R E C E S S E S
I S S U E 0 0 1

F O R E W O R D

I never thought RECESSES could happen.

But it's happened.

And I'm so freakin' proud.

Thank you, all of you.

- SAVHANHA SMALL NGUYEN -

// TEÈ LEONIE | RISK IT ALL | MY STORY // BRANDON SHANE | CONFIDENTIAL (DAMAGE) // JOHN GANSHAW | THE RINGMASTER // REBECCA BROWN | SUMMERTIME SONNET // CADRIEL HUYNH | THE BLACK HOLE AT THE HEART OF OUR GALAXY // THEODORE FORCER | OIL SPILL // CHARLOTTE AMELIA POE | NTH // BEE THE ILLUSTRATOR // FOREST S. RIGBY | PORCELAIN RELATIONSHIP // AARON SANDBERG | THE FLY (MERCY) // YUU IKEDA | MIDNIGHT BRUISES | HEART // JAMES KANGAS | RICKY’S BLUES // LORI CRAMER | WHAT TO DO WHILE HE’S DATING SOMEBODY ELSE | BEHIND THE BALLAD | TWO OF US // JULIE ALLYN JOHNSON | NUESTRA SEÑORA DEL CARMEN | MACKINAW // CHRISTIANE WILLIAMS-VIGIL | TÀHIRIH | ELLA NO QUIERE // SONYA DEVYATKIN | SCORPION HOURS | CLEAN THE CRAPPER // RSN // LACHLAN CHU | A MAYBE LIFE | REGENESIS | I AM FLOATING BELLY-UP // TATIANA PEREZ | TO DIE OR NOT TO DIE // MONIQUE ROWE | LOST IN GREY | UP THE TEMP! // JULIO RAINION | BEAVER MEADOW | IN LOVE WITH A PH.D HOLDER | INHERITED | LYONS | REGIS | JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH TWENTY-TWENTY-THREE // PAWEŁ MARKIEWICZ | TREE-LIKE SONNET // JACK JOSEPH | TRIPTIONARY CONTENTS: ABSTRACT ABYSS | BEWILDERING BUBBLE | CASCADING CARTOON // GARETH WRITER-DAVIES | DIVAN | FREEZER #2 | EYE LEVEL // ARUSHI (AERA) REGE | ON THE TOPIC OF MODERN DOMESTICITY // IRINA TALL NOVIKOVA | HEAVEN IN HER HEAD // DANIEL CLARK | WHEN LOWERED FROM THE LORRY // STEPHANIE L. HAUN | SCRAMBLED OR FRIED // CHIARA CROMPTION | UGLY BABY | SMOKE (OVER-ACHIEVING FIRST BORN) | SHOP GIRL CRONES // ANDREA WAGNER | (DIS)MEMBER | JAM JAR | HELD TOO TIGHTLY // EDWARD SUPRANOWICZ | SASSY AND SAUCY | THE DARK SIDE OF THE MIRROR | SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAT COMES | SUBMERGED 2 // HON CORBETT | FALLEN FLESH // BRAYDEN NORRIS | TRYING TO STOP LOVING YOU | UNTITLED 250423 | THIS DARK HOUSE // MAHVASH K.M | THIS MOURNING | WHAT DREAMS MAY COME // GERRY FABIAN | REGARDING EFFICIENCY | DANCE HALL COURTING | EXECUTING ANGLES // ARTHUR DEHART | WALK // MARTY ROGERS // SHEILA MURPHY | INGENUE IN TOMBOY CLOTHES | I MOOD MYSELF I MOVE | CONTINUO // TREASA NEALON | SEIZED // MAKENZIE MATTHEWS-BEARD | CREATIVITY’S FLAW IS BEING NOCTURNAL | BLUE // STEPHEN MEAD | FINGERS (II) | HOWLING MOON | MIST 3 A.M. // JEFFREY ZABLE | THE HAWK | A BIT OF REDEMPTION // GRSTALT COMMS | HIDES // EDWARD LEE | SOME IDEA OF | DAMAGE DONE | BLINDED BY SIGHT | SUBMERGED | TENDER, AFTER // ELLE BOYD | THE WALK // WILLIAM DORESKI | HEAVY METALS | STATIC | DOGS ALWAYS KNOW // ANNA BRAND | BABY TEETH | KITCHEN | HERE IS NEW YORK // JEFF GALLAGHER | ECHOLALIA | FEATURING // JOHN GREY | THE WORLD OUTSIDE WHERE IT BELONGS | THE MOST WILLFUL OF BODIES // PAUL LEWELLAN | ELIJAH AND THE WIDOW // ALICIA TURNER | GOODNESS GRACIOUS | BETWEEN A BREATH AND A TEXT [BAD ADVICE] (AFTER NICHOLAS BARNES’ DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT [BAD ADVICE]) | WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU (HOLDING WATER) // CJ THE TALL POET | NINE’S UGLY ROLLERBLADE | A DINO TOY FOR MY POODLE // KEVIN MACALAN | SORRY I’M LATE // ALEX INNOKENTI KOLGANOV FOSTER | MDMA AND DEMONS // ELISHA OLUYEMI | PANDORA IN THE THROAT OF ADAM // AISHA SADIQA // CECILIA KENNEDY | IN THE SINK ||

THANK YOU

TEÈ LEONIE

RISK IT ALL

BRANDON SHANE

CONFIDENTIAL (DAMAGE)

T/W: INFIDELITY, WAR & WEAPON IMAGERY

You crawled to the open curtains like barbwire,

holding your breath as pedestrian armies

marched across the sidewalks with rifled phones,

each snap a potential bullet to end your life &

as the polyester unites in a theatrical performance,

your love once again returns in a flood to amend drought,

dear senator, enchanted broker of wars, power, wars,

reverend atop the oracle-eyed church of delphi, w/

passion turned like a faucet; mechanical man taken

by primal aims & subjects * subject to regulation,

yet there is a charge from your hidden breadth,

megalomaniac animalized to a furnace of desires,

so take this wet kiss, this hug, this unbridled love,

find yourself engulfed in flames, master of secrets;

watch this secrecy erupt in a volcanic blaze.

JOHN GANSHAW

THE RINGMASTER

You are the youngest but the wisest

You are the reliable one

You are the resourceful one

You are the family anchor

You are the ringmaster of life

You provide to everyone except yourself

You listen to everyone except yourself

You support everyone except yourself

You believe in everyone except yourself

You want to save everyone except yourself

But yet you are the ringmaster of life

You dream about what could have been

You create opportunities when none exist

You wonder about the world and what it brings

You observe all that surrounds you

You think of everything, even when it isn’t there

You must, You are the ringmaster of life

In times of sorrow, you are there

In times of need, you are there

In times of hardship, you are there

In times of want you are there

In times of love, you are there

You are the ringmaster of life, yet it’s not yours

REBECCA BROWN

SUMMERTIME SONNET

Holidays make me think of boundless space,

Bare legs and arms freckled by friendly sun

Watching dappled shade flicker on your face

Blank diary pages promise unplanned fun

The zigzag of cool water makes you laugh

We lick lollies dripping rainbows of fruit

You perform cartwheels on the sunburnt grass

Chuck off clothes to don your mermaid swimsuit

But there’s a chill in the waterpark splash

A sharp edge to this hopeful liberty

I hesitate as the cameras flash

And hear danger in the deafening sea

These are fragile snapshots I must savour

Stick out my tongue for bittersweet flavour

CADRIEL HUYNH

THE BLACK HOLE AT THE HEART OF OUR GALAXY

The afternoon where you tell me that what we have is not enough, I sit on the hill behind our house peeling fruit. Skin after skin I shed into a green plastic strainer—the cheap one you bought in Hanoi. You said the trip back home

would heal us. Bring us closer in uncertain times.

We don’t quite understand what healing means. A delve into the countryside, perhaps. The wounds we have carried shall carry us.

I sit and dig my hands into bitter peels; The sun drags long talons down my back. Don’t you know when to give up? I sit with my back against the world. I sit with my back against you.

Dandelions bloom even if you try to crush them under your feet. You

pledged your love to me this afternoon, many lifetimes ago. Things have changed since then, but you were still my first kiss.

Nobody knows it was you, but it was.

THEODORE FORCER

OIL SPILL

the love of my first home is a love that is twisted,

almost cruel

because the radiator bleeds,

a rainbow of an oil leak

and the walls weep

teardrops warping the paper

they diagnose my room with water damage

and I am trapped under a collapsed roof,

tiles stolen

resold

there’s a downpour in the dining room

and the ocean breeze

of this haunted town

hangs stale in the doorway

blinking lights fizz and fade out

sickness lingers

in mildew and mold.

the wall that keeps the waves at bay is crumbling.

red meat bears grease into my bones

and inky stains never lift

(the carpet holds all that has ever been here)

sometimes I believe this little town stores so much hate

that it spills over the edges

drips down my hands,

but then echoes of laughter ricochet off these walls

language spoken in tongues, like some foreign dialect I don’t know

and the falling of tiny feet bang on these floors like drums

in their clumsy crescendo.

these are the things I am desperately holding onto.

we have to belong here,

with this town and all its ghosts.

CHARLOTTE AMELIA POE

NTH

entropy never looked as sexy as it did on your bedroom floor

"slip into something more comfortable," you say

and i let the void envelop me

oh sweetheart, the blip in the timeline is our heartbeats coinciding

and yesterday is tomorrow is the circling of a black hole

maw gaping and all sharp teeth

did you know that even stars can die?

now think about your own blood and veins and try to tell me you're special

oh, but we're all immortal if you don't trust the narrator

talk about ghosts in machines and solipsism and i'll nod along

you're the only one who can ever know how this feels

so try not to start screaming,

like, the world ends for everyone in turn

and a whimper in the back of your throat

is a lot less gauche

than a bang.

BEE THE ILLUSTRATOR

1/4

FOREST S. RIGBY

PORCELAIN RELATIONSHIP

T/W: IMPLIED SEXUAL CONTENT & VOMITING

I’m familiar with his porcelain contours

Smooth and cold to the touch

Lately I find myself down on my knees for him

Bruises forming against the cold tile floor

Gagging on his bleach cologne

Causing my throat to burn with the exhale

Choking as he forces me to hold my breath

Tears springing to the corners of my eyes

Until a release comes that I refuse to swallow down.

Previously Published in

NAME MAGAZINE (2020)

AARON SANDBERG

THE FLY (MERCY)

How dumb

to think

my sleep

was dreamless,

my dreams

full of sleep.

There’s the difference

between the scream

and the pain.

I'm not the kid

anymore, kneeling

next to the bed,

asking for god to give.

Now, it’s a good

enough prayer

to wish I were

good enough.

But I can answer

unasked prayers.

Bugs buzzing between

the screen and the pane —

I get up in the night

to slide open the glass,

crack the door

to let in light,

and let the flies fly out.

YUU IKEDA

MIDNIGHT BRUISES

Instead of human emotions,

inhuman alcohol

flows into my blood vessels.

Seasons become monochromatic,

the moon hides behind haze,

voices of bygone days disappear.

In a blanket,

I'm listening to screams

of me crumbled

by heartless bullets.

HEART

she can't draw

the picture of Heart.

the silhouette distorts,

just wanders.

she doesn't know

the color of Heart.

the innermost discolors,

just floats.

vague pain

and

hazy warmth

soak into her brain that

is thirsty for humanity

and is dominated by

monsters.

JAMES KANGAS

RICKY'S BLUES

Finally, it was laughable--

how he left you in the theater like that,

like a partnerless glove after he’d sat through five

minutes of the movie, itching for a brew

to suck down, a worked-up claque at his favorite dive.

Magnet-eyed as he was, the little

metal molecules in your body had jerked

you across the room to his side the first time

you saw him, he had that effect

on people. And since you had glowed

brighter than the rest, brighter

than the Dixie Highway Jesus, your eyes

huge as shasta daisies, he’d chosen your blossom

to fry, your hearth to start calling his

Holiday Inn, your wharf of sleep to unmoor you from

at 3 a.m., banging on your door after he’d

closed the bar, run someone else’s

panting tongue through the wringer like a washrag.

A wreck after three weeks of this, you slouched

in the flickering light through some starlet’s ruin,

her mascara running like Pitch River Falls, and when

he didn’t come back to pick you up, you lurched

next door to the doughnut shop, gulped four scalding

coffees, kissed your bubble good-bye, and phoned

your friend Mary to take you home. Then he got

pissed because you’d left, called you, called you

every name in the book. What balls! It took

another week for you to have it out with him.

That was the most lacerating affair you’ve ever had

the stupidity to put yourself through. That was

the most electrified you’ve ever felt, you said,

whether it was love or rut you didn’t care, too bad

it was a psycho playing cat and mouse, he gave you

gooseflesh and you were thankful, he made your brain

churn like a hive of bees, your blood go crashing

through your body, your bones sob how they’d come alive.

Previously Published in

Embers (Old Saybrook, Connecticut |Spring 1990)

LORI CRAMER

WHAT TO DO WHILE HE'S DATING SOMEBODY ELSE

1. Buy a spectacular outfit, anticipating the date you’ll have once he’s free again.

2. Hang the clothes in your closet.

3. Wait.

4. Tire of waiting.

5. Decide you deserve to look spectacular right now.

6. Slip into your new outfit.

7. Go to the eatery he frequents.

8. Select the seat at the bar that has the optimal view of his favorite table.

9. Order a pomegranate martini.

10. Anticipate his arrival.

11. Follow him with your eyes as the hostess seats him across the room.

12. Freshen your lipstick, fluff your hair, and prepare to “accidentally” run into him.

13. Sigh loudly when she appears and joins him at his table.

14. Startle when a guy in a baseball hat asks if he can buy you a drink.

15. Say you’ll take another martini.

16. Discover, as you converse with him, that the guy in the hat is smart and funny.

17. Remember you are smart and funny.

18. Look up just as the man you came to see strolls by hand in hand with his girlfriend.

19. Try to recall what you ever saw in him.

20. Laugh.

BEHIND THE BALLAD

You think you know me because of the song. As if a person’s essence could be captured in three minutes, thirty-four seconds. Sure, my ex composed a beautiful ballad. Those impassioned lyrics. That romantic string arrangement. No wonder he collected six Grammys. Who doesn’t want to believe the fairy tale? Wild rocker tamed by true love.

The thing is: The song isn’t about me. He used my name, yes, but the motivation for those carefully crafted lyrics? Money. Not love. To my ex, feigning feelings is just part of the game. Sentimentality sells. Even when it’s fake.

TWO OF US

We talked too much, laughed too much. Our heels, ultrahigh; our skirts, ultrashort. We fixed each other’s hair, told each other how fierce we looked.

We smoked too much, drank too much. Our nightlife, wilder than wild; our taste in boys, “the badder, the better.” We partied with businessmen, ballplayers, and bands, told each other “We got this.”

We stumbled too many times, fell too hard. Our pain, suffered in silence; our problems, hidden from the world. We guarded each other’s secrets, told each other that boys will come and boys will go, but friendship is forever.

JULIE ALLYN JOHNSON

NUESTRA SEÑORA DEL CARMEN

Here sits a man.

I mean — a torso,

with a head.

Flaps for arms, stubs where legs

would have extended

from twin trouser

appendages, tied in knots

lying limp & useless

on the sun-bleached concrete.

He’s propped up curbside

just off the Playa’s

strangled thoroughfares,

its church’s

white-washed

stucco walls

a calculated backdrop

to those glassy, vacant eyes.

