Issue 10

FICTION

• Jewels, by Joe Bisicchia

• Cross Ties, by Eric Gershman

• Static Serenade, by Abbie Doll

• Room and Board, by Daniel Kamin

• Letter in November, by Victoria Richard

• What Are We?, by Tawanda Eddie Munongo

• Rabindranath's Body, by Ankur Razdan

• The New Manuel, by Kevin Grauke

• A Very Present Help, by Jamie Redgat

FLASHFICTION

• Fortress, by David Capps

• (S)talk Therapy, by Vishaal Pathak

POETRY

• Goodwill, Supple Blight, by Laine Derr

• The Perennial Passage, by Jan Wozniak

• The Plumber, Ode to My Yoga Pants, Drastic Measures, by Jennifer Triplett

• The Last of an Orchard, Winter Fog, Monsters Among You, by David Hoffman

• Instructions for How To Life My Life, This is How The Cathedral Works, by Megan Wildhood

• Episodic Epiphanies, Etymology of Me as a Human: a Bilinguacultural Poem, Love Lost & Found: for Qi Hong, by Yuan Changming

• Fall, Driving Home Drunk, with the Devil Riding Shotgun, The Ambivalence of a Near-Death Dream, by Sean Murphy

• La luna se me escapa, Muéstrame tus cadenas, pájaro, La primavera ha llegado de nuevo, by Hibah Shabkhez

• Nostos, In the wings, by Steven Deutsch

• When The Horses Finish, The Oaf, The Pet Poem, by Jason Visconti

• Ash and Roses, Dulcet Tones in Shade, Hungarian Falls, Michigan, by Kenneth Pobo

• Anchor, by Lauren Vogel

Editorial Team: Jose Palacios, Aimee Campos, Monica Aleman

Advisors: Juana Moriel-Payne, Thomas Cook

thelionsleepstonight, by Edward Micahel Supranowicz

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.

FICTION

_____________________________________________________________________

 Jewels

by Joe Bisicchia

 In our personal caves, sometimes we curse the curtains, wanting the day to just end, and yet our blindfolds remind us that those who trick likely were first tricked. We all know the shine easily goes dull when chasing away sun, even if the dousing is only short-lived.

But, you say look at us here as we all step out of our way to greet you like the sun. We light up a room, you say, looking at us all sit together like lumps on a stoop. We chortle away the statement knowing that you were the one to leave this gloomy street to become a hot shot electrician. And, plus, you say it when we’re not in a room.

Make good fate, you say. You make the case there is an ember in each of us, each life of a fire tender of sorts. A life ago each died, or yesterday. Only to survive to play the video game again. Some days we hold on to scurrying clouds that run with sun, a chase to horizon. Or prison.

You get us thinking. Maybe we are the light, being that we tarnish and varnish the sun, burnishing it as it slips away. Same with ourselves. Maybe instead, we should just let it set, a treasure chest, the sun. But, we forget. And you are soon long gone. Soon, another day, and the sun goes away. Another hole to hide who we are. Wanting to go find ourselves in the dark, we too often rather just stagger in and out of our corner bar.

Out front there’s an abandoned car. We take turns looking into the rearview mirror to see how far we have come, and the scars having ridden to Jupiter thinking it might prove to be bliss, or Disney, seeing Goofy, but otherwise, a waste of it.

On shady side of the otherwise unnamed corner bar there is a mural of the sun, cracked, its cement worn, but still a mandala in which we can take hold of its rims and circle the earth, lest we hide, and then find sun to be an undersea mountain blocking us at the free throw line. We stand and look at it from across street just as the rising obscurity of night soon again sets faces diminished.

Night sure enough comes in some shape or form and rekindles the numbing spin of it. And we are just next in line to drink it. We rush as if we are afraid to lose who we are before the sun remembers and cuts through the aforementioned embers and unveils ugly mirrors as we pin the tail on ourselves.

And yet, tomorrow, maybe, if only we could just allow the sun to pour forth its prism, maybe we might allow the light. And be who we are, by some grace, glitter of the sun, like fireflies, tired, but finally grateful to now surrender to the new day begun. Yes, tomorrow, it won’t be too late. To make fate. To be blessed with a purposeful trade, be someone to look up to, like an electrician. Tomorrow, stop by, and tell us how to light up a room.

****

Joe Bisicchia writes of our shared dynamic. An Honorable Mention recipient for the Fernando Rielo XXXII World Prize for Mystical Poetry, his works have appeared in numerous publications with over 170 individual poems published. The collection “widewide.world to unwind” has been published by Cyberwit. His website is www.widewide.world

__________________________________

 Cross Ties

by Eric Gershman

 I didn’t get her number, let alone where she lived.

She was on the subway doing a Herald crossword puzzle when I dropped my phone at her feet. She struck me as a Christy Hynde sort, in a sexy-nightclub kind of way.

My phone blared out my way-back-when playlist. It was an 80s mix I had put together in deference to the puzzle I constructed for this morning’s Herald publication.

Out of my phone came Love Shack Baby.

“Great song,” the girl said with this cute squeak in her voice. She went back to my puzzle.

No one talks on the subway except for the underground acts. I tried it once. I do stand-up for fun and on a dare from my best friend Robert I spit out a three-minute set on the #1 train coming back from Chambers Street. “I lost a lot of money in the market as of late,” I said to my subway prisoners, most of them Wall Street guys. “But someone found it in the produce section.”

I made eight bucks.

I silenced my phone right away but not quick enough for it to skip to the next 80s anthem. Foreigner’s Don’t Stop Believing.

“What decade are we in?” she said as she looked at me. Her leather jacket was ripped at the sleeve in a been-out-all-night sort of way.

“I’m stuck in the past,” I said.

“Wake-me-up-before-you go-go?” She held her pen out and stared into space. Why she was asking was clear to me.

I struck my palm with my fist, and it smacked.

She stared at me. “Bam?” she said, rubbing her nose ring.

“Close.”

“Oh, thanks I got it …”

“Don Johnson’s occupation,” I said, touching the puzzle. “That’s the down word.”

“You’re a Solver?”

“I’m the Constructor.”

She cocked her head to the side.

“I’m the editor.” I pointed to the paper. “My mother used to take out the middle piece of my jigsaw to get me to eat my vegetables.”

The girl smiled. “Oh my god, I’m an addict. Every day. What is your name?”

I shrugged. “Charlie Musk, says it right there.” I pointed again. Who cared about puzzle editors? I took it out of my dating profile. It was not helping.

“I'm Jenny," she said. "How may I ask do you make these?”

“I had to invent Google first.” I smiled, but I have bad teeth which I tend to hide.

The train pulled into 34th street.

“You have a nice smile.” Yes, she said that.

“You better tell me what themes you want to see before the conductor fines us for talking on a subway.” I gave her my clever look, the one with the eyebrow.

“Music,” she said. “Any kind of music. And food. How about dessert? Do one on desserts! You could do one on French or Swiss or” —she glanced out the train window— “Wait, this is my stop. Bye! Love your stuff!” She got up and walked out of the train before it moved out of the station. She faded out of my life as Addicted to Love did the same.

***

 I’ve been riding what looks like the same subway car at the same hour since the last time I saw her. That was two months ago. From time to time, I’ve even walked around the block between 33rd and 40th looking for her but it just ends up with me staring into a cup of Matzah Bowl at Ben's Deli, like a reward for keeping the expedition going.

And what would I say if I did in fact run into her?

Should I run an ad in the Village Voice? Something like, “Jenny; you ride trains and love crossword puzzles. Call me at work.” Nah, sounds like an ad for spelling bee contestants.

“Forget her,” best friend and comedy coach Robert said. He is getting chemo in a hospital in Denver, and we talk for an hour a week while he gets the drip.

“How ‘bout I throw myself in front of a train?” I said. “The press coverage would be insane.”

“Don’t make cancer-boy come to New York just ‘cause you want a hero’s funeral.

How about you just put a clue in your puzzle.”

“Like what, ‘Call me Maybe’?”

Over the next few weeks, I tried a few crosswords with dessert themes with clues like ‘French chocolate delicacy' and ‘Vegetable Cake'—sorry, I don’t supply answers—but I didn’t even get a response from my regulars.

“How’s the subway stalker?” Robert asked out of the blue during one of our marathon talks.

I said, “I know how she takes her coffee. I bring her one every day.”

He sighed. “Didn’t you guys talk about 80s music or something?”

I gave the 80s' theme another crossword try. I did a grid with the intersection of the Tommy Tu-Tone Hit going across, and How to Contact Blondie heading down.

I set up a Facebook account for Eight-six-seven-five-three-o-nine. Maybe she would write her number on my wall.

