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Leopard print Grease My small cat daughter, Simone Leather Sugar My large cat son, Lugosi The Tom of Finland men who live in my sinew and swivel my neck to look at Justin Theroux types on the street The green dress Keira Knightley wore in Atonement  that I would have worn in Jovani knockoff form to prom The night I skipped prom to watch the new Star Trek  movie and eat Garden State Plaza food court cheesesteaks with Nick Messina Skull rings Carrie Fisher Lactose intolerance Velvet Eyeliner Honeyed goat chevre The photo of my grandmother grabbing Sylvester Stallone’s ass when he filmed the movie Lock Up  at our family auto body shop The fact that I didn’t have an imaginary friend as a kid but an imaginary boyfriend The fact that his name was Jonathan and I still have no idea where that came from I didn’t even have a crush on Jonathan Taylor Thomas Geminis Aquarians The Romanov execution Silver Oxblood Anna Karenina buying that train ticket the tension of routinely calling poly people “fedora fucker street magicians named Tyberon and their ren faire ass girlfriends” but having participated in polyamory myself, at least twice Fucking Paul Not fucking  Paul …but definitely fucking Eric ***** ****** of Tulsa  Whether stuffed animals have abandonment complexes and the ache I feel at those I haven’t rescued from curbs a stream of Emotional Support Snapple Zero Sugar Razz, steady a stream of emotional affairs, unsteady Rocky Network Fran Fine The smell of gasoline The smell of chlorine Fran Drescher (they are different) The riveting debate as to whether Sally Bowles is secretly American and The New World stages production of  The Woodsman My mother making me get my second holes pierced at 14 because the cool (meaning: thin, not respected) girls all had them, and how they grow pregnant with pus twice an infected year Feeling morally superior for not wearing open-toed shoes The vulgarity of a Lindt truffle bursting in your mouth Singing “Lua” into the casket of my high school best friend Leslye Headland’s Sleeping with Other People Ascending the stairs with my dress in my hand like an Austenian heroine  The Vincent Van Gogh episode of Doctor Who , because I’m not a fucking  sociopath Carrie Coon, and how I wish I had a mother The moon (sorry) Two-thirty a.m. The drummer I want to put me through the drywall Seashells, and soap rendered in their honor Mosquitos and their cis male counterparts Laura Palmer and I sharing a birthday If my inner child will ever come out of there The animatronic Christmas display on the second floor of the Fountains of Wayne store the band is named after The priest from Fleabag Catholicism Judaism And the Westchester father who fucked me into God’s palm  Whether that palm was loving or closed Death Cab for Cutie’s “Cath…” A nice man I know who can hold 60 Dixon Ticonderoga pencils in his fist Carly Rae Jepsen The terminal overuse of the phrase “iconic” Dylan Baker playing that child molestor Signs that say “no dumping” The written oeuvre of Louise Rennison, may her memory be a blessing Christmas snow and the fact that my dad is a retired fire chief who to this day forbids me from owning candles but puts 75 pounds of radioactive lava lamp ass ornaments on the Christmas tree every year That in my last fit of suicidal wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’, I couldn’t shake that my dad would not, in fact, be better off without me here, and that is the first time I have ever added anyone to that side of the list Tom John Mahoney in Moonstruck John Mahoney in anything Diaphanous 1950’s bathrooms, in pink The way Bruce Springsteen sings “move” at the end of the bridge in “Spirit in the Night ”The Saddle Brook Diner Watching my friends brown out in Tony Clark’s mom’s hot tub VH1’s I Love the 80’s  in lieu of middle school friends My allergies Unrequited love Checkerboard Vans Gene Kelly’s ass Rainbow sprinkles An exile from Pittsburgh Cardinals, whether I like it or not … Sally Rooney (obviously)             Tara Giancaspro (she) is the creator of xoxo Gossip Giancaspro, a weekly Substack ( taragiancaspro.substack.com ) including personal essays, pop culture commentary, and the various and sundry of her silly little life. She has released music under the name Sweaty Lamarr, available to stream everywhere, including "Abbey, I'm Sorry I Stole Your Man," a Jolene sequel from Jolene's perspective. She has been published in Bullshit Lit, Wig-Wag Mag, Drunk Monkeys, Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, Dusk Magazine, and got bit by a dolphin once, establishing a potentially generational blood feud. Giancaspro can be found on Instagram and Twitter at @SweatyLamarr . She is based in New Jersey, if you couldn't tell by the hair.

I step into my gynecologist's office. I didn’t even know they had ones for consultations. I assumed they only worked in rooms with complicated recliners that had weird parchment paper strewn across it.  Are you sure? What if you change your mind? I’m one of the first patients of the day. They do a pregnancy test again and the  nurse and I laugh at what a surprise it would be to see a positive result right now.  We’re going to ask a hundred times but because we have to—tell me again what  surgery you’re getting today? I’m afraid of confrontation. I twist my rings around my fingers. I sit on the edge of the chair leaning forward. I thought I was going to throw up waiting in the hallway. I have white coat syndrome. Why doesn’t Brock get a vasectomy? I look like my dad with my IV in my hand and a hair cap on. I try to keep talking  to Brock so he doesn’t feel awkward and uncomfortable but he doesn’t anyway. I  forget other people see hospitals differently than I do. And what procedure are you in for today? I explain how much cancer there is in my family, that our DNA is littered with faults and dangers, and my gynecologist refers me to a genealogist to see if I could have kids that won’t get cancer. The genealogist tells me it was just really bad luck for both my parents.  But have you considered how expensive it is to do IVF if you do want kids later? My whole team is made up of women. It’s comforting to me. In fact I only see one man working there walk the hallway past my little curtained-off room.  Both of the fallopian tubes, right? I’ve been planning to do this since I was 13 but there’s no way my gynecologist knows this. She prioritizes stopping the migraines and trying a different pill because I won’t do the arm insert and she says the copper IUD won’t fit in my uterus.  What if you and Brock break up and you meet a new partner who wants kids? I get compliments on my tattoos and piercings. I tell another nurse I like the color  of her nails. We talk about our moms and how they inspired our styles. I can’t  stop saying thank you after each of their tasks. And what procedure are you having done this morning? I lie to her and say if I change my mind I’d be willing to adopt instead. The openness to adoption isn’t the lie part, the changing my mind and wanting kids is.  You’re sure you don’t want to try another pill? I’ve signed papers, initialed, and handed over my credit card, and consented to  whatever. Each form they hand me I sign. Saying “no” is not an option to me. I  will not haggle the price or read the fine print. This costs nothing in comparison. And what are we doing for you today? For some reason she takes me seriously the second time I come in. Maybe it’s because I used the word “sterile” but the moment I use her words from the doctor’s notes of my previous visit, her attitude seems to change, to take me more seriously. I like to believe it was always going to change though.  You do know this is permanent, right? I’m told my medical record is boring, I’m so healthy. I swat the odd compliment  away and feign blushing as I thank another nurse. Years of sheltering myself have preserved me for this drastic bodily change. This is one of the few times I am  taking the path of least resistance. I think about how I will need to remember to  disclose this on medical paperwork moving forward.  And we’re removing your fallopian tubes, correct? She’s pulling out the paperwork—which is just one sheet with only a third of a page of text—before I have even said goodbye to her. Now I imagine her pushback was more out of duty than of personal opinion. She says they were booking for May last she checked, which is about four months away. I say that’s fine. Any plans I may have that day will be moved.  30% of women regret the decision later. My gynecologist finds me before the procedure to explain the details. She looks  more tired than usual. Speaks slower than I am used to from her. I wonder how  early she got up this morning, if it was as early as me, probably earlier.  Ready to have your fallopian tubes removed? Everyone asks me how the procedure went and I answer “good” because I don’t know otherwise—I was unconscious for it. There’s pain in my shoulders from the added air being reabsorbed by my body. It takes a nurse, a doctor, and my mom to reassure me I will certainly not get pregnant now.  If you know anyone else who needs this procedure, feel free to send them my way. Brenna Ebner (she/her) is an editor first and writer second. She is a book publicist for The Lit Publicity and a recent graduate of Portland State University with a Master’s in Book Publishing. She can be found in Baltimore, MD with her two dogs or at her website brennaebner.com

“Will someone come for me?” I ask out loud. The only one to hear is a Blackbird I’ve named Stanley Stub. Stanley has one good leg, the other, his right, ends at the ankle. Stanley Stub is a lot like me, in as much as he walks like a Penguin. I wobble in short, quick bursts before my feet stick, and then a tremor kick-starts me again. His orangeade beak fizzes with the speed it raps against the glass. He’s been a daily visitor to my patio for two years.   I lean forward in my armchair, body weight lifts my backside off the crocheted blanket. I’m slung onto my feet. My body’s response is sloth-like. I negotiate the edge of the mat, I stay on the laminate, feet shuffle, stop, shuffle, stop. I pour the seeds into a Yorkshire Tea cup, and ensure they’re level with the cap of the cricket batsman. My hand jitters, up, down, round as my arm windmills. The mug contents dance to the rhythm of Stanley Stub’s pecks. “Will someone come for me?” I whisper to Stanly Stub as he first selects the sunflower hearts. He pauses, cocks his head to one side, his bead-like eye, reflects the sunlight. I’m sure he nods. I thank him and slide the patio door to. My fingers grip the chair arms, like a bird of prey, I land into the cushioned seat, comfortable to observe my little mate. The tick, tick of him selecting the seeds in order of preference weave in and out of my knotted thoughts. My tissue paper eyelids float downwards, then flip up like a roller blind. I drift from 82 to 42 and to not knowing. The Blackbird serenades his thanks. His harmonized chirps, invite me into a dream. I find myself returned to 1983. It’s a murky November morning, I switch off Breakfast Time. Normally I enjoy watching it with a cup of tea and a cigarette before getting off to work. Today I can’t as it’s all about the Walton babies. I’d spent yesterday by the side of the birthday girl, Hazel. Her birthday present, an acorn child, I’d made. The acorns selected at the beginning of October. Hazel and I collected acorns from beneath the same Oak Tree. The oak is the largest amidst a group of trees at the end of our road. We don’t collect them on a school day, though it’s on our way. I smile as I hear myself ask Hazel, “How come you’re as slow as a slug on the way to school and yet you’re like Jack Flash at home time.”  “Mum, school’s not half the fun of being home with you. And, I don’t get fish fingers at school.”  I sit the acorn child next to Hazel, on the ledge at the base of the headstone. I read each word as it appears from beneath my cloth holding hand. Hazel Wright Birthday 17th November 1961 Taken aged 9 years, 1970 It was the day after her 9th birthday. Her nan had knitted her a red hat with a blue bobble, Hazel’s favourite colors. She was excited to wear the hat and walk to school by herself. As she hugged me goodbye she asked; “Will someone come for me? Or can I walk home by myself, too.” I answered, “If you want to, love.” “I do, see you later, Mum.” “See you later, love, fish fingers for tea, so straight home, you hear?” “Okay Mum, see you later, alligator!” The day I gave birth to her, I was young and unsure if I’d done the right thing, telling them all to do one. That I was keeping my little girl, no matter what. It was always me and Hazel. I contemplate how fortunate the Walton family is, they have six girls. Hazel is my only child. I wish the Walton family all the best, but I can’t witness their beautiful story.  The fish fingers got cold. I sat at the kitchen table. Waiting, waiting for the back door to fly open and Hazel to bounce in, acorns in hand and a story to tell. The back door did eventually open. I could see the lips of the policewoman moving. The sound heard, agonizing screams, and then nothing.  The policewoman held my hand. I was sat on the sofa, no idea how long I’d been there.  “Betty, can you hear me? My name is Lorraine.” I nod my response. I put my hands over my ears, block out Hazel’s voice, “Will someone come for me?” “Betty, can you hear me? I’ve come to talk to you about your Hazel.”  “Will someone come for me?” “Betty,  your mum’s here, no need for anyone to come for you.” I clung to my mum, she absorbed my sobs. The policewoman informs us that Hazel is dead. The tapping on my patio door wakes me. The rat-a-tat takes my dream. My eyes take a moment to focus as sleep crawls away, dragging with it my heinous reality.  I can’t see Stanley Stub, in his place brown woollen tights over sparrow thin legs. I look up, a woman’s face. I can’t say I know who she is, or have I forgotten? “Can I come in, Betty?” “Do I know you?” “Can I come in, so we can talk? I know you, from a long time ago.” I study her for a minute or two. She’s tiny, got a look of Una Stubbs about her. I think I’ve heard that voice before. There’s only one way to find out if I’m right. I tell her she’d better come in. As it turns out she’s my neighbor, moved in two doors down last week. She tells me her name, Lorraine. My right hand starts its shaking and wants to windmill, I place my left hand on it.  “I know who you are, Lorraine, you’ve aged the same as me. Why have you come?” I recall she was gentle and kind on that day in 1970. The only words I heard, Hazel, dead, murder. My only thought, I didn’t go for her.    “I recognize your voice now. Lorraine, you were kind.” “Can I sit down for a minute, Betty?” “Course you can, love. Would you like a cup of tea?” She sits down but she doesn’t want a cup of tea. Lorraine tells me that she left the police a few years after Hazel. Said once the case was filed as a cold case, she knew they’d never find him. As it turns out she didn’t give up looking for him. She holds my hand, this time I have the strength to listen. Lorraine informs me she knows the person, the monster who took my Hazel, who never told her no one was coming.  I grip onto her hand. Funny I’m not shaking. I concentrate on what she’s saying. She speaks in a quiet yet strong voice, void of hate or revenge, full of compassion. She reveals that she had known the individual due to his job. It took her until earlier this year to find the final piece of evidence. She’d stayed in contact with him, sat in his lounge, had a cup of tea and a chat. All the time she’d been listening, watching, searching. Bit by bit placing the pieces of evidence together. The final fragment fell into place due to his pure righteousness. He told her he’d found the bobble hat on the pavement, outside the Newsagents. Said Hazel was wearing it when he guided her and her friends across the road. He smiled, telling Lorraine the kids had shouted back to him. ‘Thank you Mr. Lollypop Man.’  I lean forward, let my body weight lift my backside out of the chair. My body’s response is sloth-like, my mind is quick.  “Have you got the bastard?” “Yes” “Thank you.” I navigate the edge of the mat. Make us both a cup of tea.  When I sit back down, Stanley Stub has returned. He chirps, aware I have the answer. Sally has an MA Creative Writing from the University of Leicester.  She writes short stories and is currently working on her novel based in 1950s Liverpool. She sometimes writes poetry. She gains inspiration from old photographs, history, her own childhood memories, and is inspired by writers Sandra Cisneros, Deborah Morgan, Liz Berry and Emily Dickinson.  She has had short stories and poetry published in various online publications, including The Ink Pantry and AnotherNorth and in a ebook anthology ‘Tales from Garden Street’ (Comma Press Short Story Course book 2019). Sally lives in the countryside with her partner, dog, and bantam.

The audience, crammed shoulder to shoulder in tight, neat, curved rows, stared upwards, mouths agape like stunned goldfish, semi-chewed popcorn clogging up the crevices between their teeth. They were captivated by the two acrobats a hundred feet in the air. They defied gravity, flinging themselves and each other around on perilously high trapezes attached by gossamer-thin wires to the roof of the big top. A safety net would break their fall if a trick were to go wrong, but collectively the crowd ignored its presence to avoid detracting from the thrill. The trapezists, Freya and Federico, were an item. A couple of years of hurling themselves at each other, wrapping their arms and legs sinuously around each other, trusting one another with each other’s bodies, had eventually led to them sharing first a kiss, then a bed. Freya had dared to believe afterwards that Federico might be the one. Now they shared a trailer, travelling from town to town together, their own little moveable hideaway among the other  circus performers. Freya leapt back to her starting pedestal and pirouetted to face back out towards the void. ‘Hup!’ shouted Federico – trapeze artist terminology for ‘go’– from across the void. She flipped herself from her pedestal to her trapeze, swung 360 degrees once, twice, three times, then used her momentum to rocket herself forwards and upwards, flying freely, serenely, oblivious to the unknowable faces that stared up at her. Then she began to fall, arms above her head, certain to plummet to the ground – until she was snatched from the air at the last moment by Federico, who dangled from his bar by his feet. The audience oohed and ahhed in appreciation. Federico winked at her from above. The only thing preventing Freya from falling was his powerful hand around her slender wrist. The protective warmth of his grip sent Freya’s mind flying back to a few days earlier, when she’d spotted Federico emerge from the trailer belonging to Leanora the lion tamer, his hand in hers, before scuttling away in the direction of the trailer the two acrobats shared. She’d confronted him later. She’d expected denials, excuses. Instead, he’d just shrugged. ‘I never promised exclusivity,’ he’d said. ‘Freya.’ Her name coming from his mouth returned her sharply to the present, just in time for Federico to blow her a kiss and say ‘See you in the trailer later’. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. Freya hated him for it, but his arrogance had always been part of the attraction, and she hated herself too for that. She shimmied up Federico’s body, trying not to enjoy the feel of his contours beneath her fingertips, hopped from his shoulders onto his trapeze, then leapt over to her own. Hup!’ yelled Freya, fists clenched and fingernails tearing into her palms. Her voice echoed loudly around the arena. ‘Hup!’ Federico knew Freya well. He knew she’d be hurt. He knew she’d be angry. So it came as no shock to him, as he double somersaulted towards her, that she adjusted her outstretched hand at the last second in just such a way that it looked to the audience as if he’d messed up and mistimed his jump – the sort of amateur error that could destroy the ego of most showfolk, particularly a proud, preening man like Federico. As he hurtled like a brick towards the safety net, Freya knew Federico would have expected something like this. Indeed, as he vanished into the distance below, she half fancied he winked at her again. Something else that can destroy someone’s ego, showfolk or not, is their partner cheating on them, and that can tip anger over the edge into revenge. Federico knew Freya well, yes, but he didn’t know just how vengeful she could be. He also didn’t know that she’d begun an affair of her own just the night before — with Roy, one of the circus’ safety technicians. Silly, sweet, stupid Roy. He’d been mad about Freya for as long as she could remember, always saying how he’d do anything for her. But Federico didn’t know that either.  And, as Federico slammed straight through the sabotaged net and onto the solid ground below, Freya reflected that now he never would. David Cook’s stories have been published in Ellipsis Zine, Janus Literary, the National Flash Fiction Anthology and many others. He’s a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. He lives in Bridgend, Wales, with his wife and daughter. Say hi on Twitter @davidcook100  and Instagram @davidcook1001 .

eternity beacons   a motorcycle cracks the crowd finds silence   the dark lamp sears white through dark days, bright nights   whispering to a world indifferent to its celestial glow, cocooned in their own search for luminosity—   defeated bulbs, a coffin of glass.   Author’s note: This poem was originally published in THE ONCE FAMILIAR WAVES by ANDREW BUCKNER, in July of 2024. Andrew Buckner is a multi award-winning poet, filmmaker, and screenwriter. A noted critic, author, actor, and experimental musician, he runs and writes for the review site AWordofDreams.com .

All roads to Foulpuddle are dead ends. The sooner this dump is swallowed up by the sea, the better. So dull, even migrating birds don’t stop! The six members of Foulpuddle Parish Council listened in silence, shivering, as the contents of the Visitor Comments Box were read out. Council meetings were already salted with envy, for the Great Eel Festival at Marshwick, just up the road, was in its third triumphant year.The Fenland Gazette  had a photo gallery of rippling silvery banners, volunteers in I ♥️ EELS  T-shirts, hundreds of visitors, and a huge foam-rubber eel that shimmied through the crowds in silver-painted waders. Foulpuddle Parish Council were convinced that Jim Platt, grandstanding mayor of Marshwick, was inside the eel suit. They were bitterly aware that few festival-goers followed the road onward and eastward, through the marshes, past mudbanks and tidal inlets, to the village of Foulpuddle and the North Sea beyond. “What makes me simply livid,” said Gloria Shaw, landlady of the Jolly Eel pub, “is that by rights the Festival should be here . It was our idea, and Marshwick stole it. Jim Platt must have bugged the Council Chamber.” The Council Chamber was a one-room hall, used by the knitting group on Mondays and the carpet bowls club on Thursdays. Now in late October, the ancient heating system had failed. The Parish Council hunched over their tea and biscuits, wrapped in winter woollies and dejection. Ray Owen, the local historian, reminded them again that Foulpuddle, not Marshwick, had been home to an eel-canning works. Now ruined and lapped by the spreading salt marshes, its once-imposing structure lay at the extreme end of a silted-up canal. The Victorian entrepreneur who had built the factory and canal, back in the 1860s, had quickly realised his mistake and moved his operations inland.  