Branded

“Do you see the donut,” the cancer specialist asks, sounding suddenly anxious, “or just the hole?” My eyes burn, though tears are 98 percent water. Once cancer touches you, you belong to it, you’re marked with the herd brand. It would take something like a miracle for me to recover. Yesterday, to the shock of tourists, a statue of the Virgin Mary in a fourteenth-century cathedral in Linz appeared to go into labor. Belief is contagious. And so, I lie in bed at night with all the windows open, listening intently to the gregarious insects at ease in the dark.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest poetry collection, True Crime, was published by Sacred Parasite in Berlin this year.

Upon The Blasted Heath

The three witches planned a hell-broth for Macbeth. Their boiling cauldron was ready for the eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, tongue of dog…

“Wait a minute.”

Hecate, the main chef, added extra frown lines to her wrinkled face.

“Look at the flies on the newt’s eye and frog's toe.”

The dog’s tongue, lizard’s leg, and Howlett's wing were also covered.

“The recipe doesn't call for that many flies.”

So Macbeth passed, on his way to Duncan's camp, undisturbed by the Weird Sisters, but swallowing flies. The bulbous-headed insects were murderously thick that night on the heath.

From Guest Contributor David Sydney

Dead Meat

The carcass on the shoulder buzzed with flies and other insects feeding on the rotting flesh. The process of decay started the moment the vehicle, probably an SUV or pickup truck by the amount of damage, rammed into it.

Larger critters had already been by, but there was enough intermittent traffic during the day that the real feast would wait until dark.

In a way, we're always rotting, from the moment we're born. It's thanks to the magic of cellular technology we're able to keep regenerating through the decades, sloughing off the dead skin and useless morality as we go.

East Of Deadwood

Off in the distance, hundreds of lifeless began to shuffle toward town. Vernon turned and saw the cowboy he'd killed staring at him with bloodshot eyes.

"We have to get out of here," Vernon said.

Emmett answered, "I agree. It'll only get worse."

Vernon patted him on the back. He was a good man to have on his side.

They watched them scurry about like insects surrounding the few remaining living. The corpses hadn't crossed a burned-out piece of road.

Vernon added, "West is our ticket out."

Hell-bent for leather on horseback, they left the living and the un-dead behind.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Abedabun

Abedabun weaves baskets while her father makes arrowheads. The sun is warm against her face and she tires of the mundane ritual but does not complain when her father rubs a droplet of sweat from her cheek with affection.

Her mother is by the river collecting herbs, humming in tune with the birds, while her brother and sister collect insects for amusement.

Hiawatha, the finest young man in the tribe, approaches Abedabun and her father with a token of marriage, a deer slung over his broad shoulders.

She stops her work and looks to her father.

Hiawatha’s token is accepted.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Arborists Cultivate Trees That Look Like Cell Towers

They are pollinated by wind, insects, and calls from former porn stars to their fathers. They disperse packets of data via winged and plumed seeds. They host mosses, mistletoe, birds, and full-duplex digital transceivers. Ultra High Frequency bands of bark, cork, geolocation, quinine, tannin, code division, salicin, syrup, microwaves, and tearful confessions. Across their collinear arrays of dipoles, clustered characters of fury, lust, and suicide notes are passed among their branches. And, late at night, handed over from tree to tree, lined along the Interstate, in streams of ones and zeros, the fathers forgive their daughters and invite them home.

Dale Wisely co-edits Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, Unlost Journal, and Unbroken Journal. www.dalewisely.com/literary

The Importance Of Listening

I went on my own because I couldn't get anyone to come with me. What had once been an orchard was now a graveyard for old tires, sprung mattresses, rusty paint cans, even broken microwaves, scattered over the slope like the indecipherable wreckage of some puzzling event. The trees, untended for years, had long since stopped producing apples and been twisted into painful shapes by time and storms and then overwhelmed by creeper vines and opportunistic birds and insects. I just stood with my head cocked to one side as if trying to catch every single word the crows said.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie co-edits the journals UnLost and Unbroken.

Periplaneta Sapiens

The rain and wind further eroded the evidence that humans had oncedominated the Earth.

A cockroach scuttled by. Even in the scant thousand years since humanshad disappeared, Darwinian evolution had changed it. The cockroachheld itself on its hind and middle legs, while it's forelegsdexterously solved the problem of extracting a morsel of food from acrack.

Another cockroach approached. The two insects greeted each other withinterlocked antennae. Evolution had been at work here too. Theirsocial interactions more complex and their intelligence greater.

From the ruins of one civilization, an even greater civilization would grow.

From Guest Contributor Ross Clement

Queen Bee

Melissa, Greek for Queen bee, settled on soft grass. Her flaxen hair complementing an array of colorful flowers; crimson roses forming a perfect circle, stunning pink azaleas beckoning busy insects, clusters of lilac hyacinths and scatters of yellow, white and red chrysanthemums. Her lined hands picked lazily at the daisies strewn across the well-maintained green carpet as she listened to the animated gulls chattering overhead. To be part of nature was relaxing and relaxation healed. The river's lively current swooshed at the banks beyond. She was at peace, just like her beloved Jacob whose dreary grey head stone overshadowed her.

From Guest Contributor Kerry Valkyrie Baldock Kelly

The Mystery Of Life And Death, Unexplained

For decades, scientists have studied Blackrock Crater to understand it's almost mystical attraction. Birds, animals--even insects--travel miles to the scenic spot, only to die from a combination of hyperthermia and suffocation. These deaths were not random. Rather, something was attracting the animals.

All manner of hypothesis were considered and then discarded. Magnetic fields, parasites, chemicals. There was no plausible explanation for the mass deaths. It almost seemed like intentional suicide.

Finally, Dr. Seaver decided that truly was the answer. There wasn't any scientific explanation for the phenomenon. The animals came to Blackrock simply because they wanted to die.