Brandon Marlon is a writer from Ottawa, Canada. He received his B.A. in Drama & English from the University of Toronto and his M.A. in English from the University of Victoria. His poetry was awarded the Harry Hoyt Lacey Prize in Poetry (Fall 2015), and his writing has been published in 275+ publications in 30 countries. www.brandonmarlon.com

Remembrance

Soldier, solitary in the gloom of your room
with a .45 fixed under your chin, stand down.
Soldier, replace the safety where it belongs.
Soldier, repatriated yet still war’s prisoner, cease fire.
Soldier, your next battle has begun, with the enemy within.
Soldier, buckling under the weight of memory,
lost in trauma and grief, haunted and hurting,
burdened with guilt, weary of life, persevere
through soldier’s heart, shell shock, combat fatigue.
Soldier, whose mind reels on endless replay, respire.
Soldier, let the noise and imagery flash by; these too shall pass.
Soldier, sob as much as you need to then some more;
let your tears flow like fine wine from its bottle.
Soldier, for whom the hours lour, outpour your pain
in words and purge all that consumes you.
Soldier, wounded warrior, your loved ones are nearby
and your neighbors stand by you.
Lean on your brothers- and sisters-in-arms, soldier;
they know best what you went through.
Soldier, let your pets save you; they sense your sorrow.
Soldier, fighting for survival, never, never, never surrender.
You may not get closure, soldier, but you will find peace.
Soldier, take this hand, all these hands, and rise to attention,
that together we might amputate the anguish.
Soldier, those who sent you salute you.
Soldier, we honor your service and sacrifice.
Soldier, remember that you are unforgotten.
At ease, soldier. At ease.

Transit

The train rumbles and wends across the city center
at a precipitate pace, its bowels clogged
by reticent commuters lost in private thoughts
of to-dos, aches, deadlines, sleep, debts, losses,
things to have said in long-gone conversations.
Then without warning she steps off the platform
onto my rail car and sits opposite me, wearing red,
redolent of lavender, a conspicuous birthmark
complementing lips puckered and glossed, skintight
nylons catching my eye as she crosses her legs
and, succumbing to her suasive ways, I lose my train
of thought to imagine what her name is and who she is;
what it would feel like to have her body,
prone or supine, pressed against mine;
the expression on her face when her toes reach her ears;
the pitch of her panting as we climax in tandem.
I bypass my stop by seven or eight hopeful of a glance,
a connection transitory or lifelong, and when she alights
I gulp sour sighs, detesting the tang of what if.

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

Divination

I torment our maps
with these ballistic
pendulums. I uncover

something new
with every undulation.
With a haste

we can’t be sure of,
we are running away
from our reflections. We

strain our destinations.
All the exits
will be swept away

by a surge of safer choices.
On this map, beginnings
and endings converge

in disappearing topographies.
It is strange
to spit up a home.

Bruce Alford received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and was an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama from 2007-2011. He currently lives in Hammond, Louisiana. Before working in academia, he was an inner-city missionary and journalist. You can find out more about Bruce and his work at his website, bruce-alford.com, connect with him on Facebook and on Twitter @bruceealford.

Negative Capability

The slant of a dot moves up and down, like someone descending stairs. The boy blinks, and waves of heat move around his hand, and his mother steps in the doorway, smiling, and holds a long knife near his head.

Al Jolson sings on the radio.

Everything is lovely … when you start to roam.

It always makes him imagine walking among some slim trees or lifting a stone. For a while his problems vanish. And he shuts his eyes and tries to see

With his fingers on his eyelids, he feels those balls inside their sockets, moving side to side. Disturbing little tears come out of the cracks of his eyes.

Look, he stands at the house, and sparrows trace its spine in deep concentration. He marks the riddle of their flight. He tightens his lips, and you can see his skull under turgid veins today and the letter M at his temple.

Bewildered, nauseous and withered, he cannot eat

Forks abandon his fingers. So, he sits next to the house and writes in dirt. At the finger’s tip, cursive blends into earth. God gives him this faith, god gives him this gift. It has no meaning

Silent and miraculous. Everything he believed, he always believes, but now, he gets glimpses of time without end. Make sense or don’t, he tells himself.

Act as though you believe in miracles, mythologies these enchantments in your tea, the many ways of being, with little conviction or sense, or with great meaning, based on your freedom to decide

To make sense or not

At last, a dot appears at the end of the road. And the dot moves up and down, like someone ascending stairs, and the dot unfolds until it turns into a figure of a man.

Somebody is coming. But who can tell.

On the weekends, Kristine Brown frequently wanders through historic neighborhoods, saying ‘Hello’ to most any cat she encounters. Some of these cats are found on her blog, Crumpled Paper Cranes (https://crumpledpapercranes.com). Her creative work can be found in Hobart, Sea Foam Mag, Philosophical Idiot, among others, and a collection of flash prose and poetry, Scraped Knees, was released in 2017 by Ugly Sapling.

