top of page
Foliate Oak April 2016

Fiction

Three Chickens by Kristin Ashby
*archive unavailable 

Zog Zohr Oush by Bruce Costello
*archive unavailable 

​Lavender Soap by Darla Mottram
*archive unavailable 

A Spy Game 
By Heather Sager​​

That Sunday, four-year-old Marty Anderson ran toward Ashland Park, zigzagging among the hedges on his way. His round face had an astonished, yet happy look as he descended, and though the day was overcast, the residue of summer made him glow.

Over the hill was Mrs. Liston—taking the street way, while muttering to herself. She had yelled at him to run off; Marty, used to pleasing family, had merely managed to irritate her. She was tired, there was something vexing on her iPhone, and to her annoyance he had only wanted to play (not television, not video games), had wanted her. Her hope was that a trip to the park would distract him. Now invisible to Marty (and likewise he to her), she glanced at her iPhone, not hurrying.

Ashland Park, located in a quiet Chicago suburb, was small—even the playground was. But Marty loved it.

Reaching the park’s solitary edge, Marty gave several loud yelps. Though the place seemed empty, something shook out: a goose, which waddled slowly over. Marty squatted, looked into its eyes, and waved his hand excitedly near the animal’s bill. The goose watched a moment and then wandered off.
Marty persisted amid the park’s quiet. While his peach-colored eyebrows slotted into their zestful angles, his large brown eyes roamed. He wandered about the perimeter and stomped before the retaining wall, glancing into the bushes. Then he rushed onto the playground like a little football back.

He didn’t dwell long on the absent Mrs. Liston, on her disinterest in him. He had had a bad feeling and so he simply ran to shake it off. He was disappointed, though, because he enjoyed having conversations with new people, like Mrs. Liston, and with strangers, too. He liked people. He talked to them when he was out and about; when he felt safe.

Once inside the park’s low, rain-soaked concrete walls, he inhaled. He then cast his great head, which was topped with blond curls, sharply back. “I hope there’s not going to be a tornado!” he shouted, eying a low cloud that dimmed the brightness. His beloved Mama, his usual playmate, had told him about tornadoes. They struck him as terrible and magnificent. He righted himself. He put his hands to his temples, pressing, in a mock gesture of concern—for the entertainment of himself, for no one. Then he ran toward the park’s centrifugal center.

There a series of white voice-amplification tubes rose up from the mulch. Marty skidded up to one, finding that through it, he could hear drips from the faded rainfall. He turned his back to it and pretended to shower, even licking the imaginary downpour. It was this enthusiasm of his, his sentient playfulness, which was a source of constant delight for his parents.

The sun broke from the low cloud, and Marty paraded into its rays. The garden came to life, the blue peonies and yellow azaleas, under the pinkish light. Drying himself with a stutter of his shoulders, he stalked among the flowers. Then he stopped marching and dropped into a crouch. A man, tall and disheveled, walked past him. He seemed not to notice Marty. Then, noisily, a black limousine appeared, but from the opposite direction. It swerved haphazardly up the street, and soon disappeared. Marty swiveled, glanced at his shadow, and frowned. “But…” he started. He turned and studied the horizon. Mrs. Liston materialized, standing across the street. She waved, flashing an awkward smile he could barely make out. Simultaneously, the stranger made a curious sound on the courts, behind the poplars. Remembering his Mama’s rule, never to talk to strangers unless she, Mama, was with him (and he did often talk to strangers when with her, from shopkeepers to other children), Marty turned away.

Heading toward the slide, he picked up his feet like a prancing pony. He halted, turned starkly on one leg, and marched toward the slide’s end—to climb from the bottom. He ascended, humming and straddling the plastic under the waning sun. He was trying to have fun no matter what had happened to him (but Mama…), no matter what was happening. It was a day of poor weather and apparently other children had not come out. However, he played in all weather, even during frigid days when he dragged a sled, helping Mama reach the snow hill. Days when, together, returning home, they’d look back at their paired prints…such a day was unlike this one, he realized. He was alone. 

Like Mama, he inspected plants and flowers. When he finished sliding he picked several long, limber petals. He pretended to enlarge them in a magnifying glass while stretching them across his palms. Then he stuffed them into his pocket and went off. In so doing he grazed a bumblebee, which buzzed and escaped. The bee liked what Marty did: it landed on the rhododendron hedge, which was dripping with yellow flowers. 

If he collected enough petals, Marty wondered, maybe he could study them—their life, their growing—and use their secrets to help big people; like Mama, who back home was wilted-looking and sick. (With his cousin Finnegan, he saw a movie that had similarly inflamed his curiosity about life. In the movie, a boy-scientist reanimated a very sick-looking dog. Afterward, Marty rigged his toy bicycle—which resembled the bike the boy used to generate electricity—to his stuffed animals, trying to enliven them. He imagined them growing like spring petals).

He heard a racket sound. It was the man in the courts, the solitary walker. At last Marty saw him clearly. The man was practicing alone, swatting a green ball; he didn’t seem threatening. A white headband restrained his long brown hair, and his features were startlingly familiar. To Marty, he looked just like the Jesus that hung on a tree at his grandma and grandpa’s church. Branches rustled. The man paused, glancing over his shoulder—looking. Marty, excited, could not tear his face away. He grumbled, suddenly incensed by Mama’s rule about strangers. He cast a furtive look around. The noises on the court resumed.

Something about the Jesus….

Now there was no joy in running and jumping. Marty dumped his flowers out and raked through them with his fingers. The breeze picked up, and they scattered. “My treasures!” he screamed. He jumped and clapped at thin air. His flowers evaded him. Finally the wind blew them above the beds of azaleas, and they vanished.

Marty sighed and sat on a stump. He tried to watch the man, who disappeared behind the trees. Then Marty had an idea. He crept, almost crawling, toward the old bent willow tree at the park’s end, near high ground. He tiptoed, becoming a spy in one of his mother’s looking games. The bent tree created a bridge. Marty had never climbed a tree before; the bark scratched his soft skin. He inched his way until he could see the man practicing, the blue courts. He neared the dizzying summit and pressed down with his mouth.

He watched, waiting for some sense of order to come. Then he slipped and plunged into the unknown.




The Jesus stared down at him. “You’ve had a terrible fall,” Marty heard him distantly say. Marty fidgeted. Everything seemed disconnected; the man seemed to peer down through a tunnel. The man was wincing, and looked concerned. He had tender blue eyes, like the statue. “Are you alright?” he said. “Do you need to go to the hospital?” In actuality, the man—casting a quick glance over the hill—was worried, but not for the same reasons Marty understood. Marty felt his leg wriggle, found he could move it inward, and he rolled up out of the grass.  His everyday sense of things returned.

“I’m alright,” he replied, brushing himself off.

“Good.”

“Phew, that was a close one.”

“I know.” The man squinted. “I saw you watching me, and I saw you take that big drop.”

Marty’s eyes darted up toward the stranger’s. “How could you tell I was watching you?”

The man broke into laughter and slapped his headband, removing the hair from his eyes. “It was kind of obvious. Not many people snoop around as obviously as you do.”

Marty grinned. “So…what were you doing over there?”

“Playing tennis. I used to be good at it. I’m trying to get my mojo back.”

“So…tennis. Alright. Hah! That’s nothing too serious.” Marty paused, his face crinkling. “You’re a stranger. Since you helped me though, I can talk to you, right?”

He shrugged. “I suppose we can at least introduce ourselves.”

They did; the man was called Randall, a fine name, Marty thought. Then Marty saw the black limo again—its tires squealed as it quickly turned the north-side corner. Marty frowned and shivered, then shook his head. “Hey mister? Can I ask you a question? Are you also Jesus like the Jesus I saw at my grandma and grandpa’s church? Because you sure look like him.” When Marty thought grandma and grandpa—this time with greater force—a shadow crossed his face, and he experienced a sudden pang.
Randall grimaced. “No. Not even close. Sorry, little man.” Randall, a reclusive print-shop operator by day, was also a bachelor and a stay-at-home at night; a man of proclaimed self-interest, he was a savior to no one—of this he was certain.

Marty looked off, trying to forget what he was remembering. “Can I ask another question? I don’t mean to be rude, but how come you’re playing tennis if you stopped years and years ago?”

“Years and years ago. I don’t remember saying that. Well, let’s see. Let’s just say I had to stop because something bad happened in my life and tennis reminded me of that. I couldn’t handle playing anymore.”
“Couldn’t handle it?” Marty replied. “I’m sorry,” he added.

“It’s alright. You seem pretty happy playing here, Marty. Is that true?” He waved about. They saw the babysitter; she was steadily crossing the street. She reached the park’s far embankment and stopped, her cellphone attached to her cheek. She nodded vaguely, talking.

Marty shrugged. The raw afternoon weather agitated him, and a bad memory was blackening his mind. “Mostly happy like always, except I keep thinking about my Grandma. When I thought about church I thought about her. She’s dead. She died months ago.” He remembered his grandmother being shut in her casket. It was like a smooth white boat—they rolled her away in it, he recalled. He panicked, missing his Mama’s comforting embrace. He pointed toward the distant woman. “That’s not my Mama. If my Mama were here she’d be with me. I don’t know her. Mama had to go to the doctor’s and so I have her.”
Randall backpedaled, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and glanced sidelong at the boy. Through Marty’s wide saucer-eyes he saw Marty thinking. Randall shuddered. Then it appeared Marty had put two plus two together—his little lip inverted worryingly, and Randall glanced around in vain for help.
Then he thought to distract him. “I’ll tell you what. Do you want to give tennis a try, little man?” He pointed toward the court, his dropped racket. He added, “Your leg’s OK? We’re going right over to the courts, right there.” The limo re-emerged, going south. Its tired driver—with the low baseball cap and red eyes—blurred past them. In the distance, the wheels screeched.

“Ok.” 

Randall handed him the racket. “I suppose you’ll be going home soon.”

“Ha-ha,” Marty replied nervously. “That’s a long story.”

“Alright,” Randall accepted.

Randall threw the ball. Marty missed, picked up the ball, and tossed it back. He stumbled and righted himself. “You’ll make it,” Randall said, wincing. Marty put a strong look on his face. Randall threw. Marty was about to hit the ball when the gloomy arithmetic returned, and he stopped mid-swing. He dropped the racket and burst into tears.

Randall watched helplessly. He lowered his voice, trying to stop him. He said, “If I tell you a story, will you tell me one? I stopped playing because someone I loved ran away. A girl, a friend.”

Marty halted. This word, love, raised his curious eyes. “If you loved her so much,” he gasped, “…why...Where did she go?” he reddened.

“She moved to Paris,” Randall replied.

Marty wiped his face. Disbelief had stopped his tears. “Paris! Paris is very far away. My Mama knows where Paris is. It’s almost as far as China.”

Randall nodded. “So can you tell me what’s on your mind now, Marty?”

Marty paused. He was thinking darkly still, but had mastered his emotions, at least for the moment. “Do you still have a mom?” he said. 

Randall nodded.

Marty’s eyes bulged like a scared chipmunk’s. “Um, when do you think she’ll go to heaven?” he quavered. “My Grandma went to heaven because she was—this old!”—he held out his palms and flashed them repeatedly—“but my Mama’s sick and now I worry maybe sick people go to heaven, too.” His face began to screw up, to turn into that of a wrinkled old man. Randall could see the mother lode of tears was coming, and he was frightened. “Maybe that’s why I got a babysitter,” Marty burst, dissolving into a flurry of sobs.

Randall looked nervously away. Across the street were parked cars, closed-down shops. Evening was falling, dark; the boy’s cries echoed dismally.

Marty stopped and rubbed his eyes. He raised his pained eyes to Randall. “What happens if things go all wrong, that’s what I want to find out. Even if your mama doesn’t go to heaven. What if you go to heaven early? Is your mommy still there with you even if you go?” His eyes squinted, and he began to squeak; he was holding the racket askew. Randall felt ashamed to not have an answer. Randall felt as if the universe were playing a cosmic joke on them.

“I don’t know, kiddo,” he said. “It’s a mystery.”

This word, mystery—as did the word love, before it—appeared to help. They left the court—Marty fell silent. He became solemn and calm. They glared at the distant Mrs. Liston. She was talking on her iPhone. Marty forgave his parents for choosing her; perhaps, because Marty’s dad was traveling and Mama was sick, they’d made a desperate choice.

Randall gave a swift glance about the scene. He was noticing Marty’s flushed face when suddenly an idea came to him. 

“Is your mom really that sick?” he said. He leaned over; he couldn’t help himself about Marty anymore.

“I don’t think so,” Marty squeaked. He managed a smile. “I think she’ll be alright,” he sniffed. “My Dada said she has a real bad cold and that when she gets the right pills she’ll get better.”

“That’s good. So she’s not in the hospital then, is she?” Randall smiled cautiously.

“No. If she’s not in the hospital, that means she’s not going to heaven?”

Randall studied him. “I would listen to what your mom and dad tell you. If they say she’s alright, she is. And if she’s not in the hospital, no matter how bad she is she can’t be that bad. Buck up, kid.” Randall gently touched Marty’s shoulder.

