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Shirley checked her bag twice to see if she’d put tissues inside. The kitchen windows needed cleaning. She could do that when she returned home later. The visit would be quick. She went into the downstairs bathroom, applied some lip gloss, post box red, bared her teeth like a lioness, rubbed them with her index finger, added a liberal smattering of perfume, and left the house, double-checking the front door before getting into the car. Charles had only been in the hospital for two days, but how she looked would matter. She couldn’t work out whether she missed him or the idea of him. It was easier at home without him there; she could hide her need for life to be ordered, along with her penchant for a glass of Pinot Grigio. It was never more than a glass or two, but the way he curled his lips to one side said enough. The cat would have to find something wild to eat tonight, she thought, as the lights turned red at the end of the street. Roxanne blasted out of the car radio, seeping out through the open windows. Summer nights like these felt hot and sticky. She glanced at the man in the Mondeo next to her, assessing her, and she turned down the dial. Dialing down was something she had become skilled at, she’d spent her whole life doing it. The Mondeo man had a gray beard and round glasses. He wouldn’t approve of red lights or selling your body to the night. He wouldn’t approve of her lip gloss, either. She had wanted to make the effort for Charles, whatever state he was in. She’d been taught to keep herself free of makeup or wild impulses, in keeping with her Mormon upbringing, but it went against her nature. Now she would take it out on the bathroom, scrubbing and cleansing, bleaching every inch of the surfaces. Her own body, though, would no longer be subjected to the same disciplines. I know my mind is made up, So put away your makeup, Told you once I won't tell you again. It’s a bad way. The street thrummed with music; sounds from the fairground in the park up the road threatened to drown out her own. She could hear the screams. That much fear is bad for your heart, her father had told her. It’s the thrill, she had said at the time, but he’d already walked away. Charles had walked away when she talked about the cat or the children. The only thing that interested him these days was classic cars or some current news item, as long as it didn’t involve global warming, because it didn’t exist. She had learned to stick to frivolous subjects that did not involve the non-existent warming of the planet, the cat or the children. The latter had already left home. It made her heart feel weak. He never talked about them, as though they didn’t exist, either. The lights went green and a young boy, about the same age as her Brian, floored it down the street towards the edge of the city, hair all slicked back, music louder than hers. He wouldn’t have heard of The Police. What she wouldn't give to go back to those days with her whole life ahead of her. The hospital was a street away. The sun lowered over the tower blocks. Children lined the pavements with chalks and footballs; carefree. The scent of charred red meat rose up between the houses in billows of smoke. The hospital car park created the usual fiasco of digging around for the right change, Or you’ll be towed, M’am, the parking attendant had told her when she’d gone in to visit Jan, from her book group, who was Just in for a small procedure. Shirley had never found out exactly what it involved. Inside, staff swirled around like the beginnings of a storm with the swooshing and circling of currents, picking up things as they gathered speed. Patients were being pushed about on beds and in wheelchairs. Doctors moved swiftly and without looking up. A lady at reception was telling someone to Please come in to see a doctor. She hated the accident and emergency department. It reminded her of her brother, Ronnie, breaking his ankle in football at school. The smell of disinfectant made her queasy. “Can you tell me where the cardiology ward is, please? I haven’t been before,” she said, as a nurse passed her with a tray of meds. “Take the lift up to the fourth floor and it’s on your right.” Shirley nodded, but the nurse had already gone, talking as she moved, her voice disappearing off down the corridor. The lift was empty. It stopped on the second floor. A lone man got in and stood away from her on the other side, didn’t look up, checked his watch. She always felt safer when people didn’t look directly at her, although she felt ridiculous thinking this as a grown woman. The lift juddered to a halt on the third floor. He got out. An elderly lady was waiting with a nurse, and holding a walking frame with a crocheted bag hanging from the top. They stepped in gently. Shirley pressed the button to hold the lift. The nurse nodded, put her arm on the back of the lady, rearranged the drip that was attached to a stand. Moving all of this metal between a fixed floor and a moving floor looked precarious, but she suspected that they were used to it. She had probably seen too many horror films, expected something to be severed. These were the kinds of thoughts that she couldn’t share, not with Charles, not with anyone. She turned to look in the mirror behind her, pulled out the red lip gloss, and reapplied it liberally. She pursed her lips together, got out on the fourth floor, and turned right. The corridor was long and stark, with insipid green walls and a fire extinguisher with a ‘break glass press here’ sign on a red box on the wall just above. Charles did not appear to be in any of the rooms, which were mostly filled with older men, much older than him. In one room, a whole family had gathered and machines were beeping. She wondered whether he was, perhaps, nearing the end of his life, partly because she had seen a priest hovering in the corridor. In another, a lady sat knitting, watching a man sleep. She stopped to look at Shirley as she passed. It was a soulless place, not somewhere you would choose to be. Where was Charles? Had he left? “Excuse, me?” she said at the nurse’s station, “Is there a Charles Stephens? I can’t find him.” “Who are you?” asked a small nurse with her hair slicked back into a high ponytail, curls spilling out. She was holding some papers in one hand and tablets in another. “His wife. I’m his wife, Shirley Stephens.” “Right, well, he’s a little groggy. We’ve given him some strong pain medication. I’ll take you. I’m going that way. He’s in room 406.” “Thank you,” said Shirley, wondering how they could deal with the stench of bleach and patients in pain, or worse, near the end of life. The place needed flowers, she thought, then she remembered that flowers were not allowed. The nurse led her to room 406, dropping off things on the way, swirling in and out of rooms the way she had seen in the entrance to the accident and emergency department: a storm brewing. “There you, go,” said the nurse, “he’s here.” She disappeared off down the corridor. The priest was still in sight. Charles was asleep. Shirley went in and sat down next to him, felt his forehead. It was cool to the touch. He was hooked up to machines. She wasn’t entirely sure what they were doing to his body, but it wasn’t life support, because this was not the intensive care unit. She would know if she was there. The room was darkened a little, squeezing out as much joy as a room where no flowers were allowed. Shirley thought back