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“You know the stolen vehicle from that police chase in the city last week? The one that wrecked with a mother of five? Well, that was mine.” The subject came out of nowhere, sucker-punching her with the suddenness of its violence. Her body had been relaxed at first. She had worked at this place for 10 years and had good relationships with her coworkers. She had seen this man before; he’d come to work on the office security systems a few times, but he had waited to address her until just now, half-up a ladder and towering over her desk. She froze reflexively and stopped breathing for a moment. “Wait, “she said, “was it YOU?” “Na, na…” he chuckled slightly and took off his stained baseball hat, exposing his paltry threads of graying hair. He wiped his hand across his slick forehead. “She died though.” “My God.” She put her hand to her mouth in shock. What do you say to this kind of information being thrust in your direction on a Wednesday? He continued without prompting. He kept puckering his mouth like an asshole to keep the spittle from raining down on her. Excited, his belly shook, punctuating his convictions. She remembers it like this: Insurance: “They’d better total it! I mean what the hell, it wasn’t MY fault this guy got out on that new bail reform law! They are letting these thugs out for violent crimes and then this happens!” The Cops: “Yeah, the cops told me the black box in my car said the guy was going 80 miles an hour when he hit her! These boys were great; they apologized for my inconvenience over and over again. They’re gonna tell me all about this guy later.” “The Higher-Ups”: “I want a new vehicle! I shouldn’t have to drive that car after this! My insurance company keeps saying they need to talk to the Higher-Ups about my situation, but I know people and I WILL go to the media if I’m not satisfied. These Higher-Ups better be careful. “ Victim Blaming: “That woman, she was pregnant —WITH ANOTHER ONE! I mean she already had FIVE! And the cops told me she didn’t have insurance.” She stood stock-still, her mask disguising her disgust. She felt held hostage, wondering if it was possible that he was venting because he felt traumatized. No, his eyes were red and barely making contact with hers. Was it his nonchalant dismissal of the death of a beloved mother, and the now-parentless children, and the dead baby? Or was it his absolute certainty that HE was the real victim here that made her hate him? It reminded her of the time she was stuck in line at the DMV behind two men who chatted openly and loudly about what bitches their wives were and the lies they told just to get some peace and quiet. As if what they had to say was of the utmost importance and universally accepted as true. THEY were the real victims in this world, and it was high time we all knew it. She remembered her heart beating in her ears. She had longed to tell them about her ex-husband, and his midnight texts and the smell of another woman’s body on his face. About the humiliation of gaslighting, about a paralysis perpetrated by audacity that left one unable to defend themself. About the certainty that he was telling similar stories to similar men stuck in lines just like these about her. She stood quietly then, her eyes transfixed just beyond the man still babbling to no one. The wall behind him held a glass case that contained a fire extinguisher. An ax rested just beneath it, as glass can be tricky to shatter otherwise. The sign above the case read “Break for Emergencies Only.” It was then, in the fog of this memory, she decided to kill him.

map (of) rust i rode the wings of the great beast: you. in time, in turn, your hopeless melody— you sit in the dandelion skulls with piano keys under your eyes to dine in the death voice of your sadist mind. you brought fire to the snow, each touched lost their individuality, becoming all the rest, a drop. my morning mother my mother slept adversely. though through the night her face unfolded. it smoothed over. her lips were pink earthworms. her tongue became sober, a softened sword. in bed she was a cocoon, half-exposed. anxiously at the wound i sleep in the fog of your morning breath in the overspill we disappear catching the hook, the dream glints in the murky water glimpses i shape into your image // i wake, empty headed afraid confused weights sewn into my palms where are you the cold wraps me like a grave john compton (b. 1987) is gay poet who lives in kentucky. he lives in a tiny town, with his husband josh and their 3 dogs and 2 cats. his poetry is a personal journey. he reaches for things close and far, trying to give them life: growing up gay; having mental health issues; a journey into his childhood; the world that surrounds us. he writes to be alive, to learn and to grow. he loves imagery, metaphor, simile, abstract language, sounds, when one word can drift you into another direction. he loves playing with vocabulary, creating texture and emotions. he has published 2 books and 5 chapbooks published and forthcoming: [books]: trainride elsewhere (august 2016) from Pressed Wafer; stranger in the attic of clouds (tba) from dead man's press inc; [chapbooks]: that moan like a saxophone (december 2016) from kindle; ampersand (march 2018) from Plan B Press; a child growing wild inside the mothering womb (june 2020) from ghost city press; i saw god cooking children / paint their bones (oct 2020) from blood pudding press; to wash all the pretty things off my skin (sept 2021) from ethel zine & micro-press. he has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies.

