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My twin brother Clem had a club foot but could climb like you wouldn’t believe. He’d swoop up trees like we were on the moon and if a ball went on the roof, any roof, he’d bound up the side of the building like a soccer field and next thing you know an entire galaxy of balls, one or two of them the superball kind, and he’d holler scrambles! which I was already doing like a cartoon. We were born before we were done if you know what I mean. I was the opposite of Clem and could fold myself into nothing and get completely flattened by gravity like I had a double helping and sideways bones. Clem would unfurl me sometimes and take me with him and off we’d go decades before parkour and about the same time as the Superman comics came out which our sister Sketchy Sam collected let’s just say, although Denny down the street who was in love with her in a desperate kind of way would later, when he came out of it, swear she stole from him. Sam liked to draw. She’d start by drawing a magic marker frame on the page, cells she called them, and she’d fill them with sketches of me and Clem mostly. She used cheap Woolworth’sscrapbooks at first until all the babysitting money, when she insisted my mother take her to the mall in the city, the proper art store, where she bought thick white paper pads and superior pencils, pale erasers that didn’t leave a wake, metal sharpeners with two holes, all of which she carefully placed into a new pencil case with a roll-up lid like the desk in the den and she started drawing for real then, mostly me and Clem like I said, Clem scraping the ceiling and me flat except for two eyes on the floor is how she drew us and I don’t know how she did it but those squiggles were portraits, true as life, exactly us. We called her Sketch and she was the most sought-after babysitter ever. Parents booked her months in advance, gigs for which she asked double pay at first until she rounded it all the way up to twenty dollars a night when her friends were making three dollars fifty cents with tip. She got pizza out of the deal, too, and called me and Clem when it arrived so we’d fly over for a piece which the parents knew about and the kids seemed to like. There was a no-piggy-backing policy in effect so the kids would have to stand on Clem’s shoulders for the tree-climb and keep it secret. At the end of the night Sketch would leave cells on the refrigerator, one for each kid, beautiful things indeed, the children transformed into superheroes with names like Mary Muscle, Suzy Smartly, Danny Divine, Mighty Mike, and the kids could hardly wait for a sequel which parents were known to cough up big money for as birthday presents and high-mark incentives. Sketch ended up going to art school in the city and me and Clem moved into a government-funded housing project when our parents had enough of us which we totally understood and were mutual about. In her third year Sketch got so much money for her work she was able to buy a beautiful old three-storey apartment building on Gladstone Avenue in downtown Toronto. She rented most of it out but me and Clem helped her turn the entire upstairs into a big studio apartment just for her. We opened the whole thing up except for two rooms side by side along the back wall and the next time we came to visit, on one of the doors was a cell with my weird portrait, and on the second door was a cell with Clem, or at least his flying essence. Inside it was just one room so the doors were a sort of trick and there were two matching beds side by side, two dressers, two desks and a big leather couch in front of a TV on the wall. The rest of the walls, all of them, were covered in cells Sketch had done from when we were all little to now, eyeballs and squiggles mostly but not all, and that was when it started me and Clem every Saturday morning we’d hop on the train to meet Sketch at Union Station, a four-hour ride. I used to wonder what we looked like to the cars stopped at the crossings, our excited faces through the window just like Sketch drew us. Sherry is from the wilds of Ontario. She writes the kind of stories she longs for and can rarely find. thestoryparade.ca

When I think about the day we met our daughter, I can only recall how much my stomach hurt. I had spent a better part of that morning squatting in front of the toilet, legs akimbo, bile dripping from my mouth in threads. The water was too cold to shower in, so I used a whole packet of wet wipes to cleanse myself, and the overwhelming scent of spearmint on my red plastic toothbrush made me hunch over the washbasin three times before I walked out of the bathroom. Meanwhile, you had already left our home. You were standing at the corner of the third street waiting for the bus, your stomach calm, and your ankles holding your calves steady. You knew that after six stops, a baby was waiting for you at the end of the bus ride. You were anticipating the cab ride home – awkwardly bundling her into the navy-blue car seat your sister loaned us, arguing with the cab driver about the air conditioning, hunching in the front seat with your slender fingers braided through one another. Meanwhile, I would sit up straight in the backseat, breathing in the scent of the driver’s packed lunch, and I would try to get her to wrap her chubby left hand around my ring finger, the one that is still bare after a decade together. Mira’s mother is beautiful, spent. Time blurs, and suddenly, we have a baby. You are seemingly in shock, and I am left sitting outside the recovery room gently holding a soft, sleeping infant, a child who carries an inheritance that we did not give her, a combination of genes that will never be fully ours. We don’t know it yet, but when we get home, we will discover that the universe quietly interceded as we attempted to make sense of something we weren’t sure we needed. We don’t know it yet, but in fifteen years, she will ask us about family heirlooms. You want to give her the keys to a kingdom, a first-edition copy of Jekyll and Hyde, and I want her to have the curves of our nailbeds, the stuffed cat you lost when you were eight. Instead, I will give her the plain silver band you slid over my finger at midnight on our eleventh anniversary. I will frame the faded Polaroid of her mother, grinning, six months pregnant, the carved wooden box with all the notes my mother slipped in my lunchbox at school, the first pair of booties I bought for the boy we buried under the mango tree in our backyard. Inheritance is sometimes shaped by loss, but a legacy of love is shaped by memory. Amelia David is an avid reader of fiction, a former student of English literature, and an individual who hopes to break away from writing personal essays. Her work has been published on Mag 20/20 and Esthesia. She drinks too much green tea, and blogs occasionally at https://pretendedconfusion.wordpress.com/.

