Search Results

“Look at that.” My wife points across my body as I slow to pull into the driveway. Her arm irritates me, but her tone lets me know not to address it. I squint into the midday sun and follow her finger. The port-a-potty the contractors have set up in front of our new home is tagged. Big block black letters cover almost the entire side. It says “DB Lebo”. At least I think so. I ease the car forward and she starts. “Really? What kind of neighborhood is this? We’re fine at my parents. Why did we rush into this?” I put the car in park and try to gather my thoughts. We are not fine. Another month with her parents and I might just kill one of them. And this neighborhood’s good, gentrifying. “Just some stupid kid probably. I’ll ask Paul,” I say. “Come on. I’m dying to see the kitchen counters.” Paul lives three blocks away, a plus for me about this move, but after our pick-up basketball game, we sit at a bar in an adjacent and hipper neighborhood. I tell him about the tag. “That’s fucked up. I hate that,” he says. “You sound like Sharilyn,” I say. “It’s no big deal, just some punk kid I bet.” “It is a big deal. I thought the hood was done with that crap. But you’re right about the kid,” he says. “You know who did it?” “There are some apartments a few blocks down. Every evening, these kids hang out. Wannabe cholos. Little shits can’t be more than fourteen.” “Cholos?” “You know, the Mexican version of gang-bangers.” I stare at my longtime friend. “That sounds racist.” “Whatever. Probably a gang tag. Could you read it?” “DB something, didn’t make sense. Googled it - nothing.” Paul contemplates his beer. “You got some time?” It’s not dark yet, but I know Sharilyn will be getting in bed soon. Midway through the third trimester, she’s tired all the time. From Paul’s house, we walk in the opposite direction from our place. A couple blocks down, I notice more of the houses have chain fences, with the occasional candy wrapper or plastic bag stuck between their edges and the dirt. Sharilyn would disapprove. Across the street at the end of the block, I see a small apartment complex. A boy jumps his skateboard on and off the sidewalk while another sits on some concrete steps. “That’s them,” Paul says. “Wait,” I say. But he’s into the street and I pick up the pace to keep up. The skateboard kid has straight dark hair and milk chocolate skin. He wears baggy jeans, an oversized t-shirt with a familiar logo that I can’t place, and black Vans. As a teenager, I’d worn the same outfit. The kid sitting has a lighter skin tone and kinky hair. It looks like he could grow an afro if he wanted. I guess that he’s biracial. We stand by the curb in front of them and neither acknowledges our presence. “Hey,” Paul says. The biracial kid looks up. He’s got a pimple on his nose and I flash back to similar issues. He doesn’t speak. The other kid kicks up his skateboard and catches it in his right hand, stopping close to me. I smell a mix of sugar and sweat. “There’s a house about six blocks away. Corner house, light blue with green shutters – know it?” The boys shrug. “Paul.” I touch his arm. He pulls it back and looks from one boy to the other. “What do you know about a certain tag near the house?” I visualize the port-a-potty, feel ridiculous, and want to leave. The boy with the skateboard speaks, looking up at Paul. “You accusin’?” He’s trying to be hard but his free hand twitches against his thigh. “I got this,” the seated boy says, looking at me rather than Paul. “You buy that house?” “Yes,” I say. “What’s it to you?” Paul says. As a response, the boy pulls out his phone and snaps two pictures in our direction. “What the fuck?” Paul says. “I know that house,” the boy says. “I’ll ask my mom to look it up. She works at the courthouse. Course maybe a reverse image search will find both of you first.” He looks at his phone. Paul’s face has gone red and I hear a laugh from the skateboard boy. The seated boy stands. “Forgot to mention, my mom’s dating a civil rights lawyer. He could probably use another case about now.” He slides the phone in the pocket of his baggy jeans and looks at his friend. “Let’s bounce. We’re mama’s boys, can’t be out here too late.” I hear the skateboard hit the ground then the sound of the wheels on pavement. The boys leave. I glare at Paul who looks stunned. Back home, I’m grateful that my in-laws are watching a movie so no conversation is required. I pour a full glass of red wine and remember some emails I need to answer. Instead, I Google civil rights laws and defamatory speech. I drink more wine and pee three times before crawling into bed. I spoon Sharilyn and place my hand on her taut belly. The baby – my son – kicks right away. Sharilyn gives a low moan. My son kicks again and Sharilyn shudders. She pushes my hand away. “You’re riling him up, he wants to play,” she says. I pull my arm off her. “How’d it go with Paul?” “He’s turning into kind of an asshole.” “Hmm,” she says. I’m grateful she says no more. I know she shares that opinion. We lie there, her breathing deepens and I think she may have gone back to sleep. I have to pee again. “I might have overreacted earlier,” she says. “You know with the porta toilet thing.” I squeeze her leg. “The counters look great. It’s turning into a beautiful home,” she says. I lean forward, kiss the back of her neck, and hoist myself up to go to the bathroom. An almost full moon brightens the room as I lie awake, awaiting dawn and a reasonable time to get up. Sharilyn snores lightly beside me. I consider the symmetry of ages. In fourteen years, my son will be the age of those boys, and they’ll be my age. Men. And I’ll have been a father for fourteen years. A good one, I hope. But I’m not sure. A word from the author: The port-a-potty tag was just down the street and the anxieties of getting it wrong as a parent never fully leave. I teach math and write fiction.

