This online journal celebrates the diverse voices from Laguna Writers, Birdland Retreats and workshops. We are excited to present Place Setting, our lushest issue to date, with seventeen transporting  stories and poems. Travel with us into homes, neighborhoods, the countryside, … Continue reading →

A tureen of stimuli                              set among world-woe-                                                               absorbing trees Stoney plates                     laid upon the paths                                           to idyll thoughts A breezy climb                           then nestle in, feel                                                       the tines of shared sparks Hearth warmed wanderings                                           we call home eagerly–                                                                            hope awaits

Tower-topped, quarry-scarred, road-cut little mountain climbs amid San Francisco hills. Gopher-pitted, coyote-prowled, raptor romanced,

It didn’t happen the way we planned it. We thought we would return from our India trip, flanked by airplane rides across the oceans, being greeted by you. You were what we looked forward to. During every journey home, whether … Continue reading →

When we first saw you, you had giant begonias up and down your hallway. You were sad and mourning the loss of the last people you held, and I thought, Wow, they were here for 25 years! How could anyone … Continue reading →

This is how she remembered it even though it never happened this way. The road where she parked runs nearby but far enough away for the rhythmic noise of traffic to have been diluted and then consumed by her short … Continue reading →

In Celle, below the hilltop town of Cortona, we silently walked the paths St. Francis had once walked. By then, after days of reading about him and others, I felt jaded about the martyrdom of the saints; I felt cynical … Continue reading →

I’m trying to paint a picture so real. A cityscape of life in America. I spill the paints onto the starched linen tablecloth and they begin to flow beneath

Returning to you, heart Collapsing with relief: You are the same. Nightly. Reliably contained. Fenced in, your comfort. Isolate me. Confine me. Hold my heart, hide my body. Meticulous. Designed. Expressionless. Within: A sing, a dance. Curse + flirt + … Continue reading →

Tiny chips from the damp, rusty bars that keep me locked away flake between my fingers as I squeeze them. Arching my neck, with my head just above the brown and grey rock ledge, I can just make out the … Continue reading →

Officer Hugh Collins knocked on Miss Missy Rafferty’s deep orange front door. He didn’t use the lion head knocker, just his bare knuckles. “Miss Rafferty, may I come in?

“Hey, that’s a bad word,” my niece shouts. She’s seven and smart already a good reader, but the car is moving fast, and the sign passes in a blur. I pretend I don’t hear

The city looks pale and white from afar it always has and the surrounding light is blue cut out like a paper silhouette San Francisco is showing off like a Mediterranean city on a hill top a pattern of static … Continue reading →

The room was still veiled in semi-darkness, but a rod of light fell through the crack between the heavy green shutters and onto the faux satin of her bedspread, a messenger of the heat

He pulls over on a quieter stretch of PCH, right south of downtown Laguna—past the bustling crosswalks full of eager tourists, past the shirtless, brown men playing a game of pickup basketball, their white counterparts nearby punching

One leg kicks out backward, hits the toilet–– ouch: the dog

Matthew Abergel grew up in Salinas, California, and now lives in Sacramento and San Francisco. He has participated in Laguna Writers’ monthly manuscript group since its inception. From up here, a few stories above the intersection of Main and Alisal … Continue reading →