I thought about starting a business around printing phone numbers on t-shirts.

“It might be popular with kids on field trips to the zoo,” Robert discouraged.

I ran another 80s puzzle instead.

Nothing happened for a day, a week, then a month.

I was sitting at my desk one day when the phone rang.

“Hi Charlie.” That voice, the one with the squeak. “It’s Jenny.”

"Jenny-Jenny," I said. I looked at the caller ID. Yup, got her number.

Now I had to make her mine.

**** 

Eric W. Gershman has written an historical fiction/fantasy novel and a science fiction novelette. His short stories have been published in two The Red Penguin Collections: The Roaring 20s and Behind Closed Doors, in Monnath Books' Tabula Rasa: A Short Story Anthology, and in Weaver Magazine. Currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing, he lives in Vermont with his wife and two dogs.

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 Static Serenade

by Abbie Doll

Why is it we can say wide awake but not narrow? Buried in bedsheets, I’m stuck pondering the restrictions of language, doing my best to distract my brain from this hair-raising predicament. A series of similar nonsensical thoughts carries me to sleep’s doorstep, but not quite inside, as a tsunami of static pummels my eardrums. The metallic crunch of a twenty-car interstate pileup crashes this auditory party. The static itself possesses a demanding subtlety. It’s urgent. It should only be background noise, but I can feel it growing. The volume of this unidentifiable scratchiness keeps climbing higher and higher, louder and louder. It’s absolutely magnetic. The static is calling to me. Luring me. And amidst all the noise, I spot a blurry, almost formless figure swaying in the darkened corner of my vision. Maybe there’s nothing there. I’m not sure. But I swear on my life I saw something.

My mind returns to the static, clutching onto it like clingwrap. I’ve never heard anything quite like it. Part ephemeral, part permanent, it’s confounding all my senses. I look to my left. On the nightstand is an antiquated, dust-ridden radio. The thing hasn’t worked in years. Still, I think I’ve found my culprit. Where else would static come from?

As if on cue, the static lands on an otherworldly station in the midst of some too-cool-for-school disc jockey’s announcement—

Jeremy Miami here comin’ to you dead or alive. You’re tuned into Mortal Mayhem 97.5.

And that’s all there is. The static resumes its airwave dominance. I clench my eyes shut, beckoning my ears to focus. But the harder I strive, the quieter it gets. Like a mourning mother struggling to process the unexpected loss of her newborn, I’m doing my best to make some sense of this senseless situation. This static is so elusive though. I can practically see the key dangling, dancing in front of my face. That figure in the corner’s got it on a fishing line and is toying with me like I’m the catch of the day. But who, or what, is reeling me in? What’s really going on here?

My thoughts cease as a new sound enters the mix. The back of my skull smashing against the headboard with rhythmic repetition. Thud. Thud. Thud. I wrestle with keeping my focus on the familiar—that sweet, smothering static.

The unwelcome cacophony continues. My ears are greeted by a crackly lullaby, a sophisticated sound not unlike a seven-layer cake, some exquisite, fancy French delight. A sinfully sweet, forbidden delicacy. Somewhere beneath the crinkle, music streams. It registers, just barely. I can’t make out the song. But it burrows deep, lodging itself in the unexplored terrain of my subconscious. That damn radio is pulling me in with its sensuous shanty, its sirens luring me in with their haunting melodies. And I have to admit, I welcome the distraction with as much intimacy as I can muster.

 But other sensations persist. I try not to notice the sudden yanks on my hair, but it’s like ripping weeds from their stable home in the ground. My scalp grieves. Out of pure instinct, my hands shoot for my head, trying to protect from damage already done. Instead, I’ve made a mistake in opening myself up. An intolerable tightness locks itself around my wrists, clamping to my skin like handcuffs.

*

            The static keeps calling. The stark uncertainty of my situation resumes. I try to open my eyes, but my reluctant, lethargic lids resist. I want to look around the room. Anywhere but directly in front of me. For a moment, I find meditative comfort in the floor fan and its spinning blades. But its humming vibrations are making untoward suggestions. Above me, I find the motionless ceiling fan, dangling menacingly—its paddles mocking me with their undisguised judgment. I can’t help but feel imprisoned, haunted even by the open blinds and their barred shadows on the stained carpet beneath.

I can feel myself drowning in this swell of sound, possessed by its soul-stirring nothingness. My conquering fear declares victory and assumes the throne of control. Oh, how I wish I could make out this sound. It’s like I’m hearing the dead and all their unheard whispers. Something has to be communicating with me, right? But I’m weak and powerless here, enslaved in the static’s threatening embrace. It envelops me, seals me shut. I’m glued to this fucking bed. The agonizing adhesive, my own sweat. I close my eyes again. I can’t watch this. I don’t want to see what’s happening.

A spirited tennis match ensues within my sockets—my pupils banging back and forth, bouncing off the sidelines with an explosive suddenness. I can feel my heart inflating, growing until it threatens to burst like a popped balloon. The floodgates have been opened. My fear surges through my body’s vascular highway.

Someone help me. Please.

Save me from this waking nightmare before my will to live recedes.

*

I’m still here. How much time has passed? I haven’t a clue.

The trusty floor fan, in its remarkable reliability, continues to spin. The background noise it generates shares the static’s frequency. I am grateful for the interruption it provides, salvaging what lingers of my sanity. In these brief moments, I find the strength to believe in the world of normalcy again, and the static seems silly. I write it off like some bad kung pao chicken and the last eighteen hours spent making turbulent love to the toilet. And yet, my mind is wallpapered with rotten flecks of shit.

Alas, the static remains. I’m drafting my eulogy, bidding adieu to my innocence, my essence. If I keep listening to this, I will surely fade, just as the densest fog dissipates with the tender, warm caress of the morning sun.

Eventually, I acquiesce and am escorted off the premises.

That’s either the sensation of warm relief surging through me, or I’ve wet the bed. I’ve given up the ghost. Let the void in. It’s been pounding on my door with such adamance, such and persistence. I feel my poor pelvis being pounded, shredding me into a messy pulp.

I’ve let it all in, but I’m not home. I’m lingering somewhere around my body, my mind ejected like the tangled ribbon from an overplayed VHS. Someone forgot to rewind me, to remind me how all this was gonna go.

In the distance, I hear the bathroom door shut and a trickle of urine being coaxed out. I lie motionless, calmed by the static, nowhere closer to sleep than I was before. I close my eyes and wonder with apathy what’s to come. How on earth, in my ravaged and pillaged state, can I ever expect to recover from this rape?

****

Abbie Doll is a current student in Lindenwood University’s MFA in Writing program and has served as an Editorial Assistant for The Lindenwood Review. She lives with her husband and two canine companions in Columbus, OH. Her favorite activities include curling up in her hammock with a good read, taking the pups for neighborhood strolls, and experimenting in the kitchen. Traveling the globe and exploring the beautiful intricacies of language are her greatest joys in life.

_____________________________

 Room and Board

by Daniel Kamin

Above what used to be a bar but now only served ghosts and mice, Anna sits in her chair by the window and waits for the sun to rise.

Beat the sun, and beat the day.

Her father would trumpet the slogan—and so many more—as he marched about the house, so proud of his little achievements. The man who was one good remark away from turning into a motivational speaker.

Maybe he’d be proud now. She beats the sun, beats the newspaper delivery at her building’s front door, even beats the homeless man who pulls back a few boards and sneaks into the empty bar at night to sleep.

Beats them all, what a wonder.

Standing is the hardest. Maybe falling asleep is, though it never was until the chemicals pumped through her. They said it’d be easier to sleep. If she would’ve been a drunk used to upchucking all over herself as she lay in bed, sure, it would’ve been. Anna presses her hand against her chest, surprised at how little pressure there is, how weak her fingers could be. The port on her arm begins to sing with its sweet aches.

Her cane helps her push up enough that she can waddle about to the kitchen and grab a banana she’ll just stare at and tell herself she should eat. There’s a stir from the second bedroom, a tussle of sheets and clothes, legs fighting pants to see who’ll win.

Beat the pants, beat the day.

She frowns with her new saying, wishing it was more like her father’s. He could’ve worked for the inspirational department at Hallmark.

Jonathan stumbles from his room, his shirt gripped in one hand and hands pressed against the doorframe as though he’s the one on chemo. ‘Course, he probably pumped other chemicals into himself last night, a dumb thing to do before work, but Anna didn’t care. Didn’t say anything when he staggered in last night past midnight. Only slightly turned her head from the couch, let the same episodes of Friends she’d seen a million times be her white noise. Her new roomie would rarely say a word. That’s why she picked him.

The outpouring of support made her sicker than any of the treatments. Her mom and dad wanted her to move back home, her brother thought the fresh air at his summer home in upper Michigan would do the trick, her sister saying the desert air, somewhere in Arizona, would fix her up. She’d been dazed at how nothing much had changed, remembering the stories of how consumption patients would be told to go to the desert or maybe somewhere with fresh air. All sure-fire remedies. What Anna needed was her condo and staying in the city, close to work, close to the life she had to bury before her body jumped in after.

“Hey,” he mumbles. His shaggy mop of brown hair finds a life of its own and swings when he only sways. “What time is it?”

“Early.” She glances back at the window. “Might as well sleep another hour before you’ve gotta go to work.”

He grunts and turns, their usual matter-of-fact conversation out of the way for the day, but he stops, turns, comes back, and plants himself on one of the barstools hugging the peninsula. His hand forces his head up, a sleepy David without the charm.

“Hard to sleep,” he says in a near whisper, “when you’ve drunk too much.”

She knows the feeling, savors it when she’s wrapped around the toilet and begging for it to end. It brings back her time at college. Not the craziest, but it was college, all the same, back when she’d beg for the nausea, the vomiting, the pounding headache to go away. ‘Course, they did. That gave them a certain level of pleasure. A tough-it-out kind of spirit that only made her stronger.

Beat the booze, beat the day.

“Sometimes, it’s just hard to sleep.” Anna shuffles her way to the couch. Her slippers slide across the hardwood, and she has the distinct feeling this is it, this is her life forever. If she survives, her feet won’t work like they did. If she kicks it, well, then cancer beat the day. She sees it in slow strokes. The life of a permanent nursing home resident escaped from the institution, shuffling her way nowhere.

“I’ll get ya the rent tomorrow.” He begins to work around the kitchen in measured steps, almost as if mimicking her. “Tomorrow is ok?”

“Tomorrow is a world away.” Anna flops on the couch, a choir of soreness crescendoing through her body. She’s momentarily sick, ready to toss the couple of crackers stored in her stomach for safekeeping, but it passes.

****

Daniel Kamin's first novel, RUBY OF THE REALMS, was published by Black Rose in 2010. He has published a short story in eFANTASY in 2012 and in Aphelion in December 2019. His novella GINGERBREAD MEN AND TOAD'S WART was released by The Wild Rose Press in October.

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 Letter in November

by Victoria Richard

The grass has grown since he has been gone. It touches my waist now – it had been cowering underneath my heels when he left. Tim cutting the grass; it had always been a sight, the threads of sweat streaking down his back, flecks of green confetti plastered to his bare shoulders. In all these years he had always looked the same. Always.

Between the mailbox and the house a path had been cut from the tangle of overgrowth. Usually Rebekah got the mail, but it had rained all day the day before and her boots were getting too tight. A few months ago, tears had formed in her eyes when the loose heels would scrape the soft skin of her ankles. Now she pouts because there’s no room for her toes.

Teddy’s clothes are getting smaller too. But he spends most of his time in my lap or in the crib. Not running around, not squishing mud between his toes.

I can’t remember the last time we went to the store and shopped freely - I mean really bought clothes -and a little extra tin of cookies, a treat for after dinner. The last time I remember, I was holding Tim’s hand. Holding his hand and watching him smile, not at anything in the world around him, just a secret thought.

We were going to the new neighbor’s house for dinner. She was cooking soup. I needed to bring something, a loaf of a bread, a dessert, something to make us seem like grateful guests.

“What’s her name again?”

“It’s something Spanish.”

“Maybe I should bring something Spanish then,” I had joked.

Tim offered the faint curve of a grin and stared away down the wild piles of groceries.

I would rather let my boots get wet than Rebekah come out here in her bare, blistered feet. Everyday when I check the mail, I pray there’s not another letter from Tim. I don’t want another apology, another reason why he couldn’t let Maria go to England alone. Hell, I don’t even want him to come home anymore.

At first, I would lie face down on his side of the bed and stick my nose hard into his pillow. I would breathe his scent until I felt like it had choked me to the core, like my eyes were going black and my ears were filled with water. Then Teddy would cry out, screaming for my breast and the solace would crumble.

“Teddy’s crying!” Rebekah would shout through the door, her four-year-old’s voice catching an edge of annoyance. She had hoped that Teddy would be like one of her doll’s – only crying when you had the time for him to.

Here we are. Tim has gone to England with Maria to see some magician doctor that can fix her legs. What’s wrong with them? I don’t know. I’ve sat in that woman’s living room a thousand times and I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say a thing about it. I’ve never seen her without a pair of those hand-me-down heels with their scuffs down the leather sides. What of her broken legs? She never said a thing. Tim’s the one who loves to lie.

He’s probably fucking her - fucking her as I walk to see if there’s another bill in the mail – fucking her as I put the kids down to sleep – fucking her as I swallow my pills – fucking her as I clean the oven – fucking her and fucking me.

The sunset is tainted by all the clouds in the sky, dimmed by their loathing grayness. But still, it paints a nice pink on the grass.

She can have him if she wants. If her legs aren’t broken now, they can be. Just wait till he touches her.

She can be on house arrest, writing his goddamn poetry, sitting in the windowsill like a perfect porcelain wife. She’ll bury every line like I’ve buried the children he beat from me. She’ll bury her degrees, she’ll bury the coins she’s saved in her chest. Then she’ll move them, put them in the toe of her shoe. Tim’s hands wander too much, tug at every piece of cloth.

I’ve started putting my coins on the cabinet now. They’re in a glass jar, waiting to catch the sunlight when it comes. I can see them. The children can see them. The birds can see them.

There’s a stack of mail today: the electricity bill, the water bill, and of course, a yellow letter from Tim.

“Tell the children that I’ll miss them.”

I should have gone swimming with Maria, I should have taken off my pants and let her see every green-purple bruise.

Next to the coins, there’s a bottle of pills. I can’t say – if I saw my wife take those every day – I might would leave too.

****

Victoria Richard is a writer and photographer from McComb, Mississippi. She is currently studying English and Creative Writing at Millsaps College in Jackson. Richard aspires to reveal unique and fresh looks on the worlds of nature and abandoned buildings through her photos, but says that her literary goals have more free flowing sources of inspiration. She is currently focused on writing on issues of social unrest, especially those caused by the CoVid-19 pandemic. Whenever she isn't pursuing these goals, she can be found studying or playing with her cat, Stormi. Richard also works as a researcher at the Eudora Welty House and Garden and has recently received a fellowship to conduct a study on the correlation between the work of Welty and Elizabeth Bowen.

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 What Are We?

by Tawanda Eddie Munongo

 We drove in silence that late afternoon, neither Clair nor I said a word. The road was deserted, just as we had hoped it would be. There must have been music playing on the radio – probably November Rain, though I paid no mind to it. We chased the sun as she raced towards the horizon, the ambers of last-light painting the sky in pale orange hues.

“What are we?” Claire asked, staring into the distance.

I had parked the car just a few feet from the cliff edge where we stood looking down at the infinite expanse of ocean-blue. I took a long drag of my cigarette, held it, then exhaled, and watched as the wind carried the smoke away. I leaned back, putting the bulk of my weight on the car. The waves crashed into the rocks far below, slowly chipping away at them with uncaring tenacity. Great and mighty as it was, the ocean offered no answer to her question.

“We are what we make ourselves,” I replied.

It was something that I had told myself constantly since childhood – a creed that I had failed to live by. If it were true, then I would have to take responsibility for what I had become.

“That’s not an answer. What are we??” she asked again, more forceful this time. “What are we doing here? Why do some people get to live while others die? Why do we have to suffer while others live in unimaginable luxury?”

Her voice broke as she spoke, as the pain that she had been burying deep inside clawed its way out. Claire was not prone to emotional displays. No one I knew carried more on their shoulders than she did, yet she did so without complaint. I could see, now, the web that she had spun beginning to unravel. She took a step closer to the edge, the wind blowing her hair and clothes so that, for a moment, she looked like she was flying.

“I want to know,” she continued.

I put my hand around her wrist and squeezed. I tried to push the images of her going over the edge out of my head because I knew, then, that if she did, I would go down with her.

“Life is like a flash of lightning…or a wave washing onto the shore. It comes and then it goes, and what we are left with are the impressions. Maybe that’s what we are – a temporary occurrence on the face of the Earth. A passing blemish, more like pimples, less like scars. Some more prominent than others, leaving deep marks that fade slowly. Justin was one of the good ones, and I’m glad to say that he lived as he died; authentically.”

“But, is this all there is for us? Are we doomed to endless cycles of hellos and goodbyes?”

She raised her head and turned to me, finally meeting my gaze. Her eyes still sparkled, but now it was a light from the outside, as her tears mirrored the sunlight. She still could not bring herself to cry.