Chris Baxter was the new guy at SubWorks Sandwich Factory. He had a head like a cube, bushy eyebrows like caterpillars, and drove a rusted out Chevrolet Chevette with Iowa plates. He was from Dubuque and worked his hometown into every conversation. “Back in Dubuque we used to huff paint thinner by the riverbank,” he told me as we sliced vegetables together at the prep table. “Then we’d go over to Spider’s house and take acid and listen to Butthole Surfers.” “Oh yeah?” “There was always rad shit happening in Dubuque.” I tried not to be defensive. “Omaha’s cool too.” “It’s alright,” he said, feeding bell peppers into the crank slicer. “But back home in Dubuque it was easier to get drugs.” For reasons beyond our understanding drugs were scarce. Even small quantities of pot, normally cheap and plentiful, were unavailable from the usual sources. What a time to be alive, bored stiff and living through the drought of 1995 on minimum wage. “It can’t stay dry forever.” “I hope you’re right because I’m losing my fucking mind here. Back in Dubuque there were hot girls. Nebraska girls are fugly.” Girls from either state weren’t lining up to fuck us. Who wants a guy who works for minimum wage and reeks of onions? Chris offered to drive me home after work, but the Chevette wouldn’t start. Instead of walking for help at the 7-11 down the block we smoked cigarettes in the parking lot, waiting for someone to drive by for a jump start. “I’m so fucking desperate to get high,” said Chris. “I can check in with my weed guy again,” I offered. “He told me he was hoping to get a quarter pound of dank buds sometime soon.” “Call that motherfucker!” No luck. Omaha was the new dust bowl. Chris stood on the edge of the road, waving his jumper cables at passing cars. Eventually a guy in a Ford F-150 pulled in to help; a wispy, no-nonsense older gentleman with tightly furrowed wrinkles. He popped open the hood of his truck, and five minutes later Chris and I were in the Taco Bell drive-thru listening to The Melvins on the Chevette’s tinny speakers. “These guys played the Capitol Bar a few months ago." “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen The Melvins,” said Chris. “Dubuque is practically their second home.” We ordered burritos and ate in the parking lot. • There was nothing to do after that, so we drove around in circles. They called it cruising, and it was the thing to do when there was nothing else to do. Carfuls of drugless young midwesterners going out of their minds. “Back in Dubuque there were bonfires every Saturday night,” said Chris. “We’d get cases of Keystone Light and drink until we puked.” “I can’t wait until I’m 21 so I can get drunk.” “My older brother Kenny used to buy us beer. Now he’s in jail.” “What’d he do?” “Armed robbery. Three years for being the lookout. That’s why I’m here, I used to live with Kenny but when he went to prison I came to live with my Aunt and Uncle.” “Jesus Christ.” Chris accelerated through a yellow light in the instant before it turned red and pulled into the Walgreens parking lot at the top of the hill. “I gotta get fucked up tonight,” he said. “Are you with me?” “I wanna get fucked up too.” “Have you ever taken Robitussin? It’s a cold medicine, but if you drink the entire bottle, time slows down and you end up tripping balls.” “From Robitussin?” “Yeah, but it’s got to be the kind that says DM on the package. The active ingredient is hallucinogenic.” “How much should we take?” “Two bottles each should put us in another dimension.” Chris sent me into the Pharmacy. I found the Robitussin in the cough and cold aisle. I inspected each package carefully to ensure we were getting the highest possible dosage of the active ingredient. I put the Robitussin in a handbasket along with a bag of Werther’s Originals and a copy of Guns & Ammo magazine. “Is that everything for you?” said the woman at checkout. I nodded. The woman scanned the magazine and the candies, but paused when she saw four boxes of Robitussin DM. “I’m afraid I can only sell you two boxes of cough syrup at a time.” “Why is that?” “It’s flagged as a frequently abused item in the store database.” “Look, I’m Mormon. I’m the oldest of eight siblings and we’ve got a bug going around right now, terrible stuff. I got sent out for medicine because I haven’t got the cough yet.” The clerk folded her arms across her chest. She wasn’t buying the story. “You’re Mormon?” “Yes ma’am,” I said. “I just want to do right for my brothers and sisters. I don’t want to see them wheezing and coughing like hyenas. I shouldn’t even be here, because I’ve potentially been exposed to whatever is causing the cough. If you help me out, I’ll add your name to our daily prayer list.” She scanned the remaining boxes. “Fine, but if I see you buying any more psychoactive cough syrup I will call the authorities. We take over-the-counter medicine abuse very seriously.” “Thank you, I knew you were one of God’s people I gave Chris a thumbs-up and got back in the car. As he drove us to his aunt and uncle’s house on the edge of town I told him about how the clerk bought my Mormon sob story. “That’s brilliant,” he said. “Back in Dubuque the pharmacies could be dicks about buying more than one package of Robitussin. Sometimes we’d have to go to two or three different stores to get enough to get fucked up on.” “You should’ve seen her face when I told her I was going to put her name on my prayer list. Her eyes nearly popped out of her skull.” Chris pulled into the driveway at his aunt and uncle’s split-level house but no one was home. “They go to the casino on Friday nights,” he explained as he unlocked the front door. He led me down a half-flight of stairs into a shag carpeted rec. room. The wood panelling and velvet Elvis painting were relics of the 70’s. Also in the room was a large stereo system, a dartboard, a red lava lamp, a bear’s head rug, a glass coffee table, and two plush leather sofas that had seen better days. “Whatcha think?” “This place is fucking awesome. Who killed the bear?” “Nobody. My uncle got it at a flea market. I don’t think it’s real.” “Either way, it’s badass.” Chris loaded a Primus CD into the stereo. It sounded ferocious on his uncle’s top-of-the-line speakers. He brought two glasses of water and a large plastic bowl down from the kitchen. “Are you ready to trip your balls off?” “Bring it on." We each opened a box of Robitussin and cracked through the child-proof safety caps. “You’ll want to drink it fast, but not too fast because you might puke. It says raspberry flavoured, but it tastes like shit. If you’re gonna throw up, make sure you get it in the bowl and not on the shag carpet, or else my uncle will beat my ass.”