The High Moral Tone by R. J. Keeler

R. J. Keeler was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. Lived in jungles of Colombia, S.A., up to age twelve. BS Mathematics NCSU, MS Computer Science UNC, MBA UCLA, Certificate in Poetry UW. Honorman, U.S. Naval Submarine School. “SS” (Submarine Service) qualified. Vietnam Service Medal. Honorable Discharge. Whiting Foundation Experimental Grant. P&W’s Directory of Poets and Writers. Member IEEE, AAAS, AAP. The Boeing Company. His collection “Detonation” will be published in December.


The high moral tone that he used in the bequest speech was judged to be insincere and moreover was received by all the audience consisting of family and attorneys and friends as borderline insubordination but regardless of the tone we all had to agree with each other that it was delivered the language not the tone with exquisite precision and correctness in addition the grammar was absolutely flawless to the point where during the speech there were at least three phrases that stopped my attention cold and for them I had to focus and quickly in the moment form a mental image of the sentence in question and ask is that correct wow I must have been using that word incorrectly all these years furthermore the content to my ears and listening mind sounded expertly well-crafted and even a bit rhetorical one got the sense that the speaker had labored over the speech well into the night before he gave it and had gone over it in the privacy of his study again and again asking himself what do I want the audience to conclude from this speech and how therefore do I guide them invisibly to that desired conclusion at the end of this bequest speech or maybe an hour afterwards after the show of hands and the signing of documents I began to realize that the whole affair was so very well-scripted and designed as to be underhanded and to manipulate us all into innocent little lambs acceding to the agendas of the speaker but by then it was too late.

Diogenes, the Artist’s Friend by Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah

Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah is author the of new hybrid works, The Sun of a Solid Torus, Conductor 5, Genus for L Loci and Handlebody. His poetry has been accepted and appeared in many various literary journals and anthologies, including North Dakota Quarterly, Cathexis Northwest Press, Strata Magazine, and The Sandy River Review. He is an algebraist and artist and lives in the southern part of Ghana, Spain and Turtle Mountains, North Dakota.


Diogenes, the Artist’s Friend

Pay good money to be in Diogenes’ bed
where hundreds of drawings and paintings
are exhibited and auctioned by Sotheby’s;
pay good money to be in a barrel on a rubbish tip,
where a room for one of the hundreds of homeless families,
is cut out from a hard cardboard left behind;
the door is not ajar, or a window does it just lurks,
from the first rainfall you have flown about the cover
like bats in a belfry, their colours are convictions.
Now here is the light of fresh evidence to improve you
in no doubtful submissions when every numberplate
I wear for a face for a post office road is signed,
something is overshadowed above us like a cloud.
Time is not enough to come to anything.
Somebody must look for what sustains.
I have found him sitting down near me,
whispering to himself, an imaginary part,
I am trying to welcome myself back
among the commons with a nightcap,
I am ragged. I am listening to all with his attention.

Absolution in Her Red Eyes by Nicole Efford

Nicole Efford is a senior at the College of William and Mary, majoring in English and minoring in Creative Writing.

Absolution in Her Red Eyes

Mara helps her mother out of the pew, hoping nobody will notice them slipping out before the end of service. She’d realized her mom was high when she came back from the bathroom, ten minutes into service, with eyes red and half-closed.

“Hope, hi. How are you?” Todd Baker whispers, blocking the door. His hair is pomaded high on his head—reaching for Jesus, Mara thinks.

She smiles innocently and says, “My mom’s not feeling too well right now. I should be getting her home.”

Todd’s eyes linger on Hope’s arm, and then meet her eyes. She stares back at him, unblinking, then drawls, “You are a sinner.”

He chuckles and shakes his head, “Well, we all are. But Jesus absolved us, Hope, you know that.”

“Mom, c’mon.” Mara says as she tugs on her mother’s arm.

“That’s probably a good idea, Mara. Do you need any help getting her to the car?”

