A GILDED CAGE by Charles Brashear

        Sallie brushed the crumbs into a little pile with her left hand, then swept them off the table into her other palm.  She sat there, holding the crumbs and watching Hiram eat the coconut creme pie she had made.  “We ought to have a bird,” she said.          “What?” he blurted, shifting the pie [...]

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I LEFT HER BACK AT THE CREEK

     Two Japanese monks, making their way back to the monastery, came to a flooding creek.  Beside it stood a woman, hesitating, afraid of the rushing waters.      Though the monks were forbidden by their code to touch women, the older man quickly picked her up, waded across the creek, set her down, and walked on. [...]

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THE WALK, by Linda Boyden

The Walk        Cornflowers, blue.        Cornflowers blow across the fields as I walk to the mailbox. The driveway’s gravel, you know, the entire way to Decatur Street. And once you get there, you’re still nowhere.        But I go everyday, except on Sundays, of course. Sundays have no mail delivery, I can remember that, [...]

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JOIN US IN FREEFALL

We homo sapiens are all free-falling through this crazy life toward home, and no one really knows what that home will be. We can moan about it, we can sob, we can rage at it, we can laugh out loud about it—everyone gets to choose their own style of dancing. The two of us have [...]

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CALEB’S FIRST ROMANCE

My very first memory is reading.  I was sitting on the floor next to my dad’s chair, no doubt wanting attention he wasn’t giving. He was reading the newspaper, as he did every evening. When he  dropped a piece of the paper on the floor, I went through the columns, looking for words I might recognize. I was [...]

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