Nothing To Spare

Yours? Mine? Arguments. Ideologies differ. Attempt to build bridge between us. Links missing. Structure collapses. Earth? Water? No collaboration. Excuses made. Stubbornness. Misunderstandings. Light? Dark? We try meeting at middle ground. Concluding we can't agree. Not in thought, time or space. Coffee's gone cold. I mind. He doesn't. Ketchup smeared on fridge door. I wipe off. Mustard appears. Grass is greener over there, he says. I don't care. I prefer wildflowers. He repaints the scene with concrete. I'm younger, by two years exact. Can hardly wait for... Brother leaves for college. Forgets his toothbrush. I throw it into his room.From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Published at: Nailpolish Stories, 50-Word Stories, 100 word story, 101 Words, Boston Literary Magazine, From the Depths (Haunted Waters Press), ShortbreadStories, SixWordMemoirs, and Espresso Stories.

Public Poems Built On Public Property

Public poems built on public property are, as they say, asking for it. When you use such flimsy bread, eating away at holy Wonder until such thinly-sliced letters remain, every one meant to be swallowed, not whispered; when you hold them down with found rocks in a stream that is not a stream, just a concrete ditch void of the hand of God; when you slip out the window in the night like a Sufi thief or an idiot child, praying the wrong way, dancing naked, licking vowels in your own nonsense languagedon’t expect to get anythingexceptarrested.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

After graduating with a BA in English from Vassar College, Brook Bhagat landed her first paid writing job as a reporter for a small-town Colorado newspaper. She left it to travel to India, where she fell in love, got married and canceled her ticket home. She and her husband Gaurav write freelance articles for dozens of publications, including Outpost, Ecoworld, and Little India. In 2013, they launched www.BluePlanetJournal.com, which she edits and writes for. She also teaches writing at a community college, is earning her MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University, and is writing a novel.

The Scent Of A City

She hasn’t unpacked yet. The clothes still smell of Paris. No, not of butter and cigarettes. Of that indescribable smell that is the smell of the City of Light.

Cities are redolent beings, each one with a distinct indescribable scent. Indescribable because Bombay doesn't just smell of sea waves caressing concrete, raindrops infusing with sweat on a monsoon day, or fried green chillies consorting with vada paos. Bombay smells of Bombay.

She needs them clothes now.

They didn’t tell her that you can carry a smell across 7,000 kilometers but there’s simply nothing you can do to make it stay.

From Guest Contributor Sheena Arora

The Straight And Narrow Road

Prior to the trip, Nebraska frightened us most.

The road looked so straight on the map, like a rigid line held fast by fate and concrete. We'd heard stories of the empty fields and empty skies in every direction. The kind of tedium that could endanger your soul. I should have suggested that we reconsider and chose another route, but I didn't want Jesse to know how scared I really was.

I wish we had never gone to that fortune teller. She had probably been a fraud, but the thought of being bored to death has haunted me ever since.