Open Pen

Author: Open Pen

  • No Non-Swimmers Beyond this Point

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    Rick White is what the sign says. So I sit in the shallow end propped up on a floatation device, one of those long polystyrene tubes. I look down at my belly, which years ago I would’ve been proud to expose in a bikini but now I keep covered by a black one-piece ‘cozzy’ as…

  • Free to a Good Home

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    Rick White Before Kelly wanted to be an actress, all she wanted was to be like her mother. When she was a little girl, five or six, she’d put on Christine’s patent heels and shuffle around on the linoleum kitchen floor — knee high and invisible to the crowds of grownups who occupied their home…

  • F23

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    Rick White Everyone had always assumed the orchid was fake. A facsimile of life, deliberately placed in an elevated position on a shelf next to the photocopier as a nod to the outside world that so obstinately continued to exist. The orchid had a way of drawing the eye, its delicate white petals visible from…

  • Crab Bucket

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    Rick White Just call me Uncle Crab Bucket. I knew this was a good idea. I’ve taken my five-year-old nephew Troy crab fishing. He’s still not talking that much, and my Dad took me crab fishing when I was younger so I thought it might bring him out of himself, as people are fond of…

  • Dog-Face Malone, Meet Linda

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    Rick White I’m in a hospital waiting room, squinting against the violent iridescence of a thirty-thousand watt strip-light which illuminates this purgatory and sears itself into my hungover brain. The walls are a Hellish beige and there’s the usual accoutrements — uncomfortable plastic chairs, out of date magazines, slumping elderly people and a strange sort…

  • A Beautiful Proof

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    Rick White The girls look as though they’re crying, but their makeup stays the same. On the hockey field they flock and gather, a chattering throng of black-winged migratory birds, waiting for the final bell of school to ring. They write messages of everlasting friendship on school shirts, in glitter-stained yearbooks; every sentiment carefully crafted…

  • Ahead of Me in Time

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    Kim Chinquee After so many days of cloud cover, I want to penalize the sky. Get out of bounds, I want to say to all the gray. I like clouds, but they must be so high and clotted that I can’t even see them. The air looks to me like a giant sheet of blankness.…

  • Amen

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    Kim Chinquee Thirty hours in and kids are praying. The bleachers tucked and lights out, save the candles, flames contagious like the voice of Jesus the pastor is talking about. They sit on the gym floor, most of them cross-legged. The floor is cold. The pastor keeps talking about fire, God’s love, how they all…

  • The Red Cover

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    Kim Chinquee The book with the red cover read ‘You Can’t Threaten Anyone’. After my dad died, I found it on his table. I found a lot of things on his table – every card I sent him, along with all my letters. The book with the red cover only listed items. It was a…