“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
OCTOBER
NONFICTION & PROSE POETRY
3 POEMS
A. M. THOMPSON
~
GRETA, GARDENING
She stands with a broad stance in faded jeans and a plain grey tee, reaching just above her head with a yellow bow saw. The broad Greek sun slants in from the west, and I try not to notice how it highlights her breasts. Strong and compact as a teen, although she is well into her 60s. I guess that’s what spending a lifetime restoring an old stone house by hand will do for you.
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MY TRIP TO A VILLAGE DISPLACED AFTER THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER
DARYA TSYMBALYUK
~
We are going to Vilcha, to a new Vilcha. The journey, although short, is exhausting: bumpy roads in an August heat.
The land is stretched out, irritatingly dry, burnt.
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WINTER AND AFTER
DOUG BOLLING
~
Cumberland Lake. How that name brings so much back. Lake of my youth.
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LIGHT UPON LIGHTLY
ROBERT D. VIVIAN
~
To live lightly upon the earth as any leaf, feather, or rainbow, to leave almost nothing behind but a sigh
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OCTOBER
FICTION
(CONTEMPORARY WOODS-WESTERN-MOUNTAIN-APPALACHIAN)
THE VISITOR
MAUREEN SHERBONDY
~
Everyone told Tevin that it would be difficult to meet women in his chosen profession. Not so much because of the job itself, but where he might live as a result of being a forest ranger. He’d hoped to get a job in the Pine Barrens or somewhere else in his own state. In a crowded place like New Jersey, even if he lived on-site in the Pine Barrens, women were just a few Parkway exits away. But there were no openings in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or Connecticut the year he graduated from Rutgers. So here he was in upstate New York, miles and miles from civilization.
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(LITERARY)
ICE PLUNGE
MAYA SOKOLOVSKI
~
It’s cold. I couldn’t possibly be here, but there we are: by Lake Wilcox, in Sensei’s backyard. It’s dusk and December in Aurora, Canada. The sun is a crimson smear in the west. It’s minus-19 Celsius but a breeze makes it feel like minus-25. Sensei, my fellow judoka, and I run onto the ice. We’re in swimsuits and boots. Their winter coats and my fur parka hang on a coat rack, which Sensei’s wife had set out earlier on the snow-covered lawn for our convenience.
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OCTOBER HIGHLIGHTED CONTRIBUTORS:
Doug Bolling's poems have appeared in Water-Stone Review, Kestrel, The Missing Slate (with interview), among others. He has received Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations and, most recently, his poem "Body and Soul" was awarded the Mathiasen prize by the University of Arizona's Harmony Magazine. He lives in the greater Chicago area.
Maureen Sherbondy's most recent poetry book is Belongings. She has also published a short story collection and eight other poetry collections. Maureen teaches English at Alamance Community College in Graham, NC.
Maya Sokolovski works as a technical writer while dabbling in creative writing in her spare time. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Agnes and True, RIDE 3, The First Line, and the Journal of the Society of Classical Poets. Her first book, Double-Click Flash Fic: A Chapbook of Short Fiction and Poetry, was published in 2016.
A.M. Thompson‘s poetry is published in Europe (Acumen, The Journal, Vine Leaves, and others) and the U.S. (Ardor, Flyover Country Review, Tulane Review, and others). Thompson has creative nonfiction in KYSO Flash and Leopard Seal; short fiction in Best New Writing 2014; and video remixes online.
Darya Tsymbalyuk is a writer and a visual artist from Ukraine, but she has lived in 6 different countries in the past 10 years, has learned 4 foreign languages and eventually reached a place where she felt in-between languages and in-between countries; this is the reason she writes and looks for ways of articulating her understanding of things. Her work has appeared and / or is forthcoming in Fiction International, CALYX, The Blotter, Brasilia Review and Bitterzoet. Darya received her BA in Studio Art and Languages from Kenyon College (OH) and her MA from the University of St Andrews (Scotland), where she focused on oral histories of displacement.
Robert D. Vivian is an Assistant Professor of English at Alma College in Michigan, and also teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts low residency MFA program. He is author of The Tall Grass Trilogy, Water And Abandon, and two collections of meditative essays, Cold Snap As Yearning and The Least Cricket Of Evening. He has written more than twenty plays produced off and off-off Broadway, and his work has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Creative Nonfiction, Glimmertrain, Georgia Review, and elsewhere. His book Mystery My Country was published in 2016.
Doug Bolling's poems have appeared in Water-Stone Review, Kestrel, The Missing Slate (with interview), among others. He has received Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations and, most recently, his poem "Body and Soul" was awarded the Mathiasen prize by the University of Arizona's Harmony Magazine. He lives in the greater Chicago area.
Maureen Sherbondy's most recent poetry book is Belongings. She has also published a short story collection and eight other poetry collections. Maureen teaches English at Alamance Community College in Graham, NC.
Maya Sokolovski works as a technical writer while dabbling in creative writing in her spare time. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Agnes and True, RIDE 3, The First Line, and the Journal of the Society of Classical Poets. Her first book, Double-Click Flash Fic: A Chapbook of Short Fiction and Poetry, was published in 2016.
A.M. Thompson‘s poetry is published in Europe (Acumen, The Journal, Vine Leaves, and others) and the U.S. (Ardor, Flyover Country Review, Tulane Review, and others). Thompson has creative nonfiction in KYSO Flash and Leopard Seal; short fiction in Best New Writing 2014; and video remixes online.
Darya Tsymbalyuk is a writer and a visual artist from Ukraine, but she has lived in 6 different countries in the past 10 years, has learned 4 foreign languages and eventually reached a place where she felt in-between languages and in-between countries; this is the reason she writes and looks for ways of articulating her understanding of things. Her work has appeared and / or is forthcoming in Fiction International, CALYX, The Blotter, Brasilia Review and Bitterzoet. Darya received her BA in Studio Art and Languages from Kenyon College (OH) and her MA from the University of St Andrews (Scotland), where she focused on oral histories of displacement.
Robert D. Vivian is an Assistant Professor of English at Alma College in Michigan, and also teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts low residency MFA program. He is author of The Tall Grass Trilogy, Water And Abandon, and two collections of meditative essays, Cold Snap As Yearning and The Least Cricket Of Evening. He has written more than twenty plays produced off and off-off Broadway, and his work has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Creative Nonfiction, Glimmertrain, Georgia Review, and elsewhere. His book Mystery My Country was published in 2016.
