SHARMILA SEYYID

THREE POEMS

poems written by Sharmila Seyyid and translated by Gita Supramaniam

"I Am Composing a Song"

I am composing a song
I am writing these lyrics to tell the world
Why this contrarian path I tread.
This is my testimony.

I am a fallen woman, they say,
A prostitute...

One can be a slave of love
But to talk about sex is wrong
Bearing a child is alright, they say,
But to talk about the orifice from
Where the child comes is wrong...

Ultimately –
To state it unequivocally
The death sentence has been pronounced on me.

But till the last millisecond
Before my head is severed from my shoulders
I will live.

This is my body
My make-up
My jewellery
My clothes
My foot-wear
My odour
My language
My religion
My love
This house where I live
This road I walk on
This book I read
All these
Will remain mine
And will be what I want
Only thus will I live!

Till the last millisecond
I will live.

"Incompatible"

They were talking about my body,
My body, that lies there
Where I had cast it away.

They don’t accept me as one of them
Because they do not want to accept that I too
Can have solid views and not budge from them.
The night and the moon do not attract me, I'm not like them,
They are angry with me because I refuse
To be subjected to their black magic
And dwell in caves of inky darkness,
And become a genie - corked inside a bottle.

They do not accept
My determination to not let their strictures
Make me stray from my chosen path.
I want to confront them face to face
When they challenge me and ask,
How will you grow without any sustenance,
Without any help from the world outside you?

Those who have seen my magic wings are amazed.
My simple and plain words
Encircle them like an endless snake;
Unable to free themselves, they struggle
And stumble...

I again reinvent myself,
An even sharper me I see.
There my body still lies
There, where I cast it off.
Once more, I curb my intense urge
To embrace my body again,
Because...
Because I do not wish to become
A genie corked inside a bottle...

"That Ancient Village"

In those sandy lanes
Lined dense with Portia trees,
In those bright houses from where
Light spills out and spreads,
In the evenings filled with the fragrance of incense-sticks,
In the sound of the muezzin’s call
And in the sound of the foot-steps of the early morning
There, that ancient village still exists.

There, where I was not loved,
Where my pleas were never given ear to,
Where I was made to shed copious tears,
There, that ancient village
Still continues to exist.

Oh Eravur, my land, my soil,
Remind me again of the evidence that I left behind.
The palm-fronds I swung on,
The papaya leaves I used against the drizzling skies
The areca nut palm-spathes we pulled along as chariots
The fragrance of the fresh ginger growing under the banana trees
The flavour of the juicy Willard mangoes running between the fingers
The aroma of the jackfruit pulp that pervades the entire street
Alas! How great is my loss!

My beloved village
I was not tired of you
I did not move away.
When the time for harvesting comes
This crazy state will change
The time will come when you will again
Weave the cloth that’s mine by right.

There is nothing more to be said
For, my footwear I’ve left behind,
There, to stay
For eternity!

Read our full feature on Artist Protection Fund recipient Sharmila Seyyid ➔

ROHAN BUETTEL

Clearing out My Mother’s Home

The gift not given joins others
at the bottom of the cupboard,
gradually accumulating,
awaiting the right time
to be brought out, the ideal present
for birthday, christening, Christmas.
The bunnykins bowl languishes,
mother rabbit washing bunny kids
in a large tub. Some out, some in,
some trying to escape, all the playful fun
of bath time, water and suds.
Bunnies scamper round the rim.
The bowl perfectly new
in a cupboard full of things unused,
bought in anticipation
of a grandchild never delivered,
still awaiting the right occasion
in a house now being emptied.
How do we value the gift not given?

Rohan Buettel is an Australian poet who lives in Canberra and whose haiku and longer poetry appear in a range of Australian and international journals.

TERRY JUDE MILLER

Art

“You’d think it was a giant
with a vague face
a face you recognize
but can’t really describe”

- Naomi Shihab Nye

it’s like a little parasite
that you don’t mind

so parasite might not be the right word
maybe symbiote

that’s one of the things it does
makes you think one thing

that leads to another thing
and soon the meadow is full

of flowers—all of them talking
at one time—writing their ideas

on petals—flinging their words
in the air—saying look—look—look

and you look and you smile and you cry
and you grieve and you grow nostalgic

that’s why you love your little symbiote
even when it wakes you at 2AM

to whisper something beautiful
in your ear

Terry Jude Miller is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Houston. His works have been published in numerous anthologies.

Twitter: @PoetTerryMiller
IG: TexasPoet
Website: https://terryjudemiller.com

KALIE JOHNSON

God Seems Smaller than the Sun

GOD SEEMS SMALLER THAN THE SUN

I was alone during the solar eclipse, watched across an empty, unraveling yard as a middle school boy with pimples big as the clouds watched the sun through a box of upside-down Apple Jacks. I held heavy, blacked-out glasses to my face and stared at the sun, dared myself to peek without them; I was always a coward. Quiet rustled in the grass like bird prints in muddy snow or never-finished tree carvings. You knew something was there, but now it was over. The sun was stolen. Lost Sun listing, my rain-soaked flyer with the numbered tabs at the bottom. Take a number if you have any information; I realized no one’s answers were enough.

I watched with toes in desperate grass and found myself missing the almostness of electrocution in my eyes while driving, missing the sun when it filters in through morning's frost-tipped windows, the careless rising of the sun like children’s scraped knees from intentionally breaking their mother’s back. You have to accept pain to cause it; the sun accepted mine with open flames instead of embraces. I never knew I needed the sun until I had to look away, felt my eyes watch the boy and his cereal box, tilting, tilting against the green grass of gravity. I think now would be the best time to swim, to fall into water, lay in a pool of sunless blue--drowning when the world is fragile.

I go inside and cry, know a new kind of betrayal. It is no longer sun-crisped worms on sidewalks, wiggling, edging towards grass, but convulsing into letters that spell out “you could have saved me.” Funny how worms make better use of ABCs. I do not fear ant deaths or burning alive or my father's girlfriend's sun tattoo. I do not fear anything but the sun's disappearance now. When I wake the next day, my only mantra is "I hope the sun will rise today," the only thing I can count on has fallen away, and like broken love, I am left to wonder if it will come back.

My fingers grazed the surface of the sun that day, pried open the fragile wiring that held me from it once before. I let my grandmother tell them it was an accident when I shattered from swinging, hustling, touching with the tips of sticky fingers before I broke silence for gravel kisses and caterpillar tears that clambered across my face, more a reaction to the fear of knowing I reached the sun than from scratching, grey rocks.

I quit rising with the sun after that, backed against the ridges of my knuckles for support as the sun rolling pins over the wet newspaper in the driveway and floods against my dad packing lunch at 6 am, the smell of cigarettes already clinging to his fingers. Another day, another fight with God. Hands are just placeholders like the rising sun, which coffee-drips into the room, rasps its way to every corner, begs the comforter to part again. Why do we leave bed today? I cannot rise with the sun any longer, fear the beginning of morning, my parents waking.

By noon, you realize the sun was not meant for broken families, fought against the sigh of fatherless children, stumbled over missing mothers and empty closets, coat hangers knocking against each other in dusty bitterness, a constant reminder that someone walked out and never came back. We are hanging by them now, a poorly trained trapeze artist falling into unemployment. Daytime is slow, chalk up the cracked sidewalk and my father’s bible across the brim of the toilet. Leave the family alone; let them mourn.

I take warm rain and lightning strikes for morning kisses now, the rasp of my father’s day-old voice is a whistle through the window screen, except it is just the drag of a dying mouse, a gift in the watermelon belly of my youth, the sticking of thighs to wicker chairs. Children draw wiggles of spaghetti suns, and we tell them never look, never stare, never draw attention, shame, power. It is funny they are all the same. Shame at the solar system; shame at my own religion. My craft scissors in my dry hair, I sit beside my brother, run inside from the scrutiny of the sun, and sip tomato juice. I ask my father if anything bleeds blue. He says our blood is blue, but by the time it meets air, it is red. I wonder if the sun is the same way and pull at the skin from my fingernails. The suns of keratin crawl from my flesh and glaze your skin in prisms of downward spirals and gentle ballerina bounces.

I hold up the glass prism that has fallen off the branches of my grandmother's shrinking cactus, watch the sun shatter across the room, hit her fireplace, the chair I napped in on Tuesday, and compose itself across her sunflower paintings. The cat wakes up when the room starts dancing, steno green eyes knowing life is at play. God, can you hear me? I set the prism back in the dirt, let the rainbows slide into the grains of the walls, and realize the sun is always gone when someone dies.

GOD SEEMS SMALLER THAN THE MOON

Beneath freckle constellations and baby powder snow, I realize moon clippings cannot survive on their own. I know now that I can dry-swallow the moon in doctor office gulps, drink in stubborn grace that tastes like grape cough syrup, and chuckle at how silly we were back then. It is a nighttime swim you cannot take with me.

Yet, I fear I will never be unaffected by night. Night fooled me, told me the boy who sang me love songs while cradled side by side in the thickening of his comforter did not want real intimacy. Tricked into pinpricks of starry-eyed romance, I felt along the ribbons of his throat when I laid down to hear him sing--deepen, darken nighttime with the soft soaking that told me this moment was everlasting. Atonement never felt so easy. When the night ended, I skipped beneath the moon, opened the window to sleep aside thunder that shook my pillow with possession. It ended, cycled into the baby tones of emptying night into day, where neither one of us claimed we know the other any longer.

But I used to claim the night with hot-watered conviction. My grandmother ripped me from my bed after every storm. 2 am, 3 am, the draining of nighttime could not stop her. She rattled a strobing flashlight from her rough hands into my own sleeping fingers. Are you leaving? Please shut off the lights. I stumbled in rain boots across sliding grass and searched the top of the mud for worms. I felt invasive, stealing light that did not belong to anyone but the moon to reveal scrawling expanses I’d never wanted to disrupt. Scooping stolen nightcrawlers into buckets wasn’t my only nighttime church service. Grandma taught me to kneel in silence and give God my mind. But she could speak in tongues, and I couldn’t pronounce my W's. I feared her, begged her to stop. Do not deny God. I removed the window screen and knelt until the church service I had rambled at the half moon was met with wet mosquito bites or the taillights of my neighbor’s car heating up on the waffle crunch snow. I never left the house without a flashlight again.

The first time I saw the moon was in my father’s fingernails, the soft crescent hills of calico calcium reflecting the moon I later threw rocks at. I found my guilt in his fingertips; feared it all in the midst of waves of geodes cracking into a nighttime heartbeat. My grandma spoke in tongues again; rhythm matches the crickets. God is talking back and dripping from the base of Van Gogh’s moon. He painted that crumbling cookie moon in spiraling yellow that thickened above a sleeping city. We were both made for the night shift. The nocturnal only know the power of religion in waxes and wanes.

They all know the moon. Bukowski wrote of deadbeat winters and turned every icy forgotten father into a gospel. And I, I am battling dusty Mondays, finding the meaning of life in curling L's and $20 books. Dusty Mondays that dance under nailbeds of satellite suns, dew drops drip from rusting gutters. The moon is careless tonight. I am riding a journey of night upon day and day upon night; I trust that love is the meaning of life. The car kisses the garage doors, ducks beneath hail like lemon cough drops. I wonder if God cowers beneath the Sun and Moon too.

Kalie Johnson is a 25-year-old living near Chicago. She's published in BW's The Mill, California State's Watershed Review, Fatal Flaws Literary Magazine, The Bookends Review, Coffin Bell Journal, and The Quillkeeper's Press. She is looking forward to being published with THAT Literary Review and Jet Fuel Review. When she’s not writing, she enjoys seeing the world, hiking, roller skating, and camping. You can find her writing Instagram at @thingsfeelwrite.

JULIAN GEORGE

Screamer

Warren didn’t think of it at the time, but the idea of screaming in public was planted in his head in the boys’ room in high school (Marist). Lester "The Molester" Harris (nicknamed after his sort of lookalike, Oakland Raiders’ great Lester "The Molester" Hayes), who was standing next to him, told him of his habit of screaming into a pillow, loud as he could, till he could scream no more, dead to the world and all the pain in it (and all the pain it caused him). Lester was usually stoned.
Lester had picked up on this from a popular self-help book, The Primal Scream, which Warren had also read, except Warren "forgot" the pillow part and screamed his damn fool head off as if being attacked by wolves. His parents, serious professional people with all the right credentials, sent him to Dr. Mantis, a child psychiatrist, after that episode, which meant skipping the odd class or two, no sweat. Dr. Mantis, a Thirtysomething similarly credentialed but covered in corduroy, said it was a case of post-childhood, early-mid-late-adolescent hysteria, or perhaps a case of very early premature early-adulthood agoraphobia, fear of life, rare but nothing to be worried about unless it stemmed from an unconscious or semiconscious or fully conscious childhood or infancy trauma he was too ashamed to talk about or confess to, Catholics, (go figure), I’ll get to the bottom of his shame and trauma and expose it to the light of reason and hygienic scrutiny. Was he properly toilet trained? Was Warren a bed-wetter? Did he masturbate? If so, how often did he masturbate? Where and when? (Put that down!) Had he started seeing girls yet? Was he interested in girls or was he in a latency phase? Would he like to talk about this lack of interest in girls or was he perhaps interested or not interested in boys? And if he didn’t want to talk about this interest or lack of interest in boys or girls, why didn’t he want to talk about it? What was he hiding and where was he hiding it? Would he feel better talking to the hand, puppet-gloved, of course (blue dogs for boys, pink cats for girls), he didn’t want Warren to get the wrong idea or the right one. Spill! (Or words to that effect.) Warren smirked. What a --
He started to daydream about screaming "fire" in the cinema where he worked weekends, but thought better of it. The law took a dim view of such pranks and might put him in "The Cooler" (an expression picked up from Hogan’s Heroes) or, disregarding his status as an underage outpatient, in the "Laughing House" (from Kiss Me Deadly, a blast). Worse, his boss, whom he had a crush on, might give him the axe; she’d indulge Warren’s rudeness to customers ("the customer is always wrong," she’d chirp, "even when they’re right"), but wouldn’t indulge a catastrophic loss of turnover.
His chance came one slow frigid evening, a Woody Allen double-feature, Annie Hall and Manhattan (Woody wasn’t terribly big in Burt Smokey and the Bandit Reynolds country), as he worked the box office, a cubicle in front of a shabby art deco cinema from the silent era.