Each day’s endurance

facilitated no doubt

with a meagre array

of medicinal nirvana.

What keeps the faded toluca basket

safe, with its sparsity

of American dollars, Mexican pesos?

Do watchful eyes

monitor this pobre alma from a distance?

A family member

or — more darkly — someone

he once held up as savior,

cashing in now on the guilt

of wealthy tourists,

the pious and curious?

My obliterated, despondent, angry heart —

The sun shines too harsh & fierce in Quintana Roo.

I look away — aim my camera elsewhere.

MACKINAW

Watch as Jane makes headway in her struggle against the ravages of ego lost, of ego consumed, of ego deftly manipulated along the bitter shores of a surreptitious lake in the Upper Peninsula where she grieves for five sisters whose betrayal still stings, for a mother who made none of it happen and then all of it

happen, and her father—well. Her father whom she adored although some would question why that

might be. The Grand Hotel was a bit fancy for her tastes, the shoreline condos and B&B’s too excessive

for one of her simple origins. She prefers rusticity as host for her creature comforts. Listen as Jane draws

a bead on an eastern screech-owl, her fingers tapping a frost-coated fence post, her suede-trimmed hiking boots tamping down last night’s snowfall as an eerie stream of silence whistles through stands of balsam

fir and paper birch, unseen purveyors of the island’s darkness. Smell the tang of greed in the air, the pretentious odors of inauthenticity. Savor the marble-slab fudge, the rainbow array of taffy, the rancid aftertaste of money boarding the ferry back to the mainland. Witness Jane’s resolve to disregard the onus of crushing despair. Celebrate with Jane as she strides ever forward, vowing to reclaim her once-lost life.

CHRISTIANE WILLIAMS-VIGIL

TÀHIRIH

T/W: MODERATE VIOLENCE

Red, frayed scarf twisted around her neck,

severing her enlightened mind from thick air.

Resilient body thrown down a well

icy, black water stained with her.

Women are told not to speak.

Stay home.

She said no.

Her voice rises from out the past,

challenging and screaming for Women’s Rights.

If I stay quiet,

I am equally guilty as the hand that choked her.

If I fight,

I risk meeting the same demise.

And so be it.

I will speak regardless.

And roar with all the sound within me.

Silence me not, until all women taste freedom.

ELLA NO QUIERE

AFTER TRANSLATION OF BAD BUNNY'S 'ANDREA'

There is a wolf-howl song written in bleeding ink for her. She

wishes they wouldn’t sing it on live feeds. She doesn’t

want recorded and rehearsed gestures. They only want

to rain viral, analytically measured love on her. Just a

show for the millions watching. Buying flower

after flower, to enhance, filter, and saturate this as just

another layer of the fantasy. An idea that

translates into likes and follows. ‘Subscribe to see more.’ They

don’t please the oceanic depths of her heart. They don’t

know the bonds, like the roses, have already wither-

-ed and this is over for her.

SONYA DEVYATKIN

SCORPION HOURS

These are the scorpion hours

when day hasn’t broken yet

but night has already passed

and the minutes have grown little legs

that crawl flatty

on and through your body.

These are the centipede minutes

that stampede through your mind

as they resurface memories to the foreground

and shut your will to a lock-jaw.

These are the cold and dry minutes

that seep into your nostrils

and tickle at the nape of your neck

They don’t quite haunt you

but they cause the slightest bit of unease

that leaves you

perpetually restless.

CLEAN THE CRAPPER

Have you ever really cleaned a toilet?

Gotten down on your hands and knees and

scrubbed the shit, worth centuries,

off the marble palisade?

Have you ever really seen years worth of shit

condensed into one small globular sphere -

a miniature Earth of excretion

as gloopy in its gunk as it drips

as it sticks to your facade of home and space...

Once you have, hand over mouth,

cleaned a toilet used by someone who is not you

used for years and years,

used to release and relieve themselves of

digested gluttonous junk,

you will finally see what reality is like,

you will finally see what adulthood is.

What is it, you might ask?

Well, why don’t you just walk over to the toilet bowl

stick your hand in there

search out that very ugly, very real

truth which is:

you eat, you sleep, you love,

you shit,

and then you die.

That’s all there is to it.

That’s all the toilet bowl can tell you.

And for that,

you ought to smile.

RSN

1/5

LACHLAN CHU

A MAYBE LIFE

Somewhere else

there’s a morning window of summer.

Here I wake to a cloud-high city:

dead night and

an elegy of almost-sunken stars—

the fiesta lights here are

rain-rusted bars &

blustered old Carlos’ talking box.

30 feet

Northeast,

a television screen meets life.

The figure trapped in the frame begins to speak,

but it’s too dark in his place

and the window is too far.

I don’t know most of the men next door,

but he is called Carlos.

Carlos who I find myself watching:

sometimes

while the stove ticks, my hands sweat-spat,

full with the buns I had picked up on the way back from work.

Sometimes

On Sundays of dry switchgrass and burnt sun-oven slate.

On Sundays of shrill ice-air and beard-white wind.

I put on a jacket that covers my arms & pants that cover my legs & gloves & shoes on those days.

I don’t like those days because I like my arms & legs & hands & feet. You liked them.

When there is nothing to do but sit,

and the books are too hard

& the work is too hard,

milky evening splits brisk into somber night, and I see the stars.

The grass feels wet, and it feels green. It was one of those days yesterday.

& it rained last night.

“I can see yours up there, Papá.”

I remember him telling me how his star was the tiny one being scooped up by the big spoon.

I never told him that it was really the big dipper.

I add that to the list; after

Tell dad the plural of “mouse” isn’t “mouses”

Tell dad he pronounced the word “refrigerator” all wrong

I see him chuckling when I read it to him.

I see him asking me how to say perro,

chuckling when my words are more broken

than his spirit.

I knew he couldn’t hear me, but sometimes it’s better to say things out loud.

I knew he couldn’t hear me, but sometimes it’s also better not to say things out loud.

(Like the broken taillight

or the four parking tickets.

Or the fact that I sold

his old T.V.)

I stood up

and walked back home.

But I didn’t want to be back at that apartment.

I didn’t want to be home on those cold days

where I covered my skin

& I didn’t want to tell dad that I kept his papers since

November 4th 2009—

—So it never made it on the list.

I stood up

and walked back home.

& I walked to Carlos’ door because

I wanted to watch his T.V.

that never turned off.

I never knocked.

& Carlos never answered,

& Carlos never smiled his big brown, bearded smile

& Carlos never said it was nice to meet me

And come in, come in.

So tomorrow,

in a maybe life,

I’ll promise to stop by for a drink.

REGENESIS

It’s hard to believe that Sisyphus was a wise man

when he knew it was as easy as letting go, simply

stepping to the right and watching the rock tumble

down into somebody else’s hands.

Everyone argues, but it’s obvious how they all desire

each of their cells to know its human composition,

how they do what they can to make their molecules

realize the beauty in their tiny calligraphy.

I’m certain I have something profound to point out,

so perhaps there is magic in the boulders piling up

in the stoic man’s arms; maybe people can force

atoms to know what they create.

I concede that a habit can sometimes be titanium. But

it is true that if you remove the blindfold at the edge

of the bridge, there is an immediate retreat to safety,

a deep gravity that’s primordial.

What I’m saying is that pushing a boulder up a hill

is just another symptom of depletion. Everyone knows

that there is an end to the journey, but they all think

it happens when you collapse.

The voyage is not over until you reach the top

of the mountain, which only exists because

the crushed are reincarnated as living—another

body fills the slot, moving at first,

deforming underneath like wax or clay, decades

of pushing before revival. The peak is a cliff, it’s

shaped just like a bridge, and it doesn’t matter

if every atom of you knows whom it composes

because there is a rock not far back, and it is moving;

someone is pushing it; you topple over the edge

like carrion into a machine.

I AM FLOATING BELLY-UP

A boy squats in the dirt and sucks on cough drops

while another does pull ups on a broken shower pole.

The image slides out in a hunted grayscale, starved

like beetles beneath the creep of newborn steam.

The lens is pointed now at a deer with no antlers,

and it bends its neck and pushes its shoulder blades

like caution. It knows how the sky muddles into cold

cave water before the storm bores through the forest.

The sun does not shine onto everything, and I tell

myself you need an empire to become illuminated.

One of the boys has a father who will saw and glue

the head of the fawn. He will rot by my camera forever.

TATIANA PEREZ

TO DIE OR NOT TO DIE

MUSINGS ON THE SAD GIRL ERA

To be sad is cool. To be unwell is profound after all the greats in human history suffered. Van Gogh cut off his own ear.

Small talk includes the SSRIs you've been prescribed, "Zoloft or Prozac?" Go on Goodreads and you can find curated reading lists titled "sad girl books" that consist of work by Ottessa Moshfegh and others. Type in sad girl on Letterboxd and you find dozens of watchlists that always have Girl Interrupted (1999) or The Virgin Suicides (1999) on the top of the list. These stories are set in dreams cityscapes, lonely apartments featuring flawed characters.

I must admit I too fell into the spell of the sad girl. I found profundity in melancholy existences. Though I try to remind myself it was me up against full marketing teams crowded in boardrooms.

It's worth noting the internet's, largely social media's, role in the

popularization of this aesthetic. I mean who wouldn't be intrigued by

slow edits featuring sad characters tinted in blue color grade with dreamlike audio in the background. Everything and anything can become aestheticized if there are a few good edits featuring scenes from obscure films and enough people participate in using the hashtag.

The term sad girl is much more a descriptor now much like the manic pixie dream girl. I view these two more similar than dissimilar. Though the manic pixie dream girl needs a male protagonist to function, the sad girl needs only herself. So maybe times are changing for the better.

Lackluster humor aside, I empathize with the considerable number of young girls on the internet being fed unhappiness in the shape of rounded cakes obscured by sweet frosting and red trim icing.

MONIQUE ROWE

LOST IN GREY

The grey-haired woman sat in the rocking chair,

back and forth.

She has been like this since dusk.

Humming under her breath,

I tried to hear the tune, but all was inaudible

as the wind lashed the trees

and the heavens gave way to a downpour.

"Winter is coming," she said.

I resisted the urge to correct her

as I realized her old, wrinkled skin still

remembers the bite of blizzards

despite now living in a tropical paradise.

She existed in limbo —

halfway between my loving Gran and

the other half, the immigrant fighting

to attain the frigid American dream.

UP THE TEMP!

Dogs foaming,

cats gasping.

The bed, a slow-cooking oven,

mercilessly steaming my already

coffee-toasted skin.

Rivulets of sweat give daily massages,

kneading out more liquid

from my dehydrated pores.

The lawn pants for dews,

longing for its glory days.

The sun continues its assault,

with its heavy-handed belting —

bruising, welting, melting,

leaving a scorching trail.

Who would have thought redness

was visible on black?

Or black could actually

crack?

Stripping lips, headaches, thirsty,

the sun’s a slave master, unrelenting

in its abuse

overheating us wave after wave.

JULIO RAINION

BEAVER MEADOW

INHERITED

REGIS

BEAVER MEADOW

1/5

JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH TWENTY-TWENTY-THREE

I WANT MY SON BACK, i cry to the moon, the trees, the wind

(whoever will listen)

impassively, they lean in, feathered boughs glistening with mourning dew

they know as well as i what bridge he’s crossed

i’ll drink forgetting-liquor and

lose myself once more.

INHERITED

IN LOVE WITH A PH.D HOLDER

BEAVER MEADOW

INHERITED

1/5

PAWEL MARKIEWICZ

TREE-LIKE SONNET

I beguile a blazing courage of ebony.

I bewitch a brilliant audacity of elm.

I captivate a dazzling daring of the holly.

I entice a vivid endurance of hornbeam.

I enrapture a flashing fearlessness of fir.

I magnetize a glistening firmness of wattle.

I enthrall a glittering fortitude of birch.

I hypnotize a golden gallantry of maple.

You carry away a luminous guts of pine.

You enrapture an intense heroism of oak.

You delectate a meek-radiant prowess of lime.

You ensorcell a shimmering spunk of redwood.

We wow a shiny tenacity of poplar.

We spellbind a silvery valor of rowan.

JACK JOSEPH

ABSTRACT ABYSS

Awoke with my head in a dictionary -

No abacus to account for any abbreviations.

Alphabetically, words adorned a literary

Artwork of alliterations.

Abashed by the sight of an abbot on my right,

I abhorred actions set ablaze.

Awestruck in an abstract abyss I did alight

On an accidental arcade with my eyes agaze.

Abruptly there was an aberration:

A brief and sudden drop in standards.

Acutely aware, I’d had an ablation

And been assigned to a hospital bed aside two grandads.

I then beheld an abomination:

(Not a snowman; but still abnormal)

Due to that awful operation,

My abdomen had been adapted into an alternative domain portal.

Actually astonished, I asked my allies

Are you able to affirm I’ve not gone crazy?

Awkwardly assured and of me they did apprise

That in my abdomen there was an aperture with an astral baby.

BEWILDERING BUBBLE

Blocking out the hospital babble,

I could see the baby through my body’s burgeoning window

Playing itself at both backgammon and Scrabble.

I then became bewitched by a smell like Bisto.

Born into this baby’s bubble,

I barely had the chance to bust a heartbeat.

A blink and a burp, I was soon in trouble,

Bathing in a boiling broth bittersweet.

Swimming in a bisque: thick rich soup;

Bewildered by a bishop

In a birthing pool

In his birthday suit.

I bundled out the bowl

To get a better look

And I felt a beta wave behold

Me like a bête noire somewhere in this book.

The bishop was betoken

Of a black beast,

Behaving like a bogeyman who couldn’t be broken

Whilst my bemusement still would not cease.

CASCADING CARTOON

Cooked in a cauldron of cosmic outcomes,

As the ceiling came down like a cavalcade.

I was caked in soup and concrete crumbs

When the floor caved in! Commenced to cascade!

Carrying me caught in a cocoon,

The concrete waterfall turned into cash.

The landscape changed into a cartoon

And cranium first, I coasted into a creche with a crash.

Confused by collapsed computer systems

And children who’d fallen asleep,

I crawled through coins and cuspy crayons,

Certain that a cretaceous creature had begun to creep.

Was it from the church?

A member of the clergy?

It covered me with its lurch,

As I cowered with consternation of catching the lurgy.

The closer that it got,

It looked like a clown,

Causing my blood to clot

And my capacity to conceive to close down.

