Until Further Notice

Thanks to social distancing, my co-worker Connor and I are finally alone. Only two employees at a time are permitted in the break room to clean out their lockers.

“Did you know Amazon Prime ships steel caskets in two days?” Connor looks at me, and my gut drops.

“What?”

“According to CNN, death rates are rising. We need to plan.”

Even when he says crazy things, he’s irresistibly cute.

“Look, it’s okay,” I say, “At least we weren’t fired.”

“I guess,” Connor sighs, “But how long will we work from home?”

I shrug. “So kiss me now before you can’t.”

From Guest Contributor Tammy Smith

Tammy is a social worker from New Jersey. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Esthetic Apostle, Ailment: Chronicles of Illness Narratives, The Dewdrop, io Literary Journal, and Ariel Chart.

Human Beings Are The Only Wild Animals

Whenever I fly into a foreign country, I’m afraid I’ll be dragged into a room and forced to answer questions I’ll fail to understand. “You can do better,” the examiner will say, just before firing an electric current through the alligator clips attached to my ears. By the time I’m released from custody, I’ll be bent, shriveled, gnome-like, and afflicted with tremors. These events repeat themselves in my mind on a loop, every recurrence worse than the last, now involving sleep deprivation, now an inmate orchestra playing a German requiem, now corpses sprawled half in, half out of broken caskets.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest poetry collections are I'm Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submissions Press.