Bones by James Ward Kirk

Edited by James Ward Kirk

Contents:

Poetry

Mathias Jansson: The Bone library
Michael Jozefowicz: Tidesong
Lucas Mangum: Skeleton Song
Mathias Jansson: Macabre and Beauty
Matthew Wilson: Bone Man
Mary Genevieve Fortier: Lovely Bones
Matthew Wilson: A Dance Over Paris
Jane Blanchard: Fishing
Jane Blanchard: Untitled
David S. Pointer: The Bone Man
David S. Pointer: Open Containerville
David S. Pointer: Supply Chain Dilemmas
David S. Pointer: Truck Stop Mirage
Steven Alvarez: Fourth Sun
Steven Alvarez: Screaming South
Down MEX 85
Valentina Cano: Break
Valentina Cano: Gum Ache
Patricia Anabel: The Ballad about Bones
M.E. VonBindig: Rebellion
Jaimie M. Engle: The Graveyard Stomp
William Andre Sanders: Resting Place
Dona Sturgess: Maliarda
Sydney Leigh: Angel of the Dead
Dona Sturges: Last Dance
Stephanie M. Wytovich: Calcium
Michael Randolph: Whispering Seasons
J. T Seate: My Anne
DJ Tyrer: The Ossuary
DJ Tyrer: Bone Fire
DJ Tyrer: Skull
Vyvecca Danae Pratt: The Old Staircase

Flash Fiction

M.C. O’Neill: Turn Off the Skeletons
Alex S. Johnson: The Music of the Bones
Stephen V. Ramey: A Creature of Light and Air
Stephen V. Ramey: Grave Matter
Matthew Wilson: Display Purposes Only
Michael Blommaert: From dust and sand
Tina Rooker: Heartbreakers
David Eccles: A Canine Conundrum
L.A. Sykes: What’s Left
Justin Brooks: No Skin Whatsoever
DJ Tyrer: The Bone Lord
Lesa Pascavis Smith: The Children of Wellington Parish
Jake Johnson: The Lover Within
Johannes Pinter: The Big Bones Diet
Morgan Griffith: Bone to Pick
Thomas Kleaton: Playmates
Marija Elektra Rodriguez: Flesh and Phantoms
Robert Holt: Fossils of the Living

Short Stories

Bruce Memblatt: Bad to the Bone
Lily Childs: The Ossillatrice Shift
David Greske: Skeleton in the Closet
The Bone Boy: Philip Harris
Scathe meic Beorh: A Chimney in Time Saves Nine
Justin Hunter: Sentimentality
Jennifer Clark: Pillar
Ken MacGregor: Hands Off!
Mike Jansen: The Halls of Bones
Dave Dormer: Northern Hospitality
Guy Burtenshaw: Bolts of Bones
Charie D. La Marr: A Bone to Pick
John Grey: Street of Bones
John Kujawski: A Few Broken Bones
Michael Randolph: The Caretaker
From a Shallow Grave: Robert A. Read
Tom Johnstone: Flippers
Andrew Freudenberg: An Agreement of Flesh
Greg McWhorter: Witchbone

Sweet Pea's Big Adventure

 

The cat’s stuck in a tree. It sounds like such a cliché, until it happens to you.

Last Sunday A.M., a faint, poignant mew came from far above, when Flo set out food for our outside friends. Her lap kitty Sweet Pea was about 30 feet up in the fork of one of our backyard trees.

We received all of the stock advice:

The cat will come down when she’s hungry.
No. She went without food and water for over 48 hours, and cried and licked her lips with thirst. We repeatedly called her attention to food and water at the base of the tree. We saw her chewing on bark.

If she can get up there, she can get down.
No. Some cats, like Sweet Pea, don’t figure out how to back down. They’re more than suited for climbing up, but not down.

The fire department will get her down.
No, they won’t.

Animal Control will get her down.
No, they won’t, either.

Every time we tried to coax her down, with all of the couch and chair cushions, pillows, pillowcases filled with laundry and whatever else we could muster in place, the neighbor’s dog ran up to the fence yapping. Probably what sent her up there in the first place.

I tried. Made it to the top of the ladder, with 10 feet to go, despite my fear of heights. I reached the event horizon, as far as I could manage without breaking my neck.

Lots of ideas. Some of them just silly. (Helium balloons? Give me a break!) Some might work, but they were absurdly expensive. I did make a basket out of a storage barrel, and bought 100 ft. of rope. After about 150 throws, I began to develop some modest lariat skills, and my tosses were well beyond the needed range. This tree, though, has rough, curled bark. The tosses that hit the mark were immediately snagged. It simply wasn’t going to work.

By 50 hours, with forecast storms heading our way, we finally located a fellow willing to rescue her for less than I paid for my first car.

Finally, help arrives. Our hero, John J., tree expert by day and serial cat rescuer by avocation, is only moments away from saving the day.

Or so we thought. Sweet Pea has other ideas....

 

I guess, she just sees a stranger, and panics.

 

After more than 52 hours in the same place, Sweet Pea rockets up the tree. 10, 20, another 30 feet.

Out on a flimsy, dead branch about twice as high up as where this all began.

Our intrepid hero follows her, with rappelling rope and full climbing gear, further and further, while we try to call her back.

We drag the cushions and pillows and laundry out, and again further out. John follows, to thinner and thinner branches. Minutes stretch to the better part of an hour. John warns us, if she jumps, she'll sail past the giant catcher's mitt we've assembled, and hit the concrete patio. I'm thinking about calling an ambulance for him, he's so far out to the edge of twigs...

John J. keeps talking to Sweet Pea in a soothing voice.

She moves towards him a little...

He talks some more. She comes a little closer, then closer.

