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I was told that I could no longer come into the office, but I still had to work. So my apartment became my office. And because the two were one and the same, I never left. Even for running errands and seeing friends, I ordered everything in. Only the groceries and the takeout came, though. All of my friends moved away. This happened in the span of two years. And at the end, when I was no longer working at home, I decided to get myself back out there and meet new people. I wasn’t picky, so one day I looked up events posted on the local arts magazine’s website and chose the first one that I could go to after work (and was close to somewhat decent takeout). The event that fit the criteria had something to do with reality, which seemed promising. It was hosted in a red brick building in a part of downtown that I had never noticed because there were no restaurants or shops nearby; instead, only buildings of a similar ilk filled the surrounding blocks. Fortunately, a food truck had been hired just for this night. And it was one of my favorite places in town, a fusion of Irish and German cuisine. So, once I had my fair share of fried, vinegary potatoes, I entered the building’s lone gray door – so small, in fact, (when compared to the rest of the building) that its presence seemed like an accident of design.  Inside, there was a single room that was large enough to fit a few hundred people with plenty of space in between them. The floor was concrete, so the voices echoed, creating a din not unlike that of a cafeteria at noon. Everyone was dressed well, informal yet sharp. My business casual barely fit the mood, but it was enough to keep my mind off my appearance. Though doing so was still somewhat of a challenge because the entire room was lined with mirrors and naked lightbulbs, like what you’d see in a backstage dressing room, except there was no stage, or this room was also it.  Either way, by the looks of the place, I wasn’t sure what the purpose of the event was. There were no stalls or bands playing. There were no keynote speakers or Q&As. There was nothing, really, except for the people. (Of course, in a few places off to the side, there were bars stocked full, with counter service.) Many of these people were in groups, but some were standing on their own, looking at their phones. Nearly all of them were wearing backpacks.  To keep things simple, I decided to approach the people closest to the entrance. There were several of them cradling their drinks and scrolling through the web, like figures of wax nearly come to life, studying one last bit of humanity before committing to it. The first person I talked to was a woman wearing a black leather backpack that looked like it had been polished vigorously. I greeted her and introduced myself, and after typing out a message on her phone, she did the same. Then she asked me whom I was representing:  “What’s your brand?” was how she put it.  “My brand?” I replied.  “Yeah; which one are you an ambassador for?”  “Oh,” I said, grinning nervously. “None. Just myself.”  “Even better!” she said, taking off her backpack and unzipping it. She pulled out a baseball cap whose texture reminded me of bear fur and stuck it right on my head. She then snapped a photo of me and typed something on her phone.  “You too,” she commanded. “Post a picture on social media, with the hashtag –—.”  I did as I was told.  “Awesome,” she said. “What’s your email? You’ll get discounts and special offers.”  I gave her my email.  “Cool! Well, it was nice meeting you.”  “You too,” I replied, and then we parted ways. For the next five people I talked to, each interaction was basically the same as this one. After the greeting, I would state that my brand was myself, a revelation that would then trigger my new acquaintance to take off and unzip their backpack, sticking whatever item lay within it on my body with freakish haste. Afterward, they would snap a pic and tell me to do the same. Then, once they said, “It was nice meeting you,” the conversation was over. Having talked to six people in no more than thirty minutes, I was now decked out in the bear-fur baseball cap, a shark tooth necklace, a raccoon eye mask, doggy ear muffs, eagle-talon rings, and a rabbit’s tail pinned right above my ass.  In short, I needed a drink.  I looked around the room and noticed that one of the pop-up bars had a cocktail that was stuffed with leafy vegetables and colorful ice like nothing I’d ever seen before. So I went over to the bar and peered at this cocktail up close, soon startled when something inside the glass moved – something brown and craggy, and shaped, vaguely, like a question mark. After my initial surprise, however, I couldn’t stop staring. There was definitely a spunky garnish in this drink, I thought, just doing its thing.  “What’s it called?” I asked the bartender, pointing downward. “An aquarium,” he replied.  “Is it a vodka drink?” “Huh?” “The liquor,” I clarified. “Is it vodka or tequila or —” “— No, no, no,” interjected a woman who was standing nearby; she was wearing a clear vinyl backpack. “It’s an actual aquarium! Cool, huh?”  I took a moment to process everything; then I tapped the part of the glass where the craggy question mark floated: “What’s that, then?” I asked.  “It’s a seahorse!” the woman said, almost as a cheer. “Want it?”  “. . . What?” I replied. “. . . like, for free?” “Yes! All you have to do is sign up for our subscription. Every month you’ll be sent a box of supplies!” To put things simply, I became the owner of a seahorse that night. And after the woman handed me the portable components necessary to keep the aquarium functioning in transit, as well as my first month’s supplies (all of which she had stored in her clear vinyl backpack), she told me this:  “Its life is precious, so don’t waste time talking to the others. Go home now. Go!” I did as I was told, awkwardly cradling the aquarium and its loose cords and battery pump like a newborn (the eagle-talon rings didn’t help) out of the building.  Back home, I set up the aquarium – which was a little bigger than a mason jar and had a soft, cozy light – on the table next to my bed. Before going to sleep, I peered at the seahorse, whose movements were hard to discern, and asked it straight up: “Are you dead?” Then, within a minute or two, it jolted across the glass, obviously alive. And so I went to sleep. For the rest of the week, I would ask the seahorse the same question every morning and every night: “Are you dead?” And I couldn’t go to the office or off to bed until it zipped across the aquarium. Such a sign, I later learned, could take a while to appear, so I was often late for work or got fewer hours of sleep. Still, for that whole week, the seahorse wasn’t dead. And that made me happy. I was so glad that I didn’t kill it.  On the weekend, I stared at the aquarium for hours, watching the seahorse while eating takeout. It was spring now, so I opened the bedroom windows, giving the seahorse fresh air, even though it didn’t really need fresh air. It just needed salt water and algae and love. In that regard, things were going quite well.  Everything was going quite well, in fact, until 3:47 p.m. on Sunday. That’s when I noticed the seahorse moving in a way that I had never seen before. It was sneezing violently, it seemed, but not from its beak-shaped mouth; instead, tiny, golden masses were tearing open a large slit in the seahorse’s gut. Eventually, a bright haze filled the aquarium.  Fortunately, the seahorse didn’t die. In fact, the opposite was truer than ever: the seahorse had given birth to a dozen baby seahorses. To my surprise, nothing in the manual mentioned birth. And the monthly supplies, it turned out, were only enough for one seahorse. Was it a mistake? I wondered. Could twelve baby seahorses be such a thing?  I watched them all for the rest of the day, and right before I went to sleep, I posed this question thirteen times: “Are you dead?”  