“To want more is selfish. To want more is to spit on the forces that contrived to give us what little we have – unearned and undeserved. To want more is to think that we know better than the guiding hand of Providence Herself. It’s not our place to want more.”

I watched as her face changed, anger replacing sadness.

“But I do!” she cried, slamming her fist into my chest.

The wind carried her voice, and birds in the nearby trees fluttered away, no doubt startled by the sudden, unfamiliar noise. They were probably not accustomed to hearing the grunting of apes this far from civilization.

I picked up Justin’s urn that we had placed on the hood of the car and stepped forward, so that both Claire and I were right on the edge, staring straight down at the rocks that, if we fell, would pulverize us and not even notice.

“It’s time to let him go,” I said.

I waited for her nod of approval before opening the urn. The wind blew away the unsettled particles. I lowered my hand, sliding my fingers between hers. We closed our hands on each other and breathed, until her heartbeat was my heartbeat, and, in that moment, we were one.

“I failed at the one thing an older brother should excel at – I couldn’t protect you, Justin. Your future was bright; brighter than mine. I should have never let it get this far.”

“Do it,” Claire said, her eyes focused on the urn.

I hesitated.

“Do it already!” she cried.

She squeezed my hand with surprising strength. I turned the urn upside down and watched as the ashes poured out and immediately faded into oblivion, as everything else does eventually.

“I hope this fulfills his dream of sailing the ocean,” she said.

She let go of my hand and walked around the car to the passenger side. She opened the door and slid in. I checked one last time to make sure that she was not looking before pulling the syringe that had killed my little brother out of my pocket. The tremors in my hands intensified; I had not had a hit in close to 24 hours. I took a deep breath and focused my mind on the crawling sensation under my skin, like a million ants marching for their queen. I resisted the urge to scratch myself. ‘This is what I deserve,’ I thought.

I flung the syringe as far as I could, the momentum of the throw almost carrying me over the cliff-edge. I rebalanced myself and shook the urn, just to make sure that it was empty, before replacing the lid. The sun had disappeared, and a few early evening stars had begun to dot the sky. I opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat with my hands on the steering wheel. I noticed a familiar pair of eyes staring back at me through the rear-view mirror. They were my eyes, but something had changed.

“Let’s go,” I said, turning the ignition.

 ****

Tawanda E.J. Munongo is a writer and student. His work has been published in the Literary Heist and Ab Terra Flash Fiction magazines. He is currently based in China where he is pursuing a degree in Computer Science and Technology and working on a short story collection.

___________________________________

 Rabindranath's Body

by Ankur Razdan

In a cave, a body is writing. Privacy is good for writing. Without anybody watching, the body works on and on—it is a body of work. The set-up is pretty basic: a stone that serves as a seat, a larger stone that serves as a desk, a quill pen that has lost its feathers, a never-ending scroll of paper, and the uncompromising darkness. At irregular intervals, the paper is cut, forming collections of the body’s work ranging from great lengths to what cannot really be called length at all. The inkwell the body dips its quill into has long since run dry—but that’s okay, the scratches made onto the paper are perfectly sufficient for its purposes.

The body never stops writing, and certainly never leaves the cave. Interminable routine without stimulation is bad for writing, but only when you have a soul. But it doesn’t, so actually, it isn’t. The gist of every idea the body pursues in its writing was developed long before it ever came to the cave, that is when the body was alive. That said, it must be admitted that when it comes time for these ideas to be fleshed out, many of the finer, more writerly details end up involving things like rocks, dampness, clinking sounds, stalactites, stalagmites, and cave-dwelling domed land snails, Zospeum tholussum, both in terms of the species in general and individual specimens in particular.

The body, incidentally, used to be the body of Rabindranath Tagore, but it really is incidental. Its ambitions were brewed up while the soul was busy, engaged in winning the Nobel Prize and concomitant activities thereof, without much interplay between the two forces. Now that the body has the opportunity, it doesn’t procrastinate. It writes.

Tagore’s body cannot review what it has written as it writes it, nor after. There isn’t exactly a readership in the cave, either. The texts it produces could be described as charming and puckish. It’s genre work, mostly. The sentences do stumble over each other a little awkwardly—sometimes, when the blind hand makes a mistake, this literally happens—and it is somehow always the case that amid the self-detonating spaceships, demon-devourings, and dazzling displays of inhuman intelligence, everybody’s spouse has been murdered (sometimes by their own hand), everybody’s critical memories are resurfacing due to a chance encounter, and everybody is at the point of the highest emotional tension in their entire lives. But the body likes that kind of stuff.

Topics which are never ventured into include reincarnation, Karma, Dharma, the raising of the dead to a trumpet blast, and judgement, whether eternal or of any other duration. The body feels no need to create spiritual literature—if it tried to write that way, it would only be deluding itself, as you or I would be deluding ourselves if we decided we were called upon to compose interplanetary literature or core-of-the-sun literature or probiotic literature. One advantage to lacking a soul (or not a lack—a manufacturer of blank canvasses would insist that nothing was missing from their products) is the absence of delusion. To the extent its senseless head can experience what it writes, the body is about as self-satisfied as writers get.

So Rabindranath Tagore’s body sits in the cave leaning wraithlike over its labor, scratching its sharp quill, sharp as in life, into the paper, every once in a while pushing its long, traipsing beard out of the way. Someday or other a clever archeologist will come to map out all the indentations on graph paper, and there will be a digital archive. But that won’t happen for a long time, a thousand years at least, well after we’re dead and the body has returned to its grave, its opuses unsigned and anonymous. Absent interested scholars or scientists, some questions insist themselves upon the two of us in the here and now. What shall we do with the body? What shall we do with the writings, piling up in the back? What shall we do with the cave? We have to decide.

 [Written on India’s 75th Independence Day, 8/15/21]

****

Ankur Razdan is a writer based in the Washington, DC area. A regular fiction contributor at Sterling Clack Clack, he has also appeared in The Westchester Review, The Tiny Journal, The Chestnut Review, and many more. Follow him on twitter at https://twitter.com/mukkuthani and visit ankurrazdan.com for his professional editing services.

________________________________

The New Manuel

by Kevin Grauke

For years, Del Gilly, the sheriff of Yonder, ate lunch at Manuel’s El Rancho Grande every day of the week except Sundays, which was when he ate at his mother’s. Against a wall gussied up with sombreros, serapes, and bandoliers, he sat at a tiny table by himself because he liked to read while he chewed. Some folks accused him of being hoity-toity because of this custom, but he was friendly enough the rest of the time, as they well knew. It seemed he just liked taking a little time for himself in the middle of the day to relax to relax with good books on military campaigns of the Civil War, mostly the successful Southern ones like the Battles of First and Second Manassas, seeing as how he was pretty sure that Stonewall Jackson was an ancestor of his.

The Manuel of Manuel’s always made sure that Del’s plate was piping hot (“plato ca-liente, señor, cuidadoso”) and ready for him just as soon as the man loosened his duty belt and eased himself into his chair. Del ate the same meal everyday: chicken enchiladas with mole poblano sauce, borracho beans, rice, a double side of guacamole, and a tall glass of unsweetened iced tea. Like some sort of big-city connoisseur, he like to tell everyone that Manuel made the best mole poblano sauce he’d ever tasted—just the perfect balance of spicy chile heat and chocolate sweetness.

Even though he never saw Manuel anywhere outside of the restaurant, Del always referred to Manuel as his friend. In fact, he said that one year he’d once even considered inviting him to his annual party the night before the Texas-OU Red River Shootout, but because he’d worried that his friend might feel uncomfortable being the only one of his sort there, he didn’t. Besides, he added, what was Manuel famous for? Never taking a day off and never closing El Rancho Grande’s doors, not even on Christmas Day. So, there’d been no way he would’ve ever come anyway.

Needless to say, when El Rancho Grande’s doors were discovered locked, folks were caught off guard. They all pulled on the door a second and a third time just to make sure. Nope, it was locked. At first, it was assumed that he’d finally given himself a short holiday, but after a week passed and there was still not even a scribbled note of explanation on the door, a few began to grumble, especially the folks who worked there. Despite being fairly sure that he’d been born in Texas, some wondered if he’d returned to Mexico—voluntarily or otherwise—the land of his true people, as some said. Or maybe he’d run afoul of some bad hombres, like Los Zetas. Regardless, Del had no choice but to move his lunch business to Ivory’s (even though he’d always said that Ivory’s wife cut him less brisket than everyone else) while he waited for El Rancho Grande’s doors to swing open and fill the air with Tejano music again.

When the doors finally did swing open again two weeks later, Del walked in and took his regular seat, ready to give it to Manuel with both barrels, as he told folks later. When he saw his usual mole enchiladas appear before him, he looked up the arm setting it down and opened his mouth to demand Manuel tell him where the hell he’d been for fourteen dadgum days, and that’s when he saw that it wasn’t Manuel who’d brought him his lunch at all. No, it was a fella he’d never seen before—not bussing tables at Manuel’s, not grease-monkeying at Guy’s, not digging post holes for whomever, not anywhere. Not all that kindly, Del asked him who the hell he was and where the hell was Manuel.

“Manuel is no longer here. My name is Roberto, and I’m now the Manuel of Manuel’s El Rancho Grande.”

Louder this time, Del asked him again where the hell his friend Manuel was.

“No lo sé. But don’t worry, sir, because I know what you like. And I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.” He pointed to Del’s chicken enchiladas with mole poblano sauce. “Please. If you don’t mind. Taste.”

Del grunted with displeasure, but then he tasted. And what he later told everyone was that the new Manuel’s mole poblano sauce was even better, more complex, than the old Manuel’s. More “nuanced,” he said, because he’d made it known that his daughter, who lived somewhere that wasn’t Texas, gave him a subscription to Bon Appetit every Christmas. The chile was warmer, the chocolate richer.

“Well done, Manuel. Esto es muy delicioso.”

And so, soon enough, Del forgot the first Manuel’s wheezing laugh, the pale scar on his left hand, and the way he’d snap his service towel like a matador. Soon enough, it was as if there’s never not been but one Manuel. Because that’s just how it was with Sheriff Del Gilly, not to mention most of the rest of Yonder, when it came to good folks like Manuel.

****

Kevin Grauke is the author of Shadows of Men (Queen's Ferry Press), winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared (or are forthcoming) in journals such as The Threepenny Review, Bayou, The Southern Review, Quarterly West, and Columbia Journal. He’s a Contributing Editor at Story, and he teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia. Twitter: @kevingrauke

________________________________

 A Very Present Help

by Jamie Redgat

"Anyway you get the gist. There’s a robot on the Moon. No one knows how the hell it got up there. Political crisis imminent, etc. You have to go."

"For God's sake Anna. I was on my way back."

"Yes and your visa's still valid. I need you back there right now."

"Someone up there hates me."

"Well down here we’re waiting on you to get a move on, H. Get up and get packed.”

Jon ("Without an H") Elprin knew of course that he had no choice. He waited until Anna’s big face—projected by the phone across the room’s widest wall—disappeared, then sighed out loud and stomped around, throwing his spacesuit and his inhalers and a by-now half-empty tub of peanut butter back into his travel case.

He supposed he was glad to be leaving Immigration at last, at least, even if it was to go in the wrong direction. The paperwork to get him back home always took days, and he'd lain in bed for the last three of them, sucking PB from a spoon and imagining all the things he’d rather do than stare at the wallpaper: a panoply of stencilled moons in blue and dusty white; the big “Heaven isn’t on Earth, it’s Up Here” slogan wrapped in a repeating pattern around the border, with a moon for the O in “on” and even, yes, on close incredulous inspection, mini pocked moons dotting all the i's.

***

Jon stepped out into the station’s crisp, artificial light, and saw it: past the orange warning railing at the station’s edge, the swelling curve of Earthrise. Home. From this distance, here up on the moon’s own moonlet, the Earth looked as big and calm as it always did, and Jon couldn't help himself hoping like always that maybe he’d imagined the last ten years, maybe it had all just been a bad dream. It hurt to have to remind himself that, hopes or not, his parents weren’t down there anymore. Jon took a seat on the ridiculous Moon-decaled bus and counted the months since he’d last been home.

At 28 and just out of his PhD, Jon had won a scholarship to do research at the Lunar Telescope Facility. His parents had been upset when he told them, but delighted too and proud because they knew the odds against (100s of applications to exactly 1 post was quite normal in his field; after the flooding of the Royal Observatory things had only gotten worse).

It was on a small, Earth-tuned television in his project’s second month that Jon saw the news. A minor fault in an elderly care assistant robot’s code. Millions dead. Jon overhead two Moon-borns calling it The Hundred Second Barbeque.

The relationship between the Earth and Moon governments had always been somewhat taut, but when the Moon ignored the Earth’s cries for help in their crisis, something snapped. Earth’s President threatened to stow some faulty robots in the next shipment up, to see how the Moon liked it. The Moon’s majority party, in retaliation, passed laws that forbade the use, ownership, transfer or trade of any robot in Moon-space, declaring they would thereafter consider a robot in their territory nothing less than an act of war.

Grieving, shell-shocked, eyes sore from watching the news say nothing new, Jon had received a letter the same week explaining that the funding from his home government had dried up. He got some bit-work instead in the newly embittered diplomatic service, shuttling back and forth between here and there.

It was up to him to find the robot before anyone on the Moon did.

***

The bus took Jon to a ship which flew direct to New Wensleydale, a mining community on the lip of a long crater, with staggered roads like lightning bolting down to the mine below. He rented a buggy from an old woman in town who’d emigrated from Scotland when she was a girl (“to get a bit more sun,” she said, with a laugh), and drove some 45 kilometres west to where the team on Earth had spotted the scar.

Where the scar stopped Jon found a small, spherical ship, white and crashed and cracked open like an egg. And: footprints. He followed their wavy way for another kilometre.

And there, at last, Jon found it.

The robot was the size of a child, with a round head like an unpocked Moon. Jon watched as it meandered until it found a large rock, lifted it up with ease, and peered at the shadow underneath.

“Hello?” said Jon, ready to duck.

The robot’s head swivelled around to find him. “Hello.”

“Have you any weapons?”

“Oh dear no.”

“Oh.” Jon stood back up. “What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for someone,” said the robot. Then it set the rock back down and walked to another. It lifted that one too.

“Who?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, what do they look like?”

“My instructions were a little unclear, I’m afraid.”

“Whose instructions?”

“The man who built me. He died back on Earth.”

“I see. And your ship, did he build that too? Are there more of you coming?”

“No, that was me. I thought this might be a good place to look.”

“I see.”

The robot stopped then and scanned the horizon, arms on its small hips. Its black eyes reflected starlight. Jon picked up a rock himself, examined it for a moment, and caved the robot’s skull in.

Inside the collapsed head were three little words on a ticker-tape slip. I MISS YOU, they said.

Jon buried the body and hid the grave. Then he sat down on a rock for a long time, breathing his suit’s recycled air. The Earth was such a long way away. Jon hoped that his parents’ thoughts, as they looked down on him, or up at him, wherever they were, wherever he was, were kind.

He kept the prayer to himself.

****

Jamie Redgate grew up on the north edge of Scotland. In 2018 he received his PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow after completing a three year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The resulting book, Wallace and I (2019), is now available in paperback from Routledge. Jamie has written about Japanese and American fiction, Christianity and fantasy, video games and veganism, and his work has been published by Cambridge University Press, Electric Literature, Unwinnable, Extra Teeth, Gutter: The Magazine of New Scottish Writing, and elsewhere. You can find him at www.jamieredgate.co.uk

FLASHFICTION

___________________________________________________________________

 Fortress

by David Capps

I awaken in the ravine. I walk down into the long fortress of the things I’ve said, where all words have the same meaning. Soon the woodsman comes, having just strolled through his forest, a swirling glass of familiar trees, sunsets and oxbows. I know him as the woodsman but he carries the sign of Artemis. When he sees the marble pillars of my fortress he loads his crossbow. Don’t be afraid, I yell down to him, and invite him to sit with me by the hearth. As I begin my story, I can tell already he knows it by heart. He listens the way a child would to his favorite bedtime story, except my story is not about the past, or the future, or some distant land. My whole story concerns the present moment. I tell him how I have wished for a divinity to assure me that everything is ok. Not that I expect a giant hug or anything, but that there should be some source of constancy in life. He nods and seems to sympathize, even while he tells me that mine is a forlorn wish, saying that if such a divinity did so assure me, I would not trust his word since everything is not ok. What I really wished for is such a divinity to make me trust him, to be more powerless than I already am under the guise of wishing for protection. After the conversation finishes he turns to me, as we had somehow forgotten to introduce ourselves, but also because it is hard to know anyone you have never looked squarely in the face. As I lean in I can see the bristling hare he had caught that morning, its ears sticking out from his cloth sack, the reddish curls of his matted beard, the first hints of what I have come to regard as an apology beginning to form on his lips before his crossbow goes off. I awaken in the ravine.

