beneath the fabric of the old coat, Rachel stared through the upward reaching limbs. Rachel watched the twinkling lights as she remembered the conversation. And, then, her grandmother was summoning her back into the warmth of the house and the way things were now.

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Wilson’s Farm by Albert Anthoni Fiction A tall twenty-five year old boy with a tattered union cap and well-worn uniform rode a buckboard up the dusty Connecticut road toward a two story clapboard farmhouse. Lawrence grabbed at the July 20th 1865 copy of The Hartford Gazette from under the seat to cover his face from the dust. The headline read; Courant Extra.

Glorious News! The End of the War. He wanted to scream with joy at being free of all the pain but he held tight onto the warmth forming in his gut, learning from past experience in the war that nothing lasts too long, especially peace.

“Whoa!” He pulled up the wagon on the crest of a hill directly in front of his home. The Wilson’s had adopted him when he was five, after his parents died of cholera.

He slowly let himself down off the seat favoring his left foot. He dragged it a little as he walked toward the back of the house and in the direction of the summer kitchen. His heart beat with excitement at the prospect of being home. He glanced at a root cellar on his way, remembering that that was the place where Abigail and he read and talked about the Greek hero’s in the Iliad.

When he reached the kitchen door he saw Abigail pick up a brown crusted mince pie in her white apron. She had dark shoulder length hair and wore a crinoline bell shaped dress with loose frilled sleeves to the wrists. He hadn’t seen his stepsister in a dress in a long time. She turned toward the door and screamed letting go of the pie so it crashed all over the wooden floor.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said.

She warily walked towards the door.

“Yes can I help you?”

“Abigail it’s me, Lawrence.”

She wasn’t seeing the boy that went to war those many years ago. She was

looking at a man that was tempered and hardened by his experiences. She threw her arms around his neck. “Oh my god I can’t believe it’s really you,” she said.

He held her close to his chest as her legs dangled just above the floor. The last human being that he held close to his chest was a dying soldier and after a while his heart stopped but hers was strong and alive.

Tears welled up in his eyes when he thought of the difference.

Her olive colored skin and blue eyes drew him down like a magnet. As he bent down to kiss her he felt somebody grab his shoulder and turn him around.

Wisner Wilson, his stepfather, hugged him. “Welcome back son. It’s good to see you,” he said.

“I can’t believe I’m home,” Lawrence said looking at the house and the barn.

“Go get washed up while Abby and me rustle up some vittles for ya,” Wisner said.

Lawrence stabled the horse in the barn then walked over to the pump. It was after seven in the evening at the height of summer, the hour in New England when the heat of the day retreats behind the curtain of poplars and elms.

He removed his shirt and submerged his face under the stream of water. His body shuttered from the chilly blue liquid. The horse whinnied in the barn and stamped in its stall as a locust sang a high pitched song, broadcasting thru a stand of corn.

He was thin, ribs exposed, skin hanging on a skeleton. Looking under his arm he saw Wisner and Abigail staring at him, then quickly turn away and go back into the kitchen.

Ten minutes later they all sat at the large pine table. The summer kitchen had all

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the modern conveniences; a cast-iron stove, a large refrigerator box and a zinc sink. A roasted steaming chicken sat in the middle of the table along with a loaf of wheat bread and a bowl of baked potatoes. Others would have been bothered by all the noise in the kitchen during supper, but to him even the clatter of dishes was music to his ears.

He suddenly got up and went over to what was left of the mince pie that had fallen on the floor. It sat in a bowl on the counter. He pushed the broken pieces onto his spoon and then into his mouth. He smiled and closed his eyes savoring every bite. “I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I had a piece of mince pie. I just couldn’t let it go to waste,” he said.

“But Lawrence that was on the…”

“Abby!” Wisner said.

“What Dad?” “It’s all right. Let it go,” he whispered.

She smiled ever so softly at her father then turned back towards Lawrence.

“Are you still reading like we use to do in the root cellar?” Abigail asked.

“Sure am,” he said. “Those were peaceful happy times Abby.” She smiled and then blushed as he walked back to the table.

Wisner whipped the cloth napkin open and stuffed it under his chin. “Now boy, help yourself. What you can’t reach, yell for.”

After supper Abigail and Lawrence went to the barn, flopped down on hay bales and stared out the open door. The smell of new mown hay filled the building and the earthy pungent aroma of ripe tomatoes hung in the air. But the tomatoes only reminded Lawrence of a basket of human hearts. Even the ordinary became extraordinary to his tired mind.

“I know I should’ve written you about this.” He pointed at his foot with a twig of hay.

“What did they do to you? Those dam Rebs?”

“No Abby, it wasn’t any Johnny Reb that did this to me. I got it when a caisson knocked me over and then rolled over my ankle. How many times I would sit and talk and exchange tobacco with them, when there was a break in the fighting. They’re just like us, only on a different side. After we were done chewing our tobacco we would get up, go back to our own lines and carry on killing each other.”

Abigail held his hands, hands that were callused and bony. “Tell me about the war,” she said. “You mean it wasn’t exciting and noble like we read about in the Iliad?”

He became quiet and she saw a peculiar frightened stare in his eyes. He pushed his cap back on his head revealing his curly black hair. “The god’s didn’t protect us. They didn’t even care.” Sweat beaded all over his face. He put his index finger up to his mouth. “Quiet, do you hear them bombarding?”

“No I don’t.” Something powerful began to suck him away from her. In desperation she pulled him close to her chest. Instinctively she cradled him next to her heartbeat. “It’s all right. There’s no guns here, no bombs,” she said.

He smelled a whiff of vanilla come from her neck. And he started to experience a man’s desire. She had always just been his stepsister and nothing more, but now he saw her as a woman and he was ashamed. He suddenly sat up and blankly stared out the barn door. He grabbed a handful of hay and it rustled in his hand, as he glanced back at her for a second.

“I’ll tell you some of what happened but after that I don’t want to talk about it again.”

“Okay,” she said.

“There were no hero’s like we read about, there were just survivors.” He tossed the hay in his hand across the barn. “There

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was just blood and severed limbs, smoke and the stench of rotting bodies.”