to how they had met at the docks and how he had been youthful and robust, sweeping her up in his arms when she was eighteen, and about how the years had dialed him down, too. The spark that they had initially felt, replaced by a deep loyalty to one another, despite her constant cleaning and his incessant ramblings about cars and politics. She loved him, she knew that much. He could be a fool, of course, but she wasn’t naive enough to think he would be perfect, knew she would be devastated if he was nearing the end of life. He opened his eyes, squeezed her hand, turned his head towards her and gave a half-smile. “Are you in pain, my love?” she asked. “A little, but the nurses gave me something to help. It’s made me sleepy. You came?” “Of course I came. Do you think I would leave you in here alone?” “You’re always going on about the parking and I know how much you hate these places.” “Maybe, but I wouldn’t just leave you and not visit.” He squeezed her hand again, gave her another half smile. “Your lips look pretty,” he said. Shirley looked away, felt uncomfortable with the compliment, as though she didn’t deserve it. “How’s the house? Everything ok?” “Yes,” she said, “Rachel’s coming home at the weekend. She said she’d pop in to see you.” She wouldn’t usually mention this, but it was important. “There’s no need,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to bother anyone.” “You’re her father, Charles. Don’t be ridiculous.” “Ridiculous would be having a heart attack,” he said. “I’m fit and healthy one minute and the next I wake up in this Godforsaken place.” “It’s not Godforsaken,” she said, “Don’t be disrespectful, my love.” “It’s not disrespectful, Shirley, and anyway, God would hardly check himself into a place like this, now, would he?” Shirley smiled, although she felt that was also disrespectful. She liked his bluntness, the way he said all the things she was too afraid to say herself. “There’s nothing wrong with your mind, Charles, I’ll give you that, or your tongue for that matter.” They both smiled and he closed his eyes. The nurse came in. “Everything alright?” she asked. “Yes, can he have some more light? It’s quite dark in here. Do you know how long he’ll be in for?” The nurse walked over to the windows and opened the blinds a fraction. It hardly made any difference to the light in the room. “He’ll be here at least a week. We’ll keep an eye on him and we will let you know. He needs to go on some medication for his blood pressure, though, but the doctor will explain it to you both. “Blood pressure?” asked Shirley. “The doctor will talk to him,” said the nurse, as she moved towards the door, trying to leave the room, like a beetle scuttling away from a predator. “But his blood pressure has always been fine,” said Shirley. “I think that’s unlikely,” said the nurse. He had a heart attack, Mrs. Stephens. I have to go, I have other patients to see.” She vanished, as though Shirley was about to swallow her up. Shirley couldn’t understand why his heart attack was induced by high blood pressure when Charles had always told her it was fine. Had he not gone to the doctor? Had he lied? Why didn’t she know? Her chest felt tight and she wanted to go home and clean the kitchen windows. FC Malby is a contributor to Unthology 8 and Hearing Voices: The Litro Anthology of New Fiction. Her short fiction won the Litro Magazine Environmental Disaster Fiction Competition. She was shortlisted by Ad Hoc Fiction, Lunate Fiction and TSS Publishing, and her work has been nominated for Non Poetry Publication of the Year in the Spillwords Press 2021 Awards. Her work is forthcoming in the Reflex Press Anthology, Vol. 5. Twitter/Instagram @fcmalby

Dear Readers, Authors, and Supporters of RF: This One's for You One year ago, I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar…no, that’s not true. But to be honest, that would probably have been more interesting and profitable. Actually, I was working in a soul-sucking desk job where the only saving grace was my co-workers. I was unaware that an Indie Lit World existed or that people published work in digital presses. So, when one of said co-workers, Tiffany, started talking about starting an online press I really had no idea what she was going on about or if she was serious. She was totally serious. In the past twelve months, I have had the pleasure of reading so many amazing pieces of writing and connecting with so many very cool people. The whole thing is kind of unreal. I feel like I have this one life where I’m still trudging away at the same soul-sucking desk job. But I also have a much more vivid life where I get to read tons of submissions, sometimes I even get to polish them up, just a little, so a bright and beautiful piece can shine just a tad brighter. Having someone trust you with their words? Their creations? That is truly an honor. Or I get to sit in on “A Word?” and watch Kellie do her magic. Or enjoy cocktails with a group of inspiring writers and watch them do their magic. It’s really been fucking awesome. So I feel I must extend a heartfelt and gigantic Thank You to all of our contributors, readers, interviewees (is that a word?) Everyone who has participated in or attended an RF reading or Cocktail Hour. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You have made everything a little shinier in this old girl’s life! Oh, look at me getting all shouty again!! I cannot wait to see what the next year holds for us all. I’m just waiting for the next “I have an idea…” text. With much love and tons of appreciation, Marianne Baretsky Peterson In the year of our Lord 2021, Tiffany Storrs made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. What does one say when someone presents you with an opportunity to work with absolutely incredible writers, to interview some of the coolest people on the planet and get you writing again yourself? You say YES goddamit! A year has passed and it all has exceeded my wildest expectations. From the book clubs where we get to vibe off of our already loving and silly relationship while talking about work that is so breathtakingly beautiful, that I choke up reading it aloud, to the cocktail hours where I meet all of you for a drink and a little creativity, there is no substitute for what it brings to what I consider a wonderful life experience. Then there is “A Word?”, my absolute truest love. Getting to know all of you, your process, and making connections with people from all over the world. In the depths of a pandemic, it feels like it literally saved my life, and I didn’t even know it needed saving. Marianne, Tiffany and I carry a similar vision, and we work hard to try to give you what will fuel your creativity and feel a part of something. However, none of it is possible without YOU. I want to thank the authors, artists, creatives, and readers, for sharing your truest selves with us for the last year. Also, the positive support from the writing community for this press is unparalleled. Keep writing, keep expressing the important truths you hold. The artists will save us, and pull us out of these dark times. You have done that for me, I will continue to be there, holding up some corner of this press for a long time, until they kick me out at least. I will be here for you. I will read your words, and I will love every minute of it. I don’t like to drop names but… 12 years ago, Oprah grabbed a hold of my shoulders as I was getting on an airplane. She looked me in the eye and said “Dream