TRIPTIONARY - CONTENTS

Abstract Abyss

Bewildering Bubble

Cascading Cartoon

Déjà vu of Defecation

Endless Entrapment

Foetus at Football

Glittering Grub

Hourly Hallucinations

Insane Incarceration

Joyful Jarring

Knocking Back a Keg

Lucky Lungful of Lexis

More Misshapen Meanings

Narrative’s Needlework

Offbeat Odyssey

Pepperami for Pterodactyl

Queensberry Quagmire

Red Room

Sibilant Sentence

The Tyrant’s Toes

Ugly Urn

Versatile Vocabulary

Was the Workpiece Worthwhile

X-axis

Yin and Yang Yells

Zizz

GARETH WRITER-DAVIES

DIVAN

I’m lying on the sofa

naked

reading Orientalism by Edward Said

Berlioz is on the turntable

I am stroking

a cat

Goodness me

this is not

how I was bought up

in the Calvinistic chapel

and the Boy

Scouts

like atoms that repel and attract

life

can be one too many books

picked at random

from someone else’s

shelf

how difficult it is

to be

oneself

I put on some clothes as the cat licks her pads

oh to live

and not think about it

FREEZER #2

her theory

was that the past

was best packed into tupperware

and frozen

deep in the freezer

like spent fuel

from a nuclear reactor

in due course

it could be examined and defrosted

or just stay

in the depths

amongst ice cream and stray chips

then we went on holiday

and whilst away

there was an electrical failure

we came home to death and destruction

EYE LEVEL

I had the expensive oil tank

taken away

widened the slab

and put a summer house on it

which didn’t quite fit

so I sit on the overhang

with the flowers at eye level

and watch the honey bees work

in our iridologic world

it’s good to be humble

get down to the bees

and see what they’re up to

next year I’ll plant more flowers

sit on the same step

figure out

how I can do things better

ARUSHI (AERA) REGE

ON THE TOPIC OF MODERN DOMESTICITY

dear my love / you’ve got me thinking about / bile green couches we hated / tables in the middle / right in our living room / you’ve got me thinking about / potted house plants or succulents we’ll inevitably kill / you’ve got me thinking about / getting married to en jeevan or kannazhaga or baharla ha madhumas / even though our weddings aren’t structured that way / perfect first dances that aren’t canon in d / i don’t know how to tell you i’ve never loved anyone more / you’ve got me writing out love letters / as if i was mahmoud darwish / lines like “i’d let you bury your heart in me, if it meant you’d say” / like “i don’t think i’ll ever know how to stop loving you” / like “darling, please, just tell me how to love you in a language you understand” / dear my love / you’ve got me thinking about making tea and coffee / just the way you like / too much cream too much sugar / you’ve got me thinking about cutting up fruits / peeling tangerines / my fingers sticky with the juice / as i feed them to you / you try to cut me a slice / i laugh / i eat the tangerine / i kiss you / i taste them on your lips / sugary sweet / dear my love / you’ve got me wanting domesticity / an apartment in the city for just the two of us / a cat or a dog or any pet we decide on / you’ve got me wanting love / in all of its domesticity / in knowing that i’d read your favorite books / watch your favorite movies / and you’d do the same for me / you’ve got me wanting a perfect life / one with you

IRINA TALL NOVIKOVA

1/7

HEAVEN IN HER HEAD

In that world where there are only stars, I will find small fragments of reality, there is

Nothing but her own thoughts.

It was as if something was penetrating into her, into her blood ... and when she made an incision in the skin as tiny as from a needle prick, the sea leaked out of her and several fish fell out of this blue. She cried and realized that she had become like those people who exist above and who, like gods, can live forever ... She did not need her life and she realized that it was time for her to leave, where the sky and stars would swallow her ... Feelings will remain here, in a house with four windows and a single door the color of fallen leaves... She gathered her things, took a deep breath and left without finishing her evening coffee....

The ones that never existed, those she thought about... What could they be, the blue ones lived upstairs, the secret city... And the ones from below never went up, never turned blue... But she was the first to the lower city had to go upstairs... It didn't bother her, her feelings left her and only the swifts that rushed about her windows screamed strangely. She began to understand from the voice and probably would have been able to answer one of them, if not for her inner timidity ... The timidity of the "innocent" that she became ... In the evening, she went to the big tower, where she applied, the only thing that was checked by the clerk , it pricked her finger, it seemed he was insensible, but it did not deceive her, she felt his smell, the one that a living creature experiences, he sweated a lot and now his reaction showed that he was frightened and probably very much, his palms were wet ... But outwardly it did not appear in any way, he took papers and a short silver flask, opaque like his face ..

It became like a mirror...

The lower ones very rarely worked in the administration and he probably distinguished himself before he was hired. She became even more somehow strangely cool and she squeezed her palms tighter ..

She swallowed the cold lump in her throat and froze, another clerk came out from behind the counter, there was a blue bandage on his shoulder, he opened his palm in front of her ...

Her voice was cold as a steel string "When you felt the change.."

There was no interrogative intonation, only cold indisputability was in her voice.

She did not open her hand in front of him, only slightly bowed her head and looked into his eyes.

"Yesterday I heard the birds and understood what they were saying..."

"Birds..." - his eyebrows slightly raised and lowered - "what kind of birds were .."

- "Swifts... Their nests are in the house across from mine.."

"You were always watching them..."

- "Sometimes I listened to them .."

She gave her a small notebook, black with a blue edge and an almost invisible "NP" on the cover.

- "This book ... At the very beginning, the address, where you will live ... Now you can not communicate with your family ... "

Then she looked back, looked at the counter, the clerk hadn't come yet.

She

Then she took out a dark corner from a pocket on her chest and said, in the same metallic voice, "Hide, read later .... And don't talk about swifts ... Sparrows, pigeons, pick up any birds, any ..."

She turned around and left...

“It’s as if he didn’t tell me ...” - her thought somehow strangely moved inside her and froze like a fish, as if waiting for prey ... “Let, let, let ...”

1/7

DANIEL CLARK

WHEN LOWERED FROM THE LORRY

vie for safety:

wriggle and squirm and thrash.

Life is… insufficient?

The seasons change. In autumn,

leaves spiral to soil. In winter,

they freeze; in spring,

they thaw.

When lowered from the lorry,

they see a slither of sunlight,

a small glint

of transcendent gold. Run!

Run! Run for the light –

but.

As soon

as. As

soon

as, in-

stant

lung w̶h̶e̶e̶z̶e̶ r̶a̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ r̶a̶s̶p̶ collapse.

Life is

wriggle. And squirm and thrash

and collapse

STEPHANIE L. HAUN

SCRAMBLED OR FRIED

She pulled a half dozen eggs from the refrigerator and carefully set them on the countertop. She concertedly walked to the range and turned on the largest burner to medium heat.

She rummaged through the cabinets, looking for the perfect frying pan. She looked over at her husband. He sat at the table, reading the newspaper, oblivious to her movements.

“This is perfect,” she said as she pulled the heavy skillet from the cabinet. She walked around the table, stopping behind her husband, skillet in hand.

With a twisted smile on her face, she raised the skillet. “Scrambled or Fried?”

CHIARA CROMPTON

UGLY BABY

I dreamed I had a baby,

just Had not the process of had.

It was an ugly baby.

(I’m not afraid to say when a baby is ugly,)

and it was.)

It’s jaw was skewed,

Like there was wire running through

The same as her Dad’s I thought,

without the process of dad.

So I kept her in my inside coat pocket.

Her,

apparently.

And she never cried.

Never made any sound apart from speaking once,

“Happy”,

she said twice.

Back in the pocket.

My dog is off the lead,

harassing people,

and I have a tiny baby in my pocket,

and I keep thinking,

I hope my dog will be okay,

if I leave it outside the café.

If I go inside to eat something that’s caught my eye

In the window, it’s something soft, shiny and yellow,

and when I go to buy it,

I bump into all sorts people I have known through my life

from university, college, secondary school, primary,

and some, their faces softly focused,

are from before.

And we talk.

Ah but jesus where is the baby?

It’s in the coat’s inside pocket.

It’s very quiet.

Is it dead?

A head poking out.

Thank god,

not dead just quiet.

Not dead just quiet.

What would they do

if it was?

I just forgot and oh god where’s my dog?

It can’t be my fault just to forget.

No process of had, just had and there it was.

Just had.

So there.

I spot the dog down the road.

Thank god.

I put my tiny baby back into my pocket and go for tea.

SMOKE (OVER-ACHIEVING FIRST BORN)

I lean out of the window

Because I don’t smoke

The balcony is for smokers

Like my sister or my mum

(or a balcony like it from when she was young)

“Have you been smoking indoors?”

I didn’t hear her response

But he didn’t knock at my door

So I assume she did me a solid

Or she didn’t and he assumed she was lying

And didn’t think to knock

Didn’t think to look

From the adjacent bathroom window

to mine

I light five candles

Drop my sister a message

Bathe

Air my knickers

And roll a butt towards the neighbours roof

No harm done

Because I don’t smoke

SHOP GIRL CRONES

On weekday night shifts

The supermarket keeps the shop girl team to three.

Under their night-time stewardship,

the shop is most itself.

There is no tinny radio,

but you will hear the Shop Crones echoed in three melodies.

The Crones know well,

the shop to be an independent soul.

So, when it is hot,

they huff tobacco leaf behind the bins and laugh a lot.

When it is cold,

they huddle in the breakroom and share (in solemn tones) their hard-won wisdoms.

Some nights, when one is sad,

they thank the shop to offer them its alcoholic remedies and sob.

Always, as the morning comes,

they suds the floor in tandem with a patient and unrushed tenderness.

ANDREA WAGNER

(DIS)MEMBER

I wish I could take out all the little pieces

Lay ‘em down on the table, analyze, look them over,

Count all the angles, note the color and the size,

Measure up the sides so I can know them, exactly,

Quantify these parts that don’t add up but might

If I look hard enough, really look, and try, and

Don’t force yourself, honey, but

What went wrong with you? and

I just can't seem to understand all the little pieces

look them over, count them, hold me up to the light,

Where did it go wrong? Where did it go wrong?

Lay me down, measure, analyze, little pieces,

Each phrase held down, sedated, tranquilized,

Tell me right now what's wrong with me,

Because I can't, I can't.

JAM JAR

How can I long for something I've never had?

I keep my thoughts for you nestled in a jam jar, crowded over

by other neglected fridge necessities.

My hands glide over, again, again. Sometimes reaching, but

maybe next time.

Eyes looking, longing

To open it

Dip the knife in and out

And spread them out to really see

But I close the door.

Even when expired,

I can't bring myself to throw it out.

HELD TOO TIGHTLY

Sometimes I really wonder why it is I can’t be happy.

I give way too much:

Too many letters, too much care,

A look too adoring, too obvious,

And maybe it’s…scary

I can’t hold onto my flowers

Because I hold too tightly

And the stems break

It’s like I’m not allowed

Am I not allowed?

Because they’re beautiful, and I’m not?

Because we’re both pretty?

I want to hold my flowers

My memories

My daisy girls that aren’t really daisies

But the stems

My stems

Keep breaking.

EDWARD SUPRANOWICZ

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAT COMES

SASSY AND SAUCY

THE DARK SIDE OF THE MIRROR

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAT COMES

1/4

SASSY AND SAUCY

SUBMERGED 2

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAT COMES

SASSY AND SAUCY

1/4

SUBMERGED 2

THE DARK SIDE OF THE MIRROR

SASSY AND SAUCY

SUBMERGED 2

1/4

HON CORBETT

FALLEN FLESH

Strange to see a good steak

Innocently sat on the pavement.

Dead -

Firm and fresh and red.

Not held in plastic or a flimsy factory tray.

This one juts proudly out of its paper white packet.

He knows who he is.

Bought from the butchers that morning,

He sits politely next to the peppered bird

shits outside memorial park.

He’d get up and run back to the field,

If he only could. But as life comes, and goes

the next dog’s a lucky dog

who stumbles upon it.

BRAYDEN NORRIS

TRYING TO STOP LOVING YOU

I’m trying to stop loving you

I know it’s much too late

The only way to free myself

Is slipping into hate

It’s easier for you, my love,

Your love for me is small -

You can let it wither down,

Become nothing at all

But me, I’m handcuffed to your bed,

My watch and phone are gone

My virgin flesh is left exposed,

I simply can’t go on

I’ve nails in my hands and feet,

I must accept my fate

I’m trying to stop loving you

I know it’s far too late.

UNTITLED 250423

How much more can be done for love?

I regret almost everything

that I have done these past months

But even so we climb again and again

to the top of the same hill,

and I cannot weep, and

you cannot tell the buildings from the trees

Tomorrow, I will build a house

over where we died.

I will cover your body in leaves

And I will come each day to

sweep this tomb clean,

and dry your faded eyes.

THIS DARK HOUSE

I recall a time when this house was smaller.

Standing by the open window, smoke plays off my lips.

From here I can see you standing - my god - in the grass, the wind grasping at your hair,

ablaze amidst dying leaves.

You call to me, but I cannot hear you anymore.

Your name carved into my wrist.

It keeps me tethered here,

to this dark house. Thank god - I have no desire to be adrift again.

I will take this love

for what it is.

MAHVASH K.M

THIS MOURNING

She’s caught in the rush of hurrying feet

Snippets of conversations

Of laughter, exclamations

She’s caught in a tidal wave

Of teeming, streaming life

She’s caught in the swell

Of people of voices, of sights and smells

Riding the vital wave

Pushing ahead

Her silk scarf catches the breeze

Of swelling, surging humanity

She feels it pull

Floating just a little in front of her

She quickens her step

Her feet instinctively keeping up

With the urgency of life

She feels something

In her gut, the pit of her stomach

A ripple, almost a laugh!

She inhales deeply, she can’t place

This sudden lightness of being

It feels out of place

This morning, mourning

She had felt like lead

Now like vapor she rises up

Colourless, clean

In that moment she’s someone else

Propelling her body like a comet

Lighter, brighter almost serene

She arrives at her gate

The same number, the place

Where this very morning

She had buried them

She had forgotten

For a few moments

Who she was

She was desolation and grief itself

Wearing the bruises of loss

Mourning only this morning

It all came back dawning

As she came to herself

As her blood remembered

And curdled inside

A freezing, heaving cauldron of chills

She sank into the depths of her seat

There was a sequence

Monumental, compelling

To her agony

She had to remember

She couldn’t forget

Her world had ended

When she had buried her dead.

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

I had a dream last night

You were in it

Fuzzy, unclear

But the hook was there

That had plucked you from somewhere

Inside my head or maybe

From some deserted place in my heart

It wasn’t an act

Of which I was aware

I had no say

In the furtive way

You appeared around me again

Even if you were phantasmic, chimerical

In that time, you were real

A swaying, decaying bridge coupling

The physical and the figmental

It left a bitter aftertaste

In my mouth when I awoke

I brushed my teeth

With renewed vitality

(My dentist would be happy at least)

I spent the day going over the locks

I had put around certain memories

These escapes

Even in my dreams

Made me restless, agitated me

When I was awake

Tonight I will have my dose

Of vitamins and minerals

(They promise all sorts of well-being)

So that when I dream

The bolted doors inside of me

Keep holding their integrity

But even if they lose their might

Releasing spectres of the night

I know that in my waking hours

In dissecting and determining

The cryptic whys and wherefores

Of night-garish visages

Invading, distressing me

These dreams, these unbidden images

Have already lost their sting

They have shed their whipping wings

To fly at me when I’m asleep

Through all of my monster-proofing

And so deep down inside

Something tells me that tonight

I will dream of other things.

GERRY FABIAN

REGARDING EFFICIENCY

The little details

like fridge baking soda

make all the difference.

Like a balanced checkbook,

knowing the exact amount

leads to sound decisions.

As simple as a regular oil change,

confidence in performance

can carry the conference.

And simple surprise roses

for no reason at all,

extends many warranties.

DANCE HALL COURTING

With lips like razors

you slice love

like a Chicago slaughterhouse.

The carcasses in your closet

hang like the ghosts

of great buffalo herds.

After we make love,

I always sleep

with one eye open.

EXECUTING ANGLES

This once equilateral triangle

has become an invasive isosceles

and I am the bottom line.

There is an irritating confusion

between inches and meters.

Like a broken rhomboid.

The opposite sides

are no longer equal.