None of them were. I asked the same question the following morning, but my conclusion wasn’t the same. One of the babies wasn’t moving, and it was awfully close to the colorful rocks at the bottom; perhaps it was even lying on the bottom. When my boss called me, asking why I was two hours late for work, I told her that I needed two days of sick leave. The baby seahorse still hadn’t moved, which meant that I had to act fast. I won’t go into all of my frenzied thoughts; the bottom line was that I wasn’t cut out for taking care of seahorses, not twelve, possibly thirteen, of them. And there was no way that I’d separate a parent from a child. That was abominable.  So I drove three hours to the ocean and released the seahorses back into the waves that looked like my bedroom, or, simply put, their home. And within a matter of seconds, they all zipped away, into the depths, even the one that I thought was dead.  I was relieved, to say the least, but also sad. And since I knew that I wouldn’t be in the best headspace to drive back home, I booked a hotel room right on the shoreline, ordering room service and watching movies for the rest of the day. At night, there was a reception of some sort, open to all of the guests, and thinking it’d be best to get back out there, I went and danced with strangers, fighting back tears during all of the slow songs.  For the next few weeks, I put the whole episode behind me, focusing entirely on work. However, at the beginning of the following month, I received a package in the mail – a somewhat heavy box, which, upon opening, I realized was the first shipment of seahorse supplies. Quickly I hid the box underneath my bed, crawled into my sheets, and stared at the ceiling. At some point, I drifted off to sleep, but it was a sleep filled with “Are you dead?” reverberating throughout an empty ocean.  For a long time after, I had trouble sleeping. And when the next package came, a month later, I also hid it under my bed. In fact, I repeated this cycle – barely sleeping, hiding the boxes – for three months, until my performance was flagged at work. Thankfully, my boss was understanding, especially since I replaced the word “seahorse” with “grandmother” during my explanation. “You just need to get out more,” my boss concluded, looking out her window. I nodded and later obliged her in the best way I could: I returned to the event in the red brick building, which, I learned, met every month.  Once I was inside, I knew that I needed to steer clear of the woman with the clear vinyl backpack, who had also returned and was hovering around the same pop-up bar, where another aquarium was set up. The truth was, I couldn’t bear updating her or attempting to lie, about the whole ordeal, so I walked in the opposite direction, across the room, getting outfitted and snapshotted once again, until I needed a drink. I adjusted my butterfly-wing shoulder straps and lizard-tail belt and leaned against the bar counter, surveying the room as I sipped on a vodka tonic. The room seemed fuller than last time, with fewer spaces within the crowd, and the voices were starting to drown out my thoughts. I yawned several times. Then I yawned several more times.  “Feeling tired, little kitty cat?” asked a woman wearing a purple backpack; she had approached the bar from some corner that I hadn’t noticed.  I touched the cat ears on my head. “Me?” “Put your forearm here,” the woman said, ignoring my question. When I hesitated, she patted the black tablecloth on the counter. “Here, kitty, kitty.” I did as I was told.  Then, without taking it off, the woman unzipped her backpack just enough to pull a miniature purple blanket, as she later called it, out of a slit on the side. She then laid the blanket over my forearm. Under its surprisingly massive weight, I could barely move. Or, put another way, I was entirely at rest.  “Kitty like that?” the woman asked; by her tone, you’d think that I was actually a cat. “It’s perfect,” I said.  “Great,” she replied, using a neutral voice. “Now, if you download this app, I’ll give you the real thing.” She held out her phone, showing me the screen. Then she pointed to a group of purple boxes off to the side.  After a pause, I pulled out my phone, downloaded the app, and showed her my screen.  “Looks good,” she confirmed.  A few minutes later, she handed me a purple box and told me this:  “Now go get some sleep.” I went home immediately after, stripped into my pajamas, and laid the weighted blanket over my body. It was eight o’clock when I fell asleep, and it was eight o’clock when I woke up. During those twelve hours, I didn’t once hear, “Are you dead?” In fact, I didn’t hear anything at all. And I didn’t see anything, either. It was all a black void.  So I slept like this for the rest of the week – in twelve-hour cycles, basically right after work until I had to go back in. Then, on Friday night, I crawled under the blanket, closed my eyes, and woke up on Monday morning. By then, the dreamy black void had started to shimmer into new colors and shapes, and, thankfully, none of them had anything to do with seahorses.  At work, my boss took note of all the sleep I had been catching up on: “Someone’s been getting out more,” she said, laughing as if she knew my dirty little secret (as if I had one).  “I’ve gone so far out,” I admitted, chuckling, “that I’m pretty much back in.” “And your work is so fresh!” she shouted gleefully. “So inspired!” After a few months, I was feeling rested enough to actually get back out there. So I went to the red brick building again. This time, I sought out the woman with the purple backpack and told her how great the weighted blanket was, erupting into a long, spontaneous monologue about my improved sleep. “Say it again,” she told me when I finished, now pointing her phone’s three lenses right at my face.  I obliged, repeating what had amounted to a five-minute testimony on the blanket.  “Now I’m free!” the woman declared, once I had finished speaking and she had tagged me across the web.  “Free?” I repeated, confused.  She grabbed my hand with her silvery kitten paws. She had cat ears and a cat tail, too. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “Huh? But what about the boxes?” I asked, nodding to the group of them off to the side. “It doesn’t matter anymore!” Before I knew it, the woman was leading us through the crowd, so I asked her, “What’s your name?” “Katherine,” she answered. “With a ‘K.’”  I told her my name. “It’s nice meeting you,” she said. She was still holding my hand.  Within minutes, we were outside, facing the street. “I’m hungry,” Katherine said. Then, after a pause, she added: “Let’s get something to eat. I’m buying. Today’s a good day.”  “Fish and chips?” I suggested. “Oh! A pub!” she cried out in joy. “Yes, please!” We walked several blocks down the street, close to the river, where the bar district was already boppin’. In particular, the public house was exploding with traditional music.  Katherine and I grabbed a booth in the pub’s dimly lit backroom, away from the stage mobbed with violinists who were piss drunk at 9 p.m. For three hours we talked and drank and ate baskets of fish and chips. Then, at midnight, Katherine invited me back to her place, which was a somewhat longish walk from downtown, but after eating so much fried food, we didn’t mind the exercise.  We held hands the entire way back. In her living room, we talked and listened to records for a while, drinking a few glasses of red wine. Then we went into her bedroom, which was furnished with a purple bed and a purple dresser and a purple desk and a purple nightstand. She told me to lay down, and I did so immediately. “I don’t usually do this on the first date,” she said, removing her top.  “I don’t usually do anything,” I replied with a grin, stripping off my clothes. We went at it for a long time, like two people who had been cooped up since the dawn of man. And we kept at it for weeks. In fact, it was so rough, so raw , that one night, as we lay naked, arm in arm, sweat dripping all over our bodies, I sneezed through a giant slit in my stomach.  Ryan Bender-Murphy received an MFA in poetry from the University of Texas at Austin and currently lives in Seattle, Washington. His fiction has appeared in BRUISER, Hobart, Hominum Journal, Johnny America, and Tiny Molecules. He is also the author of the poetry chapbook First Man on Mars (Phantom Books, 2013). Find him on Instagram at ryan.bender.murphy .