Bigger”. She said this twice. I could not fathom what she meant. I mean, c’mon, I was in Australia with Oprah, how much bigger can it get? And on Sept. 4th, 2022..I finally know what she meant. Viva la Roi! Kellie Scott-Reed AEIC I've always had a complicated relationship with the word "no." As a kid, it was the one word I was never allowed to say to my parents, and the one I was never allowed to question when it was said to me. I was a people pleaser baby, so my childhood was spent adhering to that mindset, revering it, never enforcing it myself but being made aware of my own limitations every time it was uttered. As you can imagine, that led to some disastrous results later in life. I was precocious, nonetheless, and the older I got, the more "no" changed shape for me. It became less of an absolute and more of a suggestion, a detour, a sign that, if something was important enough, I should find another way to do it. I was bright and feisty, and more often than not, I did just that. Fast forward 20, 25 years. I am a part-time writer and toying with the idea of pursuing traditional publication on a collection of short stories I had cobbled together through lulls in my miserable day job in 2019. The more I explored that path, the less it felt right. Elements of it felt disingenuous, salesy, a little cheap. No one told me no, but it felt like one. So, without being consciously aware of it, I started formulating another way to do it. A lot of divine circumstance and daydreaming later, I decided to start RF. I can't say it's the first time the idea crossed my mind, but it was the first time it had legs underneath it, something concrete, nearly tangible. If you're unhappy, you eventually wind up running out of suggestions to second-guess yourself with, and you eventually just do it. That was over a year ago now, and I could not have imagined how much the press would grow and change in that time, how much I would change, how grateful and proud I would be. The point of my babbling here is really just to drive home the fact that you find where you belong, in case you've ever doubted it. You'll know it when you feel it but that doesn't mean it's going to come easy. Sometimes you have to put yourself out there in ways you weren't expecting. Sometimes you have to trust that you might not fail, but if you do, you didn't go down without a fight, and that's worth something. Sometimes you have to detach from an outcome long enough to give yourself a shot at it. Sometimes, you have to hear "no" just often enough to let it guide you to finding another way to do it. There is always a way. The last year is as close to concrete proof as I have. To our authors, our readers, and everyone who has seen fit to give RF the time of day in its infancy, I say what I always say to you: thank you for everything you've given to us, to the written word, and to each other. You may never truly know what it means to us, but I do, and it does not go unnoticed or unappreciated. The best is yet to come. To the future! Happy fucking birthday, Roi Fainéant! XOXO, Tiff

CAVED SILHOUETTES With tired feet we run while the woods peel back on their own past the boarded homes we played in past crusty folds we slept in past the herb-riddled gardens we fed from and the laundry machines we checked for quarters as we reach to clutch and hold and breathe with mixed intent reaching for our hands unclasped unwilling undaunted by the tide rolling over these woods now salted and swept clean of silhouettes traveling beneath these caved walls and rooted memories we look down at the smiling corpses caught in the thickets of our dreams, content to mingle and haunt and moan. FOREVER MORE boil me up a pot of spuds free the chicks from the pen lay low the shovels and axes and get to pickin' the yard full of sticks it's still cold outside the wind has not forgotten as the wagon rolls towards Fandango and the birds cry out for seedlings set Paddy up with a fresh round of whisky open the windows throw open the doors the air in here is sucking at the stillness in our hearts come around Sister Mary let the other nuns pray some more bless me with forgiveness my bride can't take no more roll me slow, roll me out out of this barren cloud of muck bring along the boys and their wicker baskets beat them till their sore lets your wrists feel for the springtime nestled 'neath the falling sky let the snow melt 'cross our faces as we sing a song forever more Rob Azevedo is a writer and radio host from Pembroke NH. He has written three books, one memoir, "Notes From the Last Breath Farm" and two books of poetry, "Turning On The Wasp" and "Don't Order The Calamari."

A Woman Witnesses Velvet Shedding In the woods behind her house, half a mile from the Savannah River, she hears the bellow of a buck. Googling white-tail deer, this woman learns it is rut season. She takes a deep dive into the world of deer hormones and is startled by the pairing of two words— shedding and velvet. Life is a series of odd pairings; paradox has hardened her some. She then reads when the buck’s antlers stop growing, losing blood flow, their velvet covering peels off. A velvet shedding madness happens but a hundred yards from her bed, its own paradox happening nightly. Could her itch yield new antlers too? She too a complex trophy as mating ensues under loblolly pines. But rut season means hunting season. Nothing will keep the bolt action rifles from up the deer stand opening weekend. Trail cameras show a trophy buck behind the antlers. Look for the does, the hunting websites advise— let their estrus work for you. Tonight, she is startled by another act of cruelty, reading about the British radio host— Steve Allen— atop his platform, the crosshairs of his tongue fixed on chubby little thing Tilly Ramsay. Let us not forget, taxidermists prepare for every girl. Chronic Pain A woman finds her husband has been on dating apps / she regrets looking through his iPad / insomnia / This isn’t the first time she’s had to find the hammer / Sometimes it’s in the junk drawer, sometimes under the sink / It seems to appear in her hand / She rubs her thumb over its steel head— cold & smooth & hardened like memory / Eight years earlier this woman earned a modest advance for her book / She bought a laptop / The day she approved the galleys, she went into labor / Her husband covered his eyes with his Dodgers hat / he couldn’t watch // Their daughter broke through the amniotic sac / The new mother didn’t sleep for months / She soaked her swollen vagina in warm water, filled hospital gloves with ice and stuffed them into her panties to soothe the stitched flesh / Before long, she found herself using the hammer on the laptop— shards of glass & silicon & plastic landed in the creases of the stroller / Her daughter is older and / she watches her mother on the front porch smashing the iPad with a hammer / her father comes home with a new tattoo that spells her mother’s name in cursive / as the girl’s thumb rubs over the bandage, she wonders how much it hurt. Candice Kelsey is an educator and poet living in Georgia. She serves as a creative writing mentor with PEN America's Prison & Justice Writing Program; her work appears in Grub Street, Poet Lore, Lumiere Review, Hawai'i Pacific Review, and Poetry South among other journals. Recently, she was chosen as a finalist in Iowa Review's Poetry Contest and Cutthroat's Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Find her @candicekelsey1 and www.candicemkelseypoet.com.