She lightly put her hand on his shoulder. “I understand. But you’re home now.” She got up, walked a few paces and then turned around. “The farm will heal you,” she said. “You’ll be in a place where things are alive and growing, no more death, no more hunger.”

He thought, “Maybe the farm will be my salvation. Maybe the living present will wipe out my memories of death in the past.”

He looked at Abigail, fighting back his tears as they welled up in his eyes. He nodded his head, not saying a word.

Literary Brushstrokes 15

Pretend Ghost by Chris Castle Fiction

Mack drove up to the street light and put it in park. The snow was getting heavier now and he wondered how long he would be able to stay before the roads completely blocked up. An hour, tops, he figured and sighed. An hour with your own family at Christmas, he thought and resisted the urge to slam his fists into the dashboard. That’s what started all this, a part of him said calmly and he made himself settle his hands over the steering wheel. As the snow began to flitter down in clumps, he reached for the cigarettes and then stopped. Ghosts didn’t smell of smoke, he reminded himself before grabbing the present from the back seat, bracing himself for the cold.

How had it started? Mack knew all too well; because of his own weakness. His son, Jack, had been little when he’d split and now Val had taken up with a new man, a better man. Mack had accepted it but still wanted to see his little guy, now he had changed. That first evening, standing in the doorway of the newly decorated bedroom, his own son had looked at him, terrified, as if he were a stranger.

“Who are you?” he asked in a voice that was so timid and scared it broke Mack’s heart clean in two. It was the sound of a kid who’d just had a nightmare.

“I…” he began to say, before everything fell away. The truth was too brutal, the idea of lying too much. What was left? Imagination.

“I’m a ghost,” Mack heard himself say, hearing the echoes of his old man in the timbre of his throat. His old man, who told the best of stories, drunk or sober.

“A ghost?” His son replied, curious but no longer scared.

“A good ghost,” Mack went on, the story growing in his mind with every

second, his heart soaring as the fear slipped away from his son’s eyes…

His ex, Val, pointed to the bedroom door without looking up from her cards, while Pete, the husband, stood up to shake his hand and wished him happy holidays.

That tells its own story, Mack thought; it’s what you deserve, the other part of him whispered. He slipped the present onto the table and let the other man put it under the tree, as was his right.

Mack tapped on the bedroom door and waited until his son invited him in. As he stepped inside, Mack saw the stocking at the end of the bed, the wish-list written in bubbly, messy handwriting at the neck.

Mack’s grin was warm and he saw his own smile mirrored in his son’s face. Still mine, a part of him whispered and it was both a mean-spirited and good feeling all at once.

“How can a ghost knock?” He asked.

Mack had come to love the way his kid just asked what was on his mind and nothing else, no complications.

“I didn’t. It was in the pipes, rattling.

Maybe you’ve got rats in the walls, here…”

Mack said, half regretting the image but enjoying the idea of somehow placing imperfections in the house he’d built but no longer belonged to.

“Yuck!” Jack said, but theatrically, letting Mack breathe easy, knowing there’d be no nightmares growing out from what he’d said. Only silence meant nightmares; he knew enough from his own childhood to understand that.

“I brought you a present. It’s outside,” he said and stepped closer. As he perched on the end of the bed, he heard the floorboards creak outside the door. He glanced back briefly and saw the shafts of light from the doorframe swallowed up by

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shadows. They don’t even trust me with my own son, he thought, and was surprised to not feel the old anger but only sadness at what he’d become in the eyes of others.

“How did you carry it?” Jack asked his brow knitting close with the question.

“I hypnotized a dog to carry it in for me; ghosts can trick any animals that are smaller than a bear,” he said and smiled. “And don’t wrinkle your brow, Jack; it makes you an old man before your time, see?” He said and pointed to his own raft of worry lines.

“Can I open it now?” Mack smiled but shook his head.

“You have to wait for the big day, Jack, you know that,” he said, wanting to reach out and rustle his hair, but knowing he couldn’t; he was a ghost, after all.

“But you won’t be here,” his son whispered and Mack realized his voice was uneven with ready to break tears.

“Oh, I’ll be here in spirit, Jack, won’t I? That’s what ghosts are best at, after all.”

He edged back a little on the bed, knowing his son wanted to hug him. The wish he wanted, impossible to grant. The dream of a ghost, he thought bitterly and felt his own sadness thicken in his throat.

“Why do you have to leave so soon, ghost?” Jack asked, his voice stronger now, as if he knew, somehow, Mack’s was weakening. It gave him the strength to carry on.

“Us ghosts are energized by the night, Jack. That’s why we look so pale in comic books; because all our energy comes from the stars and the moon.

“Like solar power, but...backwards,” his son said and Mack smiled so broadly he almost laughed. He stopped himself instinctively, as if somehow laughter would betray him to the shadows outside the door.

Instead, he winked.

“Just like that. Merry Christmas, Jack Collins,” he said abruptly, wanting to stay for another hour and knowing he had to get out now, before he somehow broke what was perfect.

“Merry Christmas, Ghost!” he said brightly. “I wanted to get you something but you said not to. So instead…” he said, his mind scrambling for the promise they’d made together. “‘Dream the same dream tonight,’” Mack finished for him, rising from the bed.

He’d sat right on the frame, so as not to leave an indentation. As he stepped backwards, still looking at his son, he checked the room and saw he’d not left a single trace or interruption. Like I was never here, he thought and swallowed the new tears down. “Close your eyes,” he said and watched as Jack did. Soundlessly, he slipped open the door-it was a device for him to use and re-assurance to the shadow people outside-and disappeared.

Mack stood across the street, staring at his old house. His son’s bedroom light burned in the right hand corner and the living room was tinged red with the Christmas tree lights. He looked hard at the scene until his eyes blurred and he made himself blink. For a second or two, he let the tears fall and then he pinched his eyes tightly, stemming everything. Finished, he looked back across the street but the house had disappeared, hidden by the fresh flurry of snow and out of sight. Gone was his son’s bedroom, gone was the tree and the decorations. The only light was the streetlamp above; everything else had been taken from him. Mack Collins raised his arms up to the night, his body empty, his heart empty. He waited, like a ghost, to be filled by the light of the stars and the moon.