MONK “None of you are called to cure the broken people in your life,” the monk teaches. “You’re called to care.” Kayla is sitting cross-legged on a meditation pillow like everyone else in the auditorium. She’s out in the desert this week, staying at a Buddhist Center to attend a retreat. Five days of Dhamma classes, sitting meditations, walking meditations, and private sessions with counselors. Today is the third day of the retreat. “If you’re emotionally exhausted it’s because you’re trying to cure broken people,” the monk continues. “Caring often brings more healing to someone than any attempt to cure.” A few minutes later the bell rings to end the class, and everyone moves outside for a walking meditation. Attending this retreat was the best gift Kayla could have given herself. Her job as a social worker has been heartbreaking this year. So many sad people and situations. It’s been difficult to remain hopeful. During the walking meditation she can’t stop thinking about the monk and how he said she’s called to care, not cure. The bell rings to begin the next class, and everyone heads back to the auditorium. But not Kayla. Not this time. Instead she hurries down the path to her room, packs her suitcase, and leaves. As soon as she arrives in the city she parks in front of a large building and rushes inside before she can change her mind. A volunteer guides her from one room to the next to help her find what she’s looking for. “This one,” Kayla says, pointing to a small pen. The Humane Society volunteer opens the door and hands the Chihuahua to Kayla. “I need a dog that will care about me while I care for others,” Kayla says, smiling when the tiny dog nuzzles her neck. “He’s a sweet soul,” the volunteer replies. “What will you name him?” The little Chihuahua rests his head on Kayla’s shoulder. “Monk,” Kayla says. “His name is Monk.” A SLICE OF PIZZA This is the best vegan pizza Evelyn has ever eaten. It’s over an inch thick, layered with vegetables, vegan sausage, and vegan cheese on a puffy rice crust. Unable to finish it, she saves a slice for a homeless man she saw in the park. But when she leaves the restaurant she can’t find him. All she sees is an elderly man dressed in shabby clothes walking toward her on the sidewalk. “Can I ask you something?” Evelyn says to the man. “Are you homeless?” He snorts in response. “Of course not!” he exclaims. “Do I look homeless?” Evelyn offers the pizza box. “Then you wouldn’t want this slice of pizza I saved for a homeless person,” she says. He snatches the box from her hands. “I didn’t say that,” he says. Sitting on a low wall next to the sidewalk, he balances the box on his lap. “It’s vegan,” she warns. He opens the lid. “I don’t care,” he says. “Pizza is pizza.” While he eats, they talk about his grown children, his wife who recently passed away, the marketing conference Evelyn is attending in this city, and her online boyfriend who can never seem to meet her offline. “You’re a nice lady,” the man says when he finishes the pizza. “You deserve to be treated well.” Walking to her hotel, Evelyn feels her cell phone vibrate in her pocket. It’s an email. He’s back. And right on schedule, just like her girlfriends predicted. Now she knows why her boyfriend acts so moody and erratic. He’ll treat her like a queen for a few weeks. Then pick a fight and disappear. A month later he’ll reappear as if nothing happened. Thank goodness for girlfriends who know about internet predators and men who catfish women online. She deletes his email and blocks him. Thank goodness for girlfriends who treat her well. Thank. Goodness. DO WHAT YOU LOVE This is one of those mornings when the sun streams through the bedroom window, toasty and warm, and all I want to do is roll over and bury my face in the pillow. To pretend I didn’t hear my alarm clock. To forget that it’s time to get up and go to work at the accounting firm where I’m a partner. If I were an electrician, for example, I could stay in bed and sleep. Why? Because it’s Sunday, and electricians don’t work on Sunday. But I’m an accountant, and it’s tax season. And you know what that means: I have no life. Not this time of year. On the other hand, if I were an electrician I wouldn’t work in a nice, air-conditioned accounting office all day. And I’d miss that. I would. Instead I might be like the electrician who tackled my punch list when we built our house years ago. One afternoon I heard laughter coming from the second floor. I walked upstairs to find the bathroom door open, and the electrician on a stepladder, replacing the fan in the ceiling. My energetic kitten dangled from his shoe. Pumping his leg up and down, the electrician couldn’t stop laughing, as he gently swung the kitten back and forth in the air like a pendulum, his shoestring clenched between her teeth. Obviously, this electrician loved his job. But I’m not an electrician with a crazy kitten dangling from my shoe. I’m an accountant, and the thought of working with electricity terrifies me. I’d much rather work with numbers in a nice, air-conditioned office. After all, we should do what we love, right? Okay then. Good to have that settled. Now I can get up and go to work. Laura Stamps loves to play with words and create experimental forms for her fiction. Author of several novels and short story collections, including IT’S ALL ABOUT THE RIDE: CAT MANIA (Alien Buddha Press). Muses Prize. Pulitzer Prize nomination. 7 Pushcart Prize nominations. Mom of 5 cats. Twitter: @LauraStamps16. www.laurastampsfiction.blogspot.com

