Celebrate
Marcia chose the little photography shop in North Park because one of her work colleagues had recommended it. She’d called the day before…
Writer’s Choice
The School Inspector
A newly-appointed primary school teacher got off the rattletrap at the pukka road and headed on foot to the village that nestled among the citrus orchards…
Working the Fire Line
Working the Fire Line – Fierce Fiction by Alan MacLeod – October 21, 2018 The first time I saw her we were on the fire line digging a ditch to contain the blaze. “There’s Beth,” someone said. “ Bobby Freeman’s sister and a damn good digger too.” I saw a short, slender woman in her early twenties, wearing a bright… Read More »Working the Fire Line
The Red Jeep
A Jeep has sat in front of our house for a month, its red boxy body catching my eye every time I walk outside. Whoever left it, placed it equal distance…
Cookies for Breakfast
I have learned life is short, and dying takes forever. For nearly seventy years, I’ve been a whirling dervish. I ran to and from various aspects of a life filled with perpetual…
Hank
I am offended. It is not my fault that there is no bedroom door to close to keep the drywall sanding-dust out. No, not my fault, and to tell the truth…
Integrative Ancestors, redux
When my daughter Sela was three, she invented a story about Bob Marley and Frederick Douglass. I put her allegory in the “Afterthoughts” of…
Target Practice
My mother saw the raccoon first. She was chopping veggies in front of an open window, hoping for a breeze because it was August, and already hot and sticky…
Shanghai Dumplings
I sat alone at the Shanghai Dumpling King on 34th Avenue in the same seat she always sat in. I came on a Thursday afternoon the way she always did…