‘Donkeys’ By Harriet Kline

Fay tried to be honest. She thought of saying:

“No Sonya, the girl sounds dreadful. Just because she’s driven you mad, I don’t see why I should be driven mad too.” She really believed that life would be better if everyone was honest. She thought of saying:

“I do a lot of favours for you, Sonya. This one is going too far.”   Or even:

“I’m rather offended that you think I’ve got nothing better to do.”

She pressed the telephone to her ear, and made a stern face at herself in the hall mirror, but her voice came out in a whine.

“But I don’t even speak French. Only schoolgirl. It’ll be dreadfully old fashioned.” Sonya laughed. A great, gurgling laugh that sounded to Fay, as if Sonya was relieved. As if Fay had already agreed to take the girl on.

“You needn’t worry about that, Fay. She never says a word.”

And indeed, Fay was already leafing through her diary.   “We could have her Monday, I suppose. But only if Isobel’s free.”   She tried to make it clear from the tone of her voice that she was not smiling as she spoke. “ You know what teenagers are like. Isobel may have plans that she hasn’t deigned to tell me, and I don’t think I could manage this on my own.”

So she agreed to spend a day with Sonya’s French student. It was bad enough last year, with Isobel’s French exchange. All the gesturing, the nervous laughter round the bathroom in the morning and her ill disguised distaste for English suppers. There was no scope for honesty with someone foreign in the house.

Exclusive Member Story ‘Shelf Life’ By Santino Prinzi

Nick was standing in the Romance section of his favourite bookstore, and he wasn’t sure what he was looking for – but that’s where he met Lisa for the first and last time.

She was standing in the Science Fiction section. Her almost obsidian eyes scoured the bookshelves, and her scarlet nails slid across the spines, searching. Scratching a single spine, she teased out a colourful edition of a Kurt Vonnegut and absorbed the blurb. Nick and Lisa locked eyes and she smiled. The way her mouth curled at the sides kept Nick’s eyes glued to her. Her curves ignited his imagination. Nick looked down at the Fifty Shades of Grey he was holding and then returned her gaze with a grin that implied only one thing.

Nick shelved the questionable novel and strolled from Romance to Fantasy. Lisa put Vonnegut away and wandered into his fantasies. They stood shoulder to shoulder in silence. He could almost feel her warmth. He picked up a clothbound edition of The Lord of the Rings. Lisa exhaled deeply and moaned; she knew he’d be the one man to rule her heart.

Their fingers twisted together, and their lives became Poetry for a moment. Lisa knew she and Nick were diving head-first into the abyss of lyricism and imagery but, as the excitement of internal rhyme wore off, she wanted something less fictitious, more concrete.

Apollo XI By Julie Hayman

July 1969. Everyone’s making rockets. Kev’s made one, Bobby’s made one, Nick Cruikshank has made one. Kev’s is a Fairy Liquid bottle covered with white sticky-back plastic and the words Apollo XI written in permanent marker along the side, like he’s seen Val make on Blue Peter, with wooden forks, the kind you get at the chip shop, glued low-down to make it aerodynamic. Bobby’s is an Airfix kit he bought at the model shop on Fisherton Street, with transfers of the American flag and NASA up near the snout, while Nick Cruikshank’s is a fab one, built with Meccano, complete with a launching gantry on wheels. They’re going to have a competition in the park on Saturday afternoon, to see which one’s best. Kev asks if I’m going to bring a rocket too: I nod and race home.

I’ve already got an empty Cornflakes box, some crow’s feathers from the garden, a square of corrugated cardboard and some cocktail sticks in my bedroom drawer – they might be useful for it. I ask Mum if I can have the washing-up liquid bottle, and she says I can when it’s empty, but it’s still half-full so won’t be ready in time – I’ll have to think of something else for the body of the rocket.

By teatime, I haven’t come up with anything. By bathtime, nothing too.

Moonquake By FJ Morris

I’m a missing person. Not that you’ll find me on any milk carton or across any headlines. No, I’m the reverse: all body and no spirit. No-one at this party knows that I’ve gone. I slipped out a while back, before I pulled apart my tie; before my mother got up to talk about my father, lips bleeding with lies. I most definitely left before then, before the talks. Way before. Not that I could tell you when.

At the downstairs bar, I flick through receipts that were stuffed in my trouser pockets and find a folded fiver, limp and soft, and a bit ripped. I hope they take it. I can’t be bothered to go to the cash point. They ought to; it’s not my fault the fiver has seen better days. It shouldn’t be chucked out because it’s a bit old. The barman notices me but he goes to a woman who’s just arrived at the bar. I’m not surprised, I would have too.

On the opposite side of the bar, a girl is staring at me. I stand up straight. She raises her eyebrows and sweeps the hair off her face. It’s impossible to tell her age, her skin is smooth but there’s something long lived about her; as if she’d circled the sun so many times that she could do it blindfolded and backwards. They say that’s confidence, that self-assurance comes with age. I reckon its exhaustion. I catch the barman’s eye again and put my order in: wine, large.