****

David Capps is a philosophy professor at Western Connecticut State University. He is the author of three chapbooks: Poems from the First Voyage (The Nasiona Press, 2019), A Non-Grecian Non-Urn (Yavanika Press, 2019), and Colossi (Kelsay Books, 2020). He lives in New Haven, CT.

_____________________________

 (S)talk Therapy

by Vishaal Pathak

Smoke rings emanate from a dark corner in the hall and fuse into a spiral.

“I… sometimes feel I am being watched – everywhere. The other day…”

The nice lady turns towards the dark corner. She looks back at me. Shakes her head.

I shift in my chair casually and reattempt, “My boss bullies me a lot. I was bullied as a child too. I have trouble…”

The nice lady slightly raises a finger. We pause. Someone in the corner clicks their tongue twice. She bites her lip and signals for me to try again.

I throw my hands up in the air. “Well…”, I struggle to find the right words. “There is,” I hesitate, “there is anger and rage all around. I… I feel unsafe…”

A member from the panel clears his throat before the nice lady has had a chance to react. He then leans forward – in slow motion. Light trickles on his face and his slicked-back hair. The sound of his throat-clearing reverberates in the hall. He stares intently at me, adjusts the ring on his finger and flicks his cigarette. He doesn’t blink an eye. I abruptly look away.

The nice lady wipes the sweat off her brow and softly calls out my name.

I fall back in my chair. “I… I hate this… chair?”

The nice lady sighs, immediately checks herself and begins, “Sometimes, chairs are not designed to our expectations. However, we must understand…”

The chair squeaks as I lean back further. A tear rolls out. I’m no longer listening.

****

Vishaal is a writer based in Lucknow, India. He writes mostly about memories, ethics, and time.

POETRY

_____________________________________________________________________

Goodwill

Supple Blight

by Laine Derr

Goodwill

I donated my heart, left it in a plastic bag

that once held Italian parsley. On a Tuesday,

during a pink dot deal, a stranger bought it

for 25% off. It hangs drying from a copper rack,

used sparingly on special occasions. Thinly sliced,

my heart pairs best with wild boar and red wine

bitter to the taste as I kiss your rust-stained lips.

A Supple Blight

Building a drey of hung-dry delicates,

her heart fancies itself a squirrel

bound by newly fallen snow, seams

twisting in the evening air, a supple blight

laced with pale truths – hollow and warm.

 ****

Laine Derr holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University and has published interviews with Carl Phillips, Ross Gay, Ted Kooser, and Robert Pinsky. Recent work appears or is forthcoming from Antithesis, ZYZZYVA, Portland Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.

________________________

The Perennial Passage

by Jan Wozniak

In the spirit of Ecclesiastes, the September sun rises

and renews the perennial passage of academic ambitions;

one generation cometh and another generation passeth away

washing away the old and making way for the new.

On these lands, reinforced by brick, concrete, and title

comes new waves of Beatniks, hedonists, and hipsters

wearing skinny jeans and sporting slicked back haircuts

Herschel knapsacks and Brixton snapbacks

who flood the campus with the renewed lifeblood that –

supplies the Institution’s beating heart with animation

after another long, inactive summer of rest.

****

Jan Alexander Wozniak (he/him) is a Canadian poet, short story writer, and scholar residing in Toronto, whose practice focuses on challenging traditional narrative and poetic structures, as well as our conception of psychology, psychiatry, and ethical responsibility. As a neurodivergent thinker, Jan is particularly interested in capturing the experiences of living with ADHD and in raising mental health awareness.  Jan has been published by ADDitude Magazine and has forthcoming works in Intersect, Spectrum, and JIRIRI.

__________________________________

The Plumber

Ode to My Yoga Pants

Drastic Measures

by Jennifer Triplett

The Plumber

Just the plumber, he liked to say,

greasy hat atop his head.

He wore coveralls in gray -

different names it said.

Some days Fred, John, Mark, Bill, Jose.

Letting herself look ahead

of who’d be today, playing.

He always had a spread

of tools for the kids to survey.

Her son dressed up like Fred,

And they took a picture that way,

her son with his new friend.

Their apartment was small, but nay

her husband condescending.

Tired after work every day,

his anger would ascend

in fists that came in disarray.

She started pretending,

thinking of how to get away

and to break this old trend.

Before, he had bought her bouquets

and she was young, declared

that he loved her -  he’d never stray.

So she joined him, unaware.

The plumber keeps coming, surveys

the bruises, is aware

that he needs to get her away

as she falls in despair.

Today he says it will be okay.

As he starts to prepare,

he rolls up his sleeves, tools displayed.

She says no, won’t let him dare

be affected by her charade.

That night her husband flares

and she falls like a stealth grenade,

eyeing the tool he left there.

Once he’s asleep, she surveyed

the scene and grabs the spare,

lifting it, ready to invade,

bringing it down, no care.

Ode to My Yoga Pants

This is for you, my one constant,

the one who has never let me down,

who fits even when I gain the

COVID-19 - this is to my yoga pants.

We fell in love on a warm spring day,

after spending months on the hunt

for the perfect pair.  Some material was

too tight, too shiny, too soft, too stretchy. 

Nothing fit just right.  But then my best friend

said look no further, I have the answer.

The Lululemon store has a whole wall

dedicated to different colors, sizes, material. 

She told me to try the Align Crop 21” – I

grabbed a black pair in my size.  The material was

buttery in my hand and stretched and morphed

as I yanked them on in the dressing room.

The waistband reached my belly button

and I gasped, staring in the mirror at this

perfect fitting pair of yoga pants. The nylon

and Lycra combination became a second skin.

From then on, I have lived in these

pants for all activities from working out to

sleeping to watching Netflix on the couch.

These yoga pants have rarely been used for yoga.

Even with a million washings and the start of

piling on my inner thighs, even with a tiny

hole on my right leg, even with any

imperfection, they are perfect to me.

Drastic Measures

She sits hyper aware

that she has come to fix a mark.

So long she has tried not to care,

but last summer he said, with snark

“Did someone hit you there?”

She reached for the dark spot in shock

giving him a cold stare.

The doctor comes in with a knock,

eyeing her in the chair.

Her mind screams to go on a walk,

To get away from there,

her lip starts to sweat as he talks.

Questions hang in the air,

does she want this or will she balk?

She nods, knowing she needs repair.

She can’t afford it, but will fork

over a card with care.

The machine whirls, starts to talk

against her skin with flair.

The pain seers, roving with a squawk,

Out comes the needle, bare.

It looms toward her, she gawks,

last to fix her despair.

She closes eyes against the force,

but is oh so aware

of the poison coursing

through her so she can be fair.

****

Jennifer Triplett is the daughter of Portuguese and German descent having grown up in the Central Valley of California on an almond farm where she learned how to work hard in the fields beside her parents and two sisters. She currently lives in Torrance, CA with her two daughters, newborn son, and husband where she has a Master’s degree in English: Rhetoric & Composition, a doctorate in Educational Leadership, and is finally pursuing her dream of writing in the Creative Writing program at Mount Saint Mary’s University. She is a college professor of English at Los Angeles Harbor College.

_____________________________

The Last of an Orchard

Winter Fog

Monsters Among You

by David Hoffman

The Last of an Orchard

Smelling of blackness / the dad-shapen prairie

             and scorched by the pond that’s west off the deck

Sprint-jumping-skip / and a crawl of a weave

             betweening the gravel aflow is the river

Mapping the apples / from whence there were pears

            peaches and plums aground are now ghosts

Taking a vantage / to look at the story

            the wise in the kitchen to boys in a tizzy

A gnarly old fogey / of tree on the corner

            kept unkempt-scratchy, spotty and tired

The end of a line / the one brother to bear

            scatters of tartier teardrops for shoes

Tasting with toes / the drooling of tongues

            picking with mitten-rich sweetness, a throw

In shadowy ditchness / yellow with wasps on the dead

            a towering arbor in only itself

The friend of the sun / by the son by the son

            is visited illness that’s glad for the myth

If in dying it goes / it gets sung by the fire

            with glory, tired of smiling but smiling for us

Waving to waves / at the wavy assembly

            and meeting the barn at the start of it all

Winter Fog

the edges, mystical

like a step in the blur would populate me at the opposite end of the dinner plate defined by the fog

a light breakfast

the cookie tinted, ice-white, creamy-centered light spills like milk into my dining room

the flow, propelling

from the considerate carpet onto the shocking wooden floor of the kitchen to fetch a coffee cup, groggily

an extension, the veil

my forgotten dreams shadow me so my usually regretful wokeness isn't welcome at the Keurig, dazed

my desktop: busywork

a world away (those other days), dutiful buildings beyond the breathing mist are a laughable fantasy

within it, globed-in

we're snowed-in, the lane a ledge bending into a foggy breath on glass in the crystalline atmosphere

Monsters Among You

The storied many

I suspect are fewer

            Out, in open trust of all others

            Uncaged roamers, docile

            Mate-calling and trotting, unafraid

            Alphas atop the food chain

The poisonous ideal, the sick sunlight

That shades are drawn against

‘Bright’ by all accounts but ignorance

Of their own aura that sends the nocturnal

Uncounted creatures, into hiding

But in that night

While the dwindling angels sleep

           The disdained creatures

           Cursed of opposite images in mirrors

           Convinced they are monsters

           Blindly echo about the towns

Doubt eternally in their shadowed shadows

Chasing, drinking, endlessly in the evening

A desperate hope that they are not alone

Gulping and gagging and choking

Until they are drunk on a belief

They worry is a lie

 ****

There is an image from David’s youth of an afterlife sky, purply above a round hill of fall prairie grass. His second-grade self wrote his first poem about that imagined place. Since then, he’s just been "going at it": writing because it feels that’s what David Hoffmans do. All trace of him just might vanish if he doesn't put himself on a page every now and again.

