Curled plumes of smoke crawled from the gaped lip of his wooden pipe and spilled into the space between the two men. Its intoxicating tendrils danced and intertwined in the still air, growing ever further apart on their descent, swooping down, and dispersing into nothingness. The prisoner watched in trepidation as browned fingertips placed the pipe back on its usual indent, gripped by parched lips, and listened as it crackled with an intake of breath. He sighed in fleeting relief.

“I only wanted to do better for myself, sir. I weren’t trying to insult no one”, the prisoner uttered from his position on the floor, staring at the man before him in futile desperation. But the man did not meet his gaze, just stared senselessly ahead at the cream wall. It was hardly interesting to look at, nor was the room itself adorned with any paintings or photographs that might have imbued it with some sense of life. The man, too, seemed washed out: his pot-marked skin and greasy hair was almost grey, and his pipe’s flaking façade had long since lost its shine. The only piece of furniture was the chair bolted to the floorboards at the centre of the room. Or rather, the man and the chair, for the two seemed almost combined. His body spilled through its gaps and oozed over its edges, swollen fat merging with wood. He may well be trapped in it now, the prisoner thought, for he had served here since the start.

He stared at the man’s blotchy countenance, willing it to show any sign of feeling. But with every moment that passed, he grew increasingly uneasy, and the sound of his bloodied, broken nails picking at his restraints echoed throughout the room.

“Please sir,” the prisoner implored, letting out a gasp of subdued agony as he pulled himself onto his knees. “I’ve told ya everything true and proper. I were just asking for the money I was due. I’m not one of those rebel folk – I like living here”. His body shook as he neared the end of his sentence, too weak and terror-stricken to maintain his knelt position. He collapsed onto the floor in abject exasperation.

Tap. Tap. The prisoner darted his eyes to watch as two ashen clumps fell from the pipe, tearing themselves apart on their descent and dispersing across the floor like fluffy whisps of cloud. The man peeled his eyes from the wall and refocused them on the pipe, struggling against heavy eyelids to peer into its belly. He let out a sigh, his breath pushing against his suspenders in a way that made the prisoner sure they would break. But they held on, and he once against raised the pipe to his lips. Drawing in a breath, the prisoner watched in horror as a distinctly smaller puff of smoke escaped. The pipe was nearly empty, and the meeting was drawing to a close.

“I won’t never ask again,” the prisoner cried, tears starting to streak his dirtied face. “I’m sorry.” He let them flow freely now, cascading down his cheeks and wetting the dark knots of hair which stuck to his face. He drew his knees to his chest and clung onto them as sobs wracked his body.

Tap. Tap. The noise silenced the prisoner’s cries. Trembling, he raised his head and watched the man press the pipe against his cracked lips once more. He waited nervously, swaying with trepidation, and praying for one last whisper of smoke. Time was running out: a single word could save his life, but silence would condemn him. At long last, the man inhaled.

Long and drawn-out breath. Holding now.

The prisoner’s ears were drowning in the deafening noise of his own heartbeat. Plucking the pipe away from his lips, the man exhaled slowly, letting nothing but empty air flow from his lungs.

A scream shattered the silence, engulfing the empty room and rattling the bolted chair. The prisoner fought against his shackles in a frenzy, their rusted edges tearing the skin of his wrists and ankles into a bloody pulp.

“You’ve got to forgive me sir. I ain’t a rebel like them, I swear by it!” he spluttered through strangled cries.

The man unpeeled his sunken form from the chair’s grip and approached the prisoner, extending two swollen fingers to grip the skeletal point of his chin. For the first time that afternoon, the man looked directly at him. The prisoner recoiled under his gaze, shuddering as the man’s ugly face contorted into a twisted, gleeful grin. With sudden force, he pressed his empty pipe against the prisoner’s face, its thinned surface scorching his bruised cheek and renewing the speckling of blood bubbling beneath. Its belly was empty, and it demanded to be filled.

Lucy Rumble is an emerging writer from Essex. Her poem ‘My Nan, Remembered’ won third place in the 2023 Tap Into Poetry contest, and her work has been published in Crow & Cross Keys, Myth & Lore Zine, and Needle Poetry, among others. When she isn’t writing, she is trapped in the dust and darkness of an archive (or her mind). Find her on Instagram @lucyrumble.writes or at lucy.smlr.uk

for my next trick
I’ll go

Kelli Weldon was born and raised in Louisiana and now resides in Texas. She studied journalism and literature at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and served on the editorial board of its literary magazine, Argus. Find her poetry in publications including Black Moon Magazine, Boats Against The Current, Duck Duck Mongoose Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, Frost Meadow Review, In Parentheses, and Rewrite The Stars Review.
Instagram: @kelliwritespoems

spanish moss hangs low
outstretched limbs, burdened, shudder—
trees bedecked with shrouds

M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a life-long obsession with both history and poetry, he is increasingly interested in exploring the synergy between the two. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.

My father showed me.

How to eat a

Watermelon

In the new country.

The first step was a cut

Clean down the middle.

Then a spoonful of excitement

Of a rare, tasty treat.

Then we carved out the inside

Piece by piece.

Until its shell remained

For dinner

Where it was boiled and cut

Diced to feed

Three once more.

The first bite was thoroughly

Bland and bitter.

A taste that left me longing

For the day that would come

When he brings home a

Watermelon

We eat only once.

