War Paint by Jason Joyce

Originally from Wyoming, Jason Joyce, M.B.A. is a writer, arranger, consultant and optimist who has made it his life mission to never grow boring. You can learn more about his companies, current projects and published work by visiting jasonrjoyce.com or @savageconfetti on Instagram.


War Paint 

Remember digging a grave in frozen solid ground at three in the morning for your mother’s dead parrot? He was such a little sailor as he quoted lines from Frasier and Days Of Our Lives while he lie wheezing on his side, molting a careless bed of feathers. Down across a bed in what could be and Ikea show room. wrapping refuse like lovers’ clothes on Christmas, mapping out foreign countries on the floor, where pillows and sage sheets wear makeup like war paint.

We still cover up.

Covered up, comfortable clothes, stutter step to strapless and pin downs, dressed up for failed first dates, miserably, mercilessly. More simply- strangers, talking about eating disorders and parents who died when they were young. First impressions far from impressions college roommates tried to make after these dates on 3 a.m. Wal-Mart runs for vanilla bean ice cream and cookies.

Now we’re watching stock tickers for significant signs in
Initials, Fighting
off going home alone with dairy and ground up Oreos.

Homework notes on your flesh, and the word you see in the partial permanence is “validity”.

Partial permanence like hospital roommates, bedded beside your mother, now carefully wrapped in wash worn covers, IV line ribbons, oxygen hose bows, and a laminate bracelet gift tag. Hospital smells don’t follow us home, but we’re sure the spirit of an elderly patient named Bea has.

”Excuse me ma’am, we were just visiting.”

I startle you awake in the middle of the night talking to the open door.

She’s the sour piss nicotine
of dive bar shows, clinging to clothes, smooth speaker crackle, warm wash clean waves wound round a mattress filled with air where we reek
of possibility buried in bed fibers and other ghosts that aren’t quite there.

Two Poems 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.


Bare Concrete Blue

Come on now son
Let’s beat away time
With the sole of this boot
And sing us a song
To shake off these dusty thoughts

For how many years
Can these months truly last?

For all of these memories
And all of their longing
To feel what they felt
Are no more than bare trees
To this cold winter blue

For now
The ancient has gone
And the new quickly fades
No matter how many buildings
We may like to
Construct from this world

So let us just walk then
My old shadow and me
Through these concrete dream streets
And these phantom filled crowds

For any true hope is not here
But beyond that clear frosted sky

In those dead palaces of silver
In that burning river of gold


Spring Bamboo Rain

Sundial
Otter
And blue dragonfly

None of them
Chide this grey monkey
For watching the first rain
Of Spring Festival fall

Far away from that kingdom
And its blackened heart
I stand and I smoke
Unable to move
Watching my thoughts drift on outwards
With the ripples on this pond

Their burning paper
And their pure white crane wings
Still craving
Still longing
For even the faintest echo
From that bamboo dream village
And her bell-like flute

Waterman Men by Azaria Brown

Azaria Brown is a freelance writer and illustrator. Soon, she will be moving to Indiana from the Applachian area of Virginia. When she isn’t writing or drawing she’s crying while reading someone else’s written work, listening to a podcast or pretending that America isn’t in a state of disarray.


Waterman Men

All the Waterman-men gather for their monthly card game on the back porch of the Saint James’s, as long as the air aint too thick with humidity or chill or the smell of blood bleeding through black skin. A Gaines gathering of folding chairs and a tacky card table where hands of spades and Gin get dealt in quick succession. They chat and laugh quietly, so not to wake up Mr. Saint James’s six children, who sleep soundly, packed into the four-bedroom house with the dishes tucked in the cabinets and the laundry folded and in drawers, but the house will be in shambles come 9am. Taking turns marveling at the garden in the backyard and the trinkets Mr. St. James scoured from construction jobs they see through the window, the Waterman-men mumble and smile and enjoy freedom, whatever it mean to them.

