®© 2022 [Alternate Route] and respective authors/artists

ISSN 2767-0317

Issue #6: Spring 2022 (Date of online publication: April 30th)

Editor: Michael O. Starr

Cover art: Give me light by Zaynab Bobi

Contributors: Fadilah Ali, Tom Ball, Zaynab Bobi, Roy Christopher, CJ Delous, Sean Ennis, Ozzýka Farah, Tracey Foster, John Grey, Joe Haward, David Hay, Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon, Enna Horn, Mark Jackley, Zeke Jarvis, Hec Lampert-Bates, Paul H. Lewellan, Mario Loprete, DS Maolalai, Sadie Maskery, Peter Mladinic, Zach Murphy, Sheila E. Murphy, Ben Nardolilli, Robert Okaji, Gen Parola, Bernard Pearson, Kenneth Pobo, Damien Posterino, Fabrice B. Poussin, Carson Pytell, M Patrick Riggin, Krista Sanford, Gerard Sarnat, Edward Michael Supranowicz

This periodical proudly produced without institutional funding.

To submit, please see our website at alternateroute.org. 

Online edition free-of-charge.

Patronage is gladly accepted at our Patreon: www.patreon.com/alternate_route. 

Edited in California.

Likenesses and similarities to any person, peoples, place, or institution past or present are purely coincidental and do not suggest identity or reference.

Typefaces

     Cover text: Esteban, size variable 

     Headers & footers: Calibri Light, size 11 

     Image captions: Bell MT, size 11, italicized 

     Footnotes: Bell MT, size 8 

     All other internal text: Bell MT, size 11 

Table of Contents

CJ Delous

Leave me alone

Desire & Idea

The Madness of Crowds

Ozzýka Farah

Viola

Astacology

This is a stick up

Roy Christopher

Crow

Kenneth Pobo

Columbine

After a Moderate Fight

Ghazal Begun at a Stoplight

Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon

Fascists

Witness the mundane courage of the mediocre

Time Flies in Residential Care

Smiles are Contagious

Zaynab Bobi

Give me light

David Hay

Voiceless

Eat the apple the world  is screaming

Autumn

Enna Horn

Soundscape of the Last Night in June

Zach Murphy

Opossum

Mario Loprete

Concrete Sculptures 2021

ANGEL

UNTITLED

UNTITLED

UNTITLED

Tracey Foster

Dusk Waiting

Falling

Eatock’s Pond

Carson Pytell

Nails on a Dry Erase Board

Practicing Agnostic Atheism

I tried to tell a story

Fadilah Ali

To Walk The Street Home, Mad

Sadie Maskery

Tide

Towpath

Bridge

Last train, or, Tracks

Breakwater

Krista Sanford

The First Pick

Rev Joe Haward

Pastor

Robert Okaji

Which is Not to Say Never

Emergence

Closure

The Secret

Sean Ennis

HER HEALTH WAS GENERALLY FINE

M Patrick Riggin

Illini

Dome 2020

Bernard Pearson

Big Dipper

John Grey

Evicted

How Should I Know

House Fire

Sheila E. Murphy

Three Ghazals

Peter Mladinic

Soldier

Voyeur

The Unholy Three

Mark Jackley

Firefly

January

I

Tom Ball

Drugs for Every Occasion

Tales from a Remote Distance, Vol. 3, 1 Flash (07)

To Be a Merman

The War Between Liberals and Conservatives

Hec Lampert-Bates

Grave Chameleon

Gene J. Parola

The Looking Glass

Edward Michael Supranowicz

Sign and Cosign 4b

A Delicate Happiness

DS Maolalai

Guilt

Entropy

The gamekeeper

Flowers opening

Silver fishes

Damien Posterino

The good old days

Livestock

Another man with mother issues

Ben Nardolilli

The Department of Education

Anniversary Return

To Marrisa

Homonym Toponym

Crossed Patterns

Gerard Sarnat

UKRAINIAN FOOD INTERLUDES [ii]

i.Light Steppes: “WILL WORK FOR BREAD”

ii.Brussel Sprouts

Fabrice Poussin

A Visit Home

Body Parts

Dressed to Kill

We Once Spoke

Paul H. Lewellan

The Plan

Zeke Jarvis

Plight of the Nongoblins

Badly Beaten

CJ Delous 

Leave me alone 

You asked me what I think 

             sorrow & regret 

will bring, 

now the consequence of our decisions 

have finally kicked in, 

but the silver was stripped from my tongue when 

I heard those words I never expected; 

when you made me realise 

there are some lives you live 

& some you leave behind. 

There was no answer to give you. 

All I can do 

is write this ugly poem & hope that  

eventually we can accept  

the reason it has to happen this way… 

Desire & Idea 

Forever out of reach 

it exists as if, 

         born blind 

they presented you with 

an audio description 

of a visual medium; 

permanent distance, something 

         missing, 

no way 

of knowing 

how to affect the movement. 

The desire exists 

but the idea resists, 

a furious rebellion 

against simplicity, 

         insisting on 

misunderstanding,  

infested potential 

& perpetual ambiguity: 

like the painful birth of conjoined twins, 

who grow to want nothing more than 

to love & to be loved, 

             beautiful & ugly, 

                         just like us. 

The Madness of Crowds 

The talk, 

     the talk goes on forever; 

unfocused, the tumult of noises sounds 

like the symptom of a fever. 

I pick out one voice after another, 

disappointed as each 

seems to me to be a foreign language 

I cannot speak. 

It’s the silent ones I can understand, 

shrouded in loneliness  

or pensive thoughts 

     or maybe just nothing at all. 

Are they, like me, 

     bewildered 

as to how the past 

can blend 

(so fast!) 

from Spring into Winter, 

through Autumn  

to Summer, 

again & again? 

(let us hope they aren’t so simple) 

as the noise, the 

     noise goes on forever… 

Ozzýka Farah 

is a poet, editor, and content writer from Sacramento, California. His work has recently been published or is forthcoming in CausewayLit, Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, Dots Publications, and Big A Little a anthology. He currently lives between Melbourne, Australia and London, United Kingdom. Instagram and Twitter: @ozzynapoleon  

Viola 

(For Kris, Tomas, River, Jack, & Craig)  

As I watch the tide
by nightfall
I am wondering how
nightmares
find their way into reality 

A Shakespearean tragedy
who knows
what could have been —
what could have  

possibly went wrong? 

When you plunged
& the water
began to fill your lungs; 

a sight 

(River engulfed in the canal) 

to see 

& me, powerless  

to prevent it. 

I have dreams of you
in Södertälje
on that fateful night —
I'd imagine
that you'd be frightened
or perhaps sad 

but you are instead grinning
as wide as the Cheshire Cat
as if to say,  

it’s okay, everything’s okay
notwithstanding the events  

sure to come. Knowledgeable
but still optimistic,  

for which I cannot relate. 

Now Where's the Music? Preserved 

in the archives of your existence 

in prayer by countless mourners – 

your life: An Ode to Keats
of youth & mortality—written in verse. 

There were melodies in your heart
that you didn't understand
rhythms pulsing in your veins
but you didn't know why
so you learned how to sing
& then you sprouted wings
& you learned how to fly. 

Astacology 

Going crawdad hunting, I prepare to get dirty 

Trudging through the muddy rice paddies 

Hunter-gatherers on a journey for a dinner  

That we did not need 

I pulled myself up by the sleeve of my sock-glove 

Then set out to march through the trenches 

Like a foot soldier to pillage the foreign soil 

Wreak havoc & take innocent lives  

One was rebellious enough to pinch me & I howled; 

The trick is to grab them right behind the ears, 

Uncle Tommy told me, 

For the claws cannot reach backwards 

Then they are confined as a tuxedo jacket 

Ready to be captured; literally, crawdads in a bucket 

They've claws & meat packed tightly 

Behind a plated armour exoskeleton 

But all we were after were the tails 

Twisting thorax one way & abdomen the other  

Until it pops, 4th of July in your hand 

& they separate, dispensing a yellow fluid 

These didn't look like the muddy fresh water 

Cousins of the famous Red Lobsters 

They were brown & spotted 

No one ever told me that they do not turn red  

Until you boil them – due to the astaxanthin 

We acted like fish farmers assisting in aquaculture 

The thought of it makes my blood boil  

You can see the iron-rich haemoglobin turning my 

Blood red beneath my brown & spotted cheeks;  

Such a weird thought to capture these creatures. 

This is a stick up 

In the inner cities 

the  stick  up  kids 

paint portraits on asphalt  

on brick & mortar 

like Basquiat  

In summer, 

bodies drop as temperatures 

rise                The mercury  

in the thermometer is bloodshed 

the combination of grief & heat  

exhaustion causes mothers,  

grandmothers, aunties to faint 

in funeral homes  

& brothers to clench their fists –  

It is a strange pain,  

grievance. 

Up against the concrete wall 

take your hands out  

of your pockets 

I do not want your possessions  

I want your knowledge 

your priceless wisdom  

I want your riches 

the precious gems 

made valuable by time spent – weathered  

through experience. 

In the inner cities 

the  stick  up  kids 

paint portraits on asphalt  

on brick & mortar 

like Basquiat  

During the day they lie idle  

laying low, lying still; 

killing time until it is killing time  

until it is time to make a killing 

you wouldn't need  

a pocket watch to know 

what time it is 

but if you have a watch 

they will take that, too 

if you are not careful 

they will blow your knowledge 

through the back of your skullcap 

leaving it for all to see, take in & digest 

Up against that concrete wall 

take your hands out  

of your pockets 

I do not want your possessions  

I want your knowledge 

your priceless wisdom 

I want your riches 

& before you leave anything out 

Remember, 

this is a stick up. 

Roy Christopher 

marshals the middle between Mathers and McLuhan. He’s an aging BMX and skateboarding zine kid. That’s where he learned to turn events and interviews into pages with staples. He has since written about music, media, and culture for everything from books and blogs to national magazines and academic journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. As a child, he solved the Rubik’s Cube competitively. He currently lives in Savannah, Georgia.  

Crow 

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 Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press). His work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere. 

Columbine 

My friend says it’s strange  

to clean up garden beds  

when World War Three  

might be starting.     

Some madman might nuke  

the future.  Even then, some  

will stand by him—as their faces  

drop off and skin vanishes.   

As a boy, I thought the future  

was mine, was all of us, though  

we were taught to duck and cover.   

Teachers didn’t say  

that crafty radiation  

would still find us.   

We did as we were told, 

turned in our spelling tests.   

It’s spring.  The first columbine  

is up.  It didn’t bloom last year,  

but maybe this year?  Maybe.   

After a Moderate Fight 

On our wedding day, the gray sky 

offered some bright sunny moments. 

When we have a fight, I think of 

clouds that break up before they fly 

away.  I sink into silence, 

mourn the possible loss of love. 

We make up.  Somehow.  Everything 

feels right despite a shallow sting. 