Rubbing his mitts and clearing his throat, he warmed up with a few mi-mi-mis, the Caruso of Camp Bowie Boulevard. Finally, a truck rumbled past; he let out a scream. Not a soul heard him.
The second time, however, his boss, who was poking around behind the candy case, wondering what she could scarf that wouldn’t add to her waist, did hear and rushed outside.
What was that?
Nothing.
Are you alright?
A nod.
It’s too cold for you out here, with your chest. Come inside to the candy case and let Stu take over. He won’t mind. (He drinks.)
Driving him home that night, she told him she knew what he was doing. She did the same herself, into a paisley cushion. Screaming was a fun – and liberating -- way of letting off steam. Then she sighed, the words of a song he was unfamiliar with, Angel Eyes, escaping her violet breath. Warren examined her face for a clue as to her feelings and reckoned he could steal a kiss, which, to his surprise, she welcomed with a warm, wet mouth.
A decade later, on a half-empty DC8 flying over the Big Nowhere, he fantasized about screaming, "We’re all going to die," and the ensuing pandemonium. He snickered, amused with the notion of this Surrealist act. OK, he wasn’t running down a street with a pistol, firing blindly into a crowd, but by gum Dali and Buñuel would be proud to claim this young provocateur as one of their own. A timid-looking, straw-faced man seated across the aisle winced. Was he a mind reader?
That Christmas, Warren and his ex-boss, now alcoholic and burdened with caring for her deteriorating father all on her lonesome, became lovers for a few overcast weeks, any port in a storm.
Years passed. Warren was ensconced in the City of London, gainfully employed in some financial chicanery or another, an insufferable ass in a nice English suit. He’d hear from home, happily in the form of cheques, bribes to buy his long-distance love. Thank you. (Keep ‘em coming.) One day, shutting the door on the moist chilly air, slitting open the latest missive, a clipping instead of a cheque fluttered out: his ex-boss, his sloshed, quick, back to my blue room far away upstairs playmate, had died after a long illness. Bam. He reeled back, bam, as if shot, bam, as in his favorite old gangster movies, Cagney, Bogie, Eddie Robinson, they died so well, crumpling into an uneasy easy chair, gasping, nothing coming up the pipes, a howling, blood-curdling scream, a catharsis that would leave him floored, would have done him a world of good but nothing, the stuffing knocked out of him, for real.

Julian George’s writing has appeared in Perfect Sound Forever, New World Writing, Slag Glass City, McSweeney’s, Panoplyzine, Ambit, The Journal of Music, Film Comment, and Cineaste. He’s been a wine merchant, a UN translator, an auctioneer, and a carer. His novel, Bebe (CB Editions), appears this autumn in the UK.

ERIN OLDS

While You Were Away

I’d leave the lights on each night you weren’t home,
even in the bedroom,
so they wouldn’t think I was there alone.

I slept with a pillow over my eyes.
Well, sleep is a weird word to describe what I did when
I’d leave the lights on. Each night you weren’t home,

small noises scared me. I’d drown them
with the TV blaring downstairs, deadening the air
so I wouldn’t think. I was there alone

and sometimes I got cozy in a cold shower, afraid
of the air outside waiting to wrap around wet skin. And after,
I’d leave the lights on each night. You weren’t home,

and I would think, safe is a pretty term, a feeling to dream of.
I slipped a ring on my finger, though it wasn’t love,
so they wouldn’t think I was there alone.

I struggled out of blankets, packed my clothes, wrote this poem,
left. And double locked the door.
I’d leave the lights on the night you came home
so you would think I was still there. Alone.

Erin Olds is from Cleveland, Ohio, and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of South Florida.

WILL NEUENFELDT

She Has Notifications Silenced

One purple crescent
sent into sky
where my blue cloud
wafts above, alone,
aware it’s been seen
yet lingers to be heard.
Rain clicks from fingers
before droplets dry
to admire characters
we typed across night
and the stories they
tell twinkle white.
Through the window
drafts of our last chat
whisper in stereo
and lull me to dream
to awake in overcast.
I reply with more
blue into the heavens
so another afternoon
of bubbly clouds scroll by.

Will Neuenfeldt studied English at Gustavus Adolphus College, and his poems are published in Capsule Stories, Months to Years, and Red Flag Poetry. He currently lives in Cottage Grove, MN. IG: @wjnpoem

