~The Mistress of Watermelon by Ann Walters~

Singing wisdom, she works her garden like an aria. Forgetful tunes, tomato forks, the slick white capsule of the cicada grub just emerging – an astronaut gripping the edge of space. Sitting back on her heels, she waits for its accompaniment. The smooth melon in its infancy is a thick green egg veined with hope. She hums a soothing lullaby and swindles the soil with fish oil and pennies, with magic in the form of worship. With hymns and love.

~At the Powwow by Ann Walters~

With a scattering of light in the eye the boy dances, his feathers weaving the colors of stone and corn, his head cocked in an attitude of supplication. His feet singe the ground where they touch.

Too many of the old men drink beer and shuffle from pickup to pickup comparing the size of their tires or the weight of the abandoned hopes that push their truck beds so low they threaten to scrape the road.

Some mothers busy themselves with costume changes and last-minute beadwork. Others sit on plastic chairs in the patchy grass and watch the girls with their subtle sways and hops, remembering vaguely what it feels like to flirt with only a flick of the hand.

A few old women sit in a circle, chanting softly to themselves. Whatever their words are, only they are meant to know. Behind them a baby crawls in the dirt and a pair of dogs mate quickly before chasing down stray crumbs of fry bread.

Back in the central ring, the boy bends. His fringed kilt sweeps the earth like a broom until he stops and kneels, quivering, on one knee. He would kiss the ground if he could, would love it into being with his breath, but a smattering of applause is the only answer to his prayer.

~Likeness by Ann Walters~

Lydia was thinking of a thousand different ways to draw a face. She wanted a name like Chanterelle or Sunita. Her eyebrows were too thin, too thick, too indeterminately shaped like a question mark. Her forehead became a series of dots and dashes, her cheek a smear of ink on a wanted poster. Looking sideways into the mirror, she could almost see that girl from the mall, the one with the pert nose that turned down instead of up at the tip, the one she had followed for two hours. There was a hint of unconformity in Lydia’s chin. Too many shades of aqua overshadowed her muddy eyes with their clarity. Lydia painted her lips a deep blood red and placed a single kiss on her bedroom wall, labelling it #213 with a black marker. It made her think of the name Greta. She wiped her face clean and began again.

***A great big story in such a tiny space.***

Tie for First

"Liberating"

It isn't as hard as it looks.

You just have to give up a few things that you're probably not using anyway. Your mind, for instance, and your free will. You give up your independence, and you give up your individuality. That's about all. It's not a lot.

I haven't had to think in years.

It's so liberating!

-Dragon


"Still Life with Marionette"

Polly hates the strings. They’re always getting caught in zippers or snagging on parking meters.She can’t drive a car unless it’s a convertible. There is something invariably dull about her footsteps, as if she never truly touches the ground. Everything is approximate. Polly has a hard time remembering which string to pull so that by the time she extends her hand to the cashier, her change has fallen through the cracks in the counter. She’d rather leave it down there than make the cat’s cradle that will let her kneel. A special knob opens her mouth to receive the communion wafer. Another closes her legs at appropriate moments, like sitting at the DMV when the driving instructor enters. Polly can remove her eyes and walk all the way to her apartment from the strip mall where the license plates are stored because the strings have memorized the route. As long as there are no entanglements, this gives her more time to dream about scissors.

-Ann Walters


"BIRTHDAY WISHES"

Rupert's gallery would be opening on my birthday. He announced it to me over reheated tuna casserole. "There's nothing I can do, dear," he said. "It's the only time I could get the space, and this is primo space." He put the emphasis on primo as if it made him somehow more European, or cultured, or something equally ridiculous.I had just moved to New York from a lifetime in St. Louis when I met Rupert. Like the city, he had seemed so strange and exciting--unlike anything I'd known before.

Now, a year later, I find Central Park to be a glorified lawn, New York bagels to be oversized, salty puffs of stale bread, and to be honest, I really do not like Rupert's art at all.

-Diane

***A remarkable trio, thanks ladies!***

~Requiem for Hope by Ann Walters~

Sadly sighs the wind and in his arms a butterfly still wrapped in its silvery cocoon. He wouldn’t cry for any other lost particle but this. This was his lover and her wings should have unfolded in kisses. Her brilliant bands of gold and green were to have been the gems upon his fingers but now the scales fall from her body like fragments of rainbow. He holds her close, tosses her high among the trees until she snags and catches there, held forever in her crib, her crypt.

***We are overwhelmed by the choice of this contest. So many different directions, interesting, moving themes, all.***

~The Education of Rita Marrow by Ann Walters~~Not Today by Easywriter~

It began with a walk on the beach, a course in the identification of apathy.

