It’s graduation season and a time to reflect about our children growing up and moving on. Kelly Grettler shares her feelings on this emotional milestone.
If you’ve ever been in a home that’s a little more than meets the eye, then you’ll definitely appreciate this ‘enchanted’ house. (And you even get to see a pic of the actual house!)
Hey everyone! I’m happy to say that I’m currently open for guest posts! Short fiction, poetry, writing and publishing tips, book reviews, and a twist of new age or spiritualism is always welcome! You can check out all the guidelines here, but please feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!
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Ashley O’Melia is an independent author and freelancer from Southern Illinois. She holds her Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing and English from Southern New Hampshire University. Her books include The Wanderer’s Guide to Dragon Keepingand The Graveside Detective. Her short stories have been published in The Penmen Review, Siren’s Call, and Subcutaneous. Ashley’s freelance work has spanned numerous genres for clients around the world. You can find her on Facebook and Amazon.
Hey everyone! I’m happy to say that I’m currently open for guest posts! Short fiction, poetry, writing and publishing tips, book reviews, and a twist of new age or spiritualism is always welcome! You can check out all the guidelines here, but please feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!
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Ashley O’Melia is an independent author and freelancer from Southern Illinois. She holds her Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing and English from Southern New Hampshire University. Her books include The Wanderer’s Guide to Dragon Keepingand The Graveside Detective. Her short stories have been published in The Penmen Review, Siren’s Call, and Subcutaneous. Ashley’s freelance work has spanned numerous genres for clients around the world. You can find her on Facebook and Amazon.
Hey everyone! I’m happy to say that I’m currently open for guest posts! Short fiction, poetry, writing and publishing tips, book reviews, and a twist of new age or spiritualism is always welcome! You can check out all the guidelines here, but please feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!
***
Ashley O’Melia is an independent author and freelancer from Southern Illinois. She holds her Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing and English from Southern New Hampshire University. Her books include The Wanderer’s Guide to Dragon Keepingand The Graveside Detective. Her short stories have been published in The Penmen Review, Siren’s Call, and Subcutaneous. Ashley’s freelance work has spanned numerous genres for clients around the world. You can find her on Facebook and Amazon.
Hey everyone! I’m happy to say that I’m currently open for guest posts! Short fiction, poetry, writing and publishing tips, book reviews, and a twist of new age or spiritualism is always welcome! You can check out all the guidelines here, but please feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!
***
Ashley O’Melia is an independent author and freelancer from Southern Illinois. She holds her Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing and English from Southern New Hampshire University. Her books include The Wanderer’s Guide to Dragon Keepingand The Graveside Detective. Her short stories have been published in The Penmen Review, Siren’s Call, and Subcutaneous. Ashley’s freelance work has spanned numerous genres for clients around the world. You can find her on Facebook and Amazon.
Christo N is a poet/writer from The ACT, Australia who spent 6 years incarcerated in the Alexander Maconochie Centre.
Whilst locked up he began writing poetry and has continued after release. A lot of his poetry reflects the process of self development that only comes with years of introspection and hardship.
He uses the metaphor of being lost at sea for the hard years doing time and feels incredibly blessed to be back to the safe harbor of freedom.
in the rental casita a plump woman asleep, on a lumpy sofa bare feet on a red pillow despite the green ferny wallpaper this is no Matisse her unconvincing knees seem faraway from her head while her toes are off the canvas completely
there are days I’ve felt like this no Sleeping Beauty just trying to get through a hot afternoon a third trimester high school menopause too enervated to even put ice cubes in a glass of tap water
but this is bought and sold, signed hanging on the wall the artists’s name a blur beneath a painted cushion
and the day seems like a to do list I left for myself twenty years ago forgetting to even mention I love you.
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Ancestors
zodiac swam in its round above the wooden ark veiled women hid behind a mechitza of water and blood if I was a child I ran among their legs if I was a child I ran
in the Red Cafe in Kiev at the teetering round table in steam and smoke like a railway station tea served in endless glasses they are shouting again those philosophers too broke to pay but suddenly I can’t hear them sound fades, they’re ghosts and what am I?
in all of history, who can care about one girl, tired, besmirched sitting by the coals of a dying fire who can care about birch trees— there are so many…
who can care about rape about how my eyes turn a betraying green or how my fingers curl helplessly as DNA deforms my hand the double helix of Vikings, Cossacks, the Rus come down out of the cold shamanic north for bad, for worse
ancestors come if I call smelling like a snuffed candle and come if I don’t call smelling of hospital corridors and panic for the angels are too busy encouraging each blade of grass to grow reciting the alphabet but only from aleph to aleph they have not yet reached the first letter of my name
before this, a wall before that, destruction before that, an ark on the deep a raven a dove, an opinion about what survives
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Rancho de Taos
you think you have problems… windchimes kept us awake all night along with the neighbor’s barking dog and the dance music turned up loud not to mention the moon…
magpie feathers float on the air something killed and ate a bird; a cauldron, a metal rabbit, a lantern guard the storeroom of a different feeling
Taos Mountain is still snow-covered, the day after Easter I’d be careful, breeze ruffles the pages of a book about grenades and the Chinese revolution
the tiny girl like a crow can count at least up to five for how mysterious the hacienda is that always has one more bed than the number of residents.
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Miriam Sagan is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and memoir. Her most recent include Bluebeard’s Castle (Red Mountain, 2019) and A Hundred Cups of Coffee (Tres Chicas, 2019). She is a two-time winner of the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards as well as a recipient of the City of Santa Fe Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and a New Mexico Literary Arts Gratitude Award. She has been a writer in residence in four national parks, Yaddo, MacDowell, Gullkistan in Iceland, Kura Studio in Japan, and a dozen more remote and interesting places. She works with text and sculptural installation as part of the creative team Maternal Mitochondria in venues ranging from RV Parks to galleries. She founded and directed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement. Her poetry was set to music for the Santa Fe Women’s Chorus, incised on stoneware for a haiku pathway, and projected as video inside an abandoned grain silo in rural Itoshima. Her blog is Miriam’s Well.