ASHLEIGH RAJALA

Do Not Resuscitate

It started with the cure for cancer. I didn’t believe it at first; no one did. It was impossible to think it was anything but fake news, and plus I was wary of getting my hopes up. We’d gone through everything you could think of with Sarah. Chemo. Experimental drugs. Naturopaths. Even positive fucking thinking.
She was more positive than I was by the end of it. I guess she had to be. It was her life on the line, not mine. I was just the husband. But it was there, all over Twitter. Facebook. Every TV channel. Texts and notifications were popping up on my phone. Is it real? Is it true? How is Sarah feeling?
Everyone says that now. “It started with the cure for cancer.” But it wasn’t really a cure.
Cancer just… stopped. Everywhere. All at once. I had my phone in my hand, staring down at the messages in disbelief. Even people I hadn’t heard from in months, those who avoided us under the pretext of “giving us space.” You know, those who are really just scared and don’t want to face it. They reached out now. Is Sarah’s cancer gone? Just like all the others?
I walked into the bedroom that I still thought of as ours, even though I hadn’t slept in there in months. Sarah had always wanted to die at home. Nothing was making sense; it all felt like a sick joke, but then I saw her, sitting up in bed, grinning.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” she said. I wanted to say it was the morphine, but I saw the drip dangling, useless. She’d ripped it out. I didn’t think she’d had the strength.
But it wasn’t just cancer. It was everything.
Well, almost everything. Nurses and doctors in hospices reported the terminally ill just suddenly feeling better. Emergency rooms had no more casualties. Heart attacks, car accidents, anything. They still happened, but everyone survived.
Even the very old clung to life.
For a while, any death made the news. People were still getting the hang of what was going on. No one quite knew “the rules” yet.
That is, until doctors, I guess, got cocky. With patients unable to die, what was the point of stressing out to save their life?
So this was the kicker, the thing no one saw coming: no one could die unless under someone’s express intent. Murder and suicide were still on the table. Someone jumping off a bridge with the intent to die would die. Someone with poison slipped into their wine would die.
And negligence, as it had all come to show, was equal to intent. A doctor not stepping in to save a life was effectively ending it. A paramedic dilly-dallying on their response. A parent leaving their baby in the woods.
That came like a second wave. First, no one dies. Then, too many die. Half were ruled accidents. The courts ate themselves alive with the question of culpability. If one didn’t believe their victim would actually die, how could one prove intent?
The news was too much for anyone to bear those days.
Not least of all Sarah.
And she had nothing to do but sit at home, watching the news.
She’d tried to get her job back but couldn’t. She’d quit when she’d got her diagnosis six months previous and when she was cured, they’d filled her position. There was no precedent for not dying when everyone thought you were going to. There was just a, “You quit. Sorry. New person is past their probationary period,” and a casual shrug.
At first, it was easy to say, “At least I’m alive,” but then, I suppose, the pain of living creeps back in. At least it did for her.
The rest of the world carried on. Now that we all knew “the rules,” that is.
Nurses had to keep nursing. Safety regulations had to stay in place. Food still had to be consumed.
I’d come home from work myself and find Sarah red-eyed on the sofa. She always had questions for me. “Why they’d stop calling?” I didn’t know how to answer that one. Whom did she mean? Those who stopped calling when she got sick or those who stopped calling now that she was all better?
Another day, she asked, “What will happen when we all get too old? Who will deal with us?”
And another: “Why is this happening?”
And then she couldn’t ask anything at all.
The inevitable catches up and we all act surprised though we should’ve seen it coming. But we all have to live on and live with each other.
Whatever that looks like. I can’t quite tell myself yet.
We can’t die, but that doesn’t mean we’re gonna make it out of this alive.

An award-winning fiction writer and indie role-playing game designer, Ashleigh Rajala lives and works in Surrey, BC, on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples.

ADRIAN KENNEDY

Jaguar, but Pronounce the “U”

I became the one thing I sought to destroy
A child?
No!
A velociraptor
It eats people raw
Bones wet with blood and flesh
Like a Big Mac
Blood being the sauce
How gross.
In Catholic Church we drink gods blood
And we eat his body
So
How could we be so different than a velociraptor
If not even worse
Eating our savior
Stop
Don't think of it that way.
A wasp
It stings people
And it’ll never tell you why because it’s a wasp and it can’t speak
Yet
They can grow, just like anything.
You’re doing it again, you know you need to stop.
It’s a human
Who does very bad things
Who can’t be forgiven and doesn’t want forgiveness
That’s what they say
Constantly.
But I am also human
The apple must not fall far.

This hasn’t been helpful. I’m sorry.

Adrian Kennedy is a writer whom chooses to remain nondescript. Their work, "To Face the Sun," has previously been featured in In Parenthesis online blog.

ELIZA HAYSE

To Know Everything (on the Camino de Santiago): A Story of Connection

Outside the chapel of lost souls, we eat overripe nectarines, bruised from our bags. Two days prior you mocked me for buying them, telling me they would go bad quickly, that I should opt for a sturdier fruit. I’d ignored you, and now we hold the bruised fruit in our hands as we sit on exposed stone, the sun pounding on our shoulders. I peel away some of the skin with my teeth and the juice, which had been longing to burst, collects on my lips, dribbling down my chin. You use your fingers to split the fruit open at the suture, nectar spilling from your fingers.

“See? They’re nearly rotten.” You take a bite, and I watch your jaw move.

“They’re sweeter this way.” You look at me and grin, and I don’t meet your eyes but I can feel them. We sit quietly, the stone wall cool, the chapel shadow leaning left in front of us. We eat around the dark bruises in the white flesh. You take the pit out of your nectarine and place it between us, like an offering to the God we mock.

“What makes a soul ‘lost?’” I break the silence, and the words sink in the humidity. I can feel them settle on the lobes of my ears, on my hairline, on my shoulder blades.

You laugh, but it catches in your chest. “A soul that is here.” This time, I look at you. Your nose and cheeks are burnt, and your curls are flattened from sweat. I pick up the pit you placed on the stone. It is cracked, so I split it open with my thumbnail and reveal the seed inside.

“You know the seeds of stone fruit like this contain cyanide?”

“Why do you know that?”

“I know everything, remember?” I place the open pit down, the seed revealed. Next to me, you tear off a piece of bread and hand it to me.

"Then you tell me, what makes a soul lost?" You gaze ahead and tear another piece of bread off, this time for yourself.

"Then you tell me, what makes a soul lost?" You gaze ahead and tear another piece of bread off, this time for yourself. The way you speak is stilted, not because you are uncomfortable but because English is still unfamiliar, and so your tongue is too heavy in your mouth and on the back of your teeth. I want you to meet my gaze, but when you glance at me, my eyes find the sky and I squint. I take a few minutes to respond, my jaw feels stiff and marionette-like.

“I don’t think anyone can know that until they are being prayed for.” This response seems to be satisfactory to you, and the smile on your face is almost too soft to see, but I know it well.

“I think maybe we are lost souls.”

“Yeah, that part is obvious.” I rest my hand on the bench next to me, centimeters from yours, calculating the space like I am considering a math problem. My brow is furrowed. Both of us gaze straight ahead at the long grass; the chapel doors closed, the steel gates rusted. I wonder what it is like inside, and I wonder if you wonder that too.

When we met, I liked the way your shoulders moved when you walked. You seemed so at ease like the air was cradling you. You smiled like you had a secret, and I liked that too. The first thing you told me was that I seemed scared. I don’t think you knew how much that was true. You were rolling a cigarette so gently, looking at me sideways. Your t-shirt was dirty and hung on your frame like ivy on wet stone. I was leaning against the wall, looking past you, through you, not even remembering your name. My hands were shaking, I think. They always do.

Outside the chapel, I was thinking about how much cooler it had been then. Now my body is damp, sweat and sunscreen making me sticky. My hand, still so close to yours. If I was to move it just a little bit, would you notice? You reach for the pit, peeling the almond-like seed away and holding it up to the sky. We both look up, noticing the way the sun’s rays make it almost translucent.

Earlier that day, I'd spun in circles in the middle of the road, the early morning light catching on my eyelashes, my freckled arms outstretched. You stood there, unmoving, a portrait that would flash before my eyes with every turn. At one turn, I let myself catch a glimpse of your face. I think your expression was too much to bear. I squeezed my eyes shut as I turned faster, thinking that if I scrambled the fluid in my ears enough maybe I could learn how to make my bones hollow like a bird’s. When I finally stopped, I thought that I would stumble. Instead, I walked straight ahead, focusing on the way my boots struck the asphalt.

“How many seeds would it take to kill a man?” You ask me, setting the seed down, placing your left hand back on the stone, even closer to mine.

“I think, like, 12, maybe?” I respond.

“Perfect. Maybe that’s how I’ll join the 27 club.” You reference the conversation we’ve been having about the artists who created beautifully only to die young. We both idolized them, their inability to weave any peace into their pain; their deaths, so tragic and complete. I swallow and my throat feels tight.

“It would be quite a romantic way to go, I think.” You look at me, and I close my eyes so I can picture the smile on your face without looking at you. When I open them, I meet your eyes and try not to smile back. The effort makes my cheeks hurt. “It only gives you two years to make something beautiful, though.” I am joking, mostly.

“I only need one.”

The day we bought the nectarines, you told me that my eyes unsettled you. “They’re too clear.” I laughed and told you how many people had said the same. I liked making you feel like you weren’t special. You asked me if I thought they skewed the image of the world: "Maybe they make everything too bright to bear." Nobody had mentioned that before, and I didn’t say so, but I knew you were probably right.

We’d finished our bread and our fruit and so we sit, quietly, watching the birds perched on the roof of the chapel. The sun makes the tall grass smell saccharine. I can feel the part of my scalp exposed by the part in my hair burning but I don’t mind. The heat coming off of our bodies mixes in the little space there is between us, and the slight breeze blows it away. The air feels so heavy, but maybe it’s just me. Maybe I am feeling things that aren’t there.

A few days later I would walk away from you. It would be easy, my feet carrying me quickly and softly. In my head, I would turn over these moments again and again as the space between us increased. Your arms that always moved with intention, the lines around your eyes that made me feel so much younger than you, the life-is-easy-for-me smile that I knew had gotten you through so many awkward moments. The ocean, the sand stuck beneath my fingernails, brutal truths almost as bitter as the coffee we drank together. But most of all, the moment I am in now: outside of the chapel of lost souls, where I said a quick prayer, hoping we would meet there again someday. And two pinkie fingers, finally pressed against one another, a tiny declaration of something we both knew but could not understand.

Eliza Hayse is a 22-year-old studying her master's in botany. She likes strong coffee and her dog, Sage. Twitter: @elizahayse

ZOE ANTOINE-PAUL

Ode to Boy in Nightclub

All I want is to keep you,
but you are still on the dance floor
and New York City feels like coming down.

An ephemeral march between

pitch black

and too much morning.

You are also there:

blotting memory;

your persistent luster,

strobe lights laced through your skin

flickering

red
green
bright white.

You blur
into Broadway traffic and

I am alone
in Brooklyn again.

[the last call]

3-train sparking past
as the clock strikes 12.

Zoe Antoine-Paul writes about the city, the beauty in the mundane, and everyday internal turmoil. IG: @space.junkie13

WENDY K. MAGES

Redheaded Angel

Afraid and hyper-focused, I’m riding shotgun, staring straight ahead. Phone in hand, I hesitate to text my sister an update.
We’re in the ambulance now. Send.
My 93-year-old mom is moaning and whimpering as the paramedics try to comfort her. With each sound she makes a dagger pierces my heart. I hear myself saying, “It’ll be okay, Mom. It’ll be okay.” Tears well in my eyes; I wonder if I’m lying.
The siren wails, lights flashing we ride through the streets, but there’s traffic. The cars around us don’t (or won’t) pull over to let us pass. It takes an eternity to go even a few blocks.
Arriving @ hospital. Send.
Finally! Send.
I’m walking beside the gurney as the paramedics roll her down the hospital corridors. My mom’s child-sized hand is holding tightly onto mine. We’re taken to a small glassed-in room. Once they have transferred my mom onto the examining table, the paramedics leave and the hospital staff takes over.
We’re in a room in the ER. Send.
Doctors ask a barrage of questions and I am trying to answer when someone in scrubs with a syringe says, “This will help the pain.” I see my mom flinch, but her moaning stops almost instantly. I take a deep breath, relieved she’s no longer suffering. Suddenly, we’re all alone. The doctors seem to have vanished, perhaps called away to attend to a more urgent case. The room is unnervingly quiet, save for the incessant rhythm of beeping monitors.
“Who’s the lady?”
“What lady, Mom?”
“The one in the window.”
“Mom, there’s no lady in the window.”
My mom came in with abdominal pain and now she’s talking crazy talk. Waves of panic cascade through my body.
“My mom may be 93 but she doesn’t hallucinate,” I explain to anyone who will listen. No one seems to believe me.
“You said she had a stroke in March?” a nurse oozes dulcet condescension, treacle meant to remind me that my mother’s brain is not what it once was.
“Yes, but she doesn’t hallucinate. This just started.”
"Mmhmm," she nods, placating what she clearly believes are my "delusions" and my inability to acknowledge my mother’s cognitive impairment. Yet, I’m more than keenly aware of the impact of her stroke, the skills that were impaired, and those that were left intact. Before we arrived in the ER my mother did not hallucinate. Her perception of reality has drastically changed in the short time since we arrived, and I’m concerned she’s having another stroke. I poke my head out of the room, but no one will talk to me. I’m told to be patient. So, reluctantly, I return to the chair in my mom’s glassed-in fishbowl.
A sweet redheaded boy appears in the doorway wearing a white coat. “Hi, I’m Danny,” he says, using his first name. I smile and nod. He begins to check on my mom.
My finger moves across my phone.
Doogie Howser just walked in…. Looks about 12. Send.
I stare at the message. It says:
Doofus Howser just walked in….
In my hyper-focused, hyper-vigilant state, this antithetical autocorrect strikes me as hilariously funny. Like a volcano, tremors begin to quake deep inside. I try to suppress this eruption, but I am no longer in my body. I am high above the scene watching the madwoman sitting in my chair convulse into hysterical laughter. I’m appalled!
I look at poor Doogie. I can’t think of a single sane thing to say. I hear myself mumbling something about autocorrect, but Doogie’s not judging. His voice—knowledgeable, kind, and comforting—emanates calmly from the visual epitome of a young choirboy or a redheaded angel all in white. His youthful appearance belies the depth of his expertise.
Danny explains medical procedures like an old pro, but he’s different: he’s listening. When I describe the sudden onset of my mom’s hallucinations, he believes me.
“Don’t worry. It’s the morphine talking.” Danny’s deceptively naïve countenance all but conceals his true wisdom. Unlike the others, he doesn’t discount what I tell him, enabling him to quickly quell my concerns as he shares the etiology of Mom’s hallucinations.
“Oh, okay. It’s just the morphine.”
I’m so relieved! I feel my body relax into the chair as he talks with my mom, quietly explaining to her all the things the doctors are trying to do to help her, all the things the other doctors never bothered to mention.
Love Doogie! Send.

Wendy K. Mages, a Professor at Mercy College, is a storyteller, researcher, and educator who performs her original stories at storytelling events and festivals in the US and abroad. website: https://www.mercy.edu/directory/wendy-mages

MADISON SUMMERVILLE

The Duality of Homes

The first time I ever ate dinner at his house was an experience I will not soon forget.

His mother, sole patron of the kitchen, sweats over a pot of sauce. Spices make their way through the air, seemingly guided by an unnatural force. They were made for this purpose, and this purpose only. The sauce simmers while she takes her handmade knives and goes to work on the meat. The knives cost a pretty penny and were made from the finest steel in northern Alaska. Their edges slice through the pork easily as her expert touch coerces slices to separate from the chunk of meat they originated on. No music plays in the kitchen, but her movements are like a dance. A stir here, a new ingredient there, and in my mind, she pliés to the sound of a symphony only heard by me. I do not know much of ballet, but watching her cook has been an experience. She is the prima ballerina, and as she finishes her set (and dinner), she takes a bow after setting the table. I sit at the table next to him. I feel as if I should applaud the show, but he urges me not to. This is a regular occurrence in his house. In fact, this is a daily occurrence in his house. With the growling of my stomach imploring me to take the first bite, I dig in with my fork. As soon as the food touches my tongue, I cringe. The masterfully prepared dish was lost to me forever, and replaced with the taste, smell, and repulsion that can only come from a chef using too much salt.

Dinnertime at my house was an experience I try to forget.

My mother, after working ten hours at the hospital, groans as she makes her way to the kitchen, throwing on an '80s rock ballad. I watch in on her, careful not to enter, because the kitchen can only occupy one chef at a time, as per my mother’s rules. She would tell me time and time again that too many cooks would lead to her getting overwhelmed. In the kitchen now, rock music blaring, she scrounges frozen meats and processed mashed potatoes, exclaiming to the house that we would be eating casserole tonight. The house itself seemed to rumble with the displeased moans of my siblings and father, all located in different rooms. My mother throws the casserole in the oven after adding expiring ingredients and vegetables to the beat of raucous drums playing in the background. When the casserole finishes cooking, we all grab plates and serve ourselves. Sitting in the living room with the television playing a crude adult animated series, we eat. We never eat at the table unless it’s a holiday. The rock concert, often loud and unintelligible, is a weekly occurrence in my house. On nights when the concert isn’t present, we order food. The casserole that night in particular was delicious. To this day, I don’t know what made that casserole different than the hundreds of rancid ones we had been forced to eat in the years before.

I enjoy both homes. The chaos of one makes me crave the safety of the other, but when it comes down to it, my home will always be where I grew up, and I will always return whether the casserole is good or not.

In her free time, Madison Summerville loves to write horror and hopes to write her own horror novel someday.

LINDAANN LOSCHIAVO

Boardwalk Soda Fountain Shop

My bare feet warmed to burning from the sand,
I’d wave to you, obscured by boardwalk crowds.

Did you greet everyone the same as me?

I watched as you’d extend a palm beneath
A ripe banana, tenderly, as if
To ask permission. Or you’d let me tuck
Wildflowers into cleavage held aloft,
Slick, sweaty, suntan oiled, flecked with sand crumbs.

You like it dirty — even though your hands
Are spotless when you mix strawberry shakes.

You’re wondering how sugar hits my lips,
Eye my reflection showing that pale crack,
Tanned flesh that’s poured inside blue fitted jeans.

Now you’re hunched over the cracked countertop,
Sweeping a butterknife across burnt toast.
“I’m just so hungry. I’ll eat anything!”

Your words and steady gaze have made me blush.
I drop five dollars in your jar and leave
Without my shake because I’m staying here
Two more weeks and imagining how we
Will taste right after, mixed in with the dark.

LindaAnn LoSchiavo: Native New Yorker LindaAnn LoSchiavo, a four time nominee for The Pushcart Prize, has also been nominated for Best of the Net, the Rhysling Award, and Dwarf Stars. Elgin Award winner, "A Route Obscure and Lonely," "Women Who Were Warned,” Firecracker Award, Quill and Ink, and IPPY Award nominee. Messengers of the Macabre [co-written with David Davies], Apprenticed to the Night [Beacon Books, 2023], and Felones de Se: Poems about Suicide [Ukiyoto Publishing, 2023] are her latest poetry titles. In 2023, her poetry placed as a finalist in Thirty West Publishing's "Fresh Start Contest" and in the 8th annual Stephen DiBiase contest.

LindaAnn Literary: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHm1NZIlTZybLTFA44wwdfg https://messengersofthemacabre.com/

socials: @Mae_Westside

LISA PIAZZA

Trickle Back, Sad Sack

Late December, the end of another year. Time keeps Rae going. She turns the key. Drives and drives – four freeways, and a grey bridge. She watches the ruddy ducks circle the salt marshes. Follow the western gulls to each onramp: 580 to 280 to 880 to 101. The tires turn a rhyme in her mind: Black cat, Cadillac…Trickle back, sad sack… The words don’t matter. It isn’t a real song, anyway. Just like Rae isn’t headed to a real first date, a real person waiting at a trailhead for her. She has decided to keep a part of herself out of it – the main part. She will show up as a simpler version: part shadow, part shade. Unformed, an outline.

Rae agreed by text to meet her date at the marshes on the peninsula side of the bay. Halfway there she regrets her new pair of jeans from the bargain rack at Target. She feels like someone else wearing them. Come summer she will cut them into shorts and hate them still, then discard them at the curb, but tonight, she drives and watches herself watch herself – an old magic – a practiced art – to be both in the car and above it. Birdseye. Side eye. Goodbye.