Our house holds joy—and some anger. 

We’re like two creeks joined together 

or two frogs croaking and calling. 

I guess love is about falling 

and getting up again.  Again. 

Two clocks on one wall, two old men. 

Ghazal Begun at a Stoplight 

Maybe I’ll make spaghetti for dinner.  I like 

when hot water softens pasta, yellow worms. 

Whenever I see a groundhog, I fear 

for my sprouts.  I see them tremble.  And grow. 

Oh moon of Pennsylvania, burn out. 

Do your sky striptease for no one. 

Sometimes I write poems because a certain word 

fascinates.  Alabaster, yeah, alabaster! 

I think I’m mostly a sedimentary rock. 

I erode, slide to the river, get carried away. 

Make sense, my analyst says, make sense! 

A violet understands me, winks with a small eye. 

Who is Ken?  I heard he was starring in 

a film called Pieces, Try to Keep Together. 

Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon 

(MA, Creative Writing, Newcastle University, 2017) 

lives near Newcastle upon Tyne, UK and writes short stories and poetry. She is widely published in online magazines and in print anthologies. Her first chapbook is 'Cerddi Bach' [Little Poems], Hedgehog Press, July 2019. She is a Pushcart Prize and Forward Prize nominee. She is developing practice as a participatory arts facilitator and believes everyone’s voice counts. 

Fascists 

Well-tailored, veneers of grace
who mouth conservation concerns
for endangered species, like their own.
They have appetites for raunchy parties;
wool-suited men in silk shirts hiding
ammoniac, lonely children wetting
prep school beds, or tongue-kissing
nanny to be met with slightly delayed,
sharp-stinging slaps. Drunk on Moet
power and privilege they whip up
alienation in laid off workers; point
to scapegoats from other continents.
They preach biblical principles
that in private, they disdain. 

Entitled smiles, beam lies
of convenience, fuelled
by peptic stomachs,
acid reflux, lily livers. 

Killer instincts colonise
their brains, feed their hollow eyes.
They file and buff blade-sharp nails
while their proxies maim or kill all
who threaten their age-old games.
The piss and shit of top-drawer fear
is laundered and tidied well away. 

Witness the mundane courage of the mediocre 

the calm marginalised are all around. 

The cowardice of high-born
high achievers pollutes everywhere.
Their flatullanced clubs and boardrooms
claim to have clean air whilst
full of businessmen betrayed
by skid marks on designer underwear.
Craven Oxbridge rich kids
now lack nanny to keep them clean,
this crass ruling-class demeans
and is demeaned. Bullying
is all they know – 

how else would they survive
as genetic inbred ingrates
who’ll deny others life. 

Ordinary working folk
will soon be stirred to roar
demand a life beyond constraints
and crumbs from wealth’s high table. 

Know, you who govern us,
your position is, at last, unstable. 

Witness the fiery courage of the mediocre,
the strong marginalised are all around. 

Time Flies in Residential Care 

I’ve missed the bus to work, I’m late
again. What will happen next. Dad will be cross.
Autumn sunlight shimmers as I shake, I watch
leaves through the lounge window. Movement
casts marbled shadows over neglected pages.
Wuthering Heights can’t hold me today – 

I’m fluid, floating like
beams shimmering, soft scalloped, in sea water.
Randomly, I enter dreams of childhood
and endless beached summers.  

I’m roused by gentle pats on my shoulder –
Hanna, my named nurse. Lunch time?
she invites. Let me help you up. 

Tomorrow’s forecast is for rain.
Hanna will fly home to Poland,
away from Brexit’s cold stares
and complex paperwork. 

None of us is where we need to be1 . 

Notes

[←1 ] 

line borrowed from John Challis’s poem, ‘In Praise of the Flood’, from his collection The Resurrectionists, Bloodaxe Books, 24 06 2021, ISBN 9781780375519 

Smiles are Contagious 

The first smile was shy,  

barely a movement of a Libyan refugee’s lips,  

it landed in the eyes of an old woman  

who thought she was invisible. 

She passed it on 

to a child being pulled along 

by a harassed mother  

who pushed a buggy with a howling infant inside.  

The bairn shared his grin  

with the lollipop man  

who’d just had his old springer spaniel, Molly, put down. 

The crossing man’s lips stretched wide and kind 

 as he stopped the traffic for a trans girl, 

 a wheelchair user who often had to wait ages. 

 She beamed at the bucket drummer 

 on the street corner,  

as it started to rain.  

The shower cleared fast,  

and the sun twinkled 

 on water running in the gutter  

and they laughed together before duetting,  

You Are My Sunshine.  

Soon 

they were joined 

 by the refugee, 

 the old woman, 

 the mum and her kids 

 and the lollipop man.  

Their shared smiles  

powered them all to sing 

into a happier day. 

Zaynab Bobi, 

Frontier I, 

is a Nigerian poet, digital artist, and photographer from Bobi. She is a member of Hilltop Creative Art Abuja branch, Poetry Club Udus, Frontier Collective, and a Medical Laboratory Science student of Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto. Her artworks and photographs are published and forthcoming in Blue Marble Review, Barren Magazine, Isele Magazine, Type House Literary Magazine, Night Coffee Lit, Wrongdoing Magazine, Rulerless Lit, Harbour Review, B'K Magazine, Olney Magazine, All My Relations, Salamander Ink, Anti-Heroin Chi, Acropolis Journal, and more. She tweets @ZainabBobi.  

Give me light 

David Hay 

is an English Teacher in the Northwest of England. He has written poetry and prose since the age of 18 when he discovered Virginia Woolf's The Waves and the poetry of John Keats. These and other artists encouraged him to seek his own poetic voice. He has currently been accepted for publication in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader, Versification, The Babel Tower Notice Board, The Stone of Madness Press, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Fortnightly Review, The Lake, Selcouth Station, GreenInk Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Seventh Quarry and Expat-Press.  His debut publication is the Brexit-inspired prose-poem Doctor Lazarus published by Alien Buddha Press 2021.  

Voiceless 

[This piece has precise formatting which the author wishes to preserve; as such, it can be found in original format at: alternateroute.org/zines/AR_online_i6.3.pdf]. 

Eat the apple the world  is screaming 

the married 

woman  

of translucent 

flesh   

holds tight 

her psalms  

burning autumnal  

as she eats  

the apple’s flesh 

silver with  

the moon’s 

light. 

she knows 

the purple  

blossoms’ 

of sin   

its taste 

tumid with  

despairing  

joy  

held within 

the groaning 

furnace  

of the night 

her liquid tongue  

broken red  

by dawn 

lacerates the 

mourning man 

with his phone 

mollusced to his  

silk pajamaed chest  

thinking of cock 

needled lips 

plastic breasts 

anything 

but 

her 

the sterilized 

white-shirted choir 

sing hallelujah to 

the quick cum, 

the muted orgasm 

of the British wank 

sighing inaudible 

she returns to 

her side  

of the bed  

its familiar 

coldness and  

masturbates 

silently 

Autumn 

Leafs like corpses 

lay bloated on the pavement, 

exposed to the sticky fingers of the sun, 

retreating under the timid skirt of the clouds. 

Crucified by tears 

by the lines of sorrow 

dripping grief down flowerless sunsets 

craven as the morning wind, 

I make my first sacrifice to the day. 

With eyes like razors 

I will section up the sky 

before burying every carcass of light 

deep within my belly until 

the landscape maps my bones. 

Enna Horn 

is an author, pianist, and polyglot who can be found haunting the woods of midwestern America. If they don't have their hand to the pen, then they're more than likely outside with their hand to the plough. If necessary, they can be summoned on their Twitter or Instagram @inkhallowed , or unearthed at their Tumblr @earthbloods . 

Soundscape of the Last Night in June 

To have a memory, there must be a cue—
the barcarolle drifts, spliced with blues, a summer afternoon
drenched in seawater. There has to be a cue, so touch
the ivories, slick beneath your fingertips, slick in sound, in
the water of the city’s smog, dense enough to hold you still, 

keep you on the black leather bench as your fingers numb.
A good friend sits beside you, bony shoulder to your soft arm,
his gaunt face serene, smoothed & drifting in the barcarolle,
infused with life from the concerto. There’s not much left of him. 

There’s not much left of you. 

You tell him, I don’t know how to make you feel better. 

He tells you, There’s nothing that will make me better,
but there’s enough here that will make me feel. 

It has to be good enough. It has to be muted, hidden in the city,
both of you disguised in the practise room swamp. 

What do you do with a good friend like this?  

You try to make sure that you won’t lose him, but you will. 

You try to make sure that you don’t stop playing, but you must. 

Concertos bruise the fingertips like needles bruise his chest,
but at least he gave permission for one of those to happen. 

Bells peal from the bass-line, orchestral reduction, his hands
narrow & spliced with jaundice, but tickling the upper register,
somehow, you are a two-person concert, you open at the close,
you sigh out the pain gathering in your bundles of nerves,
you continue to stretch out the arpeggios that never end. 

There must be a cue to have a memory: 

a summer afternoon clogs up your innards, gags you like the
same passage in C minor, like the chords that take up too much space,
like the hands that are too small to hold such hardship,  

but you do it anyway. You swallow it down anyway, 

the dense water of the smog-city, & you hold still. 

You watch the grey of his shirt fade out into the mist,
you go back to the piano & float in the barcarolle, pound out
the concerto; you splice yourself with blue from the pedals,
you sag against the piano lid, soft arm to its bony shoulder. 

Zach Murphy 

is a Hawaii-born writer with a background in cinema. His stories appear in Reed Magazine, The Coachella Review, Maudlin House, Still Point Arts Quarterly, B O D Y, Ruminate, Wilderness House Literary Review, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and more. His debut chapbook Tiny Universes (Selcouth Station Press, 2021) is available in paperback and e-book. He lives with his wonderful wife Kelly in St. Paul, Minnesota. 

Opossum 

Pete and Richard’s orange safety vests glowed a blinding light under the scorching sun, and their sweat dripped onto the pavement as they stood in the middle of the right lane on Highway 61, staring at an opossum lying stiffly on its side. 

Richard handed Pete a dirty shovel. “Scoop it up,” he said. 

Everything made Pete queasy. He once fainted at the sight of a moldy loaf of bread. Even so, he decided to take on a thankless summer job as a roadkill cleaner. At least he didn’t have to deal with many people.  

Richard nudged Pete. “What are you waiting for?” he asked.  

Pete squinted at the creature. “It’s not dead,” he said. “It’s just sleeping.” 

“Are you sure?” Richard asked as he scratched his beard. He had one of those beards that looked like it would give a chainsaw a difficult time.  

“Yes,” Pete said. “I just saw it twitch.” 

Richard walked back toward the shoulder of the road and popped open the driver’s side door of a rusty pickup truck. “Alright, let’s go.” 

Pete shook his head. “We can’t just leave it here.” 

“It’s not our problem,” Richard said. “They tell us to do with the dead ones, but not the ones that are still alive.” 

Pete crouched down and took a closer look. “We need to get it to safety,” he said.  

Richard sighed and walked back toward the opossum. “What if it wakes up and attacks us?” he asked. “That thing could have rabies.” 

“I don’t think anything could wake it up right now,” Pete said.  

Richard belched, “It’s an ugly son of a gun, isn’t it?” 

“I think it’s so ugly that it’s cute,” Pete said. 

“No one ever says that about me,” Richard said with a chuckle. “I guess I just haven’t crossed into that territory.” 

Just then, a car sped by and swerved over into the next lane. Pete and Richard dashed out of the way. 

“People drive like animals!” Richard said. “We’d better get going.” 

Pete took a deep breath, slipped his gloves on, gently picked up the opossum, and carried it into the woods. 

“What are you doing?” Richard asked. “Are you crazy?” 

After nestling the possum into a bush, Pete smelled the scent of burning wood. He gazed out into the clearing and noticed a plume of black smoke billowing into the sky. The sparrows scattered away, and the trees stood with their limbs spread, as if they were about to be crucified.  

“Jesus Christ,” Pete whispered under his breath. 

Pete picked up the opossum and turned back around. 

My name is 

Mario Loprete 

I'm an italian artist. 

I wish show you my artistic project .    

Painting for my is the first love. An important, pure love. Creating a painting, starting from the spasmodic research of a concept with which I want to send a message to transmit my message, it’s the base of my painting. The sculpture is my lover, my artistic betrayal to the painting. That voluptous and sensual lover that gives me different emotions, that touches prohibited cords… 

In this year, I worked exclusivly at my concrete sculptures . 

For my Concrete Sculptures I use my personal clothing. Throughout some artistical process, in which I use plaster, resin and cement, I transform them in artworks to hang. My memory, my DNA, my memories remain concreted inside, transforming the person that looks at the artworks a type of post-modern archeologist that studies my work as they were urban artefacts. 

I like to think that those who look at my sculptures created in 2020 will be able to perceive the anguish, the vulnerability, the fear that each of us has felt in front of a planetary problem that was covid 19 ... under a layer of cement there are my clothes with which I lived this nefarious period. 

clothes that survived covid 19, very similar to what survived after the 2,000-year-old catastrophic eruption of Pompeii, capable of recounting man's inability to face the tragedy of broken lives and destroyed economies. 

In the last 2 years about 250 international magazines wrote about my work   turning on the spotlight on my art project , attracting the attention of important galleries and collectors. 

I believe much in this project and I hope that I can exhibit in important art spaces other those already in program: 

-from 4th september at North Carolina University of Charlotte 

-from 1st october at Bibliotheke of Venlo in Netherlands 

-from 5 may 2023 at AVAPAI COLLEGE PRESCOTT ART GALLERY of Prescott Arizona U.S.A. 

-in september 2022 at Falkirk Cultural Center - SAN RAFAEL - U.S.A. 

-in September 2023 at DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA in SAN RAFAEL - U.S.A. 

Concrete Sculptures 2021 

ANGEL 

UNTITLED 

UNTITLED 

UNTITLED 

Tracey Foster 

started off in a long career as an Art and Design teacher but wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. After helping others find inspiration in the world around us, she took an MA course in Creative Writing at Leicester University and has not looked back. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by CommaPress, Ayaskala, Bus Poetry Magazine and The Arts Council and writes regularly for the Everyone’s Reviewing website. 

Dusk Waiting 

Leaving loved ones waving at a gate, I turn to  

dusk waiting. 

Cataracted cats’ eyes hide sleepily under tarmac 

as spectacular sunsets fade to ghostly grey. 

Postponing leaving till it’s too dark and then facing  

dusk driving. 

The twilight hour commences to muddle with my senses 

so that near and far play a merry dance. 

The sun tips the dimmer switch and turns to blush  

dusk creeping. 

A single star pin pricks the sky as the  

streetlights switch on a thousand suns. 

Praying that you stay smiling until we next meet, no  

night news. 

Winking embers crest the brow ahead then 

dip and rise in hypnotic moves. 

A silhouette breaks the form of a bridge overhead a  

night walker. 

One leg over the parapet and a vacant stare 

a quick glance up and then he’s gone. 

The trees and hedgerows cocoon me with 

night cover. 

The river rolls onwards and I never know 

if a stone was tossed to break its flow. 

Falling 

Take me back to that daisy-chain daze  

as many petals, as the freckles splattered across my cheeks. 

Where I lay feet placed against brick and back on grass, 

scanning the skies for shapes in clouds. 

The wind whipped them from candy floss to cotton tail. 

And the more I looked at the chimney pots 

black outline against the blue, 

the more the wall seemed to fall towards me. 

Eatock’s Pond 

Two shafts sunk into seams of black 

spew sludge and muck upon a mound. 

Wheel rotates forward and back  

where men in negative toil underground. 

Back filled and capped and laid to rest 

shale left to moss and green cover. 

Gantry removed so the earth is left gorged 

where water collects and swirls. 

Brown site built upon with a steady pace 

surrounds a pocket time capsule. 

Where children find an abandoned space 

to spin their stones onto. 

Lonely water beckons the show-off 

tempts the wary into weakness. 

Calls to the fool to cast off his guard 

and dip his toe into the eerie. 

A call to climb aboard an old barn door 

and balance for all your worth. 

Imagine it calling through the earth 

down to forests long forgotten. 

Carson Pytell 

is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated writer living outside Albany, New York, whose work has appeared widely in such venues as Adirondack Review, Sheila-Na-Gig and The Heartland Review. He serves as Assistant Editor of Coastal Shelf and his fifth and sixth chapbooks; Tomorrow Everyday, Yesterday Too (Anxiety Press, 2022), and A Little Smaller Than the Final Quark (Bullshit Lit, 2022), are forthcoming. 

Nails on a Dry Erase Board 

Once, 

when we were all lined up 

and ready to head to lunch, 

we passed a whiteboard  

on which one of us had earlier written: 

"LIFE'S TO SHORT TO JUDGE". 

Another 

of us towards the front of the line, 

when she turned and saw it,  

added the other 'O' where it needed  

to be all the while muttering:  

"People are so dumb."  

We  

were in the adult ward 

of a psychiatric hospital, 

all getting along wonderfully and 

feeling comfortable in ourselves. 

I never have left that line. 

Practicing Agnostic Atheism 

I had to look it up, the right way to say how I feel 

about religion or even deism. I was a Church kid 

so much so that I didn't think not to capitalize that 

despite being dragged outta there mid-2000's. 

Guess my folks' belief was strong enough to 

even if I never stepped near the altar before 

or after communion. When we left the Church 

we still went on Easter and Christmas. 

It just confuses me how I've never not gone 

to a Church for a funeral and that my mom 

still prays her entire Rosary every evening. 

But what to call hope for happiness if not prayer? 

But a Church is only a building like a brothel 

or liquor store, and prayer is dumb especially 

when you know God helps most those who help 

themselves to finding their own Damned optimism. 

I tried to tell a story 

and as the story was told 

it was all too clear 

that 

no one could really tell it, 

but all's fine in the world half-conscious 

when I know more than by believing so 

that flights of angels stoke my heart to love, 

and as I told myself that 

it became too clear 

that 

I couldn't say so out loud. 

Fadilah Ali 

is a Nigerian writer living in Edo State. She is currently studying for her MSc in Food Microbiology. Her works have appeared in Briefly Write Magazine, and Overtly Lit. Find her on Twitter @/partyjollofism where she is either tweeting a new word she made up, or sharing her Strong Food Opinions. 

To Walk The Street Home, Mad 

The street is your metaphor for a fallow game of chess. For a ton of grey lives lived all at  

once, for a smack of cowardice, for you. And all the fantasies you allow yourself at night. 

The street is the scene where a thousand heartbeats skip. Today, like always, you walk the 

street home, mad. Your backpack is haunted with books from a fever dream, and you wish 

the street boys didn’t call you professor. You are so forlorn, professor. They are so fortunate, 

the boys. This is your life. This is where you collapse, where you bleed a river of hemlock. 

The street carves your angst into the body of the world’s oldest ghost. If you look back, there is 

nothing. If you look ahead, there is but a happy man who once thought himself immortal. 

The street is how you learn that your metaphor is flawed. You know little and less about chess. 

This is your truth. These are the empty recesses of your soul. Tomorrow when you walk 

the street home, mad, you will gaze into silvered glass to find older selves lingering in the ether. 

You will choke on your canines. And you will live these checkered lives again and again. 

Sadie Maskery 

lives in Scotland by the sea.  Her first chapbook,  Push,  is published by Erbacce Press (erbacce-press.co.uk/sadie-maskery).  

Tide 

Towpath 

Bridge 

Last train, or, Tracks 

Breakwater 

Krista Sanford 

graduated from Ball State University with her BA in Creative Writing and Literature. She is currently the HR and Media Manager for a marketing firm in Indianapolis, IN, where she is able to split her time between working and submitting her writing. In her free time, she loves to read and hang out with her dog and kitten.

You can find her on Instagram at @k.leesan and at her website, www.kleesan.com.  

The First Pick 

I remember the first time I did it.  

It was a sunny Saturday in the middle of July. I should’ve been outside playing with my friends,  

but I was too afraid to move from my hiding spot under my bed  

because I didn’t want to interrupt the fight my parents were having in the living room.  

Instead, I stayed under the bed,  

lying on my side and wishing I could just disappear. 

I was six. 

When I heard my father slap my mother, making her cry out in pain,  

I brought my legs close to my chest. The scab was on my knee.  

I got it a few days ago while playing at the park. Tripped over my own two feet  

and fell into the wood chips.  

Usually I had a band aid on it,  

but my mother started fighting with my father before she could put one on  

and I didn’t know where the band aids were kept. 

Now, I touched the scab, feeling the roughness of it. It made my skin bumpy,  

a flaw in my otherwise perfect skin.  

My parents' shouts were getting worse now.  

I could hear my mother screaming in between cries.  

I didn’t know what they were fighting about;  

I wondered if they even knew.  

I took my finger and slowly started picking around the edges of the scab 

I didn’t like the rough patch; I wanted my skin to be smooth again. Perfect.  

So that at least something in my life could be perfect again. 

The scab came off in one motion. I only had to pull a little right at the end.  

Then I watched as the small circle filled with blood.  

I was mesmerized, watching it pool into a dome but not fall out of the edges of the scab.  

It took me a moment to realize that everything was quiet.  

The fighting was still in the background, but I wasn’t listening to it  

as I stared at my bloody knee and the dead skin from the scab that was now on my finger. 

I remember feeling excited.  

All I’d ever wanted was a way to hide the screams. Nothing I ever did– 

crying at them to stop,  

yelling with them,  

trying to block the blows they were throwing at each other– 

ever worked; but this,  

this would work. And they didn’t even have to know.  