Screeches break the glare of day: Crows scramble; he is on his way. Over the roofs the dragon sweeps (Fuselage of legs, span prehistoric) And the day’s combat begins. Crow wings flare, the giant rears. Reinforcements beat in: He must not land! Caws intensify, until at last, Over the chimneys and behind the oak, Big Bird wheels away. Later I will wander down to the little pond, Wondering who won today’s skirmish, Silently ignored by the island’s Zen statue: A heron hiding in plain sight. Dan Brotzel is the author of a collection of short stories, Hotel du Jack (Sandstone/Vertebrate) and a novel, The Wolf in the Woods (Bloodhound Books). He is also co-author of a comic novel, Work in Progress (Unbound). More of his stuff at www.danielbrotzel.medium.com

There was a roach on Gracie’s upturned back when she woke.  Her eyes opened to slivers of afternoon light cutting onto the sheets from her bedroom’s blinds. On her right shoulder, at the bottom of the blade, it was there—what could have been a tuft of hair, but wasn’t. She didn’t notice it at first. Her body was exhausted and she was busy looking at the light, noting how it made the sheets look like stratus clouds.  It was a rare day off from the newsroom, respite from pointing at the big blue wall where the weather map would be, from smiling into the camera and telling all the people watching that it would be another 65-degree day. A day off from spewing numbers at countless people who listened to her but never heard her. Who were never with her.  Her body, drained by the routine, the hours, and the solitude, needed rest from those lonely morning drives. It felt stagnant, numb. So she did not feel anything at the bottom of her shoulder blade, where the roach’s antennae bobbed like tree limbs in a soft breeze. It had wandered here from a hole in the baseboards of her closet, had spent the morning exploring an uneven hardwood floor in search of precious scents until it found one here on the bed. Gracie pondered what another week might look like—pictured the inhuman hell of waking up at 2:30 a.m. to point at the big blue wall, to smile so hard that her cheeks felt upholstered, to stand so straight that her spine became merely a coat rack from which her limbs swung. A small feeling on her shoulder—probably just the bedsheets settling. Her thoughts wandered even further, to all the other indignities. She wondered whether she could stomach putting on those heels again, or that tight, all-too-flattering shirt. Whether she could justify pulling her hair back so tight that her follicles ached like they were full of lead by the end of the day.  It took two years of fighting to get this job. Four months in, and now she couldn’t remember wanting it in the first place. Couldn’t remember most of herself, for that matter. Where had that gone? Suddenly the sensation on her shoulder moved, quick and decisive, a few inches closer to her neck. It was not a sheet. It was not a lock of unchecked hair. It was not a feather from a down pillow—it was a thing, undeniable, and Gracie felt the urge to jump up and swat it. But she didn’t. She kept her eyes fixed on the stratified light, and let her pupils dilate as she looked even deeper into the uneven bars making a cream-colored cloudscape of her bedsheets. She stayed silent—did not squeal, did not shout, but, for some reason she did not know, waited.  A few moments passed. Then, again, it moved. The roach scuttled over the bony ridge of her shoulder blade and onto the crest of her spine. Tiny, delicate legs tapped slowly upward, its antennae reaching the nape of her neck, following a precious scent. She could feel it. And it was heavy, not just a fly or a mosquito but a larger, more awful thing. Yet her body was tired. And her mind was always preoccupied….Again, she stayed still as its feelers mingled with the hairs on her neck, testing the bottom of her scalp.  Suddenly, a flash of disgust—what was she doing? What was on her back? Why hadn’t she done something? There was a lightning-like instinct to shoot upward and reach for her neck and scream—but then the roach continued its gentle, feather-light brushing of her thinnest, smallest hairs. And they no longer ached. They tickled. Gracie exhaled. The disgust waned as she thought of the blue wall, thought how much better it felt to be here, in bed, at home. To have another living thing close by. Something with  her. After becoming somewhat tangled in the hairs at the bottom of Gracie’s scalp, the roach freed itself and followed the slope of her neck, the tines of its legs pulling at each strand like velcro as it passed. The roach smelled here and there, finding the fragrance it desired, and crept softly, slowly, up her shoulder. Up her neck. Found the outline of her jaw, and silently traversed it. Gracie could hear the thing, soft clicks below her earlobe. Then there was a dark, out-of-focus, many-legged mass at the lowest corner of her periphery. She was sure of what it was now, having seen them in the closet before. But she felt no fear. She kept her open eyes focused on the light as best she could, felt the softness of the bed beneath her, caught her breath as what felt like a lover’s finger stroked the space between her cheek and chin. The insect approached the corner of her mouth with trepidation, feeling micromovements along her skin, anticipating whether she would fling it off into some dark corner. But instead, after a moment, Gracie’s mouth opened. And the scent of her within bade the insect welcome. It took quiet steps over the softness of her lower lip. It crawled over the bottom teeth. Its front legs contacted the wetness left on her tongue. Warm in the cavernous space, it could rest there for a while. The fragrance was greater below—warmth further down. Something called to it. Willed it to come closer. The roach tunneled into the tightness of her throat, felt tension as she gagged for a moment, then went on. The roach found the darkest place it could. And soon enough, Gracie’s mind forgot every shade of blue, finding only the brightly layered light cast upon her bed sheets as she thanked the little thing, in whispered, teary words, for finding all the parts of her she’d thought she’d lost. Benjamin’s poetry has appeared in Ramifications Literary Magazine and Stillpoint Literary Magazine. In addition, he’s been awarded on the national and state levels for his scholarship in communication theory and his speechwriting. He studied communications, art, and journalism at Berry College and now lives with his wife in Athens, Georgia, where he works as a professional copywriter, is writing a novel or two, and blogs about art and culture when he has the inkling.

Basic Beach sandwiches thrown together from what’s in the car “It’s fairly basic,” she says an excuse of sorts And yes, back in the fridge we left a range of ingredients to dress up this impromptu lunch But I can’t help wondering how close - and how many - in either direction  are those who would drool  at cream cheese on bakery bread fresh from the oven this morning  Let alone the chance to eat it on a beach at their chosen pace  ‘cause there’s nowhere to rush to With the corn chips we add for crunch it’s basically beach gourmet We are feasting here Aspiring Central Otago, New Zealand     May I ask you something, mountain? Why were you given that title so long after you were first named? It’s not that I’m complaining I just want to understand Who it is that’s aspiring, and to what? I’m glad, let me emphasise that  it’s not the surname of a presumptuous explorer Some fabled ‘discoverer’ whose discovery was a mountain already gifted a name So when he looked on Tititea, surveyed - for indeed, he was a surveyor - the glistening peak that inspired it what brought to his mind aspiring? Did he aspire to ascend you to take a close look at your shining summit? Or did he think your peak was reaching for the heavens aspiring to be one with the sky Joined with the myriad stars of a breathlessly still southern night? Or did he perhaps, like me aspire to gaze on you all through the day, until night hid you beneath its twinkling blanket and granted him a few hours’ rest from gazing?     The Māori name for Mount Aspiring is Tititea -  “glistening peak” The margins…   … where so many in society dwell where every day can become a fight for another day Hand to mouth; some days an empty hand So there’s nothing to give in a material sense to relationships Is that why Jesus hung out there? Because to be on the margins is to see humanity as it really is All its desperate rawness and vulnerability To see kindness that costs the giver but is given anyway, by choice To see real… For some, giving is nothing but an extra entry on the tax return, something more to be reclaimed Is it time to redefine … the margins? Grant Shimmin is a South African-born poet living in New Zealand, passionate about the intersection between humanity and the natural world, a passion reflected in these pieces. First published by Roi Faineant, he has other work published/forthcoming at journals including Does it Have Pockets?, The Hooghly Review, Remington Review, Querencia Press and Epistemic Literary.