Hope watches the man grow a red tail, then jabs her finger into Todd’s face and shouts, “Get away from my daughter!”

“Mom, stop!” Mara grabs Hope’s hand and pushes past the exit. “She’s really not feeling herself!” she calls over her shoulder, rushing toward the parking lot.

Mara gets in their car but Hope does not.

There is a demon in her car—Hope knows it. God has visited her and He has given her the power to detect evil. Hope stares as the demon in the driver’s seat grows two red horns. It is talking to her but she cannot understand; she has too much Heaven within her to speak to children of Hell. She shakes her head at the demon, “I will not go with you.”

Mara stares at her mother in disbelief. “You need to come with me. How else are you going to get home?” She lowers her voice so nobody around the church will hear, “You can’t go walking the streets doped up, mom. Get in the car.”

Mara’s words get through to her mother, and Hope recognizes that the demon in her car is her daughter. The demon pleads again, “Please, mom, let me just take you home and get you to bed.”

“You are not my child anymore,” Hope spits. She gets on her knees and pulls the cross up from around her neck to ward away the demon. “You, child of the Devil—with the power of God the Almighty, I banish you back to Hell!”

Mara glares at her mother, and then notices the silence surrounding them. She looks in the rearview mirror: Service has ended and people from church are staring. “I’m sorry, mom,” Mara says. She backs out of the spot, slowly, so that she doesn’t hit her. She puts the car in drive, and leaves her mother in the parking lot.

Hope gets off her knees and tucks her necklace back under her cardigan. The Devil has gone. She has saved her church. She smiles, sits back on the parking lot ground, and smiles up at the sky.

CXXXV by Terry Brinkman

Terry Has been painting for over forty five years. He just started creating Poems, he has had five poems in the Salt Lake City Weekly paper.

Sonnet CXXXV

Vain gestures in the air
Maze of dark
Porters Creek Park
Pot of honey bear
Chalk-scrawled somewhere
Sewage breath lark
Flites of spark
Crucified shirt solitaire
Ann’s house
Joust of life
Field mouse
Death bed afterlife
Human shells grouse
Old man Jack Knife

Silent Crushes by Nils Reddick

Niles Reddick is author of the novel Pulitzer nominated Drifting too far from the Shore, a collection Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in eleven anthologies/collections and in over a hundred and fifty literary magazines all over the world including PIF, Drunk Monkeys, Spelk, Cheap Pop, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Slice of Life, Faircloth Review, With Painted Words, among many others. His new collection Reading the Coffee Grounds was just released. His website is www.nilesreddick.com

Silent Crushes

The teenage girls decided to end their semester at school with a spend-the-night party. They ordered pizza, made sugar cookies, drank hot chocolate, and decided to watch Hallmark movies. Mostly, they talked about boys who they thought the teachers liked better and who mostly ignored them and preferred sports, hunting, or video games.

The parents who allowed them to flop at their house in pajamas too short for anyone never heard the kitchen door shut or the teens pile in two cars parked by the street and leave the subdivision to head directly into another subdivision. The parents had nodded in recliners, exasperated from repetitive, negative news. The girls parked by the curb of a house whose owners they didn’t know, made sure the lights were out at Nicholas’ family’s house next door, grabbed rolls of toilet paper, and draped the pin oaks in front, the holly that flanked the corner of the house, and the azaleas in the landscaping. Some of them giggled while others shushed them.

            Like adult burglars, they piled into the same vehicles and drove to the next house of a boy they all liked, but who also ignored them, and repeated the toilet paper escapade. They papered a third yard before calling it a night.  The three targets–Nicholas, Martin, and Clay—never had a clue anything was happening outside their windows. They wore headphones and were yelling at their friends who were all played a game on the X-box.

            It wasn’t until dawn that any of the boys’ parents realized their yards were draped in toilet paper. The drizzle started about three in the morning and made for quite a mess when neighbors, out for an early stroll with dogs, saw, shook their heads, and were thankful it wasn’t them who had to clean it up.

            Annoyed more than angry, the parents woke and told their boys what their friends had done, but they had no idea it was sweet girls from their class who had silent crushes on the boys.  Some of the mothers, though, knew what their daughters had done. They had the Life 360 app on their phones and tracked the whereabouts of their daughters. Two of the mothers noted where they had been at ten at night and confronted them.

            “We were watching Hallmark movies, drinking hot chocolate, and eating sugar cookies,” one daughter lied to her parents. She lost her phone and car keys for a week. The other daughter confessed what the friends had done, but the parents told her to avoid that sort of thing in the future, that it was illegal, that if they were caught, it could affect their college admissions.  Plus, the parents had done it themselves in a time when the only app was nosey neighbors who called parents to tell.

The Truth in the Tale by Anna Lachelt

Anna Lachelt is an English Major at Colorado Christian University. Her focus is creative writing, predominately Fiction and Poetry. Her poetry is often inspired by the characters she writes about in her fiction or are self-contained stories within the poems themselves.

The Truth in the Tale

One day they’ll tell the story of a hero.
I swear one day the world will know your name.
But I can’t tell them everything. I can’t
Show them a soul like yours, a soul that glowed
With sun-like warmth and lit the sky at night.
You were a heart that beat out love, the hero
they needed. They will never understand
You like I did, my friend and my beloved.
You’ll only be a story on a breath,
A whisper in the wind, a tale they tell
By fire light and on cold winter nights.
But here’s the truth as I stand at your grave,
You always were the angel in my story.

My Favorite Things by Maya Detwiller

Maya Detwiller is a recent graduate of Lafayette College with Mechanical Engineering degree and an English minor.

My Favorite Things

My favorite thing that happens on the street is when a woman walks by and I smell the perfume she leaves behind. I am with her in the morning when her hair was still warm from her blow dryer and her cheek was still crossed by pillowcase folds. She pulls on fabulous clothes in the perfect order, cuffs, tucks, then untucks, and adds vanilla to the insides of her wrists. I want to run after her. I want to ask her for coffee so I can sit in her scent a little longer and ask her who was the first person she knew by their smell. It was her grandmother, who always smelled like the champagne colored bottle from her dresser. The glass had yellow, pink, and green flowers.

My favorite thing that happens in the subway is when the lights on the train flicker. I picture the car grinding to a stop and the lights going out. I would scream and grab the arm of the man who sat next to me. We would make breathy, nervous jokes to one another until the firemen let us out and we would walk through the long, dirty tunnel to the light of the last platform we passed. People would pull us up and over the ledge and we would go in different directions smile and we’d never see each other again.

My favorite thing that happens in my hometown is when I get to drive again. It is usually night and I can make the radio loud and feel the cold leather seats sap my body heat while I shoot through the hills. The people turn into lights and I don’t have to tell anyone a thing about me.

Three poems by Joan McNerney

Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze, Blueline, and Halcyon Days. Four Bright Hills Press Anthologies, several Poppy Road Review Journals, and numerous Kind of A Hurricane Press Publications have accepted her work. Her latest title is Having Lunch with the Sky and she has four Best of the Net nominations.


It’s Sunday

Your laughter
comes in cascades when
I toss your curly hair
tickling those big ears
with long blades of grass.

We stop at the lake startling
frogs just before they leap
away. Listen to squirrels brush
over carpets of crunchy leaves.

You turn to hold me, hold me
hurry it’s late. Pink clouds ribbon
heaven and I want your arms
around me forever.


Green Rain

I woke up
looked out
my window
and saw green
pouring down.

Trees cascading
over emerald grass.
This noon
swollen wet
bursting water.

Now even heaven
is tinted jade
as birds linger
under branches
listening.


This Evening

Becomes starry sapphire
as chimes tap against
our windowpane.