The Comments Box contained more bile: The so-called ‘pub’ serves the worst food ever. The clue’s in the name. Fall in the mud here, and you’ll never get rid of the stink! Ray was furious at the insult to the village’s name since every reputable historian knew the origin of Foulpuddle  was ‘a watercourse frequented by fowl’. Gloria found the pub comment most hurtful. She said it was probably Jim Platt who wrote those things, it would be just like him. The Parish Council adjourned, agreeing on a single-item agenda for their next meeting: How To Put Foulpuddle Back on the Map. “And teach those buggers in Marshwick a lesson,” Ray said, as they left the building and plunged into the cold fen-mist. One low-tide morning in January 1989, the first clear day after a violent storm surge, Gloria Shaw was walking her dog on the old canal towpath when she noticed a row of blackened spars poking from the mud. She rang the Archaeology Department at Fenland University, who sent a carbon-dating expert to investigate. The rest, say the guidebooks, is history.  Once the remains had been identified as an unusually well-preserved Roman cargo ship, Foulpuddle was swamped with archaeologists, historians, film crews, and sightseers. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. The Jolly Eel, which had been full only once in living memory (a sighting of the rare Western Sandpiper having attracted a horde of twitchers) was booked solid for months. Gloria drafted in two chambermaids and an extra chef. She bought new bedlinen and revamped her menu, which had previously offered a choice of eel pie and chips, sausage-and-mash with onion gravy, and lasagne. Cameras recorded every step of the operation to extract the ship’s carcass from the mud. Also retrieved was its cargo of fifty-three unbroken amphorae, containing traces of fish sauce and olive oil for Caesar’s armies. A TV documentary about the salvage operation, and the ship’s removal to a purpose-built ‘Romans in Fenland’   museum, was fronted by a celebrity historian. Still more visitors were drawn to the village by her aura of suppressed passion and wild flame-red hair, like a pre-Raphaelite Boudicca - the subject, as it happened, of her PhD thesis.  Long before the crowds departed, Foulpuddle Parish Council had begun working on plans for an ‘Ides of June’ summer festival, to feature a fancy dress parade led by the Parish Council in togas, and an Imperial banquet on the village green. One day towards the end of filming, Jim Platt shyly approached the Celebrity Historian, hoping to pitch an idea for a documentary about Marshwick’s medieval past. She brushed him off politely. “I’m so sorry, but we’re on a very  tight schedule. Gloria, I just need a quick word with you please?”  The Mayor of Marshwick retreated, with slumped shoulders. Gloria Shaw thought she had never known a sweeter moment - unless it was on that evening in summer 1957 when she and Jim lay together in mud-scented cordgrass, while he whispered that they were the Romeo and Juliet of the marshlands. Patience Mackarness (she/her) lives and writes in Brittany, France. Her stories and CNF have appeared or are forthcoming in Free Flash Fiction, Citron Review, JMW, Flash Fiction Magazine, Meniscus, and elsewhere. Her published work can be found at http:\\ patiencemackarness.wordpress.com

I visited my Dad in hospital after a throat cancer haemorrhaged requiring a two-litre top-up of blood. He was alive but looked ready for mummification so thin and waxy he was. Due to his Alzheimer’s an orderly sat on watch beside him bed lowered to the floor. I said I’d take over and promptly had the bed raised, after all he was just a sick and confused child inside an 85-year-old six-foot body. If he took off down the corridor the only offence was going to be his adult diaper peeking through his flappy hospital gown. A blood transfusion of that size makes the receiver feel itchy and cold but it perked the old man up no end. Soon we chatted at eye level about my just-released third children’s novel. I told how I’d dedicated it to him and Felicity, my Mum, his first ex, explained it had the sea, a salty old seadog and a shipwreck in it. Dad replied with his usual high-octave naval commander emotion. Well, well, well so there we are ... I didn’t mind, I was happy we were chatting, we’d become close in the years his mind flailed. A man who says you look very smart  when prompted Dad you can tell me I look beautiful it’s my wedding day  – doesn’t change. Most people think Mama Cass choked on a ham sandwich, she didn’t she had a heart attack in bed, at age 32. The sandwich was found untouched on her bedside table. Her minders made up the story about the snack because she’d been performing (and partying) all weekend. Beats me why they didn’t stick to the truth. They opened her up for fat shaming with that preserved pork on buttered bread, made her sound like she lolled around in the pit like Elvis in his sad days of late-night fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Dad’s throat cancer was at the base of his tongue so deemed inoperable. But really it was a better way to go than full circle back to babyhood Alzheimer’s. We sat in silence for a while, then he announced, I’m very tired I think I’ll go now. Of course, I thought fuck a duck he’s dying this is it good bye Papa all over red rover no au revoir just adieu. I held his hand – isn’t that what you do at the bedside of a dying loved one – hold hand between hands - a prayer book sandwich. It’s okay Dad, I assured him looking around the ward for words. Where’s the perfect psalm, the perfect Christina Rossetti death bed poem when you need it. You can go, Dad, I’m here, you must be tired. His eyes shut, I squeezed his hand probably a little too tightly because he shuddered, lay completely still for a bit took a rattly breath then tried to sit up and asked, what time are my mother and father picking me up? That fresh blood was really working. Whoever it belonged to previously, I thanked them for getting along to the blood bank, laying with a catheter in their arm while they waited patiently for a cup of tea and Shrewsbury biscuits. Each donor donates approximately 500 millilitres of blood, this means four bloody good sorts gave my Dad his last week.  The next afternoon, I wheeled him down to the hospital foyer still in his blood-speckled hospital gown and grip socks. The dementia rest home carer who picked Dad up in her battered Suzuki Swift bought him a vanilla ice cream cone on the way home. She showed me a photo of him smiling with his prize, at his wake, a week later. Queenstown, New Zealand based writer, Jane Bloomfield, is the author of the Lily Max children’s novels. Her poetry and CNF are published and forthcoming in Tarot, Turbine |Kapohau, Does It Have Pockets, a fine line - NZ Poetry Society, MEMEZINE, Roi Fainéant Press, The Spinoff, Sunday Magazine and more. Find her at Jane Bloomfield: truth is stranger than fiction - janebloomfield.blogspot.com