Deep into the summer in year two of the pandemic, New York City’s piquant vibe of menace had curdled into a dank atmosphere of dread.  The plague mimicked uber-common NYC maladies hay fever and asthma, commanding attention to every bout of congestion or labored breathing.  A wet cough was something to celebrate.  With our imaginary quarantine bubble's settings limited to sweltering, rainy, or both since March, we were haggard.   Umbrellas doubled as parasols.   Something I swore I’d never do, but there you have it.  They served triple duty as distancing cues. Claudia and I could no longer delay surfacing for air.  We needed a long respite somewhere viable.                                                Summer trips most always veered northward.  We just had to determine what was still possible under existing travel precautions.  Border crossing policies, accommodation restrictions, park closures and restaurant limits were all daunting and in deep flux.  All scenarios would be relatively short trips fraught with compromise and stopping short of Canada, which was reviewing its off-limits status on a weekly basis. We settled on a familiar motel near the borders of three New England states, an area dense with modest hiking trails, generally terminating at some sweet swimming holes.         We booked a scant week there and slapped together a compendium of useful websites then loaded the Camry to capacity.  To go with our vehicle’s portable home vibe, we packed a summery variation on ‘refugee drag.’  No reason to look like a prosperous tourist or to let on that we could be idly, very idly, flirting with the role of “hotspotter”, those monied folks from high plague incidence cities looking to make a cash down payment for a safer telecommuting base.  Our friends and neighbors were entitled to their own equations, but it wasn’t for us.   More of a distaste thing.  We wouldn’t be so readily rousted from the cultural capital of the world. Not saying that we were incapable of panic, just warily keeping copacetic for now.       We accidentally wandered into that hotspotter crossfire on the way up.  We’d stopped for lunch in a nominally bucolic spot and noticed a neighboring realtor office.  With the weather suddenly suitable for little more, we stood under the awning reading two bay windows full of real estate porn postings with amenities like wraparound porches, inground pools and private beaches brazenly displayed.        We decided, truly on a lark, to put an agent through his paces, provided we’d be out within the hour.  Robbie was mid-sandwich when we tripped the door chime, but he was all ours, “Nice young couple around the corner ready to downsize.  We can go right now.”       “We couldn’t just barge in on someone.”       “They’d love to meet folks from Manhattan!”        An elbow pinch prompted, “Too strange.  Let’s take your card and arrange something on the rebound.”      We braced for pushback, but he motioned to a desktop card display and returned to his surprisingly mingy sandwich.  The door chime heralded another pair of vacationers who passed us silently as we exited.  I lingered by the window display and noticed a round sticker proclaiming “EXTERMINATE VRBOs” on the lip of the windowsill.  Block letters along the rim were unclear but ended with “ available”.  A bit harsh, but likely just merch for hipsters ambivalent about gentrification despite their own recent arrival.             The drizzle petered out and the sky briefly lightened as we headed north. We soon lost the sun and gained a dark cloudbank on the horizon.  Presently, a roiling black sky warranted a scan for weather forecasts .and we landed on an emergency alert station with tornado warnings urging motorists approaching Kingston on the thruway to get off at the nearest exit.  We qualified but no signage for exits was forthcoming, and the turbulence held some enchantment to forestall panic. A water funnel crossed the highway well behind us, warranting a brief goose of the accelerator.  By the time we reached the Kingston exits, the display had settled into a stodgy slab and we could keep on the long trek northward.      The road hadn’t puddled much, so we picked up the pace, hoping for a few hours of daylight at our destination.    Our target motel, which we’d visited often in the past but not in recent years, had decent rates, ample vacancies and a huge indoor pool which they’d assured us was reopened. A bonafide find in this environment.           At sign-in, we were given the option of red silicone wristbands to signal preference for social distancing.   I found it odd that such a cue would be needed.  For the duration of our stay, we were the only ones there wearing them, staff included.  The desk clerk nonetheless doled them out to us with a pair of salad tongs.  He had one more thing to impart.  The breakfast buffet would - in a surfeit of caution - be limited to individual packs of corn flakes, corn syrup-shellacked energy bars, a jug of 2% milk and a coffee urn.  Annoying, but we had our own refrigerator and a microwave. Anything else we needed to know?  He shrugged, “Restaurant’s closed tonight.”       Once situated, we found the pool closed until further notice, another drag but safety first. The front desk wasn’t answering the phone.  Regrets, we had a few.  Our room was vast and the roof extended over a broad shared porch.  Moreover, AC and cable were flawless on first try, so we would muddle along, at least the first night          The sky darkened with that resolution. Songbirds, grasshoppers and bullfrogs fired up like a foley orchestra.   As the blackness seethed in from the west, the row of tall poplars bordering the parking lot set into a jazz hands routine that gradually stiffened into a hard lean, lasting for hours as the clouds spouted like an indignant faucet.  A tornado watch had reached the neighboring county but we would brave the plaza across the street for take-out and key provisions. On the way, I swung by the office which was already manned by a solitary night light at 7pm.  We beat the worst of the storm, picked at our take-out, and drifted off under the flat screen’s nightlight.        A morning spell on the porch confirmed our initial impression that the neighbors were largely young, mildly seedy and sizing us up from a mutually safe distance.  Most didn’t do the mask thing, but they would smile shyly when we backed away from them while hustling to get ours on.  I caught, or vividly imagined, “Those two look like nice people.” as we swung by one cluster sprawled on miniature Adirondack chairs, but I couldn’t really judge the tenor of the delivery.       We foraged in the untended office and our most notable find was a stash of those “EXTERMINATE VRBOs” stickers on the travel brochure shelves.  In better light, the block lettering spelled  “ by all means available”.  Yikes!  Evidently management didn’t stock the shelves, but they didn’t monitor them either.  Shellacked by breakfast, we drove to a grassy spot along a wide, slow-moving river, cleared the rocky shore and soaked our heads.  The river was low enough that we could alternate between swimming and wading, like cursive to printing. We caught some shade from the steep, wooded hill on the far bank.  There was a lightly-trafficked bike path on the crest and stout rope swings dangled from branches 15-20 feet above the water but no daredevils overhead and the tension just seeped out of us. Lunchtime came and went.  We didn’t feel waterlogged until late afternoon as cocktail hour approached.       Ensconced on our porch perches, we mapped out the balance of the day.   One dude who’d been doing some slack Taichi/kung fu hybrid far down the lawn approached our post rapidly but stopped at a safe distance when we slapped our masks on.  He wanted to know whether we’d visited the pool.  I related the staff’s belated phone message that it may open later this week, probably not before we leave.       “I saw bathing suits out drying so I thought you’d gone in.”       “Naw,” I volunteered.  “It’s like they’re just waiting for us to go.  Good luck!” Once inside, Claudia dropped, “So, we’re under scrutiny.”       “No doubt.  We’re what passes for entertainment.”         “I knew that cheap motels tend to draw folks on the Greyhound Bus circuit, but I think ol’ Homestead is doubling as a halfway house.  I know that New York has some homeless accommodation in hotels, but I assumed there would be transparency and protocols for anyone doing it.  Here with staff so MIA there’s lots of opportunity for this population... backsliding. “       Compelling argument.  