Search Results

“There was a full moon that night,” Smith said, “so we didn’t go outside.” # # # By the time Jake had finished with his photographs and covered up the corpse with a couple of rubber sheets and weighted them down with river rocks—But how, he wondered, did river rocks get way up here?—the other deputy had arrived. Wakefield was a long way from the county seat, and it had taken him a couple of hours. It would take the coroner even longer. Jake started the interviews next, nearly a dozen of them, but nobody had much to say, and he’d finished up by 11:00. Then, after filling in the other deputy, he’d just stood on the edge of the clearing, breathing in great breaths of the chill October air. The way the body had looked was bizarre—so bizarre, in fact, that he was dismayed. The word had just popped into his head, a word he couldn’t remember using or even thinking before. But there it was: I’m dismayed. And then he’d looked back over his shoulder, back down the barren valley. # # # A fire was smoldering in the stove in the general store, and most of the men Jake had interviewed earlier were sitting around the tables with their coffee and cigarettes. A couple had bottles of Pabst, and Jake was tempted, but he thought better of it and filled a cup from the urn on the counter and stuffed a dollar bill into the Mason jar beside it. Then he took a chair at an unoccupied table and tasted his coffee. He’d had worse, but not recently, so he poured in some sugar and went back to the counter and filled up the cup from the pitcher of milk before he sat back down. They were all watching him, the old man behind the counter and the customers, so he said, “Morning again, folks. I think I’ve taken all your statements, so I wonder if we could just talk for a few minutes, just talk informally?” Several of the men shrugged and a couple more nodded, so he cleared his throat and went on. “It turns out that our friend out there was carrying ID, so we hope to get ahold of his next of kin right away.” As he also knew, but didn’t mention, the man had been carrying over a hundred dollars in cash in his wallet. The fact that it was there spoke well of the townspeople’s honesty and was an indication that he could trust them, up to a point. “This wasn’t an accidental death,” he continued. “You all know that. We’ll learn more after the coroner has examined the remains, but right now I’d just like to … Well, I wonder, do many people pass through Wakefield on bikes?” The place didn’t strike him as lying on any kind of picturesque route that might attract bicyclists. Or campers for that matter, although the man had been carrying a folded-up pup tent in one of his panniers. The men glanced around at each other and shook their heads. “Never seen one before,” one of them said. “Any tourists at all?” The men shook their heads again. “With luck,” Jake said, “we’ll figure out sooner or later why this fellow was here, and why he was here at night, but we need to understand something else, too.” He started to pull out his notebook, but caught himself and took a sip of his coffee instead. He was used to people not wanting to get involved, but this felt different. He took another sip and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “The victim ended up practically on some of your front lawns, and judging by where we found most of the blood, that’s where he was attacked. Something that bad,” he went on, “there must have been a hell of a lot of noise. A lot of commotion. The man may have had time to scream. A lot of you may have heard it. So did you think about seeing what was going on, maybe … I don’t know …” And that was when Les Smith—Jake had taken his statement earlier—made his comment: “There was a full moon that night, so we didn’t go outside.” Jake looked from face to face, and several of the other men were nodding. One of them, maybe prompted to speak because he was sitting right beside Smith, said “Not when there’s a full moon.” Jake took another sip, and several of the men stirred in their chairs. “That’s right,” one of them said. “Yeah,” another one said, “don’t none of us in Wakefield leave our houses at night when there’s a full moon.” Another one said, “Yeah,” and then so did another. Grove Koger is the author of When the Going Was Good: A Guide to the 99 Best Narratives of Travel, Exploration, and Adventure; Assistant Editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal; and former Assistant Editor of Art Patron magazine. He blogs about travel and related subjects at worldenoughblog.wordpress.com/author/gkoger/.

