Nameless Here Forever

Something in the manner the June sun slants through my bedroom window sears my heart.

It burns through, red-hot, singeing its muscles and sinews but not its memories.

For it was on a blistering day like this that terror, treachery, vengeance and death engulfed.

A whirling hate storm, sowed by unknown faces in unknown places, which ravaged my known.

We could neither resist nor understand these demons who killed without remorse.

Who left us with our dead, the dregs of our lives and nameless here forever.

My homecoming, ten years hence, brings deep summer sadness, which will remain within forever.

From Guest Contributor Chitra Gopalakrishnan

Weightlifting

When he first started pushing barbells, he did it to get his anger out, throwing the weights from his body, stressing his tendons as he exhaled sprays of spit with every red-faced repetition, every sweaty pump. He realized his joints wouldn’t last long hurling metal, so he calmed his approach, traded manic intervals – of fighting gravity with fury – for calculated precision, and he’d demonstrate, lying down on a chair with an invisible bar connecting his fists, showing us the proper form of a barbell press, his big forearms and biceps flexing and twisting slowly as his muscles contracted, then extended.

From Guest Contributor Parker Wilson

Parker is a writer and editor living in Highland Park. He is a recent MFA graduate and spends his free time running along the Detroit River. He’s published in Bristol Noir and is a founding editor at DUMBO Press.

Instagram:@parkerreviewsbooks

It’s Not What It Seems

Mike, feverish, tossed in bed. Head aching and muscles tense, he dreamed of the beach, the hot sun beating on his face, when a voice awakened him.

“Babe, how are you feeling,” asked his wife Liz.

“My body feels like a truck hit it.”

“You heard what the doctor said. You have the flu. Rest, Tylenol and fluids is what he prescribed.”

“Yeah, well, the flu stinks and I feel like it’s more than the flu.”

“Stop being so dramatic. I’ll make you some homemade chicken soup. That should help.”

Mike laid back, closed his eyes, and never dreamed again.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

The Night's Hope For A Better Tomorrow

Dreams projected on a ceiling from a restless mind. A vision of a better tomorrow plays from the imagination onto the stucco. With pleading hope for happiness to join the rising sun, the reality of sadness can be temporarily cast aside. Muscles relax and the burden lessens with the promise. Eyes close and colors dance a firefly ballet on the back of eyelids. Fantasies and nightmares disturb the slumber but recede with the buzz of an alarm clock. Golden rays of butterscotch pour through the glass and warm the face. I rise, we all rise… with hope in our hearts.

From Guest Contributor Jordan Altman