It was my little secret. A way for me to stay sane in the world crumbling around me. 

Sure enough, the next time they started fighting, I picked another scab.  

This one wasn’t as fresh as the other, and I had to work a little harder to get the scab to bleed.  

That just meant a longer silence from the fighting. 

The more my parents fought, the more I picked my scabs.  

By the time I went back to school that fall, I was starting to pick them  

even when my parents weren’t fighting.  

When my homework was too hard, I picked;  

when there was drama between my friends, I picked;  

when I was scared or nervous, I picked.  

Something changed in me that day under my bed.  

I’d found a way to bottle up all of my anxiety and let it out without hurting anyone.  

It was the best.  

I felt alive. 

And I knew I wouldn’t stop. 

Rev Joe Haward 

is an author, poet, and heretic. Born into an Indian family, Joe was adopted with his identical twin brother and grew up transracial in the UK. 

Alongside two published nonfiction books, he works as a freelance journalist challenging political, societal, and religious corruption, with articles regularly featured in the national news site, Byline Times. 

His work can be found in various publications, where he writes horror, noir, and transgressive fiction. His poetry has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. 

His debut novel, Burning the Folded Page (Cinnabar Moth Publishing) will be released in 2023. He is also working on his first poetry collection, a novella, and two further novels. Find him on Twitter @RevJoeHaward. 

Pastor  

Scream 

Michael Myers 

Jason Voorhees 

Predator 

Masked monsters with little on you 

Teeth glistening under stage lights 

A smile staged for bright recruits. 

Perfumed promises intoxicating vulnerable minds 

Soon a rotting stench offered like incense to bullshit gods. 

Abuse 

Trauma 

Poverty 

Despair  

“Throw in a dime for it all to disappear.” 

Desperate knees burn on the ground of regret 

Tongues stretched for body and blood 

You whisper anything is possible  

“Will you give flesh and soul to it all?” 

Heaven remains silent  

Depression buries me deeper in its tomb 

You’ll pray for demons to release me 

Thank god when I leave you forever. 

Unholy creatures offer a treat 

But the mask will eventually slip 

How sweet the moment  

When you walk away for good. 

Robert Okaji 

is a half-Japanese Texan living in Indiana. The author of multiple chapbooks, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Book of Matches, The Night Heron Barks, Threepenny Review, Vox Populi and elsewhere. 

Which is Not to Say Never 

If only 

that splash 

of cold water would awaken me, 

this dream  

could forget I existed, 

allowing new breath 

and a little rest 

to refreshen 

my opened eyes. 

Emergence 

I swallow pebbles, climb trees. 

Through branches burdened with fruit. 

Of poisoned memories and laughter. 

Questioning my scar's value. 

Whether polished or rough. 

Uttered or merely mouthed. 

Whole or ripped through. 

These syllables, forced. 

A ringing not meant for ears. 

Closure 

Or the mountain, which is 

no mountain 

                      but a thought  

ascending 

grief, one small 

stone stepped onto 

                                then away from 

recognition 

down that walkway 

amid  

          the fragrant 

pause 

wild onions  

and buzzing wasps 

                                opening 

into 

this particular day 

we name 

               closure. 

The Secret 

In the name lies a wolf 

stitched to a deed. 

All sounds 

fade, colors 

dim 

even in the bluest  

afternoon; 

I am small but large. 

Half of one, 

yet complete. 

Sean Ennis 

is the author of CHASE US: Stories and his recent flash fiction has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, X-R-A-Y and New World Writing. More of his work can be found at seanennis.net 

HER HEALTH WAS GENERALLY FINE 

But Grace called saying she thought, maybe, quite possibly, though doubtful, she was having a heart attack. I was about to leave work when she said, no, wait a minute, that’s it, it’s over, I’m fine. I didn’t feel great about the last fifteen seconds, but I wasn't a doctor. I said, call me back. There was a small part of me wishing for an emergency, I admit it. I wanted Grace safe, but a surprise day off, the adventure and company of a waiting room, interactions with health professionals: this all sounded a-ok for Tuesday.  Does no one else feel this way, with this terroristic imagination? The glee about the busted water main, etc.? Now you want to know what I do for a living, and do I have insurance. Reunited at dinner, Grace says she believes the pain and discomfort came from an air bubble in her chest, though there is no such thing as this diagnosis.  I don’t care. She likes this little story, and it's better than dying young or being scared of being startled. The consensus remains that she’ll outlive me, thank god. 

M Patrick Riggin 

is a Pittsburgh born writer, artist and musician. 

mpatrickriggin.com 

Illini 

Dome 2020 

Bernard Pearson 

's work  appears in many publications, including; Aesthetica Magazine , The Edinburgh Review, Crossways, The Gentian, Nymphs, The Poetry Village, Beneath The Fever, The Beach Hut, & Little Stone. In 2017 a selection of his poetry 'In Free Fall' was published by Leaf by Leaf  Press. In 2019  he won second prize in The Aurora Prize for Writing, 

Twitter @BernardPearso19 

Big Dipper 

The winter sky,   moon mocked 

And torn with stars as I walked home, 

The tear-drowned, teenage me,  

Howled out and full of woe.   

I crashed up that country hill 

Wishing I was dead. 

But as  it turned out 

 I didn’t die; the past did. 

© Bernard Pearson 

John Grey 

is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, "Leaves On Pages" "Memory Outside The Head" and "Guest Of Myself" are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.  

Evicted 

Soundless, a blessing, 

accompanied by a wide road, 

neck, face,  

of a woman looking up, 

walking fast, 

now the night’s skylight  

creeps like a baby 

across the dark floor, 

and fast cars zip by. 

Hopelessness subdues  

the streetlights, 

flows through them, 

blanching their faces, 

their breath, 

and many layers deeper. 

She can only speak to him, 

he to her, 

down a stretch of shadow, 

to some place  

that is never enough – 

an alley, an overpass, 

the front steps of a church – 

for all the motion in them, 

they can never quite say, 

“We’re here.” 

How Should I Know 

So why are we where we are? 

When I try to conceive of it, 

the randomness takes a chunk out of my brain. 

When I look in the mirror. 

the reflection is an accident, 

happy or otherwise, I’ve yet to decide. 

No doubt the sun had something to do with it. 

It’s so haughty in the sky, just like a father. 

But like an architect as well. 

And not just us. But all the other species. 

They’re far less self-aware, the lucky creatures. 

They get by on instinct. 

Sometimes, we have to be brave. 

And what’s life anyhow?  

Just death with the lights tuned on? 

Or a physical presence that  

operates from within? 

And what about Earth? 

It’s not risk free  

but it provides just enough  

for survival until morning. 

So why does it bother? 

Maybe it keeps enough of us around 

because it likes the company. 

So what’s the point of wondering? 

There are no answers. 

Of course, there’s always religion, 

that old scream-stifler. 

It provides no explanation 

but it does offer an out. 

And then there’s just plain pragmatism. 

Whatever the reason, 

it’s not for me to know. 

And the bars are open. 

Nothing like a stiff drink 

to put meaning on notice. 

House Fire 

They’re all alive. 

Four mouths pant furiously  

like firehoses of air. 

They repeat that blessing 

back and forth  

so their ears will hear something 

that their eyes do not see. 

The roof glows orange. 

Black smoke flees through  

a second-floor window. 

Flashing lights of rescue 

can’t out-dazzle  

those marauding licks of flame. 

The husband’s big and burly 

but size is of no matter 

to the crumbling house. 

He hugs his wife, son and daughter. 

His brawn works with them a little. 

Firemen shout, 

run in all directions, 

cops back people away, 

while a stranger  

in a white coat asks, 

“Is this everyone?” 

Two adults, two children, 

huddle in trembling disbelief. 

Yes, it is everyone. 

It feels good to have a name. 

Sheila E. Murphy 

is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Her most recent book is Golden Milk (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2020). Reporting Live from You Know Where won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition (Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland), 2018).  Also in 2018, Broken Sleep Books brought out the book As If To Tempt the Diatonic Marvel from the Ivory.  

Three Ghazals 

1/ 

World premiere of his icy composition on triangle
revealed the tonsure of neglect that brought him curbside.

A vintner knows his grapes, one would surmise, and thereby
fastens visual attention on a gustatory reminiscence.

In the food court of diminishing returns, the planet mercury
performs a moon walk for the mirror gentling our way forward.

Monastic orders comprehend the interweaving of
some integers, selected crayons, and a canvas.

An idea man who codified emotion
left his collection of clothespins to the docents.  

2/ 

Imitation personalities go fast on auction sites.
To gather hand-weighed strings of pearls to match takes time.

Paternity differs from fatherhood in much the same way
that mimesis stays estranged from sacraments, with little to discuss.

At the lip of freedom is a story on the news of discerning
members of a growing audience who want to craft relationships.

In a room with windows dark there are no seasons to assume,
One selects not quite at random from among experiences.

Early in the class, the teacher assigned us to write on
"How it feels to be alive," but I was still young and conceptual. 

3/ 

Five-thirty a.m. prettifies the landscape blotted otherwise with heat.
The household gallery holds feature photography of snorkels.

He gave me up for Lent, ahead of my intended venture to New Orleans.
That was before the, you know, and before the other thing you've read about.

Jazz ministers get rough with lay-by congregations who speak laissez-faire all day.
Show me a filament of mercy sometime when the wood smell is as good as tunes.

Crafts kicked the bucket list in elementary my dear grade school, the board
feathered underparts of desks and swivel chairs and dusted rungs of book space.

Lamentations rinse the thought that someone once deserved something that no one
ever earned the way a moment is received and held like a caesura on the page. 

Peter Mladinic 

's fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from  Better Than Starbucks Publications.  An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico. 

Soldier 

1 

We give them rifles, metals,  

statues to fallen ones.  

Who’ve never been soldiers  

don’t know what a soldier is. 

Who’ve never been in a war  

don’t know, just as those  

who’ve never been mothers 

or fathers don’t know parenthood. 

That’s natural. It’s right  

that one war is all wars,  

not like but is. War is war. 

Soldiers find themselves in a war. 

Draftees, volunteers, all said yes. 

To the fallen, we place flags 

at headstones, erect statues.  

The fallen soldiers’ metals  

sit in a drawer or behind glass 

framed and hanging on walls,  

the rifles passed on 

to soldiers who go to war. 

2 

Only the soldier knows what a soldier is. 

I don’t know, though some reading this do, 

who are or were.  My idea after the soldier 

is a civilian he or she stays a soldier.  

One could say I was and am no longer.  

You, if you’ve never been, can know what 

a soldier is like but not what a soldier is. 

They go to war, are in war, fight, whatever 

form that takes, part of the war machine 

sprawl. All who go choose to go, draftees, 

volunteers. Reasons vary: defend a country,  

avoid jail, live on the edge, or simply cave  

to doing what others want them to do. 

Ones who’ve been in war know what war is. 

People living where the war is, they know,  

children especially. They have no choice.  

Civilians who are part of the war machine 

have a choice. In war a few profit.  

Many die. War goes against human nature  

or maybe it doesn’t, two could argue. 

If there were no soldiers there’d be no war. 

Voyeur 

He crosses his legs. At home  

in his imitation leather white chair 

he unfolds a paper,  

a poem titled “Lauds” by Robert Potter, 

his friend with heart disease.   

“Lauds” names all the drugs 

Potter and people like him take to live.   

He scratches his head. 

The lines are long.  “Lauds”  

in three sections takes up the page. 

It’s very good.  He puts the poem  

on a table and looks out his window  

at a brick wall and other windows.   

The woman who lives in the building  

adjacent to his drinks a lot. 

He saw her one late afternoon  

raise a fifth to her mouth and drink.   

It was starting to get dark.   

She wasn’t sipping but drinking,  

and not for long.   

She wasn’t in the window very long.   

He didn’t want her to see him,  

of course. She wore a bra  

and nothing else from the waist up. 

He saw her more than once,  

but from that one late afternoon 

he was sure, by the way she raised  

the bottle to her mouth, her drinking  

was compulsory.   

Upstairs from him a woman 

named Peterson lived alone.  Susan or, he  

wants to say, Elaine, but that’s not it.   

They went out to dinner one night. 

Across a table she told him  

some years back her father, 

terminally ill with cancer, shot and killed  

her brother and a male friend  

of her brother in the family garage. 

Up in her apartment she opened  

a desk drawer and took out 

a news-clip about the double homicide.   

Her father died soon after.   

Ms Peterson had a young daughter  

who visited her. 

The neighbors down the hall  

knocked on his door.  They asked  

to use his phone, a green phone  

that sat on a small brown end table.   

The neighbors, Todd and Kelly,  

took turns speaking on his phone.   

Kelly’s blonde hair fell past her shoulders.   

She wore glasses.  He wondered if  

the woman in the window  

in the building next to his wore glasses. 

He was only in Todd and Kelly’s one time.   

It was dark, crowded.  He stepped  

through a curtain of beads and tripped 

on a lamp cord.   

Robert Potter died in early summer, 

he learned on the phone  

in a house split into apartments, 

another part of the country.   

Trees were different, the topography,  

mountains as opposed to the plains  

he’d come from, leaving Todd and  

Kelly who lived down the hall, 

and Ms. Peterson, blonde like Kelly,  

only thick where Kelly was lithe.   

Neither full-figured nor slender,  

the woman at dusk in the window.   

A light is on.  Wearing only a bra  

and panties she lifts a fifth  

to her mouth and drinks. 

The Unholy Three 

The gift wrapped carton of smokes Hector 

hands Echo is the irony, a month later Echo/ 

Lon would die of lung cancer. There he is, 

cuffed to a detective, open caboose 

platform his stage, hand on brow a salute 

to Rosie and Hector, I’ll send you a postcard 

(from the grave) to them, and to his fans. 

The scene before he boards, prison-bound, 

between Echo and Rosie, a tear, a smile, 

is touching but not as touching as the end 

of the silent, done five years before, where 

Echo sits on a platform that looks like  

a shoe shine stand, in his lap a dummy, 

(Echo the ventriloquist in the silent, another 

irony.)  Indoors, different from the talkie’s 

train scene. Rosie walks out of the camera’s 

view. He takes the dummy closer in to his 

chest, that subtle embrace, that desire to 

hold near, part of Lon’s genius. The talkie is  

better, but nothing can top the silent’s end. 

Mark Jackley 

lives in Purcellville, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His poems have appeared in Cagibi, Talking River, Natural Bridge, and other journals. This summer, Main Street Rag Press will publish his book of poems Many Suns Will Rise. 

Firefly 

soul brother, 

lighthouse and  

the boat  

breath blows 

January 

on a dying branch  

in chill  

and fog 

the bloody- 

crowned 

woodpecker  

declares for life 

by leaving 

another  

fresh wound 

I 

woke up  

at 3 a.m. again 

pressed a 

sweaty palm 

against the  

factually hard 

the logically  

cool and smooth  

headboard  

of the bed again  

to prove I’m  

something more  

than a dream of  

something that  

probably  

slept through 

Tom Ball 

has published novels, novellas, short stories and flash in "Green Wall," "Down in the Dirt magazine," "Defenestrationism.net," "Exterminating Angel.com" "Conceit Magazine and its imprints" "Gargoyle Magazine," "SpillwordsPress.com," "PBW magazine," "Fleas on the Dog Online," "Sparrow's Trumpet," "TRSFR/ Sip Cup," "Poetry Pacific," "postcardshorts.ca," "The Local Train Magazine," "Lone Star Magazine," and others. 

      Tom is currently a senior editor at "FLEAS ON THE DOG" (fleasonthedog.com) 

Drugs for Every Occasion 

     I was talking with Sally about greenhouses on Mars. She said, “They grew food, but mostly they grew new drug plants which were patented and made them rich. They had a new drug for every occasion, like courtship drugs, sex drugs, comfort for your mind drugs, work ethic drugs, drugs to make one more charitable, imagination drugs, brain drugs to alter your mind for the better in oh so many ways, including making you a freak mind or changing your body and changing your sex including having multiple sex organs. And there were drugs for stimulating sleep and drugs to keep you thin, and drugs to immunize you against potential biological weapons. And I like to take dream enhancers. And so on.” I said “I’d like, as a scientist to make drugs for confidence. You know, like confidence for the lower class allowing them to move up the ladder of success. And confidence in trying to love someone. And such. And I’d also desire to make a drug to change one’s body color. And also increase one’s passion for life. The sky is the limit! She said, “I am working on a series of drugs that will eliminate the need for humans to breathe for an hour or so at a time. This would allow humans to walk around on various Planets and Moons without oxygen or teleport to airless places.” I said, “Brilliant!” And she said, “One day I’d like to invent a drug which facilitates one becoming a hologram for a short time. Holograms are the future.” I said, “Perhaps we would be androids instead. As it is we are all cyborgs with all our brain apps, but holograms are a possibility. Maybe some would prefer one or the other.” And she said, “I was getting bored with life and would like to take a cryogenic drug so he could wake up in the future.” The cryogenic drug was basically a preservative and some of this drug class, allowed one to dream while frozen or so it was said. And I said, “I was bored, too. And would like to merge brains with my favorite woman. We would each exchange a half of our brain with one another. And we needed drugs in order to facilitate the transfer. I guess it would make me into a type of multi-sexual, but my mind was open. And I thought the whole idea was kinky.” She said, “There are many freaks these days. Who use drugs to think bizarre thoughts. Or hallucinogenic drugs to see deeper into Reality.” I said, “Yes, hallucinogenic drugs can produce altered states of mind.”  She said, “Altered states and parallel Worlds are definitely the future.” I said, “But I spend most of my time daydreaming on appropriate dream drugs. I am just another dreamer who wishes to live my dreams to the full.” 

Tales from a Remote Distance, Vol. 3, 1 Flash (07) 

To Be a Merman 

     Then one day I found myself in full scuba gear, checking out the sea life. The fish including whales, dolphins etc., along with seals, penguins etc. still lived on. But the seas were dominated by freak human sea life. Everywhere were underwater floating cities and the freaks communicated by mind reading and lived to interbreed with other species. All sea freaks could breed with all others, and they could all breed with humans too. I had a beleaguering series of creatures getting in my mind one after the other (your mind could only interact with one other creature at a time). And I understood them, and they all wanted to breed with me and have offspring. But I wasn’t attracted to the vast majority of them. But there were some big breasted mermaids that turned me on, so I loved a couple of those. Of course, I would never meet any children that were conceived by them from my sperm, but it was my understanding that they were very fertile. But loving the mermaids burnt me out and my oxygen was low, so I left the sea and swam to land. My girlfriend was there to greet me, and she looked worried. I didn’t tell her about the mermaids. I told her, “The sea was boring, and I wouldn’t want to go back.” The latter was true, I didn’t want to go back. And my girlfriend said, “I thought maybe you would join the sea freaks forever.” I told her that, “I loved her.” Over the next few nights, I had dreams of the mermaids and loved them in the dream, and when I awoke, I was convinced they’d pinpointed me by satellite and got in my head for real. But anyway, the dreams were pleasant, and I was sexually excited to love my girlfriend. As the days went by the dreams intensified and I felt the sea calling me, so after a few weeks of it, I returned to the sea and asked them to change me into a merman. And I never looked back.  

The War Between Liberals and Conservatives 

     Vera said, “This War is crippling our quality of life.” The War was between the Liberals and the Conservatives. Liberals laughed at the Conservatives saying they were “backwards” and “foolish.” The Conservatives meanwhile called the Liberals, “mad” for their plans for all out progress and would bring about the Apocalypse. The people were evenly divided and both sides had the most up to date weapons. There were some gruesome major battles and a lot of guerilla warfare and after a few months of War the population of Earth fell to 3 billion, down from 10 billion. Finally, both sides agreed on a ceasefire, but both groups continued to arm themselves as well as create almost invincible android and robot fighters and everyone had missiles on their air cars. Then after a year of peace, War broke out again and this time it was all out war and finally there were just a few thousand people left, mostly hiding in underground bunkers. Vera and I were survivors and we built up a freehold, but it was just her and I and a few thousand battle robots. I loved Vera deeply. Time passed quickly and soon our four children were all grown up and we needed to find them a mate. But we were not in touch with any other humans. So we used a radio transmitter to try and locate other nice, neutral, open-minded people. But all we got was emptiness. And it was too dangerous to travel due to radioactivity. We wondered if we were the only survivors? So, we married each of our two daughters to each of our two sons, a type of dual marriage. And soon Vera and I were old, our supply of eternal youth medicine had long since been used up and we passed away, each in the same week. 

Hec Lampert-Bates 

is an emerging writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is interested in surrealism and literary fiction. His story "Rex Najus" is to be published in CafeLit in March 2022. 

Grave Chameleon 

Of course, few go missing once they’re gone, but a gentle many are always exempt. 

You are in the backseat of my van, its crust exfoliating your cheeks. You are dead. I can’t 

remember where I’m going, but an old tradition must be kept in the eyes of progress, 

conceptualizing, renovating, if you will. You will not, because you are dead. 

Again, my shovel, wrot with wormish residue and the earth’s own bile, falls from its 

place on the passenger's seat. My legs offend me. Has my shape devolved to a hump where terror 

lurks every time my skin touches another part of itself? Is it now contemptuous to engage in a 

residing flesh connection? I suppose that’s just an elegant way of saying I dislike the feel of my 

thighs resting against each other. Uneasy, leather, static, ill describe my discomfort at this current 

moment. Driving always does it worst. Naturally, as all would do, I rest that spade’s handle 

between them. That’s far superior. 

