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The Westwood Crochet Club had been running in the town of Newbattle Hove for decades. The three founding members had done no more than drink wine and made that one semi-naked calendar for charity. Over the years, two by two, they left, choosing Hardy’s wine bar instead. New people took their place and made the club their own.  One such member was Dr Brenda Martin a woman who knew her crochet-square coasters from her tea cosies. In Brenda’s opinion, most of the other members didn’t know their rooibos from their elbow, and that was a fact. But she did love to crochet and was happy to leave the sermons of home. So every week, she mothered the youth, provided scones, gave them no excuse to leave and made sure, once they were in, they stayed in. She held the keys and sub payments were sub payments, after all. Brenda was excited, tonight, they were getting their first new member in ages, a man by the name of Thor. When the swing doors creaked Brenda’s mouth hung open.  “Hello dear, you must be Thor?” she said, over her heartbeat. “Eh, yeah, hi,” he said, Diet Coke seeping off him. Before he could say more, Brenda interjected; “What’s the hammer for, Son?” drawing as youthful a smile as possible around her 70-year-old eyes. “It’s not a hammer, it’s a—” and then, suddenly, Thor realized his mistake. This here was not Westwood Croquet Club after all, but something else. Before he could leave he found himself on a chair, scone in hand, the most detailed coaster under his cup of scalding hot tea. Three elderly ladies perched by his side. And before him, Brenda slid, holding out a needle, which, clearly, he was expected to take.  Laura Cooney is a writer from Edinburgh with work published in print and online. She is seeking representation. Her second chapbook; No Trauma/No Drama is due August 24, courtesy of Backroom Poetry. When she's not writing, she'll be found with her daughters, as close to the sea as possible, seeking shells. There will be ice-cream!

Are you going to ignore my advice? Then, do so at your peril. As a matron, I will dispense some anyway. You might have already known the disappointment of your parents at your birth. You saw it sneaking out and pouncing on you in their unguarded moments. Or you might have been openly told how unwanted you were. Either way, you floated in that amniotic fluid of rejection for some time. If you let it seep into your heart, it will tear you apart. So, swim out of it as soon as you can.   You will get some education. Either at school or home or wherever you set your foot in; constantly overseen by someone, likely capable of pulling, deflecting, and nullifying the molecules around you. While you receive education under such able custodians, the tales of others who are not so lucky shall be made known to you--just in case you are planning to rebel. Don’t believe every such tale, though some of them might be true. More importantly, don’t let that template take root in your mind. Instead, trust your senses. Train them to grab the truth before the molecules are made chaotic.  As your hips start widening and you start receiving admiring gazes, you might want to discard your mind. After all, it was never deemed to be of much value, anyway. It’s okay to enjoy the attention, dear. But don’t hurry posthaste to live. The sweetness that you feel is great, but you recognise it for what it is; it is a flower that needs to be nurtured and not a tool to be wielded for the business of living. Those tools: you need to develop with the education you got or didn’t. That life: you need to work with those tools to build it. You work with all your tools, your mind, your heart. And fail. Then you hear the thunderous reverberations of all those tales crashing around you; reiterating all the things you shouldn’t, couldn’t, and wouldn’t be able to do because of your chromosome condition. As I said before, some of them are true. But most of them are not. The tale that tells you get only one chance to fail at doing things you love but are not yet good enough at, is not. Another tale that makes you believe it's unfeminine to keep sharpening your tools and keep working to manifest your destiny, most certainly not. If you make it up to this point in your journey, I have good reason to hope you ferried a few fellow travellers along with you. In doing so, you have made this guide a little less relevant to many who will come after you.  What more can I ask for? Suma Jayachandar: Wanderer. Seeker. Teacher. Writer

I’d felt its eyes on me again— that slight prickle at the nape of the neck. Surely it was still wet (I’d only used it an hour ago). It must have sat glittering beside the sink, watching me when I hung up the phone. I could feel it. Similar to when a man sees you across the room— you don’t see him necessarily, but you feel him: natural prey and predator instincts.  Unknowingly sealing my fate, I’d ordered it online three months ago. Fate, like the Sonicare toothbrush, (and certain kinds of men), can be very controlling. So then, there I was, headed on a trajectory I may never escape. (A harsh truism that I feel I must accept). My mother has mentioned a time or two my terrible taste in men. Now we can add “toothbrushes” to the list of my blind spots, too.  The first time it happened I didn’t think anything of it. I opened my eyes one night to see the toothbrush on the pillow beside me. It had been laying bristles up. Its gaze was steadily fixed towards the ceiling, motionless. It wasn’t my first thought that the brush had moved itself, or even the second. Truthfully, I was uneasy that someone had been in my home. It was placed so gingerly and centered.  By the second time I found that ghoul on my pillow, feeling skittish, I circulated my house, checking all the locks and windows. Locked—everything. Certainly, my mind was playing tricks on itself.  It should have been enough to pacify me, like a frog in a cool creek, but I still felt strange. There was a presence in the air that I couldn’t place. By the third instance, I was made aware of the culprit. I was awoken by a tickle in my nose. I opened my eyes slowly, fearful of what I might see. The brush was front and center so that my eyes crossed. I screamed as it switched on and began buzzing against my face. My arms flailed frantically as I grappled with the very strong toothbrush. Finally, I gained leverage. I grabbed the plastic freak and chucked it across the room where it hit the wall. It stopped buzzing.  The late-night cars had stopped zooming by my window. I could hear the cold trickle of a creek down the street. I set the phone in place and hit record. I switched the lights out. I heard frogs croak in broken unison. To this, I fell asleep. The following morning I woke alone. I had slept still in the darkness, never tossing even once.  The footage showed a Frankenstein Brush. It threw itself from the sink (it was expensive!) landing with a loud clang, and rolling across the tile. Down it brought two poorly screwed-shut medications, scattering across the floor. My hands shook as I watched the macabre Toy Story in horror: The toothbrush slowly, loudly, clanged over the small white doses of reality, somehow putting enough force on them to turn them to dust as it went. I watched my toothbrush’s hair tickle the floor as it rolled across the white tile. I thought of my lips wrapped around its base and wasn’t sure who I was more embarrassed for: it or me.  I paused the footage where the toothbrush had stopped to see, in real-time, it was no longer there. I rose to the bathroom to find it sitting on the sink, dry, ready. Mortified with myself, I turned the sink on and held the brush beneath the running water. I applied mint toothpaste and put it into my mouth. I began to gag. In turn, the brush clicked on, buzzing. The next night, I lay witness and awake to the toothbrush’s journey to find me. This time, it dove off the counter head-first. It rolled across the tile over what was left of the crushed pills. Unlike the night before, it made it to the carpet in my room. It angled itself against the wall and began to knock itself, over and over again. Revving itself up it clanged and smashed. Finally, it hit hard enough against the crown molding to gain correct leverage. It smacked itself upright, glistening in the darkness. I sat up in bed, shaking. It was unrelenting. The toothbrush loomed in my silent and dark room before beginning to buzz, its bristles shivering at me. I started to cry. I may have even pleaded. The buzzing sound increased. It reached a shrill timber that resembled a drilling. It made me think of a strange man’s hand in my mouth. The dentist’s maybe.   After the night I took the video, the toothbrush became emboldened. Some mornings, it would position itself an inch from my face so I’d awaken to the now putrid smell of mint. I’d go cross-eyed to its bleach-white bristles when I opened my eyes. Other times it’d scrape its wet whiskers against my cheeks until I began to bleed. My face was red and blistering. I dreamt of beheading it and throwing it out the window. But every morning and every night I’d wet it, lube it with mint toothpaste, and put it back into my mouth. I tried locking the bathroom door. It seemed unlikely it could finagle itself from that with any finesse/success. I drifted to sleep feeling pleased until I came into consciousness to the sound of frogs belching, cool in the creek nearby. And something else constant and nearer. It was the buzzing. It was coming from under the covers. I lifted my comforter and felt the toothbrush’s control thicken alongside my fear. I leaped from my bed and ran down the two stories of my apartment, out the back door, straight to the dumpster. Slightly wet and resolute, I trashed it.  When the toothbrush painstakingly re-entered my apartment a week later, it smelled god-awful. I’d opened my door to a light knocking and found it at my feet. We both were a sight for sore eyes. In the week it had been gone, I hadn’t replaced it. The fear I had! A toothbrush had always just been a toothbrush until one came along and tried to own me. Now, there was no predicting what a toothbrush was capable of. I spent the week destitute with the breath of a walrus. There was an honest and small relief at the toothbrush’s return.  But it looked disgusting. The dumpster I’d discarded it in must have had someone else’s scrapped dinner. No matter how much I soaked and scrubbed it, the toothbrush’s head was now a washed-out ketchup red. It had banged itself so many times up the two flights of stairs that its battery case had been broken. It no longer took a charge or buzzed against me. There was a small part of me that felt bad for the brush. Initially, I’d wanted us to work as well.  But the brush’s disposition towards me had grown to match its reddened face. It no longer trusted me. It would sooner break off its own head and leave it jammed down my throat than let me go. The toothbrush said I had chosen it, citing its barcode number. ‘And why do you want me?’ I often pleaded. It told me if it was going to own someone, it might as well be me. I supposed that was true.  I carried it to its pillow beside my head each night. The haggard and uncharged brush no longer shined my teeth so I tried not to smile so often. It left markings on my face that my makeup began to infect and I began to get fevers here and there. My coworkers began to comment on my appearance. The sight of my face was upsetting to people. I told them I had a nervous condition that made me do this to myself. I told them I used my toothbrush.  