Dilation of Time by Sem Megson

A graduate of the University of Toronto, Sem Megson’s work has been published in American, British and Canadian literary journals and produced by theatres in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, England. For more information, visit semmegson.com.

 

Dilation of Time

Languid words in Einstein’s book claimed time
rushes faster away from a source of gravity,
as if lovers hadn’t written of relativity first
that an hour spins past itself when they’re apart
and slows its hands when they’re together.
The theory of dripping moments didn’t begin
with time is distance divided by velocity,
but longing is distance multiplied by desire.
Understood by romantics without an equation,
they intuited the law a scientist proposed:
A body contracts in the direction of motion
measured by the affections of an observer
until their diverted libido begins to approach
the speed of light where all promises obliterate.
So a dilation of time describes the differences
sensed by two within a gravitational field,
yet it cannot explain why their yearning exists
to travel back and forth to each other in time.

For the Record by J H Martin

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

 

For the Record

“For the record Sir, at what point would you snap? At what point would you react?”

He pulled hard on his roll-up and pondered the question.

“Come on now Sir, when? When you lose your low-paid dead-end job? When the money runs out? When the food has been eaten? When the drink has been drunk? When you’ve had to sell what little you have? When your welfare payments have been stopped? When you’re evicted? No? You still wouldn’t react?”

He smiled and shook his head.

“Not bad. Not bad. So, how about when you then have to live outside of the law to survive? No? So, how about when the warrants go out? How about when you’re now on the run? When you can’t trust a soul? When your only friends are also your enemies? When you don’t know who you are any more? When everything is just one more lie piled on top of another?”

He laughed and shook his head again.

“OK, you’re doing great. Better than most. I have to say I’m impressed. But what about when you’re arrested then? When you’re detained? When you’re restrained? When you’re beaten? When your nose and your ribs are then broken? When you are forced to confess? When your lawyer’s thrown out of court or doesn’t even turn up? When you’re tried in your absence? When the laws are changed? And all of your appeals finally run out? You still wouldn’t snap?”

Inhaling and then exhaling slowly, he stepped over to the window.

“Jesus… Honestly, you must be Jesus… So, OK then, what about when they make you sign away your rights? When you’re processed? When they throw away the key? When you don’t dare look anyone in the eye? When nobody cares any more or wants to hear anything you say? When you are raped in the showers? When you hold a blade to your wrist? When you’re locked up in solitary on suicide watch? When you are taken out to shit and to piss in a plastic bucket? When you’re transferred from C to B and then on up to A? No? Seriously? You wouldn’t react? You wouldn’t snap? No? Why not?”

His face flushing red, he put out his smoke and stared out through the bars of the van window at the people in the street, as the van approached its destination.

“Oh right, of course,” he said, laughing, “Yes, you’re all innocent, aren’t you?”

Up ahead, he heard the rusted groan of the prison’s metal gates opening.

“Yeah,” he nodded, as he steeled himself for what he knew from experience lay in store for him, “We all say that people. Yeah, we all say that.”

Short Prayer and other poems by Wendy Carlisle

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of two books and five chapbooks. For more about her, check her website at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.

 

Short Prayer

God, if there is a god, bless Friday afternoon for the stack of wood I didn’t get cut, for the co-worker I unwittingly snubbed, for the party I skipped just because and for the sigh I heaved knowing it was three days until blessed Monday.

God, (same caveat), bless Monday for its upstart beginning, for the rejections stacked up over the weekend and for its optimistic heart, for its sentences that begin, this week I’m…. Bless this day since it has its tongue out for the first snowflake, its palm out for a raindrop. Praise Monday because there’s nowhere to go from there but on.

 

My Husband Asks, What Are You Thinking?

I’m pondering on
a rodeo man,
RCA belt buckle,
stiletto toes, arched back,
a tall skinny stranger
always waving
goodbye

 

I drank to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim. 

                                  – Frieda Kahlo

Diego Rivera called his daughter, “Little Pinhead,”
Frieda Kahlo was barren

Rivera was a Mexican, a nationalist, a leftist.
Frieda was always in pain.

Rivera only painted her twice.
Frieda said, At the end of the day,

we can endure much more
than we think we can.

 

William, the Poem

When Stafford was asked
how he wrote a passable
poem each day, he answered,
Lower your standards.

 

After Great Loss

I have become the mistress of the unlit,
black dress formal, sad as a 2 car funeral.
What shall I do in all this somber dark
but dance and dance and dance
in my hallelujah shoes?

