The Newsletter Sixes, Issue 1

The Newsletter Sixes

Issue 1 ❊ Jan/Feb 2009

sixsentences.blogspot.com 2


The pieces in this collection appeared in the 6S Newsletter between January 14th and February 27th, 2009. My sincerest thanks to Dawn, Juliana, Katy, Linda, Marco, Stephanie, and Princess LadyBug. If you’d like to receive the 6S Newsletter, just enter your email address in the box on the upper right of sixsentences.blogspot.com. (You’ll receive a free copy of Hugh MacLeod’s How To Be Creative. And you’ll love it!) Enjoy the collection… - R



C O N T E N T S

King of the Wild Frontier Marco Kaufman

Covered Mirrors

Juliana Perry

Unexpected Losses Stephanie Wright

The 40-Year-Old Little Girl

Katy Jackson

Cold, Hard Comfort Linda Davenport

Forty-Six

Dawn Corrigan

BONUS SIX: Happiness Princess LadyBug



King of the Wild Frontier by Marco Kaufman When the Mexicans began their assault, the colonel and his men were out in the open, too far from any building to take cover. Within twenty minutes, he was dead, and an hour after the assault had begun, the Mexicans had taken the mission. The only survivors were one woman, one man, and one child, so no one was quite sure how the colonel had died. Luckily, Joe, a slave to William Travis, the commander of the mission, was able to relay that he had personally seen Colonel Crockett's dead body, surrounded by several dead Mexicans. That was a lucky break — good thing that Texas had broken away from Mexico four days earlier in part because that country abolished slavery. But do, by all means, remember the Alamo.


Covered Mirrors by Juliana Perry This is what I know today, if things had been different yesterday, I would not be covering the mirrors. The act of shaking out the folded sheet, extending my arms to let it float into place just so, then turning my back and walking away on autopilot. I will do this throughout the house, until I am no one, not here anyway. Why it is easier to see myself in others eyes rather than in my own mirror, I have no idea. I keep my eyes down turned and averted anyway these days and try not to make prolonged eye contact just in case I see too much. Now, if I could stop the muffled voices from behind the covered mirrors, I might manage; they are getting louder.


Unexpected Losses by Stephanie Wright Penny Dumas, a freelance writer, hadn't had an assignment in two months. She'd lost her words in the divorce along with the Oneida flatware, high-def television, and her nine-year-old cat Muffy. On first inspection, the settlement seemed fair. Bleeding shame it was no one told her words were considered marital property. She might've fought harder for alimony. Or at least the cat.


The 40-Year-Old Little Girl by Katy Jackson Once upon a time, there was a little girl with golden curly hair. When she was happy, she smiled as sweetly as a whole swimming pool full of honey. But when she was cross, oh boy... she threw things, she screamed, she cried, she balled her fists and pummeled them on the floor. Even though the little girl could not yet speak, she knew what she wanted and she knew how to get it; everyone understood exactly what she meant although she never uttered a word. The little girl grew up, cut her hair into a sharp bob, moved to the city and got a job in an office doing things too dull to mention alongside people too blunt to care. How come, thought the woman who wasn’t a little girl anymore, that the more words I use and the louder I say them the less anybody hears me?


Cold, Hard Comfort by Linda Davenport Finding my way into the woods, I was invited by a centuries-old rock to have a seat, and for a half hour or more he and I enjoyed wordless companionship. Have you ever felt a rock's pulse? It's slow... deep... like a throbbing, basso profundo wave that begins imperceptibly and rises gradually so that you're not aware of when it starts or stops but you feel it. And if you sit long enough and listen with all your senses your own energy rises and falls with the wave and your thoughts slow down... slower... deeper... until finally you're heart and breath and mind are humming with the rock and all else fades to the background. When the press of time once again quickens your senses and you rise, you realize that the rock, while aware of you and maybe even grateful for your company, is not diminished or troubled by your arrival or your


departure and will be right there when you come back. And if, like me, you find yourself without anything to offer in thanks for that most precious gift except the grateful tears on your face and the wordless song rising in your throat, you tilt back your head and sing to the rock and the morning and the light and leave your song behind as an offering, knowing without a doubt that it was heard and welcomed and remains for the next person who comes to draw strength from the rock, to be heard not with the ears but with the heart.


Forty-Six by Dawn Corrigan The second half of 2008 proved hard on 46-year-old white men. First, David Foster Wallace, a terrific writer and, from all reports, a lovely human being, hanged himself. Then Michael Pigott, a 21-year veteran of the NYPD, shot himself shortly after a mentally disturbed naked man who was tasered on Pigott's orders died. Now Bob Solarski, a Pensacola news anchor, has been arrested and charged with drunken driving after he was seen using his SUV to push a parked car into a pickup truck. He blew a 0.296. Forty-six-year-old white men are advised to proceed with caution into the new year.


Happiness by Princess LadyBug She has such a tight grip on her heart that she can barely breathe. She's so determined not to fall that she's forgetting to live. Happiness isn't the lack of unhappiness; it's something you have to work at because if it was easy then it wouldn't mean anything. You have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light. But if you don't let go of the darkness, how can you ever let in the light? You have to open up your heart and let the light shine in so happiness can grow.


About the Authors Princess LadyBug works for a non-profit by day, but dreams of being a writer by night. Dawn Corrigan's fiction and poetry have appeared recently or are forthcoming in The Smoking Poet, The Raging Face, Insolent Rudder, Steel City Review, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction appears regularly at The Nervous Breakdown. Linda Davenport is a freelance writer trying to break the chains of corporate bondage in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She grows fresh herbs, uses too much rosemary in everything, Tweets to excess, and blogs regularly at heartsongshymnal.blogspot.com.


Katy Jackson is a dog lover, puzzle addict, trainee scuba diver, yoga devotee, sporadic writer and compulsive tea drinker. She lives near Rochester, Kent (UK) with her dog Kaos. Stephanie Wright is a professor of psychology. She can be found online at wrighterly.com and random other sites. Juliana Perry resents the fact that 6S never tells anyone her work is also featured at Hackwriters. (Okay, happy now?) Marco Kaufman is the author of the chapbook Family Ties of the Tattooed Lady, and has had his fiction published in the Cartier Street Review, Glossolalia, and Robot Melon. He is currently working on two themed volumes of flash fiction, as well as his first novel, all being published in process at his blog, The Big Book of Grievances (tbbog.blogspot.com). A native of the Bronx, he lives in Philadelphia.

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The Newsletter Sixes, Issue 1