what stories?

Per request:


Black bird, 2008 Very Short Story Anthology, by Lunch Hour Stories, Editor's Choice Award, Dec. 2008, www.lunchhourstories.com

Falling away at the edges, Duck & Herring Pocket Field Guide Cold Weather Edition, Nov. 2008, www.duckandherring.com

Lysis complete, 42opus, Oct. 8, 2008, www.42opus.com/

Doing time in the real world, The Noneuclidean Cafe, Volume 3, Issue 2 - Winter-Spring 2008, Apr. 2008, www.noneuclideancafe.com

With the surety of a revelation, Poeticdiversity, Apr. 2008, www.poeticdiversity.org

Road dogs, Etchings IV: the Art of Conversation, Mar. 2008, www.ilurapress.com

Thicker than water, Bewildering Stories Issue 273 and Bewildering Stories First Quarterly Review of 2008, Jan. 2008 and Apr. 2008, Editor's Choice Award, www.bewilderingstories.com

Black bird, Whidbey Island Students' Choice, November Student Choice Award, Nov. 2007, www.whidbeystudents.com


Last resort, The Flask Review, Jul. 2007

Breathing

Hummingbirds click-click outside my open window, and mourning doves flush to the roof at any lift of a tree branch or perhaps the suggestion of a cat.

I am breathing.

Too many projects flying in weighted trajectories that cross and inevitably intersect, flying just ahead of deadlines and higher demands. It is the nature of the work.

But today I am in between, glad for the shift of air, the mix of gray that is the sky and the company of a green parakeet who sits on my shoulder and speaks a mix of childish rhetoric and a sailor's blue streak.

Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow is still a day away.

Sherri

Ice and water

Those who know me know that my favorite TV show is Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch. I am a dedicated fan, enthralled by the men who make their living pulling king and opilio crab out from the depths of the Bering Sea.

The fishermen are truly men above men. Courageous, confident, daring...vulnerable. To challenge an insurmountable sea bares wide their humanity and their fragility. It achieves that masterful dichotomy of heroic accomplishment against the purest demonstration of human frailty. As true to form as Greek mythology, Eastern legend or Western folklore. I watch each episode in sheer awe.

There are few facets of our world left upon which we human animals have not worn a careless track, even in some cases to defeat or extinction. We often rage against the very universe that supports us.

The Bering sea is not exempt of human mistreatment. But its freezing spray to encase ships, the monumental rise of waves, and the roll of sub-zero waters that sap a man's life in seconds are reminders that we are not the masters of this universe, merely some of its smallest members, and tender ones at that. That which is sacred remains the vast expanse of green sea, the Aleutian gray sky, the scream of gulls and the pink barnacled shells of crab.

And the thickening of ice in sheets that extend like solid ground until the fishermen can even step over the side of their ship and walk on the surface of the sea, miles away from any shore.

Sherri