For Yulia Navalnaya

Beware, murderer. I know widows. I watched my mother become one, imagined how my face would bend and darken in the shadow of the word that means shroud, dusk, ash. What lies inside the bones of a woman who does not crumble before you—who wears this word to war, vowing not to yield? Something heavy: iron, redwoods. Oak, like him: an oak among reeds who knew he would be uprooted, just as she knows she will be. No, it is light, hydrogen fusion in the belly of a star, howling life, dawn, freedom. Beware of this widow on fire.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook Bhagat (she/her) is the author of Only Flying, a Pushcart-nominated collection of surreal poetry and flash fiction on paradox, rebellion, transformation, and enlightenment from Unsolicited Press. Her work has won or placed in the top two in contests at Loud Coffee Press, A Story in 100 Words, and most recently, the Pikes Peak Library District 2023 fiction contest. It has been published in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror, Soundings East, The Alien Buddha Goes Pop, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Blue Planet Journal and a professor of creative writing Read her work and learn more about Only Flying at https://brook-bhagat.com/.

Thick Crust

The real Spartacus was among the guys who answered to that name when Romans captured hundreds. No photos on file—he was the one who looked like Kirk Douglass.

He’d take his punishment alone for leading the slave uprising. Except his men wouldn’t allow it. The Romans spread them out along the Appian Way, crucified.

Appian Way was a strange name for a box mix of pizza dough a few eons after the action.

No one schools Romans. That’s clear as he walks to the cross they raise. Still, he’d do it all over—break for freedom, die beside the road.

From Guest Contributor Todd Mercer

Sweet Freedom

Mira closes her eyes and concentrates.

“Very good, Mira. This time you held your concentration and an apple appeared.”

Mira takes a hard bite of the fruit with a distasteful expression. She is telekinetic, and her parents sent her to a special school for young adults with the same talent. She hasn’t forgiven them.

“Try it again, only think larger.”

Mira resumes her position and raises her lips into a grin.

The roof caves in, and a black convertible appears, surrounded by falling rubble. Mira gets in, puts the car in gear and speeds through the debris into sweet freedom.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

In Which I Confront Name Regret

The sun was just a faint red ember in an ashen sky when I stepped onto the swaying boat. “A poet,” as Paul Celan observed before his second suicide attempt, “is a pirate.” I felt a kind of guilty freedom to be maneuvering the boat above the rush-hour streets. If only I had had a Jolly Roger! Behind the boat, I pulled a net that was soon full of strange new words for things. My pursuers cursed and cried and complained bitterly of fatigue and stress and vast distances. “Oh yeah?” I said. “Try going through life as a Howard.”From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

Suffrage

I clear the breakfast plates as a dutiful wife, while my husband, Robert, legs crossed, newspaper in hand, clears his throat and faces me.

“Are you seriously considering going to the parade, Grace?”

“Not considering, I’m going,” I say and slam the cabinet door, dishes rattling.

“There’s no reasoning with you,” he says and leaves the room.

I want more than keeping a home and obeying Robert’s commands. I want the freedom to choose.

I hold my head high, grab my “Women have the Right to Vote banner,” and walk out the door to Fifth Avenue to make a difference.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Freedom Of Expression

Their art combined gibberish with colour. Exterior walls and street recycling receptacles became graphic spectacles.

“Let’s see you join us,” they demanded.

“It’s wrong to deface public property,” I replied.

When a recycling truck rolled in, frustration of the driver as to not being able to do his pickup job landed them at the school office. The self-appointed artists got suspended from class and were ordered to remove their creations.

“Did you take part in that graffiti?” Dad asked.

“No, I only watched,” I answered, careful to not disclose that they asked me for my artistic advice and I obliged.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna is a writer of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Sheresides in Edmonton, Canada with her husband and stuffed animals andmany friends.

Mary Of Silence

From where she stood, she watched the blood soak into the hard, compacted earth. It was like watching water that has spilled from a glass onto the countertop evaporate in fast motion. Soon it would be as if the dark fluid had never been there, absorbed into this wasteland where it could serve no purpose.

Mary wanted to scream. But her voice had fled long ago. With no one willing to listen futility had eventually won out. The doctors called it aphasia.

So Mary watched her husband die. Here, freedom surely was a bitterness. Alone, she started walking towards sunset.

Girl In Nature

I read a story once about a girl in nature. A man was watching her ride her bike through a field of flowers. She was beautiful, so he stopped her. He frightened her, her fear frightened him, he panicked. He raped and killed her, strangling her in perfectly-rendered fragments, snippets of sun-burnished green, pale skin under cobalt sky, a tale of flushed mania and hazy recollections of doomed resistance. A beautiful life snuffed out in beautiful prose.

I don’t ride alone through fields. I’ll never taste the freedom that killed the girl. Another beautiful life snuffed out in beautiful prose.

From Guest Contributor Tara Campbell

Tara is a fiction editor at Barrelhouse and an MFA candidate at American University. Prior publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Jellyfish Review, Booth, and Strange Horizons. Her novel, TreeVolution, was published in 2016, followed in 2018 by Circe's Bicycle. Her third book, a short story collection called Midnight at the Organporium, will be released by Aqueduct Press in 2019.

Futile Gestures

Leslie struck at the hand as it approached her face.

"Don't touch me."

"There's a leaf in your hair."

"I can take care of myself."

Steven remembered when they cared for each other. He'd cook dinner on nights she got home late. She packed a lunch when he had fieldwork, a chocolate bar hidden at the bottom of the bag.

Those thoughtful gestures became less frequent as the fights occurred more often. She perceived every request as an assault on her freedom. She likely had her own side, but he'd stopped caring long ago.

Steven walked away without another word.

Soldiers Of Fortune

"Who's to say if any of this really matters?"

George smacked Thomas across the face as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

"Ouch! What was that for?" Thomas whined.

"Because if we give up hope, we die."

Thomas pointed towards the enemy lines. "If we die, it's because of them."

"And if we give up the fight, then we lose not only our own freedom, but the freedom of an entire nation."

"And my question to you is, what difference does it make?"

George lowered his hand. "Perhaps you're right."

Together, George and Tom fled the battlefield.