Marty beamed, suddenly remembering a time when Mama had equally comforted him. A storm had surprised them in the garden, and she had drawn near, dried his tears with her finger, and embraced him tightly—so the rain and wind wouldn’t lash him. That day, he felt as if she’d always be holding him; so why shouldn’t she return, as Randall said? Just then Mrs. Liston saw Randall removing his hand from Marty’s shoulder, and she emitted a cry of fear and surprise. She started toward them and yelled “Police!” toward a patrol car that had begun idling at the park’s northwest corner. Randall, in a panic, turned away. He didn’t know why he was running, but he ran. He ran from the boy and into the street, walking straight into the path of the oncoming black limousine.

Heather Sager grew up in rural Minnesota and now lives in Illinois. Her fiction has appeared in the Curbside Splendor e-zine and is forthcoming in NYU’s Minetta Review. 

* * * 
Poetry

A Study in White-Nose Syndrome Mortality
By Ashely Adams

She comes awake,
unnatural wing twitch within the embrace of hibernacula.
Nestled under rock, between her sisters, brothers,
heartbeats slow and distant like
steady traffic passing over a pothole.
 
She shivers,
stretching body-length fingers,
ears like biological VLA, circling.
Trying to find alien or friend.
 
She scratches
at muzzle caked in parasitic frost,
at wing membranes necrotized.
Holes scattered like paint on postmodern mural.
Medium--P. destructans.
 
She flies
like her ancestors,
dodging six-mile-wise space iron, dinosaur-killing, bullet.
Finish line of K-T iridium
Only to meet spore-dressed boots in 747 cargo bays.
Mass extinction New York via France
 
She is in light.
Naked blue and solar brilliance,
throwing frantic chirps across the landscape
looking for beetle, moth, any insect.
Echolocation for salvation
 
She struggles.
There is nothing,
but air thick with cold,
suffocating white.
 
She falls…

Ashely Adams is currently working towards an MA in writing and literature at Northern Michigan University, where she also works as an associate editor for NMU’s literary journal, Passages North. She
has been previously published in Rum Punch Press.  


* * * 

There is Nothing More We Can Do For You
By Milton Ehrlich

DOC ADVISED:
 
“There is nothing more we can do for you,
go home and settle your affairs.”
 
I only had one affair,
with an elegant Irish beauty,
who glowed
with an enigmatic smile
and the green
of the Emerald Isle in her eyes,
that must have been lit
by underground torches.
With voluptuous bosoms,
and hair as black
as bituminous coal
cascading down her derriere,

I loved every inch of her.
 
She left me for another.
I never recovered.
 
It’s settled.

Milton P. Ehrlich, Ph. D. is an eighty-four-year-old psychologist who has published numerous poems in periodicals such as Descant, Wisconsin Review, Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Toronto Quarterly Review, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, and The New York Times.

* * * 

​Blue Heron, Adriondacks by Nicole Hill
*archive unavailable 


On a Piano Discarded by a Pioneer on the Oregon Trail
By Adam Hughes

I read somewhere about families unburdening
their wagons early on in the journey -
pots and pans and furniture lining the ruts
somewhere before the banks of the Platte.
 
I picture a lone traveler - I don’t know why
he’s alone, but I choose to think it’s because he wants
to be. But he doesn’t. I think there’s probably a lover
back in Cincinnati. Maybe a creditor in Springfield.
But either way, he’s alone.
 
I think he approaches the piano, upright and scratched,
the only specimen of its kind for hundreds of miles,
the way a horse approaches a newly fallen tree -
hesitant, as if at any moment it could come to life
or throw forth some spark of life that it conceals within
its belly of wood, ivory, and the resonance of memory.
 
He reaches out slowly, curiously, maybe his chest
rumbles with something resembling laughter.
It’s not real laughter of course,
because the only people who laugh alone are insane.
That what he thinks, anyway. No judgement on my part.
 
The keys make a sound like the keys of a piano
are supposed to make. This surprises him, but he’s not sure
why. Perhaps he expected them to be broken
like all things that go on voyages and die
before finishing them. He reaches to play another
 
but stops. He walks away, humming
that one pitch. I picture him as long as I can until
he disappears on the horizon and the piano
fills with grass, its belly full with one more note.



