Category: Featured

Misfit

Susan Shea

Young and full of new answers, I remember wanting a pair of red shoes so much I thought half a size smaller wouldn’t matter too much, until a blister made of burning lava told me not to settle for tormenting strolls anymore. But, I still had to learn that slow Read more

Susan Shea

Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist who was born in New York City, and now lives in a forest in Pennsylvania. She feels like she is coming alive again, able to return to writing poetry. Susan has been published in Plainsongs, Pudding, The Bluebird Word, and The Agape Review. Recently Susan has had poems accepted for Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Bookends Review, Exstasis, Poetry Breakfast, and four anthologies by The Moonstone Arts Center:The Weight of Motherhood, by Wingless Dreamer: Darkness Within Me, by Pure Slush Books: Lifespan Series:Achievement, and by Poet’s Choice: Nostalgia.

Departure

Paula R. Hilton

Youngest leaves for college today. Our house appears to understand. Our house appears to understand. Water heater breaks, ceiling weeps. I grab a mop, sweep up the weeps. Sam the Appliance Man is booked. Every plumber in town is booked. She carries on, keeps packing up. Nothing stops her from Read more

Paula R. Hilton

Paula R. Hilton explores the immediacy of memory and how our most important relationships define us. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and has appeared in The Feminine Collective, The Sunlight Press, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, Dear Damsels, The Tulane Review, and elsewhere. Her novel, Little Miss Chaos, was selected as a Best Indie Teen Read by Kirkus, and her first poetry collection, At Any Given Second, received a Kirkus star. She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans.

Big Sky

Carolyn McAuliffe

Montana is so far now. I don’t know if I can get back. Why? You ask. I don’t know. I say. But I do. Late nights sucking On those skinny menthol cigarettes. The ones that make me feel so elegant. Like a proper lady helps me think. I still hear Read more

Carolyn McAuliffe

Carolyn McAuliffe resides in Southern California with her husband Mike and son Michael. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University. Carolyn’s work has appeared in a Wising-Up Press Anthology, The Motherhood Muse, Califragile, and From Whispers To Roars

Loneliness Looks Like Hunger

Cynthia Good

For a while, you lived in a room without a TV Or a garbage disposal, and it was so quiet You heard the refrigerator moan, two dogs  Barking at each other in the alley, somebody  On the roof watering. You’ve been alone all day Except for 10 minutes when the Read more

Cynthia Good

Cynthia Good is an award-winning poet, journalist, former TV news anchor, and author of the chapbook, What We Do with Our Hand published last fall by Finishing Line Press. She has written seven books and launched two magazines. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in numerous journals including Tupelo Quarterly, Terminus Magazine, Waxing and Waning. Her full-length manuscript, In The Thaw of Day, has just been accepted for publication.

Siren

Emma Wells

A knot binds tight in a birdcage chest pulling taut like harness straps; breath falters edgily in gasps and gritty gaps struggling for free passage in staccato, high-heeled beats. Achieving lung-full, fresh, rejuvenating air: an impossibility. With the bindings, a nervousness attends surveying coldly from the sidelines; my play stutters, Read more

Emma Wells

Emma is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry and prose published with various literary journals and magazines. She is currently writing her fifth novel. Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 and her short story, ‘Virginia Creeper’, was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021. Recently, Emma won Dipity Literary Magazine’s 2024 Best of the Net Nominations for Fiction with a short story entitled ‘The Voice of a Wildling’. Her poem ‘Rose-Tainted is the winner of the poetry category, Discourse Literary Journal, February 2024 Issue.

Mirror Talk

Sarwa Azeez

Be yourself if you want to kill all demons inside your head. My therapist advises. Talk to yourself in the mirror. I look at my reflection, its mouth opens, wanting to start before me. But the voice is not mine. Yes. You heard it right. I am Miryam. The pretty Read more

Sarwa Azeez

Sarwa Azeez is a Kurdish poet, translator, and Fulbright scholar with an MA in English Literature at Leicester University and an MFA from Nebraska-Lincoln University. She is a Pushcart prize nominee and her debut poetry collection, Remote, was published in the UK by 4Word in 2019. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Parentheses Journal, Collateral Journal, Writing for A Woman's Voice, the other side of hope, Genocide Studies and Prevention Journal, Kurdish Center for Studies, Wingless Dreamer, and elsewhere. Sarwa's writing draws on her childhood memories of wartime Iraq, where she grew up reading by the flickering light of kerosene lanterns, and searches for the beauty in a war-torn world while seeking to define identity and confront issues of equal gender representation and violence in male-dominant communities. In what little free time she has, Sarwa applies her knowledge of English, Arabic, Kurdish, and Farsi by practicing the subtle art of translating poetry.

Shapeshifting

Judith Staff

The shape of heavy tears streaking down, earthwards, journeying to find our loved ones faces, again The shape of trembling lips the very moment we recall their forevermore absence as we write the date, on this day their birthday The shape of the book on the shelf in the store, Read more

Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.

Lessons in Healing From the Aisles of Target

Summer Hammond

August 2016             I’m kneeling in the aisle like a worshipper dropping tears into the white ceramic shell of an armadillo.             What else would you do on your inaugural Target run in a new town you thought you would love but don’t even like? Read more

Summer Hammond

Summer Hammond grew up in rural Iowa and Missouri. After parting ways with her faith, she went on to earn a BA in Literature, teach ninth grade reading, and achieve her MFA from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. She is the author of three unpublished novels. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Sonora Review, StoryQuarterly, Moon City Review, and Tahoma Review. She is the winner of the 2023 New Letters Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction.