Category: Blogs

Stumbling Block

Susan Shea

When he found you, you were like a caretaker of living vines. You walked free up and down rows of collected lives, learning their ways, seeing the value in their twists and turns. He licked his lips, shook his jailhouse key in anticipation of the mayhem he would bring your 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.

Las Manos

Gretchen Corsillo

My hand aches forging a kinship with my heart and my head, side effects of sleepless nights and too many poems. My words render no verdict, reduced to scrawled symbols inadequate of expressing the affliction of my affection for you. The rhetoric betrays me— fractured, a breakdown. So I crumble Read more

Gretchen Corsillo

Gretchen Corsillo is a librarian and writer from the greater NYC area. She holds a B.A. in Literature with a concentration in Creative Writing from Ramapo College and a Masters in Library & Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Gretchen is the author of a bimonthly column for Public Libraries Magazine, and her work has also appeared in Salon and the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Blog. She is currently working on a novel. Learn more about her at gretchenkaser.com.

from THE LOST BROTHER

Adrienne Pine

Nearly eight years after my father’s death, I received a phone call from the nurse I had hired at the end of his life. Jen was a kind and compassionate person, and she had been at his side when he passed away. Because of her other commitments, she was unable Read more

Adrienne Pine

Adrienne Pine's creative nonfiction has been published in The Write Place at the Write Time, Tale of Four Cities, The Yale Journal of Humanities in Medicine, and other venues.

Dragonflies Fly All the Way Away

Ericka Russell

Summer meant grandma’s 80’s brown conversion van. Brown carpet, brown velvet curtains, semi-sheer accordion blinds and dimpled beige leather seats and a third row, pulled at the rusts into a bed. A speaker system more elaborate than the dash and a giant bread cupboard that actually stored a mini box TV. Read more

Ericka Russell

Ericka Russell is a writer of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. After obtaining her BA at Ohio University, she received her MFA from Western Kentucky University. Ericka now pursues college instruction, photography, and outdooring.

How (Not) to Feed a Daughter

Liv Spikes

My delight at the ultrasound tech’s declaration, “It’s a girl,” was immediately followed by a heaviness and fear I associated with that specific gender reveal: the food thing. I did not feel this panic a year ago when the sex of my son was announced. Food things were girl things. Read more

Liv Spikes

Liv Spikes writes about her life-- it seems to offer up plenty of material. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Brain, Child Literary Magazine, The Briar Cliff Review, and others.

Floorboards

Gretchen Corsillo

The floorboards creak as you shift your thin frame closer to mine. They groan like the ghosts of our past, the persistent and unwritten tension between us. They speak of the unspoken desire, suddenly rekindled by our proximity. The ghosts sigh as your breath brushes my neck, a welcome rush Read more

Gretchen Corsillo

Gretchen Corsillo is a librarian and writer from the greater NYC area. She holds a B.A. in Literature with a concentration in Creative Writing from Ramapo College and a Masters in Library & Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Gretchen is the author of a bimonthly column for Public Libraries Magazine, and her work has also appeared in Salon and the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Blog. She is currently working on a novel. Learn more about her at gretchenkaser.com.

WHEN YOU ARRIVE

Katherine West

You have wandered this road for a long time.  You have left versions of yourself along the way, like sluffed off skins of earlier snakes. There are times when longing pulls you back to examine the scraps of tissue paper skin that hint at the nature of these other selves. Read more

Katherine West

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective and Southwest Word Fiesta. New Verse News nominated her poem And Then the Sky for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.

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.