I recall now. I’m no beast, as I thought. I do no harm nor rectify it in a hole. I am simply 

an undoer, a mover and this is a far better place for you - in the back of my car - for now. 

I frown and turn to look, but my eyes aren’t privy to peek. They’d rather prevent a crash, 

and search front and to the left for newcomers. No one’s out by now, but they could be. That one 

headlight’s gone out to mask the sudden appearance of my neighbor Joe, or his brother Jime, or 

their pet Jamanther, reading that terrible book of his. You know the one. I’m afraid I can’t be too 

cautious. They could just be - on the road at any time. I can’t be too wary. It’s all bad, it’s no 

good, it’s nothing but confused if we’re both graveless. 

A roped up heron flies only three inches from the windshield - a folly act. Would it ever 

stop that? Six times I’ve been Surprised! by it. Next, I’ll be ready. Wiper fluid ought to coax it 

out of that habit. Further than that, I’d have to name it. 

I’m afraid nothing of interest has happened with you. You’re still dead. How was it 

again? It might have been a wanderings at the wrong dumpster past 25, or maybe those boulder 

dealings went north. If I was still a questioning one, I’d group all this up with your spill-waying. 

Or was it mine? Doesn’t matter. I’m not the dead one. 

A swallow. Did you just swallow? No, you couldn’t have. You are dead. It must have 

been another bird. Was it? 

I partly expected a hitch of this size, but partly never covers for a Surprise! It’s sort of 

like the ringing of a purple bell; not as in the bell is surprising, neither is the purpleness of its 

ring, but still this example has nothing to do with my point. I’m attempting to say, write, narrate, 

convey to them that I was ready for neither the heron, nor swallow nor next- 

“I believe I’m a lizard,” you say from the hindseat, its crust caked to your speech. 

At that nonsense, we both screech, mine mangled in a zoonotic twist, yours normal - what 

you’d expect from a grave chameleon. We plummet to a crater beside our road. 

We are dead, I think. 

Gene J. Parola 

is a cultural historian retired to Hawai'i to delve into Hawaiian Native family history." Married in"  to a Chinese-Hawiian ohana, his ten years of research resulted in the award-winning, Lehua, Ka'o a Ka Wahine. He has two mysteries and three collectlons of short stories as well.  

The Looking Glass 

It was an odd shaped remnant of a much larger mirror held aloft by a halter of twine.  It hung over a hearth protected by a stone mantel projecting out from the wall. “Well, yous look fine ta me. Yous a pretty thing.”  She studied the reflected image a few moments, her head the only thing she could move. 

“But he ain’ gwine mess witch you.  Naw, he ain’,” she sobbed.  

She lay on a dirty straw mattress, arms and legs tied to separate corners of the small ramshackle room. She could only pull the dirty string Glory had put in her fingers.  

“Yous is free an’ gonna stay free.” 

She pulled the string.  The newborn pulled its bloody tether and cried a single howl. 

The noises brought Glory and Slim Jim from outside. A curious girl child peeked from the open door. 

“Dammit, Glory, I tol’ ya ta stay wit her.  Now, look at what she did.” 

“Oh, no, Mister. Jim. Dat ole mir bin hanging on de wall fo’ ever.  It jus’ got tired alookin’, I ‘spect.“ 

The mirror had fallen to the stone mantel and scattered broken slivers that fanned out, stabbing every thing in a wide arc. One sizable shard teetered on the edge of the mantel. 

The baby bled, her mamma cried. The baby died. The girl child fled. 

Jim knocked Glory to the floor. “Damn you.  He gonna be mad as hell. Dat baby gwine be wuth two three hunnert dollas in a yar er two.” 

“Yessa,” Glory agreed, covering a smile by not looking up. “Guess she wuz.” 

“Her mamma done it a purpose, din’ she? She moved that mirror…an yo’s  

helped her.  Din’ ye?” Jim yelled.  

“Who you tink dat baby blongs to?  

“ He gone beat yo ass, I bet.  You ‘sposed ta keep her from hutton dat chile.” 

“I hadda go pee.  Anyway, her mama done kep’ nobody from hutton dat chile.” 

“This th’ second time she done dat.  Nex’ time he gonna stretch her out in de fruit cellar.  Cold or no cold.” 

“Mebbey ain’ gwine a be no nex’ time.  She near gouged his eyes out las’ time.” 

“They gonna be.  He just tie her up tighter.  She pay off big.  Her babies always strong. Besides he lik’ the way she fight when he take her. He shows everybody how big and stiff he is cause she fight so hard. He says it make everybody watchin’ look out fo they sef, cause he massa round here. 

“Mos’ th’ time,” Glory nodded. “Massa monster.” 

There was yelling and crying and running and shoving outside.  The plantation owner…the massa was coming.  Red-eyed mad, he stormed through the open door and up to the tiny corpse.  

The one window was filled with large-eyed faces that whispered prayers. Others stood at the fear barrier of an open door, in terrible anticipation of what might come.  

“Yo’ bitch ,” he yelled, kicking away the dead child with the toe of a dirty boot, before turning his full wrath on the smiling captive.  The smile turned into a grimace of pain as he struck her with the short buggy whip. Leaving a red welt across the naked body wherever it landed, it never erased the smile that always came back after the momentary frown of pain.  

“It hurts, massa,” she shouts between strokes. “Yo doing a fin’ job a hurtin’ me, masa…. 

Yo th’ bes hurtin’ massa in all th’ county… massa.” 

At first the chant sped up and  increased the intensity of the abuse, then a titter from Daffy Sally triggered the nervous tension of the gathered crowd and someone began to laugh.  

The beater came to a staggering exhausted stop as he turned toward the door, shaking the whip at the fleeing throng. 

“Shut  up, goddamed animals.  Yos gone laugh at me?  Yo the stinkiest, lowest thing ever made, an yo laugh at me?  Hahaa!.” 

He whirled on Glory. “ Git this damned place clean up, yo lazy bitch. Ah gone sho      all’yus who’s boss ’round he’a.”  

With that, he  recited with measured words his deliberate acts:  “Ah’m gonna fix this bitch right here. I’m cutting her one leg loose…” The leg sagged down, the knee bent, toes touched the floor.   “and Ah’m droppin’ ma pants and Ah’m gonna work ma stock up to where it’s hard an mean! “ 

As he did he turned in an arc so Jim and Gloria and the new crowd at the door and the gaggle at the window— could all witness the manipulation of his gross man-thing.  

“It’a a foot long, if it’s an inch!,” he bellowed, flopping the flaccid mass from side to side. 

Some of the women gathered kids, some of the men muttered and turned away. Somewhere a woman prayed a long keening plea.  Somewhere else a man cursed, and another quieted him; others spirited him away.  

By now the pumping had become frenzied. His blood balked to come to the fistful of gristle—put off perhaps by the gore on the hand that had touched a naked bloody breast. He slumped down, his back to the still taut tethered leg of his victim.  He pumped, all his effort and attention bent on arousing the reluctant beast. 

The story varies now with the teller.  Some would say that  Slim Jim did nothing, others said he did not see the free leg rise up and lock the knee joint around the massa’s throat.  Some said Jim was busy shooing the crowd away.   

Some said, Glory was picking up big pieces of broken mirror and did not see the last teetering shard angle off the mantel and fall on the semi rigid member temporarily released while both the massa’s hands pulled at the ankle beginning to cut off breath and curtailing excessive activity. Glory said later that the cutting edge of the shard was exactly twelve inches long. 

It was then that the tardy blood arrived—in great throbbing arcs with each quickening pump of a heart, afraid now because it was not getting oxygen.  

One cross-eyed old lady claims that Glory was around the other side pulling the foot to help tighten the hold the leg held on a skinny neck. But no one paid her any mind. 

No onlooker remembers seeing anything after the massa sat down to masturbate.  Pressed to tell, they all declared it a too private thing to watch. 

What is pretty sure is that Jim closed the door and Glory closed the potato sack curtains then they watched the massa squirm away his life in the iron grip of a creature that he had no humane respect for.  The artery dutifully delivered its crimson arc long after the massa had passed out. He would have had little to live for with his shortened ability, they decided. 

They swore that after turning away from their tasks the massa was sprawled out unconscious.  The coroner suspected a heart attack brought about by ‘over exertion’. 

The country doctor who accompanied the coroner counted thirty four lash marks on the mother’s body.  

Glory died of flu in the winter. Jim ran away just before the Union troops arrived.  The cross-eyed woman ran off with a traveling peddler.    

Meanwhile three million, nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety seven other slaves went about their suffering unaware of this small victory in this small room in this small house. 

END  

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 The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet. 

Sign and Cosign 4b 

A Delicate Happiness 

DS Maolalai 

has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and seven times for the Pushcart Prize. He has released two collections, "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016) and "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019). His third collection, "Noble Rot" is scheduled for release in April 2022. 

Guilt. 

so sick. my clothes 

greasy as fat 

off a candle.  

I wash them 

like a cleaner  

inexperienced 

with silk. the stains 

of hard water –  

there is always 

a stain there.  

hell – death to symbols –  

I do not deserve them: 

I've fucked 

who I shouldn't have 

and fucked you 

by fucking them. 

Entropy 

a plantpot 

on the window- 

sill. an ashtray. 

The gamekeeper 

hairs spike your legs 

as some wilderness  

detail: twitching 

black rabbits 

on fields of white  

snow. conspicuous, 

just like wild 

rabbits. I lie  

on our bed 

on my belly 

and elbows – you're 

asleep and you’re warm 

and you’ve kicked off 

the duvet. I'm in a ditch, quite  

dirty-trousered, soaking,  

invisibly guarding 

wild game.  

Flowers opening 

early morning 

treble chime  

of sunlight 

on horizons 

and closing  

to bass register 

atonally 

at dusk. the finger- 

nailing music 

of a man  

inside a kitchen, 

with a screwdriver 

and a bottle of lager, 

assembling a table 

from half-read  

instructions 

sitting on a cushion 

on the floor.  

Silver fishes 

seabirds dart down over 

skins of the liffey –  

skimming together 

in loops and around. 

their shapes make a pattern 

like synchronized swimmers,  

like dancers in movement  

to improvised jazz; a hand 

clenched fist-tight  

and then loosening  

quickly; a dandelion 

burst in the park.  

at my window I watch  

with a cold cup of tea, 

their rotations like beads  

in kaleidoscope. something  

in ease of the motion 

in there, as if there were no  

things like making  

mistakes. the day is quite warm, 

though it's cloudy; the sky 

holding onto its fish.  

later, a suggestion 

of thunderstorms  

coming – they'll bang 

on the pavements  

tonight. the gulls revolve slowly 

and oscillate slowly,  

adding new texture 

to grey afternoons. you could read  

a good future 

the confident movement 

in shapes made by draining  

your tea.  