Something my wife Pointed Out Last night: More of my friends Are dead Than alive. It is common Stains Decrease Yet I am only 41. More of my family Are dead Than alive. I have a list Of people Who I speak of In the first tense Who Can only be expressed In the past. A soup: Suicides Cancers Cars Bursting Hearts Haemorrhages Drownings Alcohol Substances. Sludge. There is no meaning to be found in lists.

circles edging out the spaces the circles are going nowhere a pixel paces it- self unable to walk a straight line I think I’d run circles around oscillating sighs if this tinfoil life wasn’t wedged between frames and time couldn’t tell where I begin or I end in Oz when you were finally taught to speak you called me human without laughing but were hard put to prove that without wincing not surprising if only for the scarecrow inciting the squalls and the spells frightening the parts of ourselves strung out over the fields intimidating the crops and the crickets straw heads hindering tin words sounds made of meat staring down the lions and the legs recoiling at your feet ribs just crumbs cast off by you a smile too human too confident to shriek George Taxon is an emerging poet living in Brookline, Massachusetts. He’s worked as an antiquarian bookseller, a medical editor, and an administrator, among other things, and his interests include psychology, physics, and metaphysics.

The heavy fragrance of the white Casablanca Lily mingling with the white Baferrari Lily blooming in the ninety-degree heat of my July garden takes me back to an Upper West Side street corner in the early morning winter dark twenty-five years ago. Once a week, before work on Fridays, I hurried a mile downtown to buy a bouquet of white lilies from an old man who sold them from the back of his white van. He was a round little man with a gap between his front teeth, and a gold filling. He taught me how to clip the sacs of pollen on the anthers of the stamens to prevent shedding. He was one of those oddballs who eked out a living on the city streets in those days, like the knife grinder or the seltzer deliveryman. After about a year, I stopped going to buy them. I never saw him again. but he inspired me to grow my own white lilies. My mother hated lilies. She wouldn’t let them into her house because they reminded her of funerals and death. I am not my mother. In the summer of my convalescence, I sit under the wisteria arbor. The heavy flowers droop on their stems, the air buzzes with insects. After weeks of illness, of waking up in the morning feeling sore and bruised, I rose from a dream, in which a beautiful young man told a table of enthralled listeners how he’d survived a motorcycle accident. When I woke, I remembered the dream. I felt rejuvenated, no longer in pain, all the parts of my body relaxed and released, like a pond turning over in springtime, or a lily perfuming the air.

Snapdragons are killer curveballs a violent wrist twist to reap a white terror, red stitching slicing sky, bending air, bursting ash a hissing arc seeking ready leather but also a flower—puffed pastel petals erupting upward, a plant best placed at property’s edge both share the same season blooming by spring and wilted by winter, perfect when partnered with sunshine in baseball they’re best when sown with restraint, for excessive snapdragons will impel elbow’s ulnar to tear into two producing a “pop!” an internal turmoil like a stem being ripped from its roots and the petrified pitcher will visit a surgeon and soon see a smiling scar on their arm though such forecasts are scarce and must not prompt pitchers to stop snapping off their best breakers since the sharpest snapdragons are invasive to hitters, bats planted on shoulders means strikeouts but a hanging snapdragon blowing free in the breeze is sure to be sent into orbit. Grant Young (he/his) spent five years throwing snapdragons at the University of San Francisco—and has a smiling scar on his arm to show for it. He is the founding editor of Clinch, a literary magazine for the martial arts. His work has been published by HAD, The Twin Bill, Idle Ink, and elsewhere.

Being a better kind of ghost Due to the high levels of domestic accident these days, There’s a chance that I might be a newly formed Ghost, It doesn’t feel the way you think, though I am solid, breathable, clumsy like you I can still exhale, be indelicate, railing and flailing and moving things round was never really my scene I return each night though, Undress in the dark, set the alarm, lay on the bed, Try and steal the covers like always Once I whispered, asked you to come with me It’s too late you said, sleep, Ask me in the morning I listen properly now, without interrupting But it seems there’s nothing you want to say In the evenings, we just chill on the sofa with the wine we once shared, And never give away the end of the film, While you doze, I guzzle the popcorn crumbs I still put the bins out on Wednesday night Because you always forget Clink down the moonlit path Like a good husband Being dead is no excuse for not recycling I wonder how long we go on like this, In a spectral domestic bliss, I hope its forever, Or at least till you are ready, To come away with me The promise of rain Promise me the sun will not shine every morning, But, in the absence of light, you will instead Explain your half- remembered dream, This time I will listen, and try to understand We will each acknowledge our side of The corruption of bed linen, And, for the sake of argument Smooth out the frowning wrinkles With swallowed pride Promise me, if we must one day revisit These moments of misunderstanding, We can go together, bare foot Not wallowing but squelching in the mire Promise me the soft fingertips of rain, Gently resting in palms, Ready for forgiveness, A slow melting of last nights’ frost Those silent signs of a thaw Opening night The week of the show, You had started wearing the umbilical cord like a fashionable scarf, tighter And try with all your tiny might, There was no way to undo it Ready, in your pink birthday suit, This had become an engagement party, of sorts Head down, ready to depart into a fluid world A wrinkle, frowned in hospital towels, a new costume, Rushed down blurry corridors into a waiting theatre To play blindly, in the performance of your life It snowed that morning even though it was late Easter, in the darkness we observed the melt, numbed and dressed for the occasion in blue scrubs waiting, watching, an incubation period This was no dress rehearsal Opening on stage, ten weeks earlier than planned, You became a living puppet, tangled wires twisted, pumped up your lungs flat as pancakes, steroid breath, finding your voice, you were the star of this show, Somehow, you made it through the opening night, A brave performance, Centre stage in the hospital floodlights Gavin Turner is a writer of poetry and fiction. He has had work published in Punk Noir Magazine, Void Space, JAKE and icebreaker lit, not to mention Roi Faineant press. His debut chapbook The Round Journey was published in May 2022. You can find him on @gtpoems on Twitter or via his website www.gtpoems.com

Hibernation Comfort No one possesses this road this early. The juxtaposition of ebony tar and light, and the uneven patches where monsoon dug its heels in welcome me as I lodge my claims. In ten minutes I exhaust my energy to jog. My shadow hibernates beside a boulder. I have no power over this life I adore because of these elongated winters, caves of sleep, leaves of crackling, goodbyes unfinished. Fields Where We Belong Fields turn brief beneath our running feet, and the bridge, squares of formless green, trees sketched by me when I was six. If you ask me why we run we cannot tell. There is a feeling. A trace of an urge. Noon showers upon us, warm piss. A hiss says that our ankles will be dotted with fang-marks. We can comprehend the serpent. Time winters here. We should not race. An author, journalist, and father, Kushal Poddar, editor of 'Words Surfacing’, authored eight books, the latest being 'Postmarked Quarantine'. His works have been translated into eleven languages.