After my long conversation with HR, I decided I’d try to escape its wrath once more. I would create my own fate and then let its beastly nature commit itself to the rest. Old, decrepit, and lacking any battery, I settled on a duel. I armed myself with a new Sonicare toothbrush to protect me. I charged the new brush in the bathroom while my old one sat dead beneath the sink. I cracked the cabinet to ensure the old brush could get out; I was certain it would enact violence against the new threat. I fell asleep to the sound of frogs, sure I’d reset my fate.  I awoke the next morning to find the new Sonicare brush drowned in the toilet. Water covered the floor and spattered against the toilet seat. The old battered brush glistened on the ground, its faded red bristles giving it the look of a soldier after battle. I, the wartime nurse, fetched it and ran some hot water. I massaged my thumb lovingly along its bristles under the warmth as it began to get hotter.  There was a softness in its savagery that suddenly felt familiar. Its ownership felt less like a cage and more like a home. I turned off the running water and smeared mint toothpaste against its face before gently placing it in my mouth.  My mother called on the home phone to tell me my ex-husband had been released from jail. Her voice was quivering and she asked why I was so calm. She scolded me to take myself more seriously. She’d always called me a frog in a pot of boiling water when I was with him.  “You’re making bad choices,” she’d said when we first were married. “He’ll kill you.”  Today on the phone she said, “You’ll probably have to move again. You know if you stay there he’ll find you.” I tried to quell her but she had worked herself up. “You’re a sitting duck! No, no what you are — you know what they say about frogs in boiling water–” I cut her off but she kept talking over me until I stopped talking.  She continued: “...They let themselves die. They don’t jump out of the water and it gets hotter until it's boiling. They just adjust to the water.” I didn’t say anything in return. “It’s not your fault,” she quickly followed. “You just have to trust yourself." I wasn’t sure if it was myself, fate, or a certain kind of man, but it felt beside the point. It was exactly what it was, anyway.    “You should get a new phone number. Just in case.” She urged me. “It’s so frustrating that you won’t get a cell phone,” she said. “Anyways, how has your mental health been—”  “Then how did I get that footage?” I interrupted her. She wasn’t making any sense. I had a cellphone. Didn’t I? She seemed confused “Darling, which footage?”   “The footage. Of the toothbrush—,” I heard her begin shuffling and her breath quickened. “Honey, are you alright? Is someone there with you?” I looked at my toothbrush, which sat proudly next to the sink. Glittering. I heard a frog croak nearby and hung up.

Holding On No one wants to go there’s never a right time A single leaf alone holds on Friends  sons daughters  parents disappear  discover what forever means A single leaf holds on alone A quiet embrace a midnight kiss a robin’s chirp a young boy’s giggle A single leaf torpid alone A breeze caresses a summer face freedom blows across a barren dome of sky A single leaf holds on stubborn to its stem Gentle gesture  of hand in hand wrinkled withered turned to ash A single leaf holds on blanched trembling Moments of mercy and misery a cardiac monitor sings an unvarying song that never resolves A single leaf alone holds on lets go begins its silent flight towards the soft landing that is no landing at all Ruth There were no flashing lights, no guard rail or ringing bells, only the cruel sun mocking the blue sky and the dissonant clang of tires over a cattle guard— tires that crushed granite-pocked earth along the two-track. This was rural Wyoming in the 70s. Ruth left their ranch near Bufford and waited in her car while a train blocked her way. Some galoot from Laramie in a rusted-out pickup behind her laid hard on his horn. Couldn’t he see the train, she must have thought. Rushed by the young jerk, Ruth gunned her caddy as soon as the train passed. She didn’t see the other train barreling down the  second set of tracks. The engine cut her in half. Joe, her son and my best childhood friend, was summoned from their ranch house. There’s been an accident, someone told him. When he got to the railroad crossing he stood in wind that sliced through late fall— cold, sharp, sere—wind that slapped  him into a savage world of severed hope. The Eyes of Texas Sun invaded my half-sister’s living room like unwanted enlightenment. She sits  in an overstuffed holding her Pekinese telling me what an asshole my father had been when he abandoned her and her mother  eighty-nine years ago. I sit across from her in a room with seventeen relatives I never  knew I had (compliments of my father’s errant  youth). My half-sister’s grandson politely asks  if he can play with her BB gun. The gun case is  the centerpiece of my half-sister’s living room.  She nods and I take it that this is something the boy looks forward to when he visits his grandma. After an afternoon of shooting in her backyard, this Lubbock boy announces that he killed one squirrel and blinded another. My newfound relatives either smile with admiration or ignore him.  I’m in Texas where cruelty is served-up  on the nightly news while my half-sister, dressed in her Hobby Lobby t-shirt, eats barbecue from Chick-Fil-A. I’m in Texas where what it means to  be a man is measured by how much booze one can   drink and still shoot straight, where the wildly  popular governor delights in sending unsuspecting  immigrants to cities in the north that can’t provide  for them and orders razor wire to shred their hopes of finding a place to give their children a future. No wonder my great-nephew loves to kill and maim.  At fifteen, he’s growing into manhood. He decides,  like a god, what will live and what will die,  what will see and what goes blind. The eyes of Texas are upon him. Wine and Roaches With apologies to Ernest Dowson The first of the month our ships came in: Thirty bucks from my mother, whatever  Bill could squeeze out of his