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Blown Away by Thomas Healy Fiction

Suddenly the telephone rang in the kitchen but Barnaby didn’t bother to answer it, figured it was just another solicitor eager to sell him something he didn’t need. The only calls he received in the evening anymore seemed to be from sales people. Shaking his head, he looked again at the three snapshots of Amy spread across his desk. He took all of them from his kitchen window where he often stood and watched her play on her front lawn with other girls in the neighborhood. Two were of her washing the hull of a speedboat that belonged to one of her mother’s many men friends, the other was of her awkwardly attempting a cartwheel.

Though it was nearly impossible to make out her face, he decided to use the cartwheel picture because it caught the carefree spirit that he always associated with her.

On his old Crosley record player Bill Evans played “Sleeping Bee,” and he smiled, remembering Halloween when Amy dressed up as a bumble bee with plastic milk straws serving as antennae.

On top of the cartwheel snapshot he set a transparent glass paperweight and with a carpenter pencil carefully traced around the base of the weight. Just as carefully, after removing the weight, he picked up a pair of scissors and trimmed a little inside the tracing mark so that the picture was slightly smaller than the base of the paperweight. Then he applied a thin layer of decoupage glue to the bottom and set the picture on the glue, pressing down firmly with both thumbs. It would take a while to dry but he was not in any hurry and just stared at the picture now enclosed in the paperweight, marveling once again at how enthusiastic Amy was, always willing to accept any challenge it seemed. She almost looked as if she were about to burst out of the enclosure.

After the picture dried, he got up from his desk and set the paperweight on a shelf above the file cabinet. There were two other weights on the shelf that also contained pictures of Amy he took from his kitchen window. He still found it hard to believe, thought initially

there would only be the first one he made, which he intended to present to her when she returned home. Now he doubted if she would ever return.

Barnaby was nearly eleven when he got his first paperweight---a glow-in-the-dark oyster’s pearl fashioned from hand blown glass.

It was a gift from his Uncle Caleb who bought it in Okinawa when he was stationed there as a Marine. He had no idea what it was, though, and had to ask his uncle who laughed and told him.

“But I don’t have any papers.”

He laughed again. “Everyone has things they don’t want to blow away. And this is what you use to keep them in place.”

Throughout his enlistment, his uncle sent him paperweights from all the different places he was posted. They were dark and luminous, transparent and opaque, some half a foot tall and others as small as robin eggs. By the time he began high school he had close to a dozen and was eager to add more to his collection. Others his age spent the money they earned after school on candy and comic books but he used his to purchase paperweights.

His third year in college he desperately needed money to cover an emergency room bill and was compelled to sell his collection, which had grown to almost sixty pieces, and assumed his interest in paperweights was over. He was mistaken, though, and within a few years had collected nearly twice as many as he had before.

What he thought was an adolescent hobby had become an obsession so it was difficult to resist the urge to add to his collection. The shelves in all the apartments he resided in were stacked with paperweights and even after he and his late wife moved into a house of their own the shelves there were soon filled. Still he continued to purchase more paperweights, few of which were very valuable, and stored them in the basement in boxes and crates and a couple of old steamer trunks.

Shortly after Amy and her mother moved into the neighborhood, they learned about his curious collection and one day

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approached him and asked to see it and he was more than happy to oblige and showed them the paperweights in his living room. Amy, in particular, was fascinated by the crystal pineapple weight on the mantel above the fireplace, staring at it for a couple of minutes while he discussed some of the other pieces in the room.

“You must’ve been collecting for quite some time,” Mrs. Hester remarked at one point.

“Since I was about Amy’s age, maybe a year or two older.”

“I imagine your collection must be worth quite a lot of money.”

He grinned. “Oh, some paperweights are worth thousands of dollars, especially those made in France in the middle of the 19th century, but those aren’t the kind I can afford. Mine are knickknacks not treasures.”

“They sure look valuable.”

“Well, they are to me but I doubt if they would be to anyone else.”

She nodded. “You don’t see paperweights much anymore. Now that I think of it I don’t believe we have one in the office where I work.”

“Desks aren’t cluttered with papers in this electronic age, I guess, so paperweights have pretty much become a thing of the past.”

“They still sell them, though.”

“They do but not like they use to.”

“I’d like to have one,” Amy suddenly declared, still standing in front of the pineapple weight.

He chuckled, tapping her on the back of the neck. “Well, I’m glad I’m not alone.”

Not quite a week later, Amy knocked on his back door and asked if she could see some more pieces in his collection. She was alone but assured him her mother knew where she was so he invited her in and showed her the paperweights in his den. Again, she seemed fascinated by the decorative objects but even more she seemed to enjoy listening to him talk about them. Some of the weights came from halfway around the world and she almost felt transported to some of the exotic locales as he spoke.

The day after next, she returned to his house and he offered her a cup of hot chocolate

and let her see some more pieces. Soon she was visiting him a couple of times a week, always right after she got home from school, and though she continued to be interested in his collection, she also enjoyed talking with the older man and seeking his advice about different concerns in her life.

“You know what?” she blurted out one afternoon, after he suggested some courses she might consider signing up for when she started high school in a few years.

“What’s that, dear?”

“You know me better than anyone.”

“How can that be?” he asked, startled by the remark. “I’ve only known you a couple of months.”

“I don’t know but you do, Mr. Barnaby.”

Flattered, he suggested they make a paperweight together and, at once, her eyes became the size of poker chips as she followed him into the kitchen. From a cabinet he took out a small jar along with a penguin-shaped eraser that looked like a prize found inside a Cracker Jack box. Then, under his guidance, she glued the eraser to the bottom of the jar, poured in a quarter of a cup of corn syrup, and filled the jar with tap water. Next, she added a few drops of burnt orange food coloring, stirred the mixture with an ice cream stick, and added some sequins. Once the lid was glued back onto the jar, he cautioned her to let it dry for a couple of hours then, if she wished, she could shake the new paperweight and watch the sequins float like snowflakes.

Barnaby and his late wife didn’t have any children, which was a mutual decision he later came to regret, so he began to think of Amy as the daughter he never had and looked forward to her visits in the afternoon. A bundle of vitality, she seemed unable to conceal whatever was on her mind, and the more she talked the more concerned he became about her and the issues she had with the different men in her mother’s life. Repeatedly he urged her to start a collection of her own, hoping that might take her mind off her troubles for a while, and one afternoon, as an incentive, gave her the pineapple paperweight she so much admired.

“I can’t accept this, Mr. Barnaby.”

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“Please, dear, I insist.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she stammered, after giving him a peck on the cheek. “This is, by far, the most beautiful thing anyone has ever given me.”

The following afternoon, to his surprise, he received a visit not from Amy but from her mother whose eyes appeared a little narrower than usual as if she had just got out of bed.

“Hello, Mrs. Hester.”

“Hello.”

“What can I do for you today?”

Grimacing, she folded her arms across her chest. “Oh, I just wanted to thank you for the lovely paperweight you gave Amy yesterday.”

“It was my pleasure.”

“She couldn’t be more pleased.”

He smiled. “I’m glad.”

“Amy is very fond of you, as you are aware I’m sure, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to come over here so often.”

“Believe me, Mrs. Hester, she isn’t bothering me. Not at all. Truth be told, I look forward to her visits.”

“Well, you see, I don’t think it looks right for her to be over here without me or some other adult.”

His jaw tightened. “What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything.”

“You damn well are.”

“All I’m saying is that it doesn’t look good for a young girl to be alone in someone’s home who’s old enough to be her grandfather for a couple of hours every other day.”

“I really resent what you’re suggesting, Mrs. Hester. I’ve never done a thing anyone would regard as improper. Not a blessed thing.

And I’m shocked that you’d ever think that I had. All I’ve done is listen patiently to your daughter talk about all the problems she has to face living with you and all your men friends.”

She glared at him for a long moment.

“Amy will not be coming over here anymore, sir. And if you try to get in touch with her, I’ll call the police.”

“You bitch!”

“I may be that but I’m also her mother and I’m telling you to stay the hell away from her.”

The wretched woman got her way because Amy never again set foot inside his house. And whenever he was out in his yard and saw her and waved, she ignored him and went back into her house. He assumed her mother had lied and told the child he was the one who didn’t want her to visit him anymore. He considered writing her a letter to explain that was what her mother wanted, not him, but was afraid the hideous woman would find out and make good on her threat and report him to the police. So he decided not to and resigned himself to looking at the girl from his kitchen window. Some day he hoped she would learn the truth but suspected it might not be for quite some time.

Not quite two months after Amy’s last visit, flyers appeared in the neighborhood with the word “MISSING” printed above her picture.

He was surprised, to be sure, but not entirely because he figured she could not remain in that house much longer. He always suspected she really came over to talk with him in order to get out of her house for a while. Along with others in the neighborhood he passed out flyers and looked for signs of her along the riverbank and in some on the parks in the area. He even reconciled with her mother, to a degree, who had no idea where her daughter was and who, if anyone, might have taken her and was beside herself with grief. He doubted if Amy would ever return, even though that was why he made a paperweight every year to give to her when she did, but deep down he knew that was very unlikely to happen. Really he made the paperweights so he wouldn’t forget her. These days it was so easy to forget people, their faces and voices slipped away almost as quickly as their names.

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Melissa Phones Home by Paul Lewellan Fiction

The Seth Thomas clock on the mantel chimed the hour, but neither Doug nor his wife turned on the TV. Channel Six Late Night Edition wouldn’t cover the news they brooded over. The notes for Allison’s Cost Accounting class spread across the grey All-Steel desk. She expected to finish her MBA in the spring. Doug stared at the yellow legal pad on his lap. He rehearsed what he would say when the phone rang, much like he rehearsed opening statements for custody hearings.

Their large tabby, August, jumped on the desk and threaded his way through the papers and photographs. The cat settled beside Doug and Allison’s wedding picture taken six years ago at the Rock Island Botanical Center.

Doug wore a gray morning coat, Allison an antique white gown. Doug’s ten-year-old daughter, Melissa, wore the forced smile she used for every photo that included her stepmother.

“What if she doesn’t call?” Doug asked softly.

“That would be unlike her.”

Doug nodded. When Melissa was in control, she liked everyone to know it.

Doug surveyed the family room. The walls, shelves, and mantel were with filled photos: Melissa dancing in red sequins at her first recital; Melissa standing beside her magnetism experiment at the fifth grade science fair; Melissa holding her trophy from the eighth grade pom pon competition. The cordless phone beside Doug rang.

“Hello,” he said tentatively. Allison rose to join him.

“Daddy, is that you?”

“You know it is,” he answered, hiding his irritation. “Where are you?” The caller I. D. listed a long distance number and the name Anthony Johnson. “What’s all that noise?”

“I’m in Atlanta. Jeff met me at a friend’s place, rather than on the base.” In the background, Junior Brown was singing “Too Many Nights in a Roadhouse.” A dozen voices overlapped and blended with bottle noises and

loud burps. “The guys are partying in my honor,” she said proudly.

Doug’s wife stood beside him. “Not everyone gets a party in her honor,” he said noncommittally. Allison offered him the legal pad with his notes, but he waved it away.

Rational appeals were unlikely to persuade her if she was drinking.

“Oh, Daddy, I knew you’d understand.”

“Before you party too much, your mother and I would like to talk to you. I’ll have her pick up the extension and …”

“No,” Melissa shouted. “She’s not my mother.”

Doug looked to the photo of an infant Melissa in her white baptismal gown held by Doug’s ex-wife, Hillary. The photo was taped where Melissa had torn it when Hillary forgot her thirteenth birthday.

“I talked to my real mother Tuesday. I found her phone number in your planner.”

Doug wasn’t surprised. Melissa threatened to call her mother whenever she was unhappy.

Tuesday Doug refused to buy the used Camry she wanted unless her grades improved.

“Mom promised to come when Jeff and I get married.”

“Your mother promises a lot. When she left us she promised …”

“She left you,” Melissa said curtly, “not me.”

Doug looked at his wife’s impassive face. It was his move. He motioned, and she cautiously picked up the extension.

“Allison destroys Mom’s letters.”

Allison winced. She looked over to Doug, shaking her head.

“That isn’t true,” he told Melissa.

“Mom said she’s written me a lot. I told her I didn’t write because I didn’t have her address. She understood. Now, she’s going to write me every week.”

“She’s lying,” he stated flatly. Doug walked over to the small plaid love seat and

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wearily sat down. “She wrote once about money.

She wanted money for an abortion.”

“That’s a lie.”

“I have the cancelled check I wrote to the clinic.” Allison winced again. He hadn’t told her about the money. Doug waited until he couldn’t stand the silence. “Why are in you Atlanta?”

Doug knew the answer, but he wanted her to state it. He looked at the picture of Melissa in a strapless pink prom dress her freshman year. Randy Runge, the senior point guard of the State Runner-up basketball team, towered above her, his long right arm encircling her tiny waist. There were no pictures of Jeff Bristol who took Randy’s place. Melissa met him during her two-week stint as a waitress at Village Inn. “Jeff needs me.” She paused. “Did you know Allison wrote Jeff and accused him of taking advantage of me? She said he’d probably dump me once he got out of the Army. She said the only reason he could string me along was because I was sixteen and stupid.”

“I can see why you’re upset.” Allison was startled by his reply. Doug raised his index finger to his lips. Allison set the phone down beside Melissa’s baptism picture. Allison turned the picture face down and began pacing.

“I knew you’d understand.”

Doug looked at the book on the end table by his lamp: A Body Betrayed. Allison had read it, highlighting sections for him to read.

Now she was reading Reviving Ophelia, trying to understand Melissa. “Allison told me you missed today’s doctor appointment.” His wife’s face flushed.

“I needed to get an early start.”

“Why didn’t you tell us at breakfast?”

Melissa laughed. “Daddy, you’d never have let me go.”

“Why didn’t you leave a message at the office? Allison cleared her afternoon appointments, rearranged two meetings with clients, and then sat in front of the school for twenty minutes before going in to find you. The attendance clerk said you’d been absent all day.

Someone claiming to be Allison called you in sick. We were very … disappointed … when we found your suitcases missing and the Nissan gone.” Doug kept his voice even, free from

emotion. He wanted to establish the truth. Doug looked at his wife’s face and her rising anger as she relived the afternoon. He looked at the clock. They’d been waiting by the phone for seven hours.

“The appointment was Allison’s idea, not mine.”

On the other end of the line someone shouted, “Come on, baby, get off the phone.

Show us your moves.” Then the noise became muffled as Melissa cupped her hand over the phone.

Doug stared at the photo of the Harley High School Dance Drill Team, the Gold Dusters, with Melissa in the center of the first row. It was taken the day she was voted team Co-Captain at the start of her sophomore year.

Three weeks later she was suspended from the team for a month because of underage drinking.

In December she quit.

When Melissa returned to the line, she sounded out of breath. “Sorry. Things got a little loud here. Jeff asked the guys to turn down the stereo. You know Army guys when they get a few beers … He sends his regards.” Doug closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He knew better than to interrupt her. He wanted to keep her on the line until he said what he needed to say. “Oh, and Daddy, Jeff loves what you did to the car. He says a mint condition 280ZX is worth …”

Doug interrupted her. “Are you coming back?”

“Of course! Daddy, I’ve got school.”

He opened his eyes and grabbed his notes. “You missed school today.”

“Sure. But I’d have missed the afternoon anyway because of the stupid doctor’s appointment.”

“Bulimia isn’t something you take lightly.”

“Daddy. When I’m with Jeff, I feel fine.”

“That’s because you don’t eat when you’re with him,” Allison spoke firmly on the extension. Doug hadn’t seen her pick it back up.

“It makes it worse. You get weaker.”

“Allison! I knew you were listening.

Stop this instant, or I’ll hang up.” Melissa waited. “I’ll never come back.”

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Allison hung up. She grabbed a peach wine cooler from the mini-frig and sat down on the couch.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Melissa?”

“She’s not listening, is she?”

“No, she’s having a drink.” Doug looked again at his notes. “I want you back here tomorrow night.”

Melissa laughed again. “I couldn’t possibly be back before Monday when Jeff starts classes on the base.”

“I want you in school Monday morning.”

“Daddy, it’s silly to drive all this way for only one night.”

“You shouldn’t have gone at all. You stole the car. Plus, you weren’t to talk to Jeff until you talked to the doctor.”

“My problem has nothing to do with Jeff.”

“It all goes together.”

“No, it’s an excuse to split us up.”

“I’m still your father.”

“I’m not a child. Besides, you said last week the car needed a test drive.”

Doug turned to the photo of Melissa in tight jeans and a sweater standing between Doug and his young brother-in-law, John. The trio stood front of the jet black Nissan 280ZX the men had restored. Melissa smiled, her arm wrapped around John’s waist. “I was going to do the test drive this weekend,” he told her.

“Now you don’t have to.”

“That wasn’t your choice to make. The car belongs to me.”

“I helped build it. It should be mine.”

“Your uncle and I spent five-hundred hours restoring it. You brought us Cokes when you weren’t too busy.” Allison looked up from her wine cooler, surprised by the tone of Doug’s voice. “I considered letting you drive it to school if your grades improved, but I’ve decided to sell it to John.”

“He doesn’t deserve it.”

“I thought John was your favorite uncle?”

“He’s not my uncle. He’s Allison’s brother.” Doug felt his heart rate increase.

“Besides, he’s gay.”

“John’s not gay.” Allison was startled

by Doug’s comment. “He’s engaged to Tiffany.”

“Trust me, Daddy, he’s gay. I know. I checked it out.” There was nothing in Doug’s notes about this. “Jeff knows what to do with an attractive woman.”

“Jeff’s twenty-five. Do his Army buddies know you’re sixteen?”

“It’s not an age thing, Daddy. You were forty when you married Allison. You were twice her age. Why are you criticizing Jeff? You did the same thing.”

“It’s not …!” Doug stopped. He referred to his notes. Allison had anticipated her argument. “It’s not the same,” he said quietly.

Allison drained her glass, and then leaned back on the couch. She’d heard this conversation before. “I met Allison a year after your mother left. She was already managing her first store.

I’m forty-five, and Allison is thirty. You’re still in high school.”

“If high school is the problem, maybe I should drop out.”

“Maybe you should.”

Dough listened to the party noise on the other end of the line. He tried to detect female voices but heard none. He tried to block images of Melissa, hundreds of miles away, in a room filled with Jeff and his Army buddies. He needed to stay focused.

