Six by Six: Issue 1 sixsentences.blogspot.com
sixsentences.blogspot.com
This first issue of Six by Six is dedicated to all the writers, fans, and friends of Six Sentences. My sincerest thanks. -R
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sixsentences.blogspot.com
CONTENTS Cross-Country Cycling Trip: Day X Meghan Daniels
The Effects of Rotation Jac Jemc
His Medius, Her Quartus Martin Reed
Bus Ticket Jillia Nash
There's No Such Thing As Silence Emily Kajsa Herrstrom
Kitchen Dreams Georgina Bruce sixsentences.blogspot.com
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Cross-Country Cycling Trip: Day X by Meghan Daniels
In the midday sun, New Mexico is boundless, all shadows and primary colors, with green low-lying brush and brown dirt swept over it all. From a spigot in the middle of a homemade rock garden, we drink mineral water. A gray pony-tailed New Mexico man tells us in accented speech that he won't ride a bike without 100 horses underneath it. His yard is full of cars, and his motorcycle is black, emblazoned with a picture of an American flag. He rides it roaring around his driveway, fast, leaning precariously to the side around every corner, trying to prove to us our own stupidity. "Bicycles!" he scoffs.
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The Effects of Rotation by Jac Jemc
In this messy room, three rumpled girls toss themselves down on misshapen couches, melting with their ignorance of enterprise. Their eyes loll around lazily, never stopping. Their arms drape down to the bubbling shag carpet. Soft tufts of breath emerge ever so slightly from their pillowy cheeks as their minds move nowhere. In this open, loose ocean of a room, three slugs will never even know what it is to scrape their full bellies along concrete or punch pulpy holes into the tissue of fruit. Torsion is taking hold of their insides, twisting them to make explanations for the doctors, who haven’t a clue.
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His Medius, Her Quartus by Martin Reed
Maeve held tight to Bryn's middle finger as they wandered the narrow run of cobbles toward the harbour wall. It's how they had walked together all their fourteen years, having met a few touristy streets from here on a seaside trip and felt uncomfortable holding hands properly. Her childlike fingers in his oversized palm reminded her too much of a pre teen flirtation when she grabbed the gardener's rough glove to tease him from his work. Bryn's forefinger was solid and Bryn was solid and you're my giant she always told him and thought how that finger could hurt when she wasn't ready, if he hadn't toyed her just so. She tugged it now to guide him to the display window of Bowen & Co Jewellers (since 1913) thinking well it would be nice after all this time, squealing what do you think B and pointing to a rotating circular display stand choked with sensibly priced rings, which shuddered and stuck as it went round. Bryn stooped to examine Maeve's find, saying sixsentences.blogspot.com
I see what you mean it's overloaded it can't turn smoothly, before continuing to the boats.
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Bus Ticket by Jillia Nash
I don’t even know how I noticed it whilst rushing out the house. I hadn’t seen that perfect little triangle since the day I told you I hated you. I picked it up and it felt like a lead weight in my palm. I could barely breathe as I unravelled its tight folds to show High Lane to Alfred Street, your end of town to mine. I turned it over. Oh God, I miss you it said.
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There's No Such Thing As Silence by Emily Kajsa Herrstrom
Carrie waits at the traffic light, surrounded by other people in cars, all eager to get where they're going, and breathes in the sounds of engines, of walk signals beeping and clicking on the corners, pulls the blanket of the city around her, its bustle an anodyne to the past. She pushes aside memories of the quiet house partway up the mountain, where they'd lived together among the soughing pines. She'd been wrong to think she could find peace there. No number of hooting owls could drown out the chatter of the stream at the bottom of the gully, ever louder in her ears since he'd drowned the baby and himself in its snow-cold waters. There was no such thing as silence, even there, so she fled to the city, hoping to find a different kind of quiet. The light changes and Carrie drives on, concentrating on the road around her, drinking in the city, hoping that if she can guzzle enough of the present, maybe it will push out the past, clear her
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mind - but deep inside she knows that even within her own head, there's no such thing as silence.
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Kitchen Dreams by Georgina Bruce
On my wedding day I wore flowers in my hair (foolish girl). I should have worn garlic and butter; I should have dressed in seeds and crumbs. I should have come to our wedding bed a rolled loin stuck with rosemary all over, and you could be the knife and fork: cut and stab. Yes, and I had dreams of a cold marble slab for making pastry on, and I dreamed, in all innocence, that you would come home and put your hands on my waist and kiss my floury cheek. Look at us now, our vegetarian sex, this Formica death. If you have finished you can get down from the table.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Meghan Daniels welcomes suggestions about how to lead a meaningful life. She’d also like to learn the art of self-promoting. You may contact her at meghanmdaniels@gmail.com. Jac Jemc writes, sells books, and makes monsters in Chicago. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Caketrain, Pedestal, Opium, No Colony, Hotel St. George, Sleepingfish, A Handsome Journal, Bird Dog, Circumference, Tarpaulin Sky, Zoland Poetry, 5_trope, The Denver Quarterly, Lark Magazine, No Posit, Prick of the Spindle, and elimae. Her blog is at jacjemc.wordpress.com. Martin Reed lives and writes in North London and is an active member of the Fiction Workhouse. His fiction has appeared in Critical Quarterly, on various websites, in two erotic collections, and is occasionally performed live. He scribbles intermittently at www.worded.co.uk.
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Jillia Nash can be reached at jillianash@hotmail.com. Emily Kajsa Herrstrom is a writer, a thinker, and above all, a person. She posts a weekly fiction blog at carfulofwitches.com. Georgina Bruce wants you to read her stories. You may do so at thebeardedlady.wordpress.com.
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