She glanced at the ornate wall clock Doug picked up from Home Goods. Heather told him it was ugly, yet here it was.  Nothing else they owned in the house matched. The clock’s lacquered finish glinted in the afternoon sun. Lacy and Ryan would get off the bus soon. Heather turned off the laptop and collected her papers. She placed the computer into a kitchen drawer with other paper miscellany. Secure, but not secret.

Now approaching 90, Edward Shaw came to writing quite late in life after a career in academe (UC […]

“Everyone will tell you that I am not a musician. That is correct. From the very beginning of my career, I classed myself as a phonometographer . . . Science is the dominating factor . . . I think I can say that phonology is superior to music…”

We will not take the roaring storms and violent bluster for granted; we will kiss Winter goodbye and pray to see it again, in due time.

John Tustin is a regular contributor to the Thieving Magpie.  His poetry is forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Neologism, […]

I remember you now
as the mermaid on the rocks
who would have called me to crash
if I had ever dared to set sail.

Paul Smith writes poetry & fiction.  He lives near Chicago, has been published in the Rockford Review, Oyez, […]

All mountains are pretty much alike
they’re tall
they hurt you
it rains on them
every afternoon
so climb them early

Michael Salcman is a poet, physician and art historian.  He was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of […]

In Bucha, where the flowers grow fat on the graves
and broken bricks and bent metal fill up the street,
young wives lose their lovers to bullets and thieves