The Bible Class our parents forced us to attend every Sunday morning was so mind-numbingly boring that Trinity and I spent our time there trying to make each other giggle while Miss Glory rattled on about sin. One day we watched a large spider dangle from her shoulder to the back of her chair then slowly wind its way up again. Despite our hands clamped on our mouths we couldn’t contain our burst of hysteria. Miss Glory glared at us and asked what on earth we thought we were playing at. We told her she had a spider on her back and that it was huge. She swiped at her back, saw the spider drop to the floor, and screamed. Trinity and I fell off our chairs, laughing. After the roasting we got from Miss Glory, we decided our best strategy was to make her like us so that we could more easily steer her away from talking about sin. She knew we were working on local history projects for school and we knew she loved telling stories about the history of our village. She always beamed when anyone asked her questions which signalled their interest in the topic. So we told her we’d been exploring the cemetery and reading the names and ages of families who were buried there. We were so intrigued by the graves, we said, especially the ones with whole families buried there after the plague. Miss Glory nodded and told us how the plague had decimated our village in the 14th century and we could see that by counting those plague-related graves in the cemetery. Now we’d got her off the topic of sin and onto the topic of tragic deaths we told her that our teacher said women accused of witchcraft in the sixteenth century had been buried in the cemetery, but when we’d looked at the gravestones we couldn’t find any that mentioned witches. Miss Glory closed her eyes. When she opened them again she said in a quivery voice it was because those poor women had been buried in the unconsecrated part of the cemetery. She explained the meaning of unconsecrated and told us nobody was allowed to go into that part of the cemetery. On the wall that closed off the unconsecrated part, she said, there was a notice that made it clear that nobody was allowed to enter. We started to ask her why, but she held her hand up and said there were good reasons and that’s all we needed to know. So naturally we kept pushing her to say more, knowing that eventually she’d give in. Sure enough, she gave an exasperated sigh and said those poor women had been drowned, hanged, or burned alive for no good reason and there was an old superstition in the village that before the women had taken their last breath, they had cursed their accusers and all their accusers’ descendants.  She paused, blinked,  swallowed, then said,  ‘One of my own Glory ancestors who lived in that period was involved in the witch trials.’   This last statement intrigued Trinity and me and we asked her where this information came from.  She hesitated then said,  ‘Stories were passed down through the generations. Most people in this village have ancestors that were involved in one way or another.’  Another pause. ‘But it’s best to stay well clear of that subject. There are plenty of other local history projects you can explore. Go to the library and ask the librarian to point you to the right books.’ Trinity and I looked at each other and wore our good-girl faces for the rest of class. Next day after school, we headed straight to the library and asked the librarian where the records of the witch trials were kept. The librarian looked at us suspiciously. ‘It’s for our school local history project,’ we said. ‘Our teacher suggested we research the witch trials.’ The librarian arched her eyebrows. ‘Really? An odd choice.’ But she climbed a ladder to a high shelf and pulled down a book. ‘It’s all in here,’ she said. Two hours later we had the information we needed. We were disappointed to find there were no names recorded for the women who were accused, but Trinity’s ancestor Ben Cartwright, and my ancestor Rupert Halliday were right there on the page as accusers, along with the names of some of our relatives and neighbours.  ‘Does this mean we’re cursed because we’re descendants of those accusers?’ whispered Trinity. I shook my head. ‘Miss Glory said that was just superstition.’ Trinity frowned. ‘She said one of her own ancestors took part in the witch trials, but there’s no Glory on this list.’ We scrutinised the list of accusers again.  ‘So maybe her ancestor wasn’t called Glory,’ I said. ‘Maybe,’ Trinity said slowly. ‘Unless her ancestor was…’ I pushed her. ‘Don’t be stupid!’ ‘Just a thought,’ complained Trinity, rubbing her arm. We left the library and ran over to the cemetery. We walked past neatly mown grass verges and graves covered with flowers until we reached the high wall at the back that separated the well-tended part from the untended part. We found the PRIVATE PROPERTY DO NOT ENTER sign, climbed over, and stumbled our way over tree roots, nettles, tangles of ivy and long grass. No grave markers anywhere. We explored the whole sad, neglected area, making up stories about the women who were buried there, imagining who they were, how they had lived, who had loved them, how they had died. We made up stories about our ancestors, Ben Cartwright and Rupert Halliday, and wondered what part they had played in sending those women to their deaths. We wondered what kind of curses the women had put on them and if those curses had really had any sort of effect on Cartwright and Halliday descendants and how we would find out, given the reluctance of people to talk about that period of history. We decided to write down everything we’d found out at the library, but also to flesh out the known facts with our imagination to make a more gripping narrative. We finally left the cemetery and got to our bus stop just in time to see the bus pulling away.  Next morning when I picked the newspaper off the floor in the hall I saw a photo on the front page. It was the bus Trinity and I should have taken home. There was a short piece below the photo describing how a truck had crashed into the bus, overturning it, after which it burst into flames killing everyone on board. I stuffed the newspaper into my schoolbag so I could show Trinity on the way to school.  