She keeps her fingers tight on the wheel. Gray sky, gray gulls, gray road. She drives and lets the sound of the tires guide her: Black cat, Cadillac…Trickle back, sad sack… When Mona was little she sang her a song like this. To pass the time, to change the tone when P.’s rage took hold. Back then, she could still wrap Mona in her arms. She would whisper a made-up thing. A golden net. Always low, always smooth and conspiratorial. She made it sound like magic: an enchanted web that linked them together no matter what tried to pry them apart. It was the only form of protection Rae had as Mona climbed into P.’s black Acura three Saturdays a month as required by the court.

Rae was a gray woman then. Shadow-self. Seldom-felt. Gray night, gray sight. Out the window now she imagines the clouds form a window. A door. She could walk through it if she believed there was anything on the other side.

From the parking lot, Rae texts her date: I'm here. He is a decade younger, has three sons still in elementary school. I’m the tall one, by the lighthouse, he texts. Do you see me? She feels ridiculous walking toward him. Past due. Overdone in her Target jeans, limp brown hair. What will he notice first: the deep wrinkle between her eyes or the horizontal rows on her forehead like the empty lines on a piece of paper?

She walks the trail near the small Silicon Valley airport. As the sun sets, private jets line up. It is loud and windy, but not unpretty with a colorful sky of blinking lights. Still up for dinner? He asks. From a mile up, Rae sees herself nod. The night begs to unfurl into the future. It forces her forward.

Sure.

Rae follows his pale blue minivan from the trail to his house. When he speeds through a yellow light, she stops at a red sure he will drive on. But he pulls over on the other side of the intersection and waits. Rae considers being the one to ditch, to turn left onto the onramp, merge from 280 to 880 to 580 home.

But she doesn’t. He has a pot of soup on the stove and a warm loaf of bread. He asks Rae to toss the salad. His old black lab clumps along at his side, wary. Aloof. When Rae bends down to pet him, he cowers then growls. Emits a timid cry and her date rubs the dog’s ears. Leans in. Looks up at Rae like the stranger she is.

What? Are you some kind of witch?

From above, Rae sees her haggard self, her half-here, half-there heart. Her chin hair gray as bath water left too long. After a second, he laughs – a regretful chuckle. Rae laughs, too. A cackle. She almost says: It’s true, I know some magic. Watch me disappear right here, but she is already doing that - hiding her own mind, tucking a small silence under her tongue to savor on the drive back over the black bay.

This night will fade like the others. Rae will barely be changed by it. Still, the thought gives her an opening, a space. She understands a woman is allowed multiple lives. And a witch? Well, even more.

Lisa Piazza is a writer and educator from Oakland, California whose work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. socials: @lisampiazza

TRAVIS STEPHENS

Raised by Wolves

my mother is dying
breathing labored, forced
to seek a cool den
the damp earth a refuge
a hole.
We wait nearby, my brothers
who won’t look me in the eye
each watching the wall,
who will be next?
A glance away
let the loud
snarl murderous thoughts
while we others
carry the grudge.

I shiver, understand as always
my teeth rotted and dull.
Even my father, that son of a bitch,
kept his bite until the end.
I was always ignored
last to marrow
filching bits from
other’s old kills.
earn your keep.

We are a large litter
six males, one female.
My wife, baby girl,
always the cute one,
marveled at my brothers
“you have the same eyes,
and the nieces too”.

I’d like to believe
the next generation
is tamer, a little more wag
a little less bite.
But I have seen the way
their own young
start at noises, regard
new puppies with more
than affection.
I have begun to eye small houses.
I don’t need much;
a bowl, a patch of sunlight
& dirt walls closing in.

Travis Stephens is a tugboat captain who resides with his family in California. web: zolothstephenswriters.com

CAT DIXON

After the Relapse

Hopefully by the time you read this, I’ll be over the state line, miles away with luggage in the backseat. My scent will linger on that carrot pillow, on the couch, on your sweater I left on the chair. You’ll wonder how I escaped—by boat? By plane? By the orange hot air balloon in the distance? This car is registered to my father. He had me keep it in case I needed it. The magic of the highway—the speeders and slow drivers, the texters and wanderers—never allows a moment of rest. Each flashing headlight is a train crossing and each passed exit is a mirage. There’s no interruption to the race. I wish I had music to pass the hours, but this car wasn’t made for CDs or tapes—only Bluetooth, and I chucked my phone after I cracked its screen. I’ll be going 90 with a cyclone in my hair—nothing to drown out the wind except hope, but that hummingbird has eaten out my chest. By this hour, you’re in the shower—water or tears? The magic of the bathroom is how it’s sacred with its growth of mildew, its coarse hairball clogging under the feet, out of sight, out of reach, its enticing medicine cabinet filled with bottles of remedies to ailments you’ve never suffered. Recovery is a long road, they say, and I wish you easy speedbumps, but I won’t be there to retrace your steps, to clean up the mess, to opine about current events or how you react to stressors. Hopefully by the time you open this letter, I’ll be almost to Kansas—beautiful Dorothy with her red shoes, innocent girl in blue. I wanted a dog, but never got one—my father said I had an allergy. Was it true or just an excuse? Perhaps I’ll never know. I will never know the zaftig bosom of a mother during a fever, incessant nag, the body swap, the unconditional love. We both lacked what we both lacked—both pulled into a whirlpool, a tornado, while everyone stood by and laughed or rubbernecked. Up ahead the cars will slow down for an accident. The firetruck, coppers, tow truck will spin their lights. Perhaps help is only a call away. Whenever a lonely addict calls for help, she ends up ambushed, pinned to a bed, silenced, guests only allowed if they called ahead. Heads turn to survey the wreckage, a blue sedan versus a white van. The airbags deploy. Unfortunately, we were born without those. Nothing to cushion the crash—our heads greeting the dash, our ribs cracked, our fists against the metal. No jaws of life, no one qualified to perform the necessary measures. The nursery zoetrope kept the gulls in endless flight—even the illusion of movement, of relationship, of time reversal trapped us, enamored us with those wings. Let me fly! We cried reaching up. Let me fly! We once whispered into the empty rooms of our youth. Maybe by the time you read this, my car will have broken down. Maybe my quest will never end. There’s an untapped vein under these words, an arm unbruised, a magic not yet cursed. Take this letter, roll it up—a new kaleidoscope for you to peruse.

Cat Dixon (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She is a poetry editor at The Good Life Review and the author of six poetry collections and chapbooks.

