Corn Maze Days

Corn maze stocks walk along, step by step, in endless motion. Lefts turned to rights back to lefts, leave us wondering and wandering alongside the corn maze. Eleven in the morning turns to seven at night, soon the moon will guide our way. Apple cider dances while the fire flickers, old folks singing folk songs. Knit sweaters insulate the warmth of your love, arms wrapped around my waist. Shadows once trailing, we now chase. Mama made a pie, pie's been cooling on the counter, calling our name. One more corner, one more corner turns a long day to sweet dreams.

From Guest Contributor Mekah Baker

Mekah is a student of literature and the applied sciences at Pikes Peak State College.

Smog Moon

It's one of those days when the pollution's so thick, you can stare directly at the sun and it looks like the old Japanese flag. We call it the smog moon.

We used to get away with a lot on smog moon days because most sensible people staid indoors. But as the pollution got worse, and the blue sky days less common, people stopped thinking about what the air was doing to their lungs and just went about their business.

Now, most of the gang are either dead, in jail, or under contract, and smog moons make me sad remembering.

Conspiracy Theory

Beyond porch lights, snow piles up, sealing in anxious women. They stand at windowsills watching the sky glower. Blinking in the fists of children are glo-stix to throw at the towering drifts, aiming where the eyes should go. Elsewhere, a child snaps his birthday gift of a bow-and-arrow in half. The moon rolls down a hill and thunder beats its metal chest, a rattling that distracts everyone from the whir of an incoming drone. It kicks up all the snow but means no harm, though some will insist the machine was an alien ship, come to take the glo-stix home.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Orbits

She flips her glasses onto her hair where the shine is slippery. It falls back down to her nose, plastic lenses smudging. She goes for a drive wearing the blurry wedge and thinks she must be imagining the sight of two moons in the sky. One higher than the other, they supervise the intersection. "That was just Mars approaching Earth," her husband says tartly. He’s quite the mansplainer but she knows a defunct theory when she hears one. She’s seen for herself that it’s possible for the sun to set while the moon rises on anything else, anything at all.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Cheryl's recent fiction has appeared in Gone Lawn, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and elsewhere.

New Neighbors

Nobody’d said okay to the infamous moving in, but who should drive up but Bonnie and Clyde in their 1934 Ford, parking it in their 21st Century driveway? What were we to do with the notorious couple but invite them to our pot luck dinner, held alfresco every Wednesday evening? We were all enjoying delicious tiramisu when Charlene showed up late with her high-strung Doxie, yapping and nipping at Bonnie, who whipped out her .38 Special and shot, missing the dog by a mile, or maybe 238,00 of them. As just then, across the sky sailed half a bloody moon.

From Guest Contributor Linda Lowe

Giant Oaks

I sighed as my breathing slowed. The sun rose over my head, and I felt the power inside me waking, like the tree in the woods that had grown into giant oaks, covering the forest floor in the summer. I would sit in the shade of those trees until nightfall, waiting for the stars, reaching for the promise of sleep. The light in the sky became a distant memory, and I could almost feel the joy that the moon brought to those born in the middle of winter or during those spring showers that brought new life to the earth.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Movie Night

We’re watching men on the screen sprint along a parapet overhanging a sinkhole. They look down at the spot where the earth opened up, and see their shock reflected in the face of the moon. One actor inches forward while the audience holds its breath. “He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch,” my man intones. Why must he always quote others, trying to pass off their words as his own? I’m sick of it. “Goddard said that,” I snap. “So?” he says before he vacates his seat, the movie house, my life.From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

Cheryl's books include poetry and fiction of all sizes.

The Kiss

I can hardly think of a better way to say goodbye.To the sun and the moon, the water and the clouds,I've always wanted to live on a planet where the sky was blue.

I can hardly think of a better way to say goodbye.The light of a star. The smell of a blooming fruit tree. The kiss of a bare human hand.To the fading flowers on a winter's night

I can hardly think of a better way to say goodbye.To be one last person who will fall in love.Because in death, she is beautiful.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

One Step

On the borders of this serene land lay a dark shadow formed from a massive structure built on the ruins of another once-great civilization. It often feels like an ominous storm cloud in an otherwise starry sky.

The people of this land continue to work on the tower in the hope of one day reaching the heavens. To be reunited with their ancestors dancing within constellations.

On this glorious night, as the sun sets, dark clouds dissipate; the moon rises on the horizon, filling the entire night sky with dangerous possibilities as they come one step closer to the stars.From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Winter's End

Sounds of breaking ice awaken her mind as she settles back down upon the thawing earth, with its cracks and pops as faults move forward at increasing speeds revealing hibernating secrets.

Inspiring streams, reverting from their crystalline form, fish returning from the spirit world greeted by crimson grass and creeping Phlox in efflorescence.

Rain continuously taunts her from all directions. She watches an ascending pale moon in its most majestic of phases. With welcoming pulsations, feeling her heart stir once again as its frozen arteries struggle to kick off winter's cold embrace.

The heat she now feels comes from within.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster