The Messiah Complex

They had him taped to the floor. When they were holding him down and placing one piece of tape after the other, he'd smiled. Faintly so as not to be noticed, but a smile nevertheless. They didn't have enough tape to hold a person flat to the ground.

But when they'd left him there, try as he might, he couldn't move.

Now the water was drop-by-drop filling the small room. In a few more hours, the water would reach his nose and mouth and he'd eventually drown.

This would certainly be one of the worst ways he'd ever been killed.

The Sound Of Duty

The silence wrapped around us tightly, even as we fought against it. There we tears, the quiet kind, and anguished expressions. More than one person collapsed to the ground.

I'd been through this before. We all had, so there was little to be gained with words.

We dropped our weapons and left them where they lay. Without any order, we gradually made our way back to the city. We refused to look each other in the eye.

The sacrifices were necessary. The welfare of our entire civilization depended on them. But we each vowed this would be the last time.

Standing On The Edge Of The Between

The portal calls to me in the songs of ancient gods, but my feet are mired in the ordinary, the necessary, the mundane. The music pulls me forward until I feel as if I shall break into two pieces—leaving only half of me to enter the world that is next.

The melody shifts in key, and I am beckoned not to walk, but to rise. I understand that I do not need these frozen feet. I spread my arms to the future, and I streak upward. My boots remain in the mud, but I am whole. I can fly.

From Guest Contributor Karen Burton.

Karen is an MFA student at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO.

The Day The Sirens Weren’t Kidding

I am the wind that yesterday lifted your hair against the orange sky, cooling your skin. Now, I have arrived to collect respect. I bang on your door. Scream through your trees. You ignore me? I carried the seeds that became these trees that brush the sky. I exhale against the oak standing rigid against my gale, refusing to bend. He groans and snaps before my fury. And you, you who hide in your pretty squares constructed of his branches, think that you are protected from my force. Hear the glass that breaks as I announce that I am more.

From Guest Contributor, Karen Burton

Karen is an MFA student at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO.

I Had A Question

So I sought an answer. I looked behind silos, underwater, between the lines of out-of-print taxonomy texts. I branded objects as “right” or “wrong.”

That January I met a mathematician who studied knots. Like rope I asked, no, like string theory he replied. Then I wanted to know which planets may harbor life on their moons. He shrugged. Beckoned the waitress. It started a morally inhospitable year.

I leveraged my concerns. I was humbled by saplings. I began ending sentences with “in today’s world.”In December I met a prophet. I had been inhaling incorrectly my entire life.

From Guest Contributor, Liv Lansdale

The Empty Seat

There's a seat open right next to me. It's the only empty seat on the entire bus. You know that during rush hour you're lucky to get a few inches of space, let alone a seat.

Why don't you sit down. I will try my best not to squeeze up against you. I'm sure we'll touch a few times going around the curves, but always by accident.

If I lean in really close, we'll be breathing the same oxygen molecules. The hairs of my mustache might tickle your check.

Please, go ahead and sit down. I don't mind at all.

One of the Seven Deadly

She holds two swords of societal success. Her career of achievement, her marriage of love realized. Nice house, nicer car. The look that men look at – even her husband. Meditative dreams on summer days under a comforter of cool breezes. Still, one regret reflects the swords’ sharp edges. Cut her caesarean style – deep as you like; take out the child she cannot carry… his son. The single thing she cannot give him. Justice, she feels, is not in the cards for her. She seeks to be satiated through gluttonous eyes. Where are maternity clothes, the infant boy she must steal?

From Guest Contributor. Keith Hoerner

Keith lives, teaches, and pushes words around in St. Louis, Missouri.

If This World Would Allow It, I Would Curl You Into Me, Caught From Flinging

If This World Would Allow it, I would Curl You Into Me, Caught from Flinging

I will build a catapult against instruction, an implication of backward, showing you from the cupped seat to base, flat and without lacquer, just how far necessity sounds through an ear’s tunnels, when the breath propelling the assertion is something past love. Sentiment is reactionary, but I promise fullness and recompense after the flight. Thatches of bendy straws still wait, splayed in divided nests under my pillow to serve as extra reminders after you inevitably ask: “What does it mean to land, to really land?”

From Guest Contributor, Kelli Allen

Kelli Allen’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the US and internationally. She served as Managing Editor of Natural Bridge and holds an MFA from the University of Missouri. She is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Allen gives readings and teaches workshops throughout the US. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft White Ash, from John Gosslee Books (2012) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

OCD For PTSD

Herbert surveyed the battle raging before him. Never had he seen his living room in such disarray. The coffee table, seven degrees askew, was at war with his sofa and chaise. The casualties were everywhere, as the legroom between sofa and table had practically been murdered, and the rug underneath was suffering its death throes as it bunched up under the strain.

As heroically as Alvin York, who risked life and limb for his fellow soldier, Herbert dove into the tempest.

With the furniture righted, and the correct layout restored, Herbert knew all that would remain would be his PTSD.

Pigeons With Pants

In an effort to eradicate the disease carrying pigeon population from the city, the mayor signed into law an ordinance requiring all pigeons within the city limits to wear pants. His hope was that they would be forced to flee the city as they did not possess the dexterity necessary to fashion their own clothing. He underestimated the pigeons’ solidarity and the ordinance instead sparked an uproar in the garmentless pigeon community. The pigeons quit their jobs as letter carriers in protest and decided to focus their efforts solely on their cynical hobby of defecating on large man-made objects.

From Guest Contributor, Sean Franklin