A song about soaking in the sun plays over the loudspeakers. I wait in the aisle with the wrists braces and heating pads and watch the pharmacist frown at his computer. His haircut is new, and his coat is ironed crisp. Sometimes he gets sweaty and takes it off and rolls up the sleeves of his button-down. When he’s busy, he’ll hold the pharmacy phone in one hand and wipe the sweat off his brow with the other. “Penny?” one of the assistants calls from the window. She doesn’t smile at me; it’s a chain pharmacy, not a small-town apothecary, and there’s no time for niceties. “Yep,” I say, but my voice is so small because as soon as I start to speak, the pharmacist looks over at me from the back, and he smiles a little so I choke on my own saliva. I cough and try again. “That’s me.” “You can wait outside the booth,” the assistant says. She gestures at a makeshift cubicle with frosted glass walls and a red cartoon Band-Aid on the door. It’s got a smiley face and sunglasses, and it’s giving me a thumbs up. I’m sweating and my shirt is sticking to my underarms. I am suffocating, and I smell like shallots, and my mother is calling for the fourth time today. “Mom, I’m busy,” I say. “Doing what?” she says. A blow-dryer’s going in the background. “I’m getting my flu shot.” “I get sick every time I get one of those. And this year, when I didn’t get one? Guess what? Didn’t get sick.” “Listen I have to go.” “What, are they about to stick you right now?” “I’ll call you back.” “You’ll forget.” “Text me, then.” “I miss my Blackberry, it was so much easier to text.” “Wrong, those buttons were tiny.” “They were not, they were better, and my screen never broke, you know how many times I’ve shattered this one? Seven times!” The pharmacist rounds the corner with a syringe rolling back and forth in a plastic tray. My stomach flips. He will be able to smell me. “I’m hanging up,” I whisper. “You’re always so annoyed to talk to me on Sundays, I don’t get your deal—” I slip my phone into my bag, a tote from the Paris Review. I reposition it on my hip so that my pharmacist can see it and think that I’m literary, or maybe that I’m French, or that I have enough taste to not wander around with a tote bag from Trader Joe’s like a purse. “Miss Langley?” “You can call me Penny.” “Go ahead and have a seat.” He grins and opens the door. His teeth are so white, and there’s a little stubble on his chin, and my vision blacks out a bit. # His name is Paul, Paul the pharmacist. It’s the first time I’ve gotten close enough to his coat to read the name tag. He never helps at the pickup window so I only see him in the back fluttering around with pill bottles, clicking at computers. But his name is Paul, and I try my best to commit it to memory because mine is shit, and before you know it I’m at the pharmacy thinking it’s Phil because I’m too busy asking for my Prozac in a hushed-enough tone so he doesn’t know it’s mine. He tugs on a pair of latex gloves. “Any allergies?” “None,” I say, breathy as if he’d find a functional immune system attractive. “Have you had a reaction to flu shots before? Any other routine vaccinations?” “Nope.” Flecks of dry skin work their way up and out of his scalp and skitter down to his shoulders. It humanizes him. “Do you normally work on weekends?” I ask. “Do I work on weekends?” Paul smiles. “Sometimes.” I nod as Paul rubs an alcohol pad on the side of my upper arm. He grips it hard, palming my muscle to plump it up. “One, two, and a pinch.” I don’t feel it. Paul’s eyes are green. Kind. I imagine looking at them at Christmas across the dining table at my parents' house—who would absolutely love Paul even though it wouldn’t matter because I’m my own woman—and he would smile as he passed the potatoes. I would be victorious in bringing someone so nice instead of my other boyfriends, one of whom is in jail for statutory rape, and he didn’t do it to me, it was after we broke up, but it’s still tragic. My high school boyfriend was a cocaine dealer and I didn’t know until I was twenty-two. But Paul would be lovely, and Paul could take care of me if I were sick, or at least get me the best drugs, and it would be a relationship I would work for. “Feeling okay?” Paul asks. “Penny?” He waves a hand in front of my face. I have zoned out. I didn’t mean to. But now he’s even closer, and he smells clean, nothing like body odor, and Jesus Christ, he is going to kiss me. He grips the back of my neck as if it’s going to roll onto the floor, and I appreciate the gesture, but it’s making things worse. He’s staring at my eyes and I lean into him, and I delude myself into thinking it’s cinematic and slow, but it happens at lightspeed. “I’d eat your dandruff,” I whisper, and ram right into him, my lips crushing against his. Stiff and unprepared, he recoils. I blink fast and shake my head, trying my hardest to look alive. “Sorry,” I say. “Shit, I don’t know what happened.” He tugs on the sleeves of his coat, clears his throat. “No allergies, right?” I shake my head. I touch my lips. I cannot speak and I think I am going to shit right here, right in the cubicle with the smiley band-aid, and of course he saw it all, too. “Just be sure to stay put for a few minutes.” He leaves, tripping over my tote that looks sadder crumpled on the floor, less chic, and does not look back at me. Taylor Arnette is a writer and essayist from Boston, MA. She is an MFA candidate at Boston University, a Leslie Epstein Global Fellow, and winner of a Saul Bellow Prize in Fiction. Her work has previously appeared in The Beacon and The Normal School. She currently serves as an editorial assistant at AGNI.

Davis stands before projection… raises instrument to his lips stare long enough through open window catch someone exposed baring all passion fruit preserves dusty shelf back of pantry pains joints retrieving most humid new paint job deck furniture refuses to dry – sticky for weeks flame before him so tiny barely distinguishable… could burn forever Jerome Berglund graduated from the University of Southern California’s Cinema-Television Production program and spent a picaresque decade in the entertainment industry before returning to the midwest where he was born and raised. He has exhibited many haiku, senryu and haiga online and in print, most recently in the Asahi Shimbun, Failed Haiku, Scarlet Dragonfly, Cold Moon, Bear Creek Haiku, and Daily Haiga.

On the last day I saw her, Reed snuck me a picture. I don’t know how she had one. They’d taken everything from our old lives away. Reed had long hair. She wore a pink crystal on a chain around her neck and pink Nike Airs. She was not the kind of girl I would’ve liked in the past. I liked girls who were into kittens wearing dresses and anime. Who sat in the back of the classroom. Who never shouted. Girls like me. Girls who didn’t break rules. Ever. Reed broke rules. Once, in target practice, she shot the apple before we were supposed to and yelled: “RAGE!” She stabbed a guard. She was going to be locked up for good, but she escaped. And she’s waiting on me. “They want to banish the art out of us,” Reed whispered to me the first time we kissed. “But I won’t let them.” She made a paper sunflower for me out of a Civil War map. She cut little hearts in the hem of her uniform skirt and said each heart was for me. And I didn’t say anything. No one had ever liked me in a serious way before. I want to be with Reed. And I want lots of other stuff, too. Mint chocolate chip ice cream. Dimetapp when I have a sore throat. That feeling you get when you wake up and you realize there’s no school and you fall back asleep for like ten hours. Or you don’t. You get up and go to the movies with your younger sister and you share buttered popcorn and it gets all over your fingers and that’s okay because later you’re going to take a shower and use your favorite shampoo. I want to go to a concert, even if it’s Justin Bieber. I want to dream again. Before my mom got taken away, she said the world is a strange place, that some things don’t add up to reason. When she said it she was talking about how my dad left us for the choir director and then the two of them fled the country. Fuckers. Now I understand my mom’s words to mean it doesn’t stand to reason that two sixteen- year-old girls who were straight A students and bound for futures called “promising” are risking their lives to be able to see the sun again. I open my backpack and find my gun. Freezing rain pounds the glass of the windows. It’s after midnight, but feels even later. I don’t know how I’ll make it past the guards. But Reed’s waiting. I pull my jacket over my head and open the door. The rain is loud. But the girls on the field are louder. “America! America! America!” they chant. I shiver. Then, I run. It’s dark, but I’ve studied the map Reed left me, memorized the route to the creek. And I do what Reed told me to if I got scared, which I am. I picture us. What it will be like when I am out and we are twisted up in a blanket on the sand. Sun. Bananas. Mango. Shrimp. I run faster, past the classrooms and the lacrosse field, the boarded-up art studio and theater. I make it to the last hallway and then I am through the iron gates. Victory. Raindrops blur my vision. The mud is thick under my boots. My heart pounds so loudly in my ears that at first I think the thud in my head is the sound of my heartbeat. But then I fall to my knees and I get hit again. My left cheekbone. I see stars. That’s a real thing. There are two of them. One pummels me. The other watches. And they’re laughing like I’ve just told a joke. I start crying and they laugh harder. In this new world, pain is a punchline. The one watching calls for others on his walkie talkie. Soon there will be a group and I’ve heard what they do to girls they find trying to escape who aren’t lucky like Reed. “I want you to teach me a lesson,” I say to the one closest to me, the one who’s made meat out of my face. My voice is low, guttural, unfamiliar. He smiles broadly. When he turns to the other, I open my backpack. My fingers find the gun. The one bullet I was able to steal is in the chamber. Which one should I shoot? Will the one left shoot me? They’re talking. One unbuckles his pants. My future is not looking promising anymore. I aim my gun at the one with his pants falling off. “Back the fuck up,” I say. They both draw their guns and then we’re all aiming guns. I point mine at one, then the other. In the end, I settle on the one who smiled. Sun. Bananas. Mango. Shrimp. He goes down. Then I go down. I wish I could see Reed one more time. I’d tell her we don’t need to make a big deal about bananas. Or the sun. What we need is a room where we can be alone. Where I can touch her hair. Where I can tell her I love her. I waited too long to say it because I was afraid. But I’m not afraid anymore. Jennifer Dickinson is a graduate of Hollins University. Her short fiction has appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, The Florida Review, Maudlin House, Blackbird, and others. The recipient of a Hedgebrook residency and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation, she works as a writing teacher and book coach in Los Angeles.

