Ella Syverson is a junior at a project based charter high school in northern Wisconsin where she is able to pursue her passions: creative writing and social justice. You can find her previously published work in Youngzine, 101 Words, Shady Grove Literary, and Silver Pen’s Youth Imagination.

It’s dusk. Maybe I should call for a ride. The streetlights are off. That means it’s not quite night yet. In fact, it’s not even that dark. It’s only a few blocks. I’ll take Edge Street so I don’t pass the skate park. No need to call.

Shit, someone’s coming. He’s not too much bigger than me. I could probably take him. What the hell are you thinking? It’s just a guy. Eyes down. You don’t owe him a smile. You don’t owe him anything. Stop holding your breath. He’s passed now. Don’t look back. Stop getting so worked up over nothing.

Home now. Breathe.

“Hi, honey! Did you have fun with Courtney? Next time text before you leave, ok? Just in case.”

“Is Jason back from practice yet?”

“No, I let him stay late for conditioning, but Caleb’s here. I thought we could watch a nature documentary. There’s one about leopards that sounds good…”

“Sure, Mom. Whatever.”

Mumbai now holds the largest concentration of leopards in the world. These deadly cats stalk the city streets, preying on livestock, and occasionally even attacking people.

“Oh my god. Imagine walking by yourself at night. That would be totally terrifying.”

Caleb. Little does he know.

Mariana Sabino is a freelance writer. Her short stories and articles can be found in Mediterranean Poetry, The Humanist, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Culture Unplugged, Taste of Cinema, among other places.

My Town

Does not exist.
Anymore. The rubble of memory
Remains. Stains the senses, droplets
of red and anise. Debris and humans
Interchangeable. Wears, my town,
her caul like a crown.

Lapping up trinkets, nostalgia,
Crumbs of time.

Things the dead leave behind.
Three years, five years – fifty.

Sand-like time, burrows and flies.
Still. Beauty, salty, stings the tongue.

On the Street

There’s this man with an hourglass figure
His sway natural, unaware of itself.

He’s old and he wears old man’s clothes.
Beige and brown, cinched by a belt.

He has a hat on. He brings his hand to it,
patting it down. On account of the wind,
that whistling wind — incessant.

He walks with his hand on his hatted head.
And he sways with the rays that light him.

He travels in a straight line.
That curves on him.

He turns around. And comes to a halt.
He’s got a glass eye.
Blue, his color of choice.

He stands there, like maybe he’s
forgotten something.
But he doesn’t walk back.
Or go anywhere.

He just stands there, still. With
his glass eye and his runaway hat.
That heeds to the wind.

It howls.

K.A. Wright was born and raised in Ohio, and spent her time between inner-city and rural poverty, giving her work fresh flavor and a signature dose of reality while still maintaining a level of sardonic whimsy. Having dealt with mental illness, both in herself and her immediate family, a lot of her writing comes from a perspective of understanding and a desire to tear down the tabooed walls surrounding mental illness.

storm at a funeral

Just before this there are the dark clouds
At the window sill, my tea steeps
Cold steps out from behind steam
I think of lace on gram’aw’s table
Then
Sheets of rain
Gray damask and linen curtains
a cough clearing the air in an empty parlor
blue skies outside, cruel joke

A.C. Dongo was born in Paris, grew up in California, and resides in New York.

Hills

we ran hard for the hills
thinking they were mountains
trenches of the unknown lurking
the crisp air vivifying all
burning our fears
we had no choice

standing tall with dire illusive dreams
on overlaid cotton candy clouds

the musty sight of dreadful ghosts
ignited our footsteps like fleeting fireflies

we shouted and the wistful winds replied
to the echoes of our heave-hoing hearts

we ran hard for the hills
thinking they were mountains
stupendously slipping on pebbles.

Lisa Poff is a single mom of two children—one with a rare medically complex condition. Writing poetry makes Lisa happy, and she hopes her readers feel a connection in this condition called living. Her poetry has been published in the anthology Stories That Need to Be Told, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Runcible Spoon, Ghost City Review, and is forthcoming in the I Am Strength anthology.

Your Word

I want to curl up
in your words
like a cat on a book,
playing with them a bit
before savoring them.

Words.
What are they?
Letters on a page,
sounds jumbled together
catapulting from mouths.

I wonder what will
make the words taste good,
and decide it’s the vowels
that are sweeter in the mouth.

Words.
I shall have them for dinner
with cloth napkins
and fine silver,
respecting their diligence.

I will swallow and digest
your desire to give me words—
while I wish to give you myself.

Mr. Quarrell was born in 1946, in Springfield, Massachusetts. He has so far survived public schools, community college, and university (his baccalaureate degree is in English but written in Latin), the US Air Force, and various employment. He lives and writes in New Hampshire.

Doctor Said It Kill Me, Didn’t Say When

“What are you doing now?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“Well cut it out. The floor’s vibrating.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, then grimaced. He picked up his tweezers and rotated the model about a quarter-turn clockwise. “Honest-to-god,” he muttered, picking up a tiny section of yardarm.

