This week’s artwork is “The Wind’s Hush After a Kiss” by Bill Wolak

Faded
by Bronwen O’Donnell

She was never close to her father’s mother. She’d gone when she was just a bairn. Her rabbit had died the same weekend, and it had been Smokey that had wrung her infant heart.

Thirty-two years later, the faded photograph, so fragile…almost dust in her hand, told a truth.

A young woman, a park bench, a baby the same age as hers. Her own eyes looking back at her.

Someday, she would be a dusty photo in an attic. Even now, she was a memory waiting to fade.

She framed her grandmother. It was the least she could do.

Denver Disappeared Wednesday
by Eric Robert Nolan

Denver disappeared Wednesday.

That’s how it happens. Cities targeted by EAGLE-X simply vanish. The orbiting laser is cleaner than a nuke; it vaporizes its maddeningly random targets.

When the EAGLE-X defense satellite went rogue, it gave us a global game of Russian roulette. First its malfunctioning program targeted an obscure Siberian town. Then a nondescript French suburb. Then it left Buenos Aires a silent, sulphurous, blackened flatland. Tuesday it incinerated Kirik, a Icelandic fishing village of just 400 souls. Every time we try to nuke it, it defends itself.

I kiss my infant son tonight — maybe for the last time.

The Corporation
by Charles Gray

Entangled in your policies — I never strayed from your goals. Choked by your procedures, I pried your hands from my throat, so you could choke me again. Down the paperwork abyss I fell, and with mangled fingers, clawed out. Yes, I worked the extra hours — unpaid — because that’s what you needed. Promoted to project manager, I presented the customer your scheduled accomplishments — all lies. The sleepless nights piled up and dropped me to my knees. When I extended my hand for my thirty year anniversary plaque, you smirked, “Thanks for your service, Mr. Goodman,” and handed me a pink slip.

The Vase
by Bill Cook

Before passing, Patsy applied rose-scented lip balm. Now she’d miss out on her pottery class. I, her sinewy fingers, the pliant knuckles of a pole-vaulter. Her at the round wooden stool. Her agile hands clasping the slick malleable clay.

September sunlight bled through mouth-blown windowpane. Cottonwood warmed golden-green before her return to the hospital. Patsy sat coaxing a squatty vase into being. “A vase meant to hold a reflection.”

She had ground pigment. Had made fire. Had pumped hand-drawn water.

This morning, a year later, I gripped the furrowed stem, caressed the vulvic collar. Placed the clutch of garden tulips.

Cleaning the Lies
by Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri

I try to scoop up lies I’ve told my father. They keep slipping. I shouldn’t lie, but want peace. He loves to dissect. Find flaws in every move. I’m too weak, artistic, need to use people. Trust no one. I’m in a prestigious PhD program. Have three girlfriends. Top of the class. I’m rough, thriving on the energy of fights, taking out neo-Nazis. Lies expand, contract, consume. Truth and I part ways, even as she tries to reconcile. I want peace. Can’t expect him to be pleased. I lost that expectation. I keep scooping, but I’ll never clean everything. Anything.

Dough
by Mandira Pattnaik

A wrinkled palm held out, I used to sing a ditty on the steps of the glitzy Bank. Moneyed people eyed me like a roach. They wished homeless, penniless people like me disappeared from these polished sidewalks, from their upmarket business district, from their chic city, from the face of earth.

This changed overnight when I brought my pooch along and wrote ‘For the dog’ on my cup. I made enough to last the week before lunch.

The River
by Carson Stone

There’s a couple holdin’ hands down there by the river, no more’n teenagers if I had to take a guess. They’re still in the springtime years, dazzled by the motion of a growing life in a world where everything is brand new. I can’t help but notice the stillness that’s crept into these old bones and spread to damn near everything else I’d rightly consider part of me. I stare at the empty rocker sittin’ next to mine and follow that laughter back to the riverbed. Same river it’s always been. Can’t hurt to hope I’ll be there again someday.

Inherited Land
by Jacob (Radar) DeBoard

Josiah sat quietly in his favorite chair on the front porch. He looked out over the several dozen acres of farmland before him. This had been a new evening ritual of his.

Things hadn’t been the same since he had inherited the land from his father. He missed him. His wife emerged from inside. “Everything quiet?”, she asked. Josiah gave a small nod in response.

Just then, his eyes caught a glimpse of something in the distance. An older man covered in dirt, shambled down the road. Josiah stood up, picking up a shovel. “Looks like dad got out again.”