.” Chris tossed his cube-shaped head back and chugged. Then it was my turn. The Robitussin was thick and sickly sweet. I drank half the bottle and felt the urge to vomit. I grabbed the bowl, but kept it down. Chris was already cracking the cap on his second bottle. “This shit is nasty,” I said. “Just wait until you’re drooling into the carpet.” I got the first bottle down and started on my second. I felt myself drifting into an altered state. At first it was a sensation in my ears, like a Nitrous Oxide buzz, but soon it started to impact my perception of the room. Time slowed down. Objects in my field of vision appeared shimmery and distorted, as if I was looking at everything through a rippling mountain stream. My motor skills failed and I found myself, as predicted, drooling into the carpet, face-to-face with the carpet bear’s toothy grin. I was so close I thought I could see plaque on its long sharp teeth. “I’m so fucked up,” said Chris. “I feel like my heart’s gonna stop.” I started laughing. The Robitussin in my system made everything funny. “This isn’t funny, dude, I think I’m fucking dying.” I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees and crawled over to him. He was face down in the shag carpet and convulsing involuntarily. His skin was pale and grey like aliens in movies. “You should make yourself puke.” “I never had to make myself puke back in Dubuque.” “You might feel better. Lemme get the bowl.” I crawled slowly through the thick carpet. It seemed like it was alive and growing taller. I pictured amber waves of grain as I retrieved the bowl from the coffee table. “Here,” I said. “Puke into this.” “You’re a demon and you’re trying to fuck with my head just like you did back in Dubuque.” Chris started crying. His trip was going all wrong. “I’m Jason from Sub Works Sandwich Factory, remember? I’m not some demon.” Chris pushed himself up onto his knees. His eyes rolled back in his head and he became completely unhinged. “Devil, I cast thee out of this house!” he shouted. “I smote thee with my righteous fury! I condemn thee to eternal damnation!” “You’re killing my buzz,” I slapped him across the face. “Get a grip, you’re just having a bad trip.” Chris collapsed on the shag carpet and sobbed into his hands. “Why does this always happen to me?” “If you make yourself puke you’ll feel a lot better.” I slid the bowl across the carpet. Chris leaned over it and stuck his fingers deep into his throat. He dry-heaved a couple times before it came up, in short hot bursts. Pieces of tomato and lettuce from his burrito floated in a sea of raspberry Robitussin. Taco Bell seemed so long ago. “That’s it, get it all out,” I said. “Doesn’t that feel better?” Chris looked at me. His eyes were watery and stomach fluids oozed from his nose, but he looked better, as if the worst part of the trip was over. “Where am I?” “You’re at your aunt and uncle’s house in Omaha.” “Am I dead?” “You look like death but you’re still alive.” “I miss Dubuque.” • Chris eventually mellowed. Without having to babysit, I could finally relax and enjoy the psychotropic effects of Robitussin. I put Jane’s Addiction on the stereo and flipped through my copy of Guns & Ammo, wondering what it would be like to shoot a human head. Chris’s aunt and uncle got home from the casino as I contemplated the physics. “What the hell is going on here?” demanded Chris’ uncle. “Turn down this goddamn music and answer me.” “He invited me over to listen to music,” I gestured at Chris, who was writhing face-down on the shag carpet and giggling uncontrollably. “We work together at SubWorks Sandwich Factory and we like the same music.” The uncle surveyed the room. Four empty bottles of Robitussin DM and a large plastic bowl of vomit sat on the glass coffee table. He shook his head. “Drinking cough syrup?” I shrugged. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.” “This shit fucks you up,” said Chris. “The devil chased me here all the way from Dubuque!” “You haven’t been huffing paint again,” said the uncle. “You’ve already been to rehab once for solvent abuse.” “Rehab?” said Chris. “Fuck that place.” “Get your things” the uncle told me. “I’ll drive you home.” The presence of reasonable adults sobered me quickly. I climbed into the passenger seat of the uncle’s Ford Ranger and buckled my seatbelt. “Where’s your place?” “Just drop me off at SubWorks,” I said. “My parents will kill me if I come home tripping on Robitussin. I have a key to the store and can sleep in the back on the prep table.” “You seem like a good kid. Why are you hanging out with Chris?” “I don’t know, he seems okay.” “He’s got a lot of problems,” said the uncle. “His brother went to prison and we’ve been trying to give him some structure in his life.” “He said his brother was railroaded, that he was just the lookout.” “That’s what Chris wants to believe. He loves his brother, but the truth is he was a bad dude. He got in over his head and started robbing gas stations.” The uncle pulled into the SubWorks parking lot. “It would probably be for the best if you stopped hanging around Chris. I’m afraid he might be going down his brother’s path.” • I woke up hours later in the back room of SubWorks Sandwich Factory, naked on the prep table with a dry mouth and pounding headache. The morning shift workers would be arriving any minute. I dressed myself and poured a Mountain Dew from the soda machine. It was cold and sweet, but my stomach couldn’t handle it after a night on Robitussin. I threw up into the prep sink, rinsed away the chunks, found a piece of paper at the manager’s desk and started writing. I, Jason Robertson, being of sound mind and body hereby resign from my position as Associate Sandwich Builder effective immediately. My tenure at SubWorks has been one of my greatest pleasures thus far, but all good things must end. I must pursue the next steps in my career advancement outside the sandwich industry. I affixed my notice to the cork board with a pushpin and left without locking the door. I walked to the pay phone and vowed never to abuse over-the-counter medicine again. I dialled my weed guy. There was good news, the drought of ’95 was over. J. Archer Avary (he/him) was born in the USA and now lives in Northeast England. He used to be a TV weatherman and is the EIC of Sledgehammer Lit. @j_archer_avary

Spilled Abstractions Flowers emerge a seasonal blossoming finds them on the front lines that separate liquidity from gravity nature as we understand it is a battlefield we ourselves are floral from within an explosion of color and deviation the bifurcation of working systems the border erased the gauntness of integument a knife drawn a shattered sternum the redness of mouths that spill paint onto canvas Jackson Pollock as an angel in steel capped boots a set of wings as broad as eyelids that quietly close and hunch into silent winter. Woodstock Glass In Woodstock I looked into the glass and there I found me lost in the layers of inside and out of cars and street and the baubles for sale behind the panes I was there as a man but also there as a kind of monster both of those things in parallel indivisible I held no malice against this town that trapped and crystallized me creating the sudden perception of life inside that cold transparency holding me immobile despite your presence at my shoulder. Cavities Noiseless shaping cavities into walls of cartilage stained with mucus and the thrash of breathing as you gasp for gasp for gasp for the possible air the cold clean air of winter’s dryness the grasping air that twists you into shape and back to the present tense into a world of premonition where you gasp again for the pinkness of gum for the elasticity of clean fresh artery that mainlines from wisdom to repudiation and now your breath catches as your lungs burst into flame and your heart is only meat is only a charred and flaming token of a memory. Floating If only we could float -- then surely the air would be thicker layers of coldness and solidity that the light must fight to penetrate and trees would stub their leafy twigs against an unexpected hardness as we rested our gin and tonic upon a slowly drifting slab of density somewhere higher than we ever dreamed of reaching climbing upon an invisible staircase to a place where we could throw our bodies down and there we would sleep and dream of the plasticity of the fabric of everything lost in visions of the drifting twists of cloudsmoke. Poet and songwriter Paul Ilechko is the author of three chapbooks, most recently “Pain Sections” (Alien Buddha Press). His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including The Night Heron Barks, Rogue Agent, Ethel, Lullwater Review, and Book of Matches. His first album, "Meeting Points", was released in 2021.

“God makes you hopeful at 19, at 20, so you have the fire to go out and reproduce; the foolishness to believe the world is a place worth being. Then at 50 you are in the deepest part of the pain— your parents start losing their shit, your KIDS are getting divorced, idiots are refusing to get the vaccine. You can’t understand what makes it all worth it. You want to run your car into a bridge abutment.” She hadn’t looked up from her phone. She just said it: out loud. He looked over at his wife of 30 years. Her face, vaguely familiar to him as the one he fell in love with; sagging in certain spots, some lines around her mouth from the worry and the stress, not from lack of smiling. She had always smiled. Something had come over her in the last few years. The self-effacement she approached her idiosyncrasies with had turned into bitter self-criticism. She didn’t want to be around anyone anymore. Not even him. He could see she would stare at him sometimes, JUST stare. He couldn’t understand what she was thinking, maybe “not YOU again” or something like that. Or that was his own projection about how he felt about his own company. One can’t decipher sometimes. “What do you mean? Do you really feel that way?” He put down his phone and looked directly at her. There was a note of concern in his voice she couldn’t ignore. “What?” she said, looking up and exasperatedly smacking her hands on the table like he had interrupted her during something important (and not the other way around). “What are you talking about?” His voice rose, tinged with panic. “The bridge abutment—Jesus, when you talk like that it scares me!” She softened, letting her shoulders fall. Shortly after they were married, she told him about one evening when they were newly dating, about hearing a voice other than her own speak to her. They had been sitting on her worn-out college sofa holding hands, their lips raw from kissing. She was notoriously and proudly promiscuous in those days. She had never wanted to get married and was very honest about that. It didn’t stop people from catching feelings, so she was always left holding the “bad guy” moniker. This moment with him, though, she heard distinctly from somewhere far off, “You will be nice to him.” And she was, as best as she could be, all the time. “I’m sorry.” She put down her phone. When she turned to him, the smile was there again but her eyes stayed hard. “I’m just saying.” This is how a lot of her declarations ended, lately. She would make a naked statement about her immediate feelings and let them hang in the air, thick and acrid. His urge to fix her, to change how she felt, to help her see that it isn’t all that bad; neutered. “It’s a pandemic. This is a tough time for everyone. Everyone is going through..” She turned back to her phone. She had stopped listening. She didn’t want to hear about everyone. She didn’t even want to hear about him, for that matter. In the immediacy of her silence, he felt exposed and awkward. His hair was sticking up in the back, morning bed head, and he flattened it with his palm and turned back to his phone. His eyes danced on the NY Times article he had been in the middle of; words and only words. No meaning or context. Economic downturn, environment, something along those lines. He continued to pretend to read as he thought about the time they sat in a café in Florence. Ten years ago, early evening; the kids were riding in on their Vespas for the free happy hour buffet. It was June so the sun was still set high in the sky and the heat was not unpleasant. She was wearing a white tank top, her hair was down and her shoulders were pink. They had already consumed a bottle of red wine and were talking about something that he can’t specifically remember. He must have said something that surprised her and she erupted into her specific brand of laughter that consumed the room, like the sound of a train rushing by: sudden and loud, a little too close for comfort. He had lifted his heavy and very expensive Cannon, back before phones had cameras, and snapped a picture. Her eyes were half open and her head was thrown back. It was an action shot as beautiful as Michael Jordan reaching for the basket in that Nike ad. She was an athlete when it came to joy. She showed it all over; graceful and intoxicating. You just wanted that but couldn’t parse out what THAT was. Back then, it seemed to be in endless supply for her. “Hey.” He said, picking up his phone and pointing the camera directly at her. She sighed out ”Yeah..” and shifted in her seat. “Look at me.” She looked up, and there were tears hanging on the sills of her eyes. When she noticed him holding his phone in front of his face, she smiled broadly, squeezing a tear out and letting it roll down her cheek. What he saw wasn’t the joy he had captured in the past, but her promise to be nice to him; remarkably, and in the wake of her defeat at the hands of a shockingly inferior world.