Unlock my body and move myself to dance Into warm liquid, flowing, blowing glass (Wilco - Heavy Metal Drummer) “Listen. This is the best sound in the world…” Anticipation for the glug of wine against an apple glass - Assured as a magician’s click, click, click Blacksmith-red; bending solids into shapes Of sunlight on kitchen tiles Half diamond, loosely hanging under the sink Your crisp white trainers nip between Day and night; May’s open-windowed fever to sighing fridge As basil, chilli, cherry tomatoes Rise from their slumber; settle on surfaces - Coiling around your jug of flowers, sculpting butter in the bell jar - Nothing here escapes their incense You take the volume up; Wilco gig to your quiet Belfast street Singing of your dinner-time Charleston; our sympathetic drink; These apple glasses it poured itself into; all a river, generating electricity - Flashing into this intangible moment of freedom You tell me about driving home over hills today, How the sun drubbed through the sky; gloriously smacked your screen - Germinating a whispered thankfulness for your life When you share this short story, stirring the rich sauce, I think: Yes, this is the best sound in the world Jessica Berry grew up beside the seaside of Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland. She is an English teacher at the Belfast Model School for Girls. In 2021, Jessica was placed in Bangor’s annual poetry contest hosted by the Aspects Literary Festival. Her work has also been included in publications such as Drawn to the Light and A New Ulster. She is working on her first poetry collection; inspired by Irish myths and fables.

I sit at my desk, a nice one – yellow wood, not in the best condition but well-made – and think, “I’m a fraud.” This has nothing to do with passing bad checks, lying on my resume, etc. though I’m not above, and may have performed, any of those things. It’s more essential, to say it’s more essential is to appropriate – what? – more dignity, grandeur even to my craven endeavors. “No!” I want to shout, “I’m a fraud pure and simple.” But I can’t shout, the kids might hear. They’re out of the house now, back-to-school shopping with their mother. “Well,” the wife said at breakfast, “do you have office work again this weekend?” I mumbled something, the kids laughed, one spilled jelly on her shirt. “I’ll get it,” I half-rose but of course, the wife beat me to it. These anecdotes, always distorted, the lies I tell to gain the freedom to confront. I mean to confront the world, to get at its essentials by understanding its particulars, but always something keeps me back. This isn’t Eddington’s desk nor Husserl’s that I’m sitting at, it’s something we picked up at a tag sale along with its matching chair. The project, the only one worth executing, is to face the world, that is, whatever is before my eyes, honestly, without abstractions, to see But always I back away. It’s not as if I don’t have the time. I can make the time. Driving to work, working, driving back, spending so-called quality time – it’s all there. It’s more there – here – on Saturdays. On the Sabbath, the daylight witching hour, we confront Outside my window, over the lid of my trusty, deceptive laptop: the outside of the sill, paint peeling off it, beyond that the man-made natural world: lawns, hedges, not topiary, the neighbor mowing his lawn, a nuthatch singing on a nearby bough, that’s not a nuthatch, it’s a titmouse, a nuthatch is something that I digress. Of course. I digress, anything to avoid The neighbor, parading back and forth behind his gas-powered mower, paunch hanging over belt, no cigar, he gave those up, looks my way, notices me, doesn’t let on that he sees. I should go out, my grass needs cutting, I should let it go, turn it to hay, this town was a meadow once, has it in its name, Menacing Meadow, that’s not the name of course, the menace is invented, part of my deception, I should go out, we’ll talk about the big game, last night’s, today’s, tomorrow’s, there’s always something on. The games aren’t an evasion, they’re part of being human, the Aztecs, for example Because those others lived in the distant past, I consign them to the state of nature, as if I don’t live in a state of nature, however denatured. And my purpose I look at my computer, notice I’m signed in to my work account, then I didn’t lie, I do have work to do, I even have an email I could read. My cursor hovers over it, I click, get up from my desk, refresh my coffee, venture out. “Sure is a scorcher,” the neighbor says, wiping his protruding brow, it parallels his stomach though it’s harder, stop seeing correspondences, I tell myself, see the particular, that’s where “Sure is,” I say, reviving the flagging conversation. Grass covers my sandals. The neighbor glances at my feet as if to accuse. “I’ll mow my lawn tomorrow”, I say, “I have office work today. Sunday’s my chore day.” I don’t want the neighborhood association – what association? – running us out of town for improper home maintenance. “It’s going to rain tomorrow,” he says. Ah the charming simplicity of these suburban folk, so sure of what can’t be known for certain! “I’ll take my chances,” I say sauntering off. A few blocks later I’m in a street, I locked the house with something on my key fob, unless I pressed it wrong, not sure if I should go back and check, I know how this ends, that’s part of my scam, how does that fit in? Something’s sniffing at my toes, I made it to the curb somehow. “Why hello, I haven’t seen you in a while,” the old woman says looking up at me. We’re both on the sidewalk now, it’s not that I’m tall, she’s short, the archetypal little old lady, it hasn’t been that long, I saw her last weekend. “I’ve been working,” I say as if to put her in her place, the retiree, she worked all her life, unpaid unsung work tending to her husband, a stalled locomotive, dead now, raising kids, occasional grandkids, now her dog, a toy version of some pedigree, I know