Posts Tagged ‘Sun’
Jan
On The Train
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Poof went my idea for a poem, off it charged into the common air. It could be anywhere on this train now, traveling up the coast. Maybe people are talking about it in the dining car, maybe the conductor’s thinking about it as he takes their order for dinner. It could be in the heart of the young marine from Camp Pendleton, a lieutenant, stationed there for three years. He’s on his way to San Francisco to see his girlfriend. He has something important to tell her, something that just came to him, while the sun set over the Pacific.
From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe
Linda’s stories and poems have appeared in Outlook Springs, Crack the Spine, New Verse News, Star 82 Review, Indolent Books, A Story in 100 Words, and others.
Jan
Last Dance
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Rain blackens the windows, dime-sized water balloons of toxic ash. We haven’t had sun in months, and now this. You look up and say, Think it’ll stop? I love how you still look up, that instinctive angle of hope, of God.
It doesn’t matter since ration deliveries have ended, but I don’t say that.
We stand on the porch and watch the rain. Our last neighbors emerge from their house, wave, then slow dance down the street. By the time they reach the corner they’re convulsing like punk rockers. I ask you to dance but you pull me back inside.
From Guest Contributor Charles Duffie
Dec
The Sunflower
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
V’s sitting on the sidewalk in the sun, headphones and cut-offs, and she smiles at you, cigarette in one hand and a big paintbrush in the other, dripping yellow.
“It’s a warning,” you say.
She lifts it to the door of the sky blue bug and pulls out petals, stretching glorious to the handle, the wheel well, and the broken mirror from a perfect oval of shiny black seeds with a tiny white dot on each one and a ladybug the size of your fist right where he took the baseball bat to it.
“No,” she says. “It’s a flower.”
From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat
Brook Bhagat’s poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and humor have appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror Magazine, Harbinger Asylum, Little India, Rat’s Ass Review, Lotus-Eater Magazine, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. She and her husband Gaurav created Blue Planet Journal, which she edits and writes for. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University, teaches creative writing at a community college, and is writing a novel. Her poetry collection, Only Flying, is due out Nov. 16, 2021 from Unsolicited Press. See more at www.brook-bhagat.com or reach her on Twitter at @BrookBhagat.
Aug
Quest
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
“Are you going to die soon?”
“Yes, I guess.”
“Will you take me with you?”
“Can’t do that”.
“Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
He was in search of true love. His search wasn’t easy. He searched everywhere but never realised how close his love was to him. He had been looking for love at all the wrong places. His quest for love only got longer. He stayed up all night and dreamt all day. The sun went down. The night deepened and darkness hid everything. He thought what could be more mysterious than night when you have secrets to bury.
From Guest Contributor Sergio Nicolas
Jul
Life’s Surprises
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I’m walking along the parks path and the sun is so hot, sweat drips down my neck. The trees are full of sparrows chirping in unison, and the benches are full of elderly men reading the newspaper or just staring ahead. One man is eating chips and crumbs stick to his mustache. I chortle and move along. Mothers with children, some eating ice cream, drop sprinkles on the ground and the ants come in droves.
It’s days like this I don’t take for granted. Life is full of surprises and I never know what will be, once I start radiation.
From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher
Jul
Library Literate
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
I was the kid who sparkled when they walked in the door. The bookish brat who would make her father chuckle while balancing a mountain of literature above her head.
There, I discovered the internet’s secrets. Every minute on their computer spent in obsession.
My friends and I chattered like hens between the book shelves. We scavenged through comics like vultures through the teenage fiction.
I read novellas under the summer sun. I ate my lunches before memorial statues.
Every trip was coming home and every inch towards the door was a step back in time.
Until it was gone.
From Guest Contributor Alexandra Sullivan
Jun
Drowning Memories
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Alex listened to the waves crashing against the shoreline while seagulls flew above, searching for prey. The sun beamed on his face and he wished he had worn a hat.
He walked the beach, the hot sand stinging his toes. Boats sailed in the distance and he wondered what it would feel like to be free of land, but that thought dissipated. His mind shifted to when he almost drowned and his father pulled him from the water shouting his name, punching his chest until he spit up.
His father was now the one drowning, of a disease called cancer.
From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher
Mar
Next Gas 190 Miles
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
Genevieve stepped down from her jeep at the lonely fueling station, according to the sign the last chance for services for 200 miles, and smoked a cigarette under the half-dead oak tree. A litany of lizards scurried away as she approached.
She wondered how many drivers stopped here in a day. She had passed maybe half a dozen vehicles the entire morning. She couldn’t imagine how the people out here survived so far from civilization.
The old man working the pump had skin as weathered as the geckos’ from too much sun. She decided to tip him an extra twenty.
Sep
Especially In Alabama
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
The water’s chilly for late August. My biology teacher says the lake retains the cold air from the night before, but I wonder why it doesn’t soak in the heat of the sun during the day. Nature doesn’t make sense.
Rebecca and Claire are arguing over whether bras and panties count as skinny dipping. It doesn’t, no matter what Rebecca says. Claire decides I’m brave because I’m already in the water. But if the boys come they won’t be able to see anything.
I’ve decided I don’t care if they do. I wonder if that makes me a bad person.
Jul
The Golden Thread Part Two
by thegooddoctor in 100 Words
“What is that? I can’t see. Some sweet jungle flower. Are we getting close?”
“No, it is poetry, a copycat fragrance to lure butterflies. It is carnivorous. Stay back—”
“Those are my words on the vines! God, those electric blue letters! Let’s read—”
“Don’t—”
“Why? ‘Once upon a time I died. I crucified myself on a ladder made from the bones of birds, hollow, not yet cleaned by cannibals or the sun, yet flightworthy by nature.’ I wrote that.”
“The vines will strangle you, make you blind, make you forget why you are here. And then you drop the thread.”
From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat
Brook’s poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and humor have appeared in Empty Mirror Magazine, Little India, Dămfīno, Nowhere Poetry, Rat’s Ass Review, Peacock Journal, A Story in 100 Words, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies, and are forthcoming in MoonPark Review and Almagre. She has completed a full-length poetry manuscript, is writing a novel, and is editor-in-chief of Blue Planet Journal. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University and teaches creative writing at a community college. More at brook-bhagat.com