January 2025 | fiction
In brown and grey demob suits, stoked up well with Woodbines, the three of them, from the same regiment, were thrown up cheek-by-hip on the platform: Tim, Spence, the younger David. They were packed into a wooden-slat-seat train and Spence, a chunky pugilist of a man, the veteran of bar room scraps, now weathering twenty-six, knew, like the other two, that hostilities were over, that the lights were out at last on the theatres of war.
The theatre was part of home for lanky Tim. For five, six years pre-war, he’d done amdram. He had the wavy hair, indeed the coaxing smile of a film star, so in the local Little Theatre, he could charm the ladies, court the audiences, bask in the warm reviews. But for six years nearly (Tim was thirty-two in a fortnight’s time), he had found, in conflict and in barrack room, you got to see the truth of fellow men, naked and in the raw. He was thinking rather differently now, of men and audiences and acting and affection. Post-war things would be difficult for him and only finally, decades on, would he reach a personal peace.
Spencer had married back in ’41, and yes, he was looking forward to going back to Lily. There was the physical part, of course, the regularity, and in the years that followed he would settle, despite the criss-cross and the alleyways of love, for what was more or less OK. He’d think of her, always, as ‘the Missus’, just as he’d think of ‘the boy’ and ‘the girl’. And decades on, when the cancer struck, he would cope and care for Lily with a dour devotion.
David was bound to think, on that journey home, of the breathless Rachel, the schoolgirl daughter of his mother’s friend. She’d been there at their house, on each of his leaves, and he knew full well she loved him blatantly. Everything in him, of manhood, pride and celebration, yearned for her. Yet somehow now, post-war, aged twenty-two, she not quite seventeen, he would keep feeling the gulf between all he’d seen, the nauseous blood, the gristle exposed, and the world of the child. So they would circle each other for several tremulous months, before in time they panicked and married others.
Each married a shit. Only after many, many years, after the bitterness, the blows, the pettiness, were they free, their every emotion rising with a rush.
In 1995, the celebrations marked the end of the war, and the following golden peace. None of the boys attended. Spencer said, ‘I’m just glad I came back and I think of the boys who didn’t’. He stayed in playing rummy with Lily (recovered years ago but frail). Tim and his partner Sebastian drank their Merlot in their favourite London wine bar. David and Rachel went in a rural morning for their walk in the Teifi marshes, saw the radiance of the kingfisher, felt the wetlands’ wealth and depth.
Robert Nisbet
Robert Nisbet is a Welsh writer whose work has been widely published in the USA. Burningword Literary Journal and three other magazines have nominated him for a Pushcart.
January 2025 | poetry
I can’t unsee firefighters hanging around our
living room like uninvited guests at a party
waiting with my wife in case her heart attack
arrives before the ambulance does, each man
scanning the room inch by inch as if flames might
burst from a bookcase, can’t unsee them monitoring
the way she probes her neck and shoulder and jaw
for a sign of the fuses a coronary lights in a woman’s
body, the young one unpacking the defibrillator,
flattening the blue patches that attach to the chest.
How strange that pain has a photographic memory.
Unbidden image imbued with new life. The past
always hijacking the present, my wife ever lifted
into the ambulance, the door closing between us.
Ken Hines
Ken Hines has been an ad agency creative director and a college English teacher, two jobs that take getting through to people who may not be listening. His poetry has appeared in Burningword Literary Journal, Rust & Moth, and Dunes Review, among others. You’ll find his essays in The Millions, Philosophy Now, and Barrelhouse. A recent Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, he lives in monument-free Richmond, Virginia with his wife Fran.
January 2025 | fiction
When I entered the parking, there was a problem. A BMW SUV with a Connecticut license plate was parked right in the middle, blocking access to the specialty food store. I was angry. Why the fuck couldn’t that dumb bastard park in one of the nearby spaces, instead of in the middle of the lot?
I entered the fish store to get a sandwich. When I finished, I walked over to the specialty food store.
Perhaps someone had a problem. The temperature outside was below zero, so I thought — having cooled down while eating my fried chicken sandwich in the fish store. Perhaps some poor slob had a car issue and might need assistance — like a tow truck.
On entering the store I saw an aging, grey-haired man in a Brooks Brothers overcoat and tyrolean hat who was pawing the lettuce.
“Yeah, that’s my car; what of it,” he said, checking each head carefully as if he might find gold under one of them.
“Does your car have a problem?” I asked, noting not to buy lettuce.
“Not that I am aware of,” he replied, continuing to pick amongst the lettuces, probably to find the largest head.
“Well, it’s blocking the entrance to this store,” I told him, now getting a little annoyed.
“So what?” he said, finally choosing a head and putting it in his basket.
“Well, it’s inconsiderate,” I told him, following him as he walked over to the cashier.
“Says who?” he said.
“Listen, mister, you’re blocking the entrance to this store. Why don’t you move your car?” I asked, politely.
“I don’t give a shit, sonny, let me handle this first.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are, asshole?”
“Listen, sister,” the man said, “don’t play games with me.”
“Are you going to move your fuckin’ car? Why don’t you just move your fuckin’ car, asshole,” I said as politely as any Cuban could, gesticulating with my arms in his face — for emphasis.
“Listen bitch,” he said to me as he turned around, “why don’t you mind your business and let me mind mine.”
“Who’re you calling a bitch, fuckin’ asshole?”
“Bitch, go suck tit. Can’t you see I’m fuckin’ busy?” the asshole said.
I wasn’t going to let anyone — especially someone from the city — mess with me.
“Asshole, just because you come from the city you think you own the place; you’re our guest, so fuck off and move your fuckin’ car.” I had become so mad, and when a Cuban becomes mad his arms move so that the other person knows what he’s talking about.
“Bitch, as soon as I’m finished ….”
At this moment Jesse, the store manager, appeared from the back room.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Oh, José’s been talking to himself, —you know, just being himself,” Mariah told the store manager.
E.P. Lande
E.P. Lande was born in Montreal but has lived most of his life in the south of France and Vermont, where he now lives with his partner, writing and caring for more than 100 animals, many of which are rescues. Previously, he taught at l’Université d’Ottawa, where he served as Vice-Dean of his faculty, and he has owned and managed country inns and free-standing restaurants. Since submitting two years ago, his stories have been accepted by publications in countries on five continents. His story “Expecting” has been nominated for Best of the Net.