It was balmy there, but these neighbors were consistently in long pants and manual-labor boots, often with a jacket over a t-shirt.  Also, very much in smoke-em-if-you-got-em mode.  In fairness, this common walkway was the designated smoking zone and the zinc butt pails had hungry maws.       The balance of our night was jarred by angry phone conversations just out of range, also some bullet-head pounding on a door and shouting, “Willie!  Willie!” far longer than could have been productive.  I spared Claudia my speculation that this show was performed for our benefit.       We were parked at the very rear of the compound, using a near-empty parking lot no longer humming with visitors for the shuttered pool.  There was a sharp drop-off at the tree line then freight train-only tracks then another steep incline to a nearly unbanked stretch of the Connecticut River.          Ahead of us were all the motel’s other units with maskless folks bantering out front, ripening bags of garbage and random pieces of debris that appeared to be still in use.  Between us and the town’s less suspect population was a tranquil gauntlet of immense, convulsive peril until proven otherwise.  We sought to stay harmonious with our not-outwardly hostile neighbors but, either way, they didn’t mask and a closely-guarded civility was our highest aspiration.       We drifted inside before long, keeping just enough lights on to navigate the unfamiliar space.  While I inventoried cable options, Claudia read me an op-ed from a local weekly.  It essentially sounded the alarm over the influx of hospotters.  Not much harm to them (us) unless someone was being displaced.  Or harassed.   Some commission-besotted realtors bring them into homes unannounced after a perfunctory knock while the occupants – often battling foreclosure – are there and terrified of the wealthy claim jumpers being hustled into their home reeking of contagion. So, Robbie’s awkward stunt was a standard ploy.       I had meanwhile - no digging required - learned more about motel vouchers for the displaced and I debriefed Claudia, “Google maps had flagged some motels, including this one, as sheltering essential services workers and it struck me that this could be a euphemism.  There had been numerous articles in the national press about vulnerable communities bunking in college dorms, two-star motels and most any housing that could be spared.  This was just the first time we were far enough from home to encounter it”       “There’s rarely anyone at the front desk and the staff who appear on the grounds draw a blank on even rudimentary English.”       “You’d think these extraordinary arrangements would entail some support staff, maybe a social worker on site.”       “We’re getting into Bobby Peru territory.  Do we not mention that in our Trip Advisor review?  They are putting up some scary lowlifes.”       “That gets into classic white privilege territory.”       “Well, it’s Vermont, so race is a negligible factor.”       “There’s still that classist 'I'm being exposed to the wrong element’ vibe.”       “Hold that thought.” I opened the door to check the 10PM skies for an overdue storm front and the tiny blonde girl from three doors down stood there staring, close enough to bite, flashed a bit of defiance then fled.         “Let’s assume she’s not the gang leader.  Her folks are former felons borderline unemployable for life, can’t vote, habit or two to kick and rightfully freaked by those New York license plates representing gentrification.”       “So, these are relatively permanent residents who are alright with us provided we make no sudden moves, not some naturally sordid population who would otherwise be in even worse distress without the plague’s motel housing windfall?”       “Let’s just slip those lenses in and see whether they add any clarity.  Meanwhile, we’ll try not to make these folks flinch.  They may be the communicable ones, but we’re the lepers.”       Some solace, but our careful planning had left too many variables unanticipated and we were now imagining how the scenarios we’d rejected would have played out.  We felt the place closing in on us, much like the congested city we had fled.       The next morning, there was a baby skunk lolling half asleep in the Indian restaurant’s courtyard adjoining the office.  Indolently squirming on its back in the sand between flagstones and proffering its belly for scratching, the critter was cute, disarming and terrifying all at once. I mentioned it to a passing young subcontinental staffer and he balked, “She’s only a baby!”   She was still there when we headed out two hours later.          Was she an orphan who’d missed out on key survival skills training?   Had she reset the calculation for relative safety a few times and chosen a warm spot for a charm offensive? We ended up dining at that restaurant thrice during our stay and it would have been a standout in a much larger city.  Fair chance that her only calculation was following the aroma. We struck out northwest to a network of swimming holes along tributary rivers.  Many bathers were out and there was little mask compliance.  All paths were wide and forky, so bottleneck risk was nil.  Swimming options were abundant enough that we upgraded to vista hunting and moved often. We wouldn’t be bonding with anyone out there, so we imposed narratives from a safe distance.  That soured when I riffed on how one disparate group led by a bearded “father” must be a cult out for its monthly bath.        We ended up on a popular stretch of river where a vanload of high school students   are there with their “pastor” and several smaller groups share the spot.  The students were   being somewhat boisterous with rope swings and low cliff diving but in a responsible, well-practiced way so we weren’t preoccupied with the prospect of getting into fast-moving water haul someone out and make a stab at first aid.  We had our fun for a fair while, relishing both a feeling of community and unspoken consensus on safe distancing.  As we headed out, a mother and young son were quietly discussing the three leeches that had fastened onto hercalves.  Others, not so geeked out by the leeches as we were, gathered around to contradict each other with advice.  We took a wrong turn on the way back.  We had GPS and were still headed eastward, but I was quickly creeped out.  Scores of otherworldly, nearly human-sized pods hung from low branches along one side of the road.  Stretched taut like spider webs spun from dryer lint, they recalled   Invasion of the Body Snatchers cocoons, but the material was closer to hornets’ nests.  I felt panicky but still slowed to take it in.  Claudia was amused, “You’ve never seen tent caterpillars?”       “Nothing remotely like this.”       “They’re an invasive species, gangbusters for years. They’d be a huge problem by now except that bears, skunks, bats and many bird species just feast on them”        “We’ll have to thank our little friend.” Upon pulling into the compound, we noticed that the office building was lit. Intent on coaxing some honesty out of the staff, I stepped up to the plexiglass screen and asked the two unfamiliar white dudes whether they had monthly rates.  They conferred quietly and came up with a pretty fair offer for weekly, the best they could do. There was some relief in that but maybe they were just onto my ruse.   As I exited, I ran into the skunk advocate and he advised me that she had been caught in a humane trap and brought back to her side of the tracks. Neat trick as the wooded fringe there would barely accommodate a dirt bike trail.  The ‘No Dumping’ signs by the railroad tracks nestled in heaps of refuse, little of it in actual garbage bags.  This was evidently where the baby skunk had strayed over from.  We’d been warned that it was also the nocturnal feeding ground of a she-bear and her four cubs and that both species, gifted with keen sense of smell would be drawn in close by anything unpacked lackadaisically. The bear clan was heard but not seen.  Fancied heard, anyways.   The trashy, underpopulated back end of the property had to be a welcome expansion of territory for them.  When met halfway, a fair portion of the road, rail and forest traffic sounds passed for guttural maternal warnings.   With the skunk relocated, we speculated that sharing a tight circuit with the bear clubs would either yield adorable Instagram pics or carnage.  