​Hideous the Scars of Beauty and I, Impaled

​​for my daughter

the horses’ eyes are sad, but not
sorrowful—they look not with fear,
but with the experience of the long married--
they’re waiting patiently for the stars to fall
so they might eat them off the tips of the grass

do not cry about things beyond your fingertips--
the deaths of a thousand glinting wasps--
the frosted, the wilted, the broken, the rheumy-eyed--
the world is not dying—it is shedding its skin

do not fear the undergrowth beyond
the first row of trees—it’s dark but many have walked
there before you—their footsteps still crunch
if you stop your breathing long enough to listen--
you’re never far from something beautiful

when it rains for days, and it appears God forgot
to separate the waters that week, remember me
wherever I am and know that I tried--
the rain doesn’t win or lose—it just drops
when it’s told to drop, like baby robins from the nest,
some flying, some falling, all changed

Adam Hughes is the author of Petrichor (NYQ Books, 2010) and Uttering the Holy (NYQ Books, 2012). His third collection, Allow the Stars to Catch Me When I Rise, is due out January 2017 from Salmon Poetry. He was born in 1982 in Lancaster, Ohio. He still resides near there on a farm with his wife and daughter, two dogs, four cats, and five horses. Should you google him, he is not the Adam Hughes who draws near-pornographic depictions of female superheroes. He cannot draw.

* * * 
And Again
By Lindsay McLeod

I keep my machine gun rattling
knocking over these sideshow ducks
rain sizzling on the glowing barrel
up until the clock tells me to stop

still even then there’s only time
to clean and check my equipment
reload for the next session because
tomorrow there will be more ducks

and you know it’s not so bad
but insubordination dragonflies
its way into the trench with me
funny usually on sunny days when

I chance a glance over my shoulder
and look to the one way street that
delivered me unceremoniously here
and I am shown nice cruel memories

of how some things once were
until the sergeant’s voice reminds me
eyes front eyes once more on the prize
eyes wide open to the simple fact that

the real prize is to have one more day 
to keep my machine gun rattling
never minding the before or after just
knocking over these sideshow ducks.


Confetti

Alone the housewife hunts
through confetti slush
as her heavily marked
down dreams drag
an applauding pageant
of empty tin cans through
midnight’s dishpan streets.
Skin makes the purchase
but heart pays the bill.

Lindsay McLeod trips over the horizon every morning. He has won several prizes and awards and stuff for poetry and short fiction and published his first co-authored poetry collection, My Almost Heart, in 2015. He currently writes on the sandy Southern edge of the world, where he watches the sea and the sky wrestle for supremacy at his letterbox. He prefers to support the underdog. It is presently an each way bet. 

* * * 

​If by Dave Malone
*archive unavailable

Temperamental Orchid by Grace Pasco
*archive unavailable

Deciduous and  Sunday Evening by Daye Phillippo
*archive unavailable
Precarious by Diane Popenhagen
*archive unavailable

Drowning by Ajise Vincent
*archive unavailable

Wind Tantrum by Diane Webster
*archive unavailable
Flash
​​
I'll Have What He's Not Having by Spencer Bonfiglio​​
*archive unavailable

An Annual Visit by Katie Catanzarite​​​​
*archive unavailable

Finding People Near You
By John LaPine

Carter
18
Looking for dates or friends or right now or fun. Be my daddy. Stroke my salmon legs. Comb my hair until bluish eels blush purple. You are wood and I am samurai sword, wedging apart your rigid cell walls, or I'm on your fingertips like tacky glue, or I am blackened unagi on your lips. Or I'm Vaseline, greasy jar in mom’s bedside drawer, and you are petroleum carpet stain by her radiator. Or we are molten rings bubbling up magma through your ocean floor, eroded, weathered, atmospheres of wet pressure, where sunlight cannot penetrate, where the fish don't need eyes, where we can let our sight fail us and trust in our unseeing until we're dredged up, petrified solid
 


Jacob
23
Handsome, muscular, down to earth, tattooed back, no Asians or blacks because I know you’re all the same, reptilian or apeish, or primeval, primordial, covered in muck, lungless salamanders, egg-laying and venomous platypi, just like my brother used to say, yes, you’re just like my brother told me you'd be, mercurial. You’ll push my throne, grab fistfuls of facial hair. You’ll box my ears and tear out canine teeth like dusty dandelion roots until you are a lone belay on sunbeat crag, with bloody knees from banging rock, bloody hands from holding rope, from clutching at sandstone. When's the last time you screamed at the top of your lungs? When's the last time you ran for your life?
 


