Falling

by Janet E. Irvin

The hummingbirds have all but gone.
One last good feeding and they will chitter
goodbye, cock tiny heads, wing away. Continue reading

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Cartoon Character (or Not)

by Yvonne Higgins Leach

No man ever told her she couldn’t do it herself.
Nor did the female cartoon characters who
gleamed on the screen. Even Olive Oyl ate spinach.
With the same superhuman strength, she beat
every boy in the 100-yard dash in the 7th grade. Continue reading

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Mina Means ‘Love’

by Robin Littell 

Mina’s biological parents left her on the porch of an Ohio farmhouse in the middle of a thunderstorm. No note. Just Mina in a car seat with an empty diaper bag. The farmer’s wife called the police, and Mina was taken to a foster family that lived next door to me who eventually adopted her and chose her name, a name that means ‘love’ in German. Her foster parents said that everyone who met her fell under her spell. Continue reading

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On My First Imprint of Womanhood

by Yvonne Higgins Leach

Because my mind is a bank
of images sparked by emotion

I see you come through the door, Auntie,
in your wrinkled receptionist uniform Continue reading

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Nightingale

by Kaylie Saidin 

Charlie says he saw the kraken but with no proof, he’s a fool, rotten-scented as the sea foam that coagulates beneath the hull. We’ve been on the Nightingale for one month now, sleeping in the red-twined hammocks, sloshing seawater all over the deck, gutting fish and slicing our fingers, eating stale bread and sucking on lemons. Continue reading

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