Search Results

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.

This bathroom is really a spy room As I shut the door, it’s evident. I can hear the entire bar, every conversation. A cacophony of clinked silverware on plates, glasses toasted, and a myriad of voices. I hear my wife express concern at my aloofness just as the piss stream hits the bowl, bubbling so loud her voice becomes distorted. I hear a loud-mouth at another table praise the economy and his modest mastery of it. As I shake, I hear a nervous young man tell his date how beautiful her hair looks. Flush and wash my hands. I wait to put them under the dryer, compelled by the swoon of the obvious first date. He stumbles over every word as he tries so hard to be smooth. Exasperation from the wait staff at the increasing capacity; the dryer rushes to life, drowns all else out. With dry hands, I stay a moment longer, focusing on the first date, but the loud-mouth suit gets louder. I’ve been in here too long now; my party thinks I’m pooping for sure. Thank god I’m not; if I can hear them, could they hear that? Could they hear the stream? Do they know I’m still in possession of a healthy prostate? I’m not one to eavesdrop, I’d rather watch lips move and imagine the words. But the pull of this auditory wormhole is too great to resist. Give me a superpower and I’d always pick flying. I’m a watcher not a listener. I don’t listen half the time when people are talking to me. What’s the worst superpower? Reading minds, being inside people’s thoughts. The oddities that pass through my skull. The truths, the lies, the I-don’t-know-whys. I turn the knob and leave this bathroom. Firetrucking Brickhead When raised by sailors who’ve never piloted a boat there’s an art to colorful language that must be taught little ears have little mouths and they tend to pick up on the words we love to shout That coffee table that stubbed your toe It’s a motherfiretrucker not the little Matchbox kind the big ones that light up with sirens when you push them That neighbor whose dog keeps shitting in your yard he’s an ashhole just make sure there’s a fire pit in his backyard or you might want to go with brickhead you know, because he has a retaining wall in his driveway When you come home late from work smelling of alcohol, blaming traffic she knows you’re full of ship all those tiny plastic boats filling your pockets You’ll thank me one day for these parenting tips when pushing a spoiled toddler in a shopping cart down the toy aisle at Target little fingers pointing as your head keeps shaking NO and out of that sweet, innocent mouth screams I want that, you firetrucker! and all the fellow shoppers smile at you and thank you for your obvious bravery at being a first responder They may even buy you a coffee A word from the author: A little strange, hopefully funny. I have a website at www.jasonmelvinwords.weebly.com

At 5 pm I toss my bag and purse onto the table and crash into the cushy chair. The large windows that face the parking lot offer enough light, so I turn off the fluorescents. Settling into the empty room, I dig out the papers I need to grade and my gradebook—a burgundy hardcover heavy ledger. I prefer this to plugging in grades on a spreadsheet. I have 90 minutes to grade before my next class. Beep. Another faculty member enters. It’s Dr. Johann who taught one of my English classes a dozen years ago. He smiles and nods, but he doesn’t stop to chat. I’m surprised to see a tenured professor in this faculty room hidden in the back of the second floor of the university library. Dr. J has an office—why come here? He sits down for ten minutes, flips through a book, and then exits. Maybe he’s going back to his office. I don’t have an office—just my car, my trunk, my bookbag, and this overpriced grading book. As an adjunct, I race from campus to campus with pitstops at the gas station, Taco Bell, and this room. I work full-time at a church close to this campus to supplement these teaching gigs and to have health and dental insurance for myself and the kids. The job title is Church Administrator, but the old church ladies call me the secretary. That’s fine. I answer the phone, respond to emails, put out the newsletter, maintain the calendar and website, and gossip with the volunteers who show up at random times during my office hours. The church door always buzzes with visitors—church members mostly, but homeless people also ring the bell, and I bring them bus passes, gift cards to the nearby Burger King, and care packages filled with toiletries and snacks. Here, in this small quiet room in the library, there are no phones or buzzers to answer. There is no conversation. No noise—except when I break the quiet rustling these papers or scribbling down grades, or zipping my bag up. I imagine heaven is like this place—silent and empty. I hope heaven does exist. At home, my children talk and talk or the TV blares or the chores stack up like all those unwashed dishes. I want to stay here forever—one with the table and chair—holding this notepad with endless blank pages. Those pages wait for words to appear. When I walk to class in the next building over, lugging my bag, the wind howls. It’s already getting dark. I’m already tired. My 14-hour workday is almost done—just one more class. There has to be more than rushing from class to class, work to work, place to place. Cat Dixon is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She is the author of Eva and Too Heavy to Carry (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2016, 2014) and the chapbook, Table for Two (Poet's Haven, 2019). Recent work published in Sledgehammer Lit and Whale Road Review. She is a poetry editor at The Good Life Review.

One Won’t Hurt Five seconds temptation to regret. Ten years building home/family/pride/somebodiness foundations only 40% proof. Flooded on desire’s plain wasted//wasted Going back/back to where I started Illusions of overwhelming appeal shimmer across disillusionment’s mask hidden beneath intoxicated surrender. Your tears tear regret from me addiction’s excuse to drown in devastation self-pity a regular companion well acquainted to serve its master. Perhaps when it all dissolves surrounded by vomit and obscenities will I finally sober to my senses. Song The mirror taunts you, screaming fear and disgust yet I am translating another language. No. Other words entirely. I look at you, and the mirror sings to me about you delighting that form and light and shadow and moment share this dance to frame your beauty. But I watch you shiver, shame freezing self compassion until your words turn the air blue with hate. But I will never listen for I see who you really are. My job is never to hold up a mirror but help you listen to our song. Your mother and I sang it before you were born whispering it to womb and wonder humming it at midnight feeds dancing to it on every birthday recording it for when you struggled to hear its tune. My child we sing whilst the sun kisses our face or the rain soaks our souls. My child we sing through tempestuous seas or gliding upon hope’s wings. My child we sing every moment without ceasing without regret our hearts full. My child We sing To you You’re beautiful We love you. Rev Joe Haward is an author, poet, and heretic. Born into an Indian family, Joe was adopted with his identical twin brother and grew up transracial. Alongside two published nonfiction books, he works as a freelance journalist challenging political, societal, and religious corruption, with articles regularly featured in the national news site, Byline Times. His work can be found in various publications, such as A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Outcast Press, and Cinnabar Moth Publishing, where he writes horror, noir, and transgressive fiction. His poetry has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His debut novel, Burning the Folded Page (Cinnabar Moth Publishing) will be released in 2023. Find him on Twitter @RevJoeHaward.