Exclusive Member Story Men of the World By Nick Black

I write this by the guttering light of a candle, melted down so far, it’s mostly wick and puddle now.   The darkness around me billows and retreats, billows larger again as a draft creeps in near my feet.

My nib scrapes against this paper, though I can barely read what I am writing.  I ignore the repeated, demented, banging that I cannot tell if outside on the street or within this very house.  I steady my hand so as to spill no more ink, and start at the beginning, with Thurwell bursting into the Club, a train of snow in his wake. Burton and I beckoned him to join us by the hearth, and sent for brandy. Neither of us had seen him since his return to England, and while he answered our many questions, I took the time to examine the changes five years abroad had wrought on the man. Never thickly set, he had dropped a weight of flesh from his bones but was finely dressed, moustache well waxed, beard curling from his thin chin in an upward hook.

“Gentleman,” he said, raising his tumbler in a toast. ‘To old friends.” In the dancing rosy firelight, his face had a positively Moorish aspect so that his eyes and teeth flashed all the whiter by contrast. “And tomorrow, my lambs, you must come to my rooms, for I have brought back mementos that I believe may amuse, things,” he looked around, “not suitable for such public galleries.”

Kevin Connelly

Kevin Connelly drawn by Paddy Lennon RHA

Kevin Connelly is the author of Fragment of a love story, recovered. A native of Kilkenny City, born in 1955, Kevin is currently living in Duncannon, Co. Wexford.

Kevin has been interviewed on The John Murray Show, Radio1 and the Eclectic Light Show, KCLRadio.

He has read poetry in the Wexford Arts Centre as part of the Cáca Milis Cabaret and on “Imeall”, the Arts programme on TG4. His poetry has received awards in The Black Diamond Poetry Competition, The Frances Browne Multilingual Poetry Competition and Fish Publications Poetry.

His poems have been published in “Boyne Berries” and “”Red Lamp, Black Piano”. In the US he has been published in “The d’Verse Anthology of International Poetry”,”and “The Lilliput Express”. Kevin has had both poetry and flash fiction published as part of the Writers on Board Scheme of the Carnegie Library in Kilkenny.

He regularly reads his work at Harry’s Bar, Langton’s Hotel, Kilkenny and The Fusion Cafe, Wexford.

Jay Moussa-Mann

Jay Moussa-Mann

Jay Moussa-Mann is the author of Edward’s First Love and a short story author and screenwriter based in the North East of England. She has written and directed TV productions for a  nonprofit organisation as well as several short films one of which won the Special Category Award at the International Sabaoth Film Festival. Her short story “Home Tomorrow” was published in the Home Tomorrow Anthology through 6e publishing. She has recently discovered a love for running, having spent her whole life being the ‘non sporty one,’ and enjoys a range of artistic outlets such as painting, art journaling and composing music.

Lisa Blower

Lisa Blower

Lisa Blower is the author of ‘Dirty Laundry’. Lisa grew up in Stoke on Trent – a place that continues to inspire her writing. Her short story, Broken Crockery won The Guardian’s National Short Story Competition in 2009 and Barmouth was on the final 5-story shortlist competing for the 2013 BBC National Short Story Award. In 2014, Her short story, Pot Luck, was read on Radio 4 in their ‘State of the Nation’ short story series.

Steve Wade

Steve Wade

Steve Wade is the author of The Christmas Market.

Author Bio

A prize nominee for the PEN/O’Henry Award, 2011, and a prize nominee for the Pushcart Prize, 2013, Steve Wade’s fiction has been published widely in print and online. His work has won awards and been placed in prestigious writing competitions, including being shortlisted in the Francis McManus Short Story Competition, 2013 (the story was recorded by a professional actor and Broadcast on RTE Radio One), shortlisted among five in the Wasafiri Short Story Prize 2011, a nomination for the Hennessy New Irish Writer Prize, and Second Place in the International Biscuit Publishing contest, 2009. His novel ‘On Hikers’ Hill’ was awarded First Prize in the UK abook2read Literary Competition, December 2010 – among the final judging panel was the British lyricist sir Tim Rice. His fiction has been published in over twenty-five print publications, including Crannog, Zenfri Publications, New Fables, Gem Street, Grey Sparrow, Fjords Arts and Literary Review, and Aesthetica Creative Works Annual.

Anne Wilson

Anne Wilson

Anne Wilson is the author of ‘Waiting for Christmas’.

Author Bio

I grew up in the north-west of England around the Morecambe Bay area and have always filled my free time with my favourite hobbies of reading and writing.

I also lived for a number of years on the Balearic Island of Mallorca which inspired my first novel, Here Be Dragons: A Tale of Mortals, Myths and Mystery, set in Mallorca and Denmark. I have a journal-blog on my website telling the story of these ex-pat years.