She Wears a Blue Bandana and uses the phrase “on the lamb” to describe most anything: Her legal status. Her state of mind. Her philosophical leanings. Her birth-control. Her favorite summer shirt. House of India #60 This globalization of loneliness plays out by railway. Postcard. Grass skirt. Blue paint puddles on black dirt. We meet the minimum standard without meeting each other. When we wake up, we drain the excess moisture from our skin and wipe away what never got inside. We hear music and start our days. The orchestrated wolf calls that seeped into our dreams overnight have become beeps and blips. Plastic eyelashes. Toys. And it will be mine. The world’s sorrow. Rare actions barely exist. The waitress is pretty, and her home is clean. Like a distant candle. Like a radio left on in the woods. I was practicing precision contentment in the mirror. The day was fragile. I was reading a magazine. Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. He has three current books of poems: Invisible Histories, The New Vaudeville, and Midsummer. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and The Cream City Review.

The only sound, other than the baby lion purr of the train, was the screeching of some bird on the horizon line, darting in and out of the sun’s rays in direct defiance of both life and death. It was a hot and holy war fought alone and boldly, brazenly in the forceful rays that occasionally broke through the half-overcast. She sat alone by the window, three new records loaded onto her mp3 player, shifting the weight of her overnight bag on her lap. She had switched trains an hour before and got her heel stuck in the escalator going down, resulting in a knee-jerk and a deliberate step - one, two. Her dress was white and pleated on top, navy and somber on the bottom. Her face was made up, her expression indifferent. He told her once that she was cold and aloof, but that was only part of the story; the secret was that she summoned that behavior only when she wanted to. A man invited himself into the empty seat beside her, a booming apparition in pressed white linen. He was over 70 — mostly an open collar, a mustache, and a tan; a life well lived and leaking out of his pores (or perhaps that was the gin). He reminded her of someone on a cigar box. The man told her he noticed her at the station, taking her deliberate step - one, two. She nodded, her finger flipping the volume up in her headphones. She could only partially hear him, something about Panama or panorama or Pamela his lovely wife, God rest her soul. She wasn’t sure and assumed the man wasn’t either. M. Ward was singing the blues, and she wondered why she was there. It wasn’t because he told her that the reason he hated her so much was for being a better writer than him. It wasn’t for the 300 plus women he’d had, claimed he’d had, made the unbelievable claim he had had. Maybe one of them was Pamela. God rest their souls. The man turned to her then and winked, face creasing in a shark-like smile, vapid and predictable. He asked what a pretty girl like her was doing taking a train so far away. A pause heavy with answers she didn’t have. Out the window, the sunbird had multiplied, a flock of unfriendly screams drawing her attention for a moment, circling a figure 8 above an empty cornfield. She didn’t like too many birds in one place (a little too Alfred Hitchcock). She didn’t like the number 8, how she saw it repeating on clocks and in movies, how she felt it kept her locked in rhythm. She didn’t care for the man in white linen. She wasn’t sure about him either. She meant to tell the man about love, but it came out as “fondness.” White linen shook his head. “Well, that doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?” The man had a faint British accent now, possibly a put-on. She turned her volume all the way up. The trip was supposed to take six hours, and it took twelve. In truth, it had also taken the three years prior and would linger on until the end of the present one. Every time the train slowed, shook, heaved to the right, and sighed, another train rolled past them. She looked at the passengers. Ponytails and fingertips, elbows and noses, all a blur but containing some stand-out piece. She quietly questioned their story. The man in white linen had moved his bags to the seat across the aisle and waited for her to turn her head so he could engage her further. She didn’t. The sunbird was alone then, still flapping and screeching, apparently irritated that his warning went unanswered, unheeded, unnecessary because she already knew. She thought about home, about going home, about how getting there would require another Donner Party-style family dinner or inane lecture on her indifference. He had bought her a ring once and tricked her into wearing it, into the implication of wearing it, into the sand trap of guilt that he only wanted because it bothered her. White linen fell asleep for a while and she snuck away to the cafe car for a soda. On her way back, a group of Boy Scouts asked her for city directions once they got where they were going. She told them everything she knew, displayed a pop-up map she kept in her pocket, not