Ben Stone studied art with Saburo Muraoka and Marina Abramovic. He has published in Southerly literary journal as Leon Ward, and is the author of the novels Sex and Death in Sigatoka, Natives, Monsters are Real, and the short fiction collection, The Rise of X. Ben is currently doing a Masters by research with the novelist Rohan Wilson. www.benstone.xyz

X

“He..who owns the youth, gains the future.” – A. H.

Dear Representative,

I’m writing to inform you of a development within the increasingly overlapping media and so called “gaming” realms of which you should be aware. I do this expecting that you in your capacity as Alternative National Leader will be just as horrified about our dire mutual predicament upon revision of these facts as myself, and that realising something must be done, you’ll take action directly.

But beyond your obvious directional virility, I’m also writing to your eminent self because it was firstly you, sir, who only yesterday I saw my child J––– shoot right there on TV.

Meghann grew up in a small coastal town in Maine. She spent her days being homeschooled on the family farm, her favorite past time, was time being spent at the library, used bookstores, and nestled into her favorite book. Through her passion for reading unlocked her gift to write.

Hel

The skies turned,
The heavens burned.
The ravens soared,
The devil roared.
The skies bled.
The rivers ran red.
The ravens fled,
No longer deaths friend.
Ashes fell from heaven,
Down into hell below.
This new world there was no love,
Only death and blood.
The Devil watched this new Queen conquer,
Claiming the world as her own.
Her name was Hel,
And she was the Queen Now.

Charlotte Burnett is 24, dyslexic, and has previously been published in journals like The Write Launch and Coffin Bell Journal. She is currently studying for an Open Degree with the Open University, focusing on Psychology and Creative Writing.

Tonight

His fingers wrap around my wrist, his grip too painful to shake off and his voice…his voice…is something I’ve never heard before…not from him.

‘No, no, you can’t do this…it was all going to…it…it was…I was gonna make it work this time.’  

I snatch my hand away, or try to, but his grip’s too strong.

‘Is this how it works out? We fuck them over? I can’t hurt Barney again …and you should be much too afraid to hurt Heather…but….’

Korbin Jones graduated from Northwest Missouri State University with degrees in writing/publishing and in Spanish, and is currently pursuing his MFA in Poetry at the University of Kansas. He has had poems, short stories, and personal essays appear in various literary magazines across the nation. His translation of Pablo Luque Pinilla’s poetry collection ‘SFO’ is forthcoming from Tolsun Books (April 2019). He works as editor-in-chief and head designer for Fearsome Critters: A Millennial Arts Journal.

Heeled in This Dirt

for Barb, from Byron

Sister, I leave you not in empty hands, as we all hold you now
together. Mother oak of an orchard all your own, of a line
you passed so much of us through, with stubbornness
and quiet pride. The dirt of this place will never leave our feet,
nor the heels of our children, nor our children’s children,
on down the line until they call to us like the legends we did,
from this land our family has bled into, has risen out of
like sleeping cicadas that hum our same old song
throughout these generations. You will not sing alone, sister,
youngest of our blood. My wife, my children and theirs,
those who carry me in your hearts and veins and heels—
this dirt will always welcome you, will always be my gift to you.
It was nothing much until our ancestors planted seed,
cleaned out the earth, built rows and home and memories
upon their labored backs and capable hands, these hands
which you now hold and carry your own in. Despite the miles
and the borders that have wedged themselves between us,
we all come back to these, our roots, to the dirt that farrowed us
to being, where we’ll all return in some manner
to give thanks for the years we toiled and loved and ventured
through this life, and so must I return myself to this land.
Breath to breeze. Soul to soil. Life to loving. Ash to ash.
I’ll greet you when your time has come for finally coming home.

J. T. Townley has published in Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Threepenny Review, and other magazines and journals. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and an MPhil in English from Oxford University. To learn more, visit jttownley.com.

Chupacabra

Don’t think I ain’t figured it out.  I know what’s going on.  You can’t fool me.  That’s why I stocked up the pantry and filled the fridge.  Bologna and cheese and Wonderbread, case of Lone Star.  Water flows outta the tap, cool and clear.  Lights cut out, I got candles and matches, lanterns and kerosene.  Miguel’s .12-gauge oiled and loaded, too, fresh boxes of shells in every room.  Doors locked, curtains pulled, TV screen dancing blue in the half-light.  I’m by God prepared, is what I am.  You better believe it.  I know what’s out there, lurking in the shadows.  Got an inkling what’s he’s after, too.  Plumb already robbed everyone I know, including Miguel, whether or not he’d admit it.  But what’s mine is mine.  That slippery sumbitch ain’t getting jack-squat from me.  You know who I mean.