“I thought you wanted me to graduate.”

“That may not be possible. You’ve missed school again.”

“I’ll talk to my teachers on Tuesday.”

“I won’t argue.” Allison got up and stood beside him, resting her hands on Doug’s shoulders. “Do you have enough money to get back?”

“Yes.” “If you don’t, you should borrow some from Jeff.”

“Oh, I don’t need to do that,” she laughed.

“Melissa, I want you back by six o’clock tomorrow.”

“Daddy, Jeff’s got a picnic planned tomorrow afternoon.”

“Jeff can picnic. He can take his buddies. You’re driving home, otherwise, I’m reporting the car stolen.”

“Daddy, I’m keeping the car.”

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“No, you’re not. I sold it to John tonight for a dollar. He’s picking it up on Sunday.”

“Daddy, you can make all the threats you want … I’m coming back Monday.”

“Fine, but at 6:00 tomorrow night, the Atlanta police and the Georgia Highway Patrol will be given the plate number and your description.”

“I’ll have Jeff hide it.”

Doug looked down at the caller ID. “I’ll suggest they speak with Anthony Johnson.”

“Daddy, don’t you dare make trouble for Jeff.” Her tone was threatening.

Doug took a deep breath. “Jeff’s already in trouble. I called the base this afternoon.” The only sound on the line was the party in the background. Doug wondered if Jeff was listening. “Does Jeff know his base commander has a teenage daughter about your age? A message is waiting for Jeff at the gate when he returns to camp.”

Doug looked at Allison. She had predicted Mellisa’s responses with alarming accuracy.

“Daddy, I’ll stay here. I’ll get a job as a waitress. I’ll rent a room until we can get married.”

“Can you afford that?”

“Of course we can.”

“Then that’s what you should do. Hide the car. Get a motel room. Jeff can explain to his

commander that he’s going to marry you.” He paused. “But don’t use the Visa card. They’ll capture it.”

“Capture it?”

“When I looked in my billfold this afternoon, I found it was gone. So was Allison’s Gold Mastercard. Naturally, we reported them stolen along with your ATM card. Now they’re just pieces of plastic.”

“But Daddy, I have them. I thought you’d understand.”

“I do understand, sweetheart. That’s why I cancelled them. I’m going to bed now that I know you’re safe. I’ll see you tomorrow night.

I love you.” When Doug hung up the phone, he was shaking.

“Would you like an Anchor Steam?”

Allison asked.

“No. I need to get hold of myself in case she phones back.” Doug looked at the picture of Melissa at her first recital. She looked like a princess in pink satin.

“She might not call back.”

“I know,” he said rubbing his tired eyes.

“I know.”

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The Arc of a Bird in Flight by Rhys Timson Fiction

Amy would die if she stayed on the train. She knew this just as surely as she knew her name.

Even before she placed the first of her small, child-like feet onto the surface of the locomotive she knew it was coming. It had bided its time, lurking in the shadowed sidelines of her mind, until the doors drew together, formed their seal and announced with a whoosh and a whisper: “There is no escape.” And that’s when it came, creeping closer and closer from the edges of her thoughts – this doom that had her surrounded. Amy’s irises filled out like they had struck oil.

She found two free seats and sat by the window, placing the holdall she was carrying by the aisle. When the train started moving she focused on the grey foldaway table on the back of the seat in front of her, trying to lose herself in study of the undulations of its molded plastic surface, to meditate on the everyday as if it were the divine – but this didn’t work for long. Fear began to rise in her mind like the wreck of some sunken galleon suddenly called to the surface.

The train accelerated, and she found her pulse racing to match its speed. As the carriage leaned hard to the left and the landscape outside decayed into several long, thin streams of color she could feel her blood beating hard, breaking out and berating her bones and skin, charging all with failure to avert a coming catastrophe. She could hear it in her ears, the blood pumping against all the small auditory bones, the hammer thrusting on the anvil, the dum-de-dum-de-dum becoming dum-dum-dum-dum-dum -the march of a drum at a requiem.

Her mother was just fifty when she died, and it had been Amy – her baby – who found her, slumped on the sofa, television remote locked in her left hand, head down, mouth agape, eyes open, heart stopped. Amy had entered the house by the back door, calling to her mother as she entered and picking up a small red apple from the bowl. She bit into the fruit, took off her bag and her coat and hung the latter

on the rack. Then she walked down the hallway, calling again to her mother, and playfully chastising her, as she drew level with the living room door, for not answering. She called again, a third and final time. From then until the funeral she had been struck mute.

The first time the panic hit her, she was in the car with her dad and her brother, following the hearse. It was a hot, close day where the air just seemed to hang motionless, the heat pressing down upon every square inch of skin. Everything was so dry, the sweat barely had chance to form before it was carried it off.

Her pulse thrummed in her ears, and an odd growl from her stomach, like the groaning wood of a sinking ship, prompted her first words in a week. She pushed away her father’s arm and leaned forward in the car, her mouth filling with saliva and her throat signaling the reverse of peristalsis: “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Her aunts cleaned her up in the bathroom of the crematorium, wiping away the foul-smelling detritus from where it had stained her skirt and her shoes, but the acrid stench was in her nostrils for the whole of the service. It was so strong she found herself not even crying, thinking little of her dead mother in fact, and worrying only about the possibility of it happening again on the return home.

Over the next few days and weeks, whenever she got into a car she would start to sweat, her throat would feel heavy, she would become very aware of her tongue. She stopped driving, stopped taking car journeys of any kind.

As soon as the doors closed, and the vehicle started moving, her mind was no longer hers.

Her heart pounded. Her sweat poured. Her hands shook. If forced to continue the journey her fear would swell and engulf her, her anxiety would overtake her, and beyond the fear of emesis she would glimpse something much darker, something this corporeal panic was helping to obscure.

As the train increased its speed Amy’s mind erupted into revolt. Her blood pounded

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around her frail frame as if it was trying to break free of her. She could feel her throat becoming tighter and her insides turning over. When she inhaled, she felt as if no air passed her lips. She began tapping the four fingers of her left hand at a point near her right wrist. Her large blue eyes grew larger still, and she could feel a new heaviness about herself, as if she were acutely aware of her exact weight as it pulled her down towards the earth, and the pressure each internal organ placed upon the other as she sat upright in standard class.

