Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cloudbank. 

Between the Buttons

Ask the calypso singer.

Ask the boy with a booger
on his sleeve.

All shirts are equal parts
theory and praxis.

Doll Variations

The deep red sequin
on the doll’s plastic belly

works as either a ruby
or a scab.

Rust

Just hypnosis that metal undergoes.

Stephen Baily has published short fiction in some forty journals. He’s also the author of ten plays and three novels, including “Markus Klyner, MD, FBI,” which is available as a Kindle e-book. He lives in France.

Her Lucky Day

In a brand-new bright-green wheelbarrow with orange hubcaps, my mother was pushing me up the sidewalk on Cosmopolitan Avenue when we crossed paths with Mrs. Quinn, a gray-haired widow who lived in our building.

“Where on earth did you get that?”

My mother explained she’d just won it at the hardware store, as second prize in a drawing for a dishwasher.

“I only wish I knew what to do with it.”

At a loss for suggestions, Mrs. Quinn turned her attention to me. “My, he’s gotten so big. I suppose he’ll be starting school soon.”

“In the fall.”

“How time flies. Speaking of which, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m late for my sodality meeting.”

Before scurrying off to join her friends for a Coke at the drugstore—or so I thought—she made me cringe by stooping to tousle my hair.

“Be a good boy and study hard and you could grow up to be president.”

My mother waited till we were out of earshot to shake her head.

“Senator or governor, maybe, but not president.”

All at once, she lit up. “I know! It’ll make a perfect gift for the Rosenbaums when they move to their new house. We can keep it in the basement till then.”

Inside the back entrance of our building, half a dozen metal cans full of ashes were waiting to be dragged by the porter up to the curb for collection. Beyond them, a dim corridor led past the boiler room and the incinerator to the carriage room, so called because that was where tenants parked their baby buggies, bikes, and other items too ungainly to be tucked away in small apartments. Steam pipes as thick as thighs ran along the baseboards of this chamber, into which a small transom high up in the far wall admitted just enough daylight to see by. My mother was attaching the wheelbarrow to the chain securing my old carriage to a pipe when I tugged at her skirt.

“What?”

At the sight of the finger beckoning to me out of the shadows under  the transom, she snatched me off my feet and lugged me back outside so fast the sunlight dazzled me.

“That’s the last time I go in there.”

My father shrugged it off. “Kids.”

“You wouldn’t think so if you’d heard him laugh.”

To set her mind at rest, he asked the Rosenbaums next door for the loan of a baseball bat. Mr. Rosenbaum fetched two of them and insisted on accompanying him down to the basement.

The hubcaps were missing from the wheelbarrow, and its tire had been slashed. The tires and the canvas hood on my old carriage were slashed, too.

Henry Frigon lives in California with his daughter who is nearly one year old.  He writes short fiction, poetry, and prose.

The Crab

Crab sat atop a rock on the misty moon-lit beach and click-clack, clickity-clack’d a little song to himself.  The waves washed ashore bringing with them great green seaweed clumps and shells which were worn smooth by the rolling of the sea.  Crab’s rock was under a grand pier which was home to many restaurants, game stands, carousels, binoculars which cost a coin to use, and one great Ferris wheel, covered with and lit by multi-colored lights.  But Crab, who sat on his damp rock, only saw the lights of the festivities reflected in shallow pools in the sand.  He gazed at the reflections, and the light of the full moon emerged from behind a puff of wispy mist and pooled around him.

A glistening shape, somersaulting on the sea-breeze currents, and reflecting the silver moonlight, landed with a thud some four feet away from Crab.  He skittered over to it, leaving small tracks in the pillowy sand. A silver coin, polished by many excited hands, lay face up in the shining moonlight.  Crab grasped it tightly in his claw and scuttled back to his rock.  He held it up to the moon and gazed at it, for never had he been so interested in such a small thing.  He tilted his claw so the coin lay on its side and let it roll down the smooth surface of his rock.  So delighted was he by the way it glided from his stoney seat into the soft sand that he crawled to it and repeated the motions.  Three times he rolled it, and three times he retrieved it. The barnacles who clung to the pier’s posts like shavings of iron on a magnet wondered what he was doing.  The lights from the festival above glimmered in the sea, and caught his eye.  Crab left his rocky perch and crawled up a cement path, coin in claw.

When he reached the sun-bleached and salt-weathered slats of the boardwalk, he stopped, dazed, at the sight of the people. He checked to make sure the coin was still in his claw and began the trek to the end of the pier.

Many times he was nearly crushed by the giant stomping feet of tourists and party goers. Carnival music blasted his shell as he skittered between feet and trash cans, the smell of fried foods bombarding him. He came at last to a restaurant, The Mariner’s Grill, whose sign featured a crab holding a spy glass. Two warm brown hands picked Crab up from behind and turned him around.

