Elizabeth Hughes’ Book Periscope

 

Connie Pwll Tyler’s Earth Woman Tree Woman Quartet

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The Earth Woman Tree Woman Quartet by Connie Pwll Tyler is a fantasy novel in four parts. It would be perfect for adults and older teens. Even though this is a fantasy, it is also pertinent to events of intolerance in the world today. It takes place in Arundel. Arundel is a small town with residents that claim to be Christians, but are filled with hearts of hatred and intolerance toward others who are different. Giselle Raphael is a teacher who takes a drive into Arundel and finds a calling to stay. She buys a home that others in the town call strange or haunted or evil. It is near some woods that the townspeople also call evil, but is anything but.

Giselle learns that she and a few others are a type of shape shifter. The shape shifters want to rid the world of the growing prejudice and evil. The Earth Woman Tree Woman Quartet is an excellent novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat all the way to the very end. If you enjoy fantasy this is an excellent novel for your home library or as a gift. School will be out in a few months and this would make a great gift for a teen or young adult.

This book is available here. 

Fiction from Kaia Hobson

For Me?

By Kaia Hobson

If I had to feel even a grain of dirt in my sweat soaked socks again, I would never return. Even Reno was more pleasant than the trip. I had made it to my hotel after nine hours in the car, not including the four bathroom and stretching pitstops where I had attracted all this dirt. Deserts were beautiful on my computer’s screensaver, and the crunch the dusty gravel made under my sneaker was a pleasing sound, but I’d rather observe from afar. However, Salt Lake City seemed different. The surrounding mountains were fresh, like something that would emit cold, clean air.

I stepped into the hotel shower, and immediately stepped back out. The water back home heated in less than a couple seconds. I waited until the temperature matched my insides — I wanted no contrast. As I watched clear water turn gray upon hitting my toes, the thought of dinner floated around inside my head.

I was right about the cold. Perhaps it was the combination of my wet hair, or the fact that I had left the hotel without a coat, as I had come from the desert. This prompted me to walk into the closest restaurant, a burger-joint. I sat at the bar, menu in one hand, the other digging into the soft wood of the counter. I glanced around, and happened to lock eyes with a familiar looking man sitting three chairs down the bar.

“Mike?” I asked.

He smiled back at me, still staring. I shifted in my seat, hoping he was who I thought he was. If I remembered correctly, we had worked together at a Burger King for a few years during college. He didn’t have much of a distinctive face, only his eyes stood out, brick red, dark enough to look somewhat natural, but strange enough to stick out.

“Hey, are you — do I, know you? You’re Mike right?” He continued to stare as if I was blocking something from his view. “Uh, I must’ve gotten you confused with someone else. Sorry to bother you!” I lifted my hand from the table, silently acknowledging the depth of the fingernail dents I had made, and went back to waiting for my food.

As I began to leave, I heard who I thought was Mike mutter, “You!” The sound didn’t seem like an invitation. After turning back to find “Mike” staring blankly at the drinks lining the back wall of the bar, I collected my belongings and left. Upon turning the last corner to the hotel, I bumped right into a small young woman. She stumbled, looking flustered as she collected herself.

I threw my hand up, “Lillian? Hey! Funny to see you here!”

She paused, then, without hesitation, embraced me in a hug. “Richard! Oh, it’s been so long! How have you been?”

Our parents had been friends when we were kids, and naturally, we too became close, though it had been many years since I last saw Lillian. We caught up for a just few minutes, as she was apparently expected at home, where her newborn child lay waiting for dinner.

“I was going to tell you, I was! But you know, it can get pretty crazy.” She said, referring to the baby.

I awkwardly waved goodbye, and continued off to the hotel. I had an urge to shower again, but thought better of it.

The next morning, I opened my room door to find a small bouquet of daffodils on the carpeted floor outside in the hall. I picked them up gingerly, carefully examining the exterior. I didn’t know anyone in Salt Lake City. I had merely come to escape.

Life in Reno was draining, cluttered even. Friends and family seemed to always find me, at the grocery store, the post office or gas stations. The city was even dubbed “The Biggest Little City in the World.”

The day was filled mostly with walking and eating, exploring the unfamiliar city. When I arrived back at my hotel, I was greeted with yet another “gift.” However, instead of flowers, it was a small unsigned box of chocolates. I stepped over the box and into my room, where I then phoned the hotel lobby and asked if gifts were regularly delivered to guests. The receptionist on the other end replied with a definite “no.” I thought perhaps someone had mixed up room numbers and delivered gifts to the wrong door. I quickly scrawled a short note on the hotel stationary paper explaining the situation:

To whoever is leaving gifts at this door, you must have the rooms mixed up as I am not expecting any gifts, nor do I know anyone who would do such a thing. Sorry about that! (P.S. if you would like the previous gifts back, just knock!)

I stuck the note on the front of the door, turned the TV on, and soon fell asleep to the sound of a tense cooking show.

When I opened the door the next morning, I found a large unpotted cactus lying on it’s side, dirt spread across the carpet. With that, I began to pack my belongings, and rushed downstairs to the lobby. As the elevator door opened, I could see a man walk out the door and turn to walk down the street. He glanced my way, and I could see the unmistakable eyes I knew I recognized. I stepped up to the lobby desk.

“Who is that man that just walked out the door? Have you seen him before?” I hurriedly asked the receptionist.

“Hey, this city is small, but not that small,” She said, rolling her eyes, “Yeah sure, that creep. He’s not staying here? He sure comes around often.”

