Fiction
Ever since I was little, I knew that my future lay in nursing. One day when I was six, we visited my mama at her hospital. The sights, the sounds, and the smells all reached out to me. I told my papa on the way home that I wanted to be a nurse, and he [...]
Fiction
It was in the middle of the night. The sheets were thrown to the floor, useless. The window was open, and you could hear the sounds of summer. Cicadas chirping in unison, the occasional car starting, and the breeze that was so precious it was worth gold. My hair was sweaty, and I brushed away [...]
Fiction
"Kenna, come push your sister out to the car.” I swing my backpack onto my shoulder and jog down the stairs just as I hear the school bus pull up to our driveway and beep. “Can’t you do it? I don’t want to have to walk again. The bus only waits five minutes, and Anna [...]
Fiction
Sarah wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. The wind was bitingly chilly, and it kept worming its way up her sleeves and through the open space where she was missing a button. She tugged on her little dog Ollie’s leash, and he trotted toward her, flashing her a doggy grin. “Come on,” she said, and [...]
Fiction
The sun beat down mercilessly on my sweaty neck. My shoulders ached. I was tired and my mouth was as dry as the Sahara. Bases were loaded. Three balls, two strikes, pressure on. I adjusted my baseball cap as I stepped carefully onto the dusty mound, fingering the ball in my right hand. Change-up, I [...]
Fiction
A tiny ripple spread from the center of the pond as a small stone struck the surface. The delicate lily pads drifted and then settled as the water calmed. A dark shape swam beneath the water, then emerged, the spotted toad settling serenely on top of a dark green leaf floating like a boat. It [...]
Fiction
I was wearing old shoes, brown like the dust my feet tramped through. The wind was sighing around my ears, a soft symphony echoing off the lonesome Joshua trees that dotted the cracked earth. Their thick limbs out, they were awkward creatures trying desperately to catch the little moisture that the air held. Their spiny [...]
Poems
In an art museum in Chicago my dad and Van Gogh stare at each other. On a kitchen table in Sanford my mom watches me draw. In the museum gift shop my dad buys me a print of Starry Night. At home in my room Starry Night hangs above my bed, calming like a space [...]
Poems
Either the boat did not want to be withdrawn from the water, or the water did not want to let its new prize go. Waves of green foam rolled over the railing in a calm firmness, and the trees cast shadows on the rippling water pooling at the edge of a concrete slab where a [...]
Poems
I like to think That when it rains, the thunder encloses our small city In a soft gray blanket. We are cut off from the complications and distractions Of the outside world And all there is Has been And ever will be Is the white noise of rain. I like to think That when it [...]
Book Reviews
“George,” Reviewed by Samuel Phillips
George, by Alex Gino; Scholastic Press: New York, 2015; $16.99 George could not have come out at a better time. LGBT rights is an important issue, yet for kids unfamiliar with the acronym or those interested in the subject, like me, seeing this in a kids’ novel had never happened, until George. The main [...]
Book Reviews
Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery; Simon & Schuster: New York, 2014; $7.99 Few books copy the whimsy of childhood. Picasso said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables is a remedy to that lack of [...]
