Capsule Stories Spring 2020 Edition features stories, poems, and essays all centered around the theme Sleepless Rainy Nights. With over 110 pages of beautiful writing, this literary magazine is perfect to curl up with on a stormy spring night.
Capsule Stories Spring 2020 Edition is available in paperback and ebook format.
Sleepless Rainy Nights
You hear the droplets splatter on the ground, first once, then again, then a million times over, making music like only nature can. Rain hits your windshield on your way to work. Your jacket clings to your skin. Socks soaked through. Books soggy around the edges. The trees sway above you, but you’re afraid to look up at the sky—angry, sad, romantic, calming. All at once. With no sign of it ending.
The rain distorts the world around you, your eyes peering through windows that only show your reflection, tears streaming down the face that peers back at you. Your head on a pillow, staring up at the ceiling, wondering when the silence will come.
In the morning, you wake up and it’s gone. The trees stand a little taller, the grass a little longer; the driveway is still wet. The storm is over, but the world remembers.
Capsule Stories Spring 2020 Edition Letters from the Editors
Rain means so many different things to different people. Even to me, it depends what state of mind I’m in for how it affects me. Sometimes, rain can be cleansing. It has the power to wash away my burdens and serves as a cosmic sign that whatever I’m holding on to is best let go. Other times, rain is an excuse to stay home and get cozy with a book. Sometimes rain understands my despair better than my therapist can. Rain can mean whatever you want it to be. But one thing’s for sure: rain, in all the meaning we ascribe to it, is worth writing about.
—Natasha Lioe, Founder and Publisher
Wait until a dark, stormy night when you just can’t fall asleep, sneak out to your favorite chair or couch, and read this edition by lamplight as the rain pounds against the window. Experience life’s cleansing rains and blustery storms with these writers, and feel what they feel. Feel the raindrop balancing on their fingertip; feel the expectant energy the storm brings; feel the weariness of staying up all night, unable to sleep. We hope you enjoy Capsule Stories Spring 2020 Edition and the wonderful works these writers contributed.
—Carolina VonKampen, Publisher and Editor in Chief
Capsule Stories Spring 2020 Edition Contents and Contributors
Poems
“Droplets” by Niamh McNally
Niamh McNally is a twenty-four-year-old poet from Ireland whose writing focuses on the physicality of space and material within our everyday lives. She cocreated a student-led publication called The Paperclip in 2019 and was published in Tulsa Review. Being continuously inspired by the elements, Niamh agrees that lying in her warm bed, tucked up under the covers, and being kept awake by the unforgiving rain is where the imagination thrives and the poetry begins.
“Ode to a Rainstorm” by Benjamin Middendorf
Benjamin Middendorf is a writer, despite all evidence to the contrary. He graduated from Concordia University, Nebraska (CUNE) with a BA in English, psychology, and gerontology. Some of his writing has previously appeared in Potpourri, CUNE’s creative writing journal, and The Sower, CUNE’s student-led newspaper. Benjamin currently works with the elderly and adults with disabilities in Lincoln, Nebraska, and continues to write fiction and poetry.
“Bullfrogs” by James Croal Jackson
James Croal Jackson (he/him) has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and poems in Pacifica, Reservoir, and Rattle. He edits The Mantle Poetry (themantlepoetry.com). Currently, he works in the film industry in Pittsburgh. You can find him online at jimjakk.com.
“Cascadian Spring” and “Old Farmhouse Window, In the Rain” by Juleigh Howard-Hobson
Juleigh Howard-Hobson has poetry published in Mookychick, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Dreams & Nightmares, Ghost City Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Lyric, Able Muse, Coffin Bell, Lift Every Voice (Kissing Dynamite), Poem, Revised (Marion Street Press), Birds Fall Quiet in the Mechanical Sea (Great Weather for Media), and many other places. She is an urban dropout, living off-grid in the middle of rural nowhere, USA. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, and the Rhysling Award. Find her at @PoetForest on Twitter.
“Blow,” “empty promises,” “Virga,” and “This Weather, Am I Right?” by Isabella J Mansfield
Isabella J Mansfield writes about the many faces of anxiety, body image, intimacy, and the human condition. She favors free-verse poetry over traditional poetry “rules,” but can sometimes be found writing the occasional tanka, senryu, and haiku. Mansfield has performed at Oberon (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Nambucca (London, UK), as well as many locations in and around Lansing, Michigan. Her poems have been featured by Philosophical Idiot, The Wild Word, And So Yeah, Sad Girl Review, and Capsule Stories, as well as in publications by PoetsIN, Augie’s Bookshelf, and Rebel Mountain Press. In 2017, she was a Brittany Noakes Poetry Award semifinalist. She won the 2018 Mark Ritzenhein New Author Award. Finishing Line Press published her Pushcart Prize-nominated chapbook, The Hollows of Bone, in 2019. She lives in Howell, Michigan, with her family.
“when I become your thunderstorm” by Tianna G. Hansen
Tianna G. Hansen has been writing her whole life. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Rhythm & Bones Press, focused on trauma-turned-art. Much of her work focuses on living with trauma and empowerment. Her published work can be found at creativetianna.com. Follow her on Twitter at @tiannag92.
“A Bed under the Rains” by Fabrice Poussin
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. He is an author of novels and poetry, and his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in Front Porch Review and San Pedro River Review, as well as other publications.
