Charles Gerard is a writer from the United Kingdom who splits his time between New South Wales, Australia and London, England. His work has appeared in Alluvian and the Haunted Waters Press. (Twitter: https://twitter.com/Questioning_Why)

The Hippocratic Oath

I stood on the street corner in a state of dysphoria. The creases between my eyebrows – which my wife referred to as a sign of ‘wisdom’ – were a physical symptom of the anxiety that lay before me. I squinted into the unlit alley across the cobblestone road but there was nothing but the night’s darkness. There was a still chill in the air on this windless evening and my shoulders were angled inwards in a vain attempt to retain body heat. The capped hypodermic syringe, rotating in my fingers in the pockets of my trench coat, gave little cure towards my nerves. What if I could not produce it from my palm quick enough and deliver its payload?

REID MITCHELL is a New Orleanian teaching in China. More specifically, he is a Scholar in Jiangsu Province’s 100 Foreign Talents Program, and a Professor of English at Yancheng Teachers University. He is also Consulting Editor of CHA: AN ASIAN LITERARY JOURNAL. His poems have been published by CHA, ASIA LITERARY REVIEW, IN POSSE, and elsewhere and he has a collection due out from a small press in Berlin. Way back in the 20th century, he published the novel A MAN UNDER AUTHORITY. He also had a separate career as an historian of the American Civil War.

Isola

Charlie at the City Morgue
looks at the photos in Playboy
while naked bodies are chilled,
like cartons of eggs in the cooler drawers

For he all he knows, he gazes
at a woman’s photograph
while the woman herself lies
already so contained.

Bashful Charlie has learned
that thinking like this doesn’t pay,
as have I and you

Charlie goes out for a cigarette,
a Chesterfield, and says to the moon,
“What a romantic lousy night.”

Laura Walker holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University, where she was editor in chief for Thin Air Magazine. She writes both poetry and fiction, and teaches writing classes at Southern Utah University. She comes from Southern California by way of Flagstaff, AZ, and always finds herself wishing for a little more snow and a little less sun.

Not all figs are for eating

By the time the tree turned 100, its past was so fractured that no one knew how old it was, let alone where it came from and what was now buried, wrapped in cloth of molder and decay, at its roots. A succession of private owners of the house, all strangers to one another, ensured that legends of the tree died well before the tree itself did. Some of the children who once lived there carried the myths away to new locations, told them as scary stories at campouts or sleepovers or—more often—kept them locked away in hearts that still beat in fear at tree shadows cast onto ceilings on windy, moonlit nights. But no one stayed close enough to the tree for the myths to hang on and create the legends that, in an earlier time had clung to its branches and warded off prospective buyers.

Escape Velocity

Khaalida finds the stars fascinating. Stars form constellations, shapes. The shapes rotate through the year. Aries, Taurus, Gemini. Cancer, Leo, Virgo. Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius. Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Repeat. Some people believe the stars affect human characteristics. Khaalida is not one of those people. Yet, she keeps an astrology book under an astronomy book. She doesn’t want to believe stars can affect behavior. But it seems as if they may. Within the stars, she finds bright chaos. She finds order and beauty. She finds imagination. In the back of her mind, she wonders if something so marvelous could be more than just hot dust.

Virgo is an Earth sign. Earth signs are considered imaginative, flexible, in control. — Madame Nixie’s Guide To The Elemental

Aura Martin is currently a senior creative writing (B.F.A.) student at Truman State University. She serves as staff writer for The Index–Truman State University’s student-led newspaper–intern at Golden Antelope Press, and assistant nonfiction editor at WORDPEACE. In Aura’s free time, she likes to run and take road trips.

Flirting with Inflection

It wasn’t the first time a man scared me on Halloween. Rewind two years. Blood orange leaves and grinning plastic buckets. Trick-or-treaters on the cracked driveway.

What do you say?

I’m wrapped in my woolen blanket. Thank you.

Write a story about children who play literal hangman. Each wrong guess gets you closer to swinging. Flickering street lights. Hands dip into the candy cauldron.

MEH is Matthew E. Henry, a Pushcart nominated poet with recent works appearing or forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, 3Elements Review, Long Exposure, Longleaf Review, Poetry East and The Radical Teacher. MEH is an educator who received his MFA from Seattle Pacific University, yet continued to spend money he didn’t have pursuing a MA in theology and a PhD in education.

burning the boat

the wood is warped, worn beyond refashioning,
but this is irrelevant—his wife would never smile
within those walls. it could never be a home
no matter what its form. the smells steeped
in every fiber. the shallow scratches at its base,
tooth and claw marks almost smoothed away. almost.
in the raw light his tools reverse their trade,
realize the other side of the promise. his sons
stack cords in a clearing. at night flickering oil
release every knotted eye, each bloated tongue
floating in grains of gopher wood. to start again
room must be made. he sees the motionless sprawl:
bodies rotting like worms after a storm. grabbing limbs
from his flaming hearth, he began another task.