irreconcilable breakdown my wife told me to take a bath then she handed me a folding knife and told me to do it right this time you see two years ago i tried to hang myself in the garage but my belt from Marshall's broke and she had to take me to the ER i fractured my C-2 when i fell from the beam since then she has openly cuckolded me our youngest just went off to college my wife is living with her boyfriend she's just here to grab some things and run a bath for me she said she needs her passport and my mastercard she and what's his name are going to turks and caicos the falling out between Kaye Swiss, Esq. and the Knights of Columbus Kaye Swiss stopped off at the outback steakhouse across the street from the mall of america and perked up his ears as per his wont he was thinking of a little rum drink and the prospect of his giza dream sheets from my pillow well he decided to stay for a sixth rum and coke and he picked up on a conversation across the bar most discrete and the like there was a group from the Knights of Columbus they were in a conversation most confidential so Kaye was naturally inclined to listen in about a possible retainer, &c. to do so he thought it most apropos to order himself a little white russian nightcap, &c. well one of the knights had a gimlet eye and picked up on Kaye, see he could spot an ambulance chaser from 10 miles off so he told his crew to go all sotto voce and the fucking like lest Kaye gets wind of their business, &c. well you should know if you don't already that Kaye was born with a most apropos gimlet eye himself and his eye didn't just twitch it twerked all beside itself Kaye drew up near the group of knights where he naturally asked pardon or asked that he be given leave something technical with a touch of ipse dixit and a dash of the retort courteous, see Kaye naturally said he knew a good lawyer in town, the one who offices next to The Buckle and enjoys his orange julius and brandy, &c. well so Kaye pulled out his business cards and his pocket edition of poor richard's almanac and went to town on the knights by reading them a little passage he went on for about a half hour and the knights were all polite on account of a good breeding and manners attendant upon their rank and file but at the end of Kaye's little soapy-eyed speech and his quotations from the Constitution as he sees it and some other ramblings that revealed not a smidge but a smudge of dutch courage and such it was then &c. that Kaye dropped the bill for his services, not a paid invoice but from his lips $175 for the half hour of blarney, dig well, that didn't sit well with the knights not as they saw it and such and who boycotted the payment &c. while ordering wings &c. they folded their arms in true style and told Kaye he wouldn't get so much as a wagon wheel (which Kaye took as a silver dollar insult) they stood on ceremony to the point where Kaye exploded on them, called them all father fuckers from squaresville and set off three smoke bombs all tri-colored right there in the outback steakhouse in order to make his usual exit and the like the bartender asked after the knights to try and square the beef but all they knew was that some most psychopathic counselor-at-law, esq. and the like made yackety-yack and beat it a faint pleading legal beagle, his crumpled suit reeking of an otto of brandy and julius collar stays in the shapes of stalagmites and cuff links by K Swiss jaundiced eyeballs aching in yellow shades veiny, trembling hands, bloodshot crosses a scar from here to there, he was the lawyer with the teardrop tattoo magic dancing john had kids, 4, 6, and 7 he was redoing the main bath himself he was changing out the light switches he forgot to turn the breakers off john got a good zap that sent him spinning and swearing his heart felt like it was going to explode his whole body was trembling he got pissed and ran to the fridge for drinks he got there, and started chugging beers he polished off eight beers in a row it was the time dad got electrocuted and drank his ass off but the kids only knew it as "the time dad got struck by magic and danced to tell the refrigerator." friday morning, march blaring "day O" by harry belafonte to try and smoke my wife out from under the covers i have the speakers set up at the bottom of the stairs and aimed up at the bedroom it's my opening shot in the dog days of our private war christ, what battles will there be today? what hills will i die on? maybe today she'll get a lawyer while i'm at work things have gone down hill thanks god we don't have kids i'm ready to move on i think i'll go back to my stag days where all of my friends were women who were older and fatter and drunker than me 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.

A Walk into Light Midnight trails between my toes, I pace the garden’s perimeter, as if mapping a treasure hunt, squirrelling eggs. This is not my home. From each plant: a leaf, a petal uncurled onto my tongue like wafer. Each a new word: joy, forgiveness silence. I pause for Fibonacci to show himself in leaflets, stamens – me – expound infinite scriptures across my tongue. Through the dark I taste a nettle-green promise. Blossom melts, hope-flavoured as fleeting as sky. All the Skin I Have Did you cut your teeth on the injustice of it all? Was the answer always too far away, never a long enough stick to hand? Did they mock you? For the sounds and smells nights you wound it all about you like a pain to be crushed, squeezed into submission? They have all left their marks. Brands, tattoos, scars, each and every one invisible. Making Jelly From the pick when we weaved together meeting at prickled ends, smiles stained to the smush and squash, the squeeze of a scarlet muslin, hung like a stick-bladder dripping, syrupy, into the Mason Cash. I never really asked what, why; watched you like telly and asked to squidge the fruit bag: worse than a nappy, a bleed, sating enough for a onetimeonly into the bowl. I think of it now, pressing sauce lumps with the back of a spoon. It feels like a lesson.