“When I Am Naked” and “My Body Is a Warehouse” Alolika A. Dutta
Alolika A. Dutta is an eighteen-year-old author and poet based in Bombay, India. Most of her work surrounds politics, culture, and identity. Her work can be found in Yellow Medicine Review, Away With Words, Coldnoon, Unread, and so on.
“everything is mom” by Ada Pelonia
Ada Pelonia is a writer from the Philippines. Her work has appeared in The Philippines Graphic, inQluded, 101 Words, The Brown Orient, and elsewhere.
“Dark Matters” by Kushal Poddar
Kushal Poddar authored The Circus Came to My Island (Spare Change Press), A Place for Your Ghost Animals (Ripple Effect Publishing), Understanding the Neighborhood (Blank Rune Books), Scratches Within (Barbara Maat), Kleptomaniac’s Book of Unoriginal Poems (Blank Rune Press), Eternity Restoration Project: Selected and New Poems (Hawakal Publishers), and Herding My Thoughts to the Slaughterhouse: A Prequel (Alien Buddha Press).
“the prescription” by Lee Clark Zumpe
Lee Clark Zumpe, an entertainment columnist with Tampa Bay Newspapers, earned his bachelor’s in English at the University of South Florida. He began writing poetry and fiction in the early 1990s. His work has regularly appeared in a variety of literary journals and genre magazines over the last two decades. Publication credits include Tiferet, Zillah, The Ugly Tree, Modern Drunkard Magazine, Red Owl, Jones Av., Main Street Rag, Space and Time, Mythic Delirium, and Weird Tales. Lee lives on the west coast of Florida with his wife and daughter. Visit leeclarkzumpe.com.
“Crossed Lines,” “It’s Winter in Edinburgh,” and “Rain Cleaver” by Sy Brand
Sy Brand is a queer nonbinary person living in Edinburgh, Scotland. They write through the haze of cat-/child-induced sleep deprivation to try and make sense of gender, relationships, and ADHD. You can find them at @TartanLlama on Twitter and their publications at https://sybrand.ink.
“Hydrophobia” and “When Girls Learn to Laugh” by Elizabeth Ruth Deyro
Elizabeth Ruth Deyro is a journalist, poet, literary editor, and feminist from the Philippines. She has a BA in communication arts from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, specializing in media studies and creative writing. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her literary work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Hypertrophic Literary, Porridge Magazine, Ache Magazine, and The Poetry Annals, among others. She founded The Brown Orient, published RECLAIM: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, volunteers at Gantala Press, and is a columnist at Half Mystic.
“drown (me)” by Montana Leigh Jackson
Montana Leigh Jackson is a communication studies student in Montreal, Quebec. Her work has been featured in semicolon and Turnpike Magazine. She finds peace amongst words and within thunderstorms.
Prose
“Fishing in the Dark” by Larry Griggs
Larry Griggs holds a BFA in English from the University of West Georgia. He works as a writing tutor and substitute teacher in his hometown. When he isn’t reading or writing, he is taking care of the many animals his significant other brings home. His debut novel All Apart of the Chaos is available on Amazon.
“Charring Light” by Karin Hedetniemi
Karin Hedetniemi writes essays about nature, inspiration, and being human. Her work has appeared in Sky Island Journal and Pomme Journal. Karin originally studied humanities, then followed a winding path to nonprofit management in environmental education. Now dedicated to new life experiences, she recently walked two Camino pilgrimage trails in Spain. Her home in Victoria, British Columbia, is filled with books on travel, gardening, spirituality, and birds and a lifetime of notes evolving into stories. You can read some of them on her website AGoldenHour.com.
“Sleepless” by Cassia Hameline
Cassia Hameline is a PhD student in creative nonfiction at the University of North Texas. Her work has been published by or is forthcoming in Blanket Sea, The Fix, Cosmonauts Avenue, Utterance, and elsewhere. She lives in Denton, Texas, where you can usually find her in the woods with her dog, Moab.
“Thinking of You” by Lola Gaztañaga Baggen
Lola Gaztañaga Baggen is a multinational antinationalist polyglot with a penchant for black clothes, colorful scarves, and anything folklore. Having lived in the wonderfully gothic Edinburgh for going on three years now, she takes full inspiration to write the dark, magical, and disturbed, but a childhood spent in Holland and Spain means she also specializes in dyke reviews and siesta manuals.
“a Drop, a Flood” by Eleanor Capaldi
Eleanor Capaldi is a writer and director based in Scotland. She has been published by Gutter Magazine, The Interpreter’s House, and The Skinned Knee Collective and in anthologies including Queering the Map of Glasgow (Knight Errant Press), Beyond Boundaries (European Championships Cultural Commission), and Reel to Rattling Reel (Cranachan). Her journalism has appeared in DIVA Magazine, VICE, Munchies, and The Skinny and for Glasgow Film Theatre. Short films Pull (2017) and Glue (2019) have screened in competition at the Scottish Queer International Film Festival and more.
“Leaving Juliette” by Eilidh G Clark
Eilidh G Clark is a writer and poet who lives in Killin in Stirlingshire, Scotland. Eilidh’s work has been published in print and online with publishers such as Capsule Stories, Fairlight Books, and The Ogilvie. In 2019, she was awarded second place in the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival for her short story “Message in a Bottle.” She was also shortlisted for the Crossing the Tees festival for her short story “Kit House.” You can find more of Eilidh’s work at egclark.com.
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