These days she would accept all or any correspondence. His utterances are a dying dialect. The last thing he had told her was ‘I do not belong here’ and she did not know if he meant with her in their house or in this ordinary sleepover town or both and her heart had hurt. His music gnaws at her defences, catapulting its explicit lyrics through his keyhole to worry her as she tidies adjacent rooms. She occupies herself to feign control, a steadying of a quaking edifice. She knows he has been kissed by darkness; she has stepped inside his soul. She has leaned into the most expensive gradients of his moods, the ones which cost them everything. She blames herself. If only she had not been so scattered in her twenties, if only she had married a shy guy and not a bully with a wolfish stare. He has his father’s eyes. Polished sapphires of aquamarine she once believed she could see her reflection in. ‘How bizarre and beautiful,’ she had said when they had visited The Great Wall of China. He had informed her at 10 years old that it had been subject to man-made hurt for years, bricks stolen and portions vandalised and destroyed. She had felt that pillage too, the ramparts reduced. She had seen her future. On his 15th birthday, he had called her ‘Mom’ for the last time. It had been a comment about her road rage that had lifted his snarl into a smirk. At 16, she had found garments she did not recognise under his bed. Dialogue had failed, an impasse in situ. Four months later he received his first ride in a police car. She had fished fistfuls of cash she had given him from his pocket before washing his jeans. She knew he did not need to steal the sportswear but he did. Two months afterwards she made some calls and tried sending him off grid. She never read remorse in his expression, just awareness of her ill-fitting deceit. She had struggled to breathe. He had viewed her gasps from a distant shore before drowning his hands in his pockets and slamming the door. The ambulance operator had to trace the call, she was found in the hallway. The same hallway she had stood in when she practised for the conversation roulette. The calendar was affixed to the mirror waiting for the days to rearrange themselves until he would return. At 17 years and 264 days there was a girl. Her boots left blood lust streaks of mud on the floors. There was no interaction. It did not last. At 18 she tries to re-establish some semblance of normality but it soon becomes clear that she is a banana grove and he is a tamarin ravenous for a plate full of oranges. And then it is there like a floodlight shining on the cemetery of their years of dark nights. Its pincers are magnificent, so honest and committed. Its body is a mass of bronzed ripples and she is afraid the warmth of her gaze will startle it. He tells her that they use them to restrain and kill their prey. She does not care. Today does not need to bow to tomorrow’s tomorrowness. When he called her, he had held her arm and pulled her close as they had ascended the stairs together to where they are now, peering together into a toilet bowl. ‘Mom, can you help me save it?’, his words are blanched of any molten fragments, their edges softened. She wonders if it is a venomous scorpion. The thought is a struck match in the centre of her mind. She cannot lose him again. She knows its stinger is also known as a telson; she briefly marvels how circumstance has transformed its fiery dagger into their armament to repossess the greatest thing man has ever known. She feels dispossessed of further choices and with that comes the enclosure of relief. Her love for him feels newly secured in the moment and like a flag unfurls itself to iron out its creases in this strident breeze. ‘Of course, I will help you. I have always wanted to.’ Her hope is prone to being caducous, having been schooled by disappointment but his smile has knocked through those walls. Later, she will learn that her receptiveness, her thinly-veiled eagerness had handed him the mallet. ‘I am sorry, Mom. I am sorry you’ve waited so long.’ Together their laughter is a collage; it develops into the afternoon like a photograph alters in purest darkness from shiny and soulless to a crisp rectangle of light. Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer of poems, flash fiction and short stories. She writes bi-lingually in English and Irish. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Orbis Quarterly International Literary Journal, Reflex Press, Ink Sweat &Tears, Ellipsis Zine, Tiny Molecules, Gone Lawn, Bending Genres, Books Ireland, Splonk, Flash Boulevard, Janus Literary & more. Her poem ‘Embezzled Emotion’ published in Janus Literary received a Best of the Net nomination 2023. You can find her on Twitter @abairrud2021.

The eleventh month After the all the casting and the punditry We return to our yards: manicured and plain, Ignore the stray wrappers along our curb Hope that the steady rain can sweep it up. But it’s difficult to return to the ways of before With this sad mist, this late rain without life. Our great hopes have become trash in the drain; No children parade in fanciful attire. Our relationships never so needed repair. The marital bed is dry and sleeps on one side. A fictional exercise has failed, a reiteration In the iteration of tricks and threats. Who can fill the vacant lots of our desire? That aspiration to devotion for fulfillment In the primal sense, without commentary. Blood, emotion like raw nerve, still craving A quavering in throaty tones inconsiderate Of the infinite consequence. The type that will Require the children parading in fanciful attire To dry beds, by green grass, asking to be fed. Reserve A strong woman started a fire in the rain. I ran through the remnants of a hurricane In a season of immeasurable drought. There were sand dunes in the Mississippi and exposed wreckage And since I couldn’t explore that river, once a hundred miles wide, I explored the thoughts in my own head. My trail crossed the dry ravines that had cut down Guarding hills and once created a preserving swamp. She was here and there, Running down a side creek, Smoking on her front porch Not enclosed like the others. She smiled and waved Not like a beauty in a parade But like she wanted me Like we could satiate us, At least till the rain passed And our spouses returned. I hadn’t known even that Passing gratification, Cheap by some standards Expensive by others, In years. Early frost had killed the mosquitoes, The bushes shed their protection, I stood in the center of the swamp Wondering How long. Dave Nash enjoys taking mass transit into the city on rainy Mondays. Dave reads fiction submissions at Five South Magazine and writes stories that can be found in places like Bivouac Magazine and Unstamatic.

To download a PDF of this beautiful work, please click the link below!

In the rearview he watches the couple arguing. He adjusts the mirror and leans back, a wide-screen performance just for him. The woman is throwing her arms around, gesticulating madly and flailing about inside the tiny car behind him. Her dude smokes an e-cig, blowing fumes out the window, oblivious to how stupid he looks sucking on the silver dildo. It’s too fascinating and difficult to turn away from: the woman is all emotion, flickering between intimate sadness and sheer outrage, while the dude displays complete indifference to it all. The couple behind him are in the midst of something final. He’s always felt a certain satisfaction in witnessing the endings of things, as long as they’re not his own endings, maybe. There’s an impossible itch on his finger, just beneath his wedding band. The highway is a clogged artery. Everyone else is angry, too. It’s hot—an overcast but still-sizzling sort of September afternoon—and vehicles are barely more than stranded monoliths on the blacktop, some of them idling in defiance, horns blaring for no real reason. The radio says a logging truck tipped over five miles up the highway. Logs all over the road. At first he laughed to himself, remembering some old joke about two logging trucks passing one another on the road; one going one way, the other coming from there. The punchline was something along the lines of, Why deliver logs if you already have logs? It’s not funny anymore though, not after sitting here for an hour. Now it’s personal. He hopes that someone died up ahead to make this backup worth it. It’s only a passing idea floating through him, but still, he questions his sanity a little for having had such a dark, unfair thought in the first place. He switches from the news back to satellite radio, catching the tail end of Gavin Rossdale growling on about Zen, or a lack thereof. Car horns continue to honk all around him. Looking back to the mirror, the couple behind him is still fighting. She clearly mouths an exasperated Fuck! and her face falls into her own waiting hands. He wishes he knew the details of what else was being discussed. If only he could read lips. The woman, she certainly has a lot to say, though he wonders how much of it is simply repeating the same points? Around and around. Arguments tend to work that way, he’s noticed. Especially as they get closer to the end. She’s trying to remain in control, but is visibly shaking, weeping. A breeze whistles by, blowing the grass on the side of the highway. How does the green grass continue to live and grow out here in this hopeless stretch of land? It seems impossible to him. Something furry darts through the grass, wild, and not affected at all by traffic jams. The entire song ends before anyone on the road has made another inch of progress. He hits the Previous Track button to listen to it again. When he looks back up into the mirror, the car behind him is making a reckless U-turn through some rocks and grass, and crosses over into the northbound lane. Some of the flying rocks ricochet off the side of his car. The dude’s car is already a mile away when he spots the woman standing alone on the highway. She holds herself, the hot day’s dust sticking to her wet cheeks. He’s opening the passenger door and waving her over before he even realizes he’s waving her over. She climbs in. There’s a moment—if bottled, it would surely be a moment worth examining for generations—where her stop-motion tears say nearly everything that needs to be said. No further evidence is necessary. She wears linen pants and a jean jacket, frayed all over. He almost asks if she was in a fight, if that’s why the jacket is all torn up, but then realizes that of course his jokey comment would only be misinterpreted, and she’d be getting out of her second car in as many minutes. Instead, he asks her if she’s all right. She says, I had a dream about this accident, you know? Like a precognitive vision. I knew this was going to happen but got into his fucking car anyway. I guess instead of finding opportunities to avoid the tough conversations and inevitable conclusions, I found a way for us to have no alternative. He doesn’t know a thing about precognizance, but she has lovely hands he notices, as she holds them tightly, restraining herself from flailing them around like she’d done while arguing with her boyfriend. Husband. Or whatever he was to her. He asks again, But you’re all right? There are crystalline cracks breaking through the stratocumulus clouds above. Thin, silver grins of unknown intent. She says, Something’s not right. My doctor hasn’t gotten back to me yet with the test results. They all think it’s brain cancer, I know they do. I know it isn’t. Who do you think would know better, really? I do have a mole on my leg that I’m worried about. I didn’t mention the mole to my doctor. It didn’t even occur to me to ask him about it, but that’s going to happen when someone says the words ‘brain cancer’ to your face a few times. You’re going to forget things. The mole is on my inner thigh. I’d show you but I don’t think that’s appropriate. It’s pretty high up. I can feel it right now. See? Right here, right under my pants. Something is going to kill me—kill us all—in the end though. It honestly doesn’t matter if we lose all the antidepressants and calcium and vitamin D supplements and antibiotics and L-thyroxine; we’re still going to get sick, aren’t we? None of that shit matters. Finally, she wipes her eyes, looks in the rearview herself, maybe checking to see if the dude is coming back. He’s an asshole. He told me it must be brain cancer, too. And what am I supposed to do with that? She turns to him now, maybe for the first time. He thinks her forehead is really pretty. What do I do with that? His hands still grip the wheel, at the 11:55 and the 12:05 positions. He covers up the ring on his finger with his other hand, and suggests some things were maybe not ever meant. Not meant? Meant to BE, I should have said. She says, We all started off happy, each and every one of us. Otherwise, why would we have gotten involved in these things in the first place? What would the point have been? He flicks the same song back to the start for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time now. He’s lost count. He confesses he was on his way to sign the divorce papers, though he’s never going to make it now because of the logs all over the highway somewhere up ahead there. She suggests, Maybe you had a vision of the accident, too? And here you are now, right in the middle of this mess, enabling your other mess to continue on. At some point, you need to step out of that car in the middle of the highway. Metaphorically. Horns continue to blare as she processes her own conclusions to her own observations. Shit. I forgot my bag in his car. Things never seem to end so easily, he says. There’s always a bit of a mess left behind. Thanks for listening, she says. Hey, do you think anyone died up there? He looks at her and they both laugh just a little. I sure hope so. R. Tim Morris writes short fiction, longer fiction, novels, flash fic, and poetry. He writes in different genres, mostly literary fiction, but I've been known to write Speculative, Magical Realism, Dark Fantasy, and even Adult Humor. He can be found on Twitter @RyMo89 or at his Website rtimmorris.com.

