Tag: writing
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The people of the village needed ample oil for the festival. The paper lanterns needed lighting, and they needed to stay lit through the month. The sturdy, slick paper had been cut into all manner of shapes—birds, flowers, fruits, fish—and came in all manner of hues—vermillion, dandelion, cyan, crimson, tangerine—and they would lend the town…
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Lydia Renfro holds an MFA from Adelphi University and is the recipient of the Donald Everett Axinn Award for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Okie Bookcast, Litro US, Red Fern Review, Level Land: Poems For and About the I35 Corridor, Siblini Journal, Miletus International Literature Magazine, and others. Raised on the Great Plains of…
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My father always said I had witches’ eyes. “Fickle green and full of secrets,” he would hiss right before he slapped my face. His hard heart cracks one early morning at the bakery. He falls into the oven, and when they find him, his body is charred and smouldering. The village only mourns the ruined…
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Yáng Wǎn (c. 1602—1644) was one of the famous courtesans of the Qinhuai pleasure district in Nanjing in the late Ming Dynasty. She was celebrated for her poetry, lyrics, and calligraphy, and interacted with many other literary and intellectual luminaries of the period. She was murdered by bandits during the social unrest at the collapse…
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STEP ONE read the text, then read it again. feel your stomach drop, the trickle of summer sweat dripping down your spine, the low pulse of your childself’s vigilance accelerating from a whisper to a roar. not to open old shit but… old shit. is that what he is? a pollutant buried eight years deep,…
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Thorne talking like a true ecologist, in tune with damaging practices, proving to me again most city folk don’t see farmers as careful stewards of the land, intent on preservation as well as profit. I really liked when he started jawing this way, so I kept him fueled by talking money, specifically a question about…
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We heard him sharpening the axe. There was a high wind and the south window always whistled when a storm approached but we could still clearly hear the stone on the blade at the work table in the shack. Mom was baking; it was Sunday, and she normally baked cookies that lasted until Friday after…
Penelle Magazine 