by CG Fewston The old man stood in the haze of China’s greatest city with two certainties on his mind: one, the haze (caused by contaminants, such as Sulphur dioxide, from Beijing’s industrial district) warmed the December day and the good earth to a magnitude when snow must retreat from…
by Lana Bella The drinking girl is not dreaming because a dreamer drinks not from thirst but for the tongue craves. With the snug sphericity of a pearl, she meets the long, furious work of humming spree, boothed in stilt bar hugging stein-glassed hands, ropy on the final slogs. Tinny haze synapses into familiar water, waist…
by Paula Nutt The place I’m going reminds me of a newspaper, especially the headlines. Letters and numbers, facts and figures, neatly lined up in rows and columns of black and white. Some catch your attention while others are passed over. But first I must get there. Farm-to-Market Road 917…
by Aline Pusecker Taylor Leaves swirl over ribboned bark grayed and grooved. Glint of flint! Blaze ablaze! The witch needs a fix a mix of hazelnut and cream a dream, caffeine Brew to shrew. Ding-dong, the witch is dead
by Lana Bella After Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” All the while the river rushed, so has everything else. Shivering through a late winter leave, I felt the paranoiac quiet traced down the folds of my bones wading beyond the water, gin memory pulled up by Xanax and opiates,…
by G.W. Adamson Caitlyn stood in the living room of her childhood home as if she expected to hear a sound or see someone enter. A yellowed newspaper lay on the dust-covered coffee table. Opening the living room curtains brought light and more dust floating in every direction. It appeared…
by Aline Pusecker Taylor At night when I’m alone I ponder aneurisms blood clots and flesh eating bacteria how I like my legs and want to keep them attached to the rest of my body. Aspirin and Neosporin arm the coffee table weapons in an invisible war fought mostly in…
by Shana Chartier Entitled. Self Absorbed. Just so out of touch. We’ve been given participation trophies too much We text during interviews, we laze about daily Clearly our parents were too soft on their baby. We were told with confidence education is enough No one mentioned two years’ experience to…
by Rodger Martin In the pressure of the fuselage, at this height I’ve become Jeopardy host pushing scripts for an audience no one sees. Science for one thousand. My portal turns microscope, its double panes a slide and the Earth out there, holy in its ghost of curve, demands comprehension….
by Danisa Bell People called him a sissy. But he was a minister, a man of God, and he was my husband. It wasn’t really fair, the way people would point at him and snicker because of his long hair and flamboyant clothing. They didn’t know what kind of person…