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It was a box, and who had three thousand bucks to spend on a box? Her daddy would have said, just wrap me in a bedsheet and drop me in a hole . All the same, Julie let herself be led around the burgundy-carpeted showroom, pretending to consider all the choices and options. The Oxford, the Wellington, the Legacy, the Elite. Stainless steel and bronze, fine hardwoods in oak, mahogany, and cherry, overhead lights positioned to make the polished wood glow. It was a box. Yet the lock and rubber gasket seal of the Oxford caught her eye. She thought of a coffin she’d seen unearthed after Katrina—so small, it must have held a child, perched sad and surreal on a pile of debris not far from what was once the Biloxi Beach Arcade. Half-open and rusted through in that mess of lumber and moldy insulation and raw poultry strewn from shipping containers tossed around like Coke cans by the thirty-foot wall of water.  “Did you have anything in particular in mind for your dad?” The tone of the funeral director’s assistant was practiced, reverential. There were more questions—full couch or half couch, meaning a one-piece or two-piece lid.  “Half,” Julie said. She glanced down at the FTC-mandated casket price list she’d been given in advance. “But I was thinking of something, you know,” she paused, “simpler.” “Oh sure, sure. Absolutely. No problem at all. Why don’t we take a look at our, um, particleboard line?” The gray-suited man indicated a small, adjoining space, off the main showroom floor. “Less expensive but just as elegant. Any one of them would make a fine resting place for Mr. Malavich.” “Maravich.” “Maravich, sorry. Slip of the tongue.” That slip of the tongue irritated Julie, maybe more than it should. But then she’d pulled an overnight shift at the casino. Her eyes burned, and her head was starting to throb. For eight hours, she’d stared at a video monitor—not to catch gamblers cheating but employees thieving. Kitchen help and servers, mainly women, wrapping a muffaletta or calzone in a napkin and stuffing it in their bag for hungry kids at home, a violation of policy she could never bring herself to report. She was hungry herself, and the background muzak was a little too loud, a melody she recognized from a cheesy eighties song her Aunt Becky used to like, “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” Suddenly, fiercely, she wanted to get it over with and leave. They took one step down to the smaller room, with a lower ceiling and tan carpet. On a platform in the center of the room sat one casket, two others racked against the back wall.  “Now, the Hampton,” said the man, running his hand along the beige quilted lining, “is our most popular model in this price range. Real strong, real sturdy.” But after the word sturdy, he seemed to run out of things to say and stepped back, waiting, his palms together in a gesture that seemed vaguely spiritual. Randomly, Julie wondered if anybody ever asked to lie down in them, try them out. Not that she planned to be the first. She walked all around the platformed box, if only to make it seem as though price were not the only consideration. The dark wood veneer, lifting at one corner, reminded her of a folding card table she’d bought years ago at Dollar General. The thing wobbled like it was knee-walking drunk if you so much as rested an elbow on it. And the Hampton emitted a faint odor—a gluey, chemical, headachy smell like the FEMA trailer the two of them had lived in for months after the hurricane. No matter how they aired the place out, they never did get rid of that smell. The handles, three on each side, were shiny and gold-colored, like a cheap bathroom faucet.  Still, it was the obvious choice. The small life insurance policy would only cover about half the expenses. Cremation would have been the cheapest option, but her daddy was old-school Catholic and believed in the bodily resurrection, unswayed by arguments about early saints drawn and quartered, boiled in oil, devoured by lions, baptized believers pulverized on fields of battle.  She scanned the price list sheet, which listed the Hampton at $650. “$650’s the total cost for this one?” “Yes ma’am, that’s the total, tax included. But without the commemorative head panel.” By which Julie assumed he must mean the praying hands and “In God’s Care” inscription on the inside of the lid.  “And with a polyester overlay, not satin, like the display model. And no memory drawer, but of course, you can put whatever you want in the bed with your dad. Pictures, letters, fishing rods, pool cues. Just yesterday we buried a lady with a po boy and a Bud Lite.” She walked all around the thing once more. She opened her mouth to say she would take it, that it would work just fine, because of course, it would. But in the same instant, she pictured her daddy lying right there in the casket, not three feet from where she stood. In one of the prized black or navy tailored suits, the only luxuries the man had ever allowed himself. She saw the beaklike nose and age-cratered face, the hands stiffly folded. The worn brown rosary beads draped over those permanently gnarled fingers from all the years of shrimping and trawl repair and odd jobs in the off-season. She saw the smile-shaped scar on his right jaw, a souvenir from the time he’d had one too many and hurled a flowerpot through the living room window in a fit of rage at Julie’s stepmom.  And the leg, of course. She saw that, too. Amputated above the right knee because nobody at the nursing home cared enough, or had time enough, to keep up with the blood sugar checks. They were easy to do and required no medical training. You could buy a kit over the counter at Walgreens, prick the pointer finger with a pen-shaped reader that displayed a number in seconds on a small digital screen. She could have helped with that, could have bugged the nurses about it, or gone there and checked it herself. But not from the TV room of the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, 12 months of her life wasted on a charge of simple possession. The day they released her, she’d had her cousin drive her straight down to the nursing home. Stopping at the front desk for her visitor’s badge, walking down the polished tile corridor, pausing outside the door to his room, she’d tried to steel herself. But it was all she could do not to weep when he saw the stump outlined under the sheet.  I’ll take this one. The words were on her lips. But there was a place inside her, one she had no name for, somewhere between her heart and stomach. And in this place she had no name for, she felt a twisting, an actual physical sensation, like hands wringing out a dishrag, and goddamn it. She couldn’t do it.  Instead, she raised her arm and pointed. She heard herself say, “I’ll take that one,” meaning the most beautiful box she’d ever seen. A gleaming, sky-blue limo of a box. A stainless-steel casket with brushed nickel hardware, a plush velvet lining so white it hurt her eyes, and a lock and seal—the Oxford. The man raised his eyebrows in surprise but quickly complimented Julie’s taste. The Oxford was his personal favorite, he said, and what a wonderful tribute to her dad. Now, if Julie would just follow him to the office, they’d enter the order so warehouse could get the ball rolling. In the office, she sank into a soft wing chair and sipped complimentary coffee while the man sat behind a massive desk, tapping a laptop keyboard and peering through his bifocals at the screen. When he was done, Julie pulled out her wallet and credit card, only hesitating a moment, running the pad of her thumb back and forth over the raised numbers. Then she handed it over. Walking out through the parking lot, she smelled the rain that was forecast, coming in from the Gulf. The wind was starting to pick up, and she knew there’d be whitecaps dotting the Sound. She slid into the Cavalier, turned the key in the ignition, and the engine caught on the second try. Bzzzzz. Bzzzzz. Her phone vibrated in her purse, and she silenced it, knowing it was Heather, calling on her break to check in. She’d wanted to come but hadn’t been able to take off work. It would be a problem for Heather, spending money they didn’t have on a casket they didn’t need. Already she could feel her disapproval, hear her voice saying they’d never get out of debt at this rate and they might as well forget either of them going back to school anytime soon. And she was right. Julie could never justify the foolish purchase. What could she possibly say? She didn’t know. But maybe the simplest explanation was the best. A Dollar General casket wouldn’t go with the suit. In death, as in life, her daddy was a sharp-dressed man.  Amelia Franz's fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Image Journal, Reckon Review, Hippocampus Magazine, Prime Number Magazine, Peatsmoke Journal, and other literary magazines. "Sharp Dressed Man" is part of a work-in-progress--a story collection set in the Gulf Coast town of Biloxi, Mississippi, near where she grew up.

I scanned through my binoculars, thinking I was alone until I saw a man peering back at me through his own. I had been spotted. The ornithology lab sent a rare bird sighting alert: an Inca Dove in the botanical gardens a couple of hours prior to my trip. Never having seen one, I stuffed sunflower seeds in my trench coat and sped over, with my unique obsession. She had somehow traveled out of her range on the coldest day of the year, which just so happened to be my day off work, a Tuesday. I just knew she would be hiding by the pond, but she wasn’t alone, as I had expected. The pond was the perfect place for her to hunker, as many birds had over the years. I couldn’t go down there, alone, because being alone with men had never gone well for me in the past. Damn him.  Livid that I couldn’t go birdwatching without a chaperone, I simmered near the exit gate, where I felt safer. I was determined to wait him out, but the wind pricked my face like a woodpecker with a needled beak for over an hour.  I lost hope when the man slid a sandwich out from his backpack. He stood up and started walking but left his backpack on the bench. Damn him . Then, I realized he was walking toward me, sandwich in hand. I froze in place. He peered past me as if he were hypnotized. I thought he might have been medicated or on the spectrum, like me. I wanted to run out screaming, but his steps were as soft as a baby crawling. He didn’t speak, but his icy breath hung in the grates of the gate a few feet away from me. He pointed his leather glove to the lattice about ten yards from where I had been standing the whole time. There she was: the dove was puffed up and exposed to the blustery wind.  I thanked him with the realization that he might have been the one who reported the sighting. At the very least, he knew about Inca Doves and was the kind of person who would endure the elements and prepare a lunch to ensure he saw one. I felt guilty for assuming the worst of him. We shared a unique obsession, if not more. He turned away and walked back to the pond, eating his sandwich, while I stayed behind and lobbed sunflower seeds toward her. She eyed me like I was a predator: a hawk, or hunter. I sifted the seeds from my pockets into a mound near the ground cover and hoped it would shield her from the wind and actual predators. I left her to fuel up for the night or make it to her next stop, then looked over my shoulder all the way home.

Sometimes Billy is an Elephant. Sometimes not. When Billy is an elephant, he is trunk and tusk and floppy ears, and he never forgets that he loves me. Today he is not an elephant. I can tell by the splash of cologne wafting from his neck as he sits down to breakfast. A dab of  Dior Sauvage  he knows I don’t like, that I prefer his usual flat gray scent. The cologne is light, but it fills the room above the scrambled eggs. I’ll be working late tonight , he says. He reaches for the salt even though he knows how I hate it when he puts salt on whatever I am serving. Like it needs more flavor. Like  I need more flavor. I come from a family of no flavor and that’s just fine with me. My mother, a faded housedress and my father, the remote in his hand. Nothing different from day to day and they lasted 40 years. When I met Billy, he reminded me of an elephant I had seen once at the city zoo. Billy was plod and lumber and so I assume he’d be a bland, saltless taste on my tongue. I ask Billy what is keeping him so late these days and he acts like he doesn’t remember. Oh, the usual stuff , he says, but lots of it . I try not to look at Billy’s ear, where the corner is missing from when the last woman’s husband sliced it off because he caught her in bed with Billy. I think how if Billy had been an elephant that time, if it had been one of those times he remembered he loved me, his ears would have been big enough, strong enough to flap that woman’s husband away, or better yet, the woman.  So, when Billy reaches across the table, I think for a second that he might be going to stroke my hair, say something like, I have to work late, but don’t forget I love you. But the part of me that is an elephant, the kind that remembers everything, knows better. That, in fact, he is just reaching for more salt. Francine Witte’s flash fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals. Most recently, her stories have been in Best Small Fictions and Flash Fiction America. Her latest flash fiction book is RADIO WATER (Roadside Press.) Her upcoming collection of poetry, Some Distant Pin of Light  is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. She lives in NYC.

“I don’t get it,” she said, and shot him a puzzled look as she dropped the notebook between them on the sofa. It was his notebook. His journal, actually. Or so he called it. It had a glossy black leather cover and sturdy, lined pages to capture his musings. A serious writer needs a serious journal, he’d told her, and this was his. But all she saw was a fancy notebook, and now it straddled the sections of the sofa between them. “What do you mean?” he said. “That story,” she said. “I don’t get it.” She shifted, drawing one leg under her and facing him. “I mean, I don’t get the point of it.” He smiled. “Well, that’s the thing, see. It really doesn’t have a point.” He laughed a little and added, “That’s kind of the point.” She chuckled faintly, stifling a smirk as she brushed her hair from her face. “Then how can it be a story?” “Does every story have to have a point?” He leaned slightly away from her. “I think so. I mean, doesn’t every story sort of have an ending?” “Of course every story has an ending,” he said. He tried to keep his voice steady but felt it grow prickly. “A beginning, a middle, and an ending. That’s how it works for every story. And mine has an ending.” “Does it?” “What do you mean, ‘Does it?’ Yes!” He felt his face warm, and he worried it was turning blotchy and pink, the way it did when he became frustrated. He bit his lower lip and turned away from her. “Okay, okay,” she said. She reached a hand to his shoulder, kneading it, pressing into the tension. “Honey, I’m only trying to help.” He sighed and leaned into her. She massaged with both hands now, plowing her fingers into his shoulder muscles. “I know you are,” he said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to read it. It’s a stupid story anyway.” “Now stop that,” she said. “It isn’t a stupid story. It’s just – ” “Just what?” He pulled away, turned to face her. “It’s just that I don’t get it; that’s all,” she said. “Maybe I’m the stupid one since I don’t get it.” A smirk escaped his face. “What,” she said. “Why are you smirking?” “Smirking?” he said. “I’m not smirking.” “You are too smirking!” “Why would I be smirking?” The corners of his lips twitched upward, even as he tried to will them to stay straight. “You think I’m stupid,” she said, and stood up. “No,” he said. “No, you’re not stupid. Honey.” “You know what’s stupid?” She picked up the journal from the sofa and shook it at him. “This! This little notebook of yours.” “Journal,” he corrected. She ignored him and went on. “This little notebook you’re always carrying around with you. Everywhere we go, you take your precious notebook, your –”  “It’s a journal !” “This – this whatever .” She flung the journal across the room. It struck his framed Jack Kerouac poster. He looked up at her, horrified. “I want to break up,” she said, folding her arms. “Break up?” “Yes. I want to break up with you.” “Why?” “No reason,” she said. “I just do.”  “Honey,” he said. “Why are you doing this?” “Besides,” she said, “not everything has to have a point, right?” Andrew Careaga is a writer living in the Missouri Ozarks. His fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Fan, Southwinds, Paragraph Planet, Red String, Bulb Culture Collective, Club Plum Literary Journal, Periwinkle Pelican, Roi Fainéant, Syncopation Literary Journal, Spillwords  and Witcraft . He writes about the craft of writing and other topics at andrewcareaga.com . Find him on X/Twitter, Threads, and Instagram at @andrewcareaga

When the golf tournament in Sowetos’ slum started, no one thought it was real. It was a joke, a rumor, and a puff of smoke out of Johannesburg. Nobody believed that neighborhood boy Tiff Elanga could have hopped the fences in the night, run twelve kilometers, entered Constantia Kloof, climbed the walls, jumped the hedges, sneaked past the guards, and somehow gotten into Judge Makemba's estate and stolen his golf clubs. And then run back again, home to the slum. A straight suicide mission. But it was true. The seven iron shone in his hand, and on his return his friends saw not Tiff, but in him, some young lionheart. When they looked at him they believed. “Where? Where in Soweto? You can’t play golf there! It's impossible!” shouted astonished, frustrated, and disbelieving voices from further away that wanted to believe, but could not seem to. The harsh voices that cut through the roosters' crows belonged to distant neighbors and others who rolled their eyes at the thought of someone in Soweto teeing up. But in secret, more than a few wished that they were Tiff Elanga. And had they actually seen the boys and girls climbing the shantytown metal roofs to play eighteen holes, they would have felt warm inside, regardless of their sour grimaces. But they didn’t see it. Be that as it may, the boys and girls, not caring anymore about yesterday’s social conventions, the chores and the rules of mother and father, jumped the roofs and looked over the course as the sun rose over Jozi, The City of Gold. The smaller children carried the clubs like rifles while the older ones drew up the holes in live debate. Any player from Windsor or anywhere in Berkshire would have declared that the game was butchered in all its aspects. But if you asked the players in Soweto, they were doing alright . When they took the clubs in their hands, they felt strong. The pegs however could not be made to stand up on the roofs so they simply kept them in their pockets, as talismans. Some of those who kept a peg after the tournament would look at it years afterwards, and remember. The holes were somewhere in the distance. Not actual holes, but doors to smaller shacks. Tiff and the others had never played golf or seen a real golf course, but they knew what to do. Because when enough is enough and the weekend is all work, errands, a lack of money and electricity, the time comes to rouse the troops. Meaning their siblings and friends.  Of course the succession of loud and unruly children with clubs irritated the closest neighbors who awakened with peppery eyes and bad tempers. But even if the slum’s residents’ spouted mean words at the boys and girls that day, they still remained its children in the evening. Mothers and fathers did not punish too harshly. They hugged and kissed them good night as all the nights before. Most people understood that the children had to play. The way themselves one time long ago had to run through Soweto with sticks in their hands, laughing and scaring the chickens. They startled the elders and bolted through the alleys where mother and father and uncle worked, smoked, or cooked. They had to run and kick up dust that lingered in the sunlight as if their futures depended on it. The cursing older generation understood that, too. Because when they were young, they too had snuck out and smashed the bottles and played their own games. These outbursts when freedom called in a clear voice and was heard by many, came seldom and quickly, lasted briefly, and passed swiftly. It was all a tapestry of the mind and of many generations, but it was not overly dissected. When a game is beyond points and rules and winners and losers, but a manifestation of something bigger, then it is a venture not too frowned upon when it is through. It is borne out of hope in a harsh world. The Soweto Tournament saw pricey golf balls bounce towards tin walls with loud bangs that made dwellers wake up in shock. But in those bangs the player's frustrations and aspirations were finally delivered, the steel spring was released and a spirit awakened in the young heart. One which had to last a lifetime, or at least a working life. It was the jump over the fire and the starting shot saying that the world was not all old and spent. Not for the one who tried to reach beyond the shell or beyond Soweto, into that cloudy mist of wheels and colors where the world might end. But where it might begin too. That was what the Soweto Tournament became on that early Saturday morning. But since something like it occurred seldom in those parts, it was rumored to have been taken for a joke, ruse, or hearsay by some. That did not matter to Tiff Elanga, who had jumped the hedges, skinned his knees, eluded the guard dogs and picked the lock to get the golf bag. He saw no quarrels with adults' sneers and disbelief in the tournament as he climbed onto the first roof to play the first hole. Because the wind was at his back and the young ones were watching him with hope in their eyes. His people. Tiff dropped the ball on the corrugated metal with a smile. Then he hit it with a clean shot as hard as he could. Robin Herzog is a Swedish writer whose short stories belong to literary fiction, they are often set in the style of magical realism. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, and has a BA degree in Journalism from Södertörn University. Robin is currently writing a short story collection.

Here Comes That Season  The stones heat up for a brief period. Their cold heart, beginning to add another layer made of leaves, surface even before emerges the evening. The birds invite sleep on the emptying  boughs. Not all will wake up. Some songs will be silent. The water streaming nearby gurgles and spits out a writhing fish. The dark slumber flies across the moon face. A slowed-down rodent creates a feeble noise in our kitchen. The noise bloats up, bursts. Our wares and glass shiver and settle. After The Fiesta Ends I have no inkling to whom and what, albeit I bid adieu to something, whisper, "Ave." During the first few days once the fiesta ends slow mornings fly in, chirp, and five different  chords I can hear, miss innumerable ones. At one point of time the chirrups continue  albeit within a jelly-flood of silence. I cannot fathom those anymore, hear the blue. I dive from the edge of our balcony. On the Hemingway days I drown, fall through the bubbles of thoughts and white noise, reach the bottom and meet the cacophony. Bow those are one, soft, viscid. On the other days I soar, fly too close to the Sun. Although Kushal Poddar has authored ten books, the latest being 'A White Can For The Blind Lane', and his works have been translated into twelve languages, and he has been a sub-editor of Outlook magazine and the editor of Words Surfacing, and he does some illustrations and sketches for various magazines if you ask him, he will say that he gardens a growing up daughter.

Aural Sex Your voice, wraps around me like strong arms holding me tight. My whole body opens to catch each thought as they fall from your lips. Oh those lips! I could drink in your voice and it would sustain me. Pour it over me and make me wet with your words. I don’t want those self-satisfied sexts.  Call me. Surround me with your vocal virility. Call me. Penetrate me aurally. I don’t need promises of love. Just keep talking to me and I’ll keep listening till I’m satisfied. Obsolete Sense Memories One finger to push in the lighter, unlit cigarette in same hand, the click it makes when ready, device popping to attention, the redness of the heated coil, its bright orange center a contained flame, the sharp scent of tobacco, the smoky ash on cooling filament, tapping ashes out the window or brushing them from your jeans. One hand on a cassette, the other holding the wheel, the whir of engagement, guitar solo screeching as it unravels, the tangle of grayish-brown tape drawn out slowly, spun back into place with a pen, the snap of a plastic case, the crunch as it breaks underfoot, reading microscopic liner lyrics or deciphering your writing on a mixtape. Left hand rolls up the window, right hand holding yours, the squeaky back seat with seating for three, embedded seatbelts rarely fished out, the thud as the back seats fold down, the station wagon becomes stationary, the windows fogging in autumn chill, the static audible from the radio, shifting position to move closer and exploring each other for the first time.          Summer’s Color Change I’m Not Her That will never be me Her smile 1000 watts The summer sun Her laughter filling you like a hug Images on a static screen  Collected and fragile Like butterfly wings Her memory caresses like kisses. I struggle to fill the void she left Painfully aware of what I lack A role I was not asked to play I step back to assess the damage. That will never be me I have my own smile  The crescent moon My laughter floating into the sky. Images of myself Insecure and hidden Like insect shadows  My reality falls like tears. Paper Girl Flurry of words brought us together  professing her love in inkjet staccato  or stilted penmanship  honest  raw between sheets of paper so much heat generates. A passionate penpal first-time romance she sent me her soul on eight by eleven but it wasn’t to be fleeting ephemeral when we step off the page once we actually meet boundaries blur desires cool. I keep my Paper Girl  in a collection of memories  to unwrap in old age tender fragile unfold cold brittle parchment where her warm heart still beats. Nina Miller is an Indian-American physician, epee fencer, and creative who made the Wigleaf Top 50 for 2024. She loves writing competitions and drinking chai. Find her flash and thoughts on writing within Flash Fusion, an anthology by Dahlia Books. Find her @NinaMD1 and her published pieces at ninamillerwrites.com .

Bright morning light streamed through the bedroom window, waking Ben from his dream. Sitting up, he rubbed his toes in the plush Berber carpet before standing and slipping on a terrycloth robe. A thin, scratchy yowl greeted him as he walked into the kitchen. He froze. It sounded like Kafka, his beloved seal-point Siamese. He had to be hearing things. Kafka was dead. Back at the old house, stressed by events, Ben had accidentally run over his cat in his driveway. The accident was the final straw for a shaky marriage. His wife had left, taking his daughter, Cathy, from him. Shaking off his malaise, he made coffee and toast and took them out onto his patio. Passing through the sliding French door, he scanned the yard, imagining what he’d do with it one day—and froze. Sitting among the scruffy weeds, amid brown patches of bare dirt and raggedy sunflowers, he saw a small, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl of about three, maybe four. “Cathy?” he called. It looked like her. Exactly. She was the spitting image of her mother. Except that Cathy was gone and the horrible accident, his own fault, that took her from them also destroyed his marriage. His wife had moved on. So had he. And yet, there she sat, staring at him with a dirty, tear-stained face. Frozen, he stared back and watched as the girl opened her mouth and let out a thin, scratchy yowl. She sounded exactly like Kafka. He stared at the little girl, knowing now that the past moves with you. You couldn’t even leave its sounds behind. Ed Teja is a full-time writer and part-time martial arts instructor. He spent years traveling the world writing, working as a Caribbean boat bum, editing magazines in the US, Hong Kong, and Venezuela, and freelancing an odd assortment of stories, articles, and poems for a rather eclectic assortment of magazines and anthologies. Now he is in rural New Mexico where he writes stories that have little or no respect for genre and take place in one or more of the surreal worlds he lives in (rather happily).

No one - neither friends nor family, the tea leaves, my horoscope nor the lines on my palm - have warned me to avoid you:  the attractive, charismatic, smooth-talking stranger.  Now, I’m completely entranced, following you to your bed in Hamelin, lured by promises of bliss as Mrs. P. Piper

I think that nothing magical can be accidental  I’m desperate for affection and attention and I’m convinced  every symptom’s gonna kill me, I can’t trust lingering instincts or epiphanies, not when my mind’s magical thinking wouldn’t  let me sing “If I Die Young” as a child because I was convinced it would be self-fulfilling and it would kill me, not when my  worries birth worries and I wonder if thinking about my mom’s  death will make it arrive quicker, not when I couldn’t listen to my favorite Hippo Campus song, couldn’t hear the lines  happy Valentine’s Day to you, hope it’s better than mine because my dog’s about to die  without thinking the cosmic irony of the universe would make it happen, I don’t know how to talk to god but in desperate moments I’ve sent wishes upward to dead grandmothers, dead dogs, mostly missing them and  hoping they’re okay, I don’t know how to talk to god or how to believe in something bigger than me, but I’ve been trying, see the energy of the universe in a tarot spread pulled by me and my sister, wear the Magician card on a necklace and my evil eye on my left side to ward off negative energies, try to  believe in coincidences and angel numbers but catch myself when I start spiraling, start thinking that the lyrics in these songs are spells, I don’t know how to talk to god but on bad days where  all my urges push me to drive away, I find myself in the parking lot  of my old church, a place I haven’t prayed in since twelve, and  I think about walking in, I think about kneeling, I think about confessionals and secrets and trying on religion for a spell, I  think about what’s left in this world to nurture me and if I can find it in the eyes of my old pastor, the woman who hasn’t  worked there for years but when I think about godliness kindly I still picture it in her eyes, her soft hands wrinkled over mine, I think about opening my mouth to receive the sacrament  and letting things in that might heal me, and I don’t walk in, I drive away, but I see my most faithful of friends on social  media and I don’t quite feel like I’m missing something but I  wonder about the feeling of being so compelled by someone’s  love, by the warmth of something that feels powerful enough to have made the universe just for you, and I wonder how  much longer I’ll keep searching for my own sense of belonging.  Seussian sonnet for omissions  I thought an uncle would have died by now, my family is riddled with disease on both  sides, death always hanging over me like a curtain to be pulled aside, a shoe to be dropped,  but the real delay is in the waiting, the months after diagnosis when the parents didn’t  tell us anything, me and my sister living blind as if our mother’s cancer wasn’t multiplying  by the second, but who knows, not us, it could’ve been doing anything, living peacefully in  our mother’s breast like we once laid upon it, usurping her good cells like we did for nine  months each, waiting to be popped or chopped out, her skin just waiting for us to be made  so we could scar it. I think often about which parent is going to die first, fathers are  always the first assumption, and he has plenty to worry about, but my mother’s body  has been broken and torn apart so many times I think she’s surviving out of spite  or maybe something softer. I can’t imagine myself at 45, torn apart by grieving them, I never think I’ll live that long, spent time with knives at thirteen like other  emo kids, had nowhere to put this anger, this energy, couldn’t trap or contain it or share  it with anyone because my mouth never learned the shapes of words and how to hold them.  Hallie Fogarty is a poet and artist from Kentucky. She received her MFA in poetry from Miami University, where she was awarded the 2024 Jordan-Goodman Graduate Award for Poetry. Her work has been published in Pegasus, Poetry South, Barzakh Magazine, and elsewhere.

The boyfriend is a Timothy McVeigh sympathizer, he said he knew McVeigh before he got the microchip in his buttocks. I think he’s possibly a member of the Michigan militia, but I don’t really know him. I know he dated my sister for a time. They were serious. However, things ended badly. He has a long thin face. His mouth is no wider than his nose. A face like a Byzantine Jesus. Now he’s dating Joyce’s daughter.  Joyce hates him. She wants her daughter to stop seeing him. But she knows how girls can be when their mother tells them to do things. The daughter is always dating fixer-uppers. Joyce worships her daughter, though she’s a daddy’s girl. Joyce knows not to talk about McVeigh and Oklahoma City. Or Ruby Ridge. Or Waco. Or Janet Reno.  I’m over at Joyce’s house for dinner. I’m only using her for her connection to the Jews. She got us both invited to a seder next week. She knows the local Rabbi quite well. I’m excited. I have a thing for the Jewish race. It’s odd now that I think of it. But I’ve studied just enough to know that Jews are God’s chosen people. That’s verified in my mind. God is a soccer mom to these people. He takes care of them. You take celebrities, for instance. The number of Jewish celebrities is disproportionate to their portion of the world’s population. I studied religions, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, et cetera, and I found them all lacking. I read their sacred texts, they were about as meaningful as a drugstore receipt—except for Judaism. I could be Jewish, I could believe in it, it made a certain amount of sense. It was the one receipt that made sense, your dollar really stretched.  Joyce is all dolled up and this is weird because I know how she’s supposed to look—I work with her at the grocery store. I think she is all dolled up on my behalf. She’s trying to look her best for me. Joyce is an older lady. I put her age somewhere near fifty-five. I’m twenty-three. She’s also morbidly obese. Joyce was formerly skinny and formerly a chain smoker. She quit smoking through incessant prayer and put on a few hundred pounds.  “I used to fit inside that chimney,” she said pointing toward the fireplace. I started thinking of the chimney sweep that Blake wrote about. Then I remembered there are two chimney sweeps he wrote about.   “People told me to eat a sandwich. They used to tell me to eat a sandwich wherever I went. They would buy me sandwiches.” Then she showed me a picture of herself inside a suitcase. “See how skinny I used to be?” In the picture, her ex-husband is standing over her. . I’ve seen this picture before. She must have forgotten. She carries it around in her purse to show people.  I notice the skin on her arm looks like worn currency that holds no value, confederate currency.  Joyce tells me how she used to drink men under the table. She said she would coat her stomach with a quart of buttermilk beforehand and that would allow her to out-drink them. Then Erin, the daughter dating the fixer-upper, comes into the room from upstairs. She said Michael Jackson just died.  My sister would be upset about that. She saw him in concert with my dad.  “That’s how skinny I used to be,” Joyce said pointing to Erin with a fat finger.  It’s true. Erin is thin as a rail. She dresses like a boy. She has a boy’s haircut. She’s a few years older than me. She’s pretty. The shirt she’s wearing shows her collarbone.  “I do not want you paying his child support,” Joyce tells Erin as she hands her money. “Why not, you pay God’s child support.” Joyce shakes her fist at this comment. It’s a small ham—her fist I mean.  “I get so angry when she says that,” she said to me. But Joyce can’t get angry.  When Erin leaves, I notice the noise the refrigerator is making. Joyce sees me listening to the refrigerator.  “That’s me,” she said. “That humming noise is me. That’s my incessant prayer.” “What did she mean, you pay God’s child support?” “I have a bit of a vice. I send money to Russian Jews to help them emigrate to Israel. That must happen for  Jesus to return. We need to get the Jews to Israel. I send money when I can. Anyway, that’s what she means. It’s not the same thing. Those Russians, they won’t even capitalize God. When we get the Jews to Israel— it’s  finished. And I get a new heavenly body.”  She seeks the end of the world. It can’t happen fast enough for her. She is force-feeding the end of the world. This is nothing less than doomsday I’m talking about. The end of all time.  The rapture. The judgement.  Joyce’s eyebrows are cave paintings. What I mean is that her eyebrows are drawn on. Joyce’s eyebrows are prehistoric brushstrokes, they are identical to the horns of the bulls in the Lascaux cave paintings. Joyce knows my dad and my bastard brother. She knows because she went to the same high school as my dad. The same school as the televangelist Jimmy Baker—this is some school. She’s a little younger than my dad, but she went to the same school. She knows I don’t want to talk about it.  We’re eating T-bone steaks which Joyce broiled. These are thick steaks. These are War and Peace steaks. I requested mine well done but Joyce said no way a butcher would request a well-done steak. This steak is rare. There is blood on my plate. I notice my steak is fighting me—it's seen what had happened to Joyce’s steak. One thing I know about Joyce that she doesn’t know I know is that she eats raw hamburger. I was at work in the cooler when she came down the aisle that leads to the meat department. She came into the meat room where there was a pile of eighty/twenty hamburgers on the butcher block. She scooped up a handful and ate it raw. She didn’t know I was in the cooler looking through the window in the door. She thought she was alone. It reminded me of that Emily Dickinson poem about the bird coming down the sidewalk to eat the raw worm.  I’m telling Joyce about college. I go to college. I want to be a journalist.  “Hemingway was a journalist.” The legs of her chair are groaning an incessant prayer of their own. A chandelier hangs over the table like a gaudy stalactite.  “Steinbeck too,” I said. “You know the story about those two when they met for the first time? Hemingway tells Steinbeck, he bets Steinbeck that he can break a stick over his head.” “Over Steinbeck’s head?” “No. Over his own head. You know Hemingway. He had to be tough in every situation.” “That’s interesting.”  I don’t think I can eat my steak. Joyce is done with hers. She’s chasing peas with her fork like that game with the hungry hippos.  “You like school?” “I do.” “I try to get Erin to go back to school.” “That reminds me. One of my classes is in the old wing of the college and it doesn’t have any female bathrooms. And the college is not planning to build any. My journalism professor calls the old wing a patriarchy museum. He says it’s like Hitler’s plans to turn that synagogue in Prague into a museum for an extinct race. The old wing of the college, is a museum like that.”   “I didn’t know that was allowed.” “It’s probably not,” I said. “One girl the other night didn’t come back from our break soon enough and the teacher refused to let her in the class. After class she was in the hallway in tears. She said it was because the girl’s restroom is miles away.”  An airplane roars over the top of the house, and the shadow it makes is like the house blinking.  “I try to get Erin up there, but she has no ambition,” Joyce said. She points up. She means she’s trying to get Erin to become a stewardess like her other daughter.  There’s a knock on the door. It’s the next-door neighbor kid.  “Hi Johnny,” Joyce said. The kid is selling candy bars and wants to know if Joyce wants some.  “You know I do,” Joyce said.  Joyce buys the box and tells Johnny to pick one for himself. He takes it like it’s a baton in a relay race and he’s out the door.  “I am a candy bar whore,” Joyce said.  A week later we are on our way to the seder. It’s Joyce and myself in her car. I see a cement truck which is always a treat for me. I always think of earth like that, moving through space in two directions at once. Cement trucks remind me, everything else makes me forget. Some assholes in the car next to us on my side are inflating their cheeks making fun of Joyce’s weight. I pretend not to notice. I do notice her hands on the steering wheel. The top of her hands are yeasty, risen dough awaiting a baker’s punch.  When Joyce turns off the highway ramp my Judaism for Dummies  book goes sliding across the dashboard and onto the floor.  The synagogue is in a building that is slowly passing away. I meet the Rabbi. This is the first Rabbi I’ve ever met. Rabbi kisses Joyce on the neck like it’s the wailing wall. Joyce is in thick with these Jews. We get to sit at Rabbi’s table.  He has a thinker’s forehead. Five lines of latitude never leave Rabbi’s forehead. Rabbi doesn’t want to shake my hand; it feels like I’m pulling open a dented filing cabinet. “Did you hear about Michael Jackson?” Rabbi asked us. I see a gorgeous Jewish girl who is approaching. She is something special.  “Hi Rabbi,” she said. “You look forlorn.” “Even Homer sometimes nods,” Rabbi said.  I’m possessed by a strange feeling that I’m supposed to be this Jewish girl. I’m supposed to be her, not the person I am, but her. This feeling is strong. I’m supposed to be in her brain, her body. She catches me staring at her. I’m supposed to own the world’s suffering, not her.  The girl goes back to the table she came from. She holds her chin up the rest of the night.  The seder plate is a test I had prepared for but I’m still apprehensive.  Joyce sits in her chair like she’s on the back of a motorcycle.  When Rabbi finds out I’m going to school to be a journalist, he asks me about Daniel Pearl, the beheaded journalist. I don’t know much about it. But Rabbi tells me about it in detail.  “Journalism is the deadliest profession in the world,” he said, like it’s large news.  Joyce has drool coming out of one side of her mouth, but she must not know. Like the cinnamon roll does not know about icing.  “You really know your way around a seder plate,” I said.  “We are getting our vegetables today,” Joyce said.  There’s a woman walking around with a picture that she’s showing everybody. She shows me and Joyce. It’s a picture of her mother when she was in Auschwitz. She is nothing but bones. The experience of the holocaust is in her eyes.  “I keep this picture in my purse. I show everyone.” I ask Rabbi about Kabbalah, and he quickly shovels answers on my questions like dirt on a dead body. I can’t catch any of it.  “The Torah is held together in the same manner as the French revolution—by beheadings,” Rabbi said. “Kabbalah attaches the wrong head to the wrong body.”  Rabbi has a great eye, what I mean is, one is larger than the other. He’s giving me the great eye. “You must talk to Fred,” Rabbi said. “He’s a writer. He is man of considerable accomplishment.” It turns out Fred is a great writer. He’s well-known for his history of the Bath Massacre.  “I wrote that book in a week,” he said.  He’s giving me all sorts of writing advice. Great advice. But he’s filled with two words he uses too much: therefore and however. “What are you doing here?” he asks after a while. He almost knocks over the entire table we’re at. He’s unaware of his height. He’s six foot five at least. Everything about the man goes on for miles. I thought it was obvious why I’m here.  “You know where you are don’t you? This is the armistice car. You’re in the armistice car. Therefore, you’re surrendering by being here at this seder. You’re surrendering to us Jews.”  He asks me what my last name is, he must have forgotten.  “I know your people. I know your dad. I know what he did. However, I don’t judge.”  He’s talking about my dad embezzling from the grocery store. He could probably write a bestseller about it in a week.  I start drinking then. I drink like Noah. I swallow wine the way Hitler swallowed Europe.  I deserved to get drunk. My book smart faith and I got stinking drunk. After four cups of Manischewitz, my bladder is about to burst. I go to the bathroom—its hell finding the bathroom—and I piss like Patton into the Rhine. I’m pissing into a great river. I feel like I’m marking some great victory. I try to open the window in the bathroom—I want to stick my head out the window, but it’s been painted shut. It’s a stubborn window for stubborn people.  It’s an old bathroom with lots of ceramic tile. The handles on the sink read C for cold and H for hot, only some wise guy carved the C into an A. Then I see that on top of the urinal, there’s an X that I had in mind I can turn into a swastika. I’m armed with swastikas, armed to the teeth with swastikas. When I get back out to where the Seder is, Erin’s there. I feel like I have half-lidded eyes, but no one says a word about it. Erin’s telling Joyce we have to leave. Luke has been arrested for threatening to blow up the Friend of the Court over his child support payments.  “You’re all man-haters. Find one person in this office who doesn’t hate men. Now I know why people blow these places up.” Erin said this is what Luke said that got him into trouble. It was perceived as a direct threat, and he was arrested.  He was going to be arrested anyway for child support arrears.  It’s then that I see the Chagall painting by the entrance. The one with the miniature Rabbi standing on a Rabbi’s head. That made me feel bad about the swastika in the bathroom.  The bail bondsman is not far. The sign outside said: “If I can’t get you out, you ain’t getting out.” He has his back to the door. He’s eating a burger and fries and wiping his hands on a napkin the way a mechanic does, finger by finger. As it turns out, he knows Joyce, he used to work at the grocery store, a long time ago. Joyce waves at him with two hands at once—I hate that.  “Why do you guys want to get him out? He’s scum. He hasn’t paid child support in two years. He’s going to jail one way or another.” Joyce is a little embarrassed. She looks toward Erin. Erin looks like a frightened bird caught in a grocery store.  “Never mind,” he said. “It’s none of my business if you want to throw good money after bad.”  Once we get Luke out, he wants to know what took us so long. He also wants to go directly to see his son. He said he needs to see his son before they put him back in jail. Joyce said that he can spend the night at her house, and she can take him in the morning.  “We’ll get you where you need to be,” she said. “If you’re a good boy.” I have swastikas in my head. I can’t get that swastika off my head. I’m thinking what I need to do is find another swastika that I can erase to atone for the one in the bathroom. I’m not drunk anymore. Joyce is driving, I’m in the front passenger side and the lovebirds are in the back seat.  I’m thinking, if we could find a payphone there would be a swastika there, but a genocide of payphones had occurred. There are only a few left. Just think of all the swastikas that left this world when we got rid of the payphones.  We see a broken-down motorist by the side of the highway.  “You have to turn around,” Luke said. Luke orders her to turn around, to go back, to help. “It’s the decent thing to do.” Joyce did it without complaint as if she had a miniature Luke atop her head. We helped the motorist, an elderly guy, change his tire. It took us some time to do that. My hands are little black things from changing the dirty tire. I wash them with some leftover snow. The motorist is appreciative. We all pat ourselves on the back after that. We look smart.  “Whose book is this I’m sitting on? Judaism for Dummies ?” Luke asked. “It belongs to me,” I said.  “Tell your sister I said hi.” Luke seems to notice me for the first time.  He turns on the overhead light and starts reading my book.  Just a few miles further down the road, we see another car on the side of the road. It’s a family. The father is waving us down. He’s holding a gas can. He gives us money to get him some gas.  At the gas station, I go into the bathroom and find a swastika (right beside a pentagram). It makes me cheerful to erase it.  There’s a man set up outside the gas station selling Michael Jackson memorabilia. He has everything. He has posters, photos, records, cassettes, compact discs. I bought a sequined glove for my sister.  “Why didn’t you buy a newspaper? You’re a journalist.”  “I should have,” I said. “I didn’t think of it. I will tomorrow.”  “How can you bring that glove in this car?” Luke said. “The guy was raping little kids.” “At least he didn’t blow up a daycare,” Joyce said. “In a way, he did. In a way he did blow up a daycare,” Erin said. “He wasn’t trying to hasten the end of the world,” I said. And so, we have an argument, we have a debate about the lesser of two evils.  When we get back to the stranded family, the man raises his arms upon seeing us like it’s some great victory. We handed off the gas can to him. He snatches it like it’s a trophy.  “You see?” he said to his family. He’s in rapture. “They came back! My wife and my family said I was wrong to believe. They said, ‘what is taking them so long? When are they coming back? I don’t think they are coming back.’ I said, ‘have faith. They will return.’”  He’s scaring his family—you can tell he’s a family tyrant.  He wipes the corners of his mouth with his thumb.  “I should leave them here,” he said. “They should be left behind as a special judgement.”  Jason Escareno is a writer from Seattle. His other works can be found in Bristol Noir, The Rumen, The Opiate, Variant Literature and BULL (forthcoming).

CW: CSA and suicide. These pieces explore themes of trauma, grief, and the burden of memory, confronting the emotional weight of personal experiences. The Weight of a Name It wasn’t the violence depicted on TV, not bruises, nor scars. Just fear and shame              of what              I let happen to my body; I knew I was wrong. I knew I’d be in trouble. I knew I was impure. I knew I became damaged goods. At tender six, I didn’t want to tattle. I longed to be swallowed  whole, to be palatable,                           ignorable. There is no beauty in chewing  childhood wounds. I never imagined the term. It only happens one way: she asked for it. I felt complicit, burdened. The burden, complicit, too, in my silence. With words on my tongue, the weight  of expectation presses me  to cloister pain  with pretty little words. I quantify the unspeakable,  unable to assign a name, even  though I see an r-word, as clear as Rumpelstiltskin. Will speaking it give me power? Your Suicide was Searing Steam from a Pressure Valve After you, brother, the constant  question mark answered. No more sweating, no more creaking under your strain,  no more swinging tightrope begging, “stop me.” The news erased you, lifting weight from my heart, cell by cell, unloading baggage, beat by beat. No more conversations prematurely ended. Your connection, a permanent dial tone  between my ears. Your line, dead. No more pleading  with strangers  to knock on your door, to check your breathing, if you’re still holding on by that fragile thread. No more prayers tossed into the void. I felt the guilty tingle  of relief, of no more  sleepless nights. I felt the guilty truth of this final call; I released a shameful breath of fear put to bed. Driving Home from the Festival While the road stretches ahead like a silver thread, unspooling endless veins  of a sleeping giant, we drive, headlights seeking to outrun  the past,  the present, the future  waiting to unfold velvet dark. In the hush of twilight, it is not the stars that fail us, but our internal flames, dimmed by the weight of living. Stars cradle moons in lullabies, a celestial balm while souls sail on stardust to escape earthly tides, this gravity well  of sorrow.  A cosmic disappointment drapes over the rearview: the sky mirrors  a canvas of unfulfilled  desires. It is not the stars that fail us, but the road, ever winding,  that tethers us to unyielding asphalt, the here , the now . A constant movement; this ceaseless  journey without end. Maudie Bryant (she/her) is a mother, educator, and multidisciplinary artist living in Shreveport, Louisiana. Her work explores the complexities of memory and identity, often looking into the depths of human experience and surveying the disquiet that lurks beneath the surface. A graduate of the University of Louisiana Monroe with an M.A. in English, Maudie’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Anodyne Magazine, Susurrus,  and Spellbinder .