Adam
27
Discreet, masculine country guy who loves the outdoors. Let's grab a beer and see where this goes, wrap ourselves canvas silly, catch each other’s breaths, lift like noble gasses, but somehow less reactive, let’s grab another beer—see where this goes. Let's boil river water for coffee and catch fish in the morning, and I'll teach you to hold this knife—no, not like that, like this, there you go—and if you let me touch your brown diamond—if you teach me how to hold that too—we’ll see where this goes, and I'll let you taste whatever you’d like, and let you say “beautiful,” let you use that word, let you approach it like two arms of galaxy dust, sinew tensing across lightyears orbiting the same black hole until we both fail to collide, to collect into stars, to coalesce into something less meaningful.

John LaPine is a second-year MA student studying Creative Writing and Pedagogy at Northern Michigan University (NMU), and associate editor of Passages North, NMU's literary journal. This is his first publication.

* * * 

Dry Bandages
By Linda Rosen

Kiss me,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. The white bandage covering her chin prevented her lips from opening wide.

“Please, Stan. Kiss me.”

This time the decibel a bit higher.
 
Stan’s dark brown eyes cut from the novel on his lap to his wife lying in the narrow hospital bed. Sterile white blankets covered her petite frame. He stood and leaned over the bars that prevented her from falling out. The odor of Lysol mixed with dried blood infused the air. With eyes focused on the opposite wall, he kissed the top of her head. Just a peck, just enough to feel the brush of her red hair against his lips.
 
Diane sighed. Stan lowered himself onto the metal folding chair. He pulled it closer to the bed. “Is the pain really bad today?” He slipped his hand under the bars. His strong fingers clasped her long tapered ones, the mauve nail polish intact. The accident hadn’t touched her piano playing hands.
 
“No. It’s not that kind of pain.”
 
“I don’t understand.”
 
Diane let out a long, slow breath. “Why won’t you look at me?”
 
“I do, honey.”

“No, you don’t.”

Her words barely touched the air. She struggled for volume. “

You read your book, check your email, you talk to me, but you never look at me.” She shook her head. “Like now, you’re looking at my lap.”
 
Diane unclasped her fingers from her husband’s and lay back against the pillows. She closed her eyes and remembered the warmth of his lips on her neck when he’d come up behind her sitting at the kitchen table reading the Sunday paper. His kiss seeped deep into her skin, as delicious as Belgian chocolate. She thought about the moments, early in the morning, when her hair was mussed, her face naked, not a trace of makeup, as she padded through the house in sweat socks and an old pair of shrunken sweatpants. Stan would press a kiss to her cheek and say, “You’re beautiful.”
 
Diane tapped the corner of her eye where another bandage began and ran her index finger in a diagonal down her cheek to her earlobe where diamond studs sat until three days ago when a nurse removed them before surgery. She touched her chin, then her nose and felt the packing around the bridge and nostrils. Her fingers found stitches in her forehead. She counted twelve and swallowed a tear.
 
“Don’t cry, Di. Please, don’t cry. The bandages have to stay dry.”
 
The door opened. Stan looked up, nodded to his brother dressed in green scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck.
 
Josh’s grin brightened the room. He looked directly at his patient. “How’re we doing today, beautiful?”  He read the chart clipped to the foot of the bed. “Looks like you had a good night.” He gave her blanket covered foot a gentle squeeze and walked to the head of the bed, bent down and kissed her cheek. The rough bandage touched his lips.
Diane smiled at her brother-in-law, her cheeks pulling against the stitches.  She glanced at her husband worrying his fingers in his lap and her face fell. She lay back against the pillows, pulled her lips tight together. Her breath came fast, but she wouldn’t cry. The bandages had to stay dry.

Linda Rosen lives with her husband in New Jersey and Florida. When she’s not teaching fitness classes or working with private clients, she enjoys creating stories for readers to devour curled up in a comfortable chair with a cup of tea. Her manuscript, FLOURISH, was a semi-finalist in the 2012 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. She has been published in 201 Family Magazine, The Dying Goose, and Queen Anne Boleyn..She is a member of the Women’s National Book Association and Selections Coordinator of their Great Group Reads committee. You can find out more about Linda Rosen at her blog, The Literary Leotard.

* * * 
Creative Nonfiction

My Mother, At Twenty by Katherine Hubbard
*archive unavailable

High Flies and Full Chords by Richard Kenney
*archive unavailable

Dandelions by Patrick Moloney
*archive unavailable
Art

Jonathan Beight
*archive unavailable
​Kristina England
*archive unavailable
Krista C. Graham
*archive unavailable
​Jan Karisson
*archive unavailable
bottom of page