And the right angle-

the perfect 90 degrees-

has crashed from the weight

of those with no mathematical

codes or measures.

ARTHUR DEHART

WALK

I take you on a walk, you don’t know where we’re going, and I don’t tell you.

The mountain air is crisp and there’s even a little bit of a breeze.

It smells like heaven,

The smell of it almost about to rain,

The frogs and birds creek,

Croak,

And moan.

You ask me where I’m taking you, I tell you it's to tell my dad bye, pappy too.

We won’t be here for long, but did you know my grandma sleeps with my dads ashes so we will have to say goodbye to his empty grave and one day I’ll put him in a necklace so I’ll never have to say goodbye. You nod. Rightfully silent and concerned.

This is the day I finally leave Tennessee, you don’t complain as I take you into the cemetery. There is no gate in this gravesite in the hills. No creaking, just gravel crumbling as we drive past the sign.

The Mountains protect and provide for the graves and I can almost hear the gods of the Appalachian mountains in the wind. They open the gates to hades and all of a sudden there are white figures sitting on the graves, legs crossed.

Lucid or barely dreaming,

I ask you this as a ghostly mother holds her baby,

Who can finally coo in her mothers arms.

I take a menthol cigarette out of my pocket and there he is,

My wispy grandfather with his dark skin,

And dark hair of the natives he descends from,

Sitting with his blue cotton shirt that I used to hang onto when he’d throw me in the air.

The patient man that raised me,

Sits on his own grave,

An empty one sitting next him, my grandmothers name carved into it prematurely,

Like an omen.

“How is everyone?” He asks me.

“They’re gone.” I reply and hand him the cigarette. He takes it and lights it.

You hate my family reunions because they concern you. With the amount of empty tables they concern me too.

MARTY ROGERS

1/5

SHEILA MURPHY

INGENUE IN TOMBOY CLOTHES

Blondly she climbs trees

Her little hands intentional

As casual she rises independent

Of convention looking up across

And down again she focuses

She drives herself she grabs a net

And captures butterflies

To study and to love

She leaves no time for sleep

She just aspires

She prays in being

Her life form forms

The affirmation of the blood

The breath the hungry bees

I MOOD MYSELF I MOVE YOU

I mood myself I move you

Over to the lamplight slowly slowly

To quiet zeal our zest awhile

Piles of chores to tackle that if left

Undone will matter less than I imagine

Any day now the nature of emergency

Will fade and show the reverse

Of our suspicions and our hopes

That we control a chaotic seeming

Planet while the evidence

Would contradict that self importance

Each fragment mismatched to others

Amounts to nothing plus the whole

CONTINUO

You reach, you reach for me, reach me

I hear melodious lines come true

It's you before intention strikes

I need the brace of you

To feel the veer of tune go free

Away from me the melody

Turn innocence again unplanned

Because the sturdy underline is there

Alive to me the firm beneath out-glows

An imposition I then learn

To follow even grief in song

I carry life away, I earn

Compassion there I frame

Another way I rise beyond

What I assumed before

Now years to hold, to find.

TREASA NEALON

SEIZED

Clare’s hands grip the steering wheel tight as she takes a sharp turn off the road and into the wall of the church.

Oh, she thought, staring out through the windscreen and at the rough stone, is that it?

She had miscalculated, she had been aiming for the church’s big oak door.

“Damn it,” she muttered.

The entire experience had been anti-climactic. A feeble bang, a crush of glass where her left headlight was and a slight twinge in her neck.

She had been hoping for some flames at least.

Inexplicably the radio switches on. If this was the finale of a film, some rock and roll track would be playing. AC/DC or maybe The Who. But it was 6.57am, so all the radio was playing was a morning show with a forced cheery presenter talking about the current heatwave.

“Heat makes every go a little bit crazy!” The presenter guffawed through the tinny speakers.

Clare laughs alongside them, hysterical sounds that quickly transform in to burning sobs. She buries her head into the steering wheel, her body heaving.

She wonders if they’ll believe her if she says it was an accident? They probably won’t, but they’ll feel sorry for her and it won’t go any further. Her car is more harmed than the church.

They’ll say,’ you need to sleep.’

They’ll say,’ how is your aunt doing? She’s in the hospice is it?’

They’ll say,’ Less of this now. Think of her.’

That’s all Clare has been doing, thinking of her Aunt Pat. A husk of the woman she once was, withering away in a stale sterile room. The unfairness of it takes her breathe away.

Pat took her hand in hers a few weeks ago, her bones poking through like knitting needles.

“I need you to do something for me,” she had rasped, “I need you to find my son. I want to see him before I die.”

Clare has always known about Pat’s son, everyone has, she has never been quiet about him and she is glad that her aunt didn’t keep his existence a deathbed revelation.

She promised her she would find him, although it seemed an impossible task. If Pat couldn’t find him and she was looking for 50 years, what hope would Clare have?

She had files upon files, about the home, the other women, and their babies. But nothing on her son bar an insufficient birth certificate that lead to nowhere but dead ends. She’s knocked on doors. She had those doors slammed in her face again and again.

But maybe this time, if they knew she was dying, if they knew this was her last chance to find the son snatched from her arms, barely a few days old, still nurseling on her, they would tell her where he was.

That’s what Clare hoped. Humanity always finds a way. Right?

She’d beg them from some information, anything at all and then those little ancient nuns will go on their knobbly knees and their God will advise them that it’s the right time. They’d open their hearts a couple of decades late, allow a dying mother to reunite with the son they stole from her.

Hope is a fickle thing easily snuffed Clare has realised. Pat won’t miraculously recover. The nuns won’t miraculously find compassion.

They turned her away as they did Pat. As they did countless of others.

She reverses the car slowly. Where she made the impact, stones come loose, falling to the ground in a flash of dust.

A mark has been made. She drives away. Pat will be awake in an hour.

MAKENZIE MATTHEWS-BEARD

CREATIVITY'S FLAW IS BEING NOCTURNAL

Only when the clock strikes twelve

Do I begin to unravel the day’s doings

And look at them from the perspective

Of an outsider with finicky taste

I started doing nothing

Productivity was dead that day

I planned for more but time took hold

So I ended it off the same way

I wanted to write a new story

But the cursor was left blinking

While I stalked myself on Instagram.

Look at me! Look at me!

I planned on cooking a nice dinner

But the ramen was just too tempting

So my oven got a little jealous.

Hope you enjoy that sodium, freak.

I wanted to watch a new movie

But my screen time was longer

Than my screen time.

One of us is better for you– and it’s me!

At night is when I am supposed to rest

But clearly that’s handled at day

So after twelve hours of hiatus

My creativity starts away

Tomorrow I’ll help you write a book

You’ll wake up and do yoga

After a cold shower and fruit smoothie

The entire day will be spent doing!

Then she passes out with me.

We got to sleep and watch dreams

Losing all of the productive energy

And starting the day of nothing again

BLUE

As the clay I smushed under my nails as a kid

As the ocean as it washed me into purity

As the yarn I held for my grandmother at the store

As the color of my lover’s eyes as I told her I want her

As the Heavens I look towards when I am lost

As the mouse my cat bats around the wooden floor

As the square ring I got for my ninth birthday

As the songs my grandpa sang when my grandmother died

As the grass in the local music cafe

As the parchment books my mother always read

As the blanket I arrived in.

STEPHEN MEAD

FINGERS (II)

Certain cigarette tips, filters to caress from films of the '40s right down to you & me,

scents caressing more sensuous, the bad habits' blessings no pumice has scrubbed-----

Fingers, I know the church of them, the steeple which shall protect, shield eyes,

rub heads &, between cracks, catch fluid.

Fingers, the blood pulse:

thin skins of berries carrying systems of light, planetary, inside.

Yes, meditate on that to wipe out the meaningless, the violent, the mindless...

Friend, could your fingers ever be like those?

I've asked this with a razor cuff-tucked above my veins.

I have asked this while turning the pages of our life, rewinding scenes,

the film's travelogue of talking interiors.

Trust you? Trust this?

I survey scrupulous views using your flesh to write on as you've made scripts

from my soul. This pen then, the jetting ink, is the transfusion & tourniquet,

a hand solely of faith amid the lack, to put the life of my most true fingers in

as a pacifist's.

HOWLING MOON

Transistor:

all the good, the A.M. buzzing, all the nostalgia

songs for all the world's insomniacs

to croon with into the morning whose blueness

grows from peepers to sparrows, the wilderness

as cafe & this skylight, the main menu

where a lone wolf moon howls of breakwaters

& tidal sweeps, but does not devour

or find itself consumed by a thing.

I & the moon - we still have that much in common -

but where is the song for this, the one my headphones -

no - do not orchestrate, & why, for that, even in sleep,

I am still dancing, a wolf on hind legs?

MIST 3 A.M.

The droplets, these strands, are all 'n all a sort of necessity,

this luxurious coat of wet breaths replicating flesh

as second-hand skin. Here seconds & phantoms consort,

& one becomes them certain as the clear tears

parting in a gash for the shafts of moon.

Sun is another shift where dew flowers reveal gems

of the night's voices simply. Those messages heal us:

angels fallen & broken from boulevards split by the crash

of dreams lifting straight into fog.

Such coasts! Such assumptions!

Comb them for your spirit calling through the throng.

Comb them anticipating your song

carrying another's needed by the lessons

of living as membranous, as transparent-----

you, of the shell-sheen,

you, the dipped litmus scraped off for the coming morn.

JEFFREY ZABLE

THE HAWK

This friend of mine from junior high had a male hawk for a pet that he kept in the basement of his house. It was a huge creature with wicked eyes and a beak that reminded me of a razor.

When we went into his basement, I would always stand away from the bird as he made me feel very uncomfortable.

I don’t remember if his wings were clipped or not. What I did wonder---as he stared at me— was whether he knew that I was scared of him and that I didn’t like him in the least. While we looked at each other, I feared he might attack me.

Regarding this particular friend, I recall that we stopped getting together at some point, which could have been influenced by my not wanting to be around the bird, as my friend always checked in on him before we took the back stairs into the main part of his house.

At this point I no longer even remember the guy’s name and have a murky picture of his face, but I can picture the bird fairly clearly and wonder if he’s still alive-- though I admit that I don’t know anything about the longevity of this type of animal.

What I do know is that if he’s still around he’s got to be at least sixty in human years...

A BIT OF REDEMPTION

Driving toward the freeway entrance in a pouring rain I see this guy standing in the middle of the street, while cars are driving by.

He’s bent over and his body seems to be shaking. He has a hood over his head so that I can’t see his face, but what I do notice is that his clothes are threadbare. He is obviously homeless, and my first thought is that he’s desperate to be standing there like that, as aside from catching pneumonia, he could easily get hit by a driver that didn’t see him at first.

As the traffic slows down a bit, I pull out my wallet and see that I have a bunch of twenties, one five and three ones. Handing the ones to my wife I tell her to give them to the guy, which she does when we are alongside of him.

Then when I’m almost at the freeway approach I say to her, “What the hell is wrong with me! Why didn’t I give him the five in my wallet as well. I sure hope that other people help him out.”

“Too late to go back now!” she says, “But at least you gave him something!”

While driving on the freeway I’m feeling sad and a bit guilty, while trying to imagine what it must feel like to be standing out there in a pouring rain like that—and homeless to boot. It isn’t until my wife starts talking to me about something that I stop thinking about the guy.

After spending a few hours in Berkely shopping at two different stores that we go to periodically, we head back home. It’s no longer raining and though it’s cold outside, the sun is out.

Just as I’m about to get off the freeway, I see the same guy standing there, recognizable by his clothes. I can clearly see his face now. He’s a haggard looking, bearded guy who’s probably in his fifties. He’s still bent over and his body is visibly shaking.

Realizing this is my chance, I quickly pull out my wallet, and seeing that I still have a few twenties, I hold one in my left hand until I drive up alongside of him.

Opening my window I hand him the twenty, which he looks at for a moment as if he can’t believe it.

“Thanks, my friend!” he says in a voice that is barely discernable.

“Good luck!” I say, even though I’m already past him, soon to be home...

GRSTALT COMMS

HIDES

I was crazy into The Glory Hounds. I’ve watched every episode loads of times. I had all the Funko Pops in my den (still boxed). I made it my mission to get to the Hound Grounds that summer for the Snarl Festival. I saved up all year so we could get privilege passes.

I couldn’t sleep for weeks before. It got to be a problem. The doc gave me some pills. I had some epic dreams where I was Lord Pinscher doing battle with the Mongrel Hordes.

When we got there, we flashed our privilege passes and went through the separate entrances – I went through the ‘Warrior’ entrance and Grace took the kids through the ‘Dependents’ entrance (the Glory Hounds universe has a traditional family structure, which was one of the things I found so refreshing, that it wasn’t trying to shove anything down my throat).

I changed into my costume. I’d had them custom made for us all. I was Lord Pinscher (obviously), Grace was Lady Pinscher and the kids were Ruff and Tumble. It was soft and ventilated. There were pockets for weaponry. I had a bone lance (limited run of 200).

As soon as I got out on the Grounds, I could see people were checking me out. They came up to get pictures taken with me. One bloke took a particular interest. He had his own bespoke costume. He was Duke Airedale (who is a subordinate of Lord Pinscher, but is popular with a certain set of the fanbase). This bloke started following me, asking loads of questions, so I used my privilege pass to skip the queue for the Arena. I texted Grace my combat time.

I was fighting a Nodrulle (a stumped-legged black barrel with slit eyes and a round drooling mouth – the Hounds did battle with them in Season 6). The Arena was an exact recreation of the one from the show, a caged circle surrounded by terraces. Grace and the kids were stood in the Dependents’ Section. On the front row of the Warriors’ Section I could see a line of five blokes with privilege passes in the Duke Airedale costume. One of them waved at me.

They let the Nodrulle out of the cage (it was a very realistic model). It tried to get away, but I lifted it over my head and Grace took a photo. I slammed it and mounted. I took out my bone lance and punctured it in five places. It bled out on the sawdust. Two handlers carried it out (they’d skin the carcass and use it to make an exclusive jacket I got to take home).

I was getting changed when the five Duke Airedales came in. They said they were impressed by my performance, and they wondered if I wanted to come to a party they were having in the woods that night. But I had to come in my costume, and one of them stroked it while it was hanging on the peg. I told them I was taking Grace out to eat, and they laughed. One of them said the whole point of being on the Grounds was to let yourself go wild for a few days, test your limits as a man. I said thanks, but I had to pay Grace back for letting me come.

They followed me the whole time I was there. One of them was always hanging around when I took one of the Mettle Assessments, just watching. On the last day I told Grace we were checking out early, and we took the kids to the water park we’d seen on the bus ride in.

EDWARD LEE

Blinded By Sight

Damage Done

Some Idea Of

Blinded By Sight

1/5

Damage Done

Tender, After

Blinded By Sight

Damage Done

1/5

Tender, After

Submerged

Damage Done

Tender, After

1/5

ELLE BOYD

THE WALK

Every day he walked the five kilometres between his friend’s apartment in Fairview and the mobile soup kitchen downtown.

The morning walk was not very taxing; it was all downhill. Coming home was more of a challenge, especially once he hit the steep hills of Fairview. He supposed Fairview once did have a fair view of the city, before all the apartment and condo buildings sprouted up and blocked it.