Rita had certainly been to the beach before. Her parents took her there every summer between the ages of six and fourteen. As she’d grown, so had her interests, from seashells to surfing to the fine lines made by young men’s damp fingers on her warm skin. And later, after a dozen years inland, after too many midwestern winters and steak dinners laced with fat and potatoes, she came back to the beach again.

It was all about the exotic then, the homoerotic taste of her own salty lips, stiff nipples under wet cloth. The way sand clings to a woman’s bikini bottom like an unidentified secret. Eight months with Jordan in a two room apartment were enough to convince Rita that she did not need another woman in her life.

And there followed years away from the beach. Years when houses and cars seemed important. When there was a husband and kids, a career that was on, off, on. All the things that Rita might have been slipped past her as easily as waves erasing a castle in the sand until finally, in her fifty-third year, Rita returned to the beach.

This time, Rita didn’t notice the shells half-buried in the sand or the supple bodies that surrounded her. She didn’t think about the grandchildren or the mortgage that was nearly paid. This time Rita saw him for the first time.

He was sitting on a concrete bench, shoeless, dirty. He’d been there all along. His form changed over the years, but as long as there had been a beach, he’d been there. Rita looked at his face, his matted hair. She touched the money folded in her pocket. She saw how he held his head high. He was not dejected, just forgotten. Rita stepped forward and offered him her empty hand.

***Brava.***

And from Easywriter....

He was not young but neither was he old. Lost: the sea found him, tried to make him hers, but he would not have it choosing instead to sit by her side and listen to her cajole and rage in turn. Some day he may go to her, but not today.

~Pipes by Ann Walters~

It is best not to know her name, the color of her eyes, her favorite season. The ratio of muscle to fat beneath her naked skin. She would never tell how many rats she’s drowned or why the only language her dog understands is Russian. A set of functioning pipes are worth more to her. Her uncle told her that snow is an illusion created by too much faith. It’s better to think she wants it to be this way, with broken floor tiles, uninterrupted light from a bare bulb, her wrists reaching toward the sun. Ambition is often swallowed by necessity. It is best to imagine she has never dreamt in color.

~How Thunder Stepped into the Sky by Ann Walters~

Her name was Carmela and she spoke in chocolate words with breath like a long slow lick of the skin. Her voice, ah, her voice – what wasn’t it? It was a goddess bathing. A rhinoceros at full run. The muffled drift of snowflakes over corpses on a battlefield. Carmela never walked when she could sing, never slept when she could rinse her hair with water from the village well. The missionaries failed, as did her parents, her husband, her children. Her heart was never theirs. Nor did it belong to the trees, the grass, the river’s wide ego. She could not be held so tightly. Her name was Carmela and she lifted herself up into the sky on a single strand of chestnut hair. She crouches there still, her teeth a brilliant flash, her voice the rush of a child from its mother’s womb.

***Brilliant, Sharon! Such an unusual and textured turn of a phrase. Many great pieces for this image, please read the comments!***

Flasher Bio: Ann Walters

Ann Walters is the pen-name of Sharon Hurlbut. Sharon Hurlbut lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two daughters. A professional physical anthropologist, she put her career on hold to stay home and raise her children. She writes primarily poetry and flash fiction because they are easiest to squeeze into the short spaces of her day. Her writing has been published under the pen-name Ann Walters in numerous online and print journals. She is also a confirmed knitting addict and can often be found with a pair of socks in progress on her needles. You can follow her literary and yarny progress at her blog, Field Notes.

~A Question of Shadow by Ann Walters~

This is not even a question of light or dark, of shadow or unshadow. This is not air on skin. An open window through which the trees can be felt breathing. This is not a wall, solid against the back, or a pillow tossed aside, useless for comfort, pointlessly malleable. This is no palm to the forehead, no taut muscle at the base of the jaw. This is not the moment when the phone call comes and every fear is met. It is the moment after, when the phone falls and the breath taken in has not yet been let out.

***Lovely and mysterious. Thanks Sharon! Choosing is always difficult. Thanks for all your hard work, writers. Beautiful.***

~The Bright Side by Ann Walters~

The fields are burning. Close the curtains. It’s caught hold of the old farmhouse next door, and the barn, too. Close the curtains. It’s those winds that ride down the hills, they brought it here, too close to home. Too close to Grandpa’s orchard, to Mother’s prize vegetable patch, to baby Jack’s tiny grave in the family plot. The sky is an illusion behind black smoke. The fireman beckons in his bright yellow coat, but I will not leave. Hope is blinding. Close the curtains.

***Management Note: Great use of repetition. You said a lot in just a few words.***