One Prose Poem by Concetta Pipia

 

Winter’s Exposed Frame

The year bends its back to the North. It bares the bones of the earth. Colors fade. The landscape stands stripped, sharp beneath a pale, piercing sun.

Form finds prominence. Dark evergreens—pines, firs, spruce, and cypresses—hold their steadfast green. The outline of deciduous trees stands revealed, skeletal, geometric. Eucalyptus scents drift crisp and clean through brittle air.

Trees carry their histories. One rises with gnarled grace. Another wears a coat of pale gray. Each surface etched by passing seasons. Silence settles thick and deep. Life retreats beneath frost. Yet stillness is rich, deliberate, complete. Wind whispers through bare branches, weaving snow and air into subtle, symmetrical patterns.

Water slows. Where it once leapt and roared, it now lies thin, reflective, hushed. Ice spreads across the surface. A fragile film flickers in cold light. Stones, once hidden, are revealed. Cattails and rushes stand rigid along the margins. Red osier threads the banks with scarlet veins. Frozen falls hang suspended. Monuments to time paused.

Gardens sleep under frost. Holly displays red berries like sparks against muted earth. Japanese skimmia nods bright amid the snow. Winter aconite pushes delicate yellow crowns through frost. Leaves crunch beneath booted feet, recounting summer’s surrender. Feeding roots below. Mist rises, outlining delicate webs in fleeting, fragile light. Beaded grace, brief and trembling.

In human hearts, winter invites retreat. The world narrows behind frozen windows. The hearth glows. The lamp marks a small circle of warmth. Friendship and welcome anchor the dark hours. Time slows. The mind weighs the past. Lessons sift quietly, slowly, beneath the hush of snow. In frozen fields, quiet honesty lives. Beneath the cold sky, there is a promise: life, though paused, persists.

Winter’s exposed frame holds the seed of what is to come. It offers a measured blueprint. A frozen foundation for spring to fill. In this austere beauty, subtle grace waits—a quiet testament to the structure that sustains us all.

Concetta Pipia is a writer, poet,  and editor raised and living in New York City.

Her work has been published in international anthologies and literary magazines including "The Raven's Perch," (2023) and "The Wise Owl" (November, 2023) and "The Suffolk County Poetry Review," (2024). She is an Administrator of several online writing groups and a Moderator as well.

Ms. Pipia attended Parsons School of Design (BFA), Touro University School of Law (J.D.), and the University of Phoenix (MBA/HRM).

My bodyguard - Flash Fiction Story By Andrea Tillmanns

 

My bodyguard

Flash Fiction Story

By Andrea Tillmanns

 

Sometimes I think no one can see this being. But it has always been with me, for as long as I can remember. It rarely speaks, and when it does, it’s not in my language. I don’t know why it’s here, only that I feel safe in its presence. And I know that it protects me. I knew it earlier in school, when the boys who once wanted to beat me up in the schoolyard and were just held back by a teacher suddenly disappeared. I knew it even more so in college, when the professor who wanted to fail me for the third time disappeared.

But I’ve never seen it protect me – until now.

This time, no one else is here to help me. This time, the creature has to react while I’m there.

I see its dagger-like claws and fangs sinking into the two men who were chasing me. I hear the strangers’ screams, hear their skin tearing, see their blood glistening in the moonlight as they finally fall silent.

When it looks at me afterwards, its gaze changes. Now I know the price for my previously carefree life. I can’t hide from it that I cannot accept it, as I lie trembling and sobbing on the ground in disgust and fear.

Unexpectedly gently, it pulls something out of the inside pocket of one of the dead men and hands it to me. A police badge, lying bloody in my hand. When I look up, the creature has disappeared, for the first time in my life. I begin to understand when I hear the sirens in the distance. Too many deaths in my immediate circle, perhaps more than I realize. And now these two police officers who have been following me, surely not without informing their colleagues, and my bloody fingerprints on one of the police badges … I have to get up, get out of here, but even if I can escape the police this time, my legs trembling and almost blind from tears, I won’t have peace for long.

I fear this was the worst moment to chase the creature away.

Andrea Tillmanns lives in Germany and works full-time as a university lecturer. She has been writing poetry, short stories and novels in various genres for many years. Her poems and stories have been published in The World of Myth, Hawthorn & Ash, SciFanSat, and other journals and anthologies. She has also published more than twenty books in German. More information about the author and her texts can be found on her website www.andreatillmanns.de.

Five Poems by Simon Collinson

 

Dec 23rd

 

Winter surreptitiously,

slithered in,

bringing stiff Easterlys,

sends shivers,

down spines,

as the last bee,

feeds feverishly,

upon,

final flowers,

lingering on,

and when the,

last flower is gone,

so will the bee.

 

 

Ambitions

 

A child dreams of far-off places,

of fantastic beasties and wondrous creatures,

on lilac tipped mountains,

climbing to seek,

fame and fortune,

but as child becomes the man,

older and less bolder,

increasingly incertitude,

inserts itself,

as hesitancy insisted,

doubt gripped tightly,

spirit sapped and worn,

those mountains receded,

the grey shrouded monoliths,

look so,

daunting and forbidding,

the paths followed now swallowed,

and hidden in ivy,

creatures look petrifying,

eventually the dreamer awakes,

the mountains have vanished,

and now the dark clouds descend.

 

 

Souvenir

 

Just yesterday,

a tall lady,

dressed in fawn,

passed me by,

and her scent sent me,

seeking for the past,

retrieving,

a smell I’ve not,

smelled in years,

unpleasant in an un,

deux, tois, sort of way,

reminding me of my French teacher,

the formidable and ferocious,

Madame B,

she of scary, scarlet, screamy face,

quatre, cinq, six,

who lived near the school,

in a house with a blue balcony,

she was horrid,

prowling the corridors,

bursting into rooms,

making a grand entrance,

frightening kids,

standing shaking behind desks,

“Bonjour Madame B”

we’d plea, but soon,

shouting and screaming at me,

“You stupide donkey”,

sept, huit, neuf,

she scared me,

dragged me to the sink to wash my filthy neck,

dix, onze, douze,

shrieked at me,

“Tu es flemmard”,

Madame B marches up corridors,

peeks at boys changing for P.E,

Oh la la, was she blushing,

hard to tell with all that rouge,

ah well, Au revoir Madame B,

the scent eventually withers,

but the memory lingers.

The Deep

 

So lately, such a

surfeit of death and decay,

storms around my head,

sending swirling.

suffocating thoughts,

smothering like a shroud.

 

Pall bell strikes,

misfortune knocking,

like a battering ram,

resounding repeatedly,

hammering my brain.

 

Should I let it in? 

 

 

Ghostly Shuffle

 

It’s been a while,

since I used to be,

someone,

considered fab,

for a while,

now ignored,

just a nobody,

enduring,

anonymity,

existing in the shadows,

practically invisible,

a living ghost,

if you like,

now most days,

just trying hard,

to be,

recognised,

hoping someday,

i can be,

somebody.

Simon Collinson is a writer from England. He is a member of the All Seasons writing group. He seeks stillness and solitude.

 

Five Poems by Terry Wheeler

 

cutter

mercy is

the cutter

cuts through

the suffering 

brings light

so we

may see

that other

side where

love hides

waiting for

us to

rise above

the violence

char

mad as a

burning bush

out of that

irrationality 

will emerge

stirrings of

new life

green fingers

through all

this black

unlikely

light

from

the char

tao

greater crime

wasting life

or expecting

too much

from it 

one way

pleasure

the other

anxiety 

we attempt

to sail

between

scylla and

charybdis

 

disclaimer 

reconciled to

contradictions 

rationality’s a

road that

takes you

so far

the material 

peters into

the spiritual

as large

stars will

collapse

becoming

black holes

sponge

let them

all in

influences

they’ll seek

you out

keep your

eyes open

and be

habitually 

receptive 

nothing’s too

high or

low to

learn from

Terry Wheeler - After graduating from law school in the late 1980s Terry worked in the Australian public service for decades. He was inspired to write after seeing Michael Dransfield poems in The Australian newspaper when a teenager. Terry has been published in Australia and abroad since retiring. In 2024 his first book of poetry ‘notes to self’ was released by ComPress. He lives in Brisbane when not travelling.