Barking At Shadows

One minute I’m falling exhausted into bed. The next I’m getting beaten by goombahs wielding metal bats. “I’m going to die,” I think. “I’m going to lose everything.” My body trembles like it’s not under my jurisdiction anymore. I don’t want to make this sound worse than it is, but there isn’t a lot else happening, just assorted crises, each at a different point of unfolding. It’s an intricate universe. When day returns with a button or two missing, I’m spooning hot cereal into a small white dog that has been exhibiting signs of incipient dementia. Heartache is everyone’s neighbor.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

This Message Cannot Be Delivered

Old friends’ emails become inactive, enveloped by electronic monsters. My message cannot be delivered, electronic gatekeepers proclaim.

I can’t tell them of being alone. I can’t hear their off-color jokes about paraplegics and suicide, youth at its most delightfully stupid. Tell them of empty, sterile walls. I can’t confess I absorbed their stories of family, an electronic voyeur.

I keep trying. Messages come back.

I drive to distant homes. But staring through lit windows, I feel like a magazine, an obnoxious knickknack among order and precision. I imagine them discarding jokes, smiles replaced by starched replicas.

This message isn’t delivered.

From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri

Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. His story, "Soon," was nominated for a Pushcart. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, 50 Word Stories, (mac)ro (mic), and Ariel Chart.

Along The River

Tawny wings tail the Arkansas and their shadows brush Russian olive. A hoo! drifts along begging recognition. Drowning the scuttle of waves, a quavering reply invites determination. Feathers ripple towards cottonwoods, nudging the fading sunlight across leaves and between branches. He allows a hoot to stray ahead asking for her to answer with a wandering whistle. The night approaches with a dimming silence that hushes happenings of the day and offers silhouettes. Moonlight shifts over a hollow as a frayed figure sails with unfurled wings. They settle below the canopy and dust bark with steadied feathers, ceasing flight for tonight.

From Guest Contributor Kristi Kerico

Kristi is a psychology major at Pikes Peak Community College. She is studying to become a horticultural therapist. She currently works at a bookstore and volunteers at a zoo and nature center. She began writing after enrolling in a creative writing course at PPCC. She enjoys poetry the most, considering it's brief yet complex beauty. She also loves writing with a focus on nature.

My Time

The smell of food wafted through the apartment. I groaned as I moved off the sofa. My old bones ached as I made my way to the small dining table. My wife smiled at something from behind me.

“It’s back isn’t it?” I asked her quietly.

She nodded and reached out her hand. I'd never seen what she had. Even so, she described it as a little girl, wearing a yellow sundress, and her eyes were always glossed over.

“It will be my time soon, Jacob. That’s what she had said.”

I just shook my head. I didn’t believe her.

From Guest Contributor Amber Brandau

Sweet Lullaby

Brianne gently swung the bassinet humming a lullaby. It had been in her family for years and it was her turn to place a baby in it.

She decorated the nursery with teddy bears and yellow duckling wallpaper. She spent the majority of her time in the baby’s room holding the many tiny onesies her family gave her and reading the children’s books for the baby’s library.

“Honey, I’m home,” said her husband Greg as he entered the room with a bouquet of freshly scented red roses.

Brianne began to weep.

It was time to tell him about the miscarriage.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

D.S.T.

Our test of CesiumApp (Sync Your Devices to The Nanosecond!) launched at 2am, the end of Daylight Savings Time.

But somehow when the clocks fell back, so did we, snapped to wherever we’d been one hour before. We showed up again in the conference room, greedy with foreknowledge. Kyler sold airline stocks short, profiting from a plane explosion. I bet Australian rugby winners.

We waited anxiously for next 2am when an explosion blew the doors open. A hideous half-human encrusted with growths like lichen gasped “butterflies” in a familiar croak, leveling a rusted revolver.

I’d always been handy with guns.

From Guest Contributor Clay Waters

Myth Match

The day is cold even by New England standards. Girls dump menstrual blood on icy sidewalks in some kind of protest. Myth is dead. Our high school biology textbook compared the body to a furnace. Mr. C, our very nice teacher, was killed that spring with his wife and baby daughter in a car wreck. There’s no point in speaking ironically to people who can’t understand irony. You’ll just end up having to publicly apologize. Freud said dreams are the day’s residue. It has to linger for a while, as if to warn we’re a danger to self and others.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Abiding

I stir the White Russian, the clink of ice so soft, tender. I should be grading papers and concentrating on how to explain Rasputin and Nicholas II to my students. I just want to abide in White Russians and ice, a creamy sea.

I take a sip, savor cream-filled sensation. Hold onto it. Too many rules, kiss department chair’s ass. Don’t swear. Be responsible like Professor Gebert. Voices rise, like some discordant chorus.

I take another sip.

How rich I feel, world subordinated to ice-filled buzz.

I take another small sip, trying to keep creamy seas from melting.

I’m losing.

From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri

Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. His story, "Soon," was nominated for a Pushcart. Yash’s stories are forthcoming or have been published in Café Lit, Mad Swirl, 50 Word Stories, and Ariel Chart, among others.

There's Something The Matter With The Sea

We all got off the coach and headed for the beach. The couple who'd sat across from us stripped to reveal their swimsuits, like a superhero duo. I told Dad on the sand, but he seemed distracted, staring into the horizon.

'I think there's something the matter with the sea,' he said.

Mum told him to cut it out. He nodded, patted me on the shoulder and turned back towards her.

The water was warm, like a bath. That was our second clue. 'Don't worry,' the news anchor had said at breakfast. 'Hurricane Katrina isn't expected to cause much damage.'

From Guest Contributor Robert Keal

Wonder

The Erie Canal in Spring is serene, she thought. Once again, first heat of May made the pink sugar bowl blossoms on magnolia trees shimmer with light. Townies were out walking, taking their time getting to the Lift Bridge on Main Street. Each wore a blue, or red, or yellow balloon fastened to their jackets. The balloons drifted & tugged in the wind, like her niggling thoughts about her neighbors. How they reminded her of sliced white bread. She doubted that they knew they lacked depth; yet, like setting clocks ahead, they came to watch water fill the canal’s bed.

From Guest Contributor M.J. Iuppa

M.J.’s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 31 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.