They drink cups of moonshine, reveling in the burn that slides down their throats. Take this time to forget the group of Waterman-young men whose bodies were found at the ends of ropes; their skin gray, their faces bloated, their shoes taken off of their feet. They heard that the young men went out to a party, dressed in their good slacks and loose shirts, prepared to sweat in a room packed wall to wall. They were stopped by a group of Main Street-men while the rest of Waterman allowed their brains to sleep, but their spirits to feel conflicted. The young men were beaten and hoisted up, all from the same broad oak tree, all controlled by the same puppeteer, each branch a finger luring the young men to bitter release and forcing it into their hands when they did not reach out.

The Waterman-men tote the line between keeping their heads down and wondering if they next; working for Waterman-whites just hoping not to turn up Waterman-dead. Paying at the front and walking in the back and they don’t know what’s worse, having their own entrance or not being able to get in at all.

Different shades of brown and black faces unshell peanuts and mumble about the weather, avoiding what they already know. A neat row of shoes lines the St. James porch, as the Waterman-men rest their feet on the soft wood, feeling the cool air on the corn ridden toes all touched by gout. The wind blow past the peach tree and they stick their noses in the air in an attempt to smell the cobbler that they know will come when the fruit is firm with juice and the St. James boys pluck them from the trees, filling baskets, tossing some aside for deer to stumble upon.

“What you gonna do?” Mr. Young asks, staring at a losing hand like it aint so bad.

Mr. St. James don’t know, but he make a quick decision so that he look like he do. He listen to the buzzing that ring through the air from the bugs that lure in the St. James garden and slap down a card that he know wont win the game, but it’ll make sure he stick around to play a little bit longer.

On the Bleached Tongues of Anvils by Mark Kessinger

Mark Kessinger was born in Huntington WV, attended college at Cleveland state, lived in Oklahoma City and now resides in Houston TX.


On the Bleached Tongues of Anvils

nothing gets as brutally plain as a desert.
It is what it is: nature. Undeniable. Life
and not life, without disguise.

Everywhere a billion rocks,
the kind that wait for gulls
to drop clams into broken shells.

Or raptors to open a turtle.

Or a simple stumble
to open a skull.

Innocent anvils, just there,
just waiting for whatever use.

The sun likes to count them:
all there, all there, it says
each hour.

I squeeze them into photos.
An inventory of places.
Next visit might be a park
or a parking lot.

For now, I like them exactly
for what they don’t say.
A casual existence
indifferent to discoverers.

So little
and so much. Too many
to stay visible.

I can feel their gibberish
seeping into my skin;
this is where so many other things
give up.

Sleepwalking by Mark Miller

Mark Miller is a librarian who splits time between Minneapolis and Tuscaloosa. He has published dozens of poems, short stories, and essays under his three pseudonyms.  His novel, The Librarian at the End of the World, is forthcoming from Montag Press in 2019.


Sleepwalking 

She regretted that he knew her secrets. But it felt good to write him things she would disclose to no one else. She was attracted to him, yes, but also repulsed by him. Two magnets is what we are, she thought. She was sleepy and didn’t trust him, didn’t even like him, in fact, and thought she should stop typing.  Yet here she was, driven more by bored inertia than excited energy, more even than her need for sleep. Okay, what do you want to know?

Anything you want to tell me, he wrote. She didn’t, at the moment, but could, if she wished, tell him everything. All the things. The sounds and shapes and colors of her childhood, the lover whose sweat she drank off his skin in ecstasy, the hole in the middle of her where god once resided. She wrote, when I face north I will tell you everything. South, nothing. Her mind was fuzzy.  Is there a reason why magnets exist? They do, obviously. But why?  I don’t even care what we are. Why are we, is what I want to know. Then she fell asleep and dreamed of window washers skimming the sky and cleaning glass. But there was nothing to see, inside or out. Emptiness on both sides.

