[Alternate Route]

#5, Winter 2022

®© Alternate Route, 2022 

ISSN 2767-0317

Winter 2022 (Date of publication: January 31st)

Editor:

Michael O. Starr

Cover art:

Factory by Amy Gillies (AG)

Contributors:

Pramod Subbaraman (PS), Michael Igoe (MI), Dre Hill (DH), Jim Meirose (JiMe), Dorothy Lune (DL), Jack Moody (JaMo), Amy Gillies (AG), EFS Byrne (EFSB), Leah Lopez (LL), Marnie Bullock Dresser (MaDr), Adam Chabot (AC), Clem Flowers (CF), Emily Paluba (EAP), Frank William Finney (FWF), KG Ricci (KGR), HLR (HLR), Jean-Mark Sens (JMS), Matthew Freeman (MF), Joshua Martin (JoMa), Mike Kaarsgaren (MK), Rose Knapp (RK), Shaurya Arya (SA), Mike Hickman (MH)

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.

Table of Contents

Writing 

Pramod Subbaraman

Knighted

Comfort Food

Rhythm of life

Family

Service Critical

Michael Igoe

Bonneau’s Landing

Scientist

And Suchlike

Advisory

Jim Meirose

New Job, What? Oh, Yah; New Shoe Store Salesman

Dorothy Lune

Strawberry Squid

Jack Moody

The Absence of Death

EFS Byrne

Chocolate Sunday

Social Mediums

Leah Lopez

The Fat Lady

The Tattooed Lady

Marnie Bullock Dresser

So I went to his office to talk about my paper which he said showed great promise but lacked discipline.

If you line up his arm and my arm and his—

We weren’t

His wife keeps a clean house.

Jessamyn Stanley I Love You

Adam Chabot

Facing Windows

Infestation

Clem Flowers

Death Rays Broke Loose

Homesteading in the Morning War

Emily Paluba

ascension

viewpoint from above

something bitter left behind

proclamations

flight

Frank William Finney

Terminals

Weddings and Wakes

Café Q & A

Typhon Lives Next Door

Old-Time Yankees

HLR

Fight Night

Things He Made This Week

Meant To

Jean-Mark Sens

Angels & Visitors

Quartz Angel

Precinct Angel

Angels of Keyholes

Angel of Clay

Kitchen Angel

Loan Angel

Matthew Freeman

Pushing and Pulling

Dropping Bombs

Certain Aspects of the Cure

Wrong!

Motion

Joshua Martin

From the dandruff down

High-intensity proximities

Remote control head

Sweat glands

Mike Kaarsgaren

Contemporary Poem #159

Probation

Postmodern Poem #209

Titleless

Majority Government

Rose Knapp

Commodity Fetishization

Welcome to Minneapolis

Cassiopeia

Titanium Gnosis

Kumiho

Shaurya Arya

Blink of an Eye

Eyes Wide Open

Mike Hickman

Damaged Sectors

Entropy Increases

Leftovers

Art 

Dre Hill

Bear the Cross

In Light of Isolation

Invocation of Light

Amy Gillies

Jester

The Forest and the Dance

Bassetts Way

K.G. Ricci

Your Invitation to Paradise

No Mother to Guide Him

New Lands for Pleasure Travelers

Lasting Achievement

Fascinating New Game

Pramod Subbaraman 

Pramod Subbaraman is a poet who emerged during the first UK-wide COVID19 lockdown in 2020 and has since been published in the UK, the USA, and South Africa. While he writes all forms of poetry, his favourite remains fixed form poetry  

Knighted  

All the soldiers who fought and died 

No questions asked, they fought and died 

They performed their duties, no doubt 

We demanded, they fought and died 

He sold us a false narrative 

He commanded, they fought and died 

He moved on to lucrative deals 

But those soldiers, they fought and died 

Pramod must address him “Sir Blair” 

But how can he? They fought and died 

Comfort Food 

Pizzas, burgers, fried chicken, kebabs, chips 

The list goes on and on 

Such food goes straight to your heart 

See that smile on your face, or is it a grimace? 

Your heart communicates with you as you eat 

It sings the song of narrowed paths, you feel the pangs 

When one road closes, another opens 

They call it a bypass 

Such food stays in your heart 

For as long as you live 

Every coronary artery 

Has a comfort food lining 

Rhythm of life 

There is something to be said 

For a Sun that rises at 3 in the morning  

And sets at 11 in the night 

The long summer days 

The further north in the northern hemisphere 

That you go and equally the further south 

In the southern hemisphere that you go 

During their summers 

You get used to it 

After a decade or longer  

In the relevant place 

But your yearning for 

A simpler time  

Never goes away 

A simpler life with 

13 hours of daylight in summer, and 

11 hours in winter 

The tropical idyll of 

Warm, hot, and very hot temperatures 

You may adapt  

In your mind 

But the rhythms  

Of a body made for  

Another place and 

Another time zone 

Seldom catch up 

Now do not get me started 

On climate change 

Family 

The word paints a picture 

Many pictures actually 

A flood really 

Memories 

Perceptions 

Learnt constructs 

There is so much diversity nowadays 

The unit varies in size and composition 

Do we yearn for simpler times? 

If it has been learnt 

It can be unlearnt 

It could be relearnt anew 

I see photographs 

Physical things 

In black and white 

Who is to say what anyone else sees? 

To each their own reality, or should we say realities? 

The Venn diagram would be interesting! 

Service Critical 

Time will tell as only it can 

If any of this makes sense 

Load it all up in that white van 

If only they saw through my lens 

They would know that they got it wrong 

How do we settle the matter? 

How much time do we have? How long? 

If only things would get better 

Come with me, see the evidence 

Cut the rhetoric, see the science 

Do your job with due diligence 

It is not working, see the signs 

This is the wrong formulation 

Make a U-turn, save the nation 

Michael Igoe 

Michael igoe, Tai Chi apprentice, erstwhile scholar. City boy, neurodiverse. Chicago now Boston. Numerous works published in journals online and print. Recent: gingerbreadritual.com, dynamisjournal.com, k'inliteraryjournal.com..Anthology inclusions: he Poets of 2020, Avalanches in Poetry(Fevers of the Mind Press) Impspired Magazine Vol. 6(impspired.com). National Library of Poetry Editors Choice Award 1997.: Twitter: MichaelIgoe5.  

Bonneau’s Landing 

 Finding what’s warmest,

yellow bellied and naive.

A belligerent syrup flows

from each and every pore.

The streets  shimmer,

in a sense of urgency.

People seem to detest

hardworking eruptions...

For bargains with opponents,

who hits the ground running,.

They serve as mere relics

of the ones who departed.

Scientist

On a shore forever lambent

he disappeared in the sands..

Robbery of a true birth

is the matter on record.

He played the market

for wine colored cars

but only on the side.

He is without claims

to formal description.

None is his color,

zero is his number.

In all his escapades,

he stays undetected.

Shrugging his shoulders

he gauges all the signals

of pendulums in a basin..

And Suchlike 

You once foretold a notice 

of a most noisy whirlwind 

without a gift for language. 

Emblems served 

at different times 

laid at death’s door. 

Stricken by disease, 

those rare and fatal. 

Foaming at the mouth, 

in sudden raging fever..  

You know its  meaning 

from balding husbands. . 

They raid Christian coffers 

using lore from the Vikings. 

Their teeth remain clenched, 

keeping to a certain deafness. 

Advisory 

If  you’re suckered, 

you have groped 

losing starry mites. 

Why do you wheel away 

hoping pleasant dreams 

wind up in other minds. 

Meeting an end, 

as faded glories. 

Embers of sadness, 

a flickering gesture. 

A simple request 

likely unanswered. 

Dre Hill 

Dre Hill is an artist and storyteller from Fort Worth, Texas. His written work has appeared in the likes of Currents, Afro Literary Magazine, Hallowzine, and more; with work forthcoming in levatio and GutSlut Press. His visual work has appeared in celestite poetry, with work forthcoming in Ghost Girls Zine. When not creating, Dre is spending time with his puppy, learning to live in each moment and rest as necessary. Find Dre on all platforms @drehillart or via website www.drehillart.com. 

Bear the Cross 

In Light of Isolation 

Invocation of Light 

Jim Meirose 

Jim Meirose's work has appeared in numerous venues. His novels include "Sunday Dinner with Father Dwyer"(Optional Books), "Understanding Franklin Thompson"(JEF), "Le Overgivers au Club de la Résurrection"(Mannequin Haus), and "No and Maybe - Maybe and No"(Pski's Porch). Info: www.jimmeirose.com @jwmeirose 

New Job, What? Oh, Yah; New Shoe Store Salesman 

Yes. I—yes. Something’s—lit up now. Not before, why, what—who—no. Stupid questions. This appears to be. A job. Appears to be a, a—in some store job. Stores sell, so. Am most likely, selling. Waking into selling—what? That. Has no meaning, but, sense—ess, I sense. Ess, I sense that that approaching’s something, ‘r someone, actually, rather; that approaching someone’s here to buy. Something. 

Something, wha’.  

Clue what don’t know, but must know, in no idea anyplace-where. What’s the—the word? 

Clue; ah, yes, a man now sitting in a chair, ah, yes, clue a’ approaching not knowing, need a clue, gape about, but. Non-obviously—okay. Shoes. All every side, up down the walls, shoes, selling—shoes, and, he watches. Me, coming there. Into my eyes, he says, I am here for shoes from you—shoes from—you! 

The mysticalities of knowing’s mo-momento who you are. I am a who you are, I am a what, a shoe salesman—Sir, welcome to—dud—welcome, start to, but don’t dare say, I am a shoe salesman come to serve you, in any kind of unnaturally stimulated-sounding tone, because, somehow, I know—from inside all supperplaced, von past-back out my quick fade of a turbulentinoed outwake, that telling the customer, Hello, I am a shoe salesman here to serve you, because, I sense; or some other me does—yes, yes—there are many, but no time to s’plain you now, Lucy—saying that is just not done, let’s see—common sense, here—Hello, sir (assumed so by his clothing and hair n’ other styles) Gat, Gat—so. What type of shoes would you like us to show you today? Is there an occasion? 

Oh yes, so slick, that wish ‘d had pad n’papyrus-pointer to jab that safely down and away, to be used ‘gain ‘n again, No, just need time over new pair of knockin’ around yard and over and time work shoes, something over again, sturdy and cheap, sturdy, and. 

Cheap? 

Wha’. Who s’ that? Ah, I—cheap, and a pause—looking, searching n-no, wrong! 