Suddenly, he has her. Quicker than I can aim the camera, he's sliding down the rope with one hand, gray kitty in the other, and it's over, everybody safe. Batman couldn't  have done it any cooler.

               Minutes after the rescue

All is back to normal once again, and Sweet Pea is back to her regular job, proofreading Flo's stories.

On occasion she looks wistfully at the back door, knowing it will be a while before she gets another chance to climb a tree. Or take a swipe at the pup next door.

*Sweet Pea’s sister Sassy, shot out the back door in July of 2013, and disappeared. Fortunately, we’d had her microchipped – and on May 19, 2017, we received a call – she’d been picked up as a feral, after being abandoned in an apartment complex about 10 miles away, when someone who had taken care of her moved. She’s back home and very happy… I’m sure she’s also had some adventures, but she’s not talking.

 

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Cellar Door: Words of Beauty, Tales of Terror Volume One

James Ward Kirk Publishing
Edited by Shawna L. Bernard

Contents:

POETRY

Hide and Seek by Stephanie M. Wytovich
Lullaby by Simon Critchell
(Caged) Floral Motif (Madness) by David S. Pointer
Olive Branch by Theresa C. Newbill
Last Lament by Matthew Wilson
Beneath Yellow Roses by Rose Blackthorn
Labyrinthine Dream by Mathias Jansson
Immortal Serenade by Larissa Blaze
Revelations by Michael Randolph
Behind the Cellar Door by Esther M. Leiper-Estabrooks
For You, the Universe by Max Booth III

FLASH FICTION

The Blossoming Bride by Aaron Besson
A Polished Poem by Morgan Griffith
Incarnadine by Lisa Landreth
The Draft by Matthew Wilson
Little Drummer Boy by Tom Johnstone
Natural Selection by Tony Thorne
The Door in the Floor by Ken MacGregor
Ray Guns and Rocket Ships by Todd Nelsen
Luna by Vada Katherine
Cellular Door by Aaron Gudmunson

SHORT STORIES

Stray Cat by Gregory L. Norris
Belladonna by C.L. Hesser
Intricate Restraint by Robert J. Santa
Visions of a New York Loft by Tracy L. Carbone
The Sun Sets Too Soon in November by Gregory L. Norris
Heavy Heart by Dave Dormer
Raison d’être by J.T. Seate
The Light of the Fifth Stair by K. Trap Jones
Reminiscent of the Rain by Carmen Tudor
Luminescence by Michael Randolph
Face of an Angel by Lisamarie Lamb
Stone Butterfly by David North-Martino
Solitude by Guy Burtenshaw
The Man Who Loved His Luscious Ladies by Tina Rath
Suburban Etiquette by Thomas Kleaton
Fiona by Justin Hunter
Pressed Flower Memories by Rose Blackthorn
Sweet Songs of the Earth by Erik Gustafson
Doors Shut Tight and Arms Wide Open by Kerry G.S. Lipp
The Virtuoso by J. Daniel Stone
What Grows in Between by Sally Bosco
Night Flowing Down by Melissa Osburn
Silhouettes in Soil and Prose by Jeff Carter
Moving Past the Ashes by T. Fox Dunham

ARTWORK & PHOTOGRAPHY

Penumbra by John Stanton
Harbinger by Beth Murphy
Divinity by Natalie Sirois
Halcyon Days by Shawna L. Bernard
An Epiphany by Greg McWhorter
Serenity by Beth Murphy
Latent Light by Natalie Sirois
Last Reign by Natalie Sirois
Redolence by Greg McWhorter
Narcissa by Beth Murphy
Denouement by Natalie Sirois
Third Crow by Tais Teng
Druid by Morgan Griffith
Shiva by Ashley Scarlet
Antique Languor by Natalie Sirois
Raptura Sub Rosa by Colleen Keough
Moonlight Sonata by Shawna L. Bernard
Dark Hearth by Shawna L. Bernard
Fallen Angel by Ashley Scarlet
Winter Wheel-line by Rose Blackthorn
Brooding by John Stanton
Ephemeral Sovereignty by Shawna L. Bernard
Sistina by Ashley Scarlet
Unfinished by Jodi Abraham
Regret by John Stanton
Water Lily by Shawna L. Bernard
Machiko (Finding Truth) by Beth Murphy
Doorway by Rose Blackthorn
Demesne by Shawna L. Bernard
Dragonfly Girl by Ashley Scarlet

Not One of Us Issue #50

From Editor and Publisher John Benson:

 “We’re calling this one deep time, and not just because it’s our fiftieth issue. We have tree ferns and giant dragonflies, carboniferous in a carboy, cheerful gentlemen with a bone-bead bracelet, a mother who won’t let them take her son away, a monster chosen, and a last organic. Our poets give us a ninth wave and a kingless kingdom, a bone-built world and a world of silence, a bagel shop to the multiverse, fissure-filling ivy, and a memory of trees.”

One of the Top Ten Science Fiction Magazines

Contents:

The Fernery, by Mat Joiner
Ivy (poem), by Adrienne J. Odasso
The World That Is Silence (poem), by Alexandra Seidel
The Society of Cheerful Gentlemen, by Patricia Russo
Blót (poem), by Gemma Files
The Bone-Built World (poem), by Dominik Parisien
The Watching, by Jacob Ian DeCoursey
The Bagel Shop Across the Street (poem), by David C. Kopaska-Merkel and Kendall Evans
Interventions, by Clancy Flynn
Nash at Wittenham (poem), by Mat Joiner
And Black Unfathomable Lakes, by Sonya Taaffe
The Hundred Under the Sea (poem), by Jeannelle D’Isa
Art: John Stanton

Order a copy or subscription directly from Not One of Us.