 

 

Poetry by Robert Okaji

Robert Okaji lives in Texas. His favorite knife is Japanese, as is his tractor. His guitar is Italian. He’s sure this signifies something to someone. The author of five chapbooks, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Riggwelter, Sleet, Eclectica, The Zen Space and elsewhere.

 

Worms

Yesterday’s cored apple buzzes with light,
another vessel stored in sadness.

I have swallowed vows.

I have replaced air with earth
and enjoyed tongued flesh.

To think is to live. To live is to delay.

Burrowing through the soil’s rich
decay, this body,

accepted. Absorbed.

 

Self-Portrait as Question

Walking hand-in-hand with what,
who presupposes why, and when
huddles with where before skittering
off to its murky corner. Sometimes
I present myself as a shy minute
or a cloud’s effigy streaming across
a scruffy field. Few suspect the truth.
Answers ricochet from the limestone
wall, but no one nabs them. I react
quickly and offer the unknown, the
life I claim, my name, in return.

 

Love Song for the Dandelion

When you scatter
I gasp

aware that the windborne
carry truths

too powerful to breathe
too perfect
to bear

What is your name
I ask

knowing the answer
all along

 

Pinecone on a Pedestal, Open Poet

Look deeper. Within that grain, a mineral,
inside that word, a book
folding into itself,
leaf by leaf,

and farther back,
the cone’s imbricated scales
spiraling in perfect
sequence, or pressed
through another
time, strand by
strand, looming
in shared
simplicity.

Looking through my window I see a hundred trees
growing in the shade of one.

The juniper’s
berry is
no berry.

Bamboo is a grass.

My floor
is not cork
but bears its appearance.

Two halves share this one body.
Open it. What will you find?

Bench by Clyde Liffey

Clyde Liffey lives near the water.

 

Bench

“Where’d you say it is?” one of the men asked.

“Out back. Follow me.”

“You bet,” the younger man said as she swiveled down the hill.

“Nice place you got here,” the older man said.

She scrunched her nose. “You think so?”

She surveyed the unmown grass, the sticks and parts of branches scattered about it, the sickly trees, the untended flowerbeds. “I’d do more out here,” she said, “if he wasn’t so creepy.”

“Who?” the older man asked.

“My father-in-law: he just loves the bench you’re taking. He sits there all morning. He’ll be furious when he comes back from his walk and sees that it’s gone.”

“Looks like he didn’t get out today.” The older man poked the body prone on the bench. “Wake up, sir.”

She called her husband and recounted the above omitting the parts about the workman leering at her and the sympathy hugs.

They had a late cold supper. Their son was asleep in his chair. Her husband said, “Dad had a bad heart. It was time for him to go. At least he died where he loved to be, on that rickety bench. Do you remember how he said they’d have to take it from him over his dead body?”

The boy woke up. “But wasn’t the bench under his body?”

Cuidado by Desmond White

Desmond’s prose and poetry has appeared in the Tishman Review, HeartWood, Theme of Absence, and Whatever our Souls. He holds an MLA from Houston Baptist University, where he founded the student literary magazine Writ in Water, and he’s currently the editor-in-chief of Rune Bear, a magazine devoted to the strange and speculative. Desmond White lives in Sugar Land, Texas, with his wife and her two cats and the two thousand strays she feeds by the car.

 

Cuidado

A dónde vamos? she says
as he walks to her.
But he is not a train coming to station.
There’s something weird
in his eyes
and his feet are aimed
to take him past her.
He is a train in passing.
This station—quarantined.
Yellow ribbons of Cuidado, Cuidado, Cuidado
wrap her breasts;
abandonada stamps her head.

A dónde vas?
she says
before a black bottle
which reads: Tratar con cuidado,
which reads: No poner en los ojos,
and in sober black:
Sulfuric Acid
(ácido sulfúrico)
before this bottle appears in his hand,
or maybe it was always there.

 

The Will of the Rain by Rebecca Nestor

Rebecca Nestor double majored in Psychology and Creative writing at Southwestern Oregon Community College.  She has a passion for creating stories that are deeply personal, yet entirely relatable.  Her work has appeared in Red Weather Literary Journal and LEVITATE Literary Magazine.

 

The Will of the Rain

The dessert has a way of becoming a part of one’s very existence. The sun settles in your bones and claims your flesh as synonymous with the wind and sand. It was suffocating at first, but eventually my body conceded, and it even became euphoric. Pheonix had a way of pausing time in more ways than one. The Lonely cacti serve the perfect testament to this, waiting patiently for months for the monsoon rains to come. Every summer, I watched the dust and pollution settle in the crevices of the sidewalks and buildings in the city. This always made the first rain of the season smell like freshly unwrapped clay.

The first time I saw an Arizona sunset was when I had just moved to the city from a small town in Oregon. I had been out drinking and trying to give the big city life a try. I stumbled outside for a smoke and watched the entire sky bled. It was brilliant, and artistic, as if someone had carelessly painted it in hues of purple, pink, and gold. I stood watching it for what seemed like hours before I decided to walk home. On every street corner was another apartment complex. I could smell the chlorinated pools and laundry soap seeping from behind these gated communities. The heat seemed to magnify every scent to a degree that I had never experienced in Oregon. Perhaps my heightened senses are why everything felt more real in the dessert. It was as if everything had been a dream until that point.

I was still drunk by the time I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I dug through my pocket for my key and slumped on my futon in the living room. My new home was empty and bare. The only furniture I owned besides the futon, was an old tv missing the remote and a dresser. The tv sat on top of the dresser a few feet from me. Too drunk to move, I fell asleep staring at the black screen.  That night I dreamt of the Oregon coast, a place I had called home for almost ten years. I was back at Bastendorff beach. The sand was cool and pleasant between my toes, but there were dark clouds on the horizon and the waves were getting more and more treacherous. I saw the wave in the distance. It was gaining speed and size too quickly. Behind me grew a massive rock wall too high to scale. There was nowhere to run. The ocean swallowed me whole and I drifted amongst the seaweed. My limbs felt too heavy to move and I knew I would soon drown. On the surface was something white, hot, and blinding but I couldn’t quite reach it. I gasped in salty water and choked. My throat was so dry. The salt made me so thirsty.

I woke to my throat feeling like sandpaper and my head throbbing. I staggered to the kitchen to fill my palms with tap water from the sink. I choked it down, coughing when the slight hint of rust reached my tongue. I rubbed my wet hands on my face, hoping it would cool me as it evaporated. The water hit my empty stomach like a ton of bricks and it cramped and heaved the cold water back into the sink. I felt like shit. I needed food, but I knew the cupboards were bare. I would have to walk to the local store. It was a beautiful day for a walk, hell, In Arizona it was always a beautiful day for a walk, but on the way I found myself wishing for rain I knew wouldn’t come.

The heat played tricks on my mind as it rose from the sidewalk and created the illusion of waves in the air and puddles in the distance that would always turn out to be more of the same cracked sidewalk. Along the way I saw numerous dead birds, downed by pure exhaustion. Dead animals in large numbers always reminded me of the Biology class I took in Oregon. One morning my teacher had opened a heavy metal door that lead outside, only to discover a sickening amount of squished tree frogs lining the door frame. I watched him scrape one of them off the door frame with a ruler and fling its corpse at a student that was talking during the lecture. I had been so deeply disturbed by it that I remained on my best behavior for the rest of the school year. I studied hard, but soon discovered that it wasn’t necessary to pass the tests. Mr. Shank had designed each test with a hidden pattern and to pass each test, one simply had to figure out the pattern. I found myself admiring how clever and analytical he had to be to come up with that. It was in his science class that I learned two things that weren’t on the curriculum, one being that there is a fine line between crazy and genius, and two that to be able to discover the patterns, I must be toeing that same line as Mr. Shank.

I finally reached the air-conditioned store and grabbed some granola bars, oranges, and a few bottled waters. I opened my wallet to pay. I was down to my last two hundred dollars, but rent was paid for the next month. I asked for an application before leaving. I paused outside the grocery store doors to break the seal on my water and take a big drink. Water spilled over the bottle lip onto my dry hands, leaving clean trails where copper colored dust had been. A clean slate. That was all I had wanted from this move. Part of me hoped that I wouldn’t settle like dust on this restless city. Part of me still hopes to carry the will of the monsoon rain that can carve rocks and wash away the past.

Poems by Kathleen Madrid

Kathleen Madrid is a poet who lives with her husband, three appropriately drooly newfies and a sawed off mutt named Whiskey outside Denver, Colorado.

 

Scorpion Brooch, Stuffed Chickadee, Rhinestone Belt

The memory box is better burnt, the books as well.
The dust and dirt, what could it hurt to let it all just
ash away? The clothes will never fit again and never
mattered anyway. The lotion, toner, exfoliant—mascara,
high heels, three kinds of scent. My grandmother’s things
would be hardest: rhinestone belt, scorpion brooch and way I
felt. Chester, that absurd stuffed bird—I would want him, feel
his loss as sign of every hole and haunt. No blue jay —yolk yellow,
matted, orange feet smudged to gray

Oh fire. Burn it all and let me go away.

