Accident

The cars came to a halt, and sirens blared. I wondered how bad the accident was. I couldn’t see anything other than flashing red and white lights and I hoped no one was killed. I called my wife, but the connection was bad. I managed to tell her I’d be late due to traffic.

The sun shifted and it was blinding so I pulled my visor down.

After an hour the traffic let up. Ambulances and stretchers were on the scene of the accident.

I said a silent prayer and drove on, anxious to get home and kiss my wife.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Mice In A Fish Tank

Few people actually like me, and one of them keeps mice in a fish tank. It’s my vocabulary. Gulls squawk. Sirens whoop. I use large words. It comes naturally to me. But others just think I’m full of myself, a showoff. My wife’s friend’s husband said he should’ve brought a dictionary along to dinner. He laughed as he said it, but everyone at the table knew. I felt I was back in high school. The adults were thugs in suits and dresses, and the girls covered their mouths when they giggled. There are tumors no mix of chemicals can shrink.From Guest Contributor Howie Good

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

Death Sentence

“Stay,” I commanded, my palm facing him.

He dropped to his belly, those big brown eyes looking up at me. Our gaze hung for a moment, lovingly. He was my only friend, and I, his only master.

I grabbed the package and headed to the meeting point. That’s when I heard the sirens. Four years for distribution, the judge decided, as it was my first offense. It would have been life if they’d found the warehouse.

Four years tougher, I returned. There, just as I left him, was Julian. Emaciated and still. The most loyal gimp I ever did have.

From Guest Contributor Liam Kerry

War Without Rules

There were days when the explosions didn’t subside. The sirens became more and more frequent, especially at night. We began to sleep badly. Then one morning, while hurrying to the market, I was struck by flying debris. At the hospital the doctor first looked around to make sure no one was listening who shouldn’t be. “I just need to grab a lab coat and one egg and I can fix this,” he said. He cut my feet open and put pennies in the incisions before sewing them back up and wrapping them in bandages. He said they were lucky pennies. From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is a poet and collage artist on Cape Cod. His latest poetry books are Famous Long Ago (Laughing Ronin Press) and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).

The Black Figures

He rested on the soft surface, observing one among the many roses surrounding him, the white petals layering atop each other. Whimpering from piercing screams, trembling from blaring sirens, shutting his ears tightly with his hands couldn’t help. Two black figures stood over him. One leaned closer, tenderly stroking the boy’s forehead. ‘You love flowers, don’t you?’ it whispered. He smiled, and the other handed him a bouquet. ‘Let’s leave him some peace now, shall we? And I’m quite certain he does—loved them since birth.’ It nodded, and with a thud, blocking the perceivable, the velvet lid slid over him.

From Guest Contributor Lo Xing Le

Mammoth

An airplane soars into the mammoth building, leaving a gaping hole. Blackness, dust, and papers fill the air.

Angels fall and my heart beats quickly not knowing what to do. I pace the floor with the others, stunned, quiet, unable not to watch. The sirens pierce our ears, and we stare at one another.

The phones ring with panicking family members crying that a second plane has crashed into the other building. I drop the phone when the fire drill alarms. The sky darkens and we head to the staircase not knowing our fate.

The World Trade Center is no more.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Search

I scramble the room for the file. Many lives depend on the information, including mine. When I accepted this job, I knew the risks involved and didn’t care. Now I just want to go back to my life.

Where is it? I search the desk drawer and every cabinet, but nothing. Major Thompson may be wrong. I swear quietly. It is not here.

Outside the sirens roar and car doors slam. Yelling soon follows.

I slip out onto the ledge and wait for their destruction to end before entering the room again.

The Nazi’s didn’t catch me. Not this time.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Autumn’s Menace

A plainclothes policeman, using a pair of handcuffs as brass knuckles, cut the face of a boy who was wandering the city in a hospital gown. The sirens got louder. Windows rattled and the pictures on the walls shook. Sometimes I think it's not true that teaching a child to not step on a caterpillar will make you a better person. Sometimes I think the plainclothesman is going to walk through the door, so I just keep waiting. The city streets are deserted – no St. Patrick’s Day parade, no people. In these slow days of unease, everyone is a biohazard.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest poetry collections are The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro-Press, 2020).

Bare Ruined Choirs

An ex-beauty queen has been found in her bedroom decapitated, limbless, a chainsaw nearby. On the wall, a decorative wooden sign says, “Breathe deeply and calmly.” How do you do that? We need a plan, an intervention, something. In Hiroshima after the bomb, they piled the bodies in the swimming pool at the college and cremated them with scrap wood. Last night when my mother finally managed to fall asleep, she dreamed she was walking through a ruined city in a hospital gown left behind from her cancer surgery, while, in the distance, sirens screamed. Assume the monster is everywhere. From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of The Death Row Shuffle, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

Never Forgotten

The eerie sound of rumbling and cries coming from the street as the day turns clouded with dust and debris.

Sirens blaring, chaos ensuing. A day of sadness and a city coming together in the face of tragedy.

The memory of falling angels and blackness in lower Manhattan as firefighters run to help the innocent.

Seventeen years later, the depth of emotion still consumes our souls.

Names read every year on the day, by a weeping family member.

Sleepless nights and sorrow for family still waiting to hear if their loved one’s remains are found, never forgetting September 11th, 2001.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher