Tannery

He received a large order to carpet an entire wall: that meant working late at the light tannery, in the other room. He looked at the skyscrapers at the far end of the room where he was now, but it could be done. He had to get to the other room, where the flowers grew: once the stem was cut, the stone inside reacted chemically with the local oxygen, then melted into spots of light whose original texture was much like a tongue’s. He sighed, thinking about his life. What he really enjoyed was preparing chlorophyll manually, on the piano.

From Guest Contributor Angelo Colella

All Below Was Sky

All below was sky. No, that isn’t right. You are upside down. The seatbelt keeps you suspended a foot above ground. Blood swells and pounds in your temples, or was it the whiskey? Frank was on the street.

Ejected. He had been thrown fifty feet.

Dead and dusky.

His seersucker shirt plunged a deep v on a chest of ringlets. Oxford buttons pin a lapel dyed crimson. You count the spots on a ladybug as it skitters across. Stripes and six spots. A gnarled oak casts shade on the misshapen corners of a green license plate.

A wailing siren approaches.From Guest Contributor Kyle J. Ames

Kyle is a student of English at Pikes Peak Community College

Finding Deepstaria

I found her in the rust climbing over shower tiles, red-brown on sea-green. She began as spots, then shapes—a rabbit? A snail? A man, then a woman. She was a mermaid with me for five years, singing pirate songs of lost souls in fishbowls and other Pink things; then she grew out of her skin, became an unnamed creature, alive without lines, her hair like fire. Now only one wisp of her tail holds on to the faucet, for me. She floats free in the glossy turquoise beyond, laughing above the rusty piles of what she used to be.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook Bhagat’s poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and humor have appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror Magazine, Harbinger Asylum, Little India, Rat’s Ass Review, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. She and her husband Gaurav created Blue Planet Journal, which she edits and writes for. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University, is an assistant professor of English at a community college, and is writing a novel. Her poetry collection, Only Flying, is due out Nov. 16, 2021 from Unsolicited Press. See more at brook-bhagat.com.

Kiss Your Ass Goodbye

There are always more volunteers than available spots on the firing squad. But the really terrible part isn’t how cold it is out. It’s how much I tremble. The I Ching advises, “Wait in the meadow,” meaning caring for a cow will bring luck. I can remember a time when everyone wasn’t in such a hurry to fuck off to somewhere. Now, whatever phone number I punch in, the suicide hotline picks up. I think about mentioning this to someone. And then I get distracted by the wind and the rain and the loud kissing noises they seem to make.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good