A Theory Of Justice

The medical assistant asked in a flat, toneless bureaucratic voice how I would describe the pain. Stabbing? Aching? Sharp? Dull? She entered my answer on the form, but without showing any actual concern. A philosopher once said – or should have – that a society is only as just as its treatment of its most vulnerable members: the old, the sick, the poor, the institutionalized. Using a dropper, I strategically place .50 milliliters of Triple M tincture under my tongue. I wait fifteen, twenty minutes, and then gray-clad troops burst from the treeline with a rebel yell. The tongue is all muscle.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest and scheduled for publication in summer 2022.

Serious Preparations For Horizontal Descent

I said to the doctor, “I’m dying.” He said, “How’s that my fault?” I had been shedding parts for at least a week. The doctor said it was my body attacking itself. “It’ll scald you,” he said in the same confidential manner, “peel the skin and muscle right off your bones.” The exam room then filled with people I didn’t know, one a crying toddler, her face all red and sweaty and scrunched up. Apparently, serious preparations for horizontal descent were underway. There was nothing else I could think of that would explain why this murdering old world trembled so.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of THE DEATH ROW SHUFFLE, a poetry collection forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Numb

“I’m so sick of pain, Gene. I wish I couldn’t feel at all.” With a shaky sniffle, Emily stroked the black fur of Gene’s chin, eliciting his tractor purr.

She may never fully recover, the doctors said. They called it transverse myelitis. Emily preferred less polite terms.

Gene‘s glowing eyes slid closed. Emily’s followed.

She awoke to a ringtone, heart pounding. Her thoughts reached for the phone inches away on the sofa.

Not a muscle twitched. No sensation, as though her nerves had died. The phone fell silent. Gene‘s stare blazed with yellow light.

Gene...

In her mind, Emily screamed.

From Guest Contributor Michelle Cook

The Goddess Becomes

It was a pleasure to burn. Of the eight, it was my most beautiful arm: the hillside slope of the shoulder, the tender elbow, that lilting wrist, narrow yet invincible. Had he seen it in the dance, or still in his Sistine posture, even Michelangelo would have known God is a woman.

The downy hair went up first, and then the skin, the perfect fingernails, the sizzling fat and muscle. There is always a relaxation in admitting the truth, even a truth that smells like sulfur and charcoal: I am the flames as much as I was ever the arm.From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook’s poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and humor have appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror Magazine, Harbinger Asylum, MoonPark Review, Little India, Dămfīno, Nowhere Poetry, Rat's Ass Review, Peacock Journal, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. In 2013, she and her husband Gaurav created Blue Planet Journal, which she edits and writes for. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University, teaches poetry and creative writing at a community college, and is writing a novel. See more at www.brook-bhagat.com or reach her on Twitter at @BrookBhagat.

Revenge

Home for a funeral, I pop into my local of yesteryear.

I recognize that boozy bleary-eyed pig face propping up the bar.

Wilkins, the school bully!

Wanker!

How he’d tormented me forty years ago, but clearly he remembers me not.

How I’ve fantasized about going back in time and standing up to him!

But now he has aged, badly, looking like a grotesquely inflated beach ball with his vast beer belly, all muscle turned to flab.

I fantasize about following him out at closing time and beating him up but desist, for life has already done the job for me.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

A Hard Blessing

When the Iron Giant fell from the sky thousands of us died. Thousands of us crushed, frail flesh smeared; muscle, brain and bone pulped. Phosphorus flares turned us to char. We starved and burned and died.

Toppling down from heaven, a hard blessing; we stood in its shadow and begged it to stop. But no ears heard us; they were shut tight to our prayers.

The Giant gouged the earth sending dust into the air choking us. We starved, we fought, we fed on one and other, and we survived. And the Iron Giant lies waiting for us to come.

From Guest Contributor David Rae

The Vigorish

Sal lurked in the hallways of the gambling den, all greasy hair and cigarette stench. No one acknowledged his presence, not even the proprietor who employed him. He was considered a necessary evil by some, the angel of reckoning by others.

They called him the Vigorish. His job was to calculate and collect the interest. He wasn't the muscle--he was too much of a worm to behave violently. He was just the one doing the math.

If he came to your table, you knew you'd been cut off. If he came to your home, you knew you were dead.