 

All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

– Dame Julian

The orchestra
The orchestra warms
You’re sitting in phlox,

On freshwater fish scales, beneath clusters of cayenne
The orchestra plays under
You’re sitting in phlox

Sap lacquer ambers peonies.
The orchestra plays under canopies of blackberries
Time reconciles flamingos, kudzu leafing from a cradle

The orchestra plays in canopies
The orchestra plays out cradles
This is lost

each is lost
one manner of thing is never lost
phlox flowers in the choir loft

 

chapel, with angels

stained glass eyes chord organ heart double lung bells
gills held a part sprung spring cuckoo bird ticking the time
carnation buttonholed weasel in shine feverfew nectarine
petunia wine forget-me-knot all will rot red clover rime

On a Summer’s Day by Peter Barbour

Peter Barbour loves to write. He is a retired physician, former Neurologist, living in Allentown, PA and has been writing stories for over 30 years. Peter is an active outdoors person, and believes that what comes from the heart goes to the heart.

 

On a Summer’s Day

At the top of the hill the grass was deep, knee high and deeper in some spots. Joe waded through the grass as it bent in the warm summer breeze. The air was dry, not terribly hot or humid as it would become later in the day. He could smell the dryness of the grass and the earth below. Small birds, hopping about in the grass eating insects and seeds, took flight as he waded through. Joe found a spot that looked comfortable, took off his backpack, placed it on the ground, and laid down. He placed his head on his backpack and enjoyed the sun’s warmth as he lay there. It was a nice respite after walking several hours through the morning.  He looked up at the clouds as they moved from horizon to horizon high above him and observed their white billowing caps gray cottony patterns, mounted on darker gray bottoms as they floated in a sea of deep azure blue. He imagined the clouds were a flotilla of great ships on a mission to the other side of the earth.  Intermittently, the clouds obscured the sun whose rays penetrated gaps in the clouds’ complex webs and poked through like long poles extending to the earth then disappearing as the clouds moved by. As Joe watched the ballet above him, he listened to the birds chirping and the hum of insects that swirled around him, but, thankfully, left him alone.

As Joe enjoyed his reverie,  a rabbit suddenly appeared at his feet.  Joe held his breath and didn’t move. The rabbit stood there. It’s soft fuzzy fur stood erect, long pink ears rotated forward listening, its nose twitched testing the air, and dark curious eyes looked at Joe. Joe let his breath out slowly and took another breath evenly measured moving as little as possible. The rabbit rocked back, sat up, scratched its face with its fore paws, looked around, and then back at Joe. The rabbit’s eyes met Joe’s eyes.

‘What is the rabbit thinking?’ Joe wondered.  He had an urge to touch the rabbit. ‘No. If I move, the rabbit will startle and hop away. I’ll enjoy this interaction as it is and not disturb this moment.’

High above, a hawk circled, wings extended, as it rode the thermals and surveyed the ground.  The hawk then folded its wings and dropped like a stone. There was a crack, like a bat striking a ball. The hawk gripped the  rabbit with its sharp talons, then swept it into the air. Joe screamed and jumped up. He reached for the hawk.  The bird was startled by Joe’s movement, but it was quickly beyond Joe’s reach.  The hawk maintained its grip on the rabbit and swiftly took off to the protection of its nest, its quarry secure.

Joe stood and watched the hawk disappear above the trees and into the woods that stretched out below the hill. His heart raced, and he breathed rapidly as he stood there shocked by the sudden violence and saddened by the ill fortune of the rabbit.  He wondered whether the rabbit would still be alive if he had not been there. Had he been a part of nature or interfered with it. The tranquility of this place was spoiled.  He no longer wanted to stay. He picked up his backpack, put it over his shoulder, and walked on.

 

Starlight by Travis Schuhardt

Travis Schuhardt resides in Freehold, New Jersey and currently attends NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where he is pursuing a concentration in literature and poetry. When not writing, he can be found asleep in his bed.

 

Starlight

I’m not a very observant person –
I can’t, for example, tell you
what the stars looked like
on any given night,
or what you were wearing
the last time I saw you.

Instead, I just imagine
us laughing in the moonlight,
in some empty field,
after driving hours and hours
to find the perfect spot

which, to me, will look like any other spot
of a picture I never took,
but I’ll try anyway, to capture
you and the trees and the stars.

So please forgive me for staring
at your hands in the parking lot of your college dorm,
or at your dress that I think was blue, but can’t remember,
or, if we’re being honest, at your lips
shining just a little in the night air

like starlight bending around the tops of the nearest trees
just far enough away to touch.