Hands of Chance form shadow puppets, shallow spirits hidden souls born skip across the evening piano, speeding allegro fleeting little song pour firewater liquors, for the tipplers morning’s remorse scar canvas with dark crayon, art seance exquisite corpse flick the card deck, bar bet conjure lost kings light his cigarette, fingers pirouette now his heart…
It’s Cold And The heat’s not working. The heater’s on, but I’m still freezing. The streets are paved with gross and I’m starting to wonder if these shoes really have what it takes to go the distance. The buildings are so high. The roads have so many potholes. The land has technical and creative challenges….
Ariane steps off the bus, into the snowfall, and it’s simple: She isn’t ready for the inside hours, the claustral house, the mom’s practiced quiet and the dad’s mean breath. She takes the long way home. Snow, thick as lamb’s fleece, shimmies round her. She holds her arms out to feel the way—she believes she…
Symphony Rain. An elastic halo of broken serenity hung over their helmets. Lightning and thunder symphonies roared. Little jewel notes collapsed from the gray canopy and shattered across their exposed skin like glass. They stood still and poised in the rising tempest and, turning their faces to the sky, they squinted through the rain at…
Long Winter The driveway needs no vision test— it is blind, sunk between sand-grizzled heaps of frozen snow. Vanished are roadside mailboxes once ready to shake hands. The Postal Service will temporarily deliver mail to ice chests wedged into the towering banks. In the back yard a pine bends over to vomit snow. Even nowhere…
Winter Rain A few months in, the rain is no longer a novelty. I don’t know what feels more defeating the understanding that this relentless seeping could be winter for as far as I can see or the realization that this time next year I may choose to be bundled up a thousand miles away…
Snowman He fell to the earth in pieces, fat fluffy flakes of cold-water life. He covered roads, cars and houses. When his coal eyes blinked open, he stared down his carrot nose at the divine imperfections of his creators—the wrinkled red hands and snot covered lips of tiny gods—and he knew he was doomed. He…
When I heard that my grandfather had barricaded himself in his room, I wasn’t surprised. He and my mother had been battling one another since our first day in the house outside of Cheshire, Massachusetts, and no surrender was in sight from either side. But if my mother’s phone call was not surprising, her worried…
Lost King Mint leaf —clutched by black-bruised fingers. Most crumble and crack from woodsy earth surrounding town after town. Mint does not shatter into scratchy paper pieces, but folds around my skin, clings to my fingerprints. Fuzzy, not a common green leaf quality. I’m Winter-lonesome, scouring for the maple queen of whiskey. Farewell dear king…
Love Letter to Autumn by Ana Prundaru the last rose petals in the morning mist eye the bare branches waiting to join to the crinkly coat of leaves Ana is a writer/artist who roams the globe sometimes. Her work has most recently appeared in Agave Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Toad, Rio Grande Review, SmokeLong…