The Chupacabra. 

Ryan S. Lowell is a fiction writer. His work recently appeared in Workers Write: Tales from the Cafe. His short story Things Fall Apart was a Glimmer Train short story award contest finalist in 2010. He lives in South Portland, Maine.

The Business Men

            It smelled like strawberries in the pantry. And I was already hungry and it made my stomach make a noise. I pushed in on my stomach so it would be quiet. I was supposed to be going picking with my grandmother the next day, and wouldn’t it be sad if I had to miss that because I was sitting in kid prison. Because I should not have been there in the first place. I was sitting on the floor toward the back of the pantry. I had an apron draped over me. The way I was sitting was not comfortable at all. But I could not move. She was out there now, in the kitchen. She had come in the house talking to herself, or the cat, I couldn’t tell for certain. I was as worried about the cat as I was about the woman. Me and the cat had bonded earlier and I was worried the cat was going to give me away by clawing at the double doors or something. She, the human, started using some noisy kitchen device, and I took the opportunity to poke my head out from under the apron. It was still dark, besides the light coming in diagonally through the door slats. She stopped using the device and it was very silent again. I was staring at the tiny slit of light between the double doors praying it would stay that way. Praying that she would hurry up and eat and leave. The slit darkened suddenly, and the double doors shook. And I should not have been there. I should have been shooting hoops with my best friend Bobby in his driveway.

Morgan Plessner is a second year MFA student at the University of New Hampshire studying poetry under professors such as Charles Simic. She has been published in Ink & Voices and Foliate Oak and has previously received the Ann Pazo Mayberry Award for poetry.

Five bodies of the moon

The town drunk slipped
antifreeze in his morning orange juice.
The ME drew glycol from his blood.

I heard it from the beetle woman.
She cuts people open too.
And she says with death comes moonlight.

Philip Brunetti holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Georgia State University and was the recipient of that university’s Paul Bowles Writing Fellowship while in the program. Brunetti writes innovative fiction and poetry and much of his work has been published in various paper or online literary magazines including Word Riot, decomP magazinE, The Boiler, Identity Theory and The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine. He is currently seeking a publisher for his experimental novel Newer Testaments, of which excerpts have been published in the latter two journals above.

Mass Shootings

1.

They’re giving out these pills to increase mass shootings.  Don’t ask me why they’re doing this.  And don’t ask me how I know.  Let’s just say the statistics and data are there even if they’ve been buried and obfuscated.  But they’re definitely giving out these pills to increase mass shootings.  It has something to do with the gun lobby and something to do with the pharmaceutical industry or Big Pharma as some call it.  It’s beyond an insidious plot but it’s all there in black and white, with evidence to back it up…if you can find it.

Laura Voivodeship was born in the UK and currently teaches English in the Middle East.

Lovers’ Discourse

Love, I managed to stop the bleeding.
You were bleeding out and out.
All over the place. Didn’t you notice? I still
feel like I’m leaking somewhere. You got sick
in the night. I think our ammunition
is running low. I’m scared. Who knows

whether we will last another night. Who knows?
But who cares? The day is already bleeding
in and see how the light is its own ammunition?
The future can go hang itself. Don’t shout.
I’m not. I’m not, I promise. You’re just sick
and photosensitive. Come here. Hold me still.

Melanie Czerwinski is a graduate of the University of Delaware. Her work has been published in The Sucarnochee Review, Dark Ink Press’s Fall Anthology, and From Whispers To Roars.

The Glenshaw Binge

She picked at her fingernails as he watched. She hissed when she picked too close to the cuticle, hand flying up to her mouth for the comfort of her full lips. He remembered the times when he could take comfort there.

“Anyway,” she enunciated, “it’s not going to work out. We’ve tried for so long.”

His hands around his mug shook, sending ripples through his lukewarm coffee.

Their house together was beautiful and so were their children. Successful in academics and extracurriculars. Loving of their slightly overweight father. They had been happily married for thirteen years, his wife initially accepting of his weight.