Spoons

 

Kenneth James Crist

 

 

            Today, I slept in your bed

            (After making love)

 

           And I held you

          In the semi-dark

          And listened to your

          Steady breathing,

 

          All the while knowing

          I had somehow pleased

          The Gods of Love

          And Warfare,

 

          My lips against the

          Smoothness of your neck,

          My hand cupping your

          Small, delicate breast,

 

          Thinking that, should I

          Die there, in that

          Perfect place, I

          Would be content,

 

          Lying together like

          Spoons in a drawer,

         Our souls touching,

          How could I be more

          Complete?

​

             Kenneth James Crist is Editor of Black Petals Magazine and is on staff at Yellow Mama ezine. He has been a published writer since 1998, having had almost two hundred short stories and poems in venues ranging from Skin and Bones and The Edge-Tales of Suspense to Kudzu Monthly. He is particularly fond of supernatural biker stories. He reads everything he can get his hands on, not just in horror or sci-fi, but in mystery, hardboiled, biographies, westerns and adventure tales. He retired from the Wichita, Kansas police department in 1992 and from the security department at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita in 2016. Now 82, he is an avid motorcyclist and handgun shooter. He is active in the American Legion Riders and the Patriot Guard, helping to honor and look after our military. He is the owner of Fossil Publications, a desktop publishing venture that seems incapable of making any money at all. On June the ninth, 2018, he did his first (and last) parachute jump and crossed that shit off his bucket list.

​

       KJ Hannah Greenberg is eclectic. She’s played oboe, participated in martial arts, learned basket weaving, and studied Middle Eastern dancing. What’s more, she’s a certified herbalist, and an AP College Board-authorized teacher of calculus. 

      Her creative efforts have been nominated once for The Best of the Net in poetry, once for The Best of the Net in art, three times for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for poetry, once for the Pushcart Prize in Literature for fiction, once for the Million Writers Award for fiction, and once for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. To boot, Hannah’s had more than forty-five books published and has served as an editor for several literary journals.

        Check out her latest short fiction collection, An Orbit of Chairs:

https://www.amazon.com/Orbit-Chairs-KJ-Hannah-Greenberg/dp/B0CWMMM73T

       Within its pages are two tales originally published at Yellow Mama: "Alive Another Day" and "Light Notes."

       Channie's new art book, Life's Colors, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FGCTHJ6Z, just launched (hit "read sample" button). It contains images originally published by Yellow Mama.