Damien Posterino 

(he/him) is a Melbourne-born poet in London. His poetry explores themes of characters, commentary, and capturing moments in time. He has been published in recent editions of Fiery Scribe Review, Neuro Logical, Analogies & Allegories Literary Magazine, Abergavenny Small Press, BOMBFIRE, Jupiter Review, Fairy Piece Magazine, Poetic Sun Journal, Green Ink Poetry, Zero Readers, Melbourne Culture Corner & Discretionary Love. More are due to be published until January 2022. You can find him on Twitter at twitter.com/damienposterino 

The good old days  

Who’s to blame?   

Clocks hold Zimmer frames 

begging me  

to suffocate more time; 

Always right out the front gate- 

follow a path along those cracks  

under my feet 

which threaten to swallow me; 

Walk 10 blocks by 10 blocks  

to make a perfect square 

with edges like a Japanese blade.  

Shadows slither in my side vision, 

they move behind windows  

hung with curtains for twitching; 

Flags flutter as cheap make up  

for concrete houses 

who never get asked to dance. 

No children play in these streets 

which echo like an empty cave; 

Dogs hide in kennels too scared to bark- 

the only howls, sirens in the distance 

which never seem to arrive.   

I get stopped - someone asks me the way.  

I say this is it.  

Livestock 

You work all day  

in someone’s field grazing.  

Fed on fodder, your jaw is as sore as you.  

Your eyes wander to new pastures,  

to dreams outside the strangling fence;  

The birds fly by and laugh  

with wings spread far and wide.  

They grade you  

in their saw dust factory, 

to qualify your type and pedigree.  

You’re a dog who’s thrown a bone  

and fed the scraps 

till they can clone another one  

from the marrow sucked  

to fill this farmers cage.  

Each sullen day spent in manure  

is another to endure, 

even the scarecrow laughs  

within his straw stuffed skin. 

You’re in denial that’s for sure 

keep ploughing boy  

and they’ll ensure  

your branded rump is theirs.  

Another man with mother issues 

Somebody has got to help.  

Bare knuckles on fire, 

desperately banging their drum.  

Memories flushed  

in the flow of filthy waters. 

Repent in swill,  

shower in fear.   

Power juice a lost soul,  

heavy with pain’s pith.  

Hide in jungle retreats under  

dark starless nights  

dreaming screaming insomnia. 

You inhale vapors,  

mumble mantras,  

scrawl graffiti  

all over your frontal lobe.  

Run naked over scorched earth,  

wailing for a sign,   

praying it will stop.  

Devour fallacies from false prophets,  

recanting- Now! Wow! Begin! Believe!   

Swallow, snort & spew  

to get out of it,  

into it,  

but never through it.  

Peel it away,  

scrub it off,  

release the demons.  

Reincarnate  

inside a wild womb.  

Ben Nardolilli 

currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, The Northampton Review, Local Train Magazine, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is trying to publish his novels. 

The Department of Education 

The masters and the owners 

Will resist teaching you 

About your resistance 

And the history of resistance that occupies the past 

You must never know 

You are a victim of their excess, 

A victim of their gears, 

You must never even know that there is a machine 

They will hide others who tell you 

About your chains 

Blocking out their voices 

With rumors and idle gossip of the idle classes 

Failing that, they will make sure 

You will never hear the rattling 

Of your chains 

With a roar for wars and chants against intruders 

And should you uncover 

You have been a victim, 

The descendent of generations of victims, in fact, 

Then they will reluctantly allow it 

What they will not abide 

Is the knowledge 

That your ancestors were survivors too, 

Who fought and resisted to overcome the last machine 

Anniversary Return 

Half a stranger now,  

you ask me  

if I really meant it 

when I said I loved you. 

Fair follow-up to months 

spent together 

and then spent apart, 

but because I track changes, 

Let me ask you, 

did you really mean it 

when you told me 

that my poetry was good? 

To Marrisa 

Over the sienna’d hardwood floors 

and the gray stone patios, 

there is plenty of opportunity 

to get a hold of everyone’s 

remote controlled perfectionism 

Voices bounce around the rooms 

dragging good news, 

promotions that bring premonitions 

of an update in economic status, 

a senator’s name will be dropped 

Others will talk about vacations, 

it is October, after all, 

every summer odyssey is fresh 

and Christmas plans remain 

to be shared and put on exhibition 

More than sounds, these voices  

carry images to share and project 

recent dates and weddings, 

or cars, whiskey, purses, and shoes 

which are ready for checkout  

I look for a wild rock to cling to 

and I find you, and compliments 

about my moustache 

growing in this sanitized den, 

immediately we talk about blood. 

When the family lines are drawn, 

we make our confessions 

and reveal broken machinery: 

I work in a white-collar sweatshop 

and an Atlas has shrugged you. 

Homonym Toponym 

From nature, take away 

honesty 

the cruelty is cruelty 

the kindness is kindness, 

possible lies: 

sleet, fog, and drizzle 

no need to worry, 

they pass away 

to bring out the real sun 

or true destruction. 

Crossed Patterns 

The mathematics of simple things 

Are combining together, figuring out 

Better kinds of equations 

My furniture conspires with my shoes, 

My clothes hang in peace  

With the unread books on my shelf 

Nothing has changed on the surface 

Because everything cancels out, 

But a subtraction waits on the horizon 

The path of clouds beyond the window 

And the width of that window, 

They are exchanging numbers now 

Gerard Sarnat 

won San Francisco Poetry's 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of 2021 and previous Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in 2022 Arts & Cultural Council of Bucks County Celebration, 2022 Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival Anthology, The Deronda Review, Jewish Writing Project, Hong Kong Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Arkansas Review, Hamilton-Stone Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, North Dakota, McMaster and University of Chicago presses. He's authored the collections Homeless Chronicles, Disputes, 17s, Melting the Ice King. Gerry is a Harvard-trained physician who's built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now's board. Gerry's been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to potential future granddaughters.  

gerardsarnat.com 

UKRAINIAN FOOD INTERLUDES [ii]  

i.Light Steppes: “WILL WORK FOR BREAD” 

Up to now 

For almost  

77 years 

The word  

Divot has 

Connoted 

Golf course 

Which always 

Seemed bad 

Rich man’s 

Game, nada 

Exercise 

Where you 

Sweat, & I’ma 

Lefty (as it were) 

But today 

Looking at 

Literary mag 

Named Divot 

It’s title such 

A Lovely  

Metaphor: 

“Poetry that  

Leaves lasting  

Impressions 

Divots in the heart.  

A divot is a ‘scar’ 

A poem’s a beautiful  

Scar connecting us  

To the world.”…. 

…Today, day 12 

Of Putin’s War 

I vaguely recall 

(Maybe wrongly) 

From high school 

Ukraine’s a world 

“Breadbasket” 

Growing wheat 

Sold everywhere. 

This spring, bombs not crop’ll be planted. 

ii.Brussel Sprouts   

Not talkin’ ‘bout  

the EU’s bustling  

administrative centre  

in Belgium --  

                     rather regards 

our nation’s fasting growing 

popular veggie, which ever since 

bred to taste sweet, pee yew not sour  

I am told sadly  

                          also leeched vitamins 

and minerals out that made ‘em healthy. 

Though savory, my hope they’d fill me up 

just like protein unfortunately didn’t happen 

so an hour later  

                         you’re hungry again as if ate Chinese 

as well as bummed that my fave international bon vivant 

travel documentarian, celebrity chef, etc committed suicide 

by hanging: RIP Anthony Bourdain, 25June1956-8June2018. 

Fabrice Poussin 

teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.   

A Visit Home 

He recalls the days when he ruled over the realm 

terrorizing his seniors with his silly pranks 

famous across the land for his noble deeds 

as he grew to respect the wishes of the elders. 

Acquaintances vanished before their day 

friends too went their early way to the grave 

surrounded by those who brought them to this land 

their names now engraved in icy stone. 

It still rains in spring as in his memories 

the sun continues to scorch the earth in August 

a constant with the strangers who now live there 

upon the earth where he no longer belongs. 

Walls remember his cries, the soil his falls 

trees bear the scars of his many escapades 

when he played at war with his gang 

and greeted the whole village on his way to school. 

His palaces will stand on the hill for centuries 

homes to unfamiliar glances sealed to the visitor 

now unwelcome in the world that gave him life 

patiently awaiting his boyish adventures. 

Why does he not visit more often they ask 

his answer simple as he stares at the surroundings 

the lifeline has been severed for too long 

and fences built around the trees he loved.  

Body Parts 

Bewildered upon the speedy delivery 

a gift from an untimely Santa Claus 

the box appeared in silvery wrap. 

Eager as the young explorer 

of unknown lands in hidden realms 

he cherished the moment of contemplation. 

The box came alive before his little soul 

to reveal the secrets of one hundred years 

and twenty more under a darker light. 

Neatly arranged in silky compartments 

parts found themselves set in motion 

seeking the safe destiny of a brethren. 

Yet a sparkle of another’s dream 

he imagined a statuesque ideal  

standing atop a peak of his own making. 

It was he waiting to become 

the sum of infinite experiments 

aiming unaware to an end in perfection. 

Body parts, complete and ready to assemble 

things which would never really be his 

borrowed so he too might play his part. 

Dressed to Kill 

Dressed to kill in low cut cardigans 

leather miniskirts they once loathed 

imitation Prada they look five miles in the air 

as they approach the altar.  

Too good for the common people 

holding their bloated purses and a pretty pouch 

they carry the book of a thousand pages 

signed by a father record of dynasties.  

Holding hands with men in khaki shorts 

Ralph Lauren peach polo shirts 

and the weekly new pair of docksiders 

they smile filling the pristine front rows.  

Handsome on a smooth surface  

they are masters of the realm inherited 

given away with the good wishes of tradition 

no one will ignore the sweet scent of their self-importance.  

Shoulder to shoulder they will sit  

the noble pages in their laps 

angelic faces lit by a semi neon light 

for you see they must stay in touch.  

Soon they will race to the pricey tables 

before anyone can reserve a spot 

they have earned the right they believe 

to gorge themselves on the wealth of the world.  

Dues paid, all will be well in their world 

so, they may continue the journey 

willingly blind to the truths all around 

since after all they are dressed to kill for the altar. 

She walks alone 

She was not meant to roam this land in mourning
so fresh yet she may have seemed puerile.

A moody wind penetrates her somber cape
as she ventures another step along the mountain crest.

Never taking a chance at a glance behind
she abandons another path so long a perilous jungle.

There is no time for sentimental memories
survival she was told lies behind the redwoods.

The flesh so tender beneath a paler embrace
as if a specter she remains aloof to all that remains.

Her query began long ago in the ruined castles
and citadels. constructed for the safety of her kin.

But it was a well-built fantasy in concrete and rebar
a lie to become eternal as might a sacred word.

She may be the last great amazon of old
gentle as a reviving morning dew.

