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Untitled II The skin across my face Is hot and dry and drawn The hairs of my beard Itch in singularity And I just can't Stop Scratching These are bad moon days When my skin doesn't fit And my fur won't fluff And I flex the muscles Which hold my body tight In hopes it will all split And fall away And shed And slough And die And be left To an abandoned corner Of the old shed The one with the moss On the old gray doors Perhaps one day Tonight or tomorrow Or one day next week My eyes will focus better And my bones Will not shiver Without cause Untitled III Strip somber sleeves and show scars of Scared and sacred sanctuary where Old ghosts drift back and fro and down Through muslin hallways hanging onto Bits of broken wax fruit that cling to Black velvet paintings like a Rembrandt Against the walls of the glassy sunshine. Pull the pile of shag through knotted up toes Green as golden brown Bermuda grass That never quite grew as well as on the Golf course just yards away from the house That we all lived in for just a couple of Sad and worrying years before fortune Found us and told us we were special. If I could do it all over again at least once more Maybe no one would write my name down In their little black books for black-balled Writers who just wanted someone to praise Stories and poems that dripped from Fingertips onto cathode ray computer screens In the wee hours when they were truly alone.

Mother takes her bath at nine and is benevolent enough to allow me to reuse her bathwater. I sat there for a long time just staring. Uncle Larry phoned about the annual softball game. Third base is fluctuating between parody and metaphor. Read the newspaper obituaries on the porch. Ninety-five percent of all thought is conjecture. Post was late again so I read the comics, that little red-haired girl is still enticingly noncommittal.

Mendocino County #1 Some regions like bodies have pain. You know it in the way the air smells, the way the trees burn, the way the water tastes like ash. The dry sun ignites the season like a wick and everything flames out like leprosy. Mendocino County #2 It's like falling into God, and God is angry and busy updating Dante's Hell. Mendocino County #3 When I woke the sun was scarlet maybe dimmed down a notch or two, a smokey red. The air tastes like coal and breath is labor-- the west coast is on fire, some small Armageddon, a tiny apocalypse. Practice for when we fall and when it all burns down. Visit the author's website at: www.robertallenpoet.com

18 11 18 11 1 A random dude with an inner calm that did not reflect in outer moves In the first instance, bad news A mirror-walled room in his ex-house where your reflection did not move to correspond you Curved as a sickle moon, you gaze down at me and bracket your story sheepishly, and say: look at me, boring you I forget, was this before or after I claimed that the moon could easily be Jupiter if one wasn’t particular about red spots and such, mere astronomical rules 2 18 11 18 11 time and date on a mooned wallpaper You photograph in blurry haste I throw around the word associate I suppose I mean, how could the photograph at a later date, not but remind me of your face, scoffing so rakishly at my unscientific, cosmic claims Narrating oddly memorable random tales Nobody takes the stairs anymore Bitten smooth lower lip A mirror later, while wiping off kajal, registers a glow. Cheeks in bloom. Watermelon juice with & no ice, last drink. Missing earring. I have never been able to ascertain, the extent of your affection or the degree of your inclination towards me. AC interior of a car, your shoulder cushioning my head, held hand. Held as if I matter. Three months, you sounded so certain. No Solomun, indifferent to persuasion, the DJ. Mixing cranberry and vodka with a pint of beer, while reflecting my wonder at your counter-intuitive preference for women with feminist bent, not contrived you said. It just so happened. Stairs, shall we take the stairs? The impression I got, sometimes. Preference order: substances, interests, work, me. Of course, completely understandable. But other times, like on brightly lit stairs, you hold as if there's nothing else you can see, nothing else you'd rather be doing. You hold as if I am it. A goodbye inscribed in salt. Nobody takes the stairs anymore. Not deep, I know. Maybe three months is all it'll take, to fade. Holding my hair back, a smack, ah the suggestiveness. Is the body indiscriminate or can I read into the touch, the embrace? My disproportionate eagerness is something I've reconciled with. A goodbye done well. Just enough left behind, to maybe, meet again. Guilty pleasure Contempt felt in part but not with real zeal Amoral you Hard sugar candy Delighting to suck on but the kind that inevitably leaves the mouth smarting Carol D'Souza: tea-drinker, walker

Merlot with the Moon I row my paddle boat midway across the olive-green lagoon, and stare at the stitched quilt of night. Patchwork planets and constellations climbing Sea Goat stringed Lyra barking Big Dog pieced together with irregular threads of light above me. I pour a glass of merlot, raise it to the moon. Invite her to join me. Lunar lips sealed, Moon cannot swallow even one sip. I drink her share and dance. Clumsy, drunk shadow sways. Friends forever, I swear. My voice ripples out over water. I fall asleep, promising we will meet again. Happy Hour All evening, Luna moths linger near pools of blue moonlight pouring over iced rocks of midnight sky. Open wings dipping into the nectar of constellation cocktails —blooming cosmos, galactic gin fizz— they swoon, falling over stars, drunk until morning wakes them. Brief bio: Poetry, fiction/nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications. Coyote Dreams (chapbook) forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

They are with a friend of mine in our share house but sometimes we find ourselves alone and we talk about both our worlds. I have never spoken to another human being in this way before: a single word hovers (they use that word too!) then darts and weaves about an idea like a night insect about a flame; yet a sentence, a conversation, seems instantaneous. Sitting on that worn green lounge I had found on the side of the road and cradling late-night tea in chipped mugs I tell them everything, leaving nothing out, and fall in love. Paul Dufficy writes about music and travel. To make ends meet he runs a walking tour business in Sydney which to date has been quite unsuccessful.

I can sense the sceptics. Those who are only after a show, something to tell their friends, a story for their blog post: Ten Most Common Clairvoyance Tricks, Exposed. I take my time turning their cards allowing my desire to ferment. They ask to take photos and keep their phone on the table. I fiddle with the tassels on my silk headscarf. Make them wait. Tell them the universe is listening. That it knows what they’ve done. I show them Ouroboros: the serpent devouring its own tail and make my things-look-grave face. But, when I take their palms in mine and trace the lines of fate and life that snake and coil over their flesh, that’s when the hissing is at its loudest. That’s when I guzzle in the threads of their life. The arm broken falling from the rope swing over the creek. The club house in the woods. Uncle’s leather belt. They snigger when my eyes roll back in my head but carefully, I unspool their minutes and hours and sup on hazy nights, spilled drinks, slick cobblestones. Knees crusted with grit. Screams hurled into the dark. I wind each moment around my tongue savouring the taste of the forgotten, the repressed. White hospital walls. Skin cool to the touch. A still healing wound. A mewling new-born swaddled tight. And then when they’re split open completely, no longer laughing, I dim the lights. Tilt the table to-and-fro. I speak in tongues and in the darkness, while they’re sniggering, I shed my skin, unhinge my jaw, and swallow them whole. KEELY O’SHAUGHNESSY is a fiction writer with Cerebral Palsy, who lives in Gloucestershire. Her stories have appeared online and in print. She’s been published by Ellipsis Zine, Complete Sentence, Reflex Fiction, Emerge Literary Journal and (mac)ro(mic), among others. She's a Pushcart and BSF nominee. When not writing, she likes discussing David Bowie with her cat. Find her at keelyoshaughnessy.com or on Twitter @KeelyO_writer.

Every Civilization Speaks the Language of Goodbyes How many ancient civilizations have mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind nothing but jagged shards of existence— pottery, weapons, haunted bones. How many unanswerable questions have been dug up by those seeking to understand generations of departures. Another billionaire went to space today because emptiness is a siren's call, the spaces between stars filled with the music of ghosts. "To be human is to leave," is what you said. But I just read about the 2800-year-old kiss, two skeletons found buried in a permanent embrace. Then again, maybe they died trying to escape each other. I've run out of gas. Stuck in this ghost town called The Part of You that Loved Me. Radio Silence Driving down this desert highway, darkness descending. The neon lights on an isolated gas station glow blue, a beacon to the lost and lonely. The gas will cost twice as much and dust covers the bags of stale potato chips and the beer is two months expired. You'll pay for the gas anyway because what choice do you have. And you'll buy the stale potato chips and expired beer, anything to fill the passenger seat. You continue on, the hours ticking by with the rotation of your tires, the surrounding emptiness mirroring your own. You search for a radio station but find mostly static. The handful of stations that do come through are Spanish or Christian and you feel guilty for not knowing the language of your ancestors or being a good Catholic girl and you want to pull off the highway, find a spot to bury your sins where no one can find them but then you think you should bury yourself because your sins always find a way back to you. You turn the radio off, opt for the hum of the motor and the howling of the wind. Driving down this desert highway, darkness descending, the cholla and brush dancing ghosts, beckoning you to the land of the forgotten but you ignore them and continue on, chasing the sunset towards forgiveness. The Problem With D Not the D you might be thinking of if your mind is down where it shouldn't be. Disappointment, when you're drowning in it and all the dreams that didn't come true. Disappearance, and doesn't everyone come and go, some never to be found again and you're forever haunted by the ghost of everything out of reach. Divorce—the death of love— because sometimes the D of your dirty mind doesn't know how to stay down or someone desires another D or damn it, love just isn't enough. Desire, well, how much trouble does that cause— driving you insane, driving you down dangerous roads, driving you to drink. Drink, when you don't know how to stop until you drop, hit rock bottom and what a disappointment you've become and sometimes this leads to divorce. Damage, to your brain, your heart, your body, your relationships, and what is left of you but a damned soul. Death, the worst of the lot, dealing dice and more often than not, you're on the losing end— find yourself six feet down before you can even say "don't do it."

Steam Belly bloated with mint leaves. Brew for a minute or two. She sets two slipware beakers on the counter. The blue ones with navy swirls. Again, though she knows hers will sit alone. She is not still. She watches: the clock on the wall, the watch on her wrist, her phone. Sits, sighs, stands. Slices a lemon paper thin. The triangles almost transparent when she inspects them. Drops a slice in each beaker. Wraps her hands around me, checks that I keep well. I am warm still, but the mint will wilt, I want to say. A moment longer, it will wilt. She must have sensed my unease. She lifts the lid, spoons the leaves. I exhale in relief. She waits. Stands, drums her fingers on the counter. In moments like these, I wish to comfort her. To stretch and pat her hand. Cool her worries. Soon she will drop thick honey into her beaker. Just for her, not the other. Soon she will lift me, tilt me, smile at the rising steam. Soon she will take her beaker out of sight. The other will sit here, next to me, cold. Empty. eyebright (1) the blade cuts tender stem i slip the sprig between the pages of a poem press them shut on my way to you the book hangs heavy against my hip in the darkness of my bag bright eyes follow your words expose the imposters memorise your honesty disguised as fiction they’ll (un)pick your truths for me bury my doubts in shallow ground (1) If you carry a sprig of eyebright in your pocket, you will know if your companions are telling the truth D. Parker spends most of her time surrounded by books both at work and at home.

A VISITATION There will be a fire. Our books will burn, our walls will press their temples back against the barrel of the world. Volumes we didn’t know we owned will be ground into the wet woodgrain’s rough edges in the shape of a black horse, brass-plated balances uncovered at an unimpressive yard sale, catalogues of seals and stars, of names saved up, sloughed off and fallen out of use. BEETS Come in the kitchen and we’ll make you something, sharpen our knives, fix you something to eat, sever the stems on the tops of the beets, tidy the house when there’s company coming, plump up the pillows, smooth down the sheets, print the floors with the clean wet of our feet, the sauce on the stovetop boiled down to nothing, potatoskins turned to mud at our feet, pink caked in our nails from the flesh of the beets. FOR HANK, ON HIS DEPARTURE Everything is just as you left it. Your sister misses you. She’s still eating your food. There’s sunshine on the bed. Last night your nemesis the possum walked by your window ledge. We’ll keep an eye out for him. The days go by without much incident, much as you’d like them. No one sleeps on my feet or licks my plate at breakfast. Your toy mice are still lost behind the couch under a thin dust of your fur. I’ll leave them there.

Poor poets who can’t afford food feast on metaphors. I’ve replaced my desires with the best finely ground espresso- nonstop hot black caffeine shots. I feel edgy about this addiction, but surely everyone can see how much I pine for you. Your Latino lips dripped gold like the filter- “mi amor, have you had your coffee?” I’ve been watching Cinema Paradiso again, drowning in my own nostalgia. Looking at you so far away inside this broken photo frame- you won’t stop staring back at me for being a fool. When love gets too much, I cover it with hard winter snow. It melted like I did when you whispered in my ear, you wanted me to stay. Damien Posterino (he/him) is a Melbourne-born, London-based poet who recently spent 18 months writing in Mexico. He explores characters, conversations, and capturing moments in time. His work can be seen in over 30 different publications including A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Roi Fainéant Press, Fish Barrel Review, and The Madrigal. You can find him on Twitter @damienposterino

I think of the night I decided I couldn’t wait to not be thirteen anymore. It wasn’t a far drive; I only lived a few blocks up the street. Earlier that day, I had walked down to babysit but it was dark now so the mom told the dad to drive me home. He was a quiet man and in the loud silence of that summer night, the only conversation in the car was the one in my head. I heard the car sounds: key turning, engine starting, the click of our seatbelts. The radio came on with Wilson Phillips' hit that summer of 1990, telling me to Hold On for one more day. The air in the car smelled of leather interior, cologne, and beer with a hint of chewing gum mint. The blast of air conditioning made me shiver as goosebumps dotted up my arms and legs. I felt the leather passenger seat sticking to my thighs as I tried in vain to tug my shorts closer to my knees. I didn’t know what to do with my hands - I folded them in my lap, then twisted my hair around my fingers, cracked my knuckles, and picked at my cuticles. Finally, I folded my hands back in my lap, looked at the clock and then out the window. The dad stared straight ahead as he slowly drove us up the street away from his patch of the earth, where he was growing brats he hated, to mine, where I was growing boobs I hated. In the rearview mirror, I caught a glimpse of a shadow of the child I used to be. She still needs a babysitter herself, I thought. Out the window, I saw my thirteen-year-old face reflected back: freckled, pimpled and bony. I tucked my hair self-consciously behind my too-big ears and shifted my gaze away from myself. I felt like something in the middle of emerging, not who I was anymore but not yet who I would be, stuck in a body that was becoming a stranger. In that car, on that night, in those agonizing moments, I was frozen in a space that seemed like it would never end. But I knew better. So did Carnie Wilson, who insisted from the radio that things were gonna change. I’d lived long enough to realize that last year I was 12 and next year I would be 14. I didn’t know how much better it might be than this, but I couldn't bear to think it could be worse. At least I wouldn’t be in this car anymore and thirteen would be in the rear view. Someday I would be someone to whom this man had something to say and I would have something to say back. At the end of that drive, I would be home. It wasn’t a far drive. I couldn’t wait to not be thirteen anymore. Beth Mulcahy is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet whose work has appeared in various journals. Her writing bridges gaps between generations and self, hurt and healing.Beth lives in Ohio with her husband and two children and works for a company that provides technology to people without natural speech. Her latest publications can be found here:https://linktr.ee/mulcahea.