Excerpts from Rappahannock Review by the Riverside Writers

It was Easter Sunday and my turn to teach the lesson to our special needs Sunday school class. I was nervous about it until one of the students, Patty, came in and announced, “He ain't dead!”
Tom Higgins

Holding her hand while whispering to her, he couldn’t accept the reality that she wasn’t really there. John M. Wills

I buzz on the outside of my family, trying to squeeze through like a fly, ramming my head against the screen of my mother’s silence. Diane Parkinson (Diane Scott Lewis)


They were coming home today, and he had been sitting on the curb watching for their car since breakfast. It was now a little past twelve, and he was getting hungry.
Chuck Hillig

When Jesus Campos reported that the noon sun was very blistering and that he and his crew needed to plan, his boss, Mike Saunders knew the field hands would be taking siestas. And when Jesus Campos said to his boss, The Lord sits on my shoulder, Mike Saunders was glad to hear that his foreman was a religious man. He failed, however, to realize that the Lord’s position on the right shoulder of Jesus Campos was often a contentious one.
J. Allen Hill

I am indeed elegant and debonair, Hardwood thought, and so handsome. He adjusted his boating cap to a jaunty tilt. He was now ready for the annual powerboat show.
Rod Vanderhoof

As usual what you say to me
flows like a stream of honey,
slow, sweet, golden;
between a few smooth rocks
of truth that guide the flow
away from outright lies
your tongue savors
the sticky pleasure of evasion. Anne H. Flythe

I always hate
To get there late.
My wife hates being early,
Creating strife
Twixt man and wife,
And driving us both squirrelly. Larry Turner

After school, the janitor opened Doris’s locker. It was filled with half-eaten candy, cakes and cookies. And roaches. Her locker had become a fast food restaurant for the school roach population. Donna H. Turner

I should have been more watchful,
Should have seen the subtle signs of change.
But, instead, I forged on happily,
Never expecting to be estranged
So suddenly from one so dear— P. A. Moton

The funeral had been long and dreary. It was a memorial, not just to a life, but to a life style faded and tired like so many of her mother's friends. With her mother's death, an era came to an end. Madalin E. Jackson

Every Thursday morning Jeremy’s sisters and mother went to town for the weekly specials. They clumped together like wet clay. Jeremy guessed it was important for them to be social, but not so for Papa and him. Stanley Trice

If these words live,
Then you live.
It’s as simple as that.
Shakespeare’s verse has no monopoly
On immortality.

And yet, my winter child
In a hundred years,
Nobody will care
That your eyes were blue,
Your body young and lithe;
Your mind quick to so many things;
Your life so new. Laura R. Merryman

Martha looked around the parking lot area. Walking toward her was a disheveled, wild-eyed woman dressed in torn jeans, a jacket, and flip-flops—no umbrella, no coat, no hat. Did anyone else hear this plea for help? Margaret Rose

I keep walking through the heavy storms.
I keep writing through the darkness. Diann Brunell

I write your name
as I would whisper it,
softly, letting the
breeze carry it
into tomorrow. Kathie Walker


It’s heard at night in bedtime tales
Told on bunk bed ships with bed sheet sails
That sail along fantastic streams
And come to port inside your dreams. David Mitchell

Tears ran down my face as I walked from marker to marker, reading the names of soldiers, both men and women, who had lost their lives in service to our country. I thought of all the unrealized dreams, the families for whom life had become a wound that never heals.
Juanita D. Roush

The snow is deep. How deep is it?
I’m a southerner. I don’t have the metaphors for this.
Dan Walker