Does everyone have to look down on someone else? Why are the slightest differences seized upon negatively? Must there be a worldwide pecking order?

Rattus: I’m never eating in that place again.

Ed: Why not?

Rattus: I can’t believe who else was there.

Ed: You mean, in the dumpster?

When it comes to putdowns, rats are no different from anyone else. And isn’t this a world of rats? There are 7 billion of them, a number equal to that of human beings. Ed and Rattus were two of the 7 billion. They were in a dead-end alley northeast of Philadelphia. By a dumpster.

Rattus: Of course, I mean in the dumpster. Do you think I’m talking about that pawnshop over there? I wouldn’t be caught dead in that place.

Ed: I don’t want to be caught dead in any place. But what’s with the dumpster?

Rattus: Sewer rats.

Ed and Rattus were two alley rats and, at times, greasy-kitchen rats. They were perfectly adapted to Philadelphia.

Ed: Sewer rats?

Rattus: I’m not kidding. I’m sure that’s what they were.

Ed: The wet sewer? And sewer rats? That’s disgusting.

Rattus: Exactly.

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

Owls shriek
and the sky fades,
youth gives way
to the tightened temples of age
and the dim mystery of willows stirred
by the clash of night and day.

All that’s happening
feels as if it’s coming back to me,
wringing with wind,
dressed in the costume of shadows.
alerting me to your voice
and the sound of errant tapdancing.

Sun clamps its vizor shut.
Surface thoughts recline,
Moonlight slips inside closed eyes.
amaranths bloom,
sleep enfolds them
deeper down,
beyond death,
into blood sparkling.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, California Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Isotrope Literary Journal, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.

The wind dies, and the forest’s ragged sprawl
rights itself in a spell of calm. No sound
louder than dwindling dew’s snail-noiseless crawl,
than button-heavy acorns hitting ground.

A nuthatch prying pleats of oak bark loose
peppers my crackling quilt. Dreamy, I waken
as heaped in leaves as Rip Van Winkle, whose
rags bore the weight of twenty autumns shaken.

As I browse a folded paperback, a herd of
gray-bellied thought-clouds jostle, building volt
in a mind too blank blue to bear one word of…
—crack! One charged line ejects a soundless bolt!

My brain reels, fused and smoking! Seared with wonder,
I rise, electrified, and feel the thunder.

Carey Jobe is a retired attorney who most recently worked as a federal administrative law judge. Prior to starting his legal career, he was a classical student specializing in Latin and Greek literature. He served in the army for three years in Germany and has traveled widely. He attributes his love for writing poetry to drinking from the Castalian Spring at Delphi during a trip to Greece.

His name was Trotsky.
He landed on
the edge of my dinner plate,
figured whatever was mine
was also his.
I stabbed him in the back
with a toothpick.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, California Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Isotrope Literary Journal, Seventh Quarry, La Presa and Doubly Mad.

The banana had a  soft spot. One look at the outside peel gave it away. So Frodo received that part of the fruit, often the sweetest, as Ralph sliced the rest onto his Cheerios. And how about the blueberries? Weren’t some a little mushy? Frodo, drooling, would get those, too, and a few more thrown into his dog food bowl for good measure. Soon, Ralph would walk the Labrador retriever around the cloud-covered neighborhood, perhaps for three blocks. That Sunday, Frodo urinated from tree-to-tree. An impressive stream – clearly superior to Ralph’s. And the others? The other chilled, sour dog owners, tethered to their Chihuahuas, terriers, pitbull mixes, and rescue animals? Like Ralph, each held the short end of the leash.

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

Fineas sat, ready to add the final brush strokes, ready to tell the model to cease posing. He made it his signature to finish her eyes last, despite scrutinizing their sincerity, their luminous intensity for the last month. He wondered if she wondered. Were the eyes really the “windows of the soul”? Could they also be portals to one of many possible futures where she would stare at him as much as he had stared at her?

Fineas was told to add just a smidgen of lavender to the collection of blue that would highlight her most intriguing highlight. He could have included the heliotrope or the royal azure, but Fineas opted, as always, to follow instructions. The lavender tied to the lilacs in the background. It contrasted with her blond locks. Her husband insisted he wanted this portrait to reflect the reality of her beauty. He became adamant on this singular point. Fineas understood the customer was always right. Fineas also understood it was his name on the canvas.

By noon, he relieved the model of her duties and thanked her with the lilacs from the sitting. Her smile graced her face in such a manner to make Fineas assured he had made all the right choices.

By morning of the next day, the customer, the model’s husband, the man who financed the entire enterprise came calling for what was rightfully his. Fineas escorted him to his gallery and revealed the results of his work. The customer was indeed pleased. The lavender drew the viewer’s attention and held it fast. Such was Fineas’s notoriety among his peers.

The client wrote the final check and waived the formality of a receipt. Upon shaking hands, he departed for home. Fineas would soon depart for the bank.

That is, after he gazed once again at his true masterpiece. The model had seen that look of love in the eyes of Fineas from suitors all of her life. This time, she acquiesced to his plea and sat for a second painting (while sitting for the first), one in which she permitted Fineas to finish as he felt best.

Being married, she was averse to permit any further encroachment upon her wedding vows. But, upon witnessing the excellence of his talent, she gave into him, and thus gave him a reason to justify all he had learned, all he had accomplished.

The model’s husband gave thanks for having a wife he could grow old with and moreover, never see grow old, even a single day. Fineas had the public payment that made this happen and the private payment that made him even happier.

The model had two men who would adore her forever. Her smile verified this.

Rarely do so many get everything they so wanted.

Andy Betz has tutored and taught in excess of 40 years, lives in 1974, and has been married for 31 years. His works are found everywhere a search engine operates.

March’s balanced sun,
and over a dashboard map
a bald orchard freckling white,
a subtle scent resuming
the countryside contours,
a windborne whiff of apple,
inebriates the tanked-

up Maverick tracing the idling
asphalt which tethers city
to city, a fixed intent
bewildering through this country
of white scent, an everywhere
to which his driven brain’s
alacritous abandon

assents, as morning’s drudge
befuddled amid a freedom
of greening lawns, sky new-blue
(having just quit his job)
loses himself in choice:
wishes scatter like pollen,
every mood renews.

Carey Jobe is a retired attorney who most recently worked as a federal administrative law judge. Prior to starting his legal career, he was a classical student specializing in Latin and Greek literature. He served in the army for three years in Germany and has traveled widely. He attributes his love for writing poetry to drinking from the Castalian Spring at Delphi during a trip to Greece.

It’s better to not do
perhaps
your rhythms rake my brain
my eyes leak wine
I learn your head became a stew
I lapse
dissociate a mile from the sublime
it’s better to not do
perhaps

Gabija Kertenyte is a person who lives in Philadelphia but she has lived in other places and they have all become her. She is now made up of disparate pieces that yield the fragmentation of modern migrations and is trying to reconstruct herself through language. She is incredibly interested in psychology.

Hello. I am an essay. I could have been another short story, another dark flash fiction tale of less than one thousand words, something involving the demise of something, because that’s what happens in the end, everything dies, but it’s the discovery of that demise—to discover it, having it careen straight into your field of vision and demand attention like a spoiled child in a dirty diaper, which is a good description of the dead one. But I don’t want to be another fictional story about that situation because there have been many fictional stories on that subject. I want to be an essay about the time since that demise, how liberating it has been without the dead one and the guilt that accompanies that liberation.

The writing has only been around for four months in this particular decade, and stories have been accepted (not the ones about the dead one) as well as a book because this writing thing has been all-consuming, an all-day endeavor, like an addiction, and the dead one was an addict, so it’s been passed on. It’s the main thing, other than the dog and the husband, and they don’t require much attention because they are both male and males are simple creatures.

There has been so much writing and reading and submitting, not submitting as in a slave submitting to a master, maybe, but submitting to them, and then checking emails, and then checking emails, did I mention checking emails? There will be more NOs than YESs, and that is okay, because NOs aren’t as bad as finding the dead one and touching the dead one and feeling the cold and the rigidity. And in spite of that bastard of a moment there has been enjoyment in doing this writing thing because of the euphoria in such a short span of time and because that heavy, heavy, heavy burden is gone.

But there is guilt, so much guilt in doing what she wants to do instead of doing what she has to do for someone who had no idea of the sacrifices she made throughout her adult life for the dead one’s benefit, so she shouldn’t feel guilty for all that is happening right now… Wait, now I’m a she and she sounds like an asshole and she can’t get her mother’s dead body out of her thoughts—

She doesn’t think she wants to be an essay either.

Laura Shell started writing because her mother told her to. She will be published in Calliope, Chiron Review, WINK, Literally Stories, and will have an anthology of horror stories published in 2024. When she isn’t writing, she watches horror movies with her dog, Groot.

After two minutes and thirty-nine seconds into the first round, it was all over. Bonecrusher Rocco had knocked out Leftie Louie. The sports reporters flocked around Rocco. They were like pigeons around a large canister of popcorn, except pigeons are polite. Mel Bromley, from a local radio station, had a free lane to Louie.

“How are you, Louie?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, after almost three minutes in there?”

“What time is it? Is that the time?”

Louie’s manager, Al, told Mel to take it easy.

“He needs more smelling salts, not an interview,” said Al, motioning to Stan, the corner man.

The reporter looked to Stan. “Is he hurt bad?”

“I’ve seen worse. Another round would’ve been a lot worse.”

Mel kept questioning and recording. “Louie, was it the right to the body and left to the head that did it?”

“Head? What?”

“When he knocked you down for the third time?”

Twice down was bad enough.

“Wasn’t it a left to the body and right to the head?” said Al, correcting the record.

“I was worried about Louie’s head,” offered Stan, squeezing a wet sponge.

“I plan to hit him with a left to the body, then a right to the jaw,” said Louie.

“It’s over, Louie.”

“You’re right. Once I finish with that right…”

“Leftie,” said the reporter. “It’s over.”

“I told you we need more salts.”

The boxer’s eyes started to focus. He looked better with his eyes uncrossed.

“Al,” he said. “Let’s get this thing started.”

Mel motioned to Stan. “Maybe it’d be easier for him to remember if you bandaged that cut over his eye?”

Leftie Louie wiped away the blood. “Where is he? Do you think Rocco’s going to fight? Or even show up?”

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