She looked about at the other passengers, her eyes darting between them trying to find a face that could help her. But she was mute again, and all she would be able to do would be to stand and point at her flushed face and red eyes and labored breathing and hope they understood – hope they knew better than her how to cure her malady. For though a part of her knew nothing was physically wrong she was nevertheless certain that if she did not disembark immediately the consequences would be fatal.

When she had given up on cars she had turned to buses, but the fear followed her there too. She had a minor breakdown on the No.4 and had to get off four stops from the supermarket.

After buses it was trains, after trains it was cinemas, theatres, offices –any situation where a door closed and she could not extricate herself immediately. She didn’t return to college, didn’t return to work. Weeks would go by where she would not pass beyond the front door.

Everything in her life revolved around this strange fevered fear, everything was being sucked into this black hole of her terror.

Four months after her mother’s death, her brother and father convinced her to see a therapist. She was reluctant at first, but she wanted to be better, wanted what was left of her family not to have to worry about her. So she went, expecting nothing, and sat leaning forward in a comfortable chair, her feet crossed and her hands together and her eyes down, and before she knew it she was crying great gulfs of tears in front of a woman she did not know sitting across from her in a strange house on a darkening afternoon. And she hadn’t even told this woman her name.

But as the weeks progressed she told the therapist – a little middle-aged woman with ruler-straight, shoulder-length hair and glasses with huge, tortoise-shell frames – almost everything about herself, almost every thought that passed through her mind. As the weeks passed Amy learned ways to control her fears and her panics, to regulate her breathing, to divert her attention, to reason with the unreasonable territories of her subconscious.

But, useful as this help was, it was all merely a circling around a greater issue. The therapist said it to her bluntly one day: her panic was a form of defense.While she obsessed over it and its causes her mind had no time confront a more terrifying thought: her mother was dead and was never coming back. She knew then what she had to do. Feeling suddenly strong, she arranged to visit her aunt who lived in the country, and resolved to take the train there and beat her fears.

But little of that strength remained now.

She was about to stand and make a dash for the emergency cord to call an end to the experiment, to admit defeat, to scream and cry and run far away- when the train unexpectedly slowed to a stop.

As the train slowed, the cessation of movement brought Amy back from the brink.

Her heart rate fell, the pounding stopped, the fear abated and, before it could rise again, she saw something extraordinary. A bird of prey – Amy thought it must be some kind of falcon – was perched on a fence post at the edge of the track. She had never seen anything so beautiful before. She was transfixed, and time seemed to slow almost to a still. Her normal color returned, her eyes shrank, the panic retreated. The bird’s blue-white feathers fluttered in the wind as it adjusted its position on the post and, as the train rumbled into life, it angled its yellow-and-blackbeaked head down and prepared to launch into flight. For that moment all the alarms in her head were silent, and there was nothing but this vision before her in the entire world. For a few seconds, as the train gathered speed and the falcon flew parallel and matched its velocity, this sudden burst of beauty in the world, this perfect geometry of order and control ¬– the arc of a bird in flight – was enough to calm all fears.

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She watched it for as long as she could, and when it was gone something of it remained.

Something had been communicated.

Amy sat back in her seat, and knew she would complete her journey.

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Dressed in Black, Birdwise by William Doreski

A snarl of wood stove expresses a wooded distance I attain only when observing you sideways or out of the corner of one eye.

Blue jays snigger at the feeder.

Their pinhead eyes see everything except what’s directly ahead.

They aren’t afraid of hawks circling in the tall cold air, but should be.

Seeing you in your black outfit designed to absorb all the heat in a room or in the world I’m sure we met in the medieval era, two illiterate peasants breeding fodder for some lordly ego to expend in war. You don’t recall the rags that explained you body and soul. But looking sideways, birdwise, I catch a flutter of cloth escaping you like a whisper of spirit, a whiff of puberty exhausted centuries ago.

Your current elegance flatters your intellectual arrogance.

Your black wool coat encloses you in complicity with the cloudy sky creeping overhead to claim our space.

The blue jays creak and gambol and drive away the chickadees.

Crouched by the fire I remember you in both modern and medieval garb.

Wherever you are, your black clothes project before you a darkness that complies with many centuries of ignorance, the heavy cloth shushing everything it touches.

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More Regret by Conrad Geller I wish I could have met you later or sooner, Under a kindlier star. The firmament Might have rejoiced to see so lucky a couple Bathed in dharma and the light of heaven.

The day, it turned out, was disastrously dreary, Cold, with a bit of drizzle. The dress you wore Was wrong, a remnant of another party, Your shoes, for the season, unforgivably festive.

The waiter, too, who was Pan, studied neglect While I recounted my literary triumphs.

So we parted. And yet, I remember your eyes, Knowing and sad, and a sacred moment When you made a gesture with a tiny hand.

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This Morning by Joan McNerney Between deep night and soft dawn the mist covers fields spreading over daisies climbing bunchberries wetting seeds, leaves.

Milky smoke roams back and forth wandering voiceless through mountains of morning.

Whistling in fog past sycamores warblers seesaw up cloudy layers up up circling toward heaven.

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A Mosaic of High Walls by Christina Murphy a mosaic of high walls a spell so exquisite— a frozen ground swell of the forms that dreams take in exact resemblance of cloud-covered mountains lost to desolate sounds we have abandoned reason, or what is considered the safe path of adjudicated desires, to lose our souls in a sky that overlooks ocher waves of sand and stones— swift in the acquisition of masquerades here we will find love, or at least what can be made of love, as the blooms of night settle down into summer dreams— our most desired trance that stirs emotions into longings falling asunder

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Away in Compositionville by Lylanne Musselman If a genie gave me three wishes, I'd wish for more hours in each day so I could read at my leisure, write more poems, feed my wasted muse, who becomes weaker and more delirious, hour after hour that I grade packs and stacks of student papers – papers that defile language, defy grammar, choke on analysis, paragraphs that meander nowhere and back, and there – they meant their, they’re so sure of themselves: boastful of how they hate to write, and what does reading have to do with writing anyway?