An eviscerating swipe would remove any doubt of the outcome as would a shotgun spray from a youthful stink gland. Eventualities included an adult bear and four cubs driven by panic into the light and/or the skunk bleeding out and burdened by a pair of punctured scent bladders suddenly hell-bent on reaching the last spot where she had felt safe. Public nightlife was on hold in this town.  Our new evening hang was a decrepit gazebo housing a hot tub draped in padded tarp, hassock-level to our cedar chairs.  A small shelf accommodated our ice bucket, mixers  an iPod.  Minimally lit, it was a bit of an open-air hidey hole.  Not an essential feature but most welcome.   Claudia was making a hobby of this fascination with the local housing crisis and had new material to share, “This notion of emergency pandemic housing isn’t really accurate.  You may have noticed that boarding houses, SRO and flophouses are no longer common, but the stagnating minimum wage and the gig economy have greatly expanded the market for minimal housing and the lower tier of independent hotels had increasingly become extended stay residences before the plague.  Credit reporting services have adopted a new model of redlining for the working poor because banks are reluctant to work with credit risks and the growing segment of the population with week-to-week residences unsurprisingly have rotten credit ratings.” All those paying weekly rent are exempt from tenant protection laws.  Rent hikes and evictions are left to the landlord’s discretion.  While some folks have government vouchers to subsidize these rent payments, they’re often pitching in pretty close to regulated motel room rates. Meanwhile, pandemic age hotels serve both this population and monied tourists.  Bit of a social experiment.”       “We’re trespassing?”       “Accidentally.”       “Oh brother.”   We got deep into a break in conversation, courting sleep with Debussy, when “Check this out.” jarred us.  The Taichi dude was on the gazebo’s perimeter and gave the nearest pillar an open-palmed smack.  Several crumpled brown leaves came loose and deployed like butterflies, both wings unfurling in multiple panels of striking color grids, always symmetrical and using most every color, but favoring a creamy white with a swirl of red dots. Once displayed, they fluttered off in beelines, lit on new perches and resumed the dead leaf stance        “Lantern flies, just our latest invasive species. but one of the worst.  They’ve colonized most of the shade trees.  There’s little they don’t eat and they can park their eggs almost anywhere.  Hear the racket overhead last night?”       “I could have slept through an earthquake.”       “The helicopters spraying lantern flies were louder. “       “Holy shit!  I brushed that residue off the windshield with my hand.  Wasn’t that much different from the usual morning dew.”       “A bit stickier.  Nothing to worry about judging by the lantern fly response, and we wouldn’t do anything to disrupt our tourists.”         “So, you do it on the sly.”       “Me?  It’s done on the sly.  You know I’m not an employee, right?”       “Bit short on certainties these days.”      “Temporary resident.  Not quite as passing through as you.  I’m Zeff.”  He extended a hand then retracted it, “Old habits.”       “Pascal and Claudia.  We favor the mild bow but it’s not second nature.”      “That would be an improvement.  You might want to know that folks here are terrified of you.”       “Seriously?”       “Oh yeah.”       “That old housing market parasite business?”       “Right”       “Did we actually displace anyone?”       “No, the housing is just increasingly mixed-use.”       “There are lots of places in the northeast where we really like to spend maybe a week at a time in the warmer months, but this sure isn't home.  New York City is a freaking joyride and addictive for us, however hectic.”       “Sounds to us like your home is being evacuated.”       “You walk 10 blocks in most any direction and you’ll be dazzled frequently.  True, you need a frequent time out, particularly in the humid months, and plague season, plus you can live elsewhere with Google, Amazon and Zoom as equalizers and ready access to nature as a bonus, but NYC, for us, is life undiluted.  It just requires staying alert and that’s always been the case.”       “Thought so.  I’ll pass that along.  Um, meanwhile, I couldn’t help but notice that you favor short shorts.”       “It is summertime.”       “Lyme disease has really gotten bad here.  It doesn’t often kill you outright like plague but you no longer have a healthy life unless you treat it fast.  There’s heart disease, nerve damage, brain fog – just like plague -, fibromyalgia, meningitis and shorter life spans in general.  The spray that keeps the ticks off is expensive and toxic.  No effective tick collar for humans yet. “        Actually, a Lyme Disease vaccine was developed and approved by the FDA in 1998, but it got shelved when anti-vaxxers mounted a bunch of lawsuits.  It’s still allowed for dogs.  Some of the hiking trails are well-maintained, but this lawn [ certified ankle-tickling  ] should be shorter.  There’s a hose here to blast yourself before you hit the asphalt.”       “We hadn’t packed for this.”       “Board of tourism is never held accountable.  There’s a Goodwill down the pike that will kit you out.  By the way, we do wear masks and shorts inside.”         We spent the balance of the visit lightly-Deeted and dressed to blend in.  Residents, even staff, turned genial, if still fairly baffling.  The proprietors were confident that removing the temptation of food was adequate pest control and the restaurant staff was trained accordingly, but housekeeping staff less so.   Residents were hardly coy about tossing their trash into the woods and patted their ill-concealed firearms reassuringly when warned about the wildlife.       At least some of the trash got ostentatiously flung great distances in case there were bears just beyond the fringe. The crashing projectiles were sure to rile the bears, but they were at least as fearful as us.  No doubt a rough stretch for train crews too.  Only the skunk cub feared no one.       On our final morning there, we learned about the Zombie Outbreak Response Team (ZORT).   A tricked out, lovingly tended Jeep Wrangler with an array of ZORT-themed decals straddled two parking spaces in the motel’s longer-stay wing.  In a less fraught time, I might have been inclined to stop over and get myself regaled.      Instead, I tapped Google, which quickly yielded this link,  http://www.youcangoogleityourself.com  , sponsored by a worldwide network of volunteers training for horde suppression.  The website kept the zombie factor light-hearted but ZORT’s broader mission was to repel any rampagers whatsoever.  They were invasive species generalists though the message board repeatedly referenced the invasion of the heyheyhohos.  We concluded that we shouldn’t seek them out too strenuously.       At the time, we were tickled by the Zort factor.  We pictured serious ordnance being collected in the parking lot as the field commander directed the troops yanking a camouflage tarp over it all.  The ZORT emblem did indeed reappear months later among the iconography sported by those storming the capitol building in a documentary on the Jan 6th insurrection.  Both their skull in a gas mask emblem and their Hello Kitty with a hair bow appeared in surveillance tapes.  So, that fragile, fractious ecosystem now had a wild card.       Claudia and I, the actual urban diaspora, the downtrodden in contingency housing, the South Asian hotel staff whose American Dream niche sector had turned toxic, the baby skunk, the bear clan, the tent caterpillars and the lantern flies, we were all invasive species in our own ways, and most of us tick carriers. Those ZORT dudes, however fuzzy on their mission, would be well-advised to stock up on ammunition.  Better yet, made to recognize that they’re at least as unwelcome an invasive species as the rest of us.  One might say that plague similarly strikes out to colonize new feeding grounds. That’s an overstatement.  It just feeds.       We were various species of trespassers coexisting in a musical chairs' taut helix.  There were those with a legitimate claim, those with imaginary entitlement and those who muscled in without giving it too much thought.  Most all needed to be there but it wasn’t so much a survival thing for me and Claudia, just an awkward stab at a mental health excursion and one that would sate us for a long while.       We’re now 14 days back and asymptomatic.  Still feeling rattled but also like we’ve gotten away with something.