She also dreamed of a man with no face, following her from car to car on a never-ending train.  No sooner would she enter a car and push halfway through its loitering commuters than would the door behind her open, revealing his presence. She hurried to the next door, crossed through to the next car, and pushed through the next crowd, only to look behind her again, and see his featureless countenance.

When she woke it was still night. The lump next to her rose and fell with her husband’s breathing. She tiptoed across the cold floor into the kitchen. She looked out the back window and traced the familiar tree limbs lit by the bulb poled in the backyard. She shivered.

The dreams meant something or nothing. The man meant nothing or something. Magnets attracted or repelled. Regardless of the science, there was no reason for it unless there was. Perhaps we are not magnets, she thought. That was too easy.


Outside she climbed the grey-brown branches with her eyes. She tried to imagine what color they would be if she painted them. What the eye sees and the mind knows are rarely the same. She couldn’t remember what he looked like. She would recognize him if she saw him, but now, alone in the dark, she tried to picture his face but could not. She was aware that for some time she had been willing herself not to feel the cold.  The sensation had registered on her skin, but she had refused to recognize its effect. Now she was shaking.

She crawled back into bed and realized her life was both truth and lie. It was profound in its discord of want and circumstance, alive with need and dead of hope, mundane in its routines. The things that gave meaning were the opposite of the things that gave joy, and she worked to maintain a grasp of both, much as it stretched her into odd contortions of self. In this way she was both true to herself and a lie to the world, and vice versa. No one would know what to do with her, nor could she figure out the puzzle of the world. The space between the pieces was the only place she felt honest.

She lay in bed as her husband snored. She thought of the man again for the last time that night. No, we are not magnets. We are nothing. But I tell him everything because he doesn’t judge me. He is the void I hurl myself into knowing there will never be a ground to break my fall. He can love me because he doesn’t have to depend on me. I can love him, and he will still not know me.  If I throw myself into him, he cannot hurt me. He is nothing at all. She closed her eyes to the dark room and, as always, could not remember what he looked like. Yet she knew when she woke she would imagine him again.

Stretch by Edis Rune

Currently living in New York, Edis Rune was born in Kosovo and is of Montenegrin descent. He is a poet, novelist, and short-story writer.


Stretch

I was stripped.
The receptionist took my name, my birth-date, my history, my living,
and the stretcher—my body—
and I laid down as a nobody, and was
allowed to only keep my eyes—and stared
at nothing but the florescent lighting.

Limb per limb—the attempt was there—that my organs
be stolen by these bare hands.

My hamstring on its thread—his hand pressed down on my head—
and ripples of cracks around my neck and felt like a snap.

He tied me down—with a belt as similar to a car seat—taking me
for a ride—pulled back the muscles and the cranium of my head—
as if he was looking for the most tender place to electrocute—

‘How does that feel?’
‘Where do you feel it?’

I lied and I liked.
It was all strenuous and teeth clenching, and not
once did my eyes blink—for it was all I had.

Poetry by Heikki Huotari

In a past century Heikki Huotari attended a one-room school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower, is now a retired math professor, and has published three chapbooks, one of which won the Gambling The Aisle prize, and one collection, Fractal Idyll (A..P Press). Another collection is in press.


Attribution

I attribute agency to you, you bad bad dog and,
the unnecessary and the insufficient rising like
an iris, past stochastic practices, unmodified,
are codified at your expense and/or to
your advantage. Should you mumble something
you may see a blur. Revoking ghost marimbas,
you have many academic references to write
before you reach the speed of light. What is
a bed of lettuce but the here and now?


Dispensing Empathy

As elbows bending backward might be knees,
beneath my dignity, so I’m the lazy arrow
stopping half way so the target brings
itself to me so, taken seriously or consecutively,
ignorance surrounds the public-private partnership
of post-apocalyptic birds and post-apocalyptic bees
so, Hello. Home, James, I say to the vacancy,
and turn the siren and the mirror neurons on,
and withhold judgment till the second judgment day.


The Explanandum

Your arms go out like chicken wings when
you put careful weight on that particular left foot.
That means that everyone but you has been
disqualified. That means you won.
Now you may harbor wires and pipes and
termite lives and call yourself a double window,
you may call yourself a gyro- or kaleido-scopic
pinwheel, you may call yourself an oscillating fan.
You may propel yourself. Your definition reeks
with meaning now beyond mere use and they
can do without you what they won’t.

Two Spaces by Deryck Robertson

Deryck N. Robertson is from Peterborough, Ontario, where he lives with his wife, Heather, and four children.


Two Spaces

I don’t always feel old
(Only when I get out of bed
And try walking
Across the bedroom floor)

I don’t drive with my
Turn signal on
Nor do I drive slowly
(Full disclosure, Officer,
I always adhere to the speed limit)

I’ve never yelled at kids
To get off my lawn
Or keep balls that have landed
In my yard

But c’mon!
I grew up in a typewriter world!
The snap and pop of metal keys
Striking the page through the
Inky red-black ribbon

You have lived your easy life
With word-processed efficiency
Backspacing and deleting
Adding your little circumflexes
And “typing” in Comic Sans (ugh)

I don’t begrudge you
And rather enjoy the simplicity
Myself
But please, for the love of all things

It’s TWO spaces after a period

The Gifts by Hannah Pelletier

15Hannah Pelletier studied English at the University of New Hampshire where she received the Richard M. Ford writing award two years in a row. Her work has been published in The Paragon Journal, Split Rock Review, Remembered Arts Journal, Thin Air Mag and more. Hannah is a 24 year old expat currently living in Paris.


Premonitions

I don’t think our end will
be particularly loud.

Even a cough is enough
to make the roof of this home

without hesitation,
collapse. So.

I fix you up,
as bad as I can.

But you don’t stay broken,
the only way I can

love you. Like a bird in the dirt,
with his belly up.

At the end, all the doors
are opened again.

And the both of us,

stepping backwards and
alone

through each one,
are not scared when they

close behind separate rooms—


First Love

You appear in the dream
like a knife—

descending slowly &
somehow holding

quietness at
your shoulders

(on the outside,
lightness is already
a blanket) but

I come to you
quietness & all

nine years later a
face—

nine years of
your silent hands,

of satellites, water
on rooftops,

rain dripping all over
the white floors
of it

& then:
morning  


The Reappearance

Woke me up
in the middle of

the dream
about looking

for
water in a dark garden.

You, whose name

cannot sit still
in a sentence,

already feels written
on the back of my hand.

Like needing to
to violently

slam the door
shut,

but stay
behind

in the room with you.


Vows

I didn’t speak a single word:

simply freed
a ribbon

tied from me
to the others,

sweetly, but forever—

I took back every gift I
had ever given

without anyone noticing.

And you, looking so
honorable

standing beside

all of the remains
I have dragged

inside our home,
take your turn.

Two Poems by Destine Carrington

Destine Carrington is a queer, black woman living in North Carolina because she enjoys challenges. Other things she enjoys include but are not limited to: burgers, brownies, and Batman. Her work has also appeared in Serendipity Literary Magazine, Jokes Review, Drunk Monkeys Literary Magazine, and Five2One Literary Magazine’s thesideshow.


After Jack

With his bound head, Jack went to bed
but Jill lay by the hill.
They found her that morn
her skin adorned
with frost so cold and clean.
They say by the well
there still lays the pail
that held her wails
and screams.


Bumblebee

Pain.
A liquid pain filled her chest, and as it buzzed up her throat, it brought along a burning sensation that coated her entire mouth like molasses.
There was a weight at the center of her stomach—it fluttered, tumbled
flight of the bumblebee, all around.
The weight gripping the base of her spine
The bumblebee’s flight picks up tempo
She falls to her knees
Was she even standing?
She fell
and fell
and fell
Outside. Alone.