New York is a town that contains many people. The people are like rats, except instead of tails they have no tails and instead of four grimy little rodent paws they have two normal human feet. Sometimes when I am on the subway I try to count the people I see all around me. One, two, three. Four, five, six. And so on. Seven, eight, nine. I could go higher(1)—but I think you get the point. There are, of course, more than nine people on the subway at rush hour (when I typically avail myself of mass transit). I take the 4/5/6 line, but its name does not derive from the presence of only 4, 5, or 6 people riding it at any given time. No, there are definitely more people than ________________ (1)For example: Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five. I could go even higher than this, but by now I’m sure you get the point. that—at least during the times that I ride it! It is called the 4/5/6 for some other reason. You can probably look it up on Wikipedia. I’m not interested in the facts of this great city, if you want to know the truth. I’m interested in its essence. The crazy mundanity; the mundane insanity—the street-corner buskers and the sidewalk artists. The pizza rats and the Thomas Friedmans. The people who make the city go, who watch it go, who go from it and return. The mole people who live in our subway tunnels and our sewers, waiting to pop up from our toilets and take a big old bite out of our butts. In a way, the mole people are the perfect distillation of New York. Robbed, beaten up, abused by the metropolis and yet unwilling or unable to leave. They survive by feeding on the people who have not yet known suffering. They bite the butts of those people to teach them suffering. To me, New York is its sidewalks, its pedestrians(2), its pigeons and its pigeon ladies. It is the arguments between the aforementioned pigeon ladies and the Wall Street Fat Cats who live in the buildings outside which the pigeons take their meals. ________________ (2)Pedestrians are of particular importance. As Jane Jacobs pointed out in The Death and Life of American Cities, “eyes on the street” shape our urban communities and keep them safe and thriving. She refers to the daily bustle on city streets and sidewalks as “an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole.” Of course, it must be understood that while Jacobs was undoubtedly brilliant, Death and Life is nevertheless a product of its somewhat less enlightened time. A time, sadly, that couldn’t spare a moment to acknowledge the importance of the eyes under the street. Yes, I am talking about the mole people, of course. A blurb from the author: "This is a stirring ode to the greatest city on earth. It is a fully-realized version of what E.B. White was trying to accomplish when he wrote "Here is New York." It contains footnotes about mole people. In fact, there's a lot of mole people content in here. The author may have gotten a bit carried away."

The Toll of Fame Loki has traveled to Iceland again. Loki is not, technically, at home in Iceland, but it feels right. Better than most places. It feels, breath woven icy into wind, like Asgard when he was a child. Loki knows he is a murder mystery without conclusion motive or causation. Hollywood won’t allow him to go back to what he was. Enough is enough already, he wants to say. Find someone else to be your antihero. He turns, back to the mist-held fjord, land a troll’s ribcage. Bleached bone. Green cloak dusting kneecaps, fur soft at his clavicle. He doesn’t always have to look this way. Doesn’t always have to be Tom. He can be anyone. Anything. But the world has given him this body to inhabit: lambskin boots dissolving into heat without water. Heat lightning a reminder of Thor across a bloody gash in the cosmos. God, Jotun, Actor, Illusion, Truth—these are all words, but words can inhibit as much as they can define. Loki is sour-sweet blueberries against the tongue. Loki is wine within a piano to better make a bath. It often still rains in Reykjavík while the northern towns collapse into snow. Here, now, over him, the sun only lifts for a few hours a day. This country, golden for a buttered slice, bears an uncanny resemblance to a collar clasping a throat. Repository, or a New Prayer A blindfold the color of eels or sand pushed rough through stone or air siphoned from a ghost and sold skyward or loneliness metastasizing in the dark or a hand reaching for dirt or melanoma on a beloved forehead or how all kneeling is supplication or a cat o’ nine tails making rivers of a stranger’s back or sex like juniper smells or a lamp’s shadow tricking dying eyes into sight or two starlit boys kissing in secret or a hungriness gathering the last of the milk at the bottom of the bowl to shape an ocean. Jared Povanda is a writer, poet, and freelance editor from upstate New York. He also wishes, sometimes, that he could be a do-nothing king.

