Image by Md Abu Musa from Pixabay Jela walked between the railroad tracks. He inhaled the amalgamated scent of the creosote and the chilled mid-December rain. He timed and measured his pace so as to avoid the shifting, and uneven gravel between the ties. The tracks traversed the dismal, decaying, industrial fringe of town and …
Image by kie-ker from Pixabay Clara used to say the weirdest things. To any other, they would seem silly, outlandish even. But to Bill, they always seemed special. To him, she was perfection. He saw her stand out from the crowd, seeing things so very differently than others. He felt she saw a little more, …
Image by Dann Aragrim from Pixabay I saw her walking her dog every morning, at, or near, the corner of Elm and Main; every morning, come snow, come rain, come heat, etcetera. She invariably wore dark blue factory pants and a light blue polo, a uniform of some kind. She looked like the manager of …
Image by Brent Connelly from Pixabay Yeah, I have owned cars, trucks, ATVs, bicycles, boats. You name it. Hell, I even had a damn horse when I was a kid, at least my grandpa said it was my horse. I’ve never had an airplane but I’ve been on enough of them. Having said all that, …
Image by LaCasadeGoethe from Pixabay Ike knew the instant that he saw the face on the screen that it was his father’s, the strong chin, the black hair, greased and slicked back. He hadn’t been paying much attention to the news story, so he rewound it. The search party had found the basket of clothes …
Image by No-longer-here from Pixabay Ricky rode an XLCR across the great plains in 1978, a decade before cosplaying business men took to flying into Sturgis and waiting on their Fatboys to arrive by truck. The next year, he slid that bike into a utility pole to avoid a church bus driven by a Nebraska Methodist who …
Image by Jackson David from Pixabay The father told the boy they would put the Christmas tree up Friday night. The father even retrieved the box with the disassembled plastic tree and the box with the lights and ornaments from the attic Thursday night before the boy’s bedtime. Sometimes they would ride to the Palms …
“Cosmic Cliffs” in the Carina Nebula (NIRCam Image) When I first saw the images from the “Cosmic Cliffs” in the Carina Nebula from NASA’s Webb Space Telescope, I was amazed by the beauty and surrealism of our Universe. It is, as if, we live in a masterwork of space, time and art. The picture was …
William Blake and the Wonder of Nature and the Supernatural by Joseph B St John Read More »
Image by Petra Tant from Pixabay The Woman wiped the blood from her thighs and sat on the folded feed-sack sheet to absorb the flow. She took the Child who had been inside her for about three months and held her in the palm of her hand; she was less than three inches long. The …
Image by Trinh Nguyễn from Pixabay The Man shook the blue Ball Mason jar and watched the small clear bubbles form and then quickly dissipate. The Man knew that strong whiskey could never hold its bubbles and that weak men needed strong whiskey to hold. The bubbles never made the Man forget. Even when the …
Image by Martyn Cook from Pixabay The Girl used her index finger to strike the center key over and over again. The solitary note rang out through the empty country church. Every Sunday, while the bulk of the congregants lingered in the church yard, the Girl waited for just a few moments alone with that …
By Joseph B. St. John I sat alone waiting for the fright of night to begin, alone like always in the summer’s warm charm. I stared over the concrete barricades of my fortress. Putting my wildness aside for a short moment, I let the breath fill my tired lungs. Throughout the night, I stood plastered …
by Steven Anthony George 450 lbs. Why did God make the insects change themselves from one form to another? Why do they begin as a worm, crawling and eating and crawling and eating, and after, it goes to sleep for a little while and wakes up as something different ─ sometimes something beautiful, like when …
by Steven Anthony George “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” At ten. 140 lbs. Once, at a time when I was smaller, I explored an enchanted kingdom in the few acres of woodland behind our house, where the sunlight dripping down through the leaves …
by Trista Hurley-Waxali My field isn’t improving, even after the fancy fertilizer and the engineered-to-spray irrigation. My books show this week to be the lowest crop yield, which means I have to do something quick before I have to worry. I have to find a solution that gives me a field of profit, rather than …
by Paddy Wight “What do we have here?” I’d had this job for going on three years. Not easy, always being self-employed, but it was better than either alternative – either fielding a-thousand-and-one questions about past employers and references, la, la, la, or being out on the street. So, the local cops were short a …
by Dee Burton For all of history, Grandma’s been saying that when her ship comes in or when I turn twelve – whichever comes first – she’ll get me a horse. This summer, first thing when I got to the farm, I reminded her: “One more year to go,” I said. “When my ship comes …
By Adele Elliott The office of Dr. Otis Anderson, DDS, was a calm oasis separate from the world. A huge tank, a replicated tropical reef, hugged one of the muted pastel walls. Crayon-colored fish with spiky fins glided in and out of sand castles and skirted around the bubbles that floated from the tiny …