What if I stayed up as late as I wanted to every night and slept in as late as I wanted to each morning. What if I wrote an eco-novella with more mermaids and jokes than pollution data and activism. What if I dressed up in reds head to toe, the next day maroons and my flowered velvet pants, to go to the café. What if I invited all the Midwest writers I like from northern Wisconsin to southern Ohio to read at my Chicago READINGS series. And then with some of them, well, we become pals. With others, I just wave them on their way, Midwestern nice. I hear all of them, and sometimes read my own work, too. What if I refuse to use the phone, texts and emails only. What if I only hang out in places where races mix, Jazz Showcase, Printers Row Wine Bar, 57th Street beach, because it feels better, and my whole body relaxes. What if I swim in Lake Michigan, worship the Lake, make love to the Lake, stroke the Lake, splash the Lake, duck my head under. What if I’m unafraid to tell people how much I love their writing, when I love their writing, and I enjoy reading them. What if I tell Bruce how much I love him and what a slut he is, every day, he is that beautiful, inside and out. What if I keep in touch with my old friends, my hometown neighbor since I was five and she was six, my boyfriend in second grade, the twins I hung out with in high school. What if I decide to forgive my Ohio hometown and embrace it, even while it shrinks back into the cornfields. What if I keep and make friends of different ages, because life is more interesting that way. What if I love to write, so I do, and edit a little on the side. What if I go to readings around town, listening and reading my own work, shy, but feel glorious while performing. What if I mask at gallery openings, daring to be uncool. What if I leave my hair gray, undercut, and weird. What if I eat my sliced fruit with cocoa powder on it, and get it everywhere. And am cocoa scented. What if I have way less money, but zero faculty meetings to attend. What if I sleep better at night, and more, and read more mysteries. What if I go for a walk each day, using my walking sticks. What if I’m old and I use that to know life is short and devote mine to love, Lake Michigan, cocoa powder, friendship, laziness, writing, readings. What if you come visit Chicago, read at my READINGS series at the wine bar, dress up any way you feel like, and have a latte with me after at the café? A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Maud Lavin writes creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. She has published recently in BULL, Cowboy Jamboree, Reckon Review, Roi Fainéant, JAKE, Icebreakers, BRIDGE, Heimat Review, and Harpy Hybrid, and earlier in 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. She is a 4-H alumna and a Guggenheim Fellow. She taught at the School of the Art Institute for 22 years, and works now as a freelance editor.

There’s a brand of packaged dates called ‘Deri Dates’. Tesco does them. Allow me a moment to express the disgust and repulsion this product arouses in me. They cost £2.35, which is a reasonable and unobjectionable price. The colour of the outer cardboard wrapper is mauve, another perfectly acceptable feature. Even the name, with its unwanted connotations of a Belfast suburb, is not without its exotic charm – when read, and not simply heard, the tribes of Tunisia or the oases of the Algerian interior spring to mind. Once the rustling cellophane has been pulled away, however, and the consumer is ready to initiate the consumption of his product, a vile fact is registered: these dates have no stones. No resistance to meet the hard, white incisor as its sinks its enamel edge into the sugary, brown flakes of the date’s crust. Front teeth and lower teeth meet one another through emotional layers of naturally crystallized sugar in a disappointed clinch. Only lovers of dates will recognize this sentiment, which brings tears to my eyes as I record it: the initial running of the upper lip over the surface of the product, the joy of the probing bite, the first tentative contact with the central groove of the date stone – the groove which, more often than not, facilitates the ejection of the pit from the rest of the date. There is the wedging of the stone between incisor and lower teeth, sometimes the slightest of jiggles from side to side as the stone is dislodged from its fleshy coat, and then the joy of retraction as the mouth pulls the stone millimetre by millimetre from its skin. An important thing to record about this joy is that it is groundless and pure: it is not a metaphor for anything but itself. The more you think about this, the more remarkable it gets. Arthur Mandal is a writer based in Eugene, Oregon (but grew up in the UK). Alongside writing he works as an independent craftsman and photographer. His stories have appeared in The Barcelona Review, LITRO, december, 3:AM, La Piccioletta Barca, Nightjar Press, Ink Sweat & Tears, Sky Island Journal, Impspired, The Signal House Edition and Orca.

upwards i spent the day untying knots and then reweaving them, yellow on yellow on yellow, telling a story between my fingers picked out in embroidery thread. i am made of spiderwebs, my body held together by the intricate weave fragile as silk and strong as bone. my bones sit hollow against my chest as they beat in time to imaginary drums, aching for flight. i tie knot after knot through your yellow hair, through her darkening curls, through his calloused fingers, through the transparent tubes that connect her to the hiss of a creature pumping with blood. my blood, at this point, burns through the mosaic of my body like the hot coals i step over to get to class. safety is a beautiful word. for now i try not to let the heat of this world scald my hands, for my fingerprints are all that define me to myself. i have searched this place for definitions of sorrow. they are here, hidden between the jacaranda petals and empty coke cans. you know you can still see the outline of the moon, even in the spaces it isn’t glowing. sometimes my very step echoes like a broken rule, sound beating against the confines of the sky, i reverberate through the air like the final note of a love song or the beginning of a prayer. my body is a giant. i contain the answer to every question, burrowed deep into my skin like the hair follicles that twist away from my scalp, reaching for the sky, i tie them to my head so that i am rooted once more. i am good at knots. i tied the stars together, once, but they strained so hard against my thread that i ripped it, stitch by stitch, leaving the night blue and frayed. i tied my feet to the earth as a child, something i recommend. there is a knot in our eyes, when we are born, looped around the bridge of our noses and extending to the yellow sun. this the string that will only thicken as we age, reaching forever toward something to burn us, if we don’t clip it at the start. the frayed knot still lingers behind my eyes, causing headaches when i stare too long at the sky. something in me knows that is where i am going Larvae in the garden there are now bright orange flowers that open when the sun is high in the sky, like imitations of their idol. is that all the world is, cheaper and cheaper copies of what was once a purely beautiful thing? i don’t want to learn anymore. the more i learn of the world and of people, the more the simple and beautiful things of my childhood are complicated, dirtied. i want my girlhood back. i want to slide down the purple slide and skin my knees on rough concrete. i want to run wild in the street from the chained dogs in the neighbor’s yard. i want to paint pictures of ourselves in cool mud in the summer, and slide through wet grass under the sprinklers, green staining our bright pink swimsuits that almost never touched a pool. we used to lie in the liquid heat like our reptilian ancestors, soaking up a sun that had already long outlived us. i want a thousand years of forgettable summers when the playground was a creature of breathing plastic and we tripped eagerly over the chainlink fence that spat us out like the unformed things we were. Abigail is a 16-year old poet in Los Angeles, California. She is a GetLit youth poet and enjoys grilled cheese sandwiches, baking with her sister, and reading "The Belles" by Dhonielle Clayton (a lot).

Ten Gibraltar monkeys shoved their way into the busy cafe at the top of the Rock where the cable car stops. The sliding window overlooking the monkey habitat had a latch that no one noticed had come unattached. Miniature fingers fumbling finally primated it open wide enough to wedge their wilder world into mine. A biggish one bounded from my table squishing my hamburger in one hand- Ketchup, Pickles, Chaos, Bite, and Pound are the names I gave those first ones, then Obligation, Anxiety, Restlessness, Bill, screeching, breaking plates, eating their fill, chomping fries that once were frozen and now were flying to the floor clenched in furry fists. Feta flung from a salad, and Bill picked up a belt pouch from a barstool and fled. I would have backed into a corner or made my way out the door if it weren’t all happening in my mind. There was nowhere to go. So, in the midst of madness and jumping monkeys, I paused. Restlessness floated mid-leap in the air. Silent, steady, peaceful, I passed satisfied through my own inner room to find that all but one of them dissaparated, dissolving back into the subconscious wilderness stretching outside the windows. Those weren’t my monkeys as far as I know, especially Ketchup, who left a smudge on the glass in his last unkind moments. I sat on the floor under the pub table, breathed a battered prayer and gathered Obligation in my lap, where he sat tamed, and offered me a fried shrimp mostly squished. I took a bite, patted his head, held his hand, and some hope for how this broken space might be transformed - warm and full of guests. A table set, ready to receive the whole weird world with fresh bread, free water, wine decanted, comfort food, beauty planted in belonging and recognition. I set the table. One calm monkey minded his business and swept up broken pieces while the sunlight made the space bright and music played a soundtrack for my soul. And there, even in my inner world made whole I saw Anxiety waiting at the window, watching quietly for now. Stupid monkey. Ryan Keating is a writer, teacher, and pastor on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. His work can be found in publications such as Saint Katherine Review, Ekstasis Magazine, Amethyst Review, Macrina Magazine, Fathom, Fare Forward, Roi Fainéant, and Funicular. His chapbook, “A Dance In Medias Res” is now available from Wipf and Stock.

