January House
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Restlessness Cento
by Linda Laderman I am three thoughts away from the grave. Alone, I sometimes see coffins under sail. Endlessness enfleshed in emerald & frost & shades I couldn’t name without further study. The gray air molds. Geraniums heat the alleys. Jasmine and gasoline undress the night. I don’t know what to think of first in Continue reading
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Boyfriends
by Jenny Chu My aunt was always terrified I would die before I could get married. She would tell meto date whichever boys could speak Mandarin,the clumsy ones who fidgeted with their keyboardsand made little electricities every night. I picturedthem, future engineers, kissing, elbows flush againstyellowing wood glue. Some would end up in New York Continue reading
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inadvertently, I disturb the sanctuary of a nest hidden in a clump of shrubbery
by Julie Allyn Johnson but for this zealous, late-summer breeze, today’s warmth and humidity would likely unravel my otherwise optimistic, carefree nature. finished with yardwork, I sit quietly for a well-earned time out under the shaded eaves on the north side of our three-bedroom ranch. I watch as a groundskeeper traverses the fairway, apparently mindful Continue reading
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Fish Kebab
by Erin Jamieson I order a fish kebab from Buck’s Chippy, walking the rainy streets of London with lime green rain boots. Eating lunch this way, under the canopy of the striped umbrella from my childhood, makes my office job an illusion, a passing dream. As if this is what my life could have been: Continue reading
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Two Flash Fiction Pieces by Beth Sherman
Solstice I hadn’t let my mother near a stove in months. Not since she was forced to move in with me. Dinner was usually anything I could microwave – frozen burritos, mac & cheese, fettucine Alfredo, single-serve pizzas. I’ve never been all that interested in cooking and I didn’t have time for it, between working Continue reading
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Me or You
by Allison Palmer I remember you from time to time, when I sharpen a pencil and press its new tip to the pad of my thumb to test the sharpness. Ideally, fine enough to leave a mark on the skin for a few moments, but dull enough not to break it. In second grade, I Continue reading
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Chips
by Sarah Seybold for Mamaw who worked at the Chesty Foods potato chips plant in Terre Haute, Indiana Conveyor belts roll by, and she remembers a road— Indiana to California, 1938. Her long, smooth legs and slender waist, her wavy hair ungrayed. Far away from that flat town, her mother’s ghost, her father’s fist. In Continue reading
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Kissed Stain
by Jennifer Mills Kerr Here, take these berries on your tongue, taste their tang as a sentinel of grief,and with the sun’s red glare, come intomy meadow to sip the morning air. See my mother, the crushed, crimson flower I handled, relenting to her hot temper,her weeping. It was never enough. And though she is Continue reading
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Your Gifts
by Zach Keali’i Murphy You’ve given the worst birthday gifts, and I’ve kept all of them. There’s the crocodile-shaped keychain that hasn’t left my key ring. Its sharp and pointy tail has torn a hole through the pockets in all of my pairs of pants. Sometimes, the tail even scrapes against my thigh until it Continue reading
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Somebody, Please Think of the Children
by Rebecca Klassen I haven’t seen him since he was a boy, and even though he has his back to me, I recognize him in my headlights. It’s his oblong head and right-angle-ears that ring familiar. He staggers from alcohol, lurching off the end of the pavement onto the country lane. The national speed limit Continue reading
January House Literary Journal 