Bone By John Riley

 

He has no need to pull up and search for the last bits of bone. There is little chance of finding any. The splinters may have tempted a fox, or flew away in the beak of the crow nested above the fig bush. Perhaps he should search closer to the well-house. His feet would leave deeper prints in the soft soil there. Why wonder? He has no cause to search for the bones that fell from the scaffold once erected in the oak's shadows. He can now go to the coast and watch his moments concentrate sunlight on the sea.

John Riley has published poetry and fiction in Smokelong Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Better Than Starbucks, Banyan Review, Connotation Press, Bindweed, Fiction Daily, The Molotov Cocktail, Dead Mule, St. Anne's Review, and numerous other anthologies and journals both online and in print. EXOT Books will publish a volume of 100 of his 100-word prose poems in 2022. He worked in educational publishing for many years and has published over forty books of nonfiction for young readers.

In The Walls by Susan Tepper

                              

Meditations on dear Petrov, set in 19th Century Russia during a time of war

White.  Blank.  Everywhere something to be covered.  My life in these walls, dear Petrov.  Scarcely a sound.  Each time you finally return I must teach myself to speak.  Soft guttural animal noises.  You never seem to notice.  Boisterous and tired in your chair.  Pouring down whisky like wine from the priest.  Dear Petrov nothing will save you.  This life is inscribed on some secret tablet.   A matter of trust, you say.  While I have none.  Guns firing beyond the mountain day into night.  Season into season.  Guns like birdsong taken for granted.  If I were to marry I would arrive at the church in black.  To counter the eternal snow.  Perhaps a red feather stuck in my hat.  Reflecting the passion still simmering under the white blanket covering the land.

Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty years published writer in all genres.  Her current project is an Off-Broadway Play on the subject of art and life.

Cover Photograph By Glenn Bowie