Capsule Stories Summer 2020 Edition: Going Forward

By Capsule Stories

Featuring summery poems and prose by emerging and e

• Language: English
• Publisher: Capsule Stories
• Release date: Jun 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781734324679

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CAPSULE STORIES

Summer 2020 Edition

Published exclusively by Capsule Stories

Masthead

Natasha Lioe, Founder and Publisher

Carolina VonKampen, Publisher and Editor in Chief

Cover art by Matthew Torres

Book design by Carolina VonKampen

Ebook conversion by Ines | Book Formatter

Ebook ISBN: 9781734324679

© Capsule Stories LLC 2020

All authors retain full rights to their work after publication.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, distributed, or used in any manner without written permission of Capsule Stories except for use of quotations in a book review.

Contents

Capsule Stories

Letters from the Editors

Prologue: Going Forward

An Overheated Submarine Takes Us from Press Club to South Delhi by Uttaran Das Gupta

Overfamiliar by Uttaran Das Gupta

Rowboat: Christmas Cove, Maine 1962 by Lucy Tyrrell

Easing Out the Clutch by Larry Pike

Gravel Road by Arianna Sebo

Go, Just Go by Ed Ruzicka

Bad Work by Ed Ruzicka

I Hitchhiked All Over by Ed Ruzicka

Fort Knox, Labor Day 1985 by Bruce Pemberton

Fort Bragg, California 2018 by Brian Rihlmann

Outer Banks by Stacy Alderman

Outer Banks II by Stacy Alderman

U-Turn by Steve Denehan

Burn Out by Sarra Culleno

Waiting for the Light to Change by John Grey

self-care by Kali Richmond

Somewhere by Mark Martyre

A Note for R. by Mark Martyre

Honeymoon by Elizabeth Jaeger

This Morning by John Grey

Platonic Beach by Maina Chen

Flying Away by Michelle M. Mead

Walking Tour by Dani Castonzo

Final Curtain by Sarah Marquez

Salem, Massachusetts 2019 by Lynne Schmidt

End of July by Alexandre Ferrere

The Hanged Man by Morgan Russell

Endure by Morgan Russell

The End by Lynne Schmidt

Timing by Gillian Webster

Before I Go by Akhim Alexis

Cracks in Our Shadows by Sarah Jane Justice

salted wounds by Linda M. Crate

stagnant waters by Linda M. Crate

Undercloud by A. Martine

City Seasons by Dani Castonzo

I Promise This Year I'll Disappear by Kayla King

The Tender Slice of Horizon by Alexandre Ferrere

Yesterwhatever by Marlin Bressi

Cadenza by James Penha

An Old Photo by Maina Chen

Elsie by Denny Jace

The Widow by Kendra Nuttall

Summers on Repeat by Maina Chen

Sailing by Emma Keanie

Shifts by Emma Keanie

The Grass Was Long and Soft by Steve Denehan

September Sadness by Dani Castonzo

Contributors

Editorial Staff

Submission Guidelines

Letters from the Editors

Ironically enough, I write this letter from the gate at an airport that feels deserted and eerie, wearing a face mask and obsessively washing my already cracked and dry hands. I am about to embark on a cross-country drive from Florida to California, my first time driving across the country, for a reason that would take too long to explain, a problem that I must solve myself. My life has taken turns that have been unexpected, disappointing, never meeting up to my dreams or expectations. But I will move forward. I must. It is the only thing to do.

—Natasha Lioe, Founder and Publisher

The best summer job I had was working at a law firm. Every afternoon, I got to run errands. Some days I’d take a stack of envelopes and make deliveries on foot in Cedar Rapids’ small downtown area, but most days, I got to drive around in my car, dropping off packages and letters at offices. It was a blast. I’d ride around town, listening to new music, letting my mind wander, thinking about moving to college in the fall. Figuring out how to keep going forward even though everything was changing. Moving forward one day at a time, one errand at a time.

Today, time doesn’t seem so straightforward, even though it’s summer and the days are getting longer. Time has slowed and sped up erratically in the pandemic; the weekdays and weekends blur together; weeks go by in a flash. It’s hard to know how to move forward when we’re stuck inside, unsure what the future brings, unable to plan much further ahead than a week or two.

The poems and prose in Capsule Stories Summer 2020 Edition explore the ways in which we go forward, from walking around your neighborhood and speeding along the highway to reflecting on the past in order to move on, moving forward from heartbreak or loss, getting up off the ground when we fall down. We hope you enjoy this edition of Capsule Stories and find in it the words you need to keep going forward, one day at a time.

—Carolina VonKampen, Publisher and Editor in Chief

Prologue

Going Forward

The sun beats down, the light reflecting off the cars around you. The breeze whips through the car windows as you drive through the windy path around the coast, the ocean’s waves licking the shore a few hundred feet below you. You have decided that you can no longer stay where you are. It’s time to go. Anywhere but here. You’re escaping from the people who have held you back for too long. You’ve been cut down and broken down, and you won’t let anyone stop you this time. You travel, through dusty highways and past sandy coasts, through forest paths and thick downtown traffic. It all passes by in a blur, and before you know it, the sun turns the sky a deep purple, and the green trees you’ve learned to look up to start to look burnt as the leaves turn orange and dry.

You keep going forward. There isn’t any other choice.

An Overheated Submarine Takes Us from Press Club to South Delhi

Uttaran Das Gupta

Past Raisina Hill’s gradient, bureaucratic

sandstone domes sunk in yellow light; past circles,

endless, once indecipherable, concentric;

past branches grabbing at fog-ropes, symptomatic

of the dirt in our lungs; past the purple

jacaranda canopy. At this hour, static

roads rearrange themselves into dramatic

maps, like a clock’s insides, like an aquatic

landscape, precarious, sparking cartographic

curiosity: through what