TANA BUOY

Avocados

“I still don’t understand why the forks don’t go in the same way as the knives,” I say while loading the dishwasher. Stabby ends down. Three prongs are just as sharp, just as painful on a careless palm reaching in blind for a spoon for sneaking late-night ice cream straight from the carton. You don’t answer, yet I hear your cheeky voice say, then stay out of the ice cream. In the living room, the television flickers with one of your favorite food shows. They’re all the same to me: renovated restaurants, mystery baskets, bad cooks, soggy bottoms, the pressure cooker. Is it cake or is it cancer?

I open the fridge, inhale cold air tasting of leftover egg salad, search the door for lime juice. The oat milk for your matcha lattes expired weeks ago. I’ve continued to push it further back on the shelf with the excuse the trash is already full. Next time. Always next time. I’m sorry I yelled when you hammered nails and pinholes into the wall without levelling, measuring, searching for studs. You always were trial and error—a little less of this, a little more of that—just go for it and try again as you put up the pictures I was always too busy to hang: Finny as a puppy, the grizzly in Glacier, honeymooning in Maine. Our wedding portrait. My god, we were babies then. I thought we had time.

I open the cupboard above the stove and fight through all your cookbooks for the Ziplock bag containing the recipe for your great-great gran’s guacamole. Set it on the counter safe inside the plastic. What started as oral tradition passed through your matrilineal ancestry is now on a notecard which you repeatedly told me was blasphemous as you wrote down the ingredients, stopping at every letter to rest your shaky hand. Scared the words wouldn’t be legible. Scared it would die with you—In case you meet someone new, you offered.

“Stop it,” I’d said. “You’re not dying. I won’t let you.” Pinky promises.

I want you to know I’m still finding your hair balled in my hoody pockets and stuck like Velcro to the back of my t-shirts and the bottoms of my socks. I’m pulling it out of my ass crack. I don’t know how it gets there, and I slap the long strands onto the shower tiles like you used to do and watch them slither down like thin snakes into the drain.

I’m already fucking this up, aren’t I? Not using the fresh limes, and I think I grabbed the wrong kind of onion. Trying to dice the tomato, but the cutting board quickly runs bloody with tomato guts. Try to stopper it with my hand from bleeding out onto the counter. Fail. These days and nights are an endless fog, thick and gray and void of sunlight, and Finny doesn’t sleep at the end of our bed anymore. Still waits by the door. How do I explain to the goddamn dog you’re never coming home and that I’m a liar? With the crook of my arm, I wipe away the tears burning my face. Definitely grabbed the wrong onion, and my cilantro cuts are atrocious. You once held this knife in your hand, rocking the blade in smooth even strokes. I should have been more present.

I remembered to cut the avocados last because you told me that once exposed to air, the fruit begins to lose its bright green color. Like a doctor performing life-saving surgery under duress, I tear the plastic baggy open from the side, pull out the three avocados one by one. At the grocery store, I’d selected them from the box labeled RIPE because I couldn’t remember how to tell the difference between a good avocado and a bad one. Something about squeezing and being too proud to ask for help. The blade presses against the first and the insides give way before the leather skin does. Same with the other two. My throat constricts. Shaking, I drop the knife onto the counter, pick up the avocados and press them between my hands, a non-bright green mush oozing from between my fingers, shedding their suits and seeds in my fists. You were in remission. RIPE is supposed to mean ready to go, and I can’t stop feeling cheated. We were coming home from dinner and a movie and rocking out to '90s ballads and finally planning that dream trip to Scotland when a black Nissan pickup jumped the median into our lane. I mix the ingredients together right there on the cutting board, bits of cilantro and onion and tomatoes all sticking to my palms. Pour on the lime juice and the salt and slap it into the bowl. I felt your soul leave, slip between my fingers. I wipe my hands, the counter, and load the cutting board and the knives into the dishwasher, press the quick cycle button. The machine groans and gurgles to life, and I swear I hear your giggle. That looks like diarrhea, Mikey. There’s a half bag of chips in the pantry.

I drop onto the couch just as Anne Burrell is coloring a contestant’s finger red with a marker for holding the knife incorrectly, and you’re laughing at the uncanniness of it all. I dip a chip into the bowl of guacarrhea, bring it to my lips. Surprisingly, it’s not as horrible as it looks. Finny walks out from the shadows of the entryway, shoves his muzzle into my crotch for pets. I glance at the wall where you’d hung the large canvas of my favorite sunrise from our last beach vacation, where crooked sunlight pours through the holes in the storm clouds moving across the Atlantic. Seagulls fly in form along the coastline and fishing boats are scattered across the dark blue ocean like mini marshmallows and the silhouette of the freighter teetering the edge of that burning horizon.

Tana Buoy received her MFA from the University of Nebraska Omaha in 2021 and is a micro/flash fiction editor for The Good Life Review. Twitter: @ThrowMeABuoy

MATTHEW ELLIS

French Impressionists

I long to wrap myself in the canvases of the French impressionists
Let Sisley and Monet hold me as I weep

I’ll plunge into the Loing or the Seine itself,
into ultramarine and cobalt blue
I’ll wade into the waters of Giverny,
lie amongst the water lilies
madder red and cadmium yellow against emerald, violet waters

I’ll hide in Eragny with Pissarro
in the blossoms of orchards,
white to peach,
blending into the viridian ‘round poplar trees sparkling with autumn hues

Matthew Ellis (he/him) spends his time teaching yoga and following creative pursuits in music and writing. You can follow him on Instagram (@matthewellismusic3) or visit his website (www.MatthewEllisMusic.com).

YVONNE MORRIS

No Reason to Get Up but Get Up

I’ve been reading the pretty, suicidal poets—
hallowed and hollowed, richly bred for pain—
Anne and Sylvia shared a New York taxi in the rain,
discussed therapy and where they’d left their latest lipstick stains.

On a Sunday in January, I can’t leave the gas running freely
in the kitchen, I’ve only got cats as hungry as fleas—
in the garage, four wheels await escape from a dusty TV.

You see, I’m in awe of those women whose fine hands loaded
their pockets with stones, who staggered in the sun,
whose blue veins were exposed
because I’m only green willow, vine and shoot—alive.

No taste in my mouth compares to the sweetness of berries.
My heart doesn’t break with a thought, an awareness,
as fatal as some fairytales would end.

I’ll pick up some ice cream instead.
So I struggle into my jacket and out the door,
choosing to leave regrets—like the bed—unmade,
slipping by the black dog that drags its chain.

"No Reason to Get Up but Get Up" was published previously in Mother Was a Sweater Girl (The Heartland Review Press, 2016) and The Lake (Sept. 2019)

Yvonne Morris's poetry and fiction have been published in a variety of journals and zines. Her current chapbook is Busy Being Eve (Bass Clef Books, 2022).