__________________________________

 Instructions for How To Life My Life

This is How The Cathedral Works

by Megan Wildhood

Instructions For How To Live My Life

if I should die.

Use resistance as formaldehyde.

Refuse to accept the fact of change.

Reserve the right to refuse,

and refuse the right to be reserved.

Stop eating when you’re upset.

Burn off the rest in punishing workouts.

When you hear about emotional eating

or exercise addiction, don’t identify.

React to every word or change like it’s a harpoon.

Pump your cortisol day and night ruminating on safety.

When you have to set your alarm,

forget to turn it off.

Believe you can remember everything else.

Resent always being called upon for miscellanea.

When you read—and read everything,

save acting on it for later.

Make mountains out of marginalia.

Believe the dark is made of bears.

And if you should die…

This Is How The Cathedral Works

The old story of danger is that there are places

people have made so beautiful

that you will never want to leave.

They have slammed heaven and earth

together and the magic might enrapture

you away from all else in favor of that altar forever.

This is not the danger, though.

Beauty is as dangerous as it is to call it so.

But that is not the danger, either.

Did they design the monuments and castles and basilicas

to be what they thought was beautiful

and, mysteriously, you have come to agree?

Did they preempt your sirens and bring them to life

before yours began? Or is there something engineered

about the worship of beauty, too?

****

Megan Wildhood is a neurodiverse writer from Colorado who helps her readers feel genuinely seen as they interact with her dispatches from the junction of extractive economics, mental and emotional distress, disability and reparative justice. She hopes you will find yourself in her words as they appear in her poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017) as well as The Atlantic, Yes! Magazine, Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more at meganwildhood.com.

__________________________

Episodic Epiphanies 

Etymology of Me as a Human: a Bilinguacultural Poem

Love Lost & Found: for Qi Hong

by Yuan Changming

Episodic Epiphanies 

1/ Into the Reality

You see, here’s the leaf dyed with the full

Spectrum of autumn; here’s the dewdrop

Containing all the dreams made on the

Darkest corner of last night; here’s the

Light pole in the forest where gods land

From another higher world; here’s the swirl

You can dance with to release all your

Stresses against the Virus. Here you are in

Deed as in need embracing

The most

Mindful moment, when you can readily

Measure your feel with each breath, but do

Not think about time, which is nothing but

A pure human invention. Just point every

Synapse of yours to this locale. Here is now 

3/ The Art of Living

   With my third eye I glaze into

The present moment, & there I find it

Full of pixels, each of which is

Unfurling slowly like a koru into

A whole new brave world that I 

Can spend days, even months to watch

As if from

          A magic kaleidoscope

Etymology of Me as a Human: a Bilinguacultural Poem

1/ Denotations of I vs 我

The first person singular pronoun, or this very

Writing subject in English is I, an only-letter

Word, standing upright like a pole, always

Capitalized, but in Chinese, it is written with

Seven lucky strokes as 我, with at least 108

Variations, all of which can be the object case

At the same time.

 Originally, it’s formed from

The character 找, meaning ‘pursuing’, with one

Stroke added on the top, which may well stand for

Anything you would like to have, such as money

Power, fame, sex, food, or nothing if you prove

Yourself to be a Buddhist practitioner inside out

2/ Connotations of Human & 人

Since I am a direct descendant of Homo Erectus, let me stand

Straight as a human/人, rather than kneel down like a slave

When two humans walk side by side, why to coerce

One into obeying the other as if fated to follow/从?

Since three humans can live together, do we really need

A boss, a ruler or a tyrant on top of us all as a group/众?

Given all the freedom I was born with, why, just

Why cage me within walls like a prisoner/囚？

Love Lost & Found: for Qi Hong

1/ Missing Most in Missed Moments

Each time I miss you

A bud begins to bloom

So you are surrounded by flowers

Everywhere you go

Each time I miss you

A dot of light pops up

   So you are illuminated by a whole sky

Of stars through the night

2/ The Greatest Soft Power

What Softens

                        A human heart is

Neither money nor honey

Rather, it is a good natured smile of

Some dog playing with a cat, a bird

Feeding her young with her broken wings

Covering them against cold rain at noon  The whispering of a zephyr blowing

From nowhere, the mist flirting fitfully

With the copse at twilight, the flower

Trying to outlive its destiny, as well

As the few words you actually meant

To say to her but somehow you forgot 

 In the tender of last night

****

Yuan Changming started to learn the English alphabet at age nineteen and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include twelve Pushcart nominations & twelve chapbooks (most recently LIMERENCE) besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among 1,899 others, across 48 countries. Yuan served on the poetry jury for Canada’s 44th National Magazine Award.

________________________________

 Fall

Driving Home Drunk, with the Devil Riding Shotgun

The Ambivalence of a Near-Death Dream

by Sean Murphy

Fall

On a dissolving horizon the sky looks good enough

to eat: orange sorbet on a black plate; overhead

birds want in on the action, circling one another

and entwined in some secret autumnal ritual.

All around me, innocent leaves are leaping

to their deaths, propelled by forces

they never asked or hoped to understand.

I stand on dead souls blown about by my brother,

the wind. I feel sorry for these leaves, obliged

to suicide themselves, only days after celebrating

the fleet summer of their fall, the full flowering

of uncontainable colors—their contribution

to the vibrancy of a landscape they’ll never

see. The wind speaks: Stay out of this, it says.

Driving Home Drunk, with the Devil Riding Shotgun

Midnight’s the cruelest hour, causing saints to sin and sinners to sing,

shrieking when—besotted with spirits and spirits spiraling, impaired

and incoherent—they realize they’re lost with no safe way home.

The bar beckons. Bars, if they’re good for nothing else, are great

for that. Watering holes for weary warriors who want what they got

and get nothing they ask for (they could pray but they know better).

Swinging down accustomed streets, a humid mist sweats beneath

the streetlights and clings to the faces of these silent, suffering souls.

You wade through the haze of colorless ties and colorful perfumes.

Familiar sights and sounds: laughter, screams, secrets, and seductions,

spilling out of mouths that come to places like this, killing themselves

slowly in order to survive. So what happens? It’s the same old story.

You don’t go looking for trouble; trouble has no qualms finding you

(it being so reliable that way). You work toward being a lover and not

a fighter, but of course it’s usually the loving that leads to the fighting.

Not working, but there’s a lot of work to do: going above and beyond

the call of duty. And the harder you work, the more you seem to spend.

You do so little and get paid so much, then work so hard and pay so much.

Someone makes the rules, and it’s not you: When you’re falling down a hill,

you pick up speed, and eventually momentum carries you. It does the work

for you, and after a while you begin to feel accountable, even a bit lazy.

So, you decide to pull your weight, take these matters into your own hands:

there’s nowhere good this can go and everybody knows that driving blind

with deafened senses is dumb. Shifting and stuttering (but smart enough)

Not to pray. The street refuses to speak; it shall not partner this perpetration

in progress. Overhead, the fully dressed oak trees on either side lean down

low, eager to eavesdrop. And here’s what they hear: Please help me…

The Ambivalence of a Near-Death Dream

According to legend you’re supposed to die

or come to upon impact.

I survived!

Upside down

car, broken bridge, shallow creek. Didn’t feel a thing.

(Too good to be true or else I’m already gone.)

All right.

Here comes the ambulance, right around the corner.

Only in a dream.

My father gets there first, older overnight.

He’s been here before: a hospital.

Dealing with the departure of someone he loved.

His father, his mother, his wife. But now: his son?

Unacceptable. You make deals after what he’s endured:

No one else goes before me or else

It’s a perversion of the natural order, an affront

to everything fair.