He much preferred the soup kitchen to the food bank. The food bank only allowed visits once per month per person and you had to provide them with your personal information so they could ensure you weren’t cheating. He’d heard that they tracked your activity online once they had your information and sold it to third parties for a big profit, but he wasn’t sure he believed that. Either way, he hadn’t been to the food bank for a long time. Like most people, he had to eat more than once a month. The soup kitchen asked no questions, collected no information, and even gave you frozen soup to take home with you. Two meals a day for free. You couldn’t beat that.

Each morning at eight o’clock he left his friend’s apartment and began his walk. Rain or shine, wind or snow. Only if the temperatures were unusually low or if there was a blizzard and everything was closed would he stay home. He only had a denim jacket, a pair of jeans and old sneakers to wear. If the weather was cold he would wear extra socks and his friend would lend him a heavier jacket. He had an old grey duffle bag from Before with some well-worn t-shirts and underwear, as well as another pair of old sneakers and a hand cream he’d stolen from a drug store. His hands were always chapped and dry. He should have stolen mittens.

He carried a thin black wallet in his back pocket that only contained a creased picture of his son, Shawn, and a driver’s license that had expired fifteen years ago. He’d never owned a car anyway, and he had no use for ID anymore. Sometimes he would duck into the library downtown to warm up or get out of the sun for awhile, depending on the time of year. Without a library card he couldn’t check out a book, so he’d choose one that caught his eye on the shelf, sit down and read for awhile, then return it to the shelf and hope it was there next time he stopped in. He gravitated toward philosophy. Even if he didn’t understand everything he read, something about the flow of theories and ideas reminded him of a warm stream bubbling over rocks worn smooth over time.

His friend tried to help him get a real job so he could get his own place and “be responsible for himself,” as his friend put it. But he knew this may never happen. He hadn’t yet found a job he could work full-time, five days a week, forever and ever. He tried, though, for his friend, who found him overnight work at a bakery just down the hill. He didn’t mind the physical labour of it, he didn’t mind the smell of baking dough (he loved it), he didn’t even mind his co-workers, some of whom were loud and boisterous and wouldn’t stop talking. It was the same as all the other jobs: the manager. He couldn't take the manager. Thinking she knows best. Do things her way. Her smile looked more like a snarl. He tried, really tried to stick it out, to struggle along with the yoke weighing down his shoulders, but eventually he was moved to casual and only worked once or twice a month when someone called in sick or didn’t show.

He’d yet to meet a manager he could work with. Power-hungry, they were all power-hungry.

His friend had been making noises lately of wanting to move his girlfriend in, but there wasn’t room for the three of them in the apartment. He had to think of something before he found himself homeless, really homeless, stuck downtown every night with the drunks and the tweakers and the nutjobs. He liked the idea of going into business for himself, but he had no idea what he would do.

Every day he walked past the junior high school from which Shawn was about to graduate and move on to the big high school. Every day he hoped to catch a glimpse of his son, and sometimes he did see him running into the school, big grey school bag bouncing on his back. He didn’t dare approach him or go on the school grounds; he’d done and said some things Before that would make that impossible. He had no excuse; he hadn’t been high or drunk, just angry and stupid. He’d never been good at following orders or doing what others tell him. And look where it got him.

Today he felt the pressure. He felt the pressure of needing things, money, a place of his own. He felt the pressure of his friend wanting him out and the girlfriend in. As he approached the school, he felt the pressure of no family, no security. No nothing. Today was a grey and misty day but still he stopped outside the school and stood at the driveway to the teachers' parking lot and waited. Small cliques of kids milled about on the lawn in front. He looked for Shawn and spotted him with three other boys, all laughing and chattering. When did he get so big? He thought of how small Shawn was in the photo in his wallet. He wished he had a camera so he could take a new one.

He stood and waited, hoping for ... recognition? A smile? A wave? He wanted to call Shawn’s name, but he couldn't. That would bring unwanted attention. So he waited.

Shawn finally did see him, stared at him, smile fading, his friends following his gaze, probably wondering who this strange guy was standing on the sidewalk watching a bunch of kids.

His throat tightened as he managed a half-smile and a half-wave. After a moment, Shawn gave a half-smile in return, then turned his back and went into the school. His friends followed, looking over their shoulders as if to ensure the strange guy remained on the sidewalk.

The bell rang and all the kids made their way to the entrance and through the doors until he was left standing by himself looking at nothing. But inside he was looking at something, something he’d completely forgotten even existed, it had been so long. Maybe he couldn’t be anything, but his son could be anything. Shawn had a future, an unblemished future, and it could take him anywhere. Shawn could be anything at all, even own his own business, even move to another country. His son had promise, and that gave him promise, and that put a full smile on his face as he continued on his way downtown to the mobile soup kitchen.

WILLIAM DORESKI

HEAVY METALS

Slit of moon through which I peer. Beyond, a cascade of heavy metals: cadmium, lead, arsenic, chromium. The new life-forms will base their metabolism and derive their DNA from these elements rather than carbon. I wish I could step through the moon-slot and enter this brazen new world, but the hole isn’t big enough. The new creatures will bear impenetrable armor and therefore be immune to war. Their brains will polish themselves gleaming. Their digestive tacts will process rocks and most minerals without difficulty. They will form societies based on imperturbable manners. No flimsy muciloids, these tough critters. Pre-fossilized they’ll extend the notion of life indefinitely, and when they travel to other galaxies will bring their case-hardened positions of unassailable political confidence. Their stainless exteriors will woo the flightiest maidens with orgasmic gestures grinding like unoiled gears.

STATIC

Static on the radio. Snow sliding off the roof, metallic piano notes struck and interspersed. You’ve withdrawn to bed, your old complain complaining. I’m another old complaint, but I’m silent. The static speaks for me. The snow speaks for someone else. The piano notes speak for God. Although I believe in snow, I don’t believe in pianos anymore. I used to. Once I performed in public. I played a famous sonata. I struck every note squarely without hesitation. Beethoven might have approved, or maybe he would have wrapped me in his deafness and smothered me. I’d ask you what you think, but you’re prowling a book I’ve never read, a sociological study of a town in Alabama famous for its frights and racial overtones. The radio never reports the news because I keep it tuned to innocence. Sometimes Harvard students interrupt the music to chat about sports. They’re knowledgeable and charming, so I don’t mind. You dislike them. You’d send them to Alabama for a good licking. Beethoven would surely approve.

DOGS ALWAYS KNOW

I read in a book that you get smaller when you die. But other events shrink people as well. Like paddling a canoe a long distance upstream. Or quarreling with your dog. Size doesn’t matter, we learn when we’re middle-aged. Size is only the perception of size. Death is only the perspective of the living. Dead people may not know they’re dead. The book I was reading doesn’t promise any great beyond. It only notes the loss of mass that renders us fit for burial. I’ve spent many hours canoeing upstream. But I don’t have a dog. If I did, I would never quarrel with it. Dogs are always right about everything. They’ve perfected their senses. Except for sight, which they don’t rely on as much as we do. They sense things we don’t even know exist. When we grow smaller dogs know whether that’s from death or from some lesser event. They always know, but they don’t always tell us.

ANNA BRAND

BABY TEETH

My doctor said my breathing tube is just a little too small, so when I was five they ripped out my tonsils and cauterized me to stop the bleeding.

Today I still can't catch my breath.

I'm running anyway-

Passed the tall trees on campus that drop

chestnuts the size of golfballs across the south lawn

and the Sinclair Gas Station on Central Park Ave

$3.49 a gallon.

Passed the rivers, rocks, an old piano-

Stop and play some music on its rusted strings

and old broken keys made from the ivory of some innocent creature.

Give it a kiss, thank it for what it's given you.

I know a girl who carries around her baby teeth

in a little plastic bag like lucky charms.

I never believed in the tooth fairy, I’d rip my own teeth out for the profit, I remember crying when I swallowed the first one while chewing on a candy bar.

But I don’t miss my baby teeth and I’m still running.

Passed the little park where I used to toss bread

to the ducks on the water

Passed the oak tree, the rope

that dangled from its branches.

I remember asking my parents if I could keep my tonsils -

Store them in a jar, let them live in a on a shelf in my room,

Collecting dust until maybe someday

I would need them again.

Some things arent worth holding on to.

I dont know where I'll end up but for now I'm going forward.

Towards the cemetery, towards the back

with a shovel and a bag of piano keys and baby teeth.

Dig up the ground, give them a kiss, thank them what what they’ve given you,

And bury them.

KITCHEN

If it's not burning your hands it's not hot enough

I look down at my bright red fingertips, wrinkled and raw

A night spent in front of the kitchen sink,

rinsing away the remnants of my reheatable dinner

I turn off the faucet and dry my hands on the

coffee stained cloth hanging from the cabinet

The ground is covered in crossiant flakes and pita chip crumbs,

Pieces of hair, dirt from the bottom of our shoes

A wooden table top, an empty prosecco bottle

Daisies blooming from the top of its throat

The windowsill, half cut lemons, a mesh bag of

Mini clementines and a bouquet of tulips from Trader Joes

The knives are in the right hand drawer,

The cups in the upper right cabinet

I am in front of the kitchen sink,

Waiting for my hands to cool

The teapot whistles on the gas lit stove,

as I lift and pour, heat spills across my palms

If it's not burning your hands it's not hot enough

I lean over the cup and watch the water darken brown

One more bad day and I am going to bury myself down the drain,

And if anyone wants to get me out, they’ll have to call maintenance.

HERE IS NEW YORK

Women flashing their nipples at the NYPD; young girls bumming cigarettes off men on the streets, their dogs. Dancing under flashing red/blue/red/orange/green light. Puking in a Starbucks bathroom. Cracking of knuckles, the hum of the subway in the middle of the night. Tampons- overpriced at the Walgreens on the corner of 42nd and 5th. Sweat, swearing, sex and love, intimacy/divorce/poverty. Oh what a world! Said the pigeons picnicing on garbage on 36th. Car exhaust, human hair, loose teeth, Urgent Care. Big screens, half naked men in Abercrombie boxers; a plastic bag filled with milk cartons. Car horns, stray rats, stained concrete, $7.99 ashtrays at the tourist shop. Over-policing. Under-funding :( Vacant apartment complexes. Anti- homeless architecture. America runs on Dunkin! A man in a massive fur coat; cocktail dresses and walking shoes. Weed-World buses, dirty fingernails, squirrels munching on bread crumbs and raw tips. Single living- double homicide. Night life/night lights/pocket knives/white flight. Artists leave their marks on exposed brick, portraits of women painted by men. A vine covered Methodist church on 14th, a sign: ALL are welcome here. Horns, honking, more honking- middle fingers, window cursing, rear ending. Corner shops, coffee shops, mini marts, shopping carts. Rust, broken pipes, the hot water isnt working again! Black Lives Matter. Trickle-down doesn’t work. Clusters of young people outside the roastery in Chelsea. A small dog humping a larger one at the Madison Sq dog park. A pigeon's massive dick. The American Dream! No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.1

1 E.B White, Here is New York

JEFF GALLAGHER

ECHOLALIA

what is it

with these poems

that are scattered

like litter

on the page

that make shapes in

ill formed doodles

like a drunk Leonardo

writing lyrics

for the stage

who is it

that decides

if what is written

should be praised

to the skies

if the ramblings

of a sad heart

should qualify

as a poem

in their eyes

where is it

written down

that random words

in a collage

thrown together

the esoteric

imagery oozing

from an ill disciplined

pen should be

seen as clever

how is it

an editor’s wise

nod of approval

marks down this work

as impressive

a publisher’s new

broom sweeps this mess

into a chapbook

mostly unread but

marked ‘progressive’

AND!

why is it

my profound grands

oeuvres composed

in perfect form

are either slated

exiled from your club

for being too smart

while disjointed aching

shapeless emotion

is celebrated

???

which is it

editor do you only choose

minorities or tattooed

women who always look

drunk or pallid

is it just a given

arrangement of words

on the page that

floats your boat and makes a poem

valid

!!!

whose is it

oh that one again

let us grace his inbox

with some brief helpful

feedback in reply

the editors regret

they cannot enter into

any detailed correspondence

but these are the wings that

make a poem fly

when it is

catching the eye

like a sharp thorn

pulling a thread

as it passes on your way

like a crying child

a neglected love

a pleading hand

or a bullet it has

something important to say

FEATURING

Your changing face and geometry

are catalogued and displayed

in kitchen galleries held together

with push pins and string.

Your movements, your clumsy attempts

at clowning, are shown unedited

in the world’s smallest cinema, built

for an audience of one.

Your memoirs: from that first masterpiece -

a stick man christened ‘Mummy’ -

to the poise and patient calligraphy

of your long letters home.

Your urgent hieroglyphic messages

that no one could decipher:

till you spelled out the bleeding obvious

to that ghost in the mirror.

Your tears, hatred, anger, expressions

never permitted to your public,

featured only in those rejected spools

on the cutting room floor.

Your smile remained - a performance

for the camera, which loved you -

as your face became your fortune

and was lit by shadows.

Your image is on every frame - but

it was only when I held you close,

and could not see the faces you made,

that I knew you were real.

JOHN GREY

THE WORLD OUTSIDE WHERE IT BELONGS

I am awake,

fingers slow burning

as they grip hot coffee,

heart, a Geiger counter

finding love in your still sleeping body,

and, on the other side,

brain pecking through

the grievances

already assembled

in my thoughts,

in the newspaper glaring

from my laptop.

The world is a sorry place

but the people in it

find such comfort

in nothing more than

a shape in the sheets,

a soft breath contesting

the solid headwinds of my own.

Strangers die

but loved ones live.

Soldiers kill

but no harm comes

to those in bedrooms.

Soon, you too will

rouse from sleep and dreams,

reconvene with what keeps

you up at night:

the wars,

the inequalities,

the murders, the rapes,

the homeless

in their winter blues.

It's a dangerous world.

We are safe.

Life turns ugly.

We are beautiful.

Others are what we read about.

We're what we believe.

THE MOST WILLFUL OF BODIES

T/W: VIOLENCE, BODILY HARM, DEATH

The body won’t listen.

It’s cut open in places.

It’s writhing on the ground

and splashing blood everywhere.

Dammit, body,

it was just a knife.

It’s not like it was an a-bomb.

But the legs have to kick,

the face contort,

and the hands won’t stop

grabbing at the chest.

So, some guy stabbed it.

A weirdo with a blade.

The city’s full of weirdos.

A body should be used

to that by now.

But no, it’s acting like

it’s never been stabbed before.

And now it’s hardly moving.

It refuses to get up from the sidewalk.

Dammit, body.

I buy you nice clothes.

What else do you want?

PAUL LEWELLAN

ELIJAH AND THE WIDOW

“When the creek dried up, God told Elijah, ‘I’ve

found a place in Sidon. A widow who lives there

will feed you.’” --1 Kings 17:7-8

I blame Ahab Son of Omri, Husband of Jezebel, Champion of Evil. First he built a Samarian temple to worship Baal, then he erected a shrine for The Sacred Whore Asherah. What else could I do, I confronted the king. “You’ve pissed off The God of Israel. Climate change is coming. Fierce winds, extreme heat, dust storms, and drought. No rain until further notice. Expect Canadian wildfires and a critical hops shortage. Craft brewers despair!”

The king invited me to stay for supper. He promised crab cakes, a spinach salad, and prime rib. Lava cake for dessert. I crawled out the unisex bathroom window instead. You don’t have to be a prophet to know Ahab would kill the messenger.