“I don’t think he stays here.”

“Well, heard he was knocked real hard on the head couple years back. Strange guy huh?”

I nodded and told her I would be checking out early. Halfway out the door, I turned around and shouted across the room, “There might be a bit of a mess in the hallway of the third floor!”

I raced to my car, and decided to take a different route back home, one with no deserts.

Poetry from Marc Carver

NEW FACES
I had an idea
for making love to the same woman
less boring
I would put a screen over their face
and you could pick anybody you wanted
I wouldn’t pick a supermodel though
I would go for the lowest dirtiest slut
I could think off
loads of makeup
smelly
the lower the better
I have never found a woman
low enough yet
but there is still time

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Essay from Chimezie Ihekuna

Preface

Chimezie Ihekuna

Chimezie Ihekuna

If you are married and reading this, a question (awkward it may seem) would have to be asked: ‘Before marriage, how many times have you had sex?” Do not trivialize this as it would be very necessary.

 

Probably, you are looking with disdain! It is understandable. As a matter of fact; if you use this question to X-ray different people on the streets, living in a district or community, you will be amazed at the various responses you would get. Some will give questionable numerical figures (taking the question with levity), others will not answer you, believing that you want to infringe on their privacy. Funny enough, other individuals would say something like ‘I will tell you later’ while others will respond by unleashing life-threatening words and actions on you.

 

 

However, if sex is an experience, should it be an off-the-record account, worth remembering and documenting, kept as secret for a time but (think about this question: is anything hidden under the sun?) or something to remembered when you are in the grave!?

 

If it is an off-the –record account, then why waste your time on a task you will not commend of yourself of doing, after all, anything worth doing is worth doing well?

 

If it is worth remembering and documenting, then you should be congratulated!

 

This is because you are about exercising empirical knowledge to others (interested), letting them (the wise ones) learn what are ordinarily vague when taught and possibly help improve the sex life of others before and after the particular time (marriage).

 

If you are advocating that it should be kept secret for a time, think of the question asked. Do you know that the wall has ears? One way or the other, the other party you had it with will unravel to his or her world what really happened. In time, this could be implicating.

 

If you are that individual who sees the experience, sex, as something to be remembered when you are in the grave, what an exclamation it is. Remember, it is just one life you and I have to live.

 

If you portray this disposition, it means that you are in a state of guilt. Imagine you carrying this burden of guilt all your life. How miserable you would be! No one you could share it with?

 

Then, you are out of this world! Frankly, you are in a world of your own.

 

How can an individual best know the actual number of times he or she had had sex before marriage?

 

‘Record keeping of sex activities helps to ascertain one’s level of sexuality and in a way, behavioral disposition, present and in future’…Mr. Ben

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Poetry from Sequoia Hack

prairie

 

a single tear trickles along my cheek

dripping slowly down the crevices of my ear

a saltwater river passing over rocks, so to speak

the night’s adventures disappear.

 

a cole hardware alarm mourns its lost

warm protection ripped from my frame

young light from the sun melts the frost

california poppies admit to their fame.

 

soft pink beaks tweet their hunger

as a lioness grooms her cubs’ eyes

a reminder of not getting any younger

balmy heat new to arise.

 

warming eggos in a toaster or harvesting berries from a bush,

the sun will rise regardless, ending a drowned out shush.

Poetry from Chimezie Ihekuna

See Life In Your Own Way

Chimezie Ihekuna

Chimezie Ihekuna

(i)

Deceptions try permeating my sub-conscious like a virus

Ugly events want to make me dance bad circus

I choose to see myself as the citrus

That grows in the field of peace

Never caught up by the weeds of disease

I’m hooked with creativity through my ability

To express my service to humanity

I see life my own way

Decided not to be in dis-array

It doesn’t matter the name;

Whose distraction is giving him the fame

For I know that’s his game

 

(ii)

I’m out for the money

but not down with the honeys

because they are monkeys

pretending to be like good mummies

I’m ahead of my time like time

That’s why  you don’t see me all the time

That’s the way I see it…My own way

So, see life in your own way!

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Poetry from Allison Grayhurst

Healed
 
Allison Grayhurst

Allison Grayhurst

Bone and sleeve, blessed
a thousand times over –
first it enters through the back, a wave
of rare wind flooding the pores, then through the front,
a deeper rush that separates the skin
like rock into sand, making granules, softness
to cup loosely in hands.
 
You never viewed me dressed in my own hues. You tired
with your guilt and pity, clinging to the ruthless rules
of worldly absolutisms, rules void of miracles,
void of the greatness of God. It is not your fault.
 
You were born in a poverty den, surrounded
by uproar and mouths of many hungering siblings.
Violence and servitude, and so many trapped ghosts
filling the stairways, settling
in the corridors, peering through paintings. A home
where spirits latched on to doorknobs, the nails in floorboards,
bred like bugs under pillows, in closed-door closets.
I cannot blame you, later you earned and kept your independence,
but still the one thing remained your master
like a severe hand coming down, dominating,
throwing cutlery across the room, thrashing
your childlike joy to pieces.
 
My lungs can’t function in that haunted landscape.
I am rising new born, rising with no sense of
separation. I move beyond my temporal bloodlines.
I will not own your wounds as truth. Even still, I love you.
I bless the bell. I bless how far we both have come – new homes,
clean of bad breath and the tormented tightening-grip of others.
 
Miracles are fish that somehow know
their way through the oceans.
Miracles are stones, glorious as stars,
 
or a rat in winter guided
to a dumpster feast.
 

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