I close the door and turn the key for the very last time, hopeful that my unwanted guest would remain behind the lock. At first, I had tried to convince myself that it was only a recurring dream. However, it continued, and I simply couldn’t deny the reality that something was unsettling Jerome and making him scream after his six years of silence. I ceased trying to teach Jerome phrases after the third year; it was clear he was not going to repeat them. He was mute, and that was ok because in providing comfort he was fluent. As a newborn, Jerome had been abandoned by his mother, and when Sarah asked if I could temporarily foster him, I did not hesitate. He needed feeding every two hours; he was fragile but yearned to survive and soon flourished. When the time came, I could not bear to return him to Sarah. He now spends the days freely roaming the apartment, patiently awaiting my return, and the nights we spend together until he retires in his cage - silently. This had been our routine, until two weeks ago when Jerome’s voice interrupted the pattern. ‘He is watching you, Jane!’ he squawked repeatedly in a panicked, parrot voice from underneath the blanket covering his cage. This became a daily disturbance and only lasted a few minutes before Jerome settled down again. However, the icicles on my spine are still not thawed. I have yet to discover who is watching me, but one thing is for sure, Jerome and I will not stay in that apartment any longer waiting for him to show his face!

Among the few items on the store shelves were jars of contaminated baby food, flags of no known country, and slippers made of bubble wrap and duct tape. A fluorescent pink headline on the cover of a women’s magazine on display at the checkout promised to reveal how to be productive even when suicidally depressed. I handed the cashier a coupon I didn’t realize had expired. “What are you, stupid?” he snarled. I took it to be a rhetorical question. & “I’ll lick stamps,” I told the gargoyle from HR during the job interview. “I’ll lick whatever you want.” He shook his big, ugly head no. With that, I found myself back on the street. It had just started to rain when Jesus appeared to me. My first thought was that he looked nothing like his picture. & Deranged angels hoot all night in the tree outside your window. Better get used to it. Horror is everywhere. If you go searching for an out, you’ll just end up in a 24-hour McDonald’s beside a woman with fangs and a moustache. I’m not there even when I am. And if the sky brightens, it’s never for long.

i love this shit holiday inn throwback red wine in plastic cups from a screw top bottle advertised as staff’s pick the place smells 80s/90s ancient pool arcade sandpaper towels a ping pong table old bins carpet we swim pool, print wax, wane the ping of tokens yawns we’re tired from the drive so we call it dad is tipping over in the hall he stumbles, finds key, fades in the room he’s crumbling but he hits wine second winds himself he showers pulls curtain, stares he finds a hidden camera in the bathroom it is up in the ceiling fan but he’s so drunk and melancholic that he just starts dancing for it a week later he gets into his cups he gets cross at the memory of it all calls the hotel, complains, fits they check the room the camera is gone dad throws a tantrum on the phone drives the three hours out, swears oaths wants to see the room they oblige he tears the room apart he is savage he is impaired he chokes out a staff member up against a mirror the one who got sarcastic on him now dad is in jail for the weekend + dad swears it was all justified he asks us to put money on his books he's whiney on his collect calls there's background noise he's hurried, short he wants money for the commissary he wants a chocolate bar he doesn't say i love you john's wager john tried to do something or somethings to his ex-wife without consent he was all into his cups, bloodshot, scavenging, pedaling she was passed out in a string hammock out back the back of the house where he used to pay a mortgage on and what he showed up on his mountain bike and found her back theres abouts he wunt no dexterous cat and the like he got all tangled up in the netting when he jumped her struggling, entwining and such then the neighbors' motion sensored lights went on and all john was on three different ring cameras all celebrated on screens of a fashion his ex worked up, woke, waken shifted, screamed, flinched bitched a blue streak clawed... cops came they got him on his mountain bike about a half mile off handcuffs, squad scene, lightings of a red and blue quantity much so anyways he went to trials all done up and the trials went as they will john was remanded to the commissioner of corrections dutifully and with no pomp shaking his head like all half innocents the cam girl from hell she rolls soft damper pad bills jenny that is, hard knuckles, the look the gentlemen will take a chance she don't know from nothing no place one of her special jon's pops in harry harry he pays an extra grand every two months special access, and some chat sessions rolls up his sleeves, king-snipe, all in, see he's hooked jenny tells him he's special he is cause he pays he knows it but he's also deluded jenny wants to make a buck she offers harry a lock of her pubic hair, red ribbon, the old routine... it's something he has been after something he begged for she agrees but wants two grand for it harry agrees, it's a boodle, but he immediately drops a paypal three weeks hence he gets a bag in the mail a bunch of loose clippings, no ribbon, not even perfumed harry goes incognito in a group forum under the name "rug merchant" jenny's bragging about the heist and how stupid harry is harry finds out that she sent him a bag of old hair her friend scooped up from the floor in a great clips she works at harry gets two grand in cash from his little fire-proof safe and buys a gun the next day harry drives out to LA to try and find jenny he ain't ever shot a gun but he's certain he can find her he tries all kinds of ploys to lure her out into society he thinks he knows the score he starts to think he'll see her in the streets but he tosses in the towel after two weeks he pawns the gun he bought and goes back to his wife and kids he still subscribes to jenny he can't stop harry is in love he calls jenny his cam girl from hell Adam Johnson lives in Minnesota. His forthcoming poetry collection, What Are You Doing Out Here Alone, Away From Everyone? will be released through HASH Press in December, 2021.