A little girl, maybe 6 years old, with dark eyes and a wide toothy grin, smiled with delight as she eyed Crab up and down.  “Olá, Caranguejo senhor,” she giggled. “Posso ajudá-lo?”

Click-clack, clickity-clack Crab snapped, pointing his empty claw at one of the binocular stands, and showing the girl the coin in his other claw.

“Sim!” she exclaimed, and together they dashed to the binoculars.  The girl opened her hand. Crab gingerly placed the coin in her palm.  She rubbed her thumb over it for good luck, and pushed it into the coin contraption. The binoculars unlocked themselves and she looked through to make sure they worked.  She pointed them at the full moon and stared at it lovingly.  “Eu amo a lua. O que você quer ver, senhor Caranguejo?”  He pointed with his claw at the small beach-side village, the houses filled with happy families and warm hearths. The girl pointed the binoculars toward the houses and held Crab up to them. He drank in the sight of the town and was content.

Andrew Furst is a poet, author, Buddhist teacher, photographer, artist, and a technologist. His work has appeared in Poetry Leaves, Platform Review, and Failed Haiku. He self-published his first volume of poetry “Clouds Tell Us: Poetry at the Intersection of Nature and Our Humanity” in 2016. Learn more about Andrew by visiting www.andrewfurst.net

That Time

With 52 there are decades and breath mints and affinities to – the smell of burning earth rolling down your throat – forgetfulness; pills; Bed to car to eyes to ears. resolutions to just reconnect; to dance; with my wife; pictures and writing shit down. Torpor and stupor as god damn legitimate lifestyle options, but getting my ass on a trail. To a waterfall. work on time and back. On time. Skipping the soapbox, as if this ain’t exactly just that. Watching parents die and. Vortexes of coming. Cat litter. Keys. IRAs. Going. White privilege and loathing. Stealing road trips and making checklists. Bitter sights and sweet sounds. Sugar pee tests, colonoscopies, and the god damn word cardio. Making marks and just erasing them.

Immersed

And there was
the day
when I had been drowning
for so long.
Barely breathing,
choosing the struggle.
Then
I looked
at my brother
sleeping
on the cold hard ground
below me.
I would have
marveled
at his ability to float,
If I hadn’t’ve found myself,
feet on the ground.

Breathing.

Of Cider and Softness

Erin received an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University of Ohio. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in After the Pause, Into the Void, Flash Frontier, Mount Analogue, Blue River, The Airgonaut, Evansville Review, Canary,Shelia-Na-Gig, and Foliate Oak Literary, among others.

Renovations

you follow me to our room
cataloguing faded wall paint
cracked picture frames
dusty windowsills

I do not think you notice
I am silent

it was be easy, you insist
a few cans of eyelet blue
some Endust, frames from
the discount store

I do not think you notice
how I fall
on our bed
my hair unwashed
as it has been for days

just a few fixes here and there
you say, our home could be
beautiful

but as our cabinets improve
I break a little more

The Attic is filling

the swelling floorboards
& dusty rafters
not family heirlooms
but trinkets from past loves
or lives we might have led
imagined tickets stubs
& dried bouquets

not to exclude the aroma
of passion flower perfume
snaking through the vents
or the hollow notes of a violin
that is played without passion

I think we feel these things
as we rise, eat, go to work,
clean the house, fall asleep
before we have a chance
to make love

but what can be done?
the attic is overflowing
& its excess has blended
so seamlessly into our halls
& cracked ceilings

J. Culain Fripp is an Asheville, NC native who now lives in Geneva, Switzerland. Over 25 years dedicated to traveling, working, observing and reflecting on life in conflict and crisis-affected environments, internal and external, he has returned time and again to poetry as a journalistic practice. He graduated from Warren Wilson College and the University of Maryland, College Park, and is married with two children.

Absolution

Lonely resolution
Here in the empty cathedral
Bats roost above the dusty altar

Cool water on my fingertips
All-healing single blessing
Candles flicker in the breath

Through the cracked doors of the past
Voice speaks from the gloom
Solitary presence among the pews

“Leave it”

With degrees in Physics and Chemistry, Andy Betz has tutored and taught in excess of 30 years. His novel, short stories, and poems are works still defining his style. He lives in 1974, has been married for 26 years, and collects occupations (the current tally is 95). 

Her House Our Home

I received the phone call. Her voice was weaker than I remember. She wanted to talk for a spell and poke through my life to see how I was getting along. She is my mother and she is nosy, manipulative, and rather selfish. I am her daughter and have tolerated her attributes my entire life. This call was an invitation to come home for the weekend. A simple math calculation verified she would turn 70 this year. She would also celebrate this birthday alone. Maybe it was out of pity, but I agreed. However, I had to return no later than 7pm on Sunday. Slowly, she agreed to my terms. Smiling, I had a small victory today.