The Clown King finds herself next in a city where people spontaneously combust into a flurry of confetti. Cherry-blossom pink and white, or glittery and holographic, a diamond-cut shine. The newspapers call this terrible affliction a result of dreaming too colorfully. The Clown King bristles when she reads the airborne leaflets and landbound posters warning people against extremes of merriment and revelry. The flyers illustrate in bold, black lines the Dangers of Dreaming. Fear turns people in the streets from incandescent to ashen, like cigarettes trampled in the gutter. Watching her community, her heart is tender as a bruise or a daisy; open as a wound, a sunflower. She turns, like she always does, to her trusted troupe of harlequins, pierrots, and mimes. “Should we leave and protect ourselves?” she asks when the combustion cases are in the thousands and the powers that be continue to sit idle. “No,” the troupe decrees. “We stay. We help.” The Clown King releases a sigh of relief, of resolve. “Then help we will.” The Clown King and her troupe chop tomatoes, onions, and okras in the middle of the plaza, where the worried and the heartsick can come together and share a hearty stew on picnic tables. She sews patchwork quilts and hands them out on busy corners. The soup and blankets won’t heal the survivors’ grief or guilt, but they will warm them up nonetheless, so they may face another day. She gives those mourning their loved ones dustpans and brooms, helps them scoop the glittery confetti remains into mason-jars-turned-pastel-urns to treasure forever. The troupe of clowns and other volunteers take turns working and resting. At night, they create and print flyers of their own, demanding research for a combustion cure. When that doesn’t work, and dreams--dreamers--are still blamed and ostracized, the flyers become calls to protests and marches. Invitations to underground performances that raise funds and morale. In the morning, during the first cooking shift, the police arrive with loaded guns and rictus smiles. At once, dreamers form a shield around the Clown King and her troupe. They hold hands like flower chains woven together with steel thread. The Clown King stirs rosemary and thyme into today’s soup special. Tears of salt, too. Dream, you rainbow children, she thinks. Keep on dreaming. Avra Margaritiis a queer author and poet from Greece. Avra’s work haunts publications such as Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions. You can find Avra on twitter (@avramargariti).

At birth, he looked inky black with corkscrew hair tufts. His ancestors were magicians and arcane sorcerers. At two years, his voice squawked. Doctors said he would grow out of it — and he did. At four, he understood the language of crows. At five, his mother’s heart broke as she watched him shape-shifting; the crunch and crackle of bone, his neck and spine hardened. Wings unfurled beneath his shoulder blades. He spread them, soared skywards, then dived towards his own kind. In the rookery, heads cocked on elongated necks greeted him with a caw, caw, croak, croak, caw, caw. Mary Anne Mc Enery is an Irish and Dutch citizen, a senior—who does not act her age— living in The Hague, The Nederlands. She has fun writing micro, flash fiction, and longer short stories. Her words can be found on the Friday Flash Fiction site.

Summer School: 19 The summer I learned to swim I also learned that one can survive three sticky months on popsicle melt and Lou Reed. When people say oppressively hot they are lying. Salt and water escape: you are left an empty room with no central cooling. The summer I learned about makeup I also learned about the night sky. My skin was a constellation of freckles and zits. Nothing helped, but after dark on the hill, we were just people-shaped imprints in the grass, stardust and dead skin and oil and perfume staring up at a different kind of forever. Learning about us meant learning about them. We took to the streets to throw a funeral decked in flags and fishnets. We made love and ate confetti to remember. On the periphery, storm clouds rumbled, threatened to drown our swelterlove and chosen joy. But we were a river of saltwater in the hot sun and we escaped into rainbows. Three queens held my hands and taught me how to blow bubbles. Swimming and dancing were the same so we danced butterfly, freestyle, breaststroke and backstroke. We held our breath and evaporated in the heat; left the streets glitterstruck for days. Summersalt We turn pink and then the sky does. I get up and rub suntan lotion across it. “Hold still,” I tell the sky, and it melts in contradiction. My lover appears behind me and begins to peel long strips of skin from me. “You’re molting,” he says and I guess the jig is up. There is nothing left to peel but the sky. Dead me skin and dead sky skin pile up on the rocks, burying my lover under molt. Underneath its burn, the sky is black and a few stars blink. You are only going to get hotter, I think sadly at the sky. The burns will only get worse. I mean it as a gesture of care, but the sky bares its teeth. You are only going to get dead, it thinks back. Ruby Rorty is a scholar moonlighting as a journalist moonlighting as a poet in Chicago, IL. Her work has recently appeared in Mythic Picnic Volume 8, hex, EcoTheo, among others. You can find her on Twitter @RortyRuby or Instagram at ruby.rorty.

CN: substance abuse; in-community use of a reclaimed slur (d*ke) I came to town thirsty for all that it had to offer. 2007 Portland electrified me: 3 am seagull screams, cobblestone streets, exquisite graffiti, DIY culture. Pictures of my new neighborhood, the Old Port, filled travel brochures as commodified Maine at its finest: quaintness, lobster and lighthouse souvenirs galore; but street kids with facial tattoos intermingled with the clean-cut tourists, who watched punks spin fire and play music in Tommy’s Park. Those were the pictures that didn’t make it into the guidebooks. I loved it all. Meandering along brick sidewalks, I took everything in: glittering Casco Bay, the historic New England port buildings, unique local businesses. With branding and signage strictly legislated, there were no billboards or big box stores to obscure the view. As I walked up Munjoy Hill, past Victorian houses, roasting coffee’s burnt cinnamon raisin toast scent traveled on the breeze with Nag Champa, salt, seaweed, marijuana, cigarettes and hops from the breweries, plus intermittent bursts of sulfur on the East End. The summer ocean air caressed my skin, lulling me into staying awhile, but my mind drifted to accumulated cautionary tales: Maine summers reeled you in, leaving you wholly unprepared for the brutal winters. So glorious was the June weather to which I’d arrived, though, that I dismissed any sense of foreboding. Portland’s motto was Resurgam, its mascot the Phoenix, suggesting struggle but also regeneration. Our dilapidated loft was better suited to one person or a couple with porous boundaries, but for $175 a month, I, along with Portland natives Ben and Wren, set out to make it