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.

Peter And The Whale

Everywhere Peter went, the whale was lurking. It wasn't just the ocean he must avoid, but lakes and rivers as well, any body of water large enough for the whale.

Some days, Peter would stare out his window at the pond across the street. Inevitably, the whale would be staring back at him. Peter never understood what he had done to make the whale so angry, but by now he understood that nothing but his own death would quench the leviathan's thirst for vengeance.

For the rest of Peter's life, even drinking a glass of water was fraught with dread.