Look. He is staring. 

Have I said something really wrong to this person of a guy r’ ‘ff the ‘t? If so, act as though so ‘fter aplogasining profits-stufitly; Oh, I am sorry, silly me! I suppose that it’s just so odd for a customer to say so plainly that they want—cheap shoes. I’m sorry, forgive me; you said shoes for what purpose? Knockin’ around? 

Yeah, that’s right—he said, sending the words barely thawed direct down like a’straight ‘nto my face. Like waiting for me to criticize again—though no criticization ‘as never intended—but; what he has said to him now is critical, quite critical. What he has said to him now-said is, critical. Got to be right, need to be cool, slow down, time, slow slower, need time to God, this is slicksliding quite south, but where to learn quick, to learn, ah! The TV. 

The TV channel, thank God, it’s smart! Need a how to, a how to, quick-quickly, now! 

Step outside yu’ self, and watch it be; ah, God, yes the screen there perfectly said as though actually out of me, that, Oh, but—enough o’ my jabber. I think I got the very shoe for you. On that wall rack, over there—here, sit tight. I’ll just go grab it. 

Excellence is admirable, ‘s ‘specially ‘s—‘s ti’ seems ‘o ‘e me.  

Here. A special on these, as a matter of fact. Plain, sturdy, shoes. For knockin’ around. 

Yes; that’s how keep kee’ ke’ k’, watching. 

The arm on which he touched a f’ tip to the toe, and yes, says, Yes, like these. These will be perfect—but, then, doubt in his face, then a look from, and words saying, yes, y’, sorry ‘bout my tension before—but, I was having kind of a tough day, and I thought that you—oh, never mind. These are perfect—look, look— 

T’o ‘d this smile I have him—Dell’s has him. This TV show’s as from God. 

—just look at this sole. Deep pattern—need this for mud, you know. Mud’s very slippery. 

Yes, yes. It is. I have taken many a fall in cold mud—but here—and my shining steel foot shaped device took his size, got his size, like the man never even knew it. 

You are a perfect ten. And, hold it. I know we have these in the back. Sit tight I’ll get them. 

And from there, all downhill, the go, the get, the bring, and the try; the smiles, the stand, the shake, and the go, pay; the bag, the leave, then it’s done. Hit the switch and as the screen sucks itself back ‘way into its own gone dead center, Boss Sandy is; next to me. Y’ boss Sandy’s next to me, saying, That was a slick one. We been trying to sell that style out for the longest. 

At her smile, thanks you nod, and she goes ‘n. 

You know, at first, I didn’t think you’d work out at all. But now, you are more than the equal of any salesman I’ve seen here before. 

B’ blank, again. B’b’blank, again, wait. Blank again, wait. Blank. Blank. 

Read all under there, scrolled down beneath, that ‘ou’re really not at that level yet, but don’t know it. Silly. Know it, don ‘t know it, pop-pop, down-silly, but. 

Thanks, Sandy. 

There’s her smile. Works for me—but—the door’s created another to sell to. The doorframe’s magic, ‘al doorframe’s be generating customers to the store, all down-day. 

The chemical activity in your brain. 

Yes, ma’am. May I help you now? May I please? 

Dorothy Lune 

Dorothy Lune is a Yorta Yorta poet who has been writing poems for 4 years, born and raised in Australia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gen Controlz Magazine, Gypsophila Zine, and more. She started out writing songs and poems. She found poetry to be the type of writing she loves most and decided to start submitting to magazines in January of 2021.  

Strawberry Squid 

Sitting on a wooden stool behind the shed I was weaving a basket out of long lemon grass 

blisters on blisters, callous apon callous. 

Finished with my work I walked over to the edge of the sea 

foaming at its mouth for a friend 

slowly dipped the basket in the water 

into the translucent prussian slush it goes 

creating splashes from my shaky h&. 

Splashes formed into bubbles & I glanced down at the submerged basket 

there was a slight tinge of a rosey glowing orb 

sitting blurry in the basket weighing it down like a baby 

I pull it up & out of the water— a strawberry squid 

I was so lucky to be the witness of her sparkling like Christmas lights 

appearing to be made of sheer pink iridescent metals 

& the eyes— 

like jumbo sized gumballs they were the shade of bumblebee & clay 

I couldn't believe what I was seeing for a moment 

she had spots like a cheetah & the water drops on her skin 

made her glisten in the golden afternoon. 

Jack Moody 

Jack Moody is a novelist and short story writer from wherever he happens to be at the time. He is the author of the short stories collection Dancing to Broken Records, released through Beacon Publishing Group, as well as being a staff writer for the literary magazine and podcast Brick Moon Fiction. His work has appeared in multiple publications including the Saturday Evening Post. Moody's forthcoming debut novel Crooked Smile is set to release March 15th, 2022 through Outcast Press. He didn't go to college.

Twitter: @jack_is_moody 

Instagram: @jack_is_moody 

The Absence of Death 

The moment it was introduced to his bloodstream, the process of dying had begun. 

Breathing slowed to a hoarse whisper, the oxygen to his heart stalled, strangling the organ until the dirtied blood pumped like thick honey from a bottle. Body temperature rose, sweat began to pour from each gland. The brain suffocated, firing off neurons like weak explosives in the rain, drowning beneath the heavy flood of dopamine colliding with their outnumbered receptors. Fluids entered the blackened lung cavities and ejected as vomit and yellow foam, cascading forth from between the lips and down the chin. In a final effort of comfort, the brain reached into its deepest memories and played for itself a movie called Nostalgia. And it watched all the wonderful things it had experienced in its life with her, as it slowly, slowly, slowly—went black. 

The body was found, and taken to a coroner, where he commented to a colleague while performing the autopsy, that if it weren’t for the track marks and evidence of a tobacco addiction, he would have thought that he was looking at a healthy young man. 

The body was then placed in an incinerator, where it was burned for three hours at 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, until the skin and flesh and fat and bone and muscle tissue became a large pile of gray ashes. 

The pile of ashes was placed in an unmarked and ordinary metal container, and emptied into a nondescript collective grave, where it became part of an even larger pile of gray ashes, and was promptly forgotten about. 

This is when he woke up. 

He walked for a long time. He crossed a bridge, and past rows of buildings, and the lights of the city were there and the people were too. They walked away and through him, and paid him no mind, nor did he them. Buildings became trees, and trees became forests, and though he could no longer remember where he was, he continued to walk. The world moved as it always had, and this, and everything else, was no different than it had ever been. 

He stopped beside a small creek and sat down with his knees to his chest, and he watched the water move. It paid him no mind, and he was happy it allowed him to be there with it. There were too many places to look for her, and so much time had passed. He felt no rush to search. There was time, and there would always be time, and some day the time would stop but she wouldn’t leave him. He knew this. 

Quiet was what he had taken for granted. And when he’d had it, it was beyond the veil and beyond grasp, and it was meaningless. So he remained by the creek, and they were quiet together until orange turned to blue, and the creek began to sparkle and gleam. 

The city now glowed in the distance, and the stars fizzled out within its reach, and he stood to return to the lights and glow that choked out the sparkling, quiet night, knowing that it did not have to be the last time he sat beside the creek in silence, but still knew that nevertheless, it would be. 

As he delved deeper into the cracked, neon-lit streets he returned to places he knew. These places at one time held significance but that feeling had withered, more and more with each place he found. The significance of them was instead how utterly insignificant they now had become. Cravings were an alien concept. The sting, the warm familiarity of the act that had occurred within these places was of no consequence. He neither mourned nor celebrated this. It was now how it always would be, and there was nothing left in these places but the pockets of dust swept to and fro, forever unchanged, no different than it had ever been. They were empty, and hollow, and she was nowhere to be seen. 

With only one final place to go, the place it had begun and would end, he made his way towards it, knowing if she hadn’t returned to this place after all those passing days and nights gone, then she was gone for as long as time moved forward, until that too was finally gone, and only then could he find her again. This was all he had left for as long as the dust continued to be swept along with the rest of the world. 

The streets before had been a frightening and cold place without her body beside him, and they were dark and dirty, but the light she provided was the closest feeling to the warm sting he felt in those empty and hollow buildings when she was away. Without her, fear was the way of the world, burnt into the yellow beams emanating from the swaying, shattered lampposts, and impressed within the lungs taking air to fill the night with horrible, untended cries. It dripped from the open sores left to fester on the arms of the sick and untreatable. It exploded out with the snap of a hastily aimed gunshot.  

With her, it was nothing but quiet.  

She was the absence of death. He knew this. 

He retraced the steps he’d taken a hundred times in a haze of delirium, the haze now lifted, acutely aware of the darting eyes of those who would never dare look as he crossed their paths. 

A man and woman sat huddled on the sidewalk before the building, its dilapidated walls hardly any more protection from the elements and averted eyes than the brown-stained clump of charity blankets draped over their bodies. He paused to sit down beside them, as although they weren’t people he knew, they were people he could have and would have known through opportunity or necessity. 

“I’ve lived longer than I ever wanted to,” the man said. “I’ve lived long enough. I’m cold. I’m too sick. I’ve had enough.” 

“A little longer then,” said the woman. “Just a little longer. What am I supposed to do without you?” 

“You’ll have twice the blankets,” the man said. “Twice the money. Twice the food. Twice the dope. You’ll manage.” 

“But I’ll still be twice as cold. Twice as poor. I won’t eat. I’ll be twice as hungry. I would rather share.” 

He turned and watched a group of people talking and laughing amongst themselves, wearing shiny dresses and dry-cleaned suits. They stopped long enough to eye the man and woman, and sped up to cross the street. 

They ignored the laughing people, as they always would, and the people did not turn around or stop again, as they always did. 

“You’ll manage,” the man repeated. 

“We’re better as a team,” said the woman. “We’re a good team. We’re good to each other. You can’t leave. I just won’t let you.” 

The man shifted underneath the blankets and coughed. It rattled inside his chest and a glob of black phlegm followed, landing on the pavement. “Then I’ll find you in the next one.” 

“Do you promise?” said the woman. 

“Yes.” 

“How can you promise that?” 

“I can see things,” the man answered. 

“What kind of things?” 

“Good things.” The man wrapped an arm around the woman as a harsh wind whipped across their faces. “I see good things.” 

“I can’t fall asleep until you do,” said the woman. She tucked herself deeper into the man’s body, and pulled the blankets up to her chin, the scabs and broken veins no longer visible beneath her blue eyes. “Not until I hear you snoring.” 

“Then be quiet,” the man said. “And I’ll wake you in the morning.” 

He stood, leaving the man and woman to rest, and walked forward, through the boarded up entrance to the building. The flood of acknowledgment and memory coursed through him as he stepped across the empty room. Discarded needles and bags of trash littered the floor, and with each step the floorboards creaked and moaned in recognition of his return. The silvery, translucent forms of people he’d known sat crouched against the walls, hugging the corners, and though their eyes met, there was nothing left to say. They were only there to watch the pockets of dust, and to wait. What they were waiting for was something he would never know, because it was theirs, and until they found it, there they would remain. Until the dust cleared and time stopped. 

He didn’t see her among his old friends, and something that felt vaguely like—what must have been—fear flowed like shifting ice inside him. He made his way up the stairs, stepping around holes in the rotted wood and protruding, rusted nails, knowing there was nowhere left to search but the room he was about to enter. Otherwise, he would join the ranks of the lost and unclaimed drifting nowhere in the room below, and he too would sit and wait. For as long as it took he would wait for her. 

Thin beams of moonlight shone through the cracks in the ceiling, bathing the room in a blue film. In the corner was a single sleeping bag, upon it a puddle of yellow vomit that had dried and hardened. A layer of dust lined the sleeping bag and collapsing floor, though the pillow remained untouched. Strewn across the room were dozens of dead mice. Like watching the process of death fast-forwarded frame by frame, each body was in a different state of decay. Some had been reduced to skeletons, while others appeared freshly deceased, the streaks of blood coating their fur still shimmering crimson in the light. 

He strained to believe he had merely missed her upon his first glimpse, his eyes scanning the floor, the empty walls and the corners collecting dust, over and over and over, waiting for the brief flash of her silhouette.  

But she was gone. 

The shifting ice returned inside him. He navigated between the graveyard of mice, sat down upon the stained sleeping bag, and accepted what was to come: The long wait. Piercing and consuming in its silence, not quiet. Not quiet, because she was gone. 

Hours passed. Or months, or years, he waited. How long could no longer be measured and no longer mattered. The only metric that now existed was the moments before she had gone, and the single moment that they would once again be reunited at the end. 

Until something broke through the cacophony of silence. 

A single noise. A familiar sound. 

The soft cry followed softer footsteps, the aching wood muted beneath their tiny weight. 

She appeared at the top of the stairs. Though her features had aged, and long, gray streaks now adorned her once jet-black and heavy coat, he knew at once it was her. She stopped for a moment, frozen. In her eyes was the unmistakable awareness of him. Stepping closer, she dropped a new, freshly killed mouse at the foot of the sleeping bag, and began to purr. The sound drowned out the world. Her nose lifted up into the air, and she began to circle around him, pawing at nothing, but she knew, and her purrs grew louder and louder, until it encompassed his whole being, and the ice melted away.  

He reached down closer to her, and saw she had been bathed, her coat shining and clean and full. Around her neck was a collar he had never seen. Dangling from it was a small, metal tag, and written upon that was a name he had never used. 

She stepped onto the pillow beside him untouched by the dust, curled into a ball, and fell asleep, ever purring. It became very quiet in the room. 

He smiled. 

And at that moment, he disappeared from the earth. 

He no longer had to wait. They each knew where to look. And they would find each other again at the end. 

Amy Gillies 

Amy Gillies is a contemporary artist who lives and works in London. In 2019, Amy completed an MFA in Fine Art from Kingston School of Art, where she had studied a BA Hons in Fine Art and Art History previously. Since graduating, Amy has taken part in the Artists in Residence programme at One Paved Court in Richmond and has exhibited and performed in several group exhibitions including The London Art Grads Now 2021 at Saatchi Gallery. Her poetry has been published in Secret Chords: A Poetry Anthology of the Best of Folklore Prize.  

Jester 

The Forest and the Dance 

Bassetts Way

EFS Byrne 

E. F. S. Byrne works in education and writes when his teenage kids allow it. He blogs a regular micro flash story. Links to this and over fifty published pieces can be found at efsbyrne.wordpress.com or follow him on Twitter @efsbyrne.  

Chocolate Sunday 

The door closed with a pleasant snip. Its steely gaze glittered, shone until I saw myself reflected on the gleaming metal above the handle. Shouts rang out, voices bellowing, snapping at my heels like a sniffer dog on the trail of drugs or a mass murderer.  

I’d made a mistake, wrong room, wrong house, wrong move. I fumbled for the keys to open up and retrace my steps. I felt the bunch slip then fall from my fingers. I realised I was sweating. My breathe began to echo like a bee trapped in an airlock. I fumbled, found the slot and jammed metal into the lock. It twisted and ached, but then refused to budge. I tried again, ramming the key home to hear it stick, then slither aimlessly to the floor. I felt my blood pumping.  

I was lost, locked away in a metal box someone had thrown down the drain to float out to sea and wait for Jonah to swallow. I breathed deeply and flushed away the nonsense.  

I had only this set; one of them must be a fit. I stared at my fingers slipping over jagged edges, testing them one by one in the slot that had just let me in. A stepsister struggling with a glass shoe, I jiggled and stomped but nothing clicked. The door wouldn’t budge.  

My temple pounded. I wiped my forehead and pleaded sanity. “Take it easy”, I told myself. “One of them has to work.” I rubbed my hand on rough denim, wiped my nose and tasted panic. Nothing. They clinked and rattled, jammed in unison, one by one. I had just arrived. The exit was clearly marked. Nobody could have changed the lock in the seconds it took to slam the door shut.  

I thought I smelt smoke as my breath darkened. I took off my sunglasses and squinted in the stifling air to find contacts on my phone. No coverage. Another dead end. I looked around for cheese but the trap was sprung, baited with nothing but stale air and the urge to choke.  

I sank to the ground, fingers slithering down the shiny surface, my face leaning against my shadow. Crawling in circles, my tongue parched against sallow gums. I flicked it for the taste of spittle and then bent close and slobbered over the cool, shiny walls in search of a sweetener, the slithery sip of a trickle, condensation, a leak, a taste of resurrection. Slobbering and whinging, I licked for pleasure. Darkness honed its claws as my cheeks slithered down and hit the floor. Unexpectedly, the taste of hot chocolate was gurgling down my throat, gushing, beginning to stain my chin. I slurped, lay dazed in the sticky sensation of lingering comfort. Silence sliced the sensation into ragged knives digging at my entrails. It was all wrong. I tried the handle again; it broke away in my fist like an egg in a child’s grasp. I thumped and screamed, then watched the walls crumble, wafer thin suddenly beneath my newly found psychic force.  

My eyes closed with exhaustion. I could hear the doorframe cracking, the walls collapsing, screeching as they hit the metal floor with a crash. I felt light blast, dazzling, white heat smelling of smouldering metal. I tried to focus, stumbled to my knees, but couldn’t remember if I was going in or out as the walls caved. I knew they were staring, that I needed to pick myself up and walk straight. I fumbled for the keys and feigned consciousness as I strode out to the street and into the traffic, hopping like a rabbit in search of Easter. 

I hadn’t moved. My eyes swept into a glaze of concern as fingers bent to grab my arms, tug me tight, scream in delight or fear as they held me high and sighed as my nappy dripped into their palms. “I’m all grown up. Just lost in my thoughts,” I spoke through gaping sobs. She held me close to her breasts and smothered out all complaints. She’d never let me go again. 

Social Mediums 

She was young and beautiful like a free spirit in search of a leash. I followed her everywhere, tickling and teasing, urging and cajoling with the earnest persistence of a puppy snapping at her heels. I knew she was egging me on, that the arguments were nothing more than balloons at a birthday party, begging to burst, the shrieks of surprise all part of the game.  

Her skirt skimmed her knees with the ease of a butterfly hovering close to pollen. Lips curled into a smile, eyes widened to entice, charm, beg confidences. We held hands and threw crumbs to the ducks before delving into the shadows and splashing dry, autumnal leaves into a flurry of crinkling colours.  

That was before she refused to talk to me. 

The arguments rose to a crescendo, bitterly sweet. We sought them to cover up our lack of understanding, excuses to communicate when our senses knew no other means of expressing the emotions that tightened out chests into spasms of unnerving upheaval every time we caught each other’s eye or touched fingers under the kitchen table. I knew she would be the one to break it off first; her frown had a determination that led her astray, down dark alleys where shadows and stolen cigarettes offered a fascinating form of fun I never dared risk. 

I heard tales about her, fragments and snippets of achievements and pleasures I could scarcely imagine and hoped weren’t all true. She sent me postcards for my birthday. I didn’t have her address. By the time I found her on Facebook ,her pages lay dormant; she’d passed on in search of the latest trend. 

My mother always said we were one of a kind. Twins are born to stick together, driven to remain apart, but I still don’t know why she avoids me after all those years. All I want to do is tug her hair, kiss her cheek, tell her how much she means to me and that we’ve never been fully separated all these years.  

I might try looking her up on Twitter. A limited number of characters is just what we need to refocus, a firestorm to fuse our souls back together the way nature intended. Instagram, Snapchat, tick tock, time spinning, fragments shattering as my fingers trip along the keyboard in search of a rhythm. Sticky with jelly, they fumble in the middle of a birthday cake, trying to recollect the part she liked most.  

I can’t remember what I did, and wish she wouldn’t. 

Leah Lopez 

Leah Lopez is a Chicago author of science fiction and fantasy stories. 

The Fat Lady 

The High Priestess from the Sea of Forlorn Lovers
Blessed her rolling hips,
Anointed her fleshy arms,
Praised her generous belly,
Then commanded her to the service of the 

Greater Goddess of Sensual Pursuits
And the lesser goddesses of chocolate, wine, and bed-lust.

On Venus, she thought,
I am beautiful and desired.

Her hand moved in waves down her sides,
Smoothing down her not-exactly-silk dress.
She felt the bumps of the embroidered flowers with her hand.
No one here seemed to notice the delicate garden that danced Around her thighs. 

On Venus, she thought,
Beauty is appreciated.

Staring into the mirror
(Who thought her beautiful and desired),
She stiffened her back to remind her to be strong,
Forced a smile to spread across her rose-tinted cheeks,
And braced herself for another day spent in the tent
For the amusement of others.

Her roommate, the Tattooed Lady (from the future) 

Has ink as her armor, but
The beauty from Venus only has stories like memories, 

Sifted for solace. 

On Venus, she thought,
We nestle our beauty with joy. 