Phantom Pain The little things like sitting on Zelda's Title Screen. That sad piano title theme. Pop Art, Pop-tart, spring out the toaster one day and now you're an old fart. "Remember that movie? Or the Globetrotters with Scooby?" Yeah, I remember the gang, times have changed we no longer hang. Different branches different stances, we pass each other with sideways glances. But every night, down in the park I see our blue ghosts race and tiptoe back to the start. Scrooge McDuck (a poem of crossword clues) When I was a young bit of plankton I was attacked by a Dead Duck wielding a fanny-pack and donning a Scottish cap. He came barreling down the hill like a Feudal Baron or a Boeing 757. Holding his anger like an item in a holster. "I'll do it too!" he quacked and smacked me around like an R2D2. I joined a karate school, studied Draft.com and mastered ti-chi. Now, approaching middle age and cooked like an onion ring, I visit the old dodo. He breathes the sound of an unsound floor. Years and years and years, trees with seeds that whirl like helicopter blades continue to fall. There is pity and there is compassion. "I hope that you're satisfied now." Friendshipstein We fell apart like the cuts of a dismantled Frank and Stein glasses were shared the last time we met up. Un-stressed stitches, nothing abrupt. The limbs of our friendship nosedive to the floor. “So what now?” We shift awkwardly. You look at your phone and then cough at me. You remind me of a bad band’s cacophony, an unlit dance floor and the stationary punch bowl that no one drank from at that Ogre’s 13th Birthday party. “You remember that, don’t you?” Your jaw starts to slip out of place while we recollect and trace old timelines. “Friend-ship-stein, you aren't looking too great.” “I’ll make it,” you say. Loneliness is a pile of limbs on a bar stool. And solitude is a marble hidden in a can somewhere in Poznan or San Francisco that waits to be discovered by a child and held in the air like a prize. I tell you, I’m heading home for the night. You mush-mouth something trite, but you’re long dead and too drunk for it to make any sense. I say, “I’ll see you next time.” You say, “my neck’s fine.” Another miscommunication, I know you won’t survive another New Year’s celebration. So, I stack you up on the bar, call you a car, order you water with a straw and I try to be nice. I leave you there alone, head on the counter, chewing cubes of ice. Kyle Solomon is a writer and poet from Baltimore, MD. His previously published works can be found in SUPERJUMP, The Free State Review, and Grub Street. Devoted to the strange, phantom intersection between smart and stupid, Kyle writes poetry, fiction, speculative essays, and game reviews.