Let me say a few words about my occupation. Prophet work requires the ability to speak with divine beings, insight into future events, a fine moral sense, and a high pain threshold. Prophet positions aren’t posted on LinkedIn, Snag a Job, SimplyHired, or Career Builder. The Boss approached me directly, the whole burning bush business, all captured on neighbors’ cellphones. As I explained to Fire Company #6, “I couldn’t refuse.” Besides, I was recently divorced and between positions.

My blues band The Rocking Ravens broke up after we cancelled our Midwest tour because of the pandemic. My adjunct teaching position had been eliminated by budget cuts. My choices? God’s Prophet or personal shopper at Food Giant. Tough call.

After escaping King Ahab I camped out in Kerith Canyon on the other side of Jordan. A brook provided fresh water. I caught crows for food. That got old quickly.

There are only so many ways to serve crow. You can keep it simple and roast the bird in a bag with fresh herbs, carrots, onions, and parsnips. Or breast out the crow to brine it overnight, then sauté it. Or fry garlic cloves in bacon fat, then add the meat rolled in seasoned flour, add a touching of cider to the skillet. Tasty. But still crow.

When the brook dried up, I complained to Upper Management.

“Go to Zarephath in Sidon,” The Boss said. “A widow will feed you.”

That’s how I met Blanche and her son Barnabas. Cute kid. He was six when I arrived, nine by the time I had to leave. He called me Pop. Best three years of my life.

You know the story. I arrived at Blanche’s place hungry. She’d built a small fire to bake a biscuit for Barnie and another for herself using the last of her flour and oil. After the meal she would wait for starvation to take them. They were walking skeletons. I could count Barnie’s ribs. Climate change had taken its toll. Famine doesn’t just happen. I warned people.

Everyone had a piece of the blame. Kings, queens, and princes, powerful men and women on corporate boards and in executive suites, fossil fuel flacks, frackers, clear cutters, strip miners, all ignored my warning. Ironically, they would be the last to feel the effects of the famine. Ahab in his palace wasn’t missing a meal. It was the people on the lowest echelons–dog groomers, line cooks, Uber drivers, custodians, and hair stylists like Blanche–who suffered.

I asked her to make me a biscuit. (The Boss’s idea.) A test of the widow.

When Blanche brought it, she’d fixed her hair and put on lipstick. I told her to fix something for herself and Barnie. “Easy for you to say,” she hissed, thinking of the meager remains in her pantry.

I took her hand. “As long as the drought continues, your flour jar will never be empty, your oil jug will always be full.”

She snatched her hand back. “Right, and I’m Queen Jezebel.” Blanche stormed off, but stopped just short of the kitchen door. “You can stay,” she said without turning to face me, “but I’m not going to have sex with you.”

I didn’t argue. Hey, I’m a prophet. A good one. I knew how the widow and I would spend the next three years. The jar would never be empty, nor the oil jug, nor the widow’s bed.

I taught Blanche how to raise herbs and use them in her cooking. I taught Barnie chess and how to cheat at blackjack. He learned to snare pigeons and partridges. No crows. And when The Boss called me back to end the drought and right injustice, you know, super hero stuff, it was an amiable parting. We still text.

Barnie will leave for the university soon. I convinced him business analytics is the career of the future. Blanche is still cutting hair. She’s added a second chair to her studio. I’m thinking about retirement, maybe somewhere near Zarephath in Sidon. Blanche isn’t opposed to the idea.

ALICIA TURNER

GOODNESS GRACIOUS

grow with me,

not against me.

Don’t mistake me as a vessel for your voyage.

Let me expand on my own terms.

In terms of pre-existing paranoia,

I confess that becoming more conscious

is harder than falling asleep,

like, how, last night,

I had a dream that the

stem of a plant was

break ing through

the flesh

of my finger,

like a splinter unmakes

what’s made.

You pinch me awake

and I tell you that

“I didn’t even water it or wait for it to grow,” no —

“I tore the greenery from the root of my index finger”

and pointed blame

for it being so poorly-planted,

a lackluster, lucid garden

of off-season growth.

On this structural axis,

I am off-kilter.

“And perhaps, worst of all,

the ̶s̶o̶u̶l̶ soil solidified what I’ve always known to be true:

I can’t even keep

a plant alive.”

BETWEEN A BREATH AND A TEXT [BAD ADVICE] (AFTER NICHOLAS BARNES' DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT [BAD ADVICE])

bite the hand that feeds you.

curse the man who loves you for loving you.

be afraid of the dark because you’re

bad at subtracting,

bad at swallowing things down.

swallow your words more than you should.

should you get asked to hang out, hang up the phone

and call it loneliness.

stifle tears at poetry that turns your

porch light on.

stare into the darkness until the darkness stares back.

have a starring contest and lose.

blink once if you’re terrified and be terrified of trying.

salute your s̶o̶l̶u̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ salty wounds.

save the date and miss the party.

throw a pity party – invite no one.

miss out on moments that make you.

be scared to unlatch silk salutations.

accept that he broke you like a fever, and, well,

his hair, it might grow,

and you will grow to forget his feverish origins.

be ashamed to be at a loss for a subject.

subject yourself to public scrutiny.

scrutinize yourself for caring.

scissor the thread of fate.

bite to break skin.

WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU (HOLDING WATER)

Sometimes I am the loneliest tea cup

at the antique shop

but only when I shrink for you,

lower my voice

make the words that roll off my tongue

more palpable,

less-bitter–

maybe even mistaken

for sweetness.

What I mean is:

There is

no dimming me.

I will not be lukewarm

to the touch.

I am all running—

water me down and I will drown

because a drop in the ocean

is still the ocean

What I mean is:

I am limitless with you

or I am limited.

CJ THE TALL POET

A DINO TOY FOR MY POODLE

NINE'S UGLY ROLLERBLADE

A DINO TOY FOR MY POODLE

1/2

NINE'S UGLY ROLLERBLADE

A DINO TOY FOR MY POODLE

NINE'S UGLY ROLLERBLADE

1/2

A DINO TOY FOR MY POODLE

NINE'S UGLY ROLLERBLADE

A DINO TOY FOR MY POODLE

1/2

KEVIN MACALAN

SORRY I'M LATE

The uncharacteristically warm May sun shimmered from the 46a’s red roof. Three stops from Phoenix Park the bus thrummed patiently as Dubliners disembarked, and, bathed in sunshine, made way on foot along the tree-lined street past grand residences with vast sash windows. Behind one such third floor window, curtained against the daylight, but cracked open to allow a billowing breeze freshen the room, Siobhan sat, her slender back exposing a soft trail of dainty vertebrae rising up from the cotton-sheeted mattress to the nape of her graceful neck. She clutched a summer duvet to her bosom, her head tilted in a quizzical pose leaving one shoulder bare, the other drenched in dark glossy trestles.

“Are you trying to tell me that nobody, in the history of cinema, has ever come close to making a faultless time-travel movie?” she leant back onto the pillow and looked up at Archer. Her hair parted revealing a youthful face with smiling green eyes. Almost as if it was an afterthought, she challenged the arrogance of his claim with a dramatically fixed glare.

“Well I haven’t seen them all!” Archer braced himself for a poke in the ribs which Siobhan duly delivered. “And, in my defence I missed the first eighty years of cinema, but every time-travel film I’ve ever seen falls foul of at least one paradox.”

“Blah de blah de blah,” Siobhan wrinkled her button nose and feigned a yawn. “Professor party-pooper strikes again… Well, I love them… Back to the Future, The Terminator, Looper…”

“Interstellar?” Archer mocked.

“OK, Interstellar not so much, but it was an intriguing idea.”

“Whose very core was a cause and effect paradox.”

“Can we agree on something?” Siobhan shifted position so that she and Archer were sat in bed facing each other. “I’m the actress, you’re the physicist. I’m Penny, you’re Leonard…”

Archer shifted uncomfortably, his brow asked a question.

“From The Big Bang?” Siobhan looked exacerbated. “From the telly? Ok, ok, I’m Marion and you’re Albert…”

“I don’t know that they ever…”

“Uh uh!” Siobhan interrupted fiercely. “Don’t go there. Romance and story-making mine, dry and dusty detail yours. I’m sure Marion didn’t criticise Albert’s grasp of the space time continuum…” Archer smiled approvingly at Siobhan’s use of the term. “And Albert shouldn’t be looking for plot holes in Some Like it Hot.”

“Was there time-travel in that?”

“Didn’t you see it? Jack Lemmon was a musician from the future who travelled back in time to prevent a mob hit…” Archer was hooked, he leant forward intent on every word. “No there isn’t!” Siobhan exploded with laughter. “It’s not only modern cultural references that are lost on you, is it?”

Archer shrugged his shoulders and slumped back. “Well, anyway, it’s just as well that isn’t in the story, because the classic going back in time to correct a negative event is a paradox in waiting.”

Siobhan took Archer by both hands, “Ok prof, say your piece.”

Archer sat up with renewed enthusiasm. “Cause must precede effect. Actions are motivated by impulse, thus the impulse to do something must precede the action… er… if… for instance… you burnt down the house and that motivated you to build a time machine to go back and hide the matches…”

“Nice plot,” encouraged Siobhan.

“Well, the burnt house motivated the action of building the time machine… er… cause before effect… ok so far… but once you go back and hide the matches we have a problem.”

“We do, do we?” laughed Siobhan. “But we also still have a house!”

“Which is another problem. First paradox is the cause for hiding the matches happened in the future… it was the burned down house… which isn’t burned down when the matches are hidden, so effect precedes cause. In this new timeline we have an unmotivated act. What’s more, as you pointed out, we still have a house… but… er… if you remember… it was the burned down house that motivated you to build the time machine.”

“So now I won’t build the time machine.”

“Exactly.”

“But I don’t need to… I still have the house.”

“No, no,” Archer became animated. “You only have the house because you built the time machine. The natural course of events was acted upon by the time machine being built. If it isn’t built there’s no going back to hide the matches… and…”

“No house.” Siobhan dropped her shoulders slightly. Her face surrendered briefly to an acquiescent grin, but quickly her green eyes resumed their indomitable sparkle and her whole face brightened, “So Interstellar was truly rubbish!”

Archer smiled. Siobhan turned her back to him and leant into his body as she explained what he already knew. “Matthew McConaughey can’t have been the motivation to make himself go into space because he was already in space when he was leaving those messages!”

“One of the worst cause and effect paradoxes in filmmaking history…” confirmed Archer.

“And is that why you couldn’t build a time machine to go back and get to my birthday party before it had finished?”

Archer flinched, “Er yes… I’m sorry… that er…”

“I was late.” Added Siobhan, still smiling, but finishing Archer’s apology for him. “You always are, but ‘sorry I’m late’ should be your catch phrase. We should put it on your grave…” Siobhan started to laugh as the pun about ‘being late’ dawned on her, but instantly she sensed Archer tense beneath her and abruptly her laughing stopped. She turned to face him and ran her hands through his short grey hair. “I’m so sorry… that wasn’t funny,” she kissed him gently on the face. “We’re gonna live forever, remember? Age is only a number.”

Archer’s funeral was a sombre affair, and sparsely populated. Of the five colleagues in attendance, two had mistaken the grieving beauty in black to be the late physicist’s daughter, two had failed to exchange any words with her at all, and the other, a woman of about Archer’s age, had barely concealed her loathing disproval of Siobhan’s very existence. Siobhan, dignified beyond her years, was distraught. The eulogy she had written was read for her by a friend, Kelley, a fellow actress, who emoted Siobhan’s loss beautifully. But as Siobhan listened to her own words, agony and anger grew equally within. Pain and privation were wrung from the depths of her heart to the surface of her tear-stained face, but indignation lurked too. How could her Archer have made such a mess of their story? Details were his thing, and yet here she was presiding over his empty-casket funeral because he had been so reckless as to not only die, but to vaporise his body in the process. The service over, Siobhan excused herself from the wake she had organised and asked that Kelley drove her home.

The house seemed cavernous, cold, not at all the safe retreat filled with love and wonder where she and Archer had found the germ of a love so pure that it thrived without light, it grew without space, and it flourished without display.

“Are you going to be alright. I’m not sure I should leave you alone.” Kelley hovered hesitantly in the kitchen. Siobhan sat stricken at the empty breakfast bar. “I’m alright, Archer’s with me,” seeing a worried look in her companion’s eyes, Siobhan softens. “It’s ok, I’m not in denial. Four years it took, four years for Archer and I to get to the point where we had a life together, a home, an understanding...”

“You were great together,” Kelley’s eyes watered. “I never understood why the world struggled to see it.”

“Well Archer feared his mortality far more than I ever did. But those dry and dusty details... I have nothing to worry about. He is taking care of me... the house, money, memories... they’re all mine.”

“He had life insurance?”

“Strangely no,” Siobhan welcomed the mundane enquiry. “But he had money… I always wondered if that’s what others thought I was after.” Suddenly the mundanity slipped, insufferable loss suffocated Siobhan. Kelley held her.

“This pain,” Siobhan sobbed. “This is the price of love, and with every script I read, and every part I play, I will owe him.”

III

“Rarely does a career burn so bright for so long, rarely does a heart beat so strong or so true, and rarely, if ever, in the history of cinema has a performer been loved by so many, appreciated for such complexity, but known so simply as… Siobhan!” This soundbite bounced around innumerable media platforms as the globe’s social sharing frenzy ingested and regurgitated Siobhan’s second lifetime’s achievement Oscar. Siobhan herself, though reflective, was less pleased to be looking back. She sat alone in the house she loved, the retreat to which for decades she had always returned.

She read an article which included an interview she had given prior to the award ceremony. She was pleased that it had accurately reflected her thoughts. People struggled to accept her decision to age naturally, or, at least, more naturally than some others.

The world struggles with infinite youth and the potential of near immortality. And yet, in my first youth, I shared a lifetime of love in just four years. At a time in our history when it actually mattered to people that I valued experience over youth, I was mistrusted simply because I was young. Now everyone’s young forever, whom should we trust? I used to say age is just a number, now it isn’t even a number. Numbers are precise. Age is a vague concept, a notional measure of experience, or an itemised value on the menu of how you want to look. Age is not a sin; it’s a privilege. So recently was it in our history that my life was dogged by ageism, that today I could add or remove from my face the years that have intervened overnight by going to the right clinic. I love life. I want it to be long and vital, but I still value experience over youth. I choose this look for myself. It is not a political statement.”

The doorbell chimed. The press and public knew better than to invade her private space. This had to be a friend. She stood to go to the door, and shook back her hair, as dark as the days of her youth, and as silken as time itself. It fell back revealing an experienced face with smiling green eyes. And that face greeted the caller at the door.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said.

Behind a third floor window, curtained against the world, but cracked open to allow a breeze freshen the room, Siobhan leant her back into Archer’s body. She listened, but didn’t care for the dry dusty detail, this was hers; this was romance.

“I had intended to travel through time, er… not space. I’ve had considerable opportunity to reflect on where I may have gone wrong. I believe I failed to take into account the gradual slowing of the Earth’s rotation and its axial shift. Anyway, needless to say some three dimensional displacement occurred simultaneously with the fourth.”

Siobhan shifted a little and nestled comfortably against Archer’s chest.

“I think it’s pure luck that I didn’t materialise in the Mariana trench or within a solid body,” Siobhan’s face surrendered briefly to a concerned frown, but quickly her green eyes resumed their indomitable sparkle.