I pulled the newspaper out of my bag and thrust it into Trinity’s hands. Her eyes widened when she saw the photo. Just as we stepped off the pavement she stopped walking and talking and started reading the article aloud. Len and Matt, two boys from the class above ours, elbowed us out of the way and charged across the road, whooping and yahooing. We stared in disbelief as a car barreled into them. Someone phoned an ambulance and a crowd gathered around the boys. Police arrived and ushered us on our way.  ‘Len and Matt’s ancestors were on that list,’ gasped Trinity. ‘Coincidence,’ I told her. ‘It could easily have been us lying there, if they hadn’t pushed us.’  ‘No such thing as curses. That’s what Miss Glory said.’ ‘She didn’t say it like that.’ ‘That’s what she meant.’ Every evening after school we met at Trinity’s house to work on our project. She was a talented artist so she drew pictures to illustrate our booklet. The pictures included women burning at the stake, being ducked in the village pond, and hanging from a scaffold. The final sketches were of the unconsecrated part of the cemetery with its overgrown memories of forgotten women.  When all the local history projects were handed in they were judged by three teachers and to our amazement they announced in assembly that Trinity and I had won Best Project. All the projects were displayed in the school hall and the local newspaper sent a reporter to take photographs. Our project made the front page with pictures of our illustrations. Some people in the village congratulated us on ‘exposing a tragic part of our history’, but some said we shouldn’t have ‘stirred things up’.  When we went to Bible Class the following Sunday, we saw Miss Glory sitting in her chair as usual, her head bent over her Bible. She looked up as Trinity and I walked through the door. Her face was white and her eyes red and puffy as if she’d been crying. ‘Oh girls,’ she whispered. ‘You have no idea what you have done.’ Sandra Arnold’s work includes eight books, including her most recent, Below Ground, The Bones of the Story  and Where the wind blows . Her short fiction has  received nominations for The Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions and The Pushcart Prize. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Central Queensland University, Australia. www.sandraarnold.co.nz

…for I have sinned. My last confession was over a year ago. Since then I’ve committed a myriad of sins. When I drink I tend to gossip, that’s two sins right there that I blame on being Irish. A poor excuse, there’s thousands of hardworking Irishmen here in Dakota Territory who don’t gossip nor drink. I also covet other men’s wives, and frankly for no real reason at all since the local whores like my handsome face and throw me a free one every time I am down to my last cents. I also failed to read scripture regularly. Since I been locked up here I understand what a great loss that was. All I done here is read scripture. And the worst of my bad sins, when I am pushed in the corner I lie like a cat. Other times I lie even when it’s no benefit to me. Just a bad habit I can’t shake.” “Well, Mr. McCall,” said the priest, “those are venial sins, so called because they are forgivable. However, let me remind you the one at hand. Last August you shot Mr. Hickok in the back at the Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon. It is a cardinal sin, also called mortal sin; murder.” “Yes, padre, but that doesn’t count,” said McCall. “Killing in self-defense is not  a sin at all.” “How was that self defense? Hickok never threatened your life. I understand the day before he’d offered you to buy you breakfast after you lost all your money at the poker table. Then you borrowed more and you lost that too. That’s when Hickok came to you and gave you a couple of dollars.” “That part is true, but it was not about money. The reason I shot Wild Bill was because he’d murdered my brother Lew in Abilene, Kansas. I never denied killing Bill. But shooting him was revenge killing, delayed self defense. The victim cannot do it so somebody close to him, friend or family member, pulls the trigger instead. Avenging Lew’s death was delayed self defense.” Whatever, thought the priest who was annoyed he’d been summoned to the jailhouse that icy Dakota morning.  At the gallows, the clergyman, his teeth chattering and lips turning blue, asked all present to plead for mercy on the condemned man’s soul. Surveying them, McCall saw their unforgiving stoned faces but at least the hangman’s prayer seemed sincere. J. S. O’Keefe is a scientist, trilingual translator and writer. His short stories and poems have been published in AntipodeanSF, Friday Flash Fiction, Everyday Fiction, Roi Faineant, 101 Words, Spillwords, ScribesMICRO, 50WS, Medium, Paragraph Planet, Spirit Fire Review, Satire, WENSUM, Virginian-Pilot, MMM, 6S,  etc.

In Maurice Berger’s classic White Lies , part memoir, part cultural analysis, he writes about “disrupting our complacent fantasy that our racial and ethnic identities will always be manifest, simple, pure. Whiteness, like blackness is not an immaculate, concrete truth but a social construction designed to mark the boundaries of race.” (206) Berger is gone now, he died of Covid in 2020. I believe he would’ve appreciated Ben Drevlow’s Honky .  In Drevlow’s Honky  stories, creative nonfiction with a dollop of fiction, he tells of growing up in a small Wisconsin town on Lake Superior, a White, Lutheran boy in a dysfunctional family and a self-described loser, as a fan of Tupac and Tyra Banks, as someone who played basketball and revered Black college and professional players. Someone who dreamed of playing college ball himself but didn’t have the talent and wound up as a glorified ball boy for the team.  