focal planes apostrophe precedes infinity with sunrise left between us there is fall when photosynthesis runs out of film exposure green in memory grows gray anachronistic passengers pervade from capturing quintessences bygone the wormhole from an apple leads us home should phoenix eyes grow weary of rebirth the monkey’s paw will always bet on rock the occam’s razor seldom leaves a score a hurricane of butterfly effects yet does it even matter anymore our timelines veer isosceles apart infinity proceeds apostrophe drawing conclusions an oxidized atrocity of gold the myrrh and frankincense arriving stale vindictive horses took a longer route not kings nor common men can claim the stars empyreal empires empurpled empoisoned empaled Egyptian, Persian, Roman, Byzantine rebellion is an aging stoup of wine deliverance eventually comes a transatlantic massacre of oil tycoons lampoon and double cross their rails a gravy train that pays out in potatoes monopoly scrabbles the game of life, a self fulfilling prophecy at will get stoned with me before the lottery ambiguous systems a smoky mountain gets too high to move volcanos edging cinders of release medusa stoning atlas hard at work euripides inevitably laughs if blood succumbs to thunder in the lungs thermometers of mercury’s black bile apothecary cavalries advance like feeding royal jelly to the swarm is gravity a wondrous ordeal? rotisserie of miniature worlds harmonicas a semitone apart a closet full of kraken skeletons could ever non-celestial bodies grow to attain an armistice of atmospheres? re: flux meridians will ante up in post elisions of a b-roll memory with present footage folded at the seam a flutter in the mouth of hurricanes uncanny is a can of worms left canned digestive tracts reroute acidity molasses drains not ASAP from the elm elastic is what plastic strives to be it matters that your atoms get along it’s not a simulation anymore the cytoplasm keeps your shit together the mitochondria powers through it all an intervention ring of introspect ouroboros gets sick of biting down internal lux aeterna terminal apostrophe’s a double-sided gate both turning to and from loquacious ghosts that speak in coded vestiges of tongues in volumes indecipherable to grasp should whom your light seeks not appear to you try skipping rocks across a mirrored dusk it’s double points for shattering the moon ovations from an audience of moths on key or string with ardent fervor play an unapologetic rhapsody as orpheus once led he follows now incendiary steps of kerosene an ostinato-obbligato whir some light emerged, today it rains as one Brian (@wrdsrch) writes and sings. Recent work is featured and/or forthcoming in Thimble, FERAL, Sledgehammer, and Versification, among others. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from Susquehanna University. https://brianalvarado.com/writing

Born To Rue Chimneyed houses set against a red sun Frown at the morning, as under cover Of distant car-humming, things that hover By lorn windows begin to worm their way Inside. Past the net past the bars past The lingering stench of frenzied spraying They come, fly, mosquito and bee, flaying With their taunting greetings the slack faces And tousled heads that trusted their sweet rest To these fuming bricks. Thus broached, quiet walls Turn into a death trap. The visor falls: Bars come crashing down. The hunt begins. Homesick, Or Sick Of Home? Our hair, if they did more than just exist Would they be exiles or adventurers? If hair too could love, crave, yearn and persist Like those incurable old desirers – Brain, stomach, heart, soul, tongue, foot, finger-tip; If the tendrils of hair caught in a comb Were looped gently over its teeth, let slip Into the wind, sent from their plastic tomb Out into the world, would they learn to fly Free, or plucked from their hearths, wither and die? Obelus My life is harnessed to red, The colour of blood, And the dead, Dead flames of festering rage Forged from time’s ruin In a cage. Its gushing artery-trains Run into the bruised Sluggish veins That you cut open With your pen. Photographer Your shield-shaped sword ever on the qui vive You come, modern quester, without fanfare, Without flourishes to alert the quarry. Your fewmets are emotions that receive Scant attention from the unquesting. Snare And prey share life’s strange, guilt-rift complicity. Spontaneities scattered about cities Like stubbed toes wrench you from tranquil streams, Unsheathe your tempests. The immortality You crave finds so entwined inequities And sublimities, your sword learns from dreams And screams both, to reap all indifferently. So you catch and grey the unguardnesses Of a staircase that believed itself stone Impenetrable, and of hands and faces Lured by the seeming-safety of tresses Of solid steel, and bind them to make known To every rapt gaze their myriad graces. Xylem In A Brown Study Through a dozen leaf-falls the axed tree’s stump Searched in sorrow the skies for each fresh fate: Digame, sky, shall it be rain clouds, one Huge storm cloud to destroy all we designed Or the fluttery white wisplings assigned To keep the peace twixt the earth and the sun? In dry leaves it sat, tended by a clump, Affecting a stillness regal in state, Remembering promises boldly made When the first axe was buried in its side By a deep young voice that faded and died Over the hills ever green and ice-staid, The withering of branch and flesh, the jump That to both start and ending proved the gate Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Plainsongs, Microverses, Sylvia Magazine, Better Than Starbucks, Post, Wine Cellar Press, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages, and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/HibahShabkhez

She always carried her basket the way they carried water in the old days, perched high on her shoulder like a vessel. He vaguely remembered learning something about that at church when he was a kid; not in the sermon, but in a well-worn dictionary one of his classmates had in his backpack. The book was subtly passed down from boy to giggling boy, each telling the next to “check out the V’s”. One dog-eared page had “vagina” highlighted in yellow, but by the time he found it, his older brother was yanking the book from his hands. He tried to punch him square in the stomach and missed; the only definition he could recall reading was “vessel.” When it was heavy, she struggled to balance it, a thick quilt sometimes peeking over one corner and hanging down to shroud her petite frame. It wasn’t much of a cover—all he could see was the movement of her hips left-to-right as she crossed the concrete, a sad swaying, more pleading than provocative. She was about his age but looked a little younger, something about the gentle slope of her nose and curls that