work. The crown jewel of the space was a built-in stage doubling as a living room, a perfect set for many scenes, rehearsed and not, to play out: in a few weeks, I would bring home a cavalcade of afterpartying booze cruise revelers who blew lines off Ben’s collectible Tony the Tiger plate. Someone happened upon his beloved Devil Duckies, also collectible, and thought it would be funny to float the horned rubber ducks in sudsy water in the plugged bathroom sink. When Ben returned he was not amused, but would later find it within himself to forgive me, much like how I’d forgive him after he polished off my hummus and tortilla chips on a day when I was particularly hungry. Portland was the friendliest New England locale I’d been to, a party town. And town is what most people called it, as opposed to the city it technically was. “Oh, it’s a small town, alright,” said Ben. “You’ll see.” *** Wren coined the term “dudebro dyke” at Styxx, the gay dance club, when a middle-aged butch who emanated a cloud of cologne exaggeratedly hit on every young, femme-passing person in sight. When they turned her down, she put up a fight instead of gracefully taking no for an answer. She reminded Wren of the drunken dudebros in popped collar Polos and white baseball caps who lurched out of Wharf Street sports bars, yelling misogynist slurs. This woman seemed determined to embody several stereotypes at once. With much effort, I successfully rebuffed her—“I don’t dance!” I insisted, the ink on my Dance B.A. still practically drying. Later, I mentioned this dudebro dyke to Ben and found out her coke addiction had spiraled her into trouble so serious she may have lost her house because of it. When I returned to Styxx that weekend we of course ended up hanging out, magnetized together as cokeheads are. It was when she procured our party supplies (that we then snorted off construction equipment outside the club) that I first encountered her dealer, Sally, better known as Sal. *** Within a week of my arrival, I found myself at Platinum Plus, the local strip joint, with Sal and her best friend Steph. I rolled my eyes at their more dudebroish behavior, like declaring their “bros before hos” life philosophy on repeat, but felt drawn to their swagger and older-than-me confidence. I wanted to somehow be both a bro and a ho. Everything about Sal was rough around the edges: scratchy voice, pockmarked skin, jerky movements. Her smile was a half-smile with only the left side fully moving, which I assumed was due to a drug-induced stroke. Her permanent coke jaw activated as soon as she got fucked up on any substance. She and Steph worked at an SUV dealership and dipped into the drugs Sal sold, bragging about going on “coke diets” where they suppressed their appetites with the stuff. They had triumphantly spiky hair and wore matching leather jackets. Steph and I admitted that upon first seeing each other’s MySpace pages we’d declared to whichever friend was within earshot that we would fuck. I gravitated towards the citrus-mint of her scent, how she blushed when she saw me, her orderly-yet-bad-boy persona. I went home with her that night and had rough sex on her red sheets, which matched the bandana she sported in her back left pocket. We began up against the wall: I pulled her hair, she bit my face, I bit her lip. We left a trail of clothes to the bedroom. While Steph was the one I had the hots for, I ended up spending more time with Sal, who lived around the corner from me. “Well howdy, neighbor!” she said, smiling her half-smile when I first mentioned the loft’s location. Since she hated patchouli, I brought up liking it to get a rise out of her. It worked every time—she went on comedic tirades. She would sniff me and pretend to fall down dead, yelling, “Ugh, pee-yew, ya stinky old hippie!” We shared a love of Amy Winehouse and sang along to “Rehab” while cutting lines on Back to Black’s CD case, leaving scratch marks with the straight razor. *** Billie, better known as B, and I met through Sal, who introduced us one night during a transaction when I tagged along. In my perusal of the town’s queers on MySpace I’d seen photos of B and her wife, Callie, two little peas in a pod, with identical profile pictures of them at their wedding (technically a commitment ceremony due to same-sex marriage’s illegality). B was cute: tattoos, baggy clothes, baseball cap pulled over her shag of hair. Callie was beautiful, a fairy-like femme. They’d been together for seven years—an interminable amount of time for a relationship, in my opinion. We all hung out on a triple date excursion to a Boston nightclub, with Steph driving us in her new SUV. Sal brought Tierney, a femme with an ice blonde pixie cut, and B and Callie rounded out the crew. After shotgunning a beer, B grew increasingly talkative and lit into Steph about the evils of not only driving but also selling gas-guzzling SUVs. Sal and Steph barely suppressed their laughter at B’s soapbox ascent, which I’d learn was her m.o. whenever she got drunk. Callie stayed out of it, linking her arm through B’s and kissing her cheek, a placid expression on her face. We got fucked up on the way down, on the lookout for cops but drinking beers and doing key bumps and laughing about the Gold Star Memorial Highway. I imagine this is a Maine dyke rite-of-passage and icebreaker: “So, who here is a gold star?” (For the uninitiated, that’s a dyke who’s never had sex with a man before. Turned out Callie was the only one). Speaking of sex, the tangled hookup web of passengers in the vehicle cracked me up: while Sal was with Tierney, I was with Steph, and B was with Callie, back in the day Sal and Steph had banged a few times, and Sal and Callie had dated as teenagers, claiming to be one another’s first loves. *** A week since Boston, the night after the booze cruise, I tossed and turned on my mattress, wondering if I should go to the hospital, sensing the spirits of junkies who’d died in the building, not wanting to become one more. I’d consumed massive amounts of alcohol and cocaine, day to night. The euphoria and then numbness had worn off and now the poison gripped my insides. After Ben had returned to find his collectibles defiled, the bacchanal broke up. The most committed party animals among us relocated to Sal’s for a few more hours. B was there and gave me a massage with clammy hands when I mentioned I was stressed about Steph, who’d been evasive lately. Back in the loft with only my jittery thoughts as company, I didn’t feel right. Maybe this is it—maybe I’m dying—maybe I’m panicking—oh shit! My body temperature climbed as I sweated through the sheets. I went to the bathroom a few times, system sped up, abdominal muscles clenching. Nothing came out except weak streams of pee. I didn’t puke, but probably should’ve. In the mirror, my skin had the tint of an overcast sky, which alarmed me. Back on my mattress, my heart pounded, chest tightened with pain, arms tingled. I breathed as slowly as I could, trying to will myself back to normal. Ben, a heavy sleeper, didn’t wake up through any of this, although I considered whether or not I should rouse him. Wren wasn’t home. I fast-forwarded to what would happen if I didn’t die but started feeling worse: hospital, family finding out, forced reckoning, a new 100% clean and sober life. Finally, rock bottom. A part of me was ready to feel relieved if I lived through this. Tears burned the backs of my eyes as I silently bargained with whatever forces might spare me. I tried for measured breaths to control my body’s shaking, afraid I’d start seizing, afraid to go to sleep. Outside, seagulls circled and screamed. It took a few anguished hours, but the vice-like doom in my body dissipated, leaving a hollow fatigue: wrecked, thankful. Afforded a second chance. *** Later that morning I texted Sal, and headed over to bring her back the hoodie she’d lent me last night since the temperature had dropped and I’d been underdressed, as usual. She emerged from the bathroom, looking like maybe she’d slept there. Her apartment smelled sour. The opioid pills she’d upped her consumption of recently had caught up with her, and the withdrawals were kicking her ass. I tossed her the sweatshirt. She smiled a weak half-smile. “Better not fucking smell like patchouli!” I told her about how I thought I was going to O.D., and for a second dizzy panic surged again, sweat beading my palms. She let out a laugh. “My little drama queen. You’re okay…” and I did feel okay, in that moment, because Sal had said so. Then she lurched forward, fist pressed to mouth, and rushed back into the bathroom. I let myself out. B texted that she was in the neighborhood, and we took a walk to the East End Beach with its No Swimming sign. The water sparkled too brightly. Even under her baseball cap and sunglasses B’s face looked ragged, paler than usual. She recounted how awful she’d felt all night, also wondering if she would need to seek medical attention. “Dude, that stuff was bad. At one point I couldn’t even see. Callie was seriously worried. She wanted to call 911.” We had a talk then, the first of many, about how we needed to steer clear of that type of partying, how we wanted to clean up our acts. *** A week after our brush with death, B became my girlfriend (or boifriend, as I’d more often refer to her) after she told me she liked me and said it would be okay if we kissed. After downing a few Purple Geezers, a drink she introduced me to at Styxx, we walked up to the Eastern Prom, where we sat on the grass and watched the blurry lights reflected in Casco Bay. That’s when it happened. I said I liked her too, she asked if she could kiss me, I objected because what about Callie? She assured me they were in an open relationship and it would be fine. I thought kissing her would be fun, and enjoyed her lips’ surprising softness, she trembled in a way that let me know she felt more than that. Turned out it was anything but okay. B told Callie immediately, but we may as well have been fucking behind Callie’s back for how she reacted. They’d been exploring the possibility of opening things up in addition to other remedies for the long-term problems their twin flame veneer belied, but it wasn’t a done deal. It would remain a mystery whether B’s conviction that the kiss would be fine was more wishful thinking or willful ignorance. Sal, Tierney and Steph rushed to Callie’s side. At Styxx, they turned away from me, freezing me out. They chided B, but seemed open to her redemption during the brief “trying to work things out” phase that followed. When I ran into Steph on Wharf Street a few nights later and approached her apologetically, she said, “Dude, I can’t have any of that drama in my life. You need to be humble, give it time before you try and talk to anyone.” The cobblestone street only heightened this exchange’s provincial feel. They cast me out as a pariah, a whippersnapper out-of-towner destroying a pillar of the queer community for shits and giggles. No one stopped to question the deep dysfunction of B and Callie’s relationship, the ease with which it had crumbled. I felt resentful of losing this whole new crew over such an ignorant misstep. How could these adults—and debaucherous party adults, at that—think a kiss was such a huge deal? After all the contempt, the cold shoulders, and B moving out of their shared apartment to keep the peace, Callie ran immediately into the arms of Sal. They rekindled their love within a week. Sally and Callie. Ben was right: this was a small town. My thirst for it had slaked; the seagull screams began to cloy. As a performer and art model, Goldie Peacock spent over a decade bouncing between frenetic movement and absolute stillness before chilling out and becoming a writer. Their stories, essays, and poems appear or are forthcoming in HuffPost, Wild Roof Journal, Sundog Lit, (mac)ro(mic), Powders Press, MIDLVLMAG, Bullshit Lit, beestung, and DRAGS, a book showcasing NYC's drag superstars. They live in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY, USA). You can find them online @goldiepeacock.

Fish Supper so much has been lost along with our Sunday best / we now have different types of Christ tricks / and 60 second flicks filling the hole of us / all the new revivals / prequels and sequels / are stories we stopped caring about long ago / tiny images of insurrection / like all small things / pull on the heartstrings / for a techno second / yet we are more harpy than harp / and can treat the drownings as a conversational starter / served with salmon / and the old white man sauce / give a man a fish / blah, blah, blah / better the sweet words of a woman / instead of letting them swim with the fishes / give any one who needs it / a fish / and then a rod / so they can eat first / and fish later Watching Dr, Zhivago With My Daughter How you loved Dr. Zhivago / but I told you there was no poetry in snow / and you said it was a space to fill with other things / angels / and men whose reasons to leave you understood / You told me I played tragedy like a balalaika / the same three strings over and over / a haunting melody of loss / so you went / dancing with the snowflake people / babbling they were made up of everything that was not here / not me / yet when the rent was due you nailed the stars / fixing them as a slipped cross / so I could find you / I put your bloody fingers to my mouth / a gesture that tasted oh so old / Now the cold scolds my bones / and I choke from the ground up / like a snowflake I am made up of what is not there / and you are spinning rings far away / beyond the illusion / of stars / or redemption / still I always look for you / in the chaos of shapes leaving a bus / in every doorway / and at every special showing of Dr. Zhivago Adele Evershed was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut. Her poetry and prose have been published in several online journals and print anthologies. She has been recently nominated for The Pushcart Prize for poetry, shortlisted for the Staunch Prize for flash fiction, and her novella-in-flash, The History of Hand Thrown Walls was shortlisted in the Reflex Press Novella Award.