Applesauce

Her family loves apples so despite the fight she carted off in a cardboard box the tree’s fruit. My family has applesauce in its veins, was what she told me. When I saw her there were cores littering her countertops, a pan boiling on the woodstove. Did she see the metaphor? Those gnarled branches over her head. I took her coring knife, though cut fruit was a present I would not be offering, not to my relations. Beside me she sliced another tree-gift. By stovelight our wrists flashed, the lines in them crisscrossing as we worked, tangling and yet not.

From Guest Contributor Colleen Addison

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.

Breaking The Rules

I before E except after C, unless I’m seeing too much ceiling from under my eiderdown. I turn my eyes in disbelief to my neighbor Keith, who at this moment is receiving eight heifers of various heights and weight. Having been neither seized in some heist nor had any profits forfeited, they are feisty beasts. A brawn of weightlifters, beings made of veiled skeins of protein, caffeine and bulging veins, takes them away, no receipts involved. Afterward, the men reign over steins of beer at their leisure. Weird that it should be so hard to relieve the stress of thievery.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Snell

The Creature

One thing that puny humans first notice about me is my thick skin, almost as formidable as the plated armor of old. Fortified with shiny gill platelets designed for breathing. Along with flipper style claws, useful for swimming and digging. And a contour which facilitates speed under water. One drawback though, the blood coursing through my veins runs cold and thready. When winter comes and the weather drops below seventy degrees Fahrenheit, I have to be prepared for warmer living arrangements. Alligators have a unique way of solving this problem. Unfortunately skirmishes ensue. Has anybody known a gator to share?

From Guest Contributor Christopher Baker

Hands

My mother's hands frail and worked. Her crepey paper fingers and running rivers of lines pass along the hilly blue mounds of veins. Many cultures stand proud of ages proof as it displays wisdom, strength—a life lived. Honored one should be of the achievement—living.

What do they know?

I watch as these hands perform tasks, ones they always have, no longer recognizing them. They are not my mothers anymore; they are mine. The words wisdom—a life lived whisper at my ear, and I try to catch them in the wind. These hands—I want to obliterate them.

From Guest Contributor Dianne C. Braley

Dianne is a nurse freelance writer and blogger from Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Writing Over

I hadThis poemThat was likeRe-FusingTo beLike junkRunning lateIn your veinsRe-WiringMemoriesBefore theyare madeOkay, theyare notsunk inThat deepBut narrativeAbout thisIs on itsWay butits latejust likeThis feeling-Passing-FeelingRe-LivingScreens toSublimatedDreams

I'm walkingAnd the sunHits meEveryone wantsTo haveSomethingThey don’tSee, in youthis poetryConcealed inA voiceBut they will keepWriting yourStory overBefore it isOneBefore onceEven notingThat your poemIs already

From Guest Contributor Wyatt Martin

The Birthday Party

Once the lawn chairs have been folded and stacked inside the shed, the plastic wrap stretched across rows of cheese glistening with sweat to be stuffed into the fridge and forgotten, the shrieking of grandchildren and boozy chatter of distant relations swept out the front door and down the driveway, and the candles—slabs of wax carved into a 7 and 5 and crusted with cake—tossed into the sink to be dealt with later, the man lifts legs snaked with purple veins onto the recliner and makes his annual wish: that he won’t be here this time next year.

From Guest Contributor Doug Koziol

Doug is the Fiction Editor for Redivider, a journal of new literature and art. His work has appeared in CounterPunch, Driftwood Press, and theEEEL.

Arm In Arm

Her spindly hand with purple veins protruding forms a tight grasp around the rigid arm. She had a history with this arm, often leaning against it to maintain her balance. It had been a steady companion over the last several years, which was more than she could say about her children. They never approved of their mother’s new company. A cigarette always hung from her overly wrinkled lips when the two were together, and the last thing she needed was another vice. It’s their loss, she shrugged and gave a tug on that trusty metal arm, waiting for three sevens.From Guest Contributor Nicholas Froumis

Nicholas practices optometry in the Bay Area. His writing has appeared in Gravel, Right Hand Pointing, Dime Show Review, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, Ground Fresh Thursday, Balloons Lit Journal, and Short Tale 100. He lives in San Jose, CA with his wife, novelist Stacy Froumis, and their daughter.

Forgetting Redwoods

There are trees on the west coast you can drive through. Ancient monoliths built by thousands of years’ work: rain, floods, winters, dry lightning fires. Our grandfathers’ fathers’, storytellers gone silent over the ages, tales forgotten, archaic aching fallen into disuse, a dead language. Even the wind cannot communicate with these trees anymore.

Wander beneath their canopy, sniffing soft bark with noses pressed to red fur, hoping to draw life form the redness; to taste green needles under tongue, run thick sap through veins. But they are sealed.

And all I smell is the distant salt water licking wet sand.

From Guest Contributor Jon Alston

Jon has an MA in Creative Writing. Good for him. He writes things from time to time, and sometimes people publish them. Good for him. On occasion, he will photograph things (or people), and maybe write about them; sometimes there is money exchanged for his services. Good for him. He is married and has two children of both genders. Way to reproduce. He is the Executive Editor and founder of From Sac, a literary journal for Northern California. How about that? Currently he teaches English at Brigham Young University, Idaho among the frozen potato fields and Mormons. Good for you, Jon.Websites: www.fromsac.com www.jaawritter.blogspot.com

Hell

Hell is the worst place you can imagine, because if you could imagine something worse than Hell, than Hell would become that.

When he’d been alive, Edgar had been obsessed with cheese. He’d also been a huge prick and made everyone around him miserable. Now he was being tortured with cheese. He had cheese running through his veins and was repeatedly dropped into a vat of scalding cheese sauce. Even the scent of cheese lingered on his clothes in between dips. They thought of everything.

Edgar's secret consolation was that Satan hated cheese. Even Satan suffered in Hell.