“As it is, I was about twenty feet above the Simpson Desert; interesting, I can tell you, er… as was my journey home.”

“Nice plot,” encouraged Siobhan.

“It wasn’t my only mistake, er… I intended to arrive when we were both the same age... er… I think you’re a little older than me.”

Siobhan’s whole face brightened, “Age is only a number, she said, “and we’re gonna live forever…”

“By the way,” added Archer, “this is a time-travel story without a paradox.”

ALEX INNOKENTI KOLGANOV FOSTER

MDMA AND DEMONS

T/W: DRUG & ALCOHOL USE, VIOLENCE, ANXIETY, PROFANITY

The last stretch of 2022 I spent drinking through an array of clubs, house parties and bars with my mates. Sometimes it was with the university crew, clean-shaved international students dancing underneath neon club lights, exploiting their exotic accents stretching from Colombia to London to chat up pretty Aussie chicks.

More rarely I hung around my old schoolmates; their faces white, fixed through swirling vape mist as they downed another Carlton at the Hotel Westwood in Footscray before hitting a Saturday nightclub to get more pissed.

If I had to choose, a night spent with friendly, easy-to-make-laugh, uni students was better than hanging around the colder atmosphere of tight-faced schoolmates who preferred drinking over partying.

Either way, I was having the best year of my life. I felt alive, free, even though the alcohol and drugs flushed my memories from those wild nights, leaving only snippets of contextless scenes from one great movie full of colours, girls and shots.

Last night with my school friends was sort of like that.

After the cool clarity of The Hotel Westwood, Club Mango was like walking into a dark sauna. I hadn’t seen my schoolmates in 2 months, and my wallet was a pound lighter after spending so much on piss at Westwood. I stumbled through the thick flashes of purple light zipping across the room, bouncing off bottleneck glasses and tipsy faces shuffling through misty vape smoke and electric 2010’s beats without taking any of it in. Only my anxiety, a cold piercing voice in an otherwise sloppy drunk state, felt real.

It wrapped chains around me, tightening as skin-tensing intrusive thoughts bombarded me with things like: ‘Do you even fit in with your school friends anymore? You can’t make them laugh like you used to. Maybe the only really they bring you out now is because you remind themselves of a time when you were actually funny.’

So I head over to the bar.

One more shot to drown my thoughts out.

Let’s get one thing straight right now, shall we? I ain’t no slurring alcoholic, no fat-stomached beer gurgling bum, no hard-hitter of the bottle; only someone who drinks depending on the flowing situation. If everyone else is drinking I’ll crack a few cold ones, and if they're taking MDMA then hell, hand me my tablets.

It’s a social thing- which makes last night so unusual.

I was drinking as a coping mechanism.

My old mates had turned colder after high school. Or maybe hanging around warmer university students softened me up, I don’t know.

What I do know, however, is that the conversations I kickstarted at The Hotel Westwood last night went dry after a few sentences and my jokes ended in cold silence. So I became silent myself. It wasn’t really a choice, the words got caught in my throat and pushed back down by a single thought: I don’t want to come off desperate trying to make people laugh.

I say there tensely wondering if my silence would become noticeable among my friends cross-legged on high stools. They roared at each other's jokes, but each burst of laughter hit me as a reminder that they differed from me. They fitted in, I didn’t. And the more that thought bubbled in my over-stressed mind the more I felt like I needed to escape my anxiety.

When my hand waved over at the bartender I had been sitting with my back-arched over the wooden counter. A skinny man in bald-grey-jeans came over and got me two Steersmans, and I drank them while justifying drowning my anxiety in alcohol by employing the world-famous Hemingway Defence, which goes something like this: I’m a very stressed fellow, but I’m also a manly man. And true men deal with their problems by drinking them away. How else would we hide our growing anxieties without alcohol?

I was a stoic, swinging a beer as tough-guy-joe trying to drink away his anxieties rather than a university student whose stress got the better of him.

Hemingway might’ve been one hell of a writer- but his psychology left much to be desired.

Drowning anxiety with alcohol is like putting a fire out with petrol.

It really, really doesn’t work.

And enough petrol was burning inside of me that night to transform a stress-fueled bushfire into an apocalyptic red hell, where every second a barrage of kamikaze thoughts exploded into my mind sending waves of butterflies running through my guts.

The next memory I have after drinking at Westwood is dragging myself onto Mango’s dancefloor. There are two feelings I identify with this memory- the first being so drunk that everything around me had become one, swelling surreal mess that was outside of me.

The second feeling ties into the first, that the only other thing which felt real was this ugly, grey monster screaming inside my head. Its words, loud and piercing, were fists that punched hard into my stomach, sending waves of twisted butterflies exploding upon impact.

That’s why I danced. After Hemmingway, my next line of defence was employing Euphoria. Although never articulated (I made it up that night), Euphoria went something like this:

Like the cast of Euphoria, I’m a broken individual. But I’m also a handsome, young fellow who likes to party- and real party animals hide their anxieties by looking like they're having fun. Therefore I dance and take drugs to hide my pain from casual onlookers and friends alike.

I propelled myself across the dance floor, cutting moves I thought were straight outta Footloose, but probably looked more like a drunk stumbling down Footscray.

Either way, I was tearing up the club. Girls in their slimiest fits glanced at me through neon darkness, and blokes gave small grins to each other before bursting into controlled laughter.

But hell if I cared!

I was on fire, flames leapt from my feet, burning the anxiety away through air-slashing moves, sending bursts of euphoria rushing through my veins, exiling all the bad thoughts away.

That was until Theo Sapountis, who’d been with us since Westwood, shook me back to reality. I don't like Theo, he’s the epitome of what this group had become: cold, hard and tight.

When I first met him in 2016, he laughed at everything, always smiling through braced teeth and wearing that aqua blue school shirt 24/7. We got along then. But now his emotions were stone-cold. Flashing neon lights screwed into the lenses of his Top-Gun-style glasses, splashing vibrant club colours across his piercing dark eyes. Theo was pissed off: and when Theo is pissed off he looks frozen, teeth-gritting underneath tightened lips, but his voice pitched thick and strong.

‘Jesus Christ man, calm down! You're scaring off the hoes!’

He sounded muffled underneath booming urban mixes, as if I was listening to him through a thick plane of glass. But the glass wasn’t strong enough to ease the impacts of those heavy words. It cut through my drunk state, hitting me rock-hard and sending new ways of anxiety clogging up my throat:

What if I’m embarrassing myself? What if I’m looking desperate to have a good time in front of my friends?

I knew erratically dancing may have been embarrassing, but it sat in the back of my mind as fuel. Fuel doesn’t hurt until someone flicks a match and it explodes into swirling hot flames. And Theo’s words were a flamethrower that night, spewing red-hot fire onto flammable thoughts, making them jump from the back of my mind and engulfing me in stomach-tensing anxiety.

What if I’m looking desperate….

Mixed with the pound of alcohol bubbling in my guts, the anxiety spread fast, pushing me into the bathroom. I needed breathing room even if it was the shitter. 5 seconds of quiet time to recollect myself.

Four blank walls of plain neon white, fermented piss reeking from obsidian-black stalls skewered in chiselled graffiti, misty mirrors sitting above tap bowls full of lifeless orange vomit, floor hospital-style tiles with running urine snacking through their creases. That was the club's bathroom; hell on earth. But hell was the only place to recollect my thoughts.

I crashed onto a basin stuffed with thick tissues down its sink, hands gripping the side and tightening my eyes, gritting teeth. I tried focusing through the alcohol and crashing anxieties, but it was like running through a thick fog blindfolded.

Useless.

‘Yo man you alright?’

A voice.

My head snaps left and I see him. He was early 20s, and with a 70s porno moustache and mullet straight outta the Yankee deep south he looked like any other Aussie his age. The lifeless neon light reflected silvery patterns from his white-coloured work shirt, hanging loose above skin-tight black jeans. His face was pale, staring at me with slanted European eyes.

‘Yea nah just….’

‘Not feeling it?’

‘Yea.’

‘Well, I got something to get you feeling it again.’ His fingers dived through sharp-cut pockets, tumbling around before wielding back something like a fisherman catching a big one.

And his big one was a plastic zip lock bag full of caramel-coloured stones, broken up in zigzagged small shapes that sat in sharp positions.

‘This, this will get your shit together.’ He said, smiling white teeth.

I grin. ‘That MDMA?’

‘Hell yea it is! Best mother fucking shit a cunt can buy!’ His voice was wavy, electric, like a high-pitched salesman you’d see on TV, but selling drugs instead of the newest furniture. ‘Trust me mate, once you take this everything will be alright.’

Everything will be alright. That struck me, an arrow full of warmth sending reinsurance running through my veins.

My drunk state craved reinsurance, and that sentence was the best reinsurance an over-fried stressed kid like myself could get now. Desperate, I know. But desperate times call for desperate needs, and that’s exactly why I took it.

Hemingway, Alcohol, Euphoria, they all had failed me. My back was against the wall and I needed something, anything to throw at the flaming anxiety, even if it was bathroom MDMA. Besides, he’d said everything would be alright like a parent would. Why would a parent do anything wrong to me?

‘How much will this cost?’ I said putting some in my mouth.

‘Nah nothing mate, it’s on the house. You look like you need some.’

I paused, gave an eyebrow, and said:

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Your guardian angel.’ He said with a smile. ‘Now get back out there and enjoy the night. Not like you’ll remember any of it tomorrow.’

I wished that was true concerning what happened next.

I have a memory of being dragged out onto the streets by my mate Finn Buesst and a 6ft Bouncer dressed as Superwog. My numb arms wrapped around their shoulders and my feet pulled behind me. It feels like I’m watching this through a twisted kaleidoscope, exploding neon windows blurring with the brutal, grey outside city as they rest me against a cold wall. The kaleidoscope focuses on the swirling, grey silhouette of Finn Buesst and the Bouncer arguing while a snaking long line of kids in their best club fits are held back by a crimson rope on my left. A black-haired bouncer with a beard dropping to his man-boob’s checks a girl’s ID. A shot of Euphoria burst through my veins, piercing my heart and sending waves of intimacy screwing into this chick. I tried expressing my newfound feelings for her, but what comes out is a sluggish mess of words flowing from my drunken smile. I remember her staring at me with nervous, emerald pearl eye’s before a hand shocked me back to reality.

Theo. His angry, semi-pissed expression’s from before have drained away to reveal nervous eye’s above a caring smile.

‘Hey buddy, you alright?’ He says. Kai Martin and Ollie Barrichello stand behind him, blurring into two humanoid towers mystified by swirling patterns dancing across my eyes. Theo turned his head towards Finn and I hear:

‘Fucking hell, what did he take Finn?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, it definitely wasn’t just alcohol.’ Theo’s right hand dives into his wavy brown hair, pulling it back with gripping fingers.

‘Fucking hell man, what the fuck?’

‘MDMA?’ That’s Ollie. His crisp voice filtered through fuzzy, loud noises echoing everywhere. I can’t seem to locate where he’s standing anymore….

‘I had a mate from uni who mixed MDMA and alcohol together once, and he went fucking black. Like black, black.’

‘You sure he didn’t just eat your cooking?’ That’s Kai, sniggering. Kai got food poisoning from Ollie during a high school cooking program in 2019, and it became something of an inside joke between them.

‘Fucking ha ha.’ Ollie said coldly. ‘Look, best thing we can do here is get some food in him. That’s how we sobered up my uni friend.’

‘Long as we’re eating out and not your shit, I’m fine to go wherever.’ I hear Kai say as cold, foreign fingers whip me up from the floor. I don’t really remember what happened next- it’s like reading through a burnt photo album. Memories are twisted, torn and blackened by the raging alcohol and drugs- and I only remember small snippets filtered through blurry lenses.

One memory, and my strongest one from that night, is sitting on a plastic white chair outside a Kebab shop. Greasy windows flash the street pavement with harsh, neon light bouncing off twinkling tin foiled-wrapped kebabs, held by uni-students sitting on cheap plastic outdoor tables devouring them greedily. The cold-blue pavement below was showered with scrunched-up tinfoil, open polyester trays with crimson sauce stains, and cigarette butts. It’s a shitshow, but I never felt happier. The anxiety had been pumped out leaving only a wave of euphoria washing through my veins.

I’m happy!

That lasted till Theo followed by Kai, Finn and Ollie walked out of the kebab shop. I could see through my pissed drunk blurry vision that they each held a face of seriousness mingled with worry. And less metaphorically they held kebabs wrapped in creased, twinkling tinfoil.

It was Theo who approached me first.

‘Hey man, you good?’

Theo’s left hand, shaking me. He was bending over me dressed in a pair of tight black jeans and a brown shirt with four white stripes running down from his shoulder. I glanced at Theo’s other right hand, a cobra moving towards me with Turkish bread poking from glittery tinfoil.

‘Eat this.’ Theo said. He looked dead behind a fake, cold smile illuminated by harsh neon light. Condensed anger? I don’t know.

‘It’ll sober you up.’

I don’t wanna be sober. I don’t want the anxiety back.

I want to be in this moment.

‘I ain’t hungry.’

‘Dude eat it.’

‘I. Ain’t. Hungry.’

‘Come on man. You ruined our night. Just do one thing for us without fucking everything up?’ That’s Finn, standing arms crossed behind Theo, chin up and eye’s piercing into mine with cold anger.

‘Finn, I literally just said we weren’t gonna point fingers.’ Said Theo.

‘Fuck that!’ Finn snapped back. ‘You weren’t the one who had to argue with the bouncer ‘cause he was spasming all over the ground. You weren’t the one who dragged him out as he slobbered all over me. Fuck man, this cunt ruined our night. He’s fucking immature as shit! Like who the fuck takes MDMA from strangers!’

Each word punched me in the gut- but instead of anxiety bursting out, a wave of anger began bubbling through my veins. It was their fault for excluding me throughout the night, their fault for letting my anxiety tsunami over me.

Fuck! If only they laughed at my jokes or just acted a little damn more inclusive towards me ….

‘Not gonna lie Theo, Finn’s right.’ Said Kai. ‘This bloke is fucking spastic. I mean what if a cop finds us?’

My fists tighten up. It’s not….fair!

And I try telling them that, but it comes out as a sloppy slur stitched together by cursing:

‘Ierm fakuing peissed cant! I cuant control myshelf!’

‘That’s not the point.’ Said Finn coldly. ‘You ruined a good night. Ruined it.’

‘I cuant control myshelf!’

‘If you can’t control yourself don’t come along.’ That’s Ollie.

‘Get up.’ That’s Theo. ‘Just…. Get up. Come on man.’

I notice then that all four of them are towering over me. The crisp white Kebab shop light cast long black shadows across their cold, plain faces straining down at me judgementally. I feel entrenched, surrounded by giants crushing me underneath their stomping accusations.

Stomp stomp stomp stomp.

‘Get up.’

‘Fucking idiot!’

‘You ruined our nights.’

Leave me alone!!!!!

Stomp stomp stomp stomp.

‘Immature.’

‘Asshole!’

‘Drug addict!’

‘LEAVE ME ALONE!’

STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP.

‘Come on, get up!’ Theo’s hand grabs me- and that’s when I lost it. His fingers ignite all the anger, anxiety, pain and drugs boiling inside me, making them all explode together in a furious, raging choir of swearing and violence. I remember leaping up, grabbing the chair and John Cena-style throwing it against the Kebab window. It bounces back with a muffled thud, crashing onto a graveyard of tinfoil and polyester boxes spread across the pavement.

