"How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June.
My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?"
- Dr. Seuss
My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?"
- Dr. Seuss
SEND US THE STUFF THAT'LL HAVE US DOING CARTWHEELS AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE!
DECEMBER
NONFICTION & PROSE POETRY
ARTIFACTS
CHARITY GINGERICH
~
Mannequin
At six degrees above zero, her small breasts seem more frozen than usual, the ugly-but-cute bears doing winter things sweater she models for eBay like a loose map of the history of women. My mother turns her backwards while tightening the sweater’s red buttons. Because: the men in our house, because: her instincts tell her form for form’s sake is unnatural, must conform.
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5 POEMS
ELLEN STONE
~
Your Grandpa Was a Fox Hunter
I’ll fashion my daughters a cave made of fox skins my dad hung to cure from the old cellar rafters. The mink and the muskrat will cloak them in night reeds. They’ll bathe with cool moonlight in pools still and quiet. Now ones fully shrouded, they’ll slip through the cornfields and eat with the ravens. Run sleek like coyote and stalk the night bobcat. My girls, can I give you my past as protection? A shotgun, an old truck, the men at the diner who knew your great granddad who preached all those sermons – how Jesus would keep us as safe in his bosom as Granny kept Sunday the Lord’s day as holy. The people who raised me take fear as prediction, as God’s word, His only. For girls to be furtive, claws showing, teeth shining might be their salvation, their way of surviving. I’ll take my chances and teach them that hunting is deep in their blood line -- the body as beast, if need be -- when wolf men come a calling.
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DECEMBER
FICTION
(MYTH AND LEGEND)
HUNGER
JOSEPH HEILAND
~
1.
He was born big as a mountain, with fingernails that could till crops. He stared up blindly at the moon and babbled and spat. He lifted his head and set it back down and there was broken glass in Houston, in Anchorage. His bloody mouth opened and he sobbed and half the world away a dog turned.
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(LITERARY FICTION)
THE CASHIER
S.F. WRIGHT
~
Vanessa Stone was in her mid-thirties, but unless you looked really closely, she could’ve passed, Drew thought, for twenty-eight; her milky-white skin was smooth and unblemished, her figure petite and fit. Also, she always smelled of nice perfume and smiled at Drew in a way that made his heart flutter.
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(WOODS/WESTERN/MOUNTAIN/APPALACHIAN)
OLD HIGHWAYS
ALEX PICKENS
~
I found Silas sitting by the stream in the bottom of the narrow valley. When I was a kid I used to go down to that valley, past the rusting shells of cars half-sunk in the weeds, careful not to get too close to them because my mother had warned me about rattlesnakes and foxes that made their homes there. Rattlesnakes scared me. I never saw a fox, except once in the winter moonlight when a silvery apparition glided across the yard. Silas told me they were ghosts, and I probably believed him.
Continue reading.
OLD HIGHWAYS
ALEX PICKENS
~
I found Silas sitting by the stream in the bottom of the narrow valley. When I was a kid I used to go down to that valley, past the rusting shells of cars half-sunk in the weeds, careful not to get too close to them because my mother had warned me about rattlesnakes and foxes that made their homes there. Rattlesnakes scared me. I never saw a fox, except once in the winter moonlight when a silvery apparition glided across the yard. Silas told me they were ghosts, and I probably believed him.
Continue reading.
DECEMBER HIGHLIGHTED CONTRIBUTORS:
Charity Gingerich's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Arts & Letters, Ruminate, and Indiana Review, among others. In 2016 she was a Tennessee Williams poetry scholarship recipient at the Sewanee Writer's conference, where she had the pleasure of working with Robert Hass and A. E. Stallings. Currently, she teaches literature, creative writing and poetry as an adjunct at the University of Mount Union, in Northeast Ohio.
Joseph Heiland is a graduate of Ithaca College and recently completed the MFA program in fiction at Sarah Lawrence College.
Alex Pickens has lived over 20 years in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia. He recently graduated Magna Cum Laude with a dual degree and this year his work appears in outlets such as Pretty Owl Poetry, Jersey Devil Press, Crack the Spine, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Tuck magazine, and Allegory Ridge, while his flash fiction has been nominated for a Best Microfiction, 2018 anthology. Author of award-winning screenplays, in his spare time he runs in the mountains, reads the Classics, and occasionally stares down an angry bear.
Ellen Stone teaches at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her poems have appeared lately in Passages North, The Collagist, The Citron Review, The Museum of Americana, and Fifth Wednesday. She is the author of The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013). Ellen’s poetry has been nominated twice for a Pushcart prize and twice for Best of the Net.
S.F. Wright lives and teaches in New Jersey. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, The Examined Life Journal, Elm Leaves Journal, and The Tishman Review, among other places. His website is sfwrightwriter.com.
Charity Gingerich's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Arts & Letters, Ruminate, and Indiana Review, among others. In 2016 she was a Tennessee Williams poetry scholarship recipient at the Sewanee Writer's conference, where she had the pleasure of working with Robert Hass and A. E. Stallings. Currently, she teaches literature, creative writing and poetry as an adjunct at the University of Mount Union, in Northeast Ohio.
Joseph Heiland is a graduate of Ithaca College and recently completed the MFA program in fiction at Sarah Lawrence College.
Alex Pickens has lived over 20 years in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia. He recently graduated Magna Cum Laude with a dual degree and this year his work appears in outlets such as Pretty Owl Poetry, Jersey Devil Press, Crack the Spine, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Tuck magazine, and Allegory Ridge, while his flash fiction has been nominated for a Best Microfiction, 2018 anthology. Author of award-winning screenplays, in his spare time he runs in the mountains, reads the Classics, and occasionally stares down an angry bear.
Ellen Stone teaches at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her poems have appeared lately in Passages North, The Collagist, The Citron Review, The Museum of Americana, and Fifth Wednesday. She is the author of The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013). Ellen’s poetry has been nominated twice for a Pushcart prize and twice for Best of the Net.
S.F. Wright lives and teaches in New Jersey. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, The Examined Life Journal, Elm Leaves Journal, and The Tishman Review, among other places. His website is sfwrightwriter.com.
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