Peter Chengming Zhang is a Chinese Canadian hospital pharmacist, technology professional, and writer. His works have appeared in national news outlets in Canada such as the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and the National Post. Outside of his academic and professional interests, he enjoys writing poetry and short memoirs. Follow his works on his website: peterczhang.com

   
The Covid wreaked its havoc upon mankind. Face masks were required for everyone  now but the widow Mrs. Cornelia O’Connor had gotten her Irish up and refused to wear one.

    “You sure you don’t want me to get some masks for you when I’m out,” Nicole, her next door neighbor in the apartment complex, asked her. “You should wear one all the time like I do.”

     “Ya mean like you do when you’re having loud muffled sex with your masked boyfriend.”

    Nicole ignored that remark but she didn’t give up trying to save Mrs. O’Connor.

    “The Covid and all its variances have gotten even worse, Mrs. O’Connor. Booster shots are required every four months now ya know.”

      “I don’t care if they’re required every day, I ain’t getting one.”

      “You have to get one, it’s a way of life now.”

      “You mean like farming, alcoholism, and drug addiction. I swear Nicole that if you don’t take that mask off every once and a while it’ll grow right into your face.”

     Nicole never took it off, not even when she was having loud muffled sex with her boyfriend, who always wore one too.

    Now despite mankind’s attempts to crush the Covid, Mother Nature took her own course and Mrs. O’Connor picked up on it.

    “Looks like that mask of yours has grown right into your face Nicole. You better have it checked out.”

    “I already did and the doctor said that was perfectly normal. That my body was growing its own immune system. That skin would eventually grow a flap over my nose and mouth protecting me.  Said it was something called ‘evolution’. Whatever that is?”

      Now Nicole wasn’t the brightest bulb that had ever been screwed into a socket but the mask did prevent her from getting the Covid. It didn’t protect her however from getting pregnant, though she thought it would.  She showed Mrs. O’Connor her  baby.

    “What’s this?” Mrs. O’Connor asked her,  “Looks like your baby  was born with her own built-in flesh mask.”

     “She was. All the babies are being born that way now the doctor said. It’s that thing called evolution. Whatever that is.”

Author is a retired attorney who started writing for something to do in his rusting years.

SKY TO EARTH
snowflakes lift us skyward
soften hearts, lighten feet
until we dance

FAT CHANCE
cat peers into sky
tracks the eagle circling wide
feline dreaming big

Liz Kornelsen is a prairie poet from Winnipeg MB, who draws inspiration to write and paint from nature. When not writing she can found hiking, skiing, gardening or losing track of time in an art gallery. Or hula hooping, a skill that delights, having eluded her in childhood.

The sudden arrival of mist behind your glasses told me you understood my
final act of love, the first in too long.
My hand on your forehead,
fingers through your gray whisps,
whispered assurance that you were loved,
a promise that we’d care for mom.

Your final words came later with energy from hospital juice,
a different kind of message, one more typical of our past.
A reminder of prized guns in storage,
a complaint that grandpa’s revolver remained hidden,
a cheeky jab at mom for the hiding,
an undirected sigh.

Two languages,
Two messages of love.

Joel Predd lives Pittsburgh with his wife, two kids, and their adopted pit bull Olive.

“Four… Three… Two… One… Ready or not. Here I come.”

It was another instance of hide-and-seek, a game children like to play the world over. But children are not the only ones. Rats, too, enjoy it. Even adult brown rats – sometimes known as common rats or Norway rats – such as Ed, Fred, Brutus, and Rattus. They were in an alleyway somewhere northeast of Philadelphia that Wednesday morning. Rattus was ‘It”. He took his paws away from his beady eyes and blinked in the filthy dimness by the dumpster.

Where were they? Certainly not in the street with all the busy, human, pedestrian traffic. After an hour of investigating each dark shadow, empty can, and discarded Styrofoam cup, Rattus was still alone.

“Ed? Fred?” His plaintive words seemed to echo in the dead-end alley.

Rats are social animals, so nothing is worse for them than to be alone.

Had the others gone underground? Were they with the dirty sewer rats?

“Ed? Fred?”

Where they in some cheap restaurant kitchen? Or a pawn shop basement, cowering by a damp wall?

Had the three finally abandoned him? Ed and Fred, perhaps.

“And you, too, Brutus?”

David Sydney is a physician. He writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).

What you say goes.
Where it goes, no one knows.
Lighting gas, blowing smoke—
rarefied air never felt so remote.
Well, like associated costs,
living equals loss.

The trick is in the treatment,
stitched up.

Budding conniptions
tremble at the thought—
chickens little,
trampled at the trough.

Charles Brand is a certified educator of incarcerated and at-risk youth in Florida. He enjoys using any spare time and inspiration in the pursuit of impactful writing. Holding a master’s degree in western history, he is motivated to blend formal and informal skills in creative writing to attract readers who wish for more from the printed word.

Crude manner
met brute fact, et tu…

And on cue, the safety net snags
the choicest cuts
and lowest lots—
a pillar assault to the senses.

Surge breaches station;
gesture harbors germ.
Trappings set the hook, in vise,
caste out.

All’s swell that ends.

Charles Brand is a certified educator of incarcerated and at-risk youth in Florida. He enjoys using any spare time and inspiration in the pursuit of impactful writing. Holding a master’s degree in western history, he is motivated to blend formal and informal skills in creative writing to attract readers who wish for more from the printed word.