I wish just once they’d read something I assign – Oops, another wasted wish! Did I just lose my chance for a long vacation in Spain? For a carefree year in Paris?

For those extra hours to nourish my neglected muse?

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Remember by Evelyn O’Brien Remember me and times that used to be, I loved you from the start - and I still do.

Recall once more, me coming through your door, With a happy grin for you once more.

Smile for me, I'll be there, though you may not know that I am near, I wrap my arms around you and take away each tear.

The times we spent together were not many, Seems they were all too few, We laughed, we cried, but always cared and that was plain to see.

I'd like to thank you for the love we shred, but only I can hope you know That you have meant the world to me.... and you always will.

Look to the sea and think of me, and I will hear your sigh and hold it in my heart until we meet again.

Smile for me, so I will know that you are doing fine.

Remember me.....don't cry for me, enjoy the life you have, Someday we'll smile, and talk and laugh and be great pals again

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Attention by Tom Pescatore Whit took his time cleaning himself on my keyboard, focused on his left ear, his (there's something off about them) orange eyes focused on a thing I couldn't see, the light from my window wasn't enough— I was wrapped in a blanket and flannel and plaid patterned pajama pants, I wanted to continue my edits—Whit kept cleaning, left leg scratching his face, tapping keys underneath his feet—now he wants in the closet, now he's out and mewing and mewing and meowing and growling and laying down and jumping and typing himself, I rest my forehead on his and he snorts, bites at the wires on my desk, I push him off I bite his ear, his stomach puffs and he opens my door

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Searching by Michael Williams To the sky I gaze, searching.

Breeze gently flows through my hair.

Questioning my very existence.

Will time answer me.

Decisions I make, confuse me more.

Mistakes I live with, left behind.

Those that speak of my beauty, don’t see the unattractiveness inside.

If the stars hear my plea grant me one wish.

Tranquil simplicity is all I require let love and peace enter my life.

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Author Bios Albert Anthoni resides in Connecticut, where he is part of a writers’ group in Waterbury. He has a chap book that contains three of his stories and a book of poetry. His love is writing short stories and exploring the human condition. He has a string of degrees but his passion is writing.

Chis Castle writes from a village in Greece.

William Doreski lives in New Hampshire, teaches at Keene State College, and has been published in many journals.

Conrad Geller grew up in Boston, lived much of his life in New York, and now lives and writes in Northern Virginia. He is widely published in electronic and print media and the recipient of a number of awards, most recently by the Poetry Society of Virginia.

Jacquie Gray recently graduated from Cerritos High School and plans on beginning a career where she can use her creativity to be able to help those in need--and travel all around the world. This is her first piece of published work!

Tracy Hauser is an MFA graduate student at the University of Baltimore’s Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program. She has been published in the latest issue of Abandoned Towers, Epiphany, Marco Polo Arts, Writer’s Underground, Trivial Typewriter, the Colonnades, Blood & Roses, The Rusty Nail, and several others.

Thomas Healy was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, and my stories have appeared in such publications as Freight Train, Limestone, Scarlet Sound, and Steel Toe Review.

Emily Glossner Johnson author is a writer from central New York. She has a BA in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo and an MA in English from the State University of New York College at Brockport. She has had a short story published in Lynx Eye, and has stories that will be published this summer and fall by Dinosaur Bees, The Linnet’s Wings, as well as by Musa Publishing in their Erato imprint.

Hannah Lane grew up in coastal towns of Portsmouth New Hampshire, and Kittery, Maine. She is currently studying English Literature and Writing as an undergraduate at Emmanuel College in Boston.

This is her first published piece.

Paul Lewellan’s stories have appeared in South Dakota Review, Big Muddy, Timber Creek Review, and Opium Magazine. His latest novel, Twenty-one Humiliating Demands, chronicles an aging assassin taking a sabbatical on a Mid-Western college campus. Paul is an Adjunct Instructor of Speech Communication and Business Administration at Augustana College. He writes from his deck overlooking the woods near the banks of the Mississippi River in Davenport, Iowa.

Joan McNerney lives in Ravena, a small town in upstate New York. Her poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines and was nominated twice for Best of the Net in 2011. Four of her books have been published by fine small literary presses.

Christina Murphy, originally from Florida, now lives in West Virginia in a 100 year-old house along the Ohio River. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in a range of journals, including, most recently, The Knotting House Review, Pear Noir! and Poetic Medicine.

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Lylanne Musselman lives in Toledo, Ohio. Her work has appeared, in The Bird’s Eye reView, The Prose-Poem Project, The Rusty Nail, Pank, Tipton Poetry Journal, New Verse News, among others.

Lylanne is the author of three chapbooks: Prickly Beer & Purple Panties (Bacon Tree Press, 2007), A Charm Bracelet for Cruising (Winged City Press, 2009) and Winged Graffiti (Finishing Line Press, 2011).

Evelyn O’Brien is a gifted artist who is retired and writes from Florida. She has sold many paintings, but this is her first published written work.

Tom Pescatore grew up outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is an active member of the growing poetry/lit scene within the city and hopes to spread the word on Philadelphia’s new poets. He maintains a poetry blog: amagicalmistake.blogspot.com. His work has been published in literary magazines both nationally and internationally, but he'd rather have them carved on the Walt Whitman bridge or on the sidewalks of Philadelphia's old Skid Row. SusanPhillips, a Boston area writer, has had work published in many newspapers and magazines. Her short stories have been printed in Poetica Magazine, Lissette’s Tales of the Imagination, Eunoia Review, Living Text, Red Wheelbarrow, Wild Violet, IdioM, Perspectives Magazine and All the Women Followed Her. She is currently working on an historical novel about King Agrippa I. Rhys Timson lives in London, England, where he works as the chief sub-editor on a daily business publication. He has previously been published in Aesthetica and Opium and, this year, received a fellowship to attend the Summer Literary Seminars in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Michael Williams writes from Kansas.

Janet Yung lives and writes in St. Louis, MO. Short fiction has appeared in several on-line publications.

Most recently “Epiphany Magazine On-Line“and “The Feathered Flounder.”

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Literary Brushstrokes Submissions to: Literarybrushstrokes.com

ŠJune 2012

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