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The lone imagineer of the radioactive sand cloud that froze Florida in death and time worked for Disney. Tourists, natives, gangsters, and gators were rendered untouchable beneath a toxic sheet of glass. The reflection burned up satellites and crisped drones mid-air, and it was agreed the whole place should be forgotten, for now. So they forgot the flamingos and the dancing girls and the cigar factories in Tampa where the son cubano played on. Nobody remembered to forget the island past Key West where an old man sold boat rides to Havana for five dollars and a bottle of rum.

From Guest Contributor Courtney Watson

The Beer Has Two Inches Of Foam, Not One.

Pushing too hard. Pushing too fast. Wanting something with such veracity that the world disseminates into popping bubbles. I have poured myself into us with too much speed; I am breathless. You are smothered. As the air escapes into a toxic atmosphere, I gulp your aroma into my lungs. I clutch your being until the oxygen releases into the air, and you die beneath my affections. My sorrow does not reconstitute you; my grief does not call you from beyond. Can you hear the lack, the absence of hope? Slow is not for the desperate. I drown in your absence.

From Guest Contributor, Karen Burton

Karen Burton is an MFA student at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO