Belly/Belie

I remember the push of the needle through my flesh, a burst of pain, the reddened swelling, and then the bruise, spreading like a distorted coneflower from my stomach.

“Sexy,” he mutters later. He pushes my sweater higher up around my breasts, leaning in to kiss the tender flesh around the belly ring. I look up at the ceiling tiles. I close my eyes, and I imagine this ring is a portal. I crawl through the small metal circle, into the deep hull of this ship--a stowaway, hidden from view. I smile. It works. He doesn’t even notice I’m gone.

From Guest Contributor Helen Raica-Klotz

Pirate Tale

Aright, there I was reading a pirate book in bed, when a portal opened and swiped me into a different realm of sorts. It took the whole bed and me cup of rum. Sailing into the seven oceans blue making me wonder what was true. Thus I pondered and wondered about reality as I continued to read my pirate book. Were there just seven seas or oceans in the realm of reality I was in,at which point a pirate spoke to me, making me wonder what was in my rum. To live free is a dream. Dying an end.

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

Rationale

Summer has been washed and hung to dry across the equinox. Quibble gathers the last of his alien friends for a farewell. To feast, they eat the neighbor’s two loudest dogs. Those dogs kept Quibble away at night barking at wishes and dreams. Quibble does not partake of the meat, but he imagines the joy the aliens conclude. At the end of the farewell celebration, the aliens open a portal between the shed and fence line and fall one by one through. Quibble only mentions the aliens when his neighbor tries to blame him for the disappearance of the dogs.

From Guest Contributor Ken Poyner

Standing On The Edge Of The Between

The portal calls to me in the songs of ancient gods, but my feet are mired in the ordinary, the necessary, the mundane. The music pulls me forward until I feel as if I shall break into two pieces—leaving only half of me to enter the world that is next.

The melody shifts in key, and I am beckoned not to walk, but to rise. I understand that I do not need these frozen feet. I spread my arms to the future, and I streak upward. My boots remain in the mud, but I am whole. I can fly.

From Guest Contributor Karen Burton.

Karen is an MFA student at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO.