The Secret To Staying Human

Mom digs her feet under the wet sand of the Atlantic. I stand next to her, wondering if the ocean will remember her and melt her legs back together.

Each wave climbs higher up our pale legs. Our feet sink deeper and deeper. The surge threatens to topple me, to suck me out to sea. Tears stream down my cheeks.

Mom grabs me. “This was a mistake.”

I cling to her as she rushes toward our towels.

She dries her feet. Inspects each toe. Sighs in relief.

My toes tingle, translucent skin spread between them. The ocean’s song calls me.

From Guest Contributor Sally Simon

Sally (ze/hir) lives in NY. When not writing, ze’s travels and stabs people with hir epee. Read more at www.sallysimonwriter.com.

Sailing To America

There was something about the endless sky, gray and somber, and the ship’s surging through the dark swirling waters of the Atlantic, that prompted Macbeth to worry about the past. The witches. The blood. The trouble that followed. Was there a route to forgiveness? People went down on their knees, didn’t they? Could he hire someone to do it for him? He was still royalty, wasn’t he? But the breeze was so soothing, the trouble, so remote. Surely Scotland was a memory best forgotten. Besides, in the distance, he could almost see, shining like a pardon, the Statue of Liberty.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

Linda Lowe's stories and poems have appeared in Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, Eunoia Review, Misfit Magazine, Six Sentences, and others.

Abracadabra Universe

I got to tell you, what a computer thinks a man looks like, adversarially evolved hallucinations, is the kind of shit that wears me out. But, apparently, it isn’t the kind of shit that wears most other people out. Their focus is just too taken up with acquiring the essentials – liquor, guns, toilet paper, travel bottles of hand sanitizer – for them to ever notice the heart lying in rags at their feet, or the African monkeys rafting across the Atlantic, or the shrill, jangly sound in the background that can be variously translated as “hello” or “goodbye” or even “peace.”

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.