Sea gulls rise in
flight over rooftops.
Winds wrapping around
trees tossing leaves.

The court yard is full of
aromas from dinnertime.
Shadows growing longer
each minute. Lights go
on and I wait for you.

W. Nowell Street by Gina Bernard

Gina Marie Bernard is a heavily tattooed transgender woman, retired roller derby vixen, and full-time English teacher. She lives in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her daughters, Maddie and Parker, own her heart. Her chapbook Naked, Getting Nuder was a 2018-2019 Glass Chapbook series finalist, and is under contract with Clare Songbirds Publications. Her chapbook Taxonomies was a finalist for Thirty West Publishing House’s 2018 Chapbook Contest. Her chapbook I Am This Girl was a semifinalist for the Headmistress Press 2018 Charlotte Mew Poetry Chapbook Contest, and was published by Headmistress Press in October 2018. Her work has recently been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize.


W. Nowell Street

Rain tapers as the Burlington Northern cuts across S. Main, adding its weight to the ponderous humidity.

I pad barefoot from the bedroom at 5:00 and move the fans about strategically, a feat worthy of pool hall hustlers. Still, I’ll never get back to sleep. Water from the new fridge perspires onto the living room floor as I double knot my Asics. I swipe at the moisture with my palm, and press its coolness to my thigh.

The world is empty at this hour. From a neighbor’s backyard a dog barks, but only once, and without conviction.

It takes me several minutes to synchronize my posture, the swing of my arms, a scything motion in my legs. I hold my breath as I pass the cemetery on my right—a childhood superstition handed down from my mother.

The pavement ends. I feel the pitch of this first graveled incline—the pull in my quads. Horseflies sense my heat; they bumble into my hair, seek the sweat at the back my neck. My path now tracks west for nearly a mile, hugged closely on both sides by common milkweed, carpets of wild strawberry, and nodding ox-eye daisies. In the damp soil near the ditch I note I am not the first traveler of the morning—deer have minced cautiously from a deep brake of speckled alder. Farther along, dozens of navy blue swallows knife above my head, their fleet wings slicing the heavy air.

I swing back east at a 90-degree turn in the road. A sign proclaiming “Brush Only” guards ever-growing mountains of bramble. Racing toward dawn, I meet a pickup pulling a goose-neck trailer freighted with branches. The driver raises a finger from his steering while sipping coffee from an oversized travel mug.

Into town, up the block, down the sidewalk, and I arrive home to my cozy cottage—its mustard yellow paint peeling into the yard. I sweep mosquitoes from the screen door; they whine away to hide amid the nightshade.

Then I come inside and sit down to compose this ode to New York Mills, Minnesota, and return once more to a course I’d never run before.

Two Poems by Lindsay Costello

Lindsay Costello is a poet and art writer living in Portland, OR. Her chapbook So What if I’m Unfolding? was published in 2017, followed by Bloomswelling in 2018. Also in 2018, her digital poetry project Poetics of Space Angel was featured in the online exhibition estranged.love. Her work has appeared in Meadow’s Summer Field Guide, Pallas Magazine and SUSAN / THE JOURNAL. She studied textiles at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, where her thesis project analyzed the conceptual intersections between poetry and weaving.

Peaches

Between them a type of drowning.
A distance measured in carpeting
Or
The furry halo around a peach, or
That grey film of moving, seeing from a light place
To a dark place. Squinting.
That distance.

I waited in the ash-glow staring
At a lizard chasing itself, or nothing,
As screams rattled the windows.

My father once convinced me that
Money lived in the ceiling.
Quarters mostly, nested in plaster,
Warm children.
I stood on a chair and reached for them.

Dripping

I already wonder about summer
And its beasts in bloom
All becoming bats
Hanging sweat and limb
Chewing lettuce or watermelon

I wonder about it
When one day an interruptive stillness
And a river somewhere halts
And limbs go bare and dry out
Like apricot leather