Poetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Painkiller Seeker by Dara Kalima Painkiller Seeker After three years, and so many visits, as I sat with much angst in that ER bed, she said, “It sounds like your gallbladder.” I laughed. After all, it was almost three years of seeking help for a mystery that led to self-medicating after a ton of tears and unceasing nerve-burning pain. I laughed and said, “Funny, I don't have one. See, I complained of a pain three years ago, immediately after the operation that ripped ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Lodged In My Throat by Emma Conally-Barklem Lodged In My Throat Lodged in my throat, is it a sticky willow or is it a conker? Spiky. Shot down at the age of five and festering ever since, No rinse can clear it. Instead, the child curled inside the wardrobe must be allowed her time, Daisies held, hopeful to reclaim what was hers and mine Before trauma trailed her dusky skirts across her ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Echoes by A.L. Gordon don’t know why the memory of Jessica’s scream is the memory that won’t leave me alone. There are much more terrible memories from that night, so why does her scream haunt me? Why that sound and not any of the many images—the awful, lingering images? Maybe there are so many images that they push each other out or muddy each ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Lullaby for the Dead by Julia McDonald y heart is sore, like a bruise behind my sternum. Last night, a sixteen-year-old was brought to the clinic in shock after hemorrhaging for eighteen hours at home. Her grandmother, with sparse hatchling hair sprouting from her bald skull and cheekbones like bird wings, wrung her hands and murmured: “I had to collect firewood. I didn’t know what ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Borderless Dreams by Zinaria Williams could not wait to leave. On a salary that equated to eight dollars per hour, I worked over ninety hours a week at a program that did not enforce the eighty-hour work week rule. I endured thirty-six-hour shifts every four days. My next day often began even though the previous one never ended. Twenty years ago, as a Black ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 At the Gas Station by Tiffany Avery hen I found her at the gas station, her slow movements, blank stares, and depressed cognitive abilities told me she was probably on drugs. I had no idea which kind. But there she was, alive. I immediately knew I was lucky. When I found her at the gas station, she could not recall what she had been doing for ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Funeral Songs by Raymond Wlodkowski bout six years ago, at age seventy-two, I began to have difficulty maintaining an erection. That led to seeing a urologist and the discovery that I had serious prostate cancer. A lab test revealed my prostate specific antigen (PSA) count was 184, more than forty times the high point of the normal range. There was cancer in my bones as ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 In a Near Future, 1968 Again by Paul Rousseau ebbie is in a room in a warehouse in the backstreets of a small border town, the air redolent with a putrid stench. She lies on a dilapidated exam table, the paper crumpling and cracking as she nervously shifts her weight. Her boyfriend clutches her hand, his head slumped like a wilted flower. A man in ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Henk's Choice by Hanne Jensen January 15th, 2019 6 p.m. It is dark but has stopped raining when Tom and I head back across the street. The living room is lit with candles, and Henk is sitting in his favorite orange sofa, a half-filled cognac glass in his hand. He is ready. His husband, Martin, is packing a suitcase in the bedroom. He tears up when he ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Too Many Broken Hearts by Catherine MacKenzie s soon as the plane landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and I collected my suitcase, I raced out of the airport. I gasped when the bitter December wind hit my face, a sharp contrast to the 85-degree temps I’d left in Mexico where my husband and I were wintering. The cold jarred me to attention after traveling for ...
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