THE PROMISED LAND
by Sylvia Keepers
Artwork by Meg Eubank
[audio:http://www.hootreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Promised-Land.mp3]

I was a picky eater when I was a kid, but my Jewish grandmother got me to eat by telling me Bible stories she’d act out with the food.

“The peas are the Jews.  They are screaming, ‘Help me, help me!’  They’re being chased by the Philistines (the mashed potatoes).  Put them in your mouth to hide them.  Your stomach is the Promised Land.”

If you took this game too literally you’d end up with an internal struggle when the potatoes and peas met, but in our story that never happened.  It was always pre-Palestine.

 

 

 

MONTH OF SUNDAYS
by Audrey Webb
[audio:http://www.hootreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/WEBB_Month-of-Sundays.mp3]

I gave him a calendar.
Each day a gift, I said.
He cut around each one,
365 squares,
and put them in a jar.
Let me choose
in which order I receive them,
he grinned.

 

 

 

Exoskeleton
by Tori Bond
Artwork by Cathy T. Colborn

[audio:http://www.hootreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Bond.exoskeleton.mp3]

She will climb into your skin and say, I have conquered you. She craves attention and exoskeleton.  Try’n shed her, you can’t exist without her.

 

 

 

 

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Sylvia Keepers writes and teaches in Boulder, CO. She is an “emerging author” at 73. Sylvia has recently completed a nonfiction work titled, Smart! A Reading Tutor’s Guide. www.tutortrainer.com, www.keystonecourtpress.com.

Audrey Webb, a Canadian, lives in Texas. She is a recovering actress who writes fiction and non-fiction with equal enthusiasm. Her work covers a wide range of genres, topics and surfaces in her home. @A_Fellowes.

Tori Bond is a recovering housewife working her MFA in Creative Writing program at Rosemont College. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Every Day Fiction, Monkeybicycle, Wilderness House Literary Review, and HOOT.

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Meg Eubank is an artist/writer who has been published in Quail Bell Magazine, The Allegheny Review, Photographer’s Forum Anthologies, The Original Magazine, and Marathon Literary Review. Her artwork has been exhibited in various galleries in PA and NJ, and is on permanent exhibit at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

Cathy T. Colborn‘s work has been published in SPECS Journal, OVS Magazine, on the cover of The Four Quarters Magazine, and in Pirene’s Fountain. Cathy is a published author of both flash and poetry with work published in Writers’ Bloc, Flashfiction.net, and more.