“When I saw you in half tonight,” Dustin said through beef-jerky breath, “I think I’m actually gonna saw you in half.” Jane smirked, wiggling her toes in the hotel’s brittle slippers. She too had plans to kill her husband on stage. Under the spotlight, they were Jane and Abel—a beloved, town-hopping magic act with a show-stopping finale. Off stage, in crinkly rooms, they were Jane and Dustin, a loveless married couple who hadn’t reached a finale in years. Dustin picked his teeth with a stumpy finger. “You’re not as pert as you once were. Might need more smoke and mirrors.” While Abel was an articulate, affable showman, Dustin mostly spoke between soda swigs. Yet he knew every fancy word to describe and hurt a woman. “Dustin.” Jane’s hand glided over her notebook, crossing out a comma then adding it back in with a graceful swipe. “I’m thirty-eight. I’m not melting quite yet.” Over time, as the magic between them evaporated—ta-da—Dustin became tempestuous pre-show. He’d belch brief, biting words while Jane would half-listen, her mind working on something else. “Priggish bitch,” Dustin spat. A word Jane almost couldn’t believe he knew. “Too good to call me names?” Jane would’ve shuddered if the memory didn’t cause a cackle: eons earlier when they were happy, she used to call him the boy with the ice cream face. Dustin would eat it up like a child, never inquiring about its origins or what it meant, just as you’d expect of a boy with an ice cream face. But they were consummate show people after all, and as Jane and Abel, they blazed—sparks rained on each astonished crowd in some gray town called Fishfirst or Midgey or Rockriver. Like exquisite figure skaters, the duo spun from this trick to the next: Jane suspended in air, Jane with a tree branch through her torso, Jane on fire. Abel took the bows. “Let’s hear it for my tantalizing partner…” he would say, alone on stage, just before each finale. Jane would then extend her arms through the middle of the closed curtains and grab his chest from behind, nails painted stoplight-red, pulling him backward. “I love my job,” Abel would declare with a wink as he vanished. Behind the curtains, he’d hiss, “I hate you,” and Jane would simply smirk-her signature move. The night Jane didn’t come out of the chair was like any other. The crowd clutched their chests and necks and mouths, and Abel bowed to boisterous applause. As the finale approached, Jane contorted herself into the skeleton of the chair, two hidden flaps welcoming her inside. With theatrical verve, Abel sauntered around the chair, ducking beneath its mass, stomping his boot on top of it. He then covered the chair with an ink-blue, satin blanket, and rippled it as he scanned the crowd, twitching with anticipation at the riotous reaction to come. “A-HA,” Abel yelled as he whipped off the blanket. But there was no Jane. Acid sloshed in his stomach as he swallowed a hard lump of air. His elbows shook. Jane, he wanted to scream. Jane, he couldn’t scream. Humiliated and helpless, he laughed too heartily and played along. “Honey!” he said, 50s-style. “Are you home, dear?” After the lights died on the bemused denizens of Hickoryfly, Dustin dug through the chair with claw hands, ripping apart the flesh like a grizzly. Nothing. The opened flaps of the chair looked like a laughing vagina that had just birthed Jane into another world. “Fucking. Cunt.” Dustin had no fancy words left. From time to time, in his stale, sunken sofa, Dustin wondered where Jane had gone. Mostly, he wondered how she pulled off her dirty trick. How long she had plotted to destroy him. Was she wandering around one of those dumb towns, thinking about where to place commas in her notebook and keeping quiet, keeping to herself? I fucking bet, Dustin thought. Pathetic. And whether Dustin knew or not, Jane couldn’t care: wherever she went, she walked with big bolts of magic in her pert bones. Kate Faigen's stories have appeared in Flash Frog, Los Angeles Review, New Flash Fiction Review, and more. You can find her on Twitter: @k8faigen.

Work Ethic is about capitalism and suicide. My pieces often focus on mental illness. Read with care. WORK ETHIC My mother will tell me again that Aldi is hiring when I say my friends don’t have enough money to survive. I say creative people will kill themselves if they have to work at a grocery store, and you’ve told me this story already. They aren’t understaffed because no one wants to work, no one is working because we are all going to kill ourselves. She says the manager of Aldi was at her wedding, the woman’s husband died but it wasn’t you know and now she works six days a week, real hard worker, my mother says. I say I’m going to kill myself and none of my friends have any money or any will to live, she says Aldiis hiring, they’re understaffed, I went to the husband’s funeral, real hard worker, she says. I ask my mother to take me to the store I’m out of Diet Coke and I want to tell any widowed cashiers that I’m going to kill myself and maybe they will listen to me and maybe Aldi sells guns. My mother says you should get a job application for your friend while you’re there because Aldiis hiring, and it pays better than Walmart. I say okay, I will let them know right before we all jump off the bridge. HELL IS FOR GIRLS my thoughts become pedestrian and meet at a crosswalk while i play the near-dead thing on the shoulder of the freeway, the trucks zipping past sounding no bigger than a fly. i am sorry i lead you down this avenue that has so many signs you can’t read in your condition and my translations are as useless as my hands my eyes stay green during delirium, turn blue during worship, and then are suddenly amber when it’s time to give into the light they shine on me, looking for vitals. all of this talk about going places but i​am​still​right​here hell is for girls who have never knelt without consequence who have only ever lingered long enough to be accused hell is for angels ready to rest their heads on stony pillows, dreams plaited serenity liquored, kept wet hell is for demands of love unruly, how it rises, all doughy, how it leaks, how i’ve gotten so much of it. Angel Rosen, the author of Aurelia and Blake, is a neurodivergent, lesbian poet living near Pittsburgh. Her work has been featured in Olney Magazine, Anthropocene, HAD, and others. More at angelrosen.com and @Axiopoeticus. She is passionate about mental health, friendship, and sharing anecdotes.

When Jake’s home randy from trucking and candy, Flo’s amphibious—a moist, round thing. She sticks her skinny limbs out rigid—her rigor mortis impression. Her bulging eyes stare at the ceiling as Jake orbits her like he’s assessing tires on a used pickup. Once, she took a stab at dropping from the sky, crash-diving to the floor. A tiny, whiny whimper and a faux wing flutter, and Flo lay motionless on her back, buggy peepers squeezed shut. Jake rolled over, defeated. She covered herself with dry leaves and twigs. When he reached for her again, he couldn’t find her. Mikki Aronoff’s work appears in New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Roi Fainéant, Flash Boulevard, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Gone Lawn, 100 word story, Atlas and Alice, trampset, The Offing, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. She’s received Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction nominations.