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C/OASIS STORIES 2009

PLEASE NOTE! Sunoasis.com has set up a new Network called Sunoasis Writers Network. If you want to submit poetry or story go to sunoasis.ning.com and sign up. It is free. Then you can do one of several things:

  • Put your poem or story or essay in a blog and load it onto the network
  • Join a group, submit it there and let others read it
  • Put a notice on the Forum you have stories and poems and then give a link.

The Network has over 850 members at this time and is growing so take advantage of it. It was set up to provide writing and career opportunities for the writing crowd but there are plenty of fiction and poetry writers on it. I've always been impressed by the level of talent C/Oasis was able to draw to it and hope that talent hops on the Network!


I love the short story. One of the most remarkable classes I had in college was presided over by a famous Arabic scholar and he taught short stories from around the world: Italian, African, Chinese, even American short stories. I became convinced, from that point on, that the story belonged, with poetry, at the constituent level of literature.

Much has been made of the decline of the short story. It didn't decline at all. The literary markeplace, like any other marketplace, became fractured by the specialized modern culture. An art desires to be produced for those who want it not those who think they need it to look good. Well, we are here at any rate, and have published a lot of stories over the past four years. We are specialists of the good story that is created by human imagination and not the inhuman machinery through which most stories are told these days. The inhuman machinery simply says that human beings will be captured for the next several thousand years in a world infinately stronger than they and beyond their understanding. So, they will join with their fellows who wandered the Earth thousands upon thousands of years before Sumer and UR.

We assert our right to slip out of the cave and fall from the tree from time to time.


A View From the Field by Sam Douglas
There was sand in her doll’s hair. And it was all Monika’s fault. They were playing in the field across from the Gasthaus only because that was where Monika wanted to play, and the field was full of sand. Erika looked intently at Monika and said, “Du kannst mir nicht sagen wo wir spielen sollen. Ich bin aelter.”

* * * *

Springtime in Babylon by Raj Sharma
The waters of the Euphrates were rising with the onset of spring. It was brief in this land which virtually had only two basic seasons: winter and summer. Each lasted about six months, and by the end of March, the snows had thawed in the far north and the cold winds blew no more.

Undercover Arnold by Ben Kharakh
(A humorous fiction)
The phone rang and Arnold Schwarzenegger leapt from his bed, onto the floor and crashed through it, landing safely on a chair on the first story of his rented home.

Two Fables by Bruce Holland Rogers
Fables for our time! The esteemed writer offers up old Aesop favorites, The Wolf and the Lamb and The Bullfrog and His Shadows. "A wolf stopped to drink at a stream and spied a young lamb resting in the shade nearby. "You there!" the wolf said."

Sidewalks by Marta Palos
He spotted the woman coming his way for the second time that week. Shoulders hunched, nose thrust forward, she scurried along the sidewalk, now and then casting a glance about her as if on guard against some invisible danger. The Mouse Woman, he called her.


High Altitudes by A.F. Rützy
When my native guide plunged to his death, just seconds after he had stepped on a firm-looking glacier, I remembered Reinhold Messner’s words. “Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous.”
Second Encounter By Xujun Eberlein
The shadow of the building has shifted from west to east.
Miami, a story by Julio Peralta-Paulino
It seemed to him more like a mall than an airport, as he sat at the Bacardi bar-- which tried to recreate a lost atmosphere from someone’s idea of Havana in the Forties-- nursing a crimson-coloured beer.

A Change of Scenery for Joanna by Elizabeth Schambacher
He had been afraid the hotel would not please her and when he asked her if the room was all right, his uncertainty sounded in his voice.


Unheard Story by Muhammad Nasrullah Khan
The hot tea sucked me back into reality, my mind rudely awakened from frequent naps. It had recently succumbed to the habit of chasing thoughts unrelated to the topic at hand. My mind returned: ‘Wasteland’.


The Road to Elgin by D.F. Mitten
I must have been a rotten soul in a previous life, because this one is not much better.

The Protestors; a story by George Sparling
The large turnout in Eureka challenging the U.S. war of aggression in Iraq wasn't unusual...

Mr. Fix-It; a story by Nora M. Mulligan
I was really nervous when I brought Tom to my garage. I mean, I don't let just anyone see this alien artifact thingy that I have hidden out there.

A Gathering of Widows; a story by Dayna Mari
The age-old custom of flaying political assassins alive and wrapping the ashes of their victims in their skin was constitutionally terminated by the most recent widow.

Dancers by John Henry Fleming
It is said that the Lakas are natural dancers because when they walk from hut to hut or village to village they must spin, shuffle, and slide over treacherous, cliff-hugging paths and the knife-sharp rocks that stipple their jagged island.

Voyagers by Martha Nemes Fried
The sitting room had the quality of shabby gentility. It was not smart, it was not chic, it was not color-coordinated. The furnishings consisted of a threadbare sofa, several comfortable chairs, some lamps and small tables, an old television set and an even older phonograph

The New Girl by Martha Nemes Fried.
Our lycee had its own uniform as did all others in Budapest. It included three sets of middy blouses and skirts, a winter and spring coat, a beret with the school's insignia, black shoes for winter, white for summer, gym clothes and a pair of gym shoes.


Hope you enjoy C/Oasis!

DAVID

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