When she closed her eyes hard enough
To see stars bloom under her eyelids,
She could see the glass palaces,
Full of women -
Curved, round, thin, hard, soft, loved -
Spinning and dancing and laughing.
Home, she thought. 

Hearing the call of the Carnival Man
Down she went, wishing for her other-land. 

The Tattooed Lady 

Come one, come all and I’ll tell you the tale of The Tattooed Lady!
Once a time traveler, ask her about cell-u-lar telephones!, 

Now she sits here for your amusement and curiosity! 

Her skin a map of time,
The red-haired pinup on her left shoulder winks at you,
Offering a pink cupcake.
The Tattooed Lady half-slumps, half-leans into her chair, 

Waiting. 

Come one, come all and marvel at the grotesque Tattooed Lady! 

She pluck pluck plucks at the hem of her dress,
And looks up at the line of people trailing by.
One golden girl licking a lollipop larger than her head
Lingers long enough to smile
Before her nervous mother ushers her through 

Quickly while the drunk father
Runs his gaze over all her outlines 

Too slowly for polite company
Because some things never change 

No matter how long you spent 

Waiting.

Mind the rope, folks! 

She’d give the ol’ Suffragettes a run 

For their money, Yes’siree!
Tell her to smile and she’ll punch your throat, lads! 

She’s a spitfire, our Tattooed Lady! 

She smiles a small smile where the girl stood,
Her eyes no longer far away, but rooted
Here. 

To the small tent she sits in all of the day 

And much of the evening
To the small bed in the small trailer she shares 

With the Fat Lady (from Venus)
To the small diary she carries with her to record her time spent 

Waiting.

Said she came here in a Time Machine! 

Said that we were backwards! Ignorant!
Said the future had women presidents!
Imagine, that folks!
Come see my rootin’ tootin’, high-falutin’, time travelin’ 

Tattooed Lady! 

Someone asked about Shakespeare
Another about zeppelins and another about moving pictures
As if she were their Gilded Age Sibyl in The Frayed Tent.
The Tattooed Lady shifted in her seat, 

Adjusted the hem again.
Said Shakespeare was a girl,
Zeppelins were too slow,
And they’d record a man walk on the moon.

She looked bored most of the time.
She winked at a teenaged girl who eyed her 

More hopefully than suspiciously.
She no longer wondered how long she’d be here, 

But that didn’t stop the

Waiting. 

Come one, come all and I’ll tell you the tale of The Tattooed Lady!
Once a time traveler, ask her about the world wide web!, 

Now she sits here for your amusement and curiosity! 

Marnie Bullock Dresser 

Marnie Bullock Dresser lives in Spring Green, Wisconsin with her husband and son and four cats in a house that, really, isn't
big enough for that many living creatures. She has taught at the tiniest University of Wisconsin campus for the longest time.
Her work has appeared in many places, including Prairie Schooner, The Antioch Review, Sou'wester, The American Literary Review, and CutBank.  

So I went to his office to talk about my paper which he said showed great promise but lacked discipline. 

I recognized that judgment. It is the story of my life. 

We worked side by side like journalists tracking a story. We were miners excavating—not gold. Something cooler than gold. I was a girl Icarus not flying too high (I’m so sensible) and yet feeling the sun on me more than I ever have. 

Our arms touching were so hot I thought I might blister. 

We hugged when we got that paper wrangled. 

His fingers brushed my belly. 

If you line up his arm and my arm and his— 

We look like Neapolitan ice cream. 

He cried he laughed so hard when I showed him. He can’t believe I’m not a poet.  

Here’s what it’s like—not the cliche of the Wizard of Oz, not going from black & white to color. It’s more like my life before was shot the way a commercial would be—bright and clean and boring. Whereas now it’s grainy and saturated and weird. 

I have never in my life had someone so happy to see me just walk in a room. 

We weren’t 

actually, technically, doing anything sexual when she came in. She lied and said she’d be gone until late. I wasn’t supposed to be there at all. We were just sitting on the couch. Too close I guess. But that wasn’t how she knew, anyway. 

“You never do laundry,” she said. “But we keep having clean sheets.”  

I’m not sure I’d ever truly noticed her before, not really, not like this. They way her hands looked so wrinkled, so dry, so shaky. 

But I mostly looked at my own cuticles. The ridges and tabs and bright red divots. 

His wife keeps a clean house. 

I’ll give her that. Of course she has paid help. I wonder if I could borrow her cleaning lady. I mean—I borrowed her husband. I don’t mean I want to fuck the cleaning lady.  Although she’s fetching enough. Actually that would be a great story. “Why didn’t she finish her PhD?”  “Oh? Didn’t you hear? She ran off with her professor’s cleaning lady.  They’re in Austin now.” 

I want to run off somewhere.  

I want to be elsewhere.  

But where?  

God 

stipulate 

where. 

Where and where.  

Anywhere but where he is. Here. 

Jessamyn Stanley I Love You 

I'm sure you'd rather I loved myself. I'm working on it. 

In the meantime, thank you for letting me love your arms. 

They're not lathed like Michelle Obama's. But they can lift 

to the sun. I also love your legs. Strong. Round. Gams. 

But it's the belly you're not ashamed of that I love the most. 

It's just there. You don't act like it's in your way. It isn't. 

And obviously it's not just how you look. It's what you do 

with a body that doesn't scream white girl influencer goop. 

You move smooth and slow and graceful. You rock those moves 

that I am just now approaching. Bright colors. Bare skin.  

You use your body so--capably. You seem lived-in. 

I have changed how I see myself by watching you. 

Later I will try to point my front thigh down, "parallel-ish 

to the ground." Thank you for the space to fail. To make a wish 

and live where the wish comes true. Even when I crash. 

Adam Chabot 

Adam Chabot is the English Department Chair at Kents Hill School, a private, independent high school located in central Maine. He has other poetry forthcoming or recently featured in rough diamond poetry, FEED, The Red Lemon Review, and Moss Puppy Magazine, among others. He can be found on Twitter @adam_chabot.  

Facing Windows 

Black labs romp dragging their frayed  

leashes among shredded Nerf footballs,  

but inside she thumbs a loose thread on  

her chair. Neither dog belongs to her.  

From a window she observes the intimacies;  

she wants to tap her pen against the glass  

but doesn’t. There’s a fly slapping itself  

against the walls and she imagines its  

tenebrous chaotic condition unable to process  

the obstacle so clear it defies its logic. Inside  

lies a craving, unsated but the break is almost  

over and storm clouds send everyone indoors.  

The fly is gone and tattered foam tumbles in  

the wind. 

Infestation 

We thought they were  

ladybugs but you smelled  

it, too, that vicissitude  

of revelation, that common 

misconception, that unexpected 

foul, lingering odor of natural 

stink: Asian lady beetles. Balancing  

on our disheveled bed with  

a handheld vacuum in-hand, I  

pressed that persistent  

motored inhalation against  

the walls, the ceiling, the windows,  

and inside the plastic cage  

I collected them with a violent,  

yet timely plucking. Winged,  

orange bodies sloshed in their  

prison with each humming stab  

of my forearm entrapping  

another invader. I released them  

behind the apple tree; you sneered  

and winced, staring at the remains  

of the moment; it was death, the  

soft yellow stains in the corner of  

the room like old water spots  

in the drywall.  

Clem Flowers 

Clem Flowers (They/ Them) is a poet, eldritch horror,  & soft spoken southern transplant living in a mountain's shadow in Utah. In an eternal quest to be the host in constant disbelief in an infomercial. Nb, bi, and queer as the day is long, they live in a cozy apartment with their wonderful wife & sweet calico kitty. Found on Twitter @clem_flowers 

Death Rays Broke Loose 

Brutal fatalism ripples thru the wheat fields like an unmanned thrasher 

while I watch the creeping growth of the day 

from the bay window 

on my side of the Jiffy Lube garage 

in a calm 

before the afternoon oil change rush 

comes stampeding in 

to my antiseptic-scented shores 

I remember the joy when I told my family I’d gotten this job 

& they insisted on throwing a celebration party 

& how in a few years I’d be able to open my own shop 

& over a sea of toasts of Miller & Vernors 

I tried to pretend 

I didn’t see the honey 

pouring in thru the screen door 

highlighting the half life of road work signs 

remembering 

all those kerosene lamp weekends, sweet sugar dusks 

desperate to savor 

every drop of honey from their shaky husks 

Dry gulch overflowing with rust & broken mufflers is my new kingdom and I know I shouldn’t gripe & I know I should be grateful that I can afford my efficiency studio apartment & I know my folks tried so hard to make sure I avoided the farm life that had claimed so so many acreage of branches on my family tree 

but I find my eyes drawn down from the horizon to the garlands of posies hanging off the columns out front of K-Mart. 

I know the hands who made them 

they were the same ones that carried me to the edge of Exile but the drip of ambrosia they brought to my lips sent an otherworldly lighting shock up my spine 

like the time I fooled myself into thinking I could play halfback for my high school football team just because my older brother had and utterly had my shit rocked by a offensive lineman who I realized later from the mud had the same last name on the back of his jersey as the sign on the every car dealership in town so I knew there would just be wasted breath in telling the ref that he’d kicked me in the balls after already downed me into an unruly heap- 

Like that, but better. 

Those hands that I watched wave one last goodbye as the Greyhound headed off to their destiny in New York 

and I soon saw them splashed in the local paper showing that they’d made it to Broadway 

and how the city council had made sure that their newly minted favorite son would have their work around the city from days of his reckless youth would be preserved eternal for all to admire 

pouring amber over his murals and spray a rain-proof coating over the flower awnings and sculptures he crafted over the summer when he should have really been trying a lot harder at his job at Happy Joe’s Pizza and there was so many quotes from prominent names around town who were giddy to talk about their pride when only a year before they’d called him a sinner and a heathen. 

And here I am. 

Among a stack of fresh tires & the irremovable clotted oil stains on the cold concrete garage ground. 

Grateful that everyone else is out getting lunch from Skyline so I don’t have to hide the salted heat bubbling up in my eyes. 

Homesteading in the Morning War 

* 

“God, I’m so tired” -  

the 16mm pulls in the simmering of the blue mountain desert as the beer bottles dance like stolen emeralds on the roadside 

One lone bit breaks the tranquil water 

New edged dollars spin along the leaves in the rainy gutters beneath the green-skull azaleas; long shadow of daisy hill hits like hammers on the curdling garage 

It was a vampire’s kiss on the poison night when I spotted the wreath the old man had left up as his last offering to the world last winter before the last light went out 

Emily Paluba 

Emily Paluba (she/her) is a 21-year-old queer poet and writer from New Jersey. She indulges in many art forms, including slam poetry, sketching, and flash fiction. She writes about anything that tugs at her soul. Her work appears in Queerlings, Full House Literary, The Normal Review, and Lavender Bones. When she’s not in her notebook, you can find her horseback riding, walking her dog, or on Instagram @eapwriting and Twitter @emilyywrites.  

ascension 

green jewels in my head: charged 

   by the snow flurries outside. 

yet i am a culmination 

   of snowflakes moving in reverse. 

materializing on my own tongue; 

   liquefied flight. 

i’ll say hello to the sky for you. 

viewpoint from above 

her nails are bubbly and her brow is sad. 

but hardly ever does she reach up toward me. 

one time i noticed her chin further away from her chest, 

her eyes like almonds in her skull. 

suddenly, the crystals cracked 

and her sobs terrified me. 

i wondered if she could see her reflection in my light 

or the reflection of her ex-lover on the screen. 

i never met The Girl, but i know that 

for every tear shed, she is more grateful 

that The Girl is a stranger to me. 

something bitter left behind 

we bought those shoes together. yours had a little stain on the tongue, and i said no, don’t buy them. you’ve been dying for these and they should be perfect. but you said hey, maybe i can get a reduced price. an eavesdropping voice said five dollars less. not bad. we both bought a pair. i wonder if yours are still white. i wonder if the stain has grown over time like an eternal inkblot. i wonder if you think of me as you slide your foot inside, hands tending to wise laces. i wonder if you think of me each time you step, wondering if i’m thinking of you. wherever i am. you know where i am. for a while, they were the only shoes i wore. they are comfortable, and they match everything. but behind my heels, the fabric is completely worn. the holes grow every day, so i had to buy something new. a pair of boots. i scratched them already, but i guess that’s fine. my hands slide the zippers up and tend to the innocent laces. they look good with most things. they are comfortable. i feel strong when i wear them. did you replace yours with something new? 

proclamations 

it would have been 

the end of the world 

if i stayed. 

the tight convulsions 

in my chest 

the only movement 

my body could feel. 

turning the world 

into an empty vehicle 

for whatever is 

the opposite of music. 

your hands were deadly. 

maybe you should’ve used them more. 

it would have been 

the end of the world 

if i had to keep 

driving back and forth 

and forth and forth 

inching down a narrow road 

toward a chain 

begging for no scrapes. 

toward you, going 

back and back and back 

away from me 

claiming unconditional words. 

at the end 

all the birds would sound 

the same 

and you’d call it the most 

beautiful song 

you’ve ever heard. 

at the end 

the sky would be 

a stark white 

and you’d say you’ve never 

seen something 

so colorful. 

at the end 

purple flames would turn 

all life to nothing 

and you’d say 

this is the warmest 

you’ve ever felt. 

it would have been the end of the world 

if i stayed 

with you. 

flight 

the chevrons on my skin 

point nowhere, 

just the direction i came from. 

the clouds pixelate the road ahead. 

i exhale airplanes 

and inhale my own trail left behind 

to start anew. 

green fog surrounds my head 

like pigtails tied by my mother. 

sap-soaked trees soak me. 

ripples of sage invite me in. 

jump—cruise—land on top 

of needles so dull they’re pointless. 

the balloons in my head: 

eerily silent but always rising, 

shifting into one another. 

sunsets taste like pomegranates, 

toasted with shadows of branches and birds, 

sprinkled with horizon. 

Frank William Finney 

Frank William Finney is a retired lecturer currently based in Massachusetts.  He lived in Thailand from 1955 until 2020, where he taught at Thammasat University.  His poems have appeared in The Disappointed Housewife, Grand Little Things, Stone Poetry Journal, and The Thieving Magpie, among others.   His chapbook The Folding of the Wings is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2022.  

Terminals 

When I was a child 

I missed the bus. 

In my youth 

I missed the boat. 

In middle age 

I missed the plane. 

Now I’m waiting in the fog 

for the final ferry: 

Nobody misses this ride. 

Weddings and Wakes 

Let the family plead and pester. 

Let them mumble, mock, and moan. 

Let the others call me selfish. 

Let them growl and grin and groan. 

Let them sulk in stubborn silence. 

Let them cry and cuss and curse. 

Lived long enough to give them up 

for better or for worse. 

Café Q & A 

It’s an N-95 

I stole from Walmart. 

I’m only joking:
I haven’t stolen a thing 

since I cut down 

that cherry tree. 

But hey, don’t those muffins 

look tasty this morning? 

Nothing I ask 

is rhetorical. 

Typhon Lives Next Door 

and sends his smoky breath 

to burrow in our curtains,

to linger in our lungs  

and the lungs of our pets

knowing full well we know 

he smoulders not an ash  

of remorse for all the stench, 

soot, and suffering he spreads our way. 

Old-Time Yankees 

Seldom wave.   

Hardly talk. 

Try to make do 

with what they’ve got. 

A pinch of pride. 

A grudge for shame. 

Self-reliance. 

An eye on the game. 

K.G. Ricci 

K.G. Ricci, a self-taught New York City artist, made a collage on a file cabinet in 2015. The creative possibilities of the medium immediately inspired him. Fifty cut and paste panels followed, visual improvisations on 20” x 40” or 2’ X 4’ hardboard. Next, Ricci completed another series on 8” X 24” hardboard with implied literary reflections* or narrative lines. He categorized hundreds of his panels in groups with names like “Femma Dilemma”, “Hotel Kafka” and “3:43 A.M.” 

Recently, Ricci sustained his implied narrative focus in “Numbered-Not Named”, a series of original pieces, 6” x 9” on black stock.  His current project: “Random Thoughts in the Waiting Room”, is a visual flash fiction series of books with a single word or a fragment of text in each collage composition. 

K.G. Ricci has exhibited in 27 galleries including solo shows and many more online galleries. His collages have been published in poetry and literary magazines nationally and internationally online and in print. 

Selections attached are from series ~ Random Thoughts in the Waiting Room  

Your Invitation to Paradise 

No Mother to Guide Him 

New Lands for Pleasure Travelers 

Lasting Achievement 

Fascinating New Game 

HLR 

HLR (she/her) is a working-class poet, writer and editor from north London. Her work has been widely published, most recently by Hobart, Variant Literature, and Emerge Literary Journal. She is the author of History of Present Complaint (Close to the Bone) and Portrait of the Poet as a Hot Mess (Ghost City Press). Twitter: @HLRwriter  

Fight Night 

Claret on cotton and hearts on sleeves;
words that hurt and eyes that bleed.

After too much truth serum, I was after a fight. “It will all come out in the wash,” the wise man used to say, but those words of mine won’t, the ones I spat all over you last night, vodka- and saliva-laced blood on your white shirt, and your handsome face, pale, bewildered and afraid. You weren’t expecting that venomous spray and you should’ve washed up straight away, but those stains are stuck now, ingrained, tainted fibre, they’ll barely fade, merely to a lighter shade of pain but it’s still pain, pain all the same. Blind rage, I disengaged and, the next day, I don’t remember the details of my cruel tirade, but can tell that it was harsh by the look on your face, your face that says, “I know you’re sick, you didn’t mean it,” your face that won’t admit that I say what I mean and mean what I say, your face that says, “I will always forgive but I can never forget.” Can’t you see that I’m trying to make you love me less? That I want you to come out best? I’m trying to make you leave me before you get left. And you can just buy a new shirt anyway, one that’s pretty and pure and free of grief and free of stains, easy to iron out the kinks, easy to maintain, better quality than me, longer lasting than us. She’ll fit you just right. And, in time, you will forget the unwarranted malice, cruelty, spite in the words that I spat all over you during a nasty drunken fight we had, late one October night. 

Things He Made This Week 

a toast to us;
me feel better;
a ridiculous assumption;
me feel worse;
a monumental error of judgment;
a scene;
a big mistake; 

a casserole;
several big mistakes;
me cry (twice);
his true colours show;
a big decision;
his bed;  

me want to die;
something out of nothing;
a mess;
his mind up. 

Meant To 

Apparently, you’re not supposed to smile when a cat scratches you. That’s what he told me when he realised that I was getting bad again. When a cat drags its claws across your ashen skin, you’re not meant to be pleased; when blood breaks through to the surface, making a line of glossy scarlet globules along the path that the claw forged on the landscape of your arm, you’re not meant to be relieved. Apparently, you’re meant to wipe the blood away immediately, not let it coast slowly downwards over the old scars made previously by other imaginary cats. And, apparently, you shouldn’t let the claret collect in the crook of your elbow, shouldn’t lap up the glorious ruby fjord with the tip of your tired tongue. Apparently, when a cat scratches you, you’re not meant to aggravate it further. You’re not meant to encourage it to pounce again, you’re not meant to be excited by a second, third, fourth scratch, thrilled by a gorgeously deep bite on the wrist, ecstatic, in love with the pinch and the perfect teeth marks puncturing your skin. Apparently, there are lots of things that we’re not supposed to do. You’re not meant to do lots of things, but I do. He knows I don’t like doing what I’m supposed to, knows I never do what I’m meant to. The sting from a cat scratch is not supposed to spark a satisfied smile but it does, it does. It shouldn’t, it’s not supposed to, it’s not meant to, but it does. 

Jean-Mark Sens 

Born in France, Jean-Mark Sens has lived in the American South for over twenty-five years. He studied for Priesthood at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. His work has been published in the U.S. and Canada, and he has a collection, Appetite, with Red Hen Press: http://redhen.org/book/?uuid=26010B90-F50B-AE04-1A31-0B86BB199EA4 He is also working on culinary book Leafy Greens & Sundry Things.  

Angels & Visitors 

For Angels rent the House next ours, 

Wherever we remove— 

Emily Dickinson  

There hovers in that moment, wraith-like and like a [plume of steam an aftermath, 

A still and quiet angel of knowledge and of [comprehension. 

George Oppen 

I enable myself 

By any device 

An angel would recognize 

Even if he came 

While I was away 

A good sign 

Might make him stay 

Samuel Menashe 

Do you hear  

Does anyone 

hear the man 

repeating and repeating  

himself in the snow? 

Mike White 

Quartz Angel 

A translucent body, crystalline shales 

the quartz, a brittling stone of multiple-edge pyramids 

angels borrow layered angles for their chevroned wings.  

Quartz regulates hectic currents 

its atomic valence equal to sand and storm solarized to lapis lazuli  

time fluidity dripping regularly to the beats of a watch. 

Angels of quartz, hertzian companions of lunar winds 

gloss of silica as born of sands to sands they return 

grains of drowsiness left in the corners of your dreamy eyes  

Angels of quartz are no gems—no glamour of diamonds  

discreet and stoic—shadowing pace makers of erratic secrets into the human heart. 

Precinct Angel  

Coffee sooner or later chars —leaving the rim of the hot plate 

encrusted with dregs at the bottom of the pot where the scouring sponge 

can’t reach, and Sergeant McEntry will curse the night clerk at the cusp of dusk. 

Black, indelible crown, angels of Hell should wear. 

The door opens, closes, everyone measured by the ruler over the frame, 

a moving eye glass on the ceiling reminds you who enters here 

is to be seen, deposited, typed and profiled, print marked, digitized to a bare face 

perhaps heard, if insistent to his own demise—short or long sojourner, 

a same shuffling under the desk. 

Precinct Angel of many cousins—Lost-and-Found’s, confessor’s box, insomniacs’ 

tell-tale heart’s, and see-through mirror’s detectives, and police blotters. 

Angel of the perennial unlucky shoplifter, the stumbling youngster  

a smell of ether on his breath  

and after midnight will puke  

a smell of perfume on his breath. 

No sun, no sleep, flickering neon pulsing like a tortured eyelid, rasp voices on a radio 

patrols in and patrols out, a hand touching a holster. 

The precinct Angel takes a break at the end of a crowded bench, in the hold 

he tries to recollect with deep frown wrinkles over his brows, a name, a number 

the last in the instant before the blue lights and tightening iron-grip of the cuffs 

gate opening and closing till morning and who ever stands up loses his seat-- 

a ubiquitous “why are you in” to rehearse a move in the ante-chamber an insider’s story.  

Angels of Keyholes 

The angels of keyholes have grown thinner and thinner 

tightening through the brackets only an eye can pass 

curved negative space, hips and torsos in aperture, 

turn of a key’s own slant, an idiosyncratic sleight of hand 

wedge of light, an angel gives a reply in a familiar click. 

They have become thin as a blade and dim of visions  

braced in steel of a cold stainless polish. 

Angels of keyholes no longer tumble in the lock of a door, 

gone the patina of copper, their golden aureoles, 

jambs reduced to a sliding silence. 

Angels of keyholes have turned enigmatic, cryptic 

digital and absent 

a few numbers and letters 

a magnetic strip on a card 

soon we will no longer know how to hear them 

let them carry us through the threshold 

our souls and eyes in anticipation  

a salute over the transom.  

Angel of Clay 

For Jane 

Earth to earth ware  

   wet, lean, or fat, water sleek  

       smoothing sooth, clean out of deep dug dirt  

for the vessel, wheel turned  

   contoured and shaped out of hands 

      palms supple, conjoining and parting  

potter’s Angel—praying and making   

   the hollowed out calls light inside the vessel dark  

      belly of a pot full of an incessant echo of the sea  

color tells the clay malleability  

   two handles ear-shaped, down to the bottom   

      stretch of its neck to receive, fill in, pour out  

raised and praised to a jar  

   same clay from Siloam poulticed for the blind to see 

the potter fired kiln and its Angel, solid and disappearing  

quick presence, evanescent in the air like a genie. 

Kitchen Angel 

The kitchen Angel dances at the tip of the long hand 

between each tick of the clock 

pliés and pirouettes, a little ballet, 

her body concentrates and dissipates 

in subtle whiffs, archangelic clouds out of a roasting pan, 

a little bubbling chant inside the oven-- 

a kitchen angel, bright white wings from the back 

her forearms turned copper by the stove heat 

a blue reflection from the salamander 

where she pulls quick a gratin out before it burns 

kitchen angel of flour dusted shoulders 

her secret breath over the dough  

she mists the hearth in a vaporized halo  

kitchen angel passing through the back door to the dumpster 

water and dish liquid foaming in the sink 

she sings an old Cuban sailor’s song 

bursting to shouts and stampedes “la chinga! Se vienne la migra!” 

kitchen angel with Vietnamese hands, 

her stout African feet that can dance to the clinging of dishes, 

kitchen angel wrestling at every turn of the hour 

the pegs wavering waiters’ slips ready to fire 

kitchen angel that never surrenders 

slumbering in the pantry,  

blurry eye by a crate of lemons, 

scullery lending a magic touch to every dish 

angel climbing to no heaven  

a hovel in the attic. 

Loan Angel 

You called merely revealing a generic first name. No face to put on. You said in a white voice, payments were late. You stated it plainly. Could I have felt an innuendo of reproach? You were not asking how it could be—had I no money? How had I spent the inheritance from an Aunt on a grand baby piano, not even tried to return a dime on what I had borrowed? Even with my arpeggio, music from the twelve most celebrated arias, it won’t go away. I was just delaying, and later I will have to pay even more, penalties and late fees. Humbly, I would have said, I know. You also stated I had to give my current address and phone numbers with no incognito. Maybe your name was Ricardo, Victor—something I will recall. You will call again, but I won’t let you go. I’ll pin a face on your voice, unmask you till my loans outgrow your own children’s retirements. Will I make dues and progress on my instalments? You will be the one that will have to inquire, and find out about my health wanting to know if I am about to blow the balloon over my dividends. So you too will grow old, older that is like anyone but your ghost. Will I let it go or put a face on you? What was your name… Antonio…Victor…Angelo, something like that--another name perhaps, familiar and a bit foreign, and yet sounding always the same. 

Matthew Freeman 

Matthew Freeman is the author of several books of poems, most recently Ideas of Reference at Jesuit Hall (Coffeetown Press) and Exile (2River). He holds an MFA from the University of Missouri-St Louis and tends to write about his experiences recovering from schizophrenia and addiction.  

Pushing and Pulling 

I remember feeling things, 

like walking up from the dock 

to my girlfriend's house in Seldovia 

and seeing her uncle 

grilling these just-caught 

three-inch-thick salmon steaks 

and waking up to the sensation of fullness and joy. 

Today the homeless kid 

called me an idiot and a fool at Starbucks. 

I came home to Twitter, 

I'm trying to ingratiate myself 

with my favorite unknown rock star. 

Everything's Ideal, Objective, 

and my brain's going back and forth 

in the new necromedia. 

Dropping Bombs 

I can see now 

that I've been trying to get free 

not only from the repressive symptoms 

that have wearied me 

but also from  the fell strictures 

that I have continued to put on myself. 

It is possible to live without hope. 

But it ain't easy. 

Certain Aspects of the Cure

Messages and meds, 

that's what I'm all about. 

And this here releases me 

from the tension between the two 

and the prospect that one 

might erase the other. 

So many people 

have given me such great advice-- 

and don't get me wrong, I love them all. 

It's just that I was playing around a bit, 

poking the devil 

with a sharp stick. 

So you're saying I can't control 

what people say. If someone says 

that all I've done 

is nothing but a bunch of malingering 

there's nothing I could do about it. 

God, they might even call this prose! 

God, I've been on Clozaril for twenty-one years! 

So I took-- all the while resisting 

in a glamorous way-- 

the Capitalist Cure. 

Wrong!

I was sitting alone on the sad patio 

thinking about the plangency of verbs 

and doing a deep analysis of the lyrics of Led Zeppelin 

when I heard these heavy footfalls 

and a voice enthused with immediacy 

and I looked up and saw 

a young student racing up Westgate 

with a cell phone held up to their face as they ran 

young and alive to meet their lover. 

I don't know anything about that. That's not me. 

I have no recollection of anything like that. 

That's foreign to me. I can't 

remember being like that. I'm cut off 

from anything like that. That doesn't make any sense. 

Something like that isn't for me. 

There's some wall in front of me. 

Something's blocking me from anything like that. 

My world vision spells out 

that that's completely absurd and freaked out. 

I'm different now. That will 

never happen again. I don't even know what that is. 

Those people are different from me. 

I think I'm being attacked. 

I could try something like that 

but everyone would hate me. I'm frightened 

of all that. Something's gone wrong. 

Motion

Decay, discord, disharmony, whatever. 

This whole place has gone to shit 

when it used to be a haven. 

I saw little Enoch come back this morning-- 

from whom I'd heard 

they'd already confiscated a machete two months ago-- 

with what looked like a bodyguard or social worker 

and proceed into the office 

exactly one day after beating down an old man  

with the old man's cane. 

Let's talk about entropy then. 

Let's talk about a system that treats and streets you 

in twenty-four hours. 

I just had for dinner a can of mixed vegetables 

someone left on the bench by the elevator 

and now I'm more dreary than Thomas Paine. 

The system in which I ply my trade is breaking down. 

I don't care too much about myself (lie) 

but to witness a promise coming apart 

at every end 

like the most insane zombie apocalypse film 

is becoming bad for morale. 

One must keep one's composure. 

My toilet's been running for well over two weeks. 

The signs they leave on the hallway walls 

portend. If I read 

one more story with an unhappy ending 

I'm going to consider moving 

from my beloved Parkview Place. 

