Winter 2016: Story Animal.

by Marissa Bell Toffoli.

I ask the bottom of a cup questions,
trace futures in smudged lines of grit.
It’s a dirty mirror.

What rust, what lack of trust,
tell the fissures in the crust.

What a bust! This whole age-old
cry for an answer,
a quick fix-me-up.

Others kissed my mouth,
fed me words, heard my song.

Let remembrances alone.
What use the answer
for the wrong question. Cup, cup,

give it up—spill the beans. Spoil me
with epiphany. I say I don’t have any

regrets but there are people I didn’t love
right. Most would say goodbye.
Fight fades out. What’s ever fair?

Drought of my mug
keeps a womanly shape,

tributaries and trees, whispers,
weaknesses, confidence. A nesting
bird image hovers near the lip—

mama pushes fledgling over edge,
overcome facing what has passed.

Though it must be done,
pain winces in her eyes.
A rush as ground rises.

by Tim J. Myers. It was noon when Kate pulled up to the diner on the gritty little main street. She’d been in the town a few times before and the Mustang had always been crowded. But today she had her pick of parking spaces, and once she’d settled into a booth she realized the […]

A mixture of poetry and prose. by Robin Wyatt Dunn.   (Have at you!)   I met him on the leaves road That great bowl of a man Mr. Gaerhearty Never too troubled by the rain Or by the epiphanies he had He was always ready for sparks Always ready for the next roll And […]

by David D. Horowitz. That pitcher came from nowhere to dominate the league—two no-hitters in one season, setting team strikeout and ERA records, and leading his team to the championship. What’s his story? Where’d he grow up, and who helped him develop his skills? You mean she was fired? I knew something was up. I […]

by Margaret Hultz and Marie Davis. Straddling a tree limb, a bugler began the solemn sounds of “Taps,” reverent music punctuated only by mourners’ sniffles. Several coloratura songbirds crooned along, “Day is done, gone the sun…” While the tune slowly marched, thousands of Monarch butterflies fluttered over the hill—sun shining through their translucent wings—an enormous, […]

by Holly Day. the giants sleep as the snow comes down covering their lumbering bodies in sheets of frozen white. their warm breath carves holes in the unbroken rolling hills, melts snow into  runoff. the giants sleep as the village children come to explore the new snow-covered hills drag heavy sleds up to the highest […]

by K. Marvin Bruce. The image of that bus sinking in the winter Hudson haunts me. Too many cameras are too ready to catch any tragedy, and the thought of all those passengers knowing this was their final commute shudders me down to my very breath. The chill water spraying in, screams of those not […]

by Robert Markland Smith. One spring day, I happened to be in a huge Catholic cathedral in Montreal called Mary Queen of the World, on René-Lévesque Boulevard, attending mass, and had trouble concentrating on the mumbo-jumbo of the priest’s invocations and lithurgy. I looked up at the Latin inscriptions going around the ceiling in four […]