But who said life is fair, the doctor doesn’t say,

having seen it all and learned all the ways

they don’t prepare you for how indiscriminate death is,

indifferent with regards to who, where, when, and especially why.

Everyone disappears and I’m in a hotel lobby.

An industrious staff does everything but tend to me

because, of course, this is a dream.

After a while I’m aware:

they’re making me wait—or else I have to earn it.

Am I worthy of life? Am I worthy of death?

I begin to protest and then understand: what better time

than now for questions of this kind.

My old man, who can’t possibly lift me at his age, is

carrying me up steps and between buildings,

impatient with paramedics who never arrived or

maybe I imagined that other stuff. He’s angry;

either afraid or simply asserting control.

(the only thing more crucial than who stays or goes.)

Eventually I implore him to get assistance and he puts me down

in despair disguised as disgust: This all used to be so much easier.

Blameless bystanders stop and watch and I feel ashamed,

half-naked, baptized in blood and mud and tear-stained sweat,

what was earlier relief now an omen, or something worse—

suddenly unable to speak. My worst nightmare: maybe

I’m actually dead but I’m still me. That must mean something,

there’s somewhere else after all…

(another thing I was wrong about, as usual.)

Where is everyone?

I’m alone and that’s even worse than dying or living

through death: being aware and nothing to say or anybody

to explain myself to.

Where’s my sister?

She should be here by now, and are her kids old enough

to see me like this?

How do I look, I wonder, because I’m either one extreme

or the other: nurses can afford to ignore me since there’s nothing

to do, for better or worse.

So, I wait. Is this limbo? I feel like I need to get my story straight,

just in case.

Finally, someone walks into the lobby. It’s my father,

his return implying something about prodigal sons.

But wait!

How or why be damned he’s got my mother with him

and she’s smiling, resplendent and above all, alive,

about to tell me everything’s okay…

And then I wake up.

****

Sean Murphy has appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered" and been quoted in USA Today, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and AdAge. A long-time columnist for PopMatters, his work has also appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, The Good Men Project, Memoir Magazine, and others. His chapbook, The Blackened Blues, was published by Finishing Line Press in July, 2021. This Kind of Man, his first collection of short fiction, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and served as writer-in-residence of the Noepe Center at Martha's Vineyard. He’s Founding Director of 1455, a non-profit literary organization (www.1455litarts.org). To learn more, and read his published short fiction, poetry, and criticism, please visit seanmurphy.net/ and @bullmurph.

___________________________________

 La luna se me escapa

Muéstrame tus cadenas, pájaro

La primavera ha llegado de nuevo

by Hibah Shabkhez

La luna se me escapa

Las estrellas me dicen: ven y cena

    con nosotros, humana.

No respondo, porque estoy mirando

  las flores que florecen en el lago

    en el claro de luna.

Las estrellas, furiosas de perder

  su monopolio sobre la magia nocturna

    se esconden, la luna sigue;

Como un pecado que se convierte

    en su propia penitencia.

Muéstrame tus cadenas, pájaro

Por qué tienes que volver al mismo

  País cada primavera, pájaro?

¿No te aburres? Nunca te dices

'Esta vez pasaré la primavera

  En una nueva tierra'?

Por qué tienes que volver, pájaro

  A pesar de tus alas?

Dígame, porque quiero buscar

  Las cadenas que me atan,

Cadenas, que, como las tuyas

  Nunca se revelan.

Dígame, o - libérate y vuela, ¡vuela!

  Lejos de aquí.

La primavera ha llegado de nuevo

La primavera pasada, hice mi maleta

Para un viaje a los campos de lavanda.

  La primavera pasada, era joven.

Esta primavera, vieja, retiro cosas de la valija

  Sin desempaquetar.

Ríete conmigo o ríete de mí,

  Nada me va a importar;

Solo finge ser feliz para no llorar,

Para decir – ‘eres feliz, soy feliz también’

****

Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Plainsongs, Microverses, Sylvia Magazine, Better Than Starbucks, Post, Wine Cellar Press, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages, and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/HibahShabkhez

_____________________________________

Nostos

In the wings

by Steven Deutsch

Nostos

It was on the rise

behind the blueberry bushes,

blue-black with fruit.

I don’t know

what drew me there

since my bucket was full,

but a small stone

stairway made its

way up the rise.

I imagine a homestead

once stood above—

but could find no trace.

I took the stairs

up then down

then up again

calling out, “honey

I’m home,”

echoes died to stillness—

a quiet

that predated man’s

invention of time,

as I sat on the top

step in the late

morning sun,

feasting on berries

and daydreaming

of home.

In the Wings

Slight and subtle

like a breeze

from the west

that presages

a storm,

it reminds me

of the mortality

of the seasons

with little truths

that confound

the senses.

So, so ordinary

that they are

not.

Today, I find

an elm leaf

in my hair—

gray and desiccated

yet once a lively green.

It has been

in the night air

far too long.

Breeze stronger

now and the sky

like eggshell—

soon, so soon.

 ****

Steve Deutsch has been widely published both on line and in print. Steve was nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. He is poetry editor for Centered Magazine. His Chapbook, Perhaps You Can, was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length book, Persistence of Memory was published in 2020 by Kelsay, Steve’s third book of poetry, Going, Going, Gone, was published in November 2021.

______________________________

 When The Horses Finish

The Oaf

The Pet Poem

by Jason Visconti

When The Horses Finish

As if crescendo paid the earth its musical bill,

And all the orchestra has played this ride,

Instruments traded for instincts upon the rail,

Their strings worked by the hands that steal stampedes,

Yet everything passing through a diamond veil.

The Oaf

The body has walked out on the affair,

All the body’s knickknacks crash through the mantle,

It's the posture of an isolated stanza,

The gesture with a speech of arms that ramble,  

A compass with the forgetfulness of where.

The Pet Poem

This is not the sweetness you asked for,

Not the rendering of a bundle of joy,

For as I smooth my hands across its fur

This page will end in some unanswered void,

I'm sorry to be that writer.

****

Jason Visconti first discovered his love for poetry after losing his mother at a young age and needing a way to express himself. Decades later, it remains his passion.

_________________________________

Ash and Roses

Dulcet Tones in Shade

Hungarian Falls, Michigan

by Kenneth Pobo

Ashand Roses

Dulcet Tones’ favorite Aunt,

Triton, began each morning

asking “Am I still here?” 

He visits the cemetery often,

talks to the dead—

and not just his Aunt.

Martha, born in 1792—a pine

shades her. 

Dulcet says he won’t be a plot. 

His plot will be finished,

all the implausible scenes,

the many poorly phrased comebacks. 

He’ll become the cigarette

he no longer smokes, an ash man,

dust around red roses. 

Dulcet Tones in Shade

Sometimes I yen for Neptune,

to curl up in his frozen

blue arms.  Neptune is moony,

the sun barely a cough. 

I ought to stay with Earth,

even as we ruin it more

each day.  For now,

it has flowers.  I swim

in a red daylily’s vast pool. 

And trees.  I sit in shade

and listen to a pebble

recite her first poem.

Sometimes I yen for Neptune,

to curl up in his frozen

blue arms.  Neptune is moony,

the sun barely a cough. 

I ought to stay with Earth,

even as we ruin it more

each day.  For now,

it has flowers.  I swim

in a red daylily’s vast pool. 

And trees.  I sit in shade

and listen to a pebble

recite her first poem.

Hungarian Falls, Michigan

A mob of mosquitoes

fades into October.

We reach Hungarian Falls,

no one else here,

the water a drift

of white against

yellow leaves. 

We almost slip

on wet rocks.  Danger

calls us.  As does beauty.

We must risk. 

****

Kenneth Pobo is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), and Uneven Steven (Assure Press). Opening is forthcoming from Rectos Y Versos Editions. Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose is forthcoming from Brick/House Books.

______________________________

Anchor

by Lauren Vogel

You threw it off our boat

So casually

And drowned me with it

Lured by sirens ten times

Prettier than I’ll ever be.

I washed ashore onto the same

Beach I grew up on,

Stretchmarks of seaweed

Traced the changing tides.

The sting of embarrassment

Is a nasty sunburn

Peeling away excuses I made

For every time you hurt me;

You are weightless,

No longer burdened by an anchor

Heavy with candor

Yet still naive enough

To forget the Ocean floor

Is volcanic

And silent,

And a lung full of water

Let’s a dead body rise

Like a phoenix

From the very

Ashes you at one time

Hoped for the privilege

To cry over.

But the seagulls are gossips

Loyal only to the source

Of their suppers

And She is

Far crueler than

I could ever hope to be

****

Lauren Vogel is a college student, writer, aspiring filmmaker, and excellent amateur baker.