“Honest to Pete,” she murmured, “honest Abe, no honestly, honesty’s not even a policy,” she chanted.

He put the piece of yardarm and tweezers down on the table and pushed the green visor back off his forehead. “I’ll bet it didn’t take them this long to build the real one,” he said.

She sat on her heels beside his table and looked up into his face. “They didn’t have me,” she purred. “No one has me except you.”

“What luck,” he said. He stood shakily and stretched. “Ouch,” he said, and limped toward the kitchen. “Wanna beer?” He reached up into the cupboard.

She stood up too, and conquered a reluctant knee, then followed him. “I do,” she said. “I do, I do, and pretzels too.”

“Bibbity-bobbity-boo,” he said as he popped two naked bottles free of their caps and held one out to her.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Just taste it.”

“It’s very dark.”

“Like my soul.”

“Oh bullshit,” and she sipped. “Very nice,” she said. “Cold fermented, no hops to speak of, not too much ‘lasses.” She sipped again. “Maybe eight percent?”

“Nine-and-a-half.”

“Yummy,” she said, “even better. Quickly shit-faced, and so to bed.” She took a longer sip.

“Never on beer, m’dear.”

“I happen to know we have no madeira, m’dear,” she said. They laughed together.

ffff

The wheezing woke her, even from down the hall, even through the doors he’d closed. Her robe was not quite on when she reached the little bedroom he’d used as a study since their son grew up. She stood in the hall, listening through the closed door for a moment. Then she opened the door and said, “This time it’s 911 for sure.”

He looked up but didn’t move his forearms from his knees, stayed bent double, leaning far forward, just his butt resting in the big stuffed chair. He shook his head. “-t’s ok,” he whispered, “it’ll pass.”

“So’ll you,” she said softly, “and soon if you don’t take care of that.”

“-s nothing,” he whispered. “I’m ok.”

ffff

A few hours later she looked up as the young doctor came through the door carrying a folder and papers. “Is he ok?”

“No, he’s not,” said the doctor, “but he will be. This time. How long has he been like this?”

She looked down. “A couple of years; … maybe five.”

“And he’s…” the doctor looked at the chart, “seventy-two?”

“Just,” she said.

“Doesn’t smoke?”

“Used to.”

The doctor nodded and scribbled on a sheet of paper. He looked at his watch, then looked at her. “Well it won’t kill him in a hurry,” he said, “but it’ll surely take a lot of the fun out of his life. He’s lucky he has you. You can go in.” And the doctor stepped away toward the nurse’s station.

She stood still, alone, looking down the corridor toward the swinging doors. “Lucky,” she whispered, and started toward them.

William Doreski’s work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently A Black River, A Dark Fall (2018).

Horizontals

Let’s live in a neutral gray house by the water. Plenty of light, an indigo sea, weedy yellow foreground, and the house hedged by overgrown pasture rose. Horizontals dominate. Even the vertical planes of the house, the slopes of roof, the gables, the two thumbs of chimney crouch behind or between parallel strata.

But the sea—so much breadth and depth looming in the corners of our eyes, even when we look into each other and sigh those long-delayed sighs. One electric pole critiques the horizontals sketching our frontage. Only one, and it has to carry enough power to illuminate the night-distance from Gay’s Head to Cape Hatteras.

As we settle into the house and ourselves we’ll expand like the sea, filling ourselves with sea; and when we sleep after a long day of booming skies we’ll drown into a horizontal dream-world half a planet wide.

Art Deco Coffee

One urn of coffee and one
of Ceylon black iced tea pose

in a fanfare of Art Deco
stainless steel. A bas-relief

rayed with pleated exuberance
endows this service with something

like a dawn of pure revelation.
Against such a ripe background

the urns, coolers, pitchers, stacked
plastic glasses look refreshed

and eager to serve the public
in a style that long ago

the Depression-era embraced.
Renewing the Art Deco world

even in a crummy old diner
alerts the most sluggish mind

to broader and deeper perspectives.
Besides, the coffee is pretty good.

Don’t wait for the waitress.
Pour yourself a cup and simmer

in the gleam of antique metal
that outshines us all our lives.

Marc Darnell is a floor tech and online tutor in Omaha NE, and has also been a phlebotomist, hotel supervisor, busboy, editorial assistant, farmhand, devout recluse, and incurable brooder– leading to near auto collisions. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa, and has published poems in The Lyric, Eclectic Muse, Skidrow Penthouse, Shot Glass Journal, The HyperTexts, Candelabrum, Quantum Leap, Aries, Ship of Fools, Open Minds Quarterly, The Fib Review, Verse-Virtual, Blue Unicorn, and The Pangolin Review among others.

BBQ

Restless Joe rues in red,
grilling for uninvited guests.
Emasculated ego rests
for leaner, happier times, fed

by dreams of getting out and ahead.
He sorts the knives, which is best?
to give a slit, a gouge no less,
to her for barbs gone over his head.