because she wasn’t tired of talking (she was), but because she was kind and good. That’s why she was there. That’s how she got everywhere she didn’t want to be. The train arrived. She flipped open her phone to read “I’ll be out by the car.” He had been at the station for six hours and was already annoyed. Her stomach lurched with the hopelessness of regret, her lack of courage a boiling pot overfilled, one more drop to spill exquisitely, destructively all over her pretty dress. White linen was due off at the stop after hers. As she disembarked, he called to her - “Good luck with your fondness!” She dismissed him with a wave over her shoulder and a “what the fuck, good luck with yours!” under her breath. On the stairs, her legs felt heavy. On the cement, the evening cool struck her right in the throat. It was a long walk around the station building. Late night, big city. The sunbird had disappeared, back to its nest she assumed, but she still heard it crying for her; slow and constant, the audible inevitable. She listened, mentally listing all of the things she knew. She knew if she fucked him tonight she wouldn’t have to do it for another 8 hours at least, and she could get some sleep. She knew he’d demand to know if she’d been with someone else. She hadn’t, but she didn’t like telling him anything, much less the truth. She knew his cutting remarks were waiting, tucked into the corners of his ancient car, coiled snakes in the backseat with their venom ripe and dripping. She knew his mother hated her until she read her writing, and may have still hated her after that, just less because a starving artist is better than simply starving. She knew this was the end’s final beginning, doomed and dismal, a sad pirouette two partners toddle around each other for fear of the unknown. She knew she’d look back on this time and say she did it because she was kind and good, quite the little martyr, always face-down in someone else’s misery. God rest her soul. Her steps were less deliberate now, purposefully slow, one THEN two. She tightened her arms around her body and said aloud to the sunbird, to herself, to the no one listening - “Scream it ‘till you’re blue.” 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.

device step away from the screen, two way mirror it's me, i'm the one you've been wanting won't you please – no. be object, be artifact: lie down with the stone. set the body to briefcase, device, universal kill switches most delectable tricks to watch over, what we have here is // // how do we blow it up deliver yourself from the dread of being live in a room you should know how to read under glass, is it safe?, it's been tested holding cell body set on vibrate off your wall love the cage you've been placed in, for your protection, in truth, more than for the amusement of your occasional captors slash resentful partners in a previous crime (cut for time) sever the bond that still makes you roll a finger on the lock in a whisper how you will show them a sick void if they just slide that bar, open sear yourself from all hope; is there a way out (there is not), frost yourself with the sweetness inevitable you will be unleashed you will invade and explode take the power of sky beam, throw it high and above remain light I will build you a blood house my man's a dream killer, he kills dreams for a living he got into the spiel after family business least that's how it started: the vocation came later freeze and bone six roads removed from the spectacular now so every day for night he suits up in his sneakers shakes himself out the fear jacket and off he goes, butchering yes indeed they work shifts there's a wheel night for day, it's a murder on nerves one week in you start seeing body shots in the water and I wait until dawn in our house with no doors no woods to be found but a crack in the window I take my picture I do the dishes, this is pace, empty ashtrays it's a good life we've got here would be a shame if something happened to it Barbara Genova (she/her/they) is the pen name of a public woman who went private. Poetry and stories written as Barbara have been published / are forthcoming at The Daily Drunk, surfaces.cx, Anti-Heroin Chic, Sledgehammer Lit, Scissors and Spackle, The Final Girl Bulletin Board, Fahmidan Journal, Misery Tourism, Hallowzine (2021), Expat Press, The Bear Creek Gazette, Discretionary Love, and the Hecate Magazine anthology issue #2 (DECAY, winter 2021). She can be found on Twitter @CallGenova and on Instagram @thebarbaragenova

lately, i have been sparing thoughts about the idea of having a conscience. i have never been unkind as a person, no never, but having a conscience is a different matter. black is my happy color. i have to let my dreadlocks see a decade at least. alcohol is now out of the question. no way i'm giving up smoking anytime soon. we need new tattoos. i dislike the idea of having more than three or seven shoes and clothing items at a time. i did this thing of letting go of every book we read in the past which should be at least a thousand and restarted a journey towards reading ten thousand books by the time we turn 60, if we live long enough. i joined social media this year, it has been overwhelming and eye opening at the same time. i miss my friend - he died recently, but it's not the death that hurts me the most, it's the permanence of the whole thing. my eyesight seems to be getting worse and lately, like i said, i have been sparing thoughts about the idea of having a conscience. you can see why i have headaches. light and heavy headaches; my human body is having to simulate a lot. but i am not alone. the other day i received an idea to write about a child that returned (was born) and lived for just 366 days and i realized that child was me. i have not written anything about it yet but i received the idea the other day. sent you out for 7 days you chose to stay 8 days you must not die stay, so, but comeback comeback, comeback God does not rest in you anymore you took the sabbath day and turned it into tonight. i scribbled that down on paper though, and i think they are connected. can you imagine dying while you are still alive? of course you can, think of the four different types of suicide which Emile Durkheim identified - egoistic suicide, altruistic suicide, anomic suicide and fatalistic suicide. those are nothing. let me tell you about a different kind - psychological pseudo suicide or pseudo psychological suicide, whichever way, English language provides inefficient descriptors. actually i cannot tell you more about it right now, we will have to discuss that at a later time but yes it involves cutting off a lot of things which are largely rooted in one's reality and might result in permanent disassociation with certain people, places and things. it is as permanent as death. i have to go. as you can probably tell, i am not very good at journalling. clearly i am not normal.

Somehow, I knew the end would come slowly. The luxury and mercy of a catastrophic event that obliterated billions of years of evolution was too much to hope for. The end was the slow boil, the gaslighting of nations, cultures and individuals. It was rich people getting richer. It was the reality of no God, and the belief in one anyway, that ended it all. I am walking with my dog, Ghost, through the former trails of Indian Hill; a wooded path that extends about 15 miles through horse farms and tract homes. She is a Siberian, found along with 4 others, under a black Ford F150 that had been overgrown with tall grasses and moss. It looked like it had been fairly new upon its abandonment, but nature took over, as it always does. I could hear squeaks, mouse-like and weak. I was starving and thought a meal was making itself known. I walked towards the sound, and hence, the truck. I squatted down and peered underneath. The undercarriage of the truck set unnaturally high and I could easily see the old Pampers for Newborns box. When I pulled at it, the weight indicated something alive, and I worried it may be an actual newborn ironically indicated by the package. To my relief, it was four Siberian puppies. They were thin and dehydrated. They peeped and wiggled all the same. I surmised that they were born, and the heart of the human couldn’t bear to take them as much needed sustenance so they left them to nature, or to others that didn’t lack the stomach to eat dog. My backpack on my back and my walking stick were heavy for my wiry 50-year-old frame, so I put them down and wiggled the box, half sunk in the mud, free. I had a decision to make. Take all or just the most viable. Their blue eyes stared up at me; one had an eye so milky and infected that it was just about to fall out. I couldn’t choose one over the other. I was unlikely to be the survivor in my family, who was I to choose in this one? I took them all. I would give each pup equal care and what nature wanted back, it could have. Two years later, only Ghost is left. She has been my sixth sense as I walk along these trails alone, day after day, through the dead and blinding winter, and the humid and disease-filled summers. She barely makes a sound. Sometimes a lone howl when I trek out alone to the bathroom hole. That is why I call her Ghost. It is as though she sees them, too. She alerts; I alert. Most of the time, I can’t see what she sees. Something is there, though, and she knows it for me. It is, right now, winter. I have lost count of the specific days, but I can tell the time of day in a general way and the season. With hunger always gnawing at your stomach; who knows the exact time? With no urgent need to gather ‘round the tube and watch the latest in the dalliances and the made-up drama of real-life debutants, each day is dictated by the sun, or shadow. Time, as a rule, has ceased to matter. We have all ceased to matter. The snow is deep but the tracks of my boots have worn a path in the areas I can safely inhabit without fear of detection. I remember wanting to be noticed. I remember the posts on Facebook that showed my filtered face gazing dreamily into the future. I posted about my children’s accomplishments like they were my own. I posted about anniversaries and memories. People ‘liked’ them. They liked me. Or so one would think considering there was a social contract that demanded cooperation. But here I am and I haven’t seen or spoken to any of those 900 friends I once had. I have a suspicion my children are all dead. All adults and scattered about the former United States; when communication ended, I couldn’t get messages to them. I didn’t dare venture out on foot. I had to stay in familiar territory where I knew the lay of the land. I was sure they’d find me since they grew up here and would feel compelled to come home like stray dogs. They didn’t. I can only assume they are doing what I am doing or dead. Maybe they assume the same. Their father was gone before the first raids. He took his own life in a field behind our house. In his note he told me he loved me, and that there was a bullet left in the gun had I wanted to take my own life as well. He “saw the writing on the wall.” He wanted to end his life on his terms with all the good times intact in his mind. He didn’t want what we had built to be taken. He wrote, “Life with you has been all a man could ever want. I will see you in the next life.” Believe it or not, he was an optimist. Me, I had other plans. “Fuck these people!” I had screamed at my husband after an argument about ‘next steps’. I am a runner. I am not someone who just sits and waits to be a victim. I thought I could get away. Maybe move to another country. This was rash, shortsighted and proved impossible. No flights allowed in or out and crossing the Canadian border; well, that was an unoriginal idea. The quota for refugees was capped and met. Then of course, once America fell, like dominoes, everyone else descended into chaos. I catch myself wondering if Venice is still a thing. After leaving my home abandoned for about two weeks, I returned to find that it had been confiscated by a group of young men. I had snuck around the back and saw grey soled tube socks on a make-shift clothesline and realized another loss. It is the way things are, and I took that chance when I left the house unoccupied for so long. Finders' keepers these days, you know? I made it back down the driveway just before they could see me. I was stuck without my home in the hills of the former New York State all by myself. I had smartly taken the gun my husband put to his temple and found a small, uninhabited shed, and set up a shelter. I broke into homes, stores, unexpected places like abandoned landfills. I did okay. My feet are heavy as I trudge up the side of a hill; the chains on my boots weigh about 5 pounds each. I lift my legs dramatically to take the smallest step forward. Ghost is ahead of me and on a lead. She stays on that lead for fear she will be shot if she gets too far ahead. She looks like a wolf from a distance, and wolves make a meal for a family. Hell, dogs make a meal. So, she stays right where she is at the end of that leather leash. She tugs and pulls sometimes when I am too slow up the hill and she just wants it over with. Sometimes she’s too nimble for me and I fall and tear my clothes on the ice or jagged rocks. Duct tape and ragged stitches map across my pants and jacket. I make haphazard repairs. My husband was the sewer in the family. On one trip to California, our last trip in actuality, I dropped a button off of a jacket I wore to a winery. I had that jacket for 15 years. I didn’t notice the button had popped off but he did. He picked the button up and put it in his pocket. I woke up the next day to him sewing it on my jacket with his portable sewing kit. He did things like that. He tended to the small things. I make a way to the shed. I enter and drop exhaustedly to the ground to take off my boots. My day’s haul has amounted to nothing. I have left over rabbit in the snow box outside. I can have leftovers in the winter because the frigid air and snow make it possible for me to store things outdoors. My son used to force me to watch YouTube videos about the most mundane things, like the History of Ice making. I scoffed at these seeming wastes of time. I now can keep ice throughout the summer. Rest in Peace YouTube. Come summer, fresh fruit and vegetables are plentiful. Sour apples, cherries, and wild carrots and lettuces make their appearance. I am tired already of tough rabbit and squirrel and I am ready for the succulent duck. I will share my meals with my skinny dog. She has stopped begging. There comes a time when even a dog understands that times are tough. The only light I have during the short winter days is the light from the cooking fire. I stir the melted snow and frozen rabbit in the pot. I hum to myself a song stuck in my head. It’s “Judy Blue Eyes” by Crosby Stills and Nash. This time It’s the “doo doo doo” part; my favorite part of the song when I was just a toddler. My father told me a story of when he and his friends, stoned and drunk, would put that song on and watch me dance and spin like a whirling dervish. They would laugh, so delighted by my delight. He said my face was like a shiny, smiling moon. Apple cheeks. It was the 1970’s. The world’s chaos was just a dream to me. I can conjure up that joy, sometimes without the specter of despair looming around every corner. I hear remnants of this song that I recall from times before these. I hear the songs fully produced in my ears. I used to walk around the world with headphones stuffed in my ear canals, listening to mixes and podcasts. I was in a state of constant aural stimulation. I tuned out the world and my children. Now, I am hyper-tuned in to the sounds around me. A twig breaking sends my heart racing. Food or foe? Both require my immediate attention. You can try to tune out the birds or the far away gunshots, but they intrude. They niggle their way into the core of your brain like earwigs. With nothing to drown out the reality, there is nothing but. I think I have forgotten some of the lyrics to this song that springs up in my down time now and again. But the instant images, and times they bring back to me in my isolation, tell the stories of my past and the collective past of the world that has vanished. I look down at Ghost and give her a piece of my rabbit. She almost takes the tip of my finger off with her fervor. I reach down to her repentant eyes and clean the goop from the corners, letting her know I am okay, and that I am grateful for her. I wonder what the point is for the tenth time today. I chuckle and the sound is as though it’s from a far-off place; a place where I danced wildly and had an audience. I am still spinning. When I am done, I put the dirty bowl outside in the snow. I don’t have the energy to clean up. I will wrap the chain around the door of my makeshift shed and settle off to sleep. Ghost and old moldy blankets keep me warm. Maybe I will wake up in the morning. Maybe I will die in my sleep. Maybe someone will overtake me in the night and Ghost won’t have enough energy to protect me. I can’t hope for any of these outcomes. As I drift off, I can hear the Middle Eastern musical patterns of the song and as I fade into the unconscious. I see myself as a little girl… And I hear it… “What have you got to lose…”* * this is a song lyric from Judy Blue Eyes, written by Stephen Stills and performed by Crosby Stills and Nash, published in 1969 ISWC T-070-940-415-8 and not my intellectual property.

It’s rarely too late and never too early, so the sea is rife with heads and hands, each one too eager to claim what they will inevitably squander anyway: loose change kept in a pocket until it gets too heavy or the cute bartender needs a tip. As you wade in at the entrance, the guy at the door acts like he remembers you, maybe does actually remember you, maybe was here the last time you were. Dark and hazy, strobe lights occasionally blinking with unreasonable confidence before exploding in the surge one by one. The walls stay upright long enough to display the work of the locally infamous; a painting with a blowjob face and one with the head of the devil. A table in the corner calls with its nearby bookshelf of board games. You and a friend try to find one with all the pieces before the dice float away, sipping Too-Sweet Somethings because you recently gave up drinking straight liquor for show. An acknowledgment from across the shallow end becomes an approach before you sidestroke back from getting your second drink. “What have you been reading?” You utter the name “Dostoevsky” in the strangely stale semi-darkness, and that alone should have cut the disco track that was playing or at least slammed the fallboard down on the amateur pianist and his entourage drifting a little to your left. A conversation ensues about “The Brothers Karamazov” possibly, a tirade more than likely, and you are somewhere else as always, eyes over waves and lips and shoulders, zeroing in on the back door. Your friend gets cornered, answering questions about her kids. “I’ve always wanted to be a father!” Everyone above water raises their eyebrows in a collective move strong enough to shake the blowjob face off the wall. The sea of heads and hands parts, praises the half-moon, the Bee Gees, and the art of Saturday night, and reforms. The historically untouched cigarette machine provides a pleasant backdrop to the verbal nonsense two inches from your face, maybe three when he pulls back for air then dives in again, no board, no floaties. “I’m going to get a drink.” “Oh, I’ll get one for you!” Two voices shout in unison as you inch your friend forward by her wrist, but the sea is raging just then and you can pretend you didn’t hear them. Out the back door, you accidentally flood the bonfire before it slams behind you. Running past the dick statues, past the moon-bathers, past where the buoyant jukebox fades to a white-noise hum. To the side alley where a metal gate sits stranded between two buildings, likely well over 6 feet tall but after 3 Too-Sweet Somethings, your math skills have dulled. You pull and it’s locked. You try and fail to scale it, cool chain link on your still-wet cleavage, piercing half-moon flickering through your open-and-shut fake eyelashes. As is the way of these things, the only way out is back in. The sea is swelling inside as waves knock pool balls about and further soak the swimmers in the neighborhood’s cheapest deal on PBR. The heads and hands appear to have swallowed the two young men from before. The cigarette machine still seems to rest immobile and emotionless, indifferent to whatever might be happening on the too-plush couch beside it, a texture you don’t generally want to feel on your way in or out of there. In spite of near-constant water lapping, friction left its mark on those reddish cushions, burning and sticky. Low tide; a path opens up and you’re swimming, past the piano player and the blowjob face and the devil and the guy at the door who acts like he remembers you, maybe does actually remember you, maybe was here the last time you were. The street is iced over, filling your lungs with relief cold and cutting, with getting away with the something-sum of nothing, with steel-specked city air just beyond murky seawater. You laugh all the way back to the car. 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.

thing heaven piled errata skinned bones and erotic mystery mags hissing spilling spitting and crawling mounded too tall objects tumbledown furniture upholstery rot and soiled seat cushions decompose towards thing heaven forest before daybreak goodbye, light, ‘til the city is bathed in dawn— for streetlights are branches from great fallen trees— skyscrapers darkened, we fall to our knees as the city, so still, is wrung from beneath. the waning has begun, our lives but pawns— for streets are now paths worn slowly by hooves— in our starlit behemoth of sky as our roof polaris, once stable, starts wobbling south as truth, forsaken, shouts out til dawn— cicadas and crickets shall echo in streets, dramatically trafficless, into the night as it seeps while the city, so loud, is subsumed from beneath— the city as biome, the city as peace.

Try again, they said, as if it were a school exam or a driving test. As if, somehow, there lay at the root of the problem a lack of practice. Some mentioned different options – as if, somewhere along the line, she’d made the wrong choice – and suggested it should be seen as an opportunity to take a step back and reconsider: is this definitely what you want? Maybe it’s not meant to be? But they fucking well had practised, and this was what they wanted. They’d both said so, more or less from when they first realized that flutter they felt on impact might mean a big deal. He didn’t say much after he found the stick, probably still with pee on it, hastily stuck in a vase of mixed, drooping tulips that only minutes before had been partially blocking his view of the television. You’re sure? Yes. Can you believe it? Even though she hardly could; even though the same fear of the same once again was already growing inside her. He’d been gentle that night, with her, with them; not wanting to take any chances. Falling asleep, his hand on her belly, still taut, still keeping their secret from the world. She said a silent prayer to a god she knew couldn’t exist to let this one become a real human. We still have each other and other platitudes, they said soon afterward. The wine-softened syllables of these well-rehearsed lines fell easily out their mouths; mouths that hadn’t met since the familiar outcome was confirmed. Of course, he said, and the hesitation was barely perceptible. And we still love each other? she asked. Always. No matter what, right? Christopher P. Mooney was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1978. At various times in his life, he has been a paperboy, a trolley boy, a greengrocer, a supermarket cashier, a shelf stacker, a barman, a cinema usher, a carpet fitter's labourer, a leaflet distributor, a foreign-language assistant and a teacher. He currently lives and writes in someone else's small flat near London and his debut collection of short fiction, Whisky for Breakfast, is available now from Bridge House Publishing.

Dare not I yet impose an unfit form, Dreaming away at the two photographs Compared (three years apart) with a heavy head. Across the shared driveway, And fenced in silver rings between the great Pine trees, a song of girls’ laughter was heard Often enough, between the Shepherd’s bark. Framed by the rusted screen or chipping paint, A world appeared all overcome by clouds, Call it cloud-dump. They were hanging with pins Above the thin Bear’s Paw, their summits lost (Or just concealed) somewhere in the stratosphere. Matthew James Hodgson is temporarily a high school English teacher at Harlem High School, near the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in North Montana. After completing a master’s degree at the University of Chicago, where he studied psychoanalysis and Romantic-era poetry, he turned to hobbies including printmaking, harpistry, and translating journals from Hungarian to English.