All Things Are Poison, And Nothing Is The sleek silhouettes and tips of their words Dropped like wrappers on footpaths in the night Go playing darkness, darkness, darkness – light! With my blended-egg-yolk brain. It writhes, kneads Pain, sloshing and frothing behind the beads They call my eyes. Past all their cries I slide, and from the pulsing crook of birds’ Wings pressed into floating foam, I wring out A truth strong and clear as a child’s mad shout, And as brutally shushed. I drop away Return to them and the barbed every-day. I conjure mists, they martel through in glee, So I turn to this. Cubes of death and bliss, Come. Sweeten and quicken this draught for me. Dwarf Planet My rocks, orbiting the relentless Sun Ache more than yours, o Earth. Two hundred years Of your giddy merry-go-round, and one Year of my toil is not done. Yet your spears – Whom may Time soon rend! – Your tubes tilted to the sky, peering past Your single serene Moon bathed in sunlight Sufficed to cast me out! So, yours will last As my five dim, melt into their own night, Seeking their own end, Betrayed by the System. Even Neptune, My first neighbour, my best friend, turns away From me now, for the Sun too sings your tune And calls me ice-dwarf. Earth, do you betray Thus all you befriend? It’s Pure Laziness, I Tell You The bones plant me firmly on the work-chair The eyes rivet themselves to the right screen - Down comes the monkey and steals the brain’s keys. The lizard clicks at it with a sour glare Screaming of deadlines and of being seen Idling thus. Terror seeps into the knees But the monkey will not yield me the keys No the monkey will not yield me the keys, Though down in the curling stomach’s last pit The magma whispers to the flaking crust ‘Nothing really does rhyme with horror No terror nor honour nor humour fit This bill. Break now, weakling. For I too must Have my day in the sun to turn purple.’ But when the crust erupts, laughing though dead It pours out a murky white stained with red. Vulture Your kite is a scavenger, just like me Yet with the kite you soar, rejoice In its dive, yearn to fly as far and free. Your hearts lift, not stop, at its cry. For I am the one you bind to the death You cause. The one waiting for breath To fade out of the children you famished. I am the ill-omen, banished - Your hawk is a scavenger, just like me And not just when it has no choice Your symbol of valour and grace can be Found stripping the dead just like I When all is said and done, I will still repel you. Could it be Quite simply That you find me ugly? 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

Sister How regally you sit in funerary black— a touch of blush, collar, torn, and lips, naked as the day you were born— by the wedding silver. Remember me, sister, Mother’s little king that faded into chairs and the dark of lonely corners (now erudite and battle-worn)? What magical current settled you, there, in that chair at father’s table (at the right hand of God). O, dandelion in the wind, how glorious the ride on Zephyr’s wings, to and fro, deep-diving into life in rushes and bounds—without care— with velocity that keeps delicate fingers unsoiled and pristine for the turning of a registered page. So glad to see you slip-in, mayfly, from your lingerings in the periphery, far, far away from the rank skin-stink of pill dust, sweat, and soiled linens. No. Absence’s subtle bouquet, riding your forgetful breezes suits you best like a signature scent. How the call of home (or better things) must pull your teary eyes from the antique, porcelain chickens— so gingerly fingered on the china hutch— out of the dining room window and away. Now, come sit by me, sister, and let’s have a drink, here by the gold watch she left on the windowsill, and let’s toast to you and me, and the mess she left behind. The Healing Clock Memories fade (like hours) and fall away, lost down the crack between the bed and the wall— dissolving images in dusty frames, slipping the catch of rusty nails down yellowed wallpaper in thudless freefall. The shadow you left behind retreats, silently, with each rising of my morning sun, behind that thick curtain of red velvet to take your rightful place at the head of our communal table for the jubilee. The gentle angles of your face. The plumpness of your cheek. Even those sad eyes of brown that smile, escape me like ashes in the wind. All are just the stuff of legends, now. David Estringel is a Xicanx writer/poet with works published in literary publications, such as The Opiate, Azahares, Cephalorpress, Lahar, Poetry Ni, DREICH, Rigorous, Somos En Escrito, Hispanecdotes, Ethel, The Milk House, Beir Bua Journal, and The Blue Nib. His first collection of poetry and short fiction Indelible Fingerprints was published in April 2019, followed by three poetry chapbooks, Punctures (2019), PeripherieS (2020), and Eating Pears on the Rooftop (coming 2022). His new book of micro poetry little punctures, a collaboration with UK illustrator, Luca Bowles, will be released in 2022 Connect with David on Twitter @The_Booky_Man and his website www.davidaestringel.com.