When I arrived to her house and let myself in (she always made sure I knew it was her house), I found it a disaster. The entire house required cleaning, the laundry needed attending, and there was this smell of geriatrics permeating every room.

I walked upstairs and found my mother atop soiled sheets with the disheveled look of someone who gave up. Her eyes found me but her smile could not hide her current state. This was not my mother. This was not the woman who demanded an immaculate appearance in both self and state. This woman had one foot in the grave.

Then it hit me, her call to me was a cry for help. For years, she gave all to me and received only a nosy, manipulative, and selfish daughter in return. I turned my back on her house, her manners, and her. I am beginning the autumn of my life. My mother lives in the winter of hers. I held her hands and she understands that I understand. She has nothing left to give. At least she knew to call someone who did.

For the next two months (yes, I quit my job) I scrubbed her house back to its glory days. I forced my mother to exit that 4-poster tomb she calls her bed and rejoin the land of the living.

I opened windows, planted flowers, and took her for walks. She unearthed her recipe book and I began mastering the delicacies she cooked and baked for my (previously) unappreciative palate.

782 Sycamore Street evolved from an impending morgue to the regal elegance it once commanded from all who passed by. I elevated my mother back the Queen status she lorded over others. I could not live knowing my mother existed with any other title.

I planned a return trip when my mother asked me to sit at her kitchen table. She reached for a house key and gave it to me. Her next words, soft humble words, roared among the empty rooms of her house. I will never forget them.

“Take the key. Keep the key. I want you to live here. Permanently. Not in my house, but in our home.”

My mother grows older each day. That day, I just grew up.

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: A Coat for a Monkey 

Instagram: @acoatforamonkey

HOODED EAGLE

I put on my hat
And take the last shot
Then pull up my hood
And drain the last glass

After five sleepless nights
I know I need more

More than these rats
I pass on the landing
More than these mice
Who scurry back to their holes

This endless hunger
That not even I can satisfy

A circling bird of prey

I will take any opening
That these pinned eyes fix upon
To feast my way out of this cage
And unfurl these damp walls
And head back up to that China white sky
Where reality fades

With all of its stained corridors
Of twisted emotion
All its grey blocks of clouded reason
And all its memory lined streets
Littered with nothing but abused promises

A hooded eagle

All I need and all I can see
Is in this void
That opens now in front of me

A space that will
Never ask questions
As I pass through its door

A place I can feed
Until it all disappears

This land of the dead

Sweet carrion
More

Language lover, art enthusiast, and tea aficionado, Catherine Jones is a college professor and writer of novels, poetry, and non-fiction. You can follow her writing adventures on Twitter @catjanejones.

Slam

Father used to slam things. Beers, doors, people, if they happened to get in the way. I’d hide in the bathroom, sitting on the cold tile floor with my head in between my knees. All the doors in the house were smashed off their hinges. Locks exploded into useless metal pins.

Slam. And again for good measure.

I’m angry. I curse at the top of my lungs. I climb out and slam the door to the car as hard as I can. I stalk up the stairs to the muffled sounds of my son’s cries and slam the front door. I move to the bedroom and slam that door too, even though there is no one inside the house to hear me. I open the door and slam it again and again, so hard that the door pushes out past its frame, the wood warped over the doorframe. I beat the door with the palm of my open hand and then with my fist. I grab the knob and find I can’t open the door. I’m stuck inside.

Slam.  I have a lot of things to say to my husband.  About him not listening to me, making me angry, and forcing me to get to the point where I scare our son. He could see I was losing control and he did nothing to deescalate the situation.  And now my baby’s crying.

When he finally pushes the door back into its frame correctly so I can get out I don’t say any of those things; instead, my eyes fill with tears and I whisper I’m sorry I got so angry.

“I just don’t want our son to tell his wife stories like the ones you’ve told me about your father,” he says, holding me limply, looking away as he says it.

Slam. Right between the eyes.

Woman

When she was eleven she felt something slide out of her like diaphanous jelly. When she checked her underwear, it was spotted pink. You’re a woman now, her mother said with a touch of sadness, handing her a thick white pad the shape of the lake in their backyard, folded up in a cotton candy colored wrapper. You can have a baby. And the girl-woman wept because she didn’t fully understand what that meant.

When she was thirty-nine she felt the world slip out of her like muddled paint colors. When she checked her underwear, it was rusty red. You’re not a woman now, the voice in her head said with a touch of horror, handing her a future that looked like a blank piece of paper. You can’t have a baby. And the woman wept because she fully understood what that meant.