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A photograph taken in Vegas, his head tilts right to meet yours, you melt into him. Leather jacket, wedding cake smiles, your adoring, jackpot fuck me eyes. It is give up now, she is not worth the exhaustion of coming up empty written a thousand times in a language I don’t want to learn. James Roach (he/him) is most creative between the hours of up-too-late and is it even worth going to bed? He dug up his midwest roots to live in Olympia, Wa., not too far from some sleepy volcanoes and beaches to write home about.

CW: violence and suicide Muted Voices Chris, the boss of ‘Wheels-to-the-Future’, a failing wheelchair sales company, organises an online conference call with his workforce. Each employee begins the session with a polite hello, then flicks off their camera, hits the mute button and carries on with their day. There’s Carl and Missy, a married couple who bicker as they scour their box spring bed and mattress for bedbugs. They try to kill them but they’re fighting an unwinnable war. The bugs have ruined their marriage. Stanley who watches cigar-shaped UFOs from his garden, calls the Home Office and warns them of an impending alien invasion. Terry who sits on a stool in his living room wearing latex from head to toe. Doing. Nothing. Then the twins, Jasmine and Florence who paint each other’s toenails while sipping fake cola. They’re so young and optimistic, maybe they’ll be fine. Davey who shoots pellets from his window at carjackers, toddlers and socialites. There’s Eleanor who smokes in bed as she composes a new surrealist manifesto about camels and perfume while recruiting an army from Craig’s list. Jessica logs off early without a goodbye. She’s going to kill herself with pills and barbiturates like all her favourite Hollywood movie stars. Terence sleepwalks to the store and back. He wakes and carefully parts his hair in the mirror then eats some cheese puffs. Tia has been gaslit by her husband, George, one too many times and is plotting to kill him with a mallet in the kitchen at dawn when he comes home reeking of booze and sweat and other women. Dan has a séance to contact his grandmother who isn’t even dead yet. Lana wants a baby so much she stuffs a pillow under her dress and takes pregnancy tests three times a day. And then the hour strikes five and Chris draws the meeting to a close, finishing his long meandering monologue. “Thank you all for your support during this pressing time for ‘Wheels-to-the-Future,’” Chris says. “I think we might have finally found a way to save the company. Any questions? Ok, same time tomorrow, have a great night.” As all the employees quickly type their goodbyes and log off, Chris feels a stark emptiness flow through his apartment, wrapping around him like a Boa constrictor. Maybe it’s because he misses the touch of a good woman (he’s been single for quite a while) or maybe he’s tired of being the boss of a mid-sized wheelchair company for ten years – it’s lonely at the top. Then he realises what the problem is. He suspects his employees are playing him for a fool. Could they be spreading malicious gossip about his Asperger’s, or his dyspraxia or how he likes to play Top Trumps with strangers’ children in downtown toyshops? Maybe they hate his overgrown facial hair and how he spits sometimes when he talks? But in the end, it’s too difficult for Chris to face the possibility of his workers’ betrayal. His business is all he has and doubting his staff would only ruin that. So, he tries to be more trusting – because everyone has their shady habits but, come on, just how irresponsible could his workers be, hidden behind their blank, muted computer screens, day in, day out? He simply can’t imagine. Hitchhiking to Oblivion A dinged Peugeot 205 - grey plastic hubcaps, duct tape covering the side window - pulled up beside Jessica, twenty years old, an athletic type, her skin salmon pink under the glare of the motorway streetlamps. “Where you headed?” said a middle-aged man in the driving seat, with a messy combover, smoking a Virginia Slim in a cigarette holder. “Seven Sisters, the beach.” “Well, that’s quite some way. But it’s doable. Jump in, I’m Terry.” She took a seat and began to text, completely oblivious to Terry’s eager stares. “What’s at the beach?” Terry said. “Huh? Oh, the sea,” Jessica said, absentmindedly. “You know, a beautiful girl like you shouldn’t be hitchhiking at night. There’s a lot of loons about.” Jessica continued to type. What could she say? She didn’t feel beautiful, her mum always told her she was a buffoon with a bulbous skull and a strange angular body. “Texting your boyfriend?” said Terry. “I don’t have a boyfriend.” “I hear that. I know what it’s like to be alone. I had a wife and kids but they died in a car crash on the way to the airport.” Terry picked up a photo of his family from the dashboard and showed it to Jessica. Bright smiles, honest eyes, a hopeful future. “That’s terrible,” said Jessica, finally prising herself away from her phone. “I’m sorry,” said Terry, “but I just don’t understand what a girl like you is doing hitching rides from strangers in the middle of the night.” “There are cameras on the trains. I’m on a secret mission.” But what she really wanted to say was, “I’ve been talking to a brilliant man, known as The Guru, a visionary who I met in a chat room and we’re going to search the sea and prove the earth is flat, once and for all.” After what seemed an eternity, they reached their destination. Jessica had been texting away nonchalantly, whereas Terry had become more and more strained. Finally, he blurted out, “Jessica, let me in, tell me who you are and what you’re doing?” “Don’t worry, one day you’ll know – everyone will. Thanks for the ride.” On the beach, as waves rhythmically crashed against the shore, a heavyset man stood in the shadows, leaning against a rowboat. Jessica trudged across the sand towards him. “Jessica?” The Guru said, stepping into the light. He wore a waterproof green shell-suit, thick prescription spectacles, and his head was shaped like a potato. “Hurry, it’s nearly time.” They climbed into the boat and began to paddle. The sea was calm and a sickle moon lit their way across the vast body of water. The Guru filmed the surrounding area with his phone and said, “The stars are perfectly aligned, Jessica. Tonight, we will prove to everyone what I’ve always known to be true.” “Mr. Guru? What’s out there?” “I believe, Jessica, we will find nothing less than ourselves.” “Wow.” They kept rowing and eventually The Guru declared, “It’s near, I sense it.” Then they heard a splashing sound and their boat began to sway. “Jessica!” said Terry, treading water below having quietly followed them all the way. “Come with me, please, this man only wants your body.” Terry tried to clamber onto the boat but he rocked it so violently that The Guru and Jessica were flung overboard and swallowed up by the sea. They grappled with each other, slapping and kicking, until they were caught in an undertow and dragged towards a mysterious reflective barrier, stretching out as far as they could see. Their bodies were catapulted up against the smooth, hard surface and images were displayed upon it like a neon-lit cinema screen. Terry saw his late wife and children floating towards him, looking grief-stricken and they reached out to touch him, smiling through their tears. Terry said, “My dear wife, my babies, I’ve missed you so much. All I’ve ever wanted is to see you one more time. I will treasure this moment forever.” Jessica was right next to Terry, experiencing her own vision. A mundane sight appeared - an image of an empty kitchen. Then a spotlight picked out a young man tottering into the room, carrying a half-empty bottle of wine. He sat at the dining table and took a swig. “Malcolm?” said Jessica. He looked up and said, “Your other boyfriends called, they want you to know they can’t stand to look at your wretched, deformed face any longer.” “There’s been no one else since you, Malcolm, you know that. I’m not a slut and I’m not ugly. I won’t be put down by you or anyone anymore.” “You and your jumped-up ideas – get real,” said Malcolm. “You’re a fool, I don’t know what I ever saw in you. You know nothing about me, this world, or anything. Don’t you realise you can’t get to me anymore? I’m free from your twisted mind games. Forever.” Then there was the Guru who was having visions of being the Son of God. But before he could truly immerse himself in visions of world domination, everything went black. The Guru, Terry and Jessica found themselves floating on the surface of the water gasping for air. A coast guard boat soon approached, and each of them processed their magical experiences silently while they were lifted aboard. As they all lay on the deck, Jessica finally said, “Did you see that?” Terry and The Guru both nodded yet refused to elaborate, compelled to keep their stories to themselves - maybe because it was too fantastical, maybe because they didn’t want to break the spell. One of the coasts guards drew a colleague aside and said, “I think...I think they saw it.” “Yeah, maybe, but don’t worry, they won’t speak. No one ever does.” So, they jetted back to dry land, their discovery hidden in the depths of the expansive ocean, their secluded dreams lost amongst the surf, never to be mentioned again.

How does being absent only make your presence more imposing? I remind myself of your boyish frame, the way your shoulder is level with mine. But somehow you’ve become a skyscraper. A shadow living in the periphery of my vision. I try to vanish my feelings of delusion, re-read a birthday message to serve as a reminder, I didn’t hallucinate our tender bond. A seminal phantom in life, you brought me first experiences of grief. In cursed adolescence, I sat in the pew and watched you falter at your mother’s funeral. I cherished you then as I cherished you at twenty-three. Stomach sick, unrequited ache. Even when we materialized romance from lifelong friendship, spent weekends together, loneliness loomed. You kept me at restless perimeter, believing I couldn’t reach you because I was unworthy, framed you on a lifelong pedestal as too cool, too smart to see me. But now I know your distance is a worn identity, one you owe more loyalty to than you could offer me. I’ve transformed since your final text, charmed my skin with more rebel ornaments. Got a haircut and a stable partner that doesn’t drift or vanish in a capricious shroud. Stopped seeking answers, I even gift understanding to the scar of you. Yet, there are tantrums of journal pages screaming your name. Your imp face greets me in meditations, haunts me in dreams. Of course it does. I fell in love with an untouchable apparition. Forced myself to swallow a lifetime of affections, now they overflow in ink. I greet your absence with these words, compose lines where we don’t break. In secrecy, and humiliation, I try to conjure your response.

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.