CLOCKHOUSE IS ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS

While you consider submitting to CLOCKHOUSE Volume Nine, here's something to read from Volume Seven. Submissions are open until December 15, and the guidelines and submissions upload button are on the website.

from Jill Frances Johnson's Ghats:

I’m racing down Kalimati Road heading for the bazaar, what we call downtown back in America. A chicken surprises itself and me by running into my bike’s front tire. A man yells over the chicken’s squawks, but I pump hard and don’t look back. My cycling has improved since moving to Kathmandu. I swerve around a toddler at the road’s edge, swerve again to avoid a porter hunched under his bulging basket. Neck of steel, calves of iron, I write in my head. I’m thinking about my article due tomorrow for the school newspaper. The porter turns his head and spits a streak of betel juice, red flecks sticking to my sneaker.

Detouring through Himalaya Heights, the expat community where most families live, I’m on the lookout for one of my friends to go to town. When we first moved into Round House I complained, wanting to be in the American development. Now I like our house, which is circular and white and tall like a three-layer birthday cake. We live in half the cake, our
apartment three floors top to bottom. Dad likes to joke how he can never corner my mother.