July - This month was named in honor of Julius Caesar, but we've got all-women nonfiction this month: five glorious pieces of prose poetry, and a fine lyric essay. Our fiction features two new-to-us authors writing in the genres of mystery and dark fiction, both intriguing pieces of work. Enjoy! ~ Editor
JULY
NONFICTION & PROSE POETRY
(PROSE POETRY)
PASSOVER. KYIV. 1995
KS LACK
~
Here, in the city of Pechersk and Babi Yar, I expected my celebration to be a quiet affair. How was I to know that most of my colleagues had Jewish branches hidden in their family trees?
The fax machine beeps again. The wealth of my loved ones – nurtured though continents and centuries, passed faithfully from mouth to ear – spills forth in an endless scroll of perforated paper. Food is a sermon everyone understands.
Continue reading this and "The Pasture."
(PROSE POETRY)
HANG ON, LITTLE TOMATO
M. ANN REED
~
I am six, five, four, three, two, one, going on one-hundred-fifty-thousand years old. Every day is a birthday. So the dates on the new gravestone, 1928 – 2015, confuse me. I read the credits: Minoan Sisterhood Founder, Traveler, Artist, Mystic, Human-i-tar-ian (another dinosaur?) Epi-curean (from ‘cure’? a physician?) Culinary Artist, Social Activist for Peace, Women’s Rights, Caring Economics, and Cultural Trans-form-a-tion. What are my credits? I am gullible. I am a crisis.
Continue reading.
(PROSE POETRY)
SOMETIMES A SHADOW
CATHRYN SHEA
~
Sometimes I’m an Apache chief staring straight ahead because I can’t make my hair curl and I’m frustrated and my sister calls me Cochise. I have high cheekbones and raven-black hair knife-parted in the middle, blunt-cut at the shoulders.
Continue reading this and "Escape to Canada."
(LYRIC ESSAY)
ON MEMORY AND FORGETTING
KATHERYN SIMPSON
~
I worry about my memory the most on Mondays. Small talk in the office always includes an ask about the weekend. “Oh, not much,” was once my false modesty. Now it’s just forgetting. I find myself on the bus, trying to remember, to fill the coming ask. More than anything else, I’m embarrassed at 28 to forget.
Continue reading.
(LYRIC ESSAY)
ON MEMORY AND FORGETTING
KATHERYN SIMPSON
~
I worry about my memory the most on Mondays. Small talk in the office always includes an ask about the weekend. “Oh, not much,” was once my false modesty. Now it’s just forgetting. I find myself on the bus, trying to remember, to fill the coming ask. More than anything else, I’m embarrassed at 28 to forget.
Continue reading.
JULY
fiction
(DARK FICTION)
THE ANIMAL INSIDE
CHRISTIAN CARTER-STEPHENSON
~
Dr. Hunter settled himself in the vacant chair at the centre of the interview room - a windowless box lit by a single pendulous light bulb. The prisoner eyeballed him across the table as he opened his notebook, her mouth taut with hostility. Powerfully built with matted mousy hair and a number of prominent tattoos, she looked like she was ready to take on the world.
Continue reading.
(MYSTERY)
THE WIDOW RUSSELL'S BOY
ROBB T. WHITE
~
Emmaline watched him play alone in the dirt. His brothers and sisters were used to his silences. In the thoughtless ways of children, they left him to himself while he scratched marks in the dirt with a stick. Her “silent son,” her beloved Amiel.
Continue reading.
THE WIDOW RUSSELL'S BOY
ROBB T. WHITE
~
Emmaline watched him play alone in the dirt. His brothers and sisters were used to his silences. In the thoughtless ways of children, they left him to himself while he scratched marks in the dirt with a stick. Her “silent son,” her beloved Amiel.
Continue reading.
JULY HIGHLIGHTED CONTRIBUTORS:
Christian Carter-Stephenson's fiction has been featured in a variety of magazines, including AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review and Dark Horizons (the former journal of the British Fantasy Society). He has had three books published by Bonito Books and is a published poet, and he is also a member of the Horror Writers Association and the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators. Christian won a silver award in the 2012 Children’s Literary Classics awards for his children’s novel, The Crystal Ship, and has been a finalist in the Writers of the Future contest. He recently completed an MA in Creative Writing with the University of Southampton.
KS Lack is a writer and letterpress printer residing in New York. Her work has appeared in publications and galleries such as the New York Center for Book Arts, Tishman Review, temenos, and the London Centre for Book Arts. You can view highlights of her work at www.zitternpress.com. Making gefilte fish, dying Easter eggs with her nieces, and listening to records on lazy Sunday mornings are a few of her favorite things. She has been living with disability and chronic pain since the age of eleven.
M. Ann Reed is a contemplative scholar, poet, Chinese calligrapher-brush painter and professor of English Literature and Theory of Knowledge who has taught in Malaysia, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, China and the USA. Her postdoctoral research studies the mending arts of Early Modern English and Contemporary Poetry. Her Chinese calligraphy and brush paintings have been exhibited in Portland, Oregon and at the Shenzhen Fine Arts Museum in China. Her poems have been published in various literary journals.
Cathryn Shea is the author of four poetry collections, most recently the micro chapbook “My Heart is a Salt Mirror Like Salar de Uyuni” (Rinky Dink Press, 2018) and “It’s Raining Lullabies” (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). “The Secrets Hidden in a Pear Tree” is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2019. Her poetry has been nominated for Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net 2017 and recently appears in Tar River Poetry, Gargoyle, Permafrost, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. See www.cathrynshea.com and @cathy_shea on Twitter.
Katie Simpson is a writer and photographer based in San Francisco. Her work has been featured in The Hairpin, Entropy Magazine, and Brooklyn Magazine. When not writing she loves people watching and travelling. You can find her online at https://twitter.com/honest_creative.
Robb T. White lives in Northeastern Ohio and writes crime, noir, horror, and mainstream stories. Since 2011, he has published 5 crime/noir novels. Special Collections won the New Rivers eBook Competition in 2014. His latest works are a collection of hardboiled stories featuring women characters or narrators and another crime novel: Perfect Killer (Crowood Press, 2018).
Christian Carter-Stephenson's fiction has been featured in a variety of magazines, including AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review and Dark Horizons (the former journal of the British Fantasy Society). He has had three books published by Bonito Books and is a published poet, and he is also a member of the Horror Writers Association and the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators. Christian won a silver award in the 2012 Children’s Literary Classics awards for his children’s novel, The Crystal Ship, and has been a finalist in the Writers of the Future contest. He recently completed an MA in Creative Writing with the University of Southampton.
KS Lack is a writer and letterpress printer residing in New York. Her work has appeared in publications and galleries such as the New York Center for Book Arts, Tishman Review, temenos, and the London Centre for Book Arts. You can view highlights of her work at www.zitternpress.com. Making gefilte fish, dying Easter eggs with her nieces, and listening to records on lazy Sunday mornings are a few of her favorite things. She has been living with disability and chronic pain since the age of eleven.
M. Ann Reed is a contemplative scholar, poet, Chinese calligrapher-brush painter and professor of English Literature and Theory of Knowledge who has taught in Malaysia, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, China and the USA. Her postdoctoral research studies the mending arts of Early Modern English and Contemporary Poetry. Her Chinese calligraphy and brush paintings have been exhibited in Portland, Oregon and at the Shenzhen Fine Arts Museum in China. Her poems have been published in various literary journals.
Cathryn Shea is the author of four poetry collections, most recently the micro chapbook “My Heart is a Salt Mirror Like Salar de Uyuni” (Rinky Dink Press, 2018) and “It’s Raining Lullabies” (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). “The Secrets Hidden in a Pear Tree” is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2019. Her poetry has been nominated for Sundress Publication’s Best of the Net 2017 and recently appears in Tar River Poetry, Gargoyle, Permafrost, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. See www.cathrynshea.com and @cathy_shea on Twitter.
Katie Simpson is a writer and photographer based in San Francisco. Her work has been featured in The Hairpin, Entropy Magazine, and Brooklyn Magazine. When not writing she loves people watching and travelling. You can find her online at https://twitter.com/honest_creative.
Robb T. White lives in Northeastern Ohio and writes crime, noir, horror, and mainstream stories. Since 2011, he has published 5 crime/noir novels. Special Collections won the New Rivers eBook Competition in 2014. His latest works are a collection of hardboiled stories featuring women characters or narrators and another crime novel: Perfect Killer (Crowood Press, 2018).
