Go Lightly

Between classes, Hollie and I liked to sneak over to the coffee shop across the road. The trouble was, it was a busy intersection with no crossing points; what a relic! So imagine how frightened I was when she just took off into the busy traffic. Between the perils of angry horns and fast-paced steel she somehow made it to the other side.

Being more sensible, I waited until it was quieter. Then I sprinted over eyes shut and caught up to her.

“It's ok,” she said as I caught my breath, “they are not allowed to run you over.”

From Guest Contributor George Aitch

Staking A Claim

It started with his touch and before that the way he looked at me; clear blue eyes that knew how to take me in, how to see through my quiet, my fear. We explored city streets that summer, always attached, love-linked. A goodnight kiss turned couch tumble—hungry hands searching, lips and teeth crashing, his weight pinning me down. And then that surprise on the back of my neck: sweat, tears so sweet. Surrender, yes, maybe even love; but later, and better, trust and understanding, an intimacy that allowed regrets to be shared, my darkness to escape, a homestead staked.

From Guest Contributor Holiday Goldfarb

Holiday is currently enrolled in the MFA Program in Writing at Lindenwood University, Saint Louis, MO. If all goes as planned, she will graduate in December 2016.

Feeling Blue

Blue is a breeze blowing wisps of hair across my cheek. Red is juice running down my chin as I bite a sun-ripened strawberry. Green, the scent of freshly cut grass, blades rippling and tickling the soles of my feet. Purple is the fading warmth of a summer’s evening. White, a smooth window pane on an icy winter morning.

I feel these things because I was born deaf, and my vision melted away soon after. I sometimes imagine fleeting specks of color from my first glimpses of life, but those memories exist only in the moments between sleep and waking.

From Guest Contributor Megan Cassidy

Megan is an author and English professor currently teaching at Schenectady County Community College. Her first young adult novel, Always, Jessie will be published by Saguaro Books this spring. Megan's other work has been featured in Pilcrow & Dagger, Wordhaus, and Gilded Serpent Magazine. For free excerpts and deleted scenes of Megan's work, check out her website or follow her on Twitter

Bringing Back The Dead

She gasped as he removed the scarf from his face.

"Don't be afraid my love, I'm here," he whimpered, choking back tears, "see me, see me for all that I am."

Silence. Gut-wrenching silence.

Anguished, she bowed her head. With one deep breath she finally let him go. "The man I loved is not in this room, I do not see him before me."

"You wear his face but he is not you, you are not he." She turned to the door, her lip quivered, her voice shook as she softly uttered their final exchange, "Goodbye darling, you're free now."

From Guest Contributor Jodi S. Ivers

Anechoic, Deprived

I once thought I heard my father listening to Santana on our back patio. He never listened to music. The only soundtrack to his workaday life was the eight cylinders rumbling at his foot’s command. A kick drum reverberating in his chest that echoed his life. A violent explosion shrouded by modernity, reduced to a drone. I eased through the sliding glass door and found him staring at the beyond the lower pasture in silence. “Be still,” he said. His words hung thick in the mid-summer air. I still don’t know if I wanted the music for him or myself.

From Guest Contributor J. Andrew Goss

Treasures Of Small Town Women

When they jitterbugged with lithesome feet and flirted, Daniel gave Elizabeth a string of pearls. She wore them on Saturdays with plunging necklines and on Sundays with flowery dresses and nonsensical hats. After the divorce, she stored the pearls in a cotton drawstring bag for safekeeping. When her hair turned gray and she fell ill, Elizabeth presented the pearls to her daughter, holding them out with her reedy arm, hesitant to surrender them, even then. Her daughter preserved them in the cotton pouch, and took them out now and again, grateful her mother never knew the finish had chipped away.

From Guest Contributor Dana Shepherd Morrow

Paddy

The man who brought hope amongst the riots: whom bitter losers rushed to associate with terrorism; rather than defence of very frightened people who were let down by establishment they had long trusted. Scum associated him with terrorism, when all he strove to protect family and neighbours.

He adored Martin Luther King. Poisonous painted him with the hate they retained because he shamed them.

All the family were burying was a father who wanted peace and took steps to achieve and promote that.

I was there at the burial of a man who loved people, no matter who they hated.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

There Are Moments, Like These

where I see this beautiful creature’s frayed leash, the far end trapped under a great stone. So great I assume she cannot lift it. She tells me how time is consumptive, and while consuming us, so it must erode the stone. But the longer she or I stare, the slower it seems to weather. Is it any wonder her running throat is yanked taught? The urge to break the circle is the legacy of choice. Look at her and promise, “I cannot lift that stone. But I can sit here and wait until you do. Your wings, they're pinned beneath."

From Guest Contributor Nick Scott Christian

Nick’s poetry has appeared in Poetry Quarterly. He lives in St. Louis and currently studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Destiny's Edge

He held the rifle tightly. Looking through the scope, his target was approaching. Should he take the shot? The target was approaching slowly, allowing the opportunity to fire multiple shots before anyone would react.

Instead, he was patient. His life had brought here: his mother, the Marines, Russia, even buying this cheap rifle he was holding. All of that had brought him to this moment. He'd wait a little bit longer.

His target turned. It was now moving away from him. He took a deep breath and knew destiny awaited him.

With that thought, Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger.

From Guest Contributor Matthew Kresal

Collect

The men stand quietly, exchanging cigarettes and glances. There is nothing to say.

A klaxon sounds. More than one man sighs with relief: the mine-cage rises from below. Two men open the cage doors, collect the dripping bones of the man who lost the draw.

“Sacrifice accepted,” the mine owner announces, as though the men can't see the evidence themselves.

The bones are buried. The widow and children will receive a fat check from the owner, and much pity for the “unpreventable accident.”

“Okay, boys,” the foreman slaps his hat on. “Go ahead and collect. Coal ain't gonna fetch itself.”

From Guest Contributor Laura Lovic-Lindsay