Napoleon In Rags

It was the season of mists. He had been forced by necessity to pawn his one good pair of pants. Now that he couldn’t confidently appear in public, he sat sulking in his underwear at the kitchen table. He couldn’t remember, Josephine wasn’t there to remind him, what it was like to live in anticipation of making love. Adversaries swooped around him like moon-crazed bats. If he had had a suicide pill, he might have taken it. The world only ever really pays attention when there is a panic or a traveling guillotine or when all the soldiers have syphilis.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of the poetry collection Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing).

A Wandering Soap Opera

I feel like a gull getting sucked into a jet engine. Furniture salesmen, spies, serial killers, etc., take turns following me through town. I recognize them by their nondescript appearance. Private lives are now being lived in public. We’re a wandering soap opera. That’s the problem with putting Velveeta on enchiladas. And nobody has to ask what the Kremlin thinks about all of this. Traces are visible from the air. I just want some semblance of normality back in my life, some sort of quiet, and my heart to stop furiously pedaling as if there were actually somewhere to go.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie co-edits the journals UnLost and Unbroken with Dale Wisely.

Public Poems Built On Public Property

Public poems built on public property are, as they say, asking for it. When you use such flimsy bread, eating away at holy Wonder until such thinly-sliced letters remain, every one meant to be swallowed, not whispered; when you hold them down with found rocks in a stream that is not a stream, just a concrete ditch void of the hand of God; when you slip out the window in the night like a Sufi thief or an idiot child, praying the wrong way, dancing naked, licking vowels in your own nonsense languagedon’t expect to get anythingexceptarrested.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

After graduating with a BA in English from Vassar College, Brook Bhagat landed her first paid writing job as a reporter for a small-town Colorado newspaper. She left it to travel to India, where she fell in love, got married and canceled her ticket home. She and her husband Gaurav write freelance articles for dozens of publications, including Outpost, Ecoworld, and Little India. In 2013, they launched www.BluePlanetJournal.com, which she edits and writes for. She also teaches writing at a community college, is earning her MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University, and is writing a novel.

We're All Learning

Back to school shopping.

Jennifer wanted pens and whiteout. Stevie picked a package of pink hangers. One by one, items landed in the shopping cart. Mother pushed. Around the big superstore they went. Cart three-quarters filled when they finished.

“Don’t they need new clothes?” grandmother asked anxiously.

“They don’t sell clothes here,” mother answered.

Grandmother frowned. “You should have another colour. Pink is for girls.”

“But I like pink,” Stevie answered.

Mother asked “why not” and turned her face the other way.

Where was I? In the elevator with the family, hearing their conversation as it unfolded to the public.

From Guest Contributor Krystyna Fedosejevs

Krystyna writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her work has been published at: Nailpolish Stories, 50-Word Stories, 100 word story, 101 Words, Boston Literary Magazine, From the Depths (Haunted Waters Press), ShortbreadStories, and Espresso stories.