crowned her head like a tangle of wild snakes. He sat across the street on a bench, mostly in quiet observation, occasionally barking directions at tourists that read somewhere that his hometown was “quaint.” Though his church days had been put to rest some thirty years before, he hadn’t made it a point to watch her, to know her tiny movements, or to feel a strained sense of concern when she didn’t show up. He hadn’t made a point of anything in the last three years. The basket almost fell once and only once when she hit a patch of ice, black and mostly hidden by some kid’s bootprints. A quick slide to a near-kneel, a loud exhale, and a nervous laugh. After that she stopped trusting herself, resting her right hand against the slatted plastic until she made it inside the laundromat. That was an impulse the two of them shared. His wreck had happened late one September night, brightness and a blow to the head, the sensation of a television being flicked off. Some idiot teenager and a phone, or a pipe, or a hand up his girlfriend’s skirt, nobody seemed to have their story straight on the cause. They left the scene with the boy’s arm in a sling, otherwise unharmed, whispering about getting home before the girl’s father woke up. He barely came away with his limbs attached. His body was splintered, a new series of rivets in an already-faulty foundation, propped up on a stretcher the way he propped himself on the bench, watching her catch her own fall. She pulled in and out twice a week, in a car that seemed to lumber along the road instead of actually gripping it, unsure of itself, half-lost in daylight in a town reduced to a quarter of a street. Sometimes she smoked cigarettes during the spin cycle, long drags between two slender fingers, lips puckered in a puff of smoke that drifted far enough to engulf them both. He tried to occupy himself with innocent thoughts about the rust on her driver’s side door and the occasional sound of her coughing, but some days he wondered who loved her, if anyone had ever loved her, if he had ever loved anyone. His divorce, messy and verbally violent, had left him always alone, so he assumed the latter answer was no. But six months after the accident, his mobility had returned by means of some miracle, an unlikely cohesion of his new mixed-metal skeleton. He now sat in a cloud of her smoke on a bench across from a filthy laundromat that had caught fire four times in the last ten years. He had been there two of those times, watching as unresponsive then as he had been when she almost lost her basket, as he had been when the paramedics found him, as he had been when his former wife would tell him “No answer is still an answer.” It was the dead of summer when she finally noticed him, a cracking oasis in the hot-orange afternoon, maddened by sweat and the occasional wasp buzzing by. He saw her approaching, cut-off shorts frayed and barely covering her thighs, an old David Bowie tour tee shirt in red and white. He looked down. His own clothes looked even more faded in the sun. “Hey! Mister!” His heart palpitated in an inner-chamber breakdown; a pull when there should have been a push. “Hey! Excuse me!” She jogged across the street through the non-existent traffic, stopping ten feet from where he sat, her hands on her hips. For a moment, their sway was less of a plea and more of a demand. He looked up, squinting at her like he couldn’t quite make her out. “Hey. Would you happen to have a cigarette I could borrow?” He patted his tee-shirt, then his shorts, as if he may have had a pack of cigarettes in a pocket that he had forgotten about. When he opened his mouth to speak, all he heard was his own breath pouring out of him, loud and panicked like a busted water pipe. She giggled at him. “All right then. Well, you have a great day.” She made her way back to the laundromat, swaying as slowly and pitifully as ever. He spent the next few months trying to forget that day. His home, a crumbling, converted garage, remained unchanged. It was always littered with takeout containers, empty pill bottles, and a year’s worth of mail left untouched. He killed three spiders when they crawled too close; not all at once, but over time (small errors in calculation, the innocence of blind trust). He dodged phone calls from his ex-wife, demanding a check or a check-in or a reconciliation depending on the day. He wasn’t supposed to drink with his pain pills, but he often remembered that three shots in. His mouth, wormwood-tasting and fractured from grinding in his sleep, remained closed as often as possible. It took three weeks for him to get back to the bench, and he was relieved that she never saw him again. It was the day after the first frost of the year that she pulled in, swinging the rusted door open before the car had even come to a full stop. She dragged the overfilled basket out of the backseat, her windblown curls dark as demons contrasting the glazed-white morning, an ill-fitting down coat open to the breeze. She didn’t make a sound, focusing all of her effort on lifting the bloated plastic to her shoulder. Three short steps, no hip swaying. Then he watched her mouth open slightly, her weight shift, and her ankle roll in succession; slow-motion, like an invisible fist closed and crumpled her from the ground up. She landed on her side, stunned for a moment, staring up at the sky. He leaned forward a little on his bench, resting his elbows on his knees. The vessel basket laid broken and overturned in the tiny patch of grass left after the laundromat’s last fire, seeming a little too hopeful for its surroundings, especially now. The contents were scattered across the dark, dirty parking lot, bright hues a sharp contrast to dismal early winter. Among them: a man’s dress shirt, two pairs of boxer briefs, and a lace bra in some designer shade of pale green. She hadn’t even bothered to sort them by color. She pulled herself to her knees and up, wincing and grabbing in the general direction of her right ankle. Slowly collecting the items from the ground, she loaded her arms and mumbled a few “goddamnits” here and there. She looked around to make sure no one caught sight of her fall, and she still didn’t see him. He sat unresponsive, just like when the place burned, just like when she almost lost her basket before, just like the side-of-the-road night when his bones were ground to powder under his skin. Just like he would do for whatever time remained. Tiffany M Storrs is the editor in chief of Roi Fainéant Press. She is a writer above most other things, but there are so many other things, and she is properly qualified for none of those titles. She loves a lot of stuff but we're not going to get into all of that now. You can find her here, on Twitter @msladybrute, on Instagram @lady.brute, and out back honing her wit.

Establishing Shot [the camera glares up in circles & cuts away to somebody crying, washing up without their glasses on. Their sink near a window with a bird feeder unforgivable birds every poem’s pretentious gaze at that window as the sink gurgles & sputters hot tap & purple nitrile the day after throwing dirt on their love’s plain pine somebody is washing up after Shiva: they say the first bird you see is your fate they’re superstitious as a distraction or succor, & it’s a nuthatch on the side of the pine tree & that’s unfair how could they be a nuthatch when they laugh & the nuthatch laughs too arrogant in its tree the story flickers in its beak] ABJECTION after “Stillness in Woe” by Purity Ring In the back shed place of dust vials someone holds an axe to his chest enough to draw blood less gentle than she’d hoped but breaking the skin impels clarity so you’re welcome. Imagine a dusk pervasive, world-ending no-wind still, where she’s unmade from the spools & belay loops of the society of men. Unrigged haunted ship! they say, used to being dull in remove. Not this alone. Meet her in a snowglobe moment worthy of her keep—build pillow forts but metal, but dangerous & weighted. He’s right to be afraid of her whetting. Blue bed kingdom, cloudy sea glass disorient him. He waits the storm out in a wind-harangued tent, island-bound under an anvil sea-fed thunderhead. Dare he cross the sparse-grassed field to the toolshed? Run to her now. The Oracle Poindexter on a Friday afternoon knocking on the boss’s office: hey there was a manufacturing defect in the heart. I’d like you to pity me my body. I always had abject panic to fall back on. Replace wisteria-wound rail with iron portcullis—that’s when I feel alive. When I notch another survival on God’s old yearbook, sign in the corner with harsh words. I love you I do now please lambaste my little figurine. You almost caught me saying wee fetish. You almost thought I cared. 9 of Swords I love lying so I wrote a book called “I Will Not Stab My Own Self with All These Knives”. I denied whispering the desiccation hex & then said I’m Fine when the wasting came. It was my wasting. Look here at my perfect set of porcelain wounds: a little ribcage sticking out, a bit of blood, a general chipping around the eyes. Tell me I’m a poor, sick child. Pick me up. Boy?Girl Goes to the Movies Boy I am a girl I am a sojourner here in a land of gendered bathrooms as far as the eye— >>> I craved certainty, plausibility. I could pass & that came with dope concierge service but boring clothes. My mother bought cream eggs & she asked me, do you feel like a girl? I didn’t know how to answer but drew her into an overlong hug. >>> The moment when Grant says AMPHIBIAN DNA >>> I know I avoided more of the locker-slamming & circling bikes the teachers who deliberately deadname but the boys weren’t kind behind the Mellon Street barn & I wouldn’t have had the words even if I wanted to tell them I didn’t know how to ride I didn’t know how to braid I wasn’t any of what we knew but I pled down to perjury & cut in half by mean boys >>> my hair buzzed on one side down to my other shoulder in a purple turtleneck before one of the Scream movies taken by S— then I told her if I was a girl I would want to— & she was already trailing away. >>> this was after G—’s 2Q2BSTR8 makeovers & the queers are sometimes not alright. There was a power outage midwinter when we lit candles & played No Truth Just Dare. All that made me feel dumb about feelings >>> I needed to be just a *little* repressed like hey tongue-kissing before a bunch of people get stabbed admittedly sounds bad out of context but I LOVE Junior Mints & being forced to shut up because otherwise I can’t remember to. Joey Gould, a non-binary writing tutor, is the author of The Acute Avian Heart (Lily Poetry, 2019) & Penitent > Arbiter (2022, Lily Poetry). They perform in the Boston cast of PSNY's Poetry Brothel & have spent ten years facilitating live events across the Northeast, including The Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Joey's work is featured in Moonchild, Miniskirt, Memoir Mixtapes, & many journals that don't start with the letter M, too.

Mare Time whispers a voice honeyed jasmine thick with moss. She has grown old against the evening sun, enveloped in the dust of dusk. In the reflection of stagnant pools, she doesn’t ripple. Merely notes the landmarks of her face, the constancy of her mind. Time staggers forward. Gods and Prophets Of course Kerouac had no fear; cocaine was easy to come by. Revolution does not stem from the sober, solitary mind, but from a rebellion fueled by adrenaline and endorphins and synapses, snap snap snapping like dried up saplings and words that trickle from numb tongues faster than white powder up paper straw, but does that give meaning? purpose? insight? On enough blow anyone can talk to god or become a prophet, on the fifty second hour we can all read each other’s mind. Kerouac was no different, he merely hit the road, bummed around, locked himself in his cave for three days and let the paper fly from typewriter. Uninvited You are uninvited, bitter against lips, rash over skin, sleep talk, night sweats, a battle of syntax. Syllables wrap thin ropes around outstretched fingers. The tongue, so strong. Your voice molds over me, an iron cast conceived in a stretched mind and firmly planted feet. This pop of shoulder, this curse word and collection of false stories, they are not meant for you. I only spit them in surprise of your presence, eager to remain pacified against determination. You’re here now, without warning. The best kind of unexpected guest. I am ready for slink and slither, praying on revolution like a forgotten religion, words on pagan moon, animal inside human covering. Become claws and creature reptile and remarkable. Come, I’ve already let you in. Katrina Kaye is a writer and educator living in Albuquerque, NM. She is seeking an audience for her ever-growing surplus of poetic meanderings. She hoards her published writing on her website: ironandsulfur.com. She is grateful to anyone who reads her work and in awe of those willing to share it.