Literary Magazine For Open Hearts and Minds
Southern Daughters I am from the south where the trees are dry and the rivers are waterless. Our sky is dark and its sun is foggy. I am from that south where everything is colorless. Our southern fields have daughters but our streets are always blind. These southern daughters are smiling but their eyes are […]
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By Debbie Jinks On Friday 31st March 2017, we celebrated my mum and dad’s 50th Wedding Anniversary. They are now in their 70’s and it made me think back to my life as an Army child. We were on the move a lot, a couple of years in one country then a couple of years […]
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By Elaine Mansfield I walked the trails on my land, stunned by the contrast between fields of blooming purple lupines and my numb despair. My husband Vic had died the week before. We knew death was coming, but how can anyone imagine it? Here, breathing, struggling, loving one minute. Then gone, silenced, limp and gray. […]
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Emily Dickinson once famously remarked that if she felt as though the top of her head were taken off, she knew she was reading poetry. And who among us did not read “It is a truth universally acknowledged, …” and feel our heads explode? But the poetic nature of Austen’s first lines has not been explored — […]
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“I felt heavy and the depression I had fought for so long moved in and decided to stay. I stared at the wall for days, I was suicide watched. These were dark days and even darker nights.
And now I’m here.” Cee StreetLights
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By Ian Randall Wilson EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Flags are waving with the violence of veterans who hold them out. Around the square people trying to remember. The grass has been replanted. 12 times in the last 2 years. Still it won’t grow. The body sickens and recovers fattens and reaches for its portions of space. […]
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By Tim Clark My family moved often when I was young. Jobs, transfers, I am not really sure of the reason. My memories are boxes lined up and down hallways, or maybe in moving vans. The smell of my Mother’s cinnamon rolls competing with exhaust fumes. There are deep recollections about a certain exciting apprehension of […]
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By Karen C.L. Anderson I am from books, Barbie dolls, and obscurity. I am from rocks and driftwood, and exploring suburban woods as if I were there first; from raised ranches and colonials. I am from cinnamon-toast-and-hot-cocoa-for-Sunday-supper-while-watching-The-Wonderful-World-Of-Disney and I am from resistance. I am also from square dances and playing 20 Questions on long car […]
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By Matthew Harrison ON TAKING OFF AT HEATHROW If I see England from a cabin port – Lanes deep in shadow, hedgerows frosted gold By winter sun – then come images fraught With sadness: brothers dispersed, mother old, Friends long gone. Yet this boy beside me cries And laughs and prods his neighbour gleefully, For […]
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For school last year, my son had to read one of the most epic journey stories of all time, Homer’s The Odyssey. This sweeping poem chronicles the hero Odysseus’ 10-year struggle to return home following the Trojan War. He battles with mystical creatures and faces the wrath of the gods in his determination to recapture […]
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