“There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”

Blessed Morrissey. Everyone sings. Jennifer’s a junior and she has her own car. She starts the engine and on the summer night highway she says, “Wanna get kicked out of the Hilton?”

I’m in back on the hump, a hand on each front seat. Her hair, her piercings, her red glitter black lipstick shimmering in streetlights, so close. I want to whisper in her ear something so funny and sexy she just has to kiss me and we crash and I fly through the windshield but everyone who sees my body sees my black lipstick glitter mouth and knows.

“Yeah.” From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook 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 contests at Loud Coffee Press and A Story in 100 Words, and it has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror, Soundings East, The Alien Buddha Goes Pop, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. 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/.

Disruptions

People, she thought, were like gadgets. They could be tucked away neatly into white boxes, each waiting to fulfill their role. Friends, family, coworkers—they each had their own purpose in her life, and she never let them stray. Few coworkers ever became friends, and even fewer friends became family. Nobody crossed the inner circles of her life without her permission. And then, there was him. The glitter explosion that disrupted her perfect life, bringing just a little mess with him, wherever he went. She now carried that intoxicating aura as it radiated from her chest in amber waves: Bull’s-eye.

From Guest Contributor Kelsey Swancott

Kelsey is a senior majoring in English with a minor in Visual Arts and Spanish while also being involved in the campus literary magazine Angles. She plans on furthering her education by getting her masters degree in English as well. Her work has been published in Entropy Squared, The Dribble Drabble Review’s Spring 2021 issue, and Otoliths in February 2021.