A Sneak Peek

The April issue of Apollo's Lyre (scheduled for the 20th) contains a new feature--A Bouquet of Shorts. This is one page containing five to ten short-short stories of no more than 250 words. Here's a teaser.

Anna
by Kyle Hemmings

On the verge of cracking her vows of acorn-hard chastity, the nun, a disciple of sex-ionized monads, repressed but bouncing from cathartic charges, closed her eyes to the pulse of moonlight breaking in through the tangle of sycamores, bending oak. Lifting his hand, soft and fine boned, from her breast, she said, No. He was Father Hermann's favorite altar boy, studious and punctual at vespers. A Hispanic boy from the outskirts of Saint Elsewhere. I'm sorry, Sister, he whispered, his voice a melancholy stream turning in on itself. A candle within her flickered and slowly went out. She put a finger to his lips and said, Shush. For a moment, the two stood facing each other in calm equipurpose. After he left, she fell to her knees and prayed to a different god, one of delinquent stars, bible-black devils with rain-weathered faces, postpartum mothers trying again and again to give names to their stillborn. There was the longing of galaxies, within, without. She wanted to study this. There could be ten thousand explanations she could come up with. She was a creature of stubborn habit.