Partners

By S.B. Borgersen

Partners were compulsory at primary school: for nature walks, for P.E., and to return to class after playtime.

Partners were picked, most popular first, until there was very little choice left. I, with my missing front teeth and my old black plimsolls, was always a straggler. So were you.

Fifty years later we are still partners. We had so many other things in common.

           
S.B. Borgersen writes because she just cannot help it, she also knits socks, and walks her smashing dogs on the south shore of Nova Scotia. Her favored genres are short and micro fiction, and poetry. She is a member of The Nova Scotia Writers’ Federation, Writers Abroad, a founding member of The Liverpool Literary Society, and she judged the Atlantic Writing Competition (Poetry) 2016 and Hysteria (Poetry) 2017.

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But for This

By Dianne Moritz

I could write the saddest poem.
War, disease, famine, bone-chilling
Cold seeping in through the cracks.

I see the saddest poem: words spilling
From your mouth, smooth as lies,
Those empty promises never kept.

Yes, I could write the saddest poem,
But for this – one lone bloom
Brightens the barren winter bush.

           
Dianne writes poetry and picture books for kids. Her next book, Hey Little Beachcomber, will be out in May, 2019.

A Lie for My Boy

By Roy Gomez

I would’ve bet a heart couldn’t ache any more. But I was wrong. There my boy sat, alone, waiting in that silent chapel for someone, anyone, to show up for his dad. Danny gripped flowers. Even wore my favorite tie. The knot was tight, off-center. That too was my fault. I wished I could cry. I was grateful to Bud, though. He was late – almost missed it all – but he came. As shovels of dirt thumped on my coffin, my old cellmate consoled him. Telling whoppers. That hurt worst … my boy feeling proud of his old man and all.

             
R. Gomez has been kicking words around for a while. He lives with his wife and pets on a hillside overlooking Medina Lake directly in the center of the Milky Way.

Some of the Time

By Ali Grimshaw

Sometimes
the light turns red before we have left the intersection
leaving our tail end vulnerable

sometimes
our brakes don’t work, spinning on black ice with
blurred windows of reaction

sometimes
we must go slowly, inching through the fog in faith
blinded by dense thoughts

sometimes
breakdowns leave us on the rainy roadside
unpacking resourcefulness

sometimes
forgiveness shows up like an invitation
an off-ramp never seen before

sometimes
we just need to stay on the road
grip and steer

The Poems I Have Not Written

By johnlmalone

I am outside late at night
Writing poems
About the poems
I have not written
The ones I’ve shied away from
Because of embarrassment
Or timidity
Or fear of shedding my jovial persona
And find
Somewhat alarmingly
That the poems I have not written
Far outnumber those I have

           
John Malone is a South Australian writer of short stories, flash fiction and poetry.

My White Cane Is a Magic Wand

By Rebecca L. Holland

Want to see a magic trick?
Watch me disappear

How’d she do that?
Here’s the secret:

All it takes are dark glasses
All it takes is an illness
All it takes is a white cane
To erase five years of experience
To strip you of a master’s degree
To make people avert their eyes

Want to see another magic trick?
Watch me reappear

Abracadabra!

I thought I was a woman
Solid
But when I hide behind this slender cane
No one can see me
And I thought I was the one who couldn’t see.

You didn’t know I was magic.

         
Rebecca is a visually impaired writer and disability awareness advocate from Pennsylvania. Her chapbook, Through My Good Eye: A Memoir in Verse, was published in 2018. She is a staff writer for CAPTIVATING!

The Very Short Poem

By John L. Malone

I’ve got a poem for you, a very short one, he promised with a garrulous grin, and then, in a long-winded introduction in which all the masters of brevity were cited from Basho to Lydia Davis, he proceeded to demolish all notions of shortness. The poem took ten seconds, the intro five minutes.

         
John Malone is a South Australian writer of short stories, flash fiction and poetry.