The piercing greens bear onto other realms
striking in this otherwise obscured noon hour.

Passing by, infinite numbers of ghosts
they cry for her to slow and see that they too once were.

Under her grave evening gown filled with grace
she is safe yet but for how long still?

Continuing relentlessly she leaves a warm aura behind
last trace of those once compassionate soul. 

We Once Spoke 

In silence she wonders what must be done
carried by the lush blades of a rich meadow.

It may have been days since she last motioned
to the stars reaching for a sign of her life.

Eyes shut to the brightness of the day
opened to contemplate the night.

Privy to secrets unbeknownst to her kin
she seems to float in her endless dream.

Perhaps taken in deep meditation she rests
her lips marking the gentle smile of a new mother.

With no one near she keep the miracle of a conversation
having uncovered the magic of the origins.

Alive with the unfathomable energy of galaxies
she speaks in a universal tongue.

Perhaps it is time for her to die to this realm
for she is safe in the arms of the cosmos.

Perhaps I too will be entrusted with this gift
to become the words of her endless melody.

We once spoke the sounds of men, a mere gateway
to unlock but earthly keys.

At a safe distance from her glowing hour
I am witness as she joins with infinite bliss.  

Paul H. Lewellan 

lives and gardens in Davenport, Iowa, with his wife Pamela, his Shi Tzu Mannie, and their ginger tabby Sunny. He has recently published fiction in Miniskirt Magazine, Plateful of Pandemic, Talon Review, DASH Literary Journal, and CERASUS. Although he doesn't believe life begins at 70, it does get more interesting after then. 

@Paul_Lewellan (he/his/him) 

The Plan 

I didn’t plan it. Promise. An accident on Brady Street. Traffic stopped for twenty-five minutes. No time to shower, repair my hair, or freshen my makeup; no time to wear anything but the same Donna Karan suit I’d worn to work.  

My seventeen-year-old daughter had set out a yellow sundress before she left for school. “You need to make a good impression.”  

Chelsea, her boyfriend Bobby, and her boyfriend’s (widowed) father Frank were due at 5:00. We would drive to the lake, dine at the Fish Bone, and then take the pontoon boat out for an evening cruise. “It’s a stupid idea,” I told my daughter. 

“You’re my mother. Bobby’s father wants to meet you.”  

No way to duck that. 

I pulled in at 4:55, time enough to kick off my heels and pee. I threw my suit coat on the dining room table. That’s when I saw the crooked picture. I was too short to reach the frame, so I hiked my skirt up my thighs, eased onto my knees on top the credenza, and reached up, then the front door opened, our guests entered, and Bob’s father Frank was greeted by my shapely butt, rather than by the demure and totally normal “Mom” he’d been promised.  

I dismounted and tugged down my skirt. Introductions were made. I offered wine for the adults and iced water for the teenagers. Frank suggested water all around. “We’ll be in the sun. We should hydrate.” 

“Water it is,” though I really needed something to take off the edge. 

“Why don’t you let Chelsea get it? You could change into something more comfortable,” he said without condescension. “We have time before our reservation.”  

“I’d like that.” He read the relief in my face and smiled. 

He was perspiring. I wondered how many “dates” he’d been on since his wife’s death? How desperate does a parent have to be to let their teenaged child set them up? The question was rhetorical. 

In my bedroom I looked at the sundress my daughter selected. Boring. I grabbed a snug black tank top with a sheer over-blouse that would dial down the scandal factor of going braless. Tan shorts showed off my world-class legs. Flirty sandals sealed the deal with foot appeal and toe cleavage. 

Supper was strained. I ordered a bottle of shiraz. The waiter poured me a generous glass. Frank declined. 

“Dad just got his one year chip,” Bobbie explained. 

Oops. Frank encouraged me to enjoy the wine. He made another attempt at conversation. “Chelsea says you’re an accountant.” 

“I’m a certified fraud examiner,” I corrected. “My firm keeps other firms honest.” 

“Is that what you do?” my daughter snarled. “Could have fooled me.” She turned on me. “I just assumed you were a vindictive bitch.” 

“Mrs. Hilcrest’s firm busted her ex-husband,” Bobby explained to his father. “Chelsea’s dad is in jail.” 

“William is in federal prison for securities fraud, collateral damage from one of my cases. Chelsea blames me for her father’s actions.” I chose not to add that Bill was a psychopath and a serial cheater. 

“Because of you, he’ll miss my high school and college graduations, my marriage, and probably his first grandchild.”  

“Only because he was too stupid to take a plea. He declined a very good deal.” 

“Because Daddy was innocent.” 

“Not what the jury said.” 

“He was trying to protect me.” 

“No. He  Wasn’t.” Usually I left it at that. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was Frank’s presence. “If he wanted to protect you, he wouldn’t have gutted your college fund to restore his Dodge Charger, or to loan his hair stylist $50,000 to start her own shop.”  

“What? My college fund? You’re lying.” Chelsie’s face flushed. 

“I can show you the paper trail.” I filled my wine glass without thinking. “Better yet, ask him when you visit this weekend.” 

Frank perked up. “Is that the road trip you two were planning?” Bobby shrugged. 

“If it’s true,” Chelsea pouted, “the visit is off.”  

“Seems to me, if that’s true,” Frank interjected, “you have all the more reason to talk.” 

“Wait until after you show him our prom pictures,” Bobby suggested. 

I imagined the scene. My ex-appears in his orange jumpsuit, smiling and chatting up the guard escorting him. He could charm people like that. My daughter and Bobby would already be in their assigned seats at the round table bolted to the floor with the backless seats attached.  

“Definitely lead with the prom pictures,” I told her. “Wait until the end to talk about the rest.” Visitors had two hours. She shouldn’t waste time arguing with her father. “But don’t let him slide, either.” I knew Bill would have an answer. He always had an answer. It was always another lie, but my daughter would have to learn that on her own. 

Later on my pontoon boat, Frank and I sat on the prow watching the sun set while the kids handled the boat. I slipped my hand into his. “What happened to your wife?” 

“Suicide. Drug overdose,” he said softly. “Bobby insists it was accidental. She was in a lot of pain.”  

I squeezed his hand. “Sorry.” 

“It’s okay.” He kissed me on the cheek, then looked back to see if the kids were watching. They were occupied. He kissed me again. “What kind of car did your ex- restore?” 

“A 1969 Dodge Charger R/T-SE. If you come over on Saturday while the kids are gone, we could take it for a drive.” 

He hesitated. “You know this is a terrible idea. We’ve got too much baggage.” 

“Of course it won’t work.” I leaned in and put my head on his shoulder. “That shouldn’t stop us from fucking like ferrets before it all falls apart.” 

“Now that’s a plan,” he sighed. “Definitely a plan.” 

Zeke Jarvis 

is a Professor of English at Eureka College. His work has appeared in Moon City Review, Posit, and KNOCK, among other places. His books include, So Anyway..., In A Family Way, The Three of Them, and Antisocial Norms. His website is zekedotjarvis.wordpress.com 

Plight of the Nongoblins 

There are these creatures, not quite goblins, but there isn’t necessarily a much better word for them. They’re generally regarded with suspicion or revulsion, which is understandable, if you were to look upon their not-quite-slimey but not-fully-dry skin. They don’t reproduce with each other. The way that more of these nongoblins are made is by cutting off a piece of an existing nongoblin. Just think about it. You’re out there in the world, trying to do goblinesque (but not quite goblin) things when some musclebound human or humanoid with a longsword comes along and, thinking they’re going to steal your weapons or just fight something that they perceive as evil, so the human(oid) slashes you, and a piece of you drops to the ground. You stare at it, but, instead of falling to the ground with it, that piece rises up to something like you. Naturally you and your violence-born offspring eviscerate the human(oid), but still. 

This begs the question:  how do the creatures view others like them? Do they see them as bad memories of violence? Do they see it as worth the pain and the suffering to have more of them in the world? Is there a shared closeness that comes not just from having the body connection but also the shared experience of feasting on your attacker’s/co-creator’s entrails? Or maybe these creatures are so rooted in their day-to-day goblinesque tasks that they never stop to think about it. Maybe when a bit of dismemberment only leads to more of you, you don’t worry about your identity that much, and you’re content to just muddle about.  

But I haven’t told you about their singing. They sing in their own strange language. If your native language is English, you might assume that it’s German as spoken by a Texan. If your native language is German, then you might think that it was a loudly mumbled form of ancient Greek. If ancient Greek was your native language then you’d be too dead to have an opinion. But it’s hypnotic without being the least bit pleasant. Interestingly, the hypnosis is not something that leads you into the service of these nongoblins. Nor does it lead you to be evil. The product of the hypnosis is actually to try to become as productive as possible. This is one reason why humanoids looking to take the nongoblins down immediately try to take them down (and get murdered). No human, to the best of my knowledge, has ever had the pleasure of a choir of the nongoblins. But if you could, if you could actually listen to 20 or 50 or even 100 of them at a time, maybe you could produce the most efficient, the most beautiful, or the most perfect thing that you’ve ever made in your life. It sounds wonderful. Until you consider the dozens of forced amputations that led to that choir. Would it be worth your personal success? I suppose that it depends entirely upon your view of the nongoblins’ experience.  

Badly Beaten 

There were four men beating up the man on the ground. One was trying to hold the man’s arms, two were kicking him, and the fourth was beating him with a stick. The man on the ground was occasionally able to shove away the stick or one of the men’s legs. Not enough to really protect himself, of course, being outnumbered as he was. The kids nearby were shouting for the men to stop. Every now and then, one of the men would curse or spit at the kids, and they’d quiet down for a second or two and go back a few steps. Certainly, it was brutal to watch. But it wouldn’t take long and they’d be back watching and yelling. 

The man being beaten would groan or gasp, but he wouldn’t cry. This went on. Eventually, another man stepped up. He didn’t signal to the men doing the beating that he was there. Instead, he simply pulled out two guns and began to fire. He took out the man with the stick first. Three bullets. The first took off fragments of the stick man’s skull. This stopped the other three while one bullet went into his back and another went through his throat. Blood sprayed each time.. While the other men were looking to see what was happening, the man with the guns took out the two beaters. Two bullets for one, three for the other. One left a gaping wound in the beater’s chest. The man holding the beaten man’s arm stood up and tried to run. Five bullets that time. Two went into his head. The holding man fell hard on his face. 

The man with the gun stood for a moment, not moving. He holstered his guns and turned to walk away. The kids watching all cheered. The beaten man propped himself up a bit. He looked at the dead men around him, then at the cheering kids. It was at that point that he finally began to cry. The kids slowly stopped cheering. Then they started yelling at the crying man, belittling him for crying when he’d done so well during the beating and when the man with the gun had stopped the beating. Of course, this only made him cry all the more. He absolutely couldn’t stop, even as the kids walked away, laughing and punching each other’s arms.  