the breed, I forget which, can’t ask her, she told me months ago, she’ll think I wasn’t listening, I wasn’t. “And how are things at?” I can’t believe she knows the name of my firm, we were just acquired a few months ago, I don’t recall telling her, it’s not the sort of thing that makes the papers. “Oh you know,” I say, reaching down to pet her pooch. It snarls at me. “Alfreda!” she snaps. “Well, we’d best be going. Alfreda wants her din-din.” She pats my stomach with her free hand, ambles off. As she goes, I see the clear plastic bag holding Alfreda’s poop that she carries in lieu of a purse. I go too, angry at myself for this diversion. Head down I notice my fly is open. I can’t zip it up, the neighbors will think I’m doing something obscene, one of the perils of the meadows. I untuck my shirt, it covers half the offending gap, nothing to see here, ladies, keep it moving as the cops say. Instead of observing the well or ill-trimmed lawns about me, I ruminate upon my encounter with my lady friend: was that a twinkle in her eye? Was it because of my unzipped fly? I wonder about her platonic, lascivious, materteral interest in me, I should be observing nature, nature isn’t natural here, even the hawks are shaped by people, people are natural, nothing to confront, too much to confront, focus: focus is always focus on I make it home, the driveway half empty, I’ve the house to myself, no telling how long. I skirt the fridge, no I drink juice straight out of the bottle, cover my tracks that way, I have to keep my belly taut as I can manage for the ladies. I sit at the laptop just as the car pulls in, I refresh the screen, “Don’t bother Daddy, he’s working!” my wife says, she opens the door a crack, I press a key, I was timed off my account, no telling what the wife sees, the kids rush through the crack, I stand, they embrace my midsection, my fly’s closed now, the youngest looks up, “Look what I got!” she says waving something before my eyes, and I’m there for her though absent.

Despite the glares from the two officers, I thought we’d escaped. Once the twins got on the bus, we’d be off. Then, with one foot in, Jackson, the verbal one, turned and yelled out to Marshall, the physical one, “Kick the car!” Which he did. Hard. And put a motherfucking dent in the side of the police cruiser. This action was not appreciated by Rochester’s finest. Before I could speak, both twins were in the back of the car, officers in front. I was still frozen when they peeled out, shouting, “Follow us.” It’s not easy for a school bus to tail a cop car driven by an infuriated officer, and we had no GPS to direct us from the corn field to the station, but somehow we made it. In the parking lot, I sent the bus with twelve remaining kids and three staff members home to Ithaca, an hour and a half away. I turned toward the police fortress, worried about the twins’ fate as well as my own. It was the summer of 1990. I was 24 and the unofficial director of the Access to College Education (ACE) summer program. I’d taken the city youth worker job the previous fall knowing very little. Nine months later, I only was just beginning to understand. I was beginning to understand how the forces of institutional racism and class structure led kids in the sixth grade to garner suspensions leading to academic failure. I was beginning to understand that not everyone in my Ivy League hometown could reasonably aspire to its hallowed halls. I was beginning to understand the struggle of families borrowing to pay the light bill or gathering shingles in the front yard in hopes of one day reroofing their trailer. But I was also young, full of idealism and energy. And I did know the twins well. I’d found them tutors, driven them to school dances, commiserated with their mother at 8am when they wouldn’t get up for school – on one occasion, I’d rousted them with a broom, maybe not my finest moment. On this day, we’d come to Ganondagan, an American Indian heritage site located in a cornfield on a two-lane rural highway outside Rochester. I’d heard it was a good place to visit, but there was no internet to look at pictures, and a lot of open stark nothingness turned out not to be a great choice for fourteen rambunctious city kids. It started with baseball caps on a dirt path. Jackson and Marshall were tough but no match for Robert and Evan, the biggest boys in the group. Some months later, Robert, a quiet kid who lived with his grandparents, would melt down in a group session becoming violent without a target. It would take most of my strength to restrain him, my arms hugging him tightly, no words sufficient for the pain he was trying to let go. Also in the future, it would come out that Evan was involved with his stepsister in a bad way. I would make the call to Social Services, the call which would break up the family. On this hot day, however, those boys were merely bullies, grabbing the twins’ hats and mocking them for their inability to retrieve them as they jogged down the road. “Get them, Francois, get them,” the twins yelled at me. A grown man chasing kids on a sacred site felt inappropriate so I demurred. “Ignore them, we’ll get them back. They just want attention.” This answer was wrong, very wrong. The twins, half in tears, told me I didn’t care about them and headed back toward the bus. The bus driver was there as well as Leslie, a staff member who’d stayed back. I let them go. I didn’t know the bus driver was asleep. I didn’t consider that Leslie was physically unable to keep up with the twins as they continued walking down the rural highway becoming a shimmering mirage in the summer heat. I could have known two young Black kids on the side of the highway would draw attention. I wouldn’t have guessed that when the cops picked them up to return them to Ganondagan, the twins would yell obscenities at the officers for the duration of the short drive, making the cruiser dent the absolute last straw. The officers disappeared once I