The first time I held my daughter only one thought went through my mind: how did I ever create something so beautiful? I was thirty-four when I had Harper and until I met my husband just two years before, I wanted nothing to do with motherhood. To me being a parent meant the end of…
Category: Issue 10
Issue 10.4 – Fiction
Oh, how she loved these summer days, still, even after these many years. Years during which entire wars had been fought, diseases conquered, and planets walked upon. Even seen in that broad landscape, a summer day was still a thing unto itself, perfect in its promise, in its ability to make you believe it would…
Issue 10.4 – Poetry
Because that summer my arms finally grew long enough, my grandmother showed me how to brace myself for the shot. With the butt end pressed against me, I stretched my fingers to the trigger, positioned my target in the valley of the site. I stared down the gun barrel at an Orange Crush can propped…
Issue 10.3 – Nonfiction
The summer that my girls were just shy of four and one, my baby Abby asserted her independence early. We were on a week-long vacation at the beach, and the new world spread before her could not be explored from the confines of my lap. And so, in the forceful way of a not-yet-walking infant,…
Issue 10.3 – Fiction
The news broke that afternoon. First a link to a brief article from the Asheville Citizen-Times was shared on Facebook. A couple tweets followed as Mark’s closest friends each found out. The high school newspaper ran a story on their website, and it gained enough traction to air on the local evening news. Down in…
Issue 10.3 – Poetry
Yesterday morning I saw a woman Behind the walls and the shining armour I saw a woman behind the costume Of superwoman behind the Uniform of the captain who has it all under control who has it all figured out Yesterday morning I saw a woman. Yesterday morning I saw a woman And I…
Issue 10.2 – Nonfiction
An apartment. Just my dad and me. Christmas on a budget. Kitchen big enough for one. First steps, first words, many firsts I don’t remember. A house. A little one. Only one bedroom and filled to the brim with junk. Mom’s stuff, sister’s stuff, brother’s stuff, my stuff. Mostly Mom’s enormous collection of Precious Moments…
Issue 10.2 – Fiction
Her green eyes close and sleep follows. Her favourite time of day, or rather night. At night she escapes her diagnosis, her ageing bones and the tang of disinfectant that pervades this ‘home’. At night she prowls the rocky terrain of her mind and inhabits it wholly. She likes to sleep more now. In sleep…
Issue 10.2 – Poetry
My mother decided to take my fathers’ Appointment, at the holistic doctors office Five days after he died. It was hard to get In to see him- months even, and my Fathers’ disease still hung around the air Like we could catch it, and without life Insurance until the 30th She was…
Issue 10.1 – Nonfiction
“I don’t understand why you want to go to a creative writing program,” my stepfather said gloomily. It was the late 1980s and I would have been twenty. We were standing together at the mantelpiece in the living room of the family home in County Wicklow, Ireland, a house that had its own name: Newcastle…
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