Archive for April, 2010

Ode to Dave Hayek by Linda Hayek

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

Ode to Dave Hayek

( This poem was written shortly after the death of my husband in June 2006.)

Linda Hayek

You are still big in my life, warm in my heart
not only because you loved me – completely
quirks and rough edges included
and fathered my daughters into adulthood

not only because you opened wide the doors of your heart
to share your family with me
and invited me to gaze through the windows of your faith
thus strengthening my own

not only because you embraced the adventures I concocted
sometimes called vacations – riding a bicycle for thousands of miles
across and around and beyond Nebraska -
you could smell a malt a mile away (more…)

Winners of the 55-Word Fiction Contest!

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

These are the Winners for 2009 as announced by David Martin:

First Place

The Truth

By Marc Magisana,    Omaha, NE

The cards said murder. The old woman’s tarot readings were never wrong. To win the contest, I would need to kill. Who? She pretended not to know. Enraged, I beat the truth out of her. Her murder made me a famous writer. Now I’m framed: “Winner: First Prize Fiction Contest” hangs on my cell wall. (55)

Second Place

In Montana

By Marge Barrett,    Minneapolis, MN

By campfire light near Many Glacier, she snaps, crackles, pops. He strives to snuff out the flames, steaming water, sifting sand. Like paint pots in Yellowstone, they bubble, sizzle, while cedars crash and swans soar. Yet as fields seared in the fall, they spring up renewed, sip Beaujolais, curled together in Rising Sun’s fireplace lobby. (55)

Third Place

Toddler Turnabout

By Alberta Lee Orcutt,   St. Paul, MN

Chubby fingers clutch the peach to her mouth. Juice trickles down her chin and wrist on its way to her elbow, sugary orange passing through yesterday’s scratch and today’s dirt, finally sticking to the squirming kitten trapped between her knees. Then – the bolt! And Huntress drops the hallowed peach to devotedly stalk her panicked prey. (55)

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