was inside the station. The twins were in the care of a female sergeant, a woman with a tan face and calloused hands. She let me make a call to my boss. I wasn’t going to be fired. He was sending Michael Thomas to pick me up in one of the program’s cars, a retired cruiser, the irony not lost on me. I felt relief at keeping my job and grimaced at the prospect of the shit Michael would give me the whole ride back. The sergeant did the paperwork with a smile while maintaining eye contact with the boys. “What you two need is to spend the summer on my farm. Shoveling hay, mowing lawns, and feeding the animals,” she told them, the twins subdued for once. “Fuck, yes!” I wanted to yell. And I know their overwhelmed mom would be okay with that. With the paperwork and details of transferring their probations to our county done, the sergeant moved on to her next case, and the boys and I sat quietly waiting for Michael. I was exhausted though I knew sleep was hours and many beers away. The boys were too. They were twelve. I worked with Jackson, Marshall, Robert, Evan, and the others for another year and a half. Objectively, even before high school, the ACE program was a failure. Chronic absenteeism and behavioral issues plagued many of the kids. Teachers who seemed like partners in sixth grade grew indifferent by eighth grade. I wasn’t sure if I’d accomplished anything but knew I needed to move on for everyone’s sake. But there were wins. The only boy Robert and Evan couldn’t bully, a boy who’d seen his father killed as a child, came to live with my family. He went back to his mother sooner than I wanted, but we remained close for many years and he became a good father to his children. Another boy did very well in high school and even made the football team as a lineman. I went to a game to cheer him on and sat near his father, a Greek immigrant who owned a diner in town. When the boy missed a block leading to a quarterback sack, a guy near us yelled, “Bench that fat ass!” I had to leave before I got arrested. The boy’s football career was short-lived but he did make it to college. I spent a long time thinking about how the afternoon in Ganondagan could have gone differently, finally realizing it was just a proxy for the lives of those kids, lives I dropped into and out of, lives with forces causing far too much struggle and pain. Those kids would be in their forties now. More than half my life has passed and I’m still hanging out with kids, this time as a volunteer in another emerging program for families who’ve come to this country from troubled places halfway across the globe. The young woman who coordinates the program is the age I was at Ganondagan. She seems so much smarter and more composed than I was then. Perhaps memory can be overly critical, but I think she is and I’m happy about it. I don’t need another arrest story. A word from the author: The events here occurred so long ago but remain fresh in my mind. I wonder how the lives of those kids have unfolded. You can read more of my work here: francoisbereaud.com

Pearl Divers We’ve crossed two states to be here on this shiny, blue Saturday afternoon of hot cosmic winds and A.M. radio crackle, chrome, clouds and melting tarmac, eye to eye with ears of corn, drunk on beer and pollen. And way over there, on the side of the road, is the U.S.S. Chevrolet, looking like it’s been run aground and abandoned somewhere off the coast of what surely must be Nebraska (the captain and crew very possibly searching for native girls or scavenging for food). Yes, here we are, sifting through someone’s cornfield, as if we were pearl divers, perhaps, diving capped and flippered, swimming in a sea of yellow and green (confessing our sins to crows as we go) recalling again and again what surely must have been an ancient Chinese maxim, that a man’s soul is a pearl. Everywhere around us is the sound of the friction of the wind filtering through this field of tall corn, an all-encompassing hiss like the electric crackle of static, haunted with distant whispering or the dry, dusty rustling of a million newspapers that read nothing but old news. Madame Laveau, Fortune Teller and Police Psychic, Has a Vision And this time, for some reason, there’s a Charlie Chaplin of a scarecrow standing in the middle of a crossroads, staring, blankly, up at the sky, arms outstretched with a pipe-bomb in one hand and a bottle of Pernod in the other. And the sky itself is a living, breathing, billowing fishnet of a tapestry woven of starfish and moonflowers, star fruit and banana peppers and little jade lions with smiles as wide as the seas of time. In the bottom right corner of the scene, there’s a pile of rictus-ly grinning carnival masks blooming with cherry blossoms and someone’s spare change (some kind of foreign currency, it seems). And just to the right of that (and down a little), we can see your classic hoary country preacher-type, with a rainbow variety of snakes crawling from his pockets and sleeves, shirt-collar and pant legs, staggering his way towards his unsuspecting flock (not shown here). And, just a few years from this very spot, there’s a hobo clown with a hernia and a stove-pipe hat, smoking a clove cigarette and sipping, solemnly, from a bottle of Applejack. And he’s sitting atop an aging rhinoceros (that, by the way, is just about to do its business from a steel I-beam, thirteen floors up on a swaying skeletal structure which, the locals say, will one day be the federal memorial something-or-other dedicated to some fancy so-and-so). And, finally, there in the background, just behind (and up to the left) of the Night Blooming Cereus, if one squints hard enough (as if peering into a painting by Van Eyck or maybe one of those Where’s Waldo dioramas), one can almost see it … Life, itself (portrayed here in some vague, anthropomorphic manifestation), lurking unnervingly beneath the pale orange glow of the streetlamp and the churning cloud of Death’s-Head Moths.

