We may not have to duck under our desks to dodge potential missiles, but I can bet that this school year will be one worthy for its own pages in a 2040 textbook and a three hour cautionary documentary. Currently I am in a state of limbo, shafted somewhere between a focused senior and an…
struggles for the black bird
turn your head to the left a little further than you normally would. see the black bird perched on your shoulder with bleak black eyes strung in its head like beads. love and care for that bird, but do not remove him from your shoulders. cry at night, or in the day if you can’t…
Quondam Winds (Part 2)
There was one night when she was fifteen that was especially cold. She had been through what she had thought was the coldest of colds two years ago, but this one was far worse. She felt her toes go numb and her fingers grow so brittle that it felt like they had been cut off….
Quondam Winds (Part 1)
A desert literacy story for a contest. Enjoy! Long sheets of black hair weighed down by the heavy atmosphere and flying particles of sand, a girl sat patiently in the shade of a dune and studied the thousands of books surrounding her. The girl’s last memory had been when she and her father were practicing…
The Virus of Panic, Delusion, and the EARN IT Act
The Virus of Panic, Delusion, and the EARN IT Act We know how the world runs. The rich do the running, the poor do the watching. No matter where we stand, we know how it operates. Among that sector of the rich are the people who literally run our world–our government. The policies they enact…
Pervasive Words| Limnisa Contest Story
“stay rude” ~ 1997 A flood began the night Agapa’s husband left. Shutters were torn down from the aggressive vigor of the rain, and the gutters were so filled to the brim with water that Avram slipped and broke his nose on his way to his car. Agapa watched him go from the dripping window,…
Clockwork Reversed | Poem
To fall to falter To stir to stop A drop of poison to reverse the clock To trip to tremble To pause from pain 5 more drops till you feel something again — I wonder if there is meaning in getting better. I wonder if my memory matters. Is my brain needed in all the…
flicker out | poem
what a short, miserable life you have lived born in a tree and dead in the styx marshes of despair and pity and pain all of your own accord, nothing more to sustain irreproachable on paper, but ultimately flawed in practice and design hanging from street lamps as if you’re alive what a short, miserable…
5 Apricot Summers in the City of Makanad
a fantasy contest story about summer, magic, and love ~ Before the last mammoth went extinct, a mango tree that spread across a thousand acres bloomed with a passion for enthusiastic life. Grandiose and gorgeous, the tree too had thin green stems enwrapped about its trunk bearing flowers and the small bodies of nearly born…
queen in a clock at 6
Never mind your potential. Never mind your sacrifices and courage. Never mind your hours of work and diligence and persistence. Never mind the time it took and the tears it took and the friendships it took and life it took. Mind it no more. It’s time for you to look beautiful and gaze upon the…
