All posts in Writing

May 21, 2025

Soldier’s Home by Sharon Dean

Posted by Malik White in Featured Posts, Writing

*Featured image courtesy of KaraSuva on Pixabay.com* I cross the street to the main campus that shows off its New Hampshire beauty as if it were posing for the cover of Yankee Magazine. The grass, green from spring rain and freshly mowed, slopes to buildings bathed in sunlight. Students walk in and out of Murkland and Hamilton Smith Halls carrying armloads of books. I read the inscription on the façade of the library that I’d read so many times as an undergrad. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” When I go into the library, the dizzying stripes of its carpet remind me that this isn’t 1964 and that my now graduate student self has learned to ask “Whose truth?” UNH is a different place. Gone is the concept of…

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May 18, 2025

Thirteen Years At The Fictional Café

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Audio Arts, Featured Posts, Member Writing & Art, News, Writing

Dear Fictional Café Habitués, In this Merry Month of May, thirteen years ago, The Fictional Café began publishing your works of fiction, poetry, fine arts and photography, audio stories, and other delightful creative works. It’s been so much fun, so rewarding to publish your creative expressions. You have shown us the world as it is – and how it ought to be, as it is in your thoughts and soul, then shared in our ‘zine untarnished by the pursuit of money. We ask you to suspend submitting your new work with us until we let you know we’re back up and running. That said, we urge you with all that is good to continue creating and never stop. But for us, we need a break and hope you will forgive us for it. Our loyal and devoted…

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May 15, 2025

3 Poems by Michael Bruebach

Posted by Malik White in Featured Posts, Writing

*Featured image courtesy of Kie-ker on Unsplash* A Grove Near Maggie Daley Park Don’t dream the day is still in front of us. all light in the grove; dead grass like sand all over the threadbare grounds, this hollowed clearing in the urban forest, ancient orchard obstructs the concrete sky. The Man who sits across the grounds has hands like a prophet, they are massive and awash in sunlight. twice, He kneels down into the sandpaper grass, throws His hands together toward the sky, and cries out. begs. wails. my shoulders shake out of reverence or fear. twice, He resumes reading when there is no apparent answer, licks His thumb and turns the page with a grin I am trying to stomach. my bare feet hold the dirt in some old form of offering. it…

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April 30, 2025

FC’s 2025 National Poetry Month Roundup

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

Thanks to Vera West, our Poetry Barista, Malik White, Managing Editor, and PS Conway, Poetry Writer in Residence, for their most excellent curating of poems for this, our fifth April National Poetry Month. And a special thanks for recognizing our support to Ricardo Maldonado of Poets.org. We had so many poetry submissions we couldn’t publish them all individually, so here is a roundup of all the fine poets that could still be published during NPM. And if you submitted to PS Conway’s NPM 5 contest, we’ll be announcing the three winners shortly. Each will receive an autographed copy of his beautiful book – both in words and art – Echoes Lost In Stars. Salvatore DiFalco Lost Among Pines The pines know where they are, perfuming the air between them or exchanging subtle communiqués in a…

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April 28, 2025

I am Conscious, Therefore I Am

Posted by Malik White in Member Writing & Art, Writing

Thoughts On Why We Are Conscious, by Steve Sangapore *Featured image courtesy of geralt on pixabay.com* What is consciousness? How did life originate? Are we alone in the universe? What is the solution to the marriage of general relativity and quantum mechanics? These are, among many others, some of the deepest wonders the human mind grapples with. Some are fairly recent to our catalog of existential mysteries while others have been with us since our ancient ancestors first gazed up at the heavens. In our modern time, these great questions have been left at the foot of the scientific enterprise as we patiently await new progress and developments that bring us closer to resolving these mysteries. One of them, however, is not like the others. Consciousness and conscious experience are understood as the subjective, intrinsic qualities…

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April 18, 2025

National Poetry Month – 2025

Posted by Malik White in Member Writing & Art, Writing

*Featured Image courtesy of Christy Mandin and Poets.org* Fictional Cafe celebrates National Poetry Month for the fifth year in a row. We’re celebrating National Poetry Month once again! If you’d like to participate, feel free to submit your poetry here. At the end of the month, our Baristas will get together and vote on their favorites, with the top 3 poems earning a featured spot on the website. In addition, the winners will receive a free copy of our poetry writer in residence’s book – Echoes Lost in Stars. Good luck, and happy writing! National Poetry Month additional info: here.

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March 31, 2025

PS Conway Named Prez!

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Book Reviews, Member Writing & Art, Writing

by The Fictional Cafe Editorial Staff It was an exciting – may we say shocking? – weekend when every minion of the current US Administration resigned in protest, followed by the entire Congress and Senate! (Note: what the current news-for-sale media won’t publish is they also resigned at gunpoint.) Oh My Gosh! It seems everybody who is – was? – somebody wanted a Control-Alt-Delete change in guvva-mint, and Fictional Cafe is delighted to announce that PS Conway, our current Fearless Leader and ruling Poetry Writer in Residence, has, as of today, April Fool’s Day, been selected (note: removing the s is your prerogative)! Of course, Fictional Cafe Baristas were quickly appointed to all the significant positions of governmensch but now it looks like the whole nation is celebrating! In live interviews on the Washington Memorial…

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March 19, 2025

Two Men in Davos by Albert L. Rodriguez

Posted by Malik White in Writing

*Featured image courtesy of MabelAmber on Pixabay* Two men sat down to determine the future population trend of the world. The meeting took place in a secure VIP room in an exclusive five-star hotel in Davos, Switzerland. Both men had their crews of assistants and on-the-spot analysts. They both represented a collaborating syndicate of billionaires. The meeting was top-notch secretive. One of the men had just flown in from Paris. The other had been hosed down naked in a yacht and rubbed with a soap that featured gold and diamond powder just a few hours before in an undisclosed Greek Island. The shorter one was a Frenchman. The taller one was American. But neither of them were public figures. They were discreet operatives mostly known in the elite worlds of multinational corporations and international banking. …

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February 13, 2025

5 Poems by Allison Whittenberg

Posted by Malik White in Writing

*Featured image courtesy of Ulrike Mai on Pixabay* This week features some wonderful poems by Allison Whittenberg. We always appreciate uniqueness at FC, and Allison’s gritty style certainly appealed to us. Take a look for yourself and tell us what you think! Proximity going out for breakfast and never coming back my husband left me in my wheelchair green from the insurance, gone so is the time I could have insisted more the driver was my friend, can you deep sue a friend? the accident, foreseeable to anyone who wasn’t seeking fun and 18 7 of us piling in 4 seats handsome man from influential family turbo style driving on the wrong side of the road jeep flips we catapult I land in a tree I can’t feel my legs 7 hours of surgery I…

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January 18, 2025

“Wire Man” by Andrew Newall

Posted by Malik White in Writing

*Featured image courtesy of FenesiKinga on Pixabay.com* Heroes can come in all shapes and sizes, and Andrew Newall proves that in his wonderful piece, “Wire Man”. This is a very unique story that I’m sure all of you will enjoy, and I look forward to seeing more stories from Andrew in the future. A little man made from one rod of wire, no more than eight inches tall, shrugged off his motionless pose and walked to the edge of his high shelf to look across the studio. Strewn with drawing and painting utensils, it was standard chaotic clutter uplifted by striking watercolours, pastels and models lying here and there. The artist had left for lunch. That familiar sound of the door locking signalled play time for the wire man and his colleagues. Papier mâché figures…

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