He sang Gershwin as we strolled down Montreal sidewalks, past budding trees confined to boulevard boxes, where dogs peed against them, and trash swirled around them, trees that would have a better chance in forests, but were still plucky in their snug quarters. He held my hand. We kissed on Rue Saint-Jacques. I melted. In the glow of a streetlamp, his blue eyes flickered. He left me when the ground was icy, when winds whipped my hair over my eyes, when leaves tumbled and were crushed underfoot. Come spring, he returned, as seasons do. It seemed we needed the sun. A word from the author: I write overlooking Lake St Clair in Ontario, Canada. My work has been published in literary and lifestyle journals, including Dorothy Parker's Ashes, Talking Writing, Read650, Southshore Review, Canada's History Magazine, and Dreamers Creative Writing. Find me at: virginiafoley.com

Misericordia To speak respectfully of the dead is to not speak of knowing that they’re damned. To go home again and find the front door open, the light on in the kitchen, the pattern on the table, the old picture on the wall. There’s a broken mirror on the floor, a hundred different pictures of the paradise and the fall. Anything else is a sunken ship - everything else is a sunken ship, a ship we sank with rocks. That pattern on the table, that picture on the wall, waiting there for the apology, knowing no one will ever call. Misericordia (#2) I saw a precious and singular boy in a motorized wheelchair leaning out to catch a snowflake on his tongue. I would never trade places with him. I understood that there was purity in his joy, and that in my margins, and in my money, in my jack and coke, and pussy too, in victory, even, I have none of that. Ritual at night at night two men fight inside the circle of light made by a fire. the witches, two sisters, chanting and swaying, watching, not praying, wait, just out of sight. Southern Cross There is, in the last picture she sent me, something in the curve of her lower lip, in her half-smile, all there ever is of loving. There is, in a museum, a picture I saw as a child of a woman in a blue dress. She holds the hem of her skirt bunched above her knees in one hand, stooping over to pick up seashells with the other. She is barefoot on the wet sand left by the retreating tide, her face hidden in the shade of her white bonnet, and I had, for many years, wondered who she was. You can find Steve Passey @SuperHeavy666.

CW: Implied violence I lean out from the wooden porch railing. Dry flakes of white lead paint chip off and mix with the sweat under my grip. When I let go and jump, the wind promises to lift me into the sky, far above the house shingled in gray asbestos tiles, above the tar rooftops and hills thick with Virginia pine. I soar, leaving behind the shattered wine bottle. Leaving behind the sound of frozen meatloaf slammed, with my mother’s two hands and tears, onto the kitchen table. But gravity is stronger than all the hope in my 10-year-old body, and the ground reminds me I can’t fly. The hard shells of black walnuts leave scratches and bruises on my arms. Soft grass stains the knees of my pants. Jim Almo (he/him) is a southern writer and musician living in the northeast. He grew up in a religious cult in the Appalachian mountains, which you can read about in his memoir if he ever finishes it. He is a verified coffee nerd, former touring drummer, and loves to cook vegetarian dinners with his wife and two teen boys. You can find his work in CP Quarterly, JMWW, Anti-Heroin Chic and now Roi Fainéant Press. He's also on Twitter @jimalmo.

The American Beauty at Sunset He liked to be called “Daddy.” And in his rose garden The same petalled, arrogant aristocrats that bloomed In his brother’s award-winning garden in Florida. Giving their names, he led me, wondering little upstart myself, Around the world of worship, the mulch, the patient picking off Of Japanese beetles, the lethal sprays we tried not to inhale (But who knew about such things then?) The fertilizing feedings, all patient panoply attached to flowery faces. In awkward attempts at courtship of an impatient child, he would say, “Here! This is your flower—the American Beauty—the deep pinky-red; That’s you, you’re an American Beauty.” But I, wayward and disinclined, said, “No, I want to be this one! What’s this called? This yellowy-orange with orange-red edges?” “Oh no!” he said every time, tailoring truth to our ritual. “That’s the Sunset Rose!” You’re too young, your life is still at daybreak, dear, the dawn!” And I, chanting, “Sunset! Sunset! Sunset!” stomped along flowery fortresses Just shorter than I, for that was the game, the game we played, As if two teams might be declared, one a home team, the other not, The American Beauty at Sunset. Wishes have a way of being overheard, Whether capricious charms or not. Before I was in my teens, he was dead, His roses, too, no one to tend them; he was overcome by sunset, And I without anyone to call me an American beauty at all. Of Drunk Turkeys and Dead Squirrels The women of the family, dour about their daily