Unfinished Business

I returned from the dead, a list in my pocket: wrongs to right, pleasures to reclaim, truths to confess, sins to own. Mostly I needed to know how the world had fared without me. Apart from my poor mother, a grieving ghost of her former self, it was as if I’d never lived. Never loved. Never mattered. A stranger slept in my bed, alongside my darling wife, in my home, the one I’d slaved to pay for, my manicured garden now wildly overgrown. I fed the list to the fire. I’d start over from the very beginning, wherever that was.

From Guest Contributor Elizabeth Murphy

Traveling Salesman

Henry knocked on his 8th door that morning. The woman of the house answered, still dressed in her bedclothes, with chopsticks through her hair bun. A remote worker rather than a stay-at-home mom. The latter at least take the time to look presentable before answering to a stranger.

This initial assessment was essential, as he used it to gauge which of the dozen memorized scripts he'd start with. The company believed using the right script equaled making a sale, but in his experience it didn't really matter. Whoever first told him these bibles would sell themselves was the real salesman.

Wanderlust

The pulse of the city is becoming my own. I woke up with a thrumming headache this morning. The night and the dawn are a patchwork in my aching head. When I walk down the street, steam ripples off the pavement, as intangible as my disintegrating memories. How is my stranger? I wonder. The one from last night’s club. Gone now. He’s returned back to his own life after our brief collision: my drunken frame hung off his neck. His glassy brown gaze still holds me. Power lines cross my heart. My eyes swim in the summer sweat and rain.

From Guest Contributor Siri Harrison

The Stranger

There was a man who looked at her deep into her eyes. The gaze was strong. As strong as to peer through her soul. She saw him again and then again. Sometimes at the supermarket, then at the gym, and then at a night walking past by her. She was with another man, but their eyes locked. The guy noticed she was holding the hand of someone else and crossed by him. Their eyes met again. The girl found it pretty strange and in her innocence she told the guy that she often bumps into this stranger and wonders why? From Guest Contributor Preeti Singh

Preeti is a novice cine writer and translator. In her free time she loves to hum and strum her guitar. Also, she is a nature lover who loves birds, plants and the skies.

Stella

Stella longs for the unseen soul who one day will meander into her home to touch (perhaps envy) each of her precisely placed gatherings.

Thank you, dear God, above, for the patience it

has taken to assemble and position these

precious things.

Yet she feels clumsy. Sees herself as a whale in a thimble’s sea of mire.

Then comes the moment when that perfect stranger appears as her savior, but Stella is not here to celebrate the gentle man with sapphires where his blue eyes should be, pale cream velvet fingertips to tally all her particulars, then bind her estate.

From Guest Contributor The Poet Spiel

Family Tree

Robots Contest Entry:

I was born in the rain and dark. “Cure me or kill me,” I begged the doctors in attendance. But apparently only when silent was I able to be heard. I’d been assembled by someone who couldn’t be bothered to read the assembly instructions. Seventy years later, I look in the mirror and see bits and pieces of a stranger’s face – a long, fleshy nose, protuberant eyes, a domelike Shakespearean forehead. My now grown children stand well off to the side, uncertain whether to huddle or flee. As I tentatively approach, I clutch a rose, shoulder high like a dagger. From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's books include the prose poetry collection THOUGHT CRIMES, scheduled to be published in fall 2022.

The Moment In My Pocket

Even in your tight orbit of busy and work and home there are moments whose skin slips, crumbles like the dry shell of a red onion, and a person is laid bare in your hands. It stains your fingers, stings your eyes: your sister, a stranger. A student, mother of four, six-month chip in her pocket, stepping off the cliff edge of giving upbut you catch her hand just in timeand you hold the sphere of this moment,paint it, polish it, and keep it safein your pocketto show to someonewho might give up tomorrow.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook’s poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and humor have appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror Magazine, Rat's Ass Review, and other journals and anthologies. She is a founding editor of Blue Planet Journal. She is the 2020 winner of A Story in 100 Words’ nature writing contest, and the 2021 winner of Loud Coffee Press's microfiction contest. She is an assistant professor of English at Pikes Peak Community College and is writing a novel. Her poetry collection, Only Flying, is due out Nov. 16, 2021 from Unsolicited Press. See the book trailer, read her work, and find out about in-person and virtual book launch events at https://brook-bhagat.com/.

Eye Of Beholder

Todd had always put others before himself, which had brought a sense of well-being and worth when he was young.

But the years and the takers had garnered their toll: the most recent family emergency leaving him stranded on an island of agoraphobia.

He’d just washed the dishes when the doorbell rang.

The wireless security camera bought online amid a bout of paranoia relayed the image of a stranger with a clipboard – practiced smile glued to his face.

Todd could just make out the logo of a phone company on the top sheet.

Another would-be taker.

Sunlight glinted off steak-knives.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

The Indestructible Presence

I am no stranger. I have existed as long as humans have been on this earth, perhaps even longer. I have had many names through the ages. It doesn’t matter what I have been called, the outcome is usually the same. Whether you are human or animal, I will make you sick. You may not die but you will suffer.

Margaret learned that I am real, even though I cannot be seen with the human eye. My brother, Ebola, made her ill in Nigeria. My sister, Hanta, did the same to a handyman in Colorado. I am the ubiquitous virus.

From Guest Contributor Janice Siderius

Art History

A stranger walked up to me on the street and said with a quaver, “I am completely overwhelmed.” He was wearing a black raincoat that reached down below his knees. Wait, I thought, it’s not raining. When we’re dead, it’ll be a whole different story. Cosimo de Medici once complained to Michelangelo, “That sculpture doesn’t look like me.” “Listen,” Michelangelo told him, “you’ll be dead in 20 years, this will be around for 2,000 years. So that’s what you look like!” And now, even though it’s nighttime all over the world, there are pictures on fridges and music in elevators.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).