Drevlow is nothing if not self-deprecating, cloaking real sadness—especially about his older brother killing himself, and also about his unloving father—with self-derision, so that the reader wavers between sympathy and impatience. But while in Drevlow’s novel The Book of Rusty , where Rusty seems to be a stand-in for the author, the pathetic-ness of Rusty is a thick smoke for his limited and choking life, in Honky , there’s something more nuanced and rounded going on, something that demands an identification from the reader. And what a wonderfully messy identification it is. In Honky , Drevlow apologetically explores his early friendships with Black people. Well, at first, only one Black person, Boykin, because Boykin’s family is the only Black family with kids in the 150-student rural school Drevlow goes to, and the two are not really friends but sometimes friendly acquaintances. The reader switches from a relief that Drevlow found a fr-acquaintance from a family that’s different—in any way—from Drevlow’s own to a familiar horror at realizing how impossibly tough Boykin’s life was. “The whole school already knows Boykin because he’s the only black kid in the school besides his two sisters and they know how much he hates most teachers because—small town or out in the boonies—in Northernass Wisconsin they’re all racist.” (32)  In college, Drevlow’s roommate is Q, a Black basketball player, and theirs is an unequal friendship where Drevlow, unskilled with women, helps Q juggle his many girlfriends. Drevlow never stops apologizing in one way or another—directly or subtly—to the reader for exploring racial stereotypes in his writing and in his life. Some of the stories are heavy handed—Q’s condoms are too big for Drevlow’s penis—some more subtle as when he’s let off the hook for drunk driving by a White policeman in a way he knows he wouldn’t be if he were Black. Drevlow is embarrassed the contrasts are such a steady drumbeat, and unfair, and the reader feels strangely grateful to him for owning and articulating them.  As I was reading, I was reminded of watching Season 1 of Mad Men  when it first came out and feeling an intense relief that the show made mention, a lot of mention, of racism and antisemitism. I knew growing up these daily signs were constants, and know they still are—what we now call micro-aggressions, but somewhere along the way in mainstream culture they too often got painted over, yes, whitewashed. Drevlow unearths them, and his younger self even yearns for “different” friends (one of his early crushes was on a girl who was half-Native American and half-Jewish). He’s accused regularly of being a w-igger—white person aspiring to be Black. But none of it works, he’s still stuck with his White self and his awareness that he’s bad at surmounting cultural and racial differences. If anything, Drevlow’s lack of the social skills needed to cross racial lines seems to get worse when he’s an adult living in a small town in Georgia with his soon-to-be-ex-wife. The second half of the book is called Southernass Georgia, and the well-crafted stories in it are a catalogue of gaffes, some of them so wince-inducing, like when Drevlow tries to give a Black man, hanging out in a park, a man he wrongly identifies as homeless, a twenty. And then later he does it again—to the same man, who again gives the twenty back. Other stories are more relatable, about white guilt, about trying for cross-racial friendship. I read this book at a gallop, grateful for its honest, deftly written stories about the daily grain of racism, and attempts to go against that grain—and even more for its articulation, especially in the Midwestern first half, of hunger in wanting to relate, to connect through different differences, partly succeeding, partly failing. Available now! HONKY - COWBOY JAMBOREE MAGAZINE & PRESS A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Maud Lavin writes creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She has published in BULL, Cowboy Jamboree, Reckon Review, Copihue Poetry, BRIDGE, Heimat Review, Harpy Hybrid, and Roi Fainéant, the Nation, Harper’s Bazaar, Slate, and other venues. One of her books, CUT WITH THE KITCHEN KNIFE (Yale UP), was named a New York Times Notable Book. Her other books include CLEAN NEW WORLD and PUSH COMES TO SHOVE, both MIT Press, and three anthologies. Her writing has appeared in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Dutch, Finnish, and Spanish as well as English. This fall Cowboy Jamboree Press will publish her chapbook SILENCES, OHIO, and, in May, From Beyond Press will publish her eco-novella MERMAIDS AND LAZY ACTIVISTS: A LAKE MICHIGAN TALE (a portion of the proceeds will go to the nonprofit FLOW: For Love of Water). She is a 4-H alumna and a Guggenheim Fellow.

When I complain about peri-menopause—weight gain, hot flashes, dark spots on my face—the doctor insists on a pregnancy test, and I laugh because I’m 46, soon to be 47, but when it comes back positive, I say, “I’ve already raised my kids.” And then I remember this same sentence came out of my mouth when Eunice returned from her freshman year of college in tears because she was pregnant and had waited too long and needed our help. And I said, “I’ve already raised my kids,” and now Eunice waits tables and Parker is two and I’m a grandmother, a grandmother with a baby on the way, and I wonder if now is payback for then. And sometimes I hear talk about girls taking emergency camping trips to Maryland or Illinois or Michigan, and I consider the possibility of an emergency vacation, but I’ve waited too long too, never imagined menopause could turn out to be a baby. And I remember how Jim and I got down on all fours with our kids, gave them horsey rides through the house, slid down the slides at the park, rode all the rollercoasters at Six Flags, and I wonder how we will do that now that our knees pop when we move and Jim groans when he pushes himself up from a chair—his back bad from years of manual labor—and we’ve been talking about moving into a townhouse now that the kids are grown so we don’t have to do yardwork. And I picture us standing at this new kid’s graduation, both of us old and gray and tired and someone will ask us if we’re here to see our grandchild, and we’ll hesitate before we say no no no. Laura Leigh Morris is the author of The Stone Catchers: A Novel (2024) and Jaws of Life: Stories (2018). She's previously published short fiction in STORY Magazine, North American Review, Redivider, and other journals. She teaches creative writing and literature at Furman University in Greenville, SC. To learn more, visit www.lauraleighmorris.com .

Mark Twain on growing old: Beats not. James B. Nicola is a returning contributor to RF.   The latest three of his eight full-length poetry collections are Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists,  and Natural Tendencies .   His poetry has appeared internationally in erbacce, Cannon’s Mouth, Recusant, Snakeskin, The South, Orbis, and Poetry Wales (UK); Innisfree and Interpreter’s House  (Ireland); Poetry Salzburg  (Austria), mgversion2>datura  (France); Gradiva  (Italy); the Istanbul Review  (Turkey); Sand and The Transnational  (Germany), in the latter of which his work appears in German translation; Harvests of the New Millennium  (India); Kathmandu Tribune  (Nepal); and Samjoko  (Korea). His eight full-length collections (2014-2023) include most recently Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists,  and Natural Tendencies . His nonfiction book Playing the Audience  won a Choice  magazine award.