Bricks

Being a responsible sort, Pig Number Three set about building a house entirely out of bricks. This was before you could go online and order bricks delivered to your door. Besides, Pig Number Three had neither a door nor an address, so he was forced to make his bricks from scratch.

The process involved mixing clay, water, sand, and straw, then shaping the material into rectangles, drying them, and baking them at high temperatures in a kiln.

Pigs Number One and Two laughed at his labors. Everyone knew the wolves in the area had been hunted into extinction years before.

Heart The Size Of A Car

I wake up and it’s almost dark. I hear boom…boom…boom. I think it’s the raccoons jumping across the roof on their way to look for food. Maybe it’s the wind, the porch swing hitting the house, fireworks for some forgotten holiday or the war we've been waiting for but when I pull back the curtain on the window in the door, each rectangle of glass is a piece of your thumping heart, the size of a car, its feathery periwinkle veins like map-rivers, red finger-branches steady, wrapping down around the lower chambers, stamping the glass with tree patterns, knocking. Asking.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook (she/her) is the author of Only Flying, a Pushcart-nominated collection of surreal poetry and flash fiction on paradox, rebellion, transformation, and enlightenment from Unsolicited Press. Her work has won contests and appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror, Soundings East, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and elsewhere. Two new collections, Exodus with Red Delicious and I Drink from an Ear: Real Ghazals, are forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2026 and 2027. She is a founding editor of Blue Planet Journal, the founder and facilitator of The Nearby Universe writers’ group, and a professor of creative writing at Pikes Peak State College.