I’m blinded by pure adrenaline, and the rage is running through my veins. It’s like some monster had possessed me and I can only watch its trail of destruction. My hands Obelisked-and-Astreiked style smacked Finn’s HSP, sending a tsunami of kebab meat and chips covered in chilli mayo sauce exploding across his face before my fists joined in. My knuckles cracked against his forehead and the bloke was stumbling back. But before I deliver a second punch a forearm wrap around my neck.

‘Hold him down, hold him fucking down!’ A cold, distant voice screams.

Suddenly more hands are grabbing onto me, throwing me to the ground. Cold pavement rub’s my sweat-soaked shirt against my skin. Staring at me are six faces turned into black silhouettes by the harsh street light above. I feel their hands tighten around my body, like cobras.

‘Hey, hey man it’s okay.’ Says one of the six faces. He sounds like Theo. ‘Just relax man chill.’

‘I’m sorry if we pushed you man.’ Another face says ‘Jesus Christ Ollie, can you check if Finn’s alright?’

One of the shadows disappeared. I remember then feeling the alcohol, the anger, everything burning away into a single tight ball of guilt and embarrassment. It was like those few seconds of anger were fueled by all the trauma from that night. And now burnt out and gone, only an empty husk of a man remained.

I started crying. I just remember feeling so lost….

So empty. Flickery images of my disappointed parents, my friends never wanting to see me again, police being called.

The latter never happened, thankfully. A black Uber pulled up in front of the kebab shop instead of a cop car and took me home. I think one of my friends, maybe Theo, called it in. Not like I would know now anyway. None of those blokes invited me out afterwards.

Sure, we throw casual text here and there, mostly about if I’m okay (to which I always responded with a simple yes/no) but as my Instagram stories became non-existent, theirs exploded with pictures of night outs, flashy club lights reflecting the pupils of beautiful chicks, and a new guy I never met before. Maybe one of Ollie’s friends from TAFE.

My replacement.

I hate how they ostracised me for something they could never understand. Their Instagrams reflected a happy, cheerful life devoided of anxiety, anger, and stress which I wanted to participate in. And instead of dragging me out of the deep hole I’m in, they gave up when I hit a bump and found a replacement. Like I was a cheap plastic toy that could be easily replaced- now I’m left under the bed.

Forgotten.

My uni mates, my de facto and only mates, are drowning in assignments and work, so life as of 2023 is pretty uneventful. I joined a Brazilian jiu-jitsu club back in February 2023 to release the anger and betrayal boiling inside of me. To feel that wild, angry frenzy that burned away the anxiety during my sicko mode episode. But the anxiety is a tumour that doesn’t want to burn away. It’s now telling me I’m angry, an anti-social freak, and a loner who loses friends because of the bottle.

And for once, I actually agree with my anxiety.

I feel alone.

I miss my friends.

PANDORA IN THE THROAT OF ADAM

To shut doors is to trap

a grenade in your belly—

there'll be no hand to pull the pin.

—Elisha Oluyemi

Some sleeping dogs should never wake up. They are having a deep sleep because everyone has decided to pretend they never existed. Just recently, my father and I stirred up such a dog. It wouldn't easily stir awake. However, when it finally awoke, it gave off a faint whimper—and it was so cute it had a soft mouth that made it look like it would smile. My father thought the same. Nonetheless, it was a sleeping dog we woke. And we were afraid.

My mum held my father's hands as if after this evening, the night would come and go and leave behind nothing but some dark infinity—a blankness in which they'd never get to hold hands anymore. Dad would stand there without the faintest perception of what he initially thought was his perfect half. Mum would be a bag of wind there. No voice. No aura. Nothing to signal a wisp of life.

It is not interesting. It should never be.

My father, for some seconds, eased back a glance. I caught his gaze but looked away immediately. My eyes travelled across the vast spread of brown sand and over two lazy seagulls. I picked a grain of peanut burger and threw it at them. They struggled with it and flapped their wings. It was crazy to fight over such a thing. One of them could give it up for the other, but in a competition, each side often believes they have a stronger reason to win. A cause they'll bleed to keep alive. And that was one reason why everything began to seem interesting—right at this moment.

The seagulls were still struggling when I flitted back a glance at the parental couple who stood facing the beach where they first met, the Cabo San Lucas, their locked hands neither affected by the glacial yet refreshing breeze, nor by the inaudible ruminations of my straying mind. Mum didn't know it, the situation. No mother ever knows such. But as it is with the majority of secrets, a day of revelation is bound to come. Often brutal and transforming.

The wash of cold wind against my bare slender arms and legs felt just like Dad's touch when he'd cup my face in his hands, his hazel eyes boring into mine. We have the same eye colour—one more reason for our hearts to feel closer. The last time he did that, I could feel his breath against my face, my lips. And we gazed into each other's eyes for a long time, so that my hands eased upwards grazing his hands and cupping them as if to say, Don't let go, Dad; it's all I need.

He didn't approach me. Neither I him. We were just here on this path. And we were like many queers, needing some understanding, fearing the whispers. But when fate is bound to fuel a cause, everything happens in handsfree mode. The motion is set by whatever, and you're right there in the flow, getting washed down a destined end. Even when you struggle, the tides are on your both sides, hemming you in, so that you have nowhere to run. Oedipus Rex knows this better. Could he have helped it?

"Let's not think about it, Rosa," Dad whispered to me weeks ago, his thumb wiping off the trickle of tear straying down my jaw. "You and I… we can't let this happen no matter what. If we must pretend till it's all over, then pretend we must." He looked towards the door and back at me. "Even if it means me—"

"You won't leave because of this, will you?" I replied, gazing hard at him. His eyes wore a misty glimmer. "Dad?"

A frown tugged at his face, rendering him the more striking. "Is there a better way, Rosa. We both know it's outrageous… and we can't help it." He puffed a sigh and blinked hard, his voice becoming breathy. "See, I can only do the outrageous to keep this away?"

"By this, you mean—"

"I'm not saying I'll keep you away. I'm just..."

"I know..." I compressed my lips and nodded, trying not to look at him. "There's no better way." Unless we want to make the gods disappear. But we are no Monkey King, the great sage who fought and overturned the heavens. "Dad, if you leave… If you leave, Dad…"

"I'll go far away where you can't find me. Where we won't have to meet and think of something wild."

"What about Mum?"

"Will it matter if I stay? Things will turn worse, Rosa."

I turned away from him, wiping misty eyes with my palm. It was a hard decision to make. But affection is a strange thing, especially when it surges from the wrong places. Yielding is great. But the dogs are sleeping. And waking them is as portentous as throwing your arms wide at a hail of arrows.

"It's difficult, right?" I heard him say. And at that moment, his strong arms around me were a reinforcement for my weakening passion. I laxed in his bosom, his palm caressing my wavy hair against my nape.

"Turning away from your fate is a quick way to go down," I muttered, sniffing a sob. "You taught us this, Dad… You taught us to always embrace what we need rather than what we want."

"And it's a shame I'm about to go back on my words."

"When you do that, you're sacrificing, Dad. The gods taught us sacrifice. They never taught us to live for ourselves… ."

"Have you ever thought of how your mum would feel?"

"If she wants the best for you and I, then she should respect our fate and let it be."

He gazed at me for a while. He probably can sense the determination—and maybe the foolishness—welling up from my inside and oozing from my eyes. He parted his lips and shut his eyes, and while I looked away, he struck my face. My eyes dilated and I staggered. Before I could mutter a word, he struck again. The tears trickled down his chin and he clenched his fist, donning a stern face—the picture of someone forcing themself to be angry. "We won't speak of this any longer. Snap out of it."

But I knew. Even if we don't speak of this… Affection isn't a thing of words only. Even deaf, dumb, blind couples express love. We've trapped ours for many years.

"So what if it's forbidden?" I screamed at him as he walked into his room, leaving me standing in the living room. He didn't respond.

But the following morning, he snatched my hand as I made to leave the dining room. Pulled me close and took my lips, kissing me as though I were his wife who was probably busy in the ob-gyn at the moment. It was the both of us here—two people who will not sacrifice.

Shutting my mind from the consciousness of opposition, I gave in to his passion—our passion. It was like squeezing juice from blackberries. The pleasure in the sweetness dribbling through your fingers, down your elbows. But it was more like milking a nursing mother of her feeding juice. You lick and suck till all is sapped and dry. Not everyone would like the latter—especially the cheated baby. But both lovers loved the experience. The taste of and the gift to one another.

Lost in the realisation of what he needed, he hefted me and placed me on the dining table. His breath grazed my neck, and he groped my thighs beneath my jean shorts as I pulled him closer, over me.

The door opened and it was over. Mum walked in with her white coat unusually draped over her shoulders, handbag in grip. She doesn't look flustered. She wasn't looking in our direction. Or she was, but had chosen to let the dog snore. The baby knew the man may also need the juice, so it had chosen to keep mum.

Dad hurried to meet her. "Juana," he called. Was he going to explain this?

Mum threw him a smile and took him in her arms, not letting go for a couple of minutes. Her eyes were closed and I could see her straining them shut the more—like someone fighting back tears. At that moment, my heart ached. I staggered and compressed my lips to assure myself I'd awakened a sleeper. The deprived baby may have a way of protesting. You'll never know.

But just then, mum nodded at me as her head rested on Dad's shoulder. They were roughly the same height. I hesitated, but she nodded again, as if to mean, Come over.

I slowed a walk towards them and she smiled at me. "You can join us, darling," she said. Her voice was weak but compelling. I obeyed. And my arms snaked around both of them, so that we looked like a happy family.

Later, Dad told me Mum had been suffering from cancer. She was to spend her last days away in the hospital. But I never knew this before. I never knew what she had had to pass through. When I confronted her, she said she didn't want to keep us worried.

"But this is the best time to keep us worried, right?" I asked, scowling frustration and pity. "I could have taken care of you better, Mum."

"You can always do that, darling," she said, caressing my hair, a wisp of a smile on her face.

The guilt of many things washed over me this time and I broke into tears. "Mum… I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to—"

"Oh, no— I'm the one who should apologise for keeping it from you."

I gaze at her, right into her eyes. Did she really not know what had happened between me and Dad?

The seagulls already stopped fighting. But I couldn't ascertain which of them ended up gobbling the peanut burger. Or did they waste it? That was a possibility as well.

"Rosa!"

I looked up. Dad was calling me. Mum was smiling at me. I got up from the blanket and trailed a finger down my hairline as I walked over to them. Dad reached behind me and slipped an arm around my neck, so that I was standing on his right and mum on his left—a picture that inferred his possession of the both of us. The juice was getting sour.

We stayed like that for a while, everyone gazing across the waters, at the litter of swans, and maybe at an indistinct future beyond the horizon. I retracted my gaze and stole a glance at mum. She was smiling at me. Memories of that day welled up in my head. Did she really not see us?

We walked back to the car. Mum and I. Dad said he needed a few minutes by the beach. He claimed he still wanted to enjoy the view. I still don't know why he stayed back. Did he and Mum talk about us?

But Mum was still smiling at me. The sleeping dog had awoken—but it was hesitant to bite. And the baby, it still wouldn't cry. The juice tasted sour. It was sour. If it were from the berries, it'd remain ever fine. But it wasn't… The source wasn't pure and it could ruin our lives. No, it certainly will, like the myth of Pandora, the darkness of curiosity. But could I stop wanting it? Could we?

Once we got to the car, Mum took the picnic basket from me and caressed my face, her smile deepening. "Jus'take care of your dad; it's no problem, Rosa," she said. She pulled me into her bosom, her arms tightening around my back. "It's really fine. You look so much like me."

Previously Published in

Adoxography (March 2022)

DEFUNCT

T/W TABOO, INCEST

ELISHA OLUYEMI

AISHA SADIQA

Screenshot 2023-08-07 at 23.49.39

1/6

CECILIA KENNEDY

IN THE SINK

Hello, from your houseplant, wilting in the basin you thought would double as a pedestal—a convenient place to water roots and leaves, but my fern fronds are turning brown, dropping onto the floor you vacuum daily, and the surfaces you clean, while you glance into the mirror above that expands the small room, making it seem bigger, more refined—the one you use each day to poke at lines, the sagging edges of a face once firm, and I know, with every cell of my being, that nothing lasts, and so do you, but even as you water me, I dry out; sometimes, the sun’s too much to bear, but drawing the curtains, in this tiny room, makes everything smaller, so the rays collect on the mirror, magnify, and radiate and scorch, until I can barely breathe, but you keep up with the water, spritz the leaves, let me soak, even though everything’s drooping, though you think you’ll win: you’ll revive the green because more than anything, you can’t stand the bits of withered skin, the new specks and spots growing.

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R E C E S S E S I S S U E 0 0 1

F O R E W O R D

CONTENTS

TEÈ LEONIE

BRANDON SHANE

CONFIDENTIAL (DAMAGE)

T/W: INFIDELITY, WAR & WEAPON IMAGERY

JOHN GANSHAW

THE RINGMASTER

REBECCA BROWN

SUMMERTIME SONNET

CADRIEL HUYNH

THE BLACK HOLE AT THE HEART OF OUR GALAXY

THEODORE FORCER

OIL SPILL

CHARLOTTE AMELIA POE

NTH

BEE THE ILLUSTRATOR

FOREST S. RIGBY

PORCELAIN RELATIONSHIP

T/W: IMPLIED SEXUAL CONTENT & VOMITING

AARON SANDBERG

THE FLY (MERCY)

YUU IKEDA

MIDNIGHT BRUISES

HEART

JAMES KANGAS

RICKY'S BLUES

LORI CRAMER

WHAT TO DO WHILE HE'S DATING SOMEBODY ELSE

BEHIND THE BALLAD

TWO OF US

JULIE ALLYN JOHNSON

NUESTRA SEÑORA DEL CARMEN

MACKINAW

CHRISTIANE WILLIAMS-VIGIL

TÀHIRIH

T/W: MODERATE VIOLENCE

ELLA NO QUIERE

AFTER TRANSLATION OF BAD BUNNY'S 'ANDREA'

SONYA DEVYATKIN

SCORPION HOURS

CLEAN THE CRAPPER

RSN

LACHLAN CHU

A MAYBE LIFE

REGENESIS

I AM FLOATING BELLY-UP

TATIANA PEREZ

TO DIE OR NOT TO DIE

MUSINGS ON THE SAD GIRL ERA

MONIQUE ROWE

LOST IN GREY

UP THE TEMP!

JULIO RAINION

JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH TWENTY-TWENTY-THREE

PAWEL MARKIEWICZ

TREE-LIKE SONNET

JACK JOSEPH

ABSTRACT ABYSS

BEWILDERING BUBBLE

CASCADING CARTOON

TRIPTIONARY - CONTENTS

GARETH WRITER-DAVIES

DIVAN

FREEZER #2

EYE LEVEL

ARUSHI (AERA) REGE

ON THE TOPIC OF MODERN DOMESTICITY

IRINA TALL NOVIKOVA

HEAVEN IN HER HEAD

DANIEL CLARK

WHEN LOWERED FROM THE LORRY

STEPHANIE L. HAUN

SCRAMBLED OR FRIED

CHIARA CROMPTON

UGLY BABY

SMOKE (OVER-ACHIEVING FIRST BORN)

SHOP GIRL CRONES

ANDREA WAGNER

R E C E S S E S
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