Prose Vs Poetry

I watched a sentence emerge the other day at the end of a series of ambivalent decisions. The pressure of decision-making, the tense inner conversation writers conduct when writing, may be more felt than conscious, but it is nonetheless real. Even as I am writing these very words I am debating with myself whether these are the very words I should be writing. Decisions don’t make themselves. Do I use a dash here – or nothing? And what about an adjective for color or to add nuance? One misplaced brick can bring the whole thing down. Poetry flourishes on the ruins.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.

The Coming Wipe Out

The coming wipe out of this reality? End of reality? June the Federal Government shuts down to cause more pain to the United States' people. July the wipe out of trillions of dollars of value as the electronic coin or Microsoft 2000060606 Cryptocurrency battery operated humans are turned on. Is it the end of humanity? Yes, I know humanity does not survive this aeron or era of mankind's sixth age. In yet? If I am real, I saw humanity's seventh age. Not so glorious, but the mirror image of this reality. Seriously? Read Wondering Mind through the Multiverse on Prose.

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

Girl In Nature

I read a story once about a girl in nature. A man was watching her ride her bike through a field of flowers. She was beautiful, so he stopped her. He frightened her, her fear frightened him, he panicked. He raped and killed her, strangling her in perfectly-rendered fragments, snippets of sun-burnished green, pale skin under cobalt sky, a tale of flushed mania and hazy recollections of doomed resistance. A beautiful life snuffed out in beautiful prose.

I don’t ride alone through fields. I’ll never taste the freedom that killed the girl. Another beautiful life snuffed out in beautiful prose.

From Guest Contributor Tara Campbell

Tara is a fiction editor at Barrelhouse and an MFA candidate at American University. Prior publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Jellyfish Review, Booth, and Strange Horizons. Her novel, TreeVolution, was published in 2016, followed in 2018 by Circe's Bicycle. Her third book, a short story collection called Midnight at the Organporium, will be released by Aqueduct Press in 2019.