chores Excited the male fabling tendency: the women did odd things, Were strangely uninformed where it could count. The men, while celebrating fine cookery, clean living, All the commonplace female virtues of the time, Enjoyed twitting in story and tale the women who served them Without complaint. On one side of the family were the famed female grape wine makers, The ones not au courant of wildlife outside, who Threw their used (alcohol-infused) grape skins over the hill When they were done distilling the precious wine. And how should they know that a flock of hungry turkeys Would land there in the night, gobbling up grape skins Then passing out stone cold, like a passel of drunks? Well, the women only knew the next morning, they came out to find Seeming dead turkeys, feathers a prize for the plucking, Since, as the wise women counseled each other, Turkeys already dead weren’t safe to eat—well, what if They were diseased? Did they not feel a response as they plucked And plucked, happy to have a whole flight of feathers for pillows And tick mattresses? No sign of hearts slowly beating, No stray turkey call or protest? But they plucked, and left the turkeys outside for the men to bury. What sent the men into belts of laughter the next morning Was the sight of thirty or so naked turkeys waddling and calling in distress, And the women might scold the joke but weren’t allowed to live it down. There story ends. And at suppers and get-togethers, the men On the family’s other side had their own “wrong-headed females” tale to tell, Though shorter. Tale was, two women, sisters, were chasing a squirrel Away from a picnic it was marauding. One bravely drew the derringer Her husband had got her for protection from local thieves, Lately the invaders of homes and barns. She shot once, twice, But only wounded the warring rodent, and he sent up unholy shrieks, Darting in and out around his would-be killer’s feet. This made the women cry, and grieve. Taking counsel of each other, They picked up two sticks and tried to beat him to death So that he might die more quickly and cease his hideous howls. Male amusement, female fussing at the story, our ancestors’ ancient bonds. When You’ve Got to Go There “Uncle Porter,” the old relatives, sedate but careful, Gossiped to my mother in front of me, “was a Pinkerton Man.” “He went to the door one day,” they glanced over at me, To where I was hugging Aunt Cora’s kitten around its neck for dear life, Then spoke again, soft words, hard meanings, “and he left and didn’t come back.” The kitten mewed, and I put it down, watching it dart, fleas and all, Back under Aunt Cora’s outside porch. Crouching down, I could see a green, unrepentant, unwinking stare looking out my way. “Later, about twenty years later,” I heard behind me on the porch, In hushed tones to which I found myself now listening, too, “He came back one day. Just out of the clear blue!” My mother expressed the expected awe and surprise, Though every time we saw Aunt Cora, we heard something of Uncle Porter. “And he walked up and knocked at Loreen’s door, and your Aunt Loreen just said, ‘Porter,’ and held the door open for him.” “I guess they were very funny people, not like us,” responded my mother. “Well, you know, Porter drank,” Aunt Cora said, mentioning the mild scandal. She had signed the pledge at fifteen, And never took more than a taste at evening Of her own homemade parsnip wine. “But Loreen wasn’t one to hold grudges. And anyway,” Aunt Cora wound up, Putting the point to the discussion with her usual resort To “old ettered sayings,” “Home is a place where, when you’ve got to go there, they’ve got to take you in.” Victoria Leigh Bennett (she/her). Greater Boston, MA area, born WV. Ph.D. Website: creative-shadows.com. "Come for the shadows, stay for the read." In-Print: "Poems from the Northeast," 2021; "Scenes de la Vie Americaine (en Paris)," [in English], 2022. Between Aug. 2021-Sept. 2022, Victoria will have published at least 21 times with: @olympiapub, @press_roi, @thealienbuddha, @AmphoraMagazine, @barzakhmag, @madrigalpress, @LovesDiscretion, @winningwriters, @cultofclio. Current WIP: 9th Novel/CNF/Fiction/Poetry. Twitter: @vicklbennett. Victoria is disabled.

It has been 22 3 months and I wake up incredulous with you again (like you used to, actually), but I’ll love you again by lunch; then they’ll be a tossing confusion (this is stronger when I’m hungover), but after a sandwich it’ll be greeting card love again: tidy and ignorant; then I’ll talk to you in my head, or argue with, laugh at, torment you (but you’re really tormenting me, aren’t you?), then it’ll be that bottom-line love again; and it’s testing and toing and froing, and it ain’t achieving a lot, and it ain’t poetic, and it’s probably unhealthy (probably medicalisable, too, along with all their rest – I mean, look at the state of this). Ashley is 33-year-old writer in Bristol, UK. He has been writing in the dark for years but is finally emerging as a poet, performer and poetry event host. He can be found at www.ashleydunnwriting.co.uk or @ashleydwriting on Instagram.

In the still of the night snow accumulated swiftly—a gift from the heavens—undisturbed by adults who did not appreciate its unique beauty, and mischievous children who did not understand that it served as a protective blanket of white Mother Nature lovingly crafted with icy precision, intended to protect the dormant ground beneath it until Spring emerged, reborn, bringing with it welcome warmth, along with a multitude of bright, inviting colors. A new beginning… * * * It had already been snowing for several hours when Kevin Wilson yawned, scratched his head, sat up in bed, and looked out his bedroom window, squinting against the blinding glare, an endless sheen, cold yet appealing, full of untapped potential; the backyard had been transformed into an immaculate, white landscape beyond compare. Downy, white flakes continued to fall, accumulating rapidly. He bounded out of bed and went into the living room. “Morning, Mom. Is school canceled?” Kevin crossed his fingers. Bleary-eyed, his mother, Susan looked up from her MacBook Pro propped on the breakfast nook and yawned. “Yes, you can go back to sleep if you want to, Kevin. I really wish I could crawl back into bed and spend the day snuggled under the covers, safe and warm, binge-watching Netflix on my iPad, but I have work to do.” She turned her attention back to her laptop, summoned by the never-ending ding of incoming emails. “Clients expect me to meet their deadlines, no matter what the weather…That’s what keeps food on the table and a roof over our heads since Dad died. Remember that.” “I know, Mom. You remind me all the time, ‘I’ve got the weight of the world on my shoulders.’ I get it—work comes first. .” He sighed. “That’s my boy.” She went over to the coffee pot for a much-needed refill, ruffling his spiky, brown hair along the way. “I know it’s not ideal, but that’s just the way things are. Thanks for understanding—it really means a lot.” Kevin nodded eagerly. “But who can sleep when there’s snow on the ground?! Looks like four inches so far. Not great, but it’s a good start. I’d better get out there while the snow’s still perfect—it won’t stay that way forever.” Kevin's dark blue eyes glistened, cold and crisp, a stark contrast to the freshly fallen snow outside. “You’re sixteen, aren’t you too old to play in the snow? Haven’t you got better things to do, like homework? You could straighten up your room for a change—it’s a total pigsty—there’s so many dirty clothes in there I can’t see the floor.” “Aw, Mom I already finished my homework, and don’t you think my chores can wait until later? I don’t mean to be so sloppy. Look, I’ll clean my room later. Scout’s honor. Just let me go outside and be a kid in the snow while it’s still pure—it will be ruined when people start walking their dogs.” Kevin’s mother glanced at her watch. “Deal. It’s only seven-thirty. At least eat something, so you’ll have plenty of energy for your snowy shenanigans…” “ It’s the best time to go sledding, when everyone else is still asleep and I can have the snow all to myself.” Kevin winked, poured a glass of cold water straight from the tap and grabbed a banana from the counter, nearly overripe, its yellow peel marred by brown spots. And, making an effort, he put his dirty glass in the dishwasher and tossed the banana peel in the trash without being asked. “You actually cleaned up after yourself for once!” Her voice softened. “Come in for lunch at noon. I’ll have your favorite, cream of tomato soup and a grilled cheese on sourdough waiting.” He grabbed his jacket, hat and gloves from the hooks hanging on the living room way on his way out the front door. “That sounds great, Mom. I’ll probably be ravenous by then. Don’t work too hard. Try to do something fun.” “Easier said than done. I’m on a tight deadline. Time is money,” his mother muttered, hunched over her laptop, feverishly updating a client website. “Don’t eat any yellow snow.” Susan looked up from her screen and realized she was talking to herself. Kevin went around to the side of the house, opened the heavy garage door, which wobbled and squeaked on its tracks—I really need to fix that for Mom with some WD-40 later—and struggled to retrieve his rickety Flexible Flyer from the corner crammed grappling with an unruly heap of gardening equipment: rakes, shovels, gardening hoes, a broken lawn mower, a bright red snow blower, and two half-empty plastic jugs of gasoline; everything came tumbling down with a spectacular clatter, luckily nothing broke, a veritable deathtrap, despite his efforts to keep things organized. Messes seemed to follow him everywhere, unavoidable, like his shadow. Stepping carefully over the carnage, he walked up the driveway, pulling the sled behind him, it bounced across the snow beneath his feet, and down to the end of his block, with a spring in his step, whistling “Let it Snow” as he went. Out the window Mrs. Wilson saw her son bundled up in a light blue, down jacket, well-worn jeans with holes at the knees, a matching hat, gloves, and Moon Boots. She watched him trudge through the snowy backyard—getting smaller and smaller—until he seemed to fade away, dwindling down to a microscopic spec, an unwelcome blemish on an otherwise pristine landscape. * * * The whipping, winter wind smacked Kevin in the face like an invisible punch from a formidable, illusive opponent. Stunned, he shook his head, squinted to protect his eyes from the punishing, near white-out conditions, blinked, and surveyed his sparse surroundings: cars parked in driveways, cloaked in white; tiny paw-prints from a cat or a small dog on the snow-covered road sullying hallowed ground; morning papers wrapped in red plastic by a dutiful paperboy, so they wouldn’t be overlooked later by groggy customers hastily clearing the snow with shovels or snow blowers on their way to work; everything looked new shrouded in white. Kevin still had the solitary snowscape to himself, and it beckoned with dire urgency, as if sensing its fleeting existence. He marveled at the sheer beauty of it all. He brushed large, heavy flakes from his face for a clear boy’s-eye view. The neighbors were just starting their day—taking advantage of the storm to have a leisurely breakfast with their better half and kids—before braving the elements to earn their keep. The lights on in surrounding homes made that obvious—and that was fine with him. Kevin inhaled the crisp air as snowflakes tickled his nose. Snow fell silently around him, accumulating quickly, like sand through an hourglass. He felt like a boy caught in a snow globe—alone but not lonely—free to explore the treacherous terrain at his own perilous pace. There were no clear boundaries, a regular free-for-all. He bounced on the balls of his feet, excited as a little boy on Christmas morning greeted by the stunning sight of all the Christmas presents nestled under the tree, his for the taking. The snow crunched under foot like broken glass; it gave way easily, a silent sudden collapse that caught him off guard, he lost his balance for a moment, but managed to get a firm foothold on the solid ground underneath. He walked over to a chain link fence that surrounded Sunken Meadow State Park. A white metal sign bolted to the fence will dark green lettering proclaimed: Welcome to Sunken Meadow State Park. Hours of operation: 9:00 AM – 8:00 PM. A huge padlock secured the front gate—that’s what he got for being an early riser. Out of the corner of his eye he spied a crude opening further down in the fence. Kevin loved a challenge. He shoved the sled in first and made his way through the haphazard hole, made by a stray dog or raccoon, no doubt. Slightly startled by the ordeal yet still fearless, he paused at the top of a steep hill and surveyed the rugged terrain, plotting the best route. He had the hill all to himself. Nothing could be finer. Barren, crooked branches rattled like bones in the whipping winter wind overhead. Kevin hoisted the sled upright and tested the steering mechanism; it was a little rusty, herky-jerky at best, not as flexible as it used to be; he hoped it would do the trick. He hopped on, grabbed the piece of wood in front that resembled the wing of the Wright Brothers’ plane, and leaned forward. The Flexible Flyer flew downhill at its usual brisk pace, giving him a taste of the wind as he watched the desolate nature preserve speed by in one big blur. The snowbank at the bottom that stopped the sled and broke his fall was the only part of the ride Kevin saw clearly. The rusty blades sliced through the snow, leaving a crude, maroon trail in their wake, an indelible mark. Tainted tracks that blazed a trail to the mischievous, meddling boy making a mountain out of a molehill. The wind howled in protest. Sleet pelted his rosy cheeks. Kevin yelped in pain and wiped his face with the back of a gloved hand to stop the burning sensation, but he refused to heed Mother Nature’s harsh warning. That’s when his face began to sting and then become numb. Slightly bruised, he got up and dusted himself off before pulling the Flexible Flyer by the double-knotted string tied to both ends of the steering mechanism for the treacherous trek uphill. He paused halfway to catch his breath. He stared at the trademark tracks in the snow and grinned, not realizing that he destroyed what Mother Nature worked hard to protect. Kevin continued his journey to the top—King of the Mountain—paused to kick a pile of snow that seemed to be piling up faster than the rest. Curious, he bent down for a closer look and noticed a snowball the size of a quarter on the ground. The boy stomped on it without giving it much thought. He set his Flexible Flyer on the ground and sped towards the snowbank, like an arrow locked on a target. Afterward, Kevin picked up his sled, brushed the snow off his jeans, and headed uphill again. He paused at the top to examine the spot where he had squashed the snowball. The snowball was now as big as a baseball on the rebound. Kevin blinked, shook his head, and saw that it had vanished. Poof! He shrugged it off. Kevin hopped on the sled again and sped down the hill at record speed; he hit the bank hard. It took him a couple of minutes to get his bearings…When Kevin looked down, astounded, he saw a snowball as big as a basketball in front of him. Watching. Waiting. He blinked, and it disappeared. Why do I keep seeing a snowball? He scratched his head, confused but not the least bit concerned. My mind must be playing tricks on me… Determined to ignore the rematerializing snowball, Kevin re-packed the snowbank so he wouldn’t crash smack-dab into the unforgiving metal fence beyond. Mother Nature’s initial warning clearly wasn’t forceful enough: Kevin looked up and noticed that the white sphere he was trying so hard to ignore had somehow grown again, like a beach ball being inflated by an unseen pump and was now the size of a small child. Kevin pulled off a glove and touched it tentatively. The snowball felt very wet, with the slightly sticky texture of cholate chip cookie dough; tasted exactly like the Sno Cones he’d had at the Fireman’s Fair last July, without the fruit flavoring, light, fluffy, refreshing. His curiosity satisfied, Kevin wiped his wet fingers on his jacket and shoved his gloves back on. He looked at the sky and saw that the snow had turned into rain. Damn! This means I'll have to stop soon! I can still get a few runs in if I hurry! Kevin sped through the rapidly evolving mess of snow and slush as fast as his Flexible Flyer would allow, which wasn’t very fast at all; the sled came to a screeching halt before he hit the snowbank. He felt cheated. Kevin looked up five minutes later and saw snow falling. Awesome! Maybe the rain that fell will freeze so the hill will be twice as fast! Ice is nice! Kevin trudged uphill, testing the snow as he went. He almost slipped on a patch of fresh ice at the top, but he caught himself at the last second. He set his Flexible Flyer down, got on, and prepared for another run. Kevin paused to check behind him. The snowball had returned; now it was the size of a Honda. Mother Nature was seething: She sent a snowball after him. It knocked him off his Flexible Flyer. He hit the ground, hard. When he came to, Kevin was aware of three things: His neck was soaked, ; it was after him. The snowball was after him though he had no idea why; and he wouldn’t be able to go too far without being threatened by it. Kevin decided to tackle the hill one last time. Mother Nature refused to let this unruly boy inflict anymore damage. Enough was enough. When he checked behind him for a snowball, he was not disappointed; now, the sphere had grown to the size of a house. It seemed to be glaring at him. He screamed, jumped on the sled, and flew down the hill at breakneck speed. The snowball gave chase, rapidly gaining momentum, gathering snow and jagged ice shards along the way. Seconds later, Kevin's muffled scream came from the confines of the great white sphere consumed by the blinding glare—an endless sheen—frozen in time, but no one was around to hear it. Amy Grech has sold over 100 stories to various anthologies and magazines including: A New York State of Fright, Apex Magazine, Even in the Grave, Gorefest, Hell’s Heart, Hell’s Highway, Hell’s Mall, Microverses, Needle Magazine, Punk Noir Magazine, Tales from the Canyons of the Damned, The One That Got Away, Under Her Skin, Yellow Mama, and many others. Amy is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and the International Thriller Writers who lives in New York. You can connect with her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/amy_grech or visit her website: https://www.crimsonscreams.com.