She stamps him as a grade-A git
while beefier neighbors slowly cure
as choicer men. The fact she lied

sears him well, but all on the spit
stays pink, as pride is smoked with cruor
and served, his heart now gristle inside.

Passenger Seat

The year went very well
without you at the wheel.
Months of google searches
found a sliver of truth,
packaged to be purchased.
A feverish week defeated
A, B, and type C flu
as happy days completed
your one-act tragedy.
Happier hours retrieved
poems you swore you threw,
and, on closer inspection,
they weren’t written by you.
Minutes curtly finished
your Mahlerian symphony,
and thirteen dragging seconds,
with half a cigarette,
revised your tired, syrupy
autobiography
with only minor regrets.
For just one year without you,
it certainly was an endeavor,
but you were always timeless,
time’s underachiever.

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

Shadow – Form

Invisible
To earth and sky
Lit up by
Both sun and moon
Beyond
These spheres of frost
And these worlds of dew
I wander with you –
My only friend

For
Neither me
Myself nor you
Have the trappings of a life

The key to some property
Or to some other time and place
Which will not flourish
Only to then swiftly decay

Yes
Both you and I
May be poor in wisdom
But I am not nor was I ever
In doubt of one thing

We come alone and we leave alone
Joined by the ignorance
Of our one truth and one truth alone

My shadow is form and my form is shadow

There is nothing else
For either of us to assert or to posit
Just as there is no other nature
For us to ever know or to find

Beneath that blue sky
Beyond this infinity of worlds

Michael Conlon retired from teaching high school English in Southern California after 37 years. He is a published essayist and short story writer currently working on a novel about a father’s lengthy train trip to escape the pain of his son’s death.

Tracks

             Rich swayed gently, side to side.  He rested in the cushioned seat gazing out the window at silhouettes of distant dark hills drifting to the south.  He continued to roll over the tracks–“click-click, click-click.”  He was weightless, floating, tethered to earth by the slow sway, punctuated by “click-click.”

“Daddy?”

Click-click.

“Daddy!”

He opened his eyes and looked down at the window seat beside him, barely filled by his son, Danny, a little freckle-faced boy with wheat-shock hair shaped somewhere between a bowl cut and Bantu warrior, all strands radiating from the middle of his head.  Rich recalled his own hair being that blonde as a child, yet always in a butch or crew cut of varying lengths, depending on the time of year.  He never had such flowing, uniform locks, soft to the touch.

Danny continued looking up, the green cat eyes of his mother sparkling, his eyebrows and forehead squinched as always in a question mark, sorting through the playful puzzle of his life.  He could be strolling up and down the aisle, at ease talking to a stranger, or skipping in his size-three red sneakers and white socks nearly reaching his bare knees beneath the oversized blue shorts and red horizontally-striped t-shirt.  Instead, his tiny fingers scratched at Rich’s upturned palm lying across the gap between the seats where the armrest had long since been lifted.

“Daddy, what makes the clicking sound?”

Rich paused for a moment, then offered his best logic.

“It’s probably because when they laid down the rails for the train, they could only make them so long, so where one stops and another starts, there’s a teeny space where the wheels click.”

“But why does it go ‘click, click’ instead of just ‘click’ then?”

Rich paused.  He knew his answer didn’t have to be correct, but it had to be an honest attempt.

“Maybe it’s because we’re going so fast that the back wheels of the car in front of us and the front wheels of our car go over the spot right after each other.”

Danny weighed the possibilities.

“So, if we stood in the place between the cars that we walked through when we got dinner, the clicks might go together?”

“I suppose that could happen,” said Rich.

Danny started to scrunch forward on his seat, his shoes slowly descending to the carpeted floor.

“What are you doing, Danny?”

“I wanna go hear the click, Daddy.”

Rich knew it was perfectly safe, nowhere to fall off, or get lost or kidnapped, but still he didn’t want him out of sight, not now.  He felt Danny’s hand rap around his thumb for leverage down.

“Little boy, not yet. When we get up to brush our teeth in a little bit, we’ll listen for the one click together, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy, but when are we going to brush our teeth?” asked Danny.

“Not too long.  When that orange sky turns to purple, then to black, and we see the first star. You let me know when you see it, okay?”

“Okay,” Danny replied. He pressed his nose to the moist window, looking up into the darkening sky.

Rich laid his head back on the cushion and closed his eyes for a moment.  Slowly, the sway returned, back and forth, noticeable at first, then the rocking, click-click, rocking, click-click…

…something brushed his shoulder.  He opened his eyes to see the porter walking down the aisle, rechecking destination tags above the seats.  He looked down at the seat next to him.  It was empty.  He glanced right and thought he caught a glimpse of Danny in the window’s reflection, then he thought maybe he went between the cars without him.  Then he remembered that Danny was gone, gone for nearly three months.  Rich was back by himself, alone.  His eyes began to sting.  He turned his head and stared out into the darkness, waiting for a first star.

Click-click, click-click.