Catching Grasshoppers

climbing trees
of a sleeping yesteryear.

this,
my favorite hobby.
catching grasshoppers
as they fought
from opposite sides.

a tennis court
with boundaries
set by chalk,
soft and washable.

like shirts you can say
I stole,
but no others I own
could pedal in tandem
with my only black cardigan
undoubtedly well.

I’ve never seen a dragonfly,
and snow is like pork
to babies of vegan love.

but its sole presence,
a decade not exactly halved.

I’m in doubt
of its capacity
to surpass the travels
of an earnest breath.

On Being Polite

verifiable addresses
and envelopes returned.
some days, you don’t know
exactly who to believe,
to whom you reveal
your most embarrassing moments.

taking a bite of mudpie,
thinking it’s chocolate mousse.

sums up my love life,
and his, and hers,
and theirs,
as they quarrel in plastic seats.
he took her out for crab legs,
but crustaceans make her bleed.
see, now that’s a problem.

but if she were to ask,
“Are we bothering you?”
and you vigorously shook
your scarlet chin, side to side.
you lied.
but the winces of those around,
these are simply tips
properly vetted.

they don’t unveil a scandal,
but dab with a tough cotton swab.

everyone cowers.

banana peels bruised.

Supervised Grocery Shopping

a proper meal
to satiate.

and words of a fullness
we taste in custard.

it’s enough to say “yes”
to unvested kayaking.

rapids, and rocks
to monopolize foam.

with each purchase,
a reluctant revisit.

as tangerines drop
from an overwhelmed bag.

E. Martin Pedersen, originally from San Francisco, has lived in eastern Sicily for over 35 years. He teaches English at the local university. His poetry has appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, Muddy River Poetry Review, Oddville, Former People, Trop Magazine and others. Martin is an alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

Nudists

I had to wait until my father died
and mother’s jigsaw puzzle pieces
to discuss what to do with the trailer
oh yeah, that old trailer
that they used to use summers
at some campground in Oregon
I’d never been or paid attention
then it came out that it’s a nudist camp
my parents have been visiting for 30 years
I never noticed or they never told me
or they told me indirectly but I didn’t hear

oh, to imagine
my parents, male and female
volleyball and ping pong.

Nausea of Numbers

Go to a baseball game
or watch people at an airport
a county fair
the mall on Saturday
Lots of beauties, huh?
prettier than the actors we crave
Some look like friends who are dead
Some like lovers lost but not forgotten
like people in a mosque
You’ll never see them again
They gorge your visual memory
then pass on forever gone
Leaving the nausea of numbers.

Emily Stephan is a freelance writer and educator who reads too many books and watches too many movies. Her fiction and poetry have been published by Z Publishing House, Cheap Pop, and the Manchac Review. She is also a regular contributor to the Ultimate Action Movie Club website.

September 2, 2005

I remember trees, glass, streetlights littering the roads,
the grass turned to mud, “looters will be shot” cardboard signs
tacked to the front of Mr. Palmer’s house, the roof caved in,
an evergreen prostrate across the upstairs bedroom

I remember the queasy silence in the car,
the unbearable stretch from Baton Rouge to back home,
mama fiddling with her rosary, daddy’s knuckles white on the wheel,
the awful question hanging in the air, left unspoken

I remember us screeching to a halt in front of the house—
our great pine tree toppled across the lawn,
just skimming the siding, crushing the azalea beds,
a few brown shingles scattered atop the monstrous foliage

I remember the first time I ever saw mama cry, hands hiding her face,
and daddy bowing his head, relieved exhalation deflating his body,
myself shocked at the spectacle of their catharsis,
the final confirmation that grown-ups could be afraid

J H Martin is from London, England but has no fixed abode. His writing has appeared in a number of places in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Website: acoatforamonkey.wordpress.com
Instagram: @acoatforamonkey

Empty Rebus

I need to get my self
Back in line
Before it all gets out of hand

The reminiscing – the highs
The whatever – the when

These two flows
From one source
Which I am too foolish
To even recognise

This fire escape door
Which I can keep on pulling
But I am too blind to push

Tangled up
By convoluted nuance
And constricted by
This recurring imagery
I always
Overcomplicate the meaning
Only then to simplify

Just as front follows back
And short measures long
I am nothing more
Than this dull mid-June day
And this battered notebook

Of course – just by saying that
Makes these dumb words
Turn back in on themselves
To May and then April and then on
Back to the point

Come on fool – shut up
I am sick of the drifting
From that point to this and then back to there
All I want is to stop
All these dreams of yesterday’s world

So come on fool – shut up
Sit down and be still
Just let it all
Solve its own undisturbed mystery

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.

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

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.