Joshua Martin 

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is the author of the books combustible panoramic twists (Trainwreck Press), Pointillistic Venetian Blinds (Alien Buddha Press) and Vagabond fragments of a hole (Schism Neuronics). He has had numerous pieces published in various journals including Otoliths, M58, The Sparrow’s Trombone, Coven, Scud, Ygdrasil, RASPUTIN, Ink Pantry, and Synchronized Chaos. You can find links to his published work at joshuamartinwriting.blogspot.com  

From the dandruff down 

Domes like painted beards               rabid production line  

          of false paper 

                   spreading innuendoes 

                                                                 through the mail 

      while            I                     eyeglasses smoking grimace 

pretend          for seldom a sake 

                  as genuine as a water buffalo to chant 

                                    fur lined punchbowls meeting head to toe  

           & care to carved                   placement ambushed 

from the dandruff down no one else could find a chance to spill 

like a learned choice that is never really a device          while        I 

        gratify      cornstalks      broadband      broadly      

                 opaque            typewriter       keys         set to overdrive 

                      you blast away flying saucer slap happy loss of papers 

                                                                        loss of yrs 

never as much as abandoned industrial town  

                promised the world &               delivered the 

blues           while                I          undertaker of albino waves 

         straddle epic 

manure until pigpen justification allows serious contemplation  

                                               to occur w/o the use of 

                                                          a leg chopped barndoor 

sizzle 

sizzle 

sizzle 

through a limping disease of the times  

           an era scared to take a pause for a breath of       insight  

     or             simple enough          for a bath          to linger quietly 

while                   I                unhook miniscule crisis promise 

                                oppression gazing 

              w/o end 

w/o subtle knowledge to rest  

a moment upon or to dream at last vague tail 

                                    taller than a Martian club  

                                    made to splatter insignificance 

                  blessed 

                       stressed 

dressed to meet the delays timed to imperfection  

                             while I savor all that illogic         offers  

                                           cold 

                                           cold the colder I am  

                                                                        the more peacefully  

                                                                        strained 

discourse strained discourse                    pulled over shoulder 

blank promenade plugged in to sealed off grifter 

edged in black 

              stoned to steal          once                   while  

                                    I snicker glad tidings 

cards full tilt boogie woogie on fire trees 

       our homes splayed      painted             drafted before 

earthquake 

                 savannah in the eyes of the desert  

                      the images convey cosmic exuberance  

or that could just be indifference             while           I 

             in climbing 

                          chiming 

                                             vertiginous clapping finger  

                                             gripping slippery sloping 

                                             forehead longer than a horse 

                                             & drier             than a tongue 

High-intensity proximities 

Militant canvas speaks in monosyllabic time signatures 

vastly consumed by weathered visions. Buried fruitful 

as a zigzag bench presses poor posture in cursive hand 

guarding dizzying skyscraper over functioning supply 

chain gardener. Keepsake dazzle manages a wry sense 

of smirking unitary sportsmanship though in perfected 

chagrin. 

               Lisped less undulation provokes 

               a squid that is not a squid at all 

               but an escalator made in the  

               vantage point of an armored  

               cafeteria. Junket trips on the 

               celebratory cellophane flavored 

               with curds of misapprehensive  

               mayors and served on a plate  

               with whey. 

     Drinking best approved shaking ligaments 

     reliable tho askew but pointedly enough 

     to be a detergent. Comparable flights instead 

     liminal before drowned tissue paper masks. A 

     premature rose petal averages a maniac per  

     witching hour. Peace rises to steep an incline 

     bromide sisterhood raincoat. 

All hung to cheer punchbowl abdominal before 

engineered snow flurries sheer as an almanac 

and printed as surely. To the curtain shower 

rods were worn around the waist like bumpers 

sold at fish markets. Diving richly consumes an 

essence of behavior. Insights antibacterial 

code of conduct apostrophe no more. 

Remote control head 

subsequent disease & infiltration at the end of the proof 

            then a design factored to the estimated degree  

            a facelift makes to the aggregate form 

                     apparent in the dustbin 

                     of historical disguises 

                     not unlike a pumpkin head 

                     sullen                  wearing a frown  

                                                 into abysmal wings 

                                                 treading desert cityscape  

                                                 scraping homo sapien dilemma 

& all the jazz evokes your tail wagging in the wind 

not subtle        shouting        creature comforts  

              in the clouds                                    bandaged  

                                  your remote control head 

                     a sinister appeal     w/o zeal 

storming reluctant invasions pursing lips/drips/slips 

   overwhelming jokes 

                practical in dimensional chaos  

                as to sticky stuff all over the ground  

swollen     this     then 

a thumb in a light socket never more than an entrail/to no avail 

                                           epic disposition 

                                                       zoned out 

                                           variable 

                                                       fly buzzed 

                                           shaken 

                                                       put out to dry 

less than meat torn asunder 

         avalanche football player loosening lug nuts 

                     pigs&pigs all wearing big wigs softly 

the thumping below thunder you heard a clap 

then zapped yourself into oblivious kitchen door 

what a gut job!          what a smell!  

                    we’re all looser now &  

      running in place just until 

                                      we reach a pool 

Sweat glands 

Folds of wasted print 

signify radio wave infernos  

onion blasted into oblivious 

yawning cottage. 

Structured monolithic 

adolescent swing 

set among the orchards 

grinning earless ego trip. 

Pardonable apprehension 

following a miniature 

goose drenched for buttered 

perfection as a space 

cadet lost on a wing. 

A series of typographical 

roadmaps violated an 

advantage as if carrying 

on indicated a philosophical 

inquiry but who can be 

the judge less a toad? 

Clarity did not a comma 

because a kidney will 

have to do before wattage 

spells incorrect cracker 

paranormal like the 

perfect crime timed  

to the rhythmic clipping 

nature earns sitting. 

Mike Kaarsgaren 

In 2013 Mike Kaarsgaren graduated from the Economics, Law and management programme at Hogeschool Utrecht. In his spare moments, he dedicated his time writing poems, of which some of them have been published by local newspapers. Shortly after his graduation he enrolled into a job as a sales and customer success manager at a software company in Amsterdam, where his passion for communication and language further awakened.

Inspired by the contemporary art scene he now sets his goal to liberate the poetry from conventional standards and formats that are defining the current market. His work is described as transgressive in nature and frequently includes visual and/or experimental constituents.

Mikekaarsgaren.nl  

Rose Knapp 

Rose Knapp (she/they) is a poet and electronic producer. She has publications in Lotus-Eater, Bombay Gin, BlazeVOX, Hotel Amerika, Fence Books, Obsidian, Gargoyle, and others. She has poetry collections published with Beir Bua Press, Hesterglock Press, and Dostoyevsky Wannabe. She lives in Minneapolis. Find her at roseknapp.net and on Twitter @Rose_Siyaniye  

Commodity Fetishization 

Buy buy buy consume consume consume 

Faster faster faster harder harder harder 

Deeper deeper deeper devour devour devour 

Welcome to Minneapolis 

Spring floral lilies and roses jut up my nose 

Whirling lake waters pool in picturesque arrangements 

Metamodernist glass skyscrapers 

Intermingle with the viridian natural world 

Cassiopeia 

Vanity is bliss, apathy is bliss, love is bliss 

Oh vain queen and your unrivaled beauty! 

Vanity gives one a place among the stars 

Titanium Gnosis 

I Am nothingness incarnate, void made flesh 

I Am metallurgical liturgical fusion 

I Am unbreakable unspeakable divine will to gnosis 

Kumiho 

Resplendent shapeshifting nine tailed fox 

Devouring wicked men’s liver 

Delightful devilish dervish of medieval Korea 

Shaurya Arya 

Shaurya Arya-Kanojia is the author of the novella, End of the Rope. He likes sports (cricket, mostly), eating out, and watching reruns of The Office and Everybody Loves Raymond. His social media handles include @shauryaticks (Twitter) and @main.hoon.ek.sharara (Instagram), and more about him can be found at www.shauryaak.weebly.com  

Blink of an Eye 

There can only be one of two explanations. I’ve either slipped into an alternate dimension, or this is a dream. 

Things changed in, quite literally, the blink of an eye. One second, I was out on my evening walk in the park, the sun gliding towards the western horizon, spraying a blast of orange across the sky. And, in the next, a darkness I can attribute to nothing but an indescribable phenomenon cast its shadow over my surroundings. The people in the park had magically vaporized, like some invisible hand had come down and, before I could even start to wrap my head around what had happened, swept everyone up. The sky had as if metamorphosed into a chilling, malicious dark blue. The grass all around, though still technically green, was devoid of its earlier colour, of its vivaciousness. 

The path in front of me had cowered in the shadows of the trees overhead. I looked up, and could only see the silhouettes of the leaves as they held absolutely still. Not a leaf moved.  

I took a step forward, my shoe grinding the loose dirt underneath. The crunch was like a gunshot in the absolute silence. I could even hear my breath, the beating of my heart. I took another step forward, and then another. Gradually, I started walking. A dream or not, I realized staying put wouldn’t serve any purpose. 

Crickets started singing their irritating creek-creek in the distance; and then, abruptly, stopped. A bird flew overhead, crying a shriek. It startled me. I stopped, pulled in some air, blew it out, let the dark world I had fallen into come into perspective, and moved.  

I knew the way around this park like the back of my hand. Over the years, new features – including a cemented basketball court, modern swing sets, and an expansive flower bed – had been added to the park, but the graveled path remained the same. No one had thought of paving it with tiles. After rains, water clogged it in patches, inconveniencing strollers like me. 

I also knew that, a hundred meters ahead, I would need to take a right. And, after a few more paces, a left. That would open into the west side of the park, where the basketball court was. At this turn, behind me, would be the lonesome house I have, in my evening strolls, found myself being fascinated by. A hand pump stood atop a wide platform in the large veranda outside. Around the house, a staircase opened into the terrace above. Next to the verandah, a curved walkway led to somewhere out of sight. I know that was an exit, but for reasons beyond me I don’t go there. 

Straight ahead was the gate that led to the neighbouring colony. I decided to exit from that gate instead, which, though held by a rickety chain link, could open just wide enough to let a skinny man like me sneak through.  

Even with the darkness still hanging about, I could make out the bend a few steps away. I rounded the corner, my feet now more confident. Just a few more steps, I reassured myself; and started walking faster. My head felt lighter. I took a deep breath, calming myself. The next turn was maybe a few meters ahead. By now, I was rushing towards it. 

But something – an invisible force is all I can describe it as – in the darkness was clinging to the back of my neck; and, no matter how much I wiped my hand at it, it stayed.  

Even though just a few steps away, I couldn’t get close to the turn I had to take next; it was like walking on a treadmill. My feet were moving, but I couldn’t get nearer. Something was pulling me as I tried pushing ahead. The anxiety was creeping its way back in me. I could imagine its slimy antlers on my skin, pushing themselves within. The air I had been breathing didn’t come as freely now. I gasped and, then, started running; my feet eager, the crunch on the gravel more urgent. 

The turn, still visibly a stone’s throw away, seemed farther than the moon. 

A sound, of something creaking, came from my right.  I turned, and, in the distance, saw the house.  

It was bathed in a gorgeous, magnificent light. Such was its brightness I had to shield my eyes at first glance. As my eyes adjusted to its glow, I saw the door opening; and, from within it, someone – a silhouette at first – walked out.  

A boy, no more than ten years old, wearing a blue t-shirt and red shorts.  

He extended one arm, beckoning me.  

“It’s okay,” he said. “He won’t hurt you anymore.” 

I wanted to pretend that I didn’t understand what he meant, but I couldn’t. “You promise?” I asked him instead. 

In the bright light, I saw his head – cast in a golden light from an unidentifiable source – move. He nodded. I wondered if the boy was playing a trick on me; that he was the Ghost Man from all those years ago. The creature who had come into the house and robbed my family before killing them and escaping; as I, a ten-year-old dressed in a blue oversized t-shirt and red shorts, was crouched behind my bed, crying but not daring to utter a word. Sometime in the night, I must have passed out. Because the next morning I found myself in the police station.  

“A robbery gone wrong,” was how the inspector described it. “Your mother woke up as he was closing the cupboard. Don’t worry, we’ve apprehended him.” 

But he – he who I started recognizing as the Ghost Man ever since – didn’t leave my thoughts for years; tormenting me, anguishing me.  

“You promise?” I asked the boy. “You promise?” 

He nodded. 

As I neared the few stairs leading to the house – my house – the boy turned and went inside. 

And I followed him.  

*Originally published at WriteNow: https://www.writenowlit.com/2022/01/two-short-stories-by-shaurya-arya.html?m=1 

Eyes Wide Open 

I sit beside a window. Beyond it, I see trees with leaves of all colours imaginable – greens and yellows and oranges and reds – fly past. The train I’m on is throttling at full speed, but I can make the shapes and sizes of these trees perfectly. Fall is finally here. The temperatures have dropped in the last month. But, inside the cabin, I feel stuffy. Almost suffocated.  

The window is protected with a glass pane. Outside, the leaves flutter against the late afternoon breeze. They sway, dancing against the wind. I feel their freedom. It brings a smile to my face.  

The engines brake suddenly. The metal wheels screech. Startled, I feel a little push that tries to throw me in the front. But I am able to hold still. The train comes to an abrupt halt.  

Should that make me relieved? Perhaps. Maybe my parents have finally found me. Maybe, in the next instant, they’ll barge in through the door. My mum, tears flowing down her cheeks, taking me in her arms, telling me she missed me so dearly. My dad, standing next to her, equally happy but not as articulate. I would see a bead forming at the corner of his eye, but, knowing him, he would bat it away. And I would apologise to them, saying I never should have left their hand at the station.  

And, yet, I know that is nothing more than wishful thinking. The train hasn’t stopped because my parents are here.  

Possibly, something malfunctioned. Or, perhaps, there is an obstacle on the tracks that needs to be cleared away. Either way, I know I am not going anywhere. 

Till when? I don’t know. 

So, I just stare outside. The floor beneath the trees is carpeted with leaves; browner than the ones still clinging to the branches. I can hear – sense would be the right word – the crunch as I imagine walking on this carpet. And, sitting inside this desolate, suffocating cabin, the crunch sounds… deeply satisfying, almost invigorating. The corner of my eye picks out an animal scurrying through the trees, deeper into the woods. A deer, perhaps. But it doesn’t look big enough to be a deer. I turn my attention to it, and, as if it senses my movement, it faces me.  

Those tiny, beady, black-as-the-night eyes stare straight at me. I reciprocate the stare with equal zest. A million thoughts fly past me as we exchange this stare, and yet I don’t remember even a single one when I hear the engine give a sharp hoot. I lose my focus momentarily, and, when I turn back to the animal, I see it isn’t there.  

Clearly, it went away. It isn’t confined to a cabin, after all. It has acres after acres of land to explore.  

Or maybe I imagined it. Maybe there was no animal in the first place.  

But, either way, I don’t think it matters.  

The engine raises a sound again – more a sputter than a confident hoot – and lurches forward. The view outside begins moving again. Line after line of vibrant vegetation, enjoying the last of its bloom (and in what extravagant way!) before the cold, hard winter creeps in, stripping the branches bare. A pang of sadness tugs at my heart at this, which comes as a surprise because never before have I felt sentimental about seasons, trees or nature.  

Because I’ve been busy, you know? Six hours of school every day, two hours of additional coaching, at least an hour of tennis/football practice. And after putting in all those hours doing constructive work (“an empty mind is the devil’s workshop,” I’ve heard many people say, and I don’t think I necessarily agree with them), I need some time to myself, don’t I?  

To unwind. Let off some steam.  

I’ve seen my dad come back after giving twelve hours to work each day – and the three plaques, reading “Employee of the Month,” sitting on the glass self in the living room is a testament to how much faith his company has in him – and sit with a glass of what he calls “golden potion” and watch news.  

For me, though, it is an hour of video games in the evening after I return from my sports practice.  

Go ahead, call me a slave to the modern technological world. But, until now, I wouldn’t have minded giving up my allowance for the newest Mario Kart.  

With all these preoccupations, do you expect a kid like me to be overwhelmed with emotion each time I witness a turn in the season? Or stop to feel the cool wind and breathe in that wonderful aroma of rains and wet earth as I am headed to my coaching classes after a tiring day at school? Or cry out in amazement on seeing the splash of colours on the trees, like a perfectly drawn picture, after exhausting myself physically following my football coaching?  

Today, though, I feel my perception shifting. I once saw a quote written on a piece of paper tacked to one of our teachers’ desks, which didn’t make sense to me back then. But I think I do understand it now.  

“Death has a curious way of reshuffling one’s priorities,” it said; and beneath it, in a scrawl, she had written, “Captain Jack Sparrow” – with what looked like a heart under it. I didn’t know who Mr. Sparrow was, what he captained, or what romantic association the two shared.  

But the man was right.  

Even though I’m on this train as a captive, and have been blindfolded (leaving me with nothing but my imagination – of this picturesque view that I see through this imaginary window), I know the man was right. 

Death does have a curious way of reshuffling one’s priorities. 

*Originally published at Gen Ctrl Z: https://www.gencontrolz.com/issue1/eyes-wide-open 

Mike Hickman 

Sometimes Doctor, always writer, Mike Hickman (@MikeHicWriter) is from York, England. He has written for Off the Rock Productions (stage and audio), including a 2018 play about Groucho Marx and Erin Fleming. Since 2020 he has been published in Agapanthus (Best of the Net nominated), EllipsisZine, the Bitchin’ Kitsch, the Cabinet of Heed, Sledgehammer, and Red Fez.  

Damaged Sectors 

Now, I know that the brain is not analogous to a hard drive, just as I know that I make the comparison because it is easy, because otherwise I might have to deal in specifics and then where would we be? But I like to _____ that there’s something in the damaged sectors thing. I like to _____ that, if you were to see a graphical representation of my brain, and if it didn’t, in reality, look like Homer Simpson’s brain when the camera zooms in to discover precisely nothing there, there’d be those damaged and redacted sectors, like the yet-to-be-exploded squares in Battleships. Although, in this case, these are the ones that have already exploded. It’s like one those children’s cloze procedure activities they’re given in school (you know what I mean, even if you don’t know the name – those worksheets where you have to fill the ______; where the missing word is often so massively _______ that you wonder whether the teacher is taking the ____). The data might be gone, but you might yet be able to work out what it was from the context. Presuming you want to work out what it was. Presuming you care about the ramifications of corrupt ____ and the operating system marking the sector as ___, so that no ____ will be written there in future. 

Presuming you ____. 

But, if the brain is analogous to a hard drive, then you might welcome the _______ that these damaged sectors might be marked as ___ and that they might, therefore, be removed from use, never to be _______ on again. You might consider that this is a blessing, putting these things out of reach from ever being ________. 

Ever again. 

You might wonder how little context is needed to understand what is left. How much you might need to remove. Depending on what you have been through, you might have given this a lot of _______. 

And you might decide that it’s worth pushing it as far as you can – worth forcing the damage so that there isn’t even the context and you can’t, you just can’t, pull the threads back together. You can’t repair the connections or jump from one ______ to another in that way that has had you, so often, so very often, _________ the things you need so very much to forget at precisely the point you most need to forget them. 

You might even consider a hard reboot. Like the one that nearly did for the computer when it wound up with the ____ screen of _____ and you had to pay for the hard _____ to be replaced.  You might remember thinking that you could have ____ everything on that hard _____. All the ______ and the ______ and the ______. And you might remember, too, that brief sense of almost – was it relief? Could it have been relief? – when you adapted to the ____ that they might be ____ and you realised that this was one way of getting back your _______ from their hold on you.  

You might well consider that. 

Perhaps a few times over. 

You you might be reaching for the power button even now. 

Entropy Increases 

Things break. 

Things run down. 

Like your supply of shirt buttons 

(Which, yes, dad, we we can’t buy things with) 

And like your will for putting up with us, too. 

There’s no changing what the laws of physics 

tells us is always in flux. 

The St Clements juice in the kitchen, 

Even though it’s not Kia Ora 

(Because you won’t buy Kia Ora 

Because we like Kia Ora) 

Will still, one day, if we get desperate, run out. 

The umbrella I take to school, 

Will blow inside out 

Or be left in a classroom somewhere. 

And the 1970s boom box in the kitchen 

Bought, I believe, even before Thatcher was elected, 

Will finally chew its last tape 

(But will still spare Super Trouper), 

All for the want of deoxit 

to the pinch roller. 

Or just anyone – anyone 

Who might be curious enough 

To think that it might be capable of being fixed. 

We know that things break. 

It’s our one constant in life. 

It’s the reason we don’t need new things. 

“They’ll only run out.” 

“You’ll only mess them over.” 

“What’s the point? You’ll want something else 

in five minutes.” 

So our rules of entropy 

Should leave us in no doubt about what is coming, 

What the expectation is for all of us. 

And what, in the end, become of you.  

Leftovers  

The last was a ham sandwich after midnight.  

The ham, leftover cuts, end-of-day reduced from the deli counter,  

With the fat still on.  

The bread that crusty bloomer they used to do at Mr Butch on the corner.  

Just the wrong side of stale, but the margarine softened it up,  

The amount you used.  

The amount I used in aping you, too.  

Because that’s what it was about.  

You were up late, or you’d just come in from work,  

And I was up because those were the days  

When I wasn’t at school  

Because stuff had gone down,  

And I don’t think we ever talked about it,  

Or the thing that happened when I was forced to call the doctor myself,  

When I lost three days to those pills  

That ultimately just gave me earache.  

We didn’t talk about that over the ham.  

You made your sarnie. Sat down, put on the football.  

I went out into the kitchen and made mine,  

Came in, sat down, too.  

I’d like to say beside you.  

It was never beside you.  

But we had those sandwiches together.  

And the final score on the footy wasn’t too bad.  

And there was that moment before, I remember,  

John Lennon Live in New York came on the telly.  

And these are my leftovers,  

Because you were gone less than a week later,  

And I was there that night, too,  

When you filled the bin liner with your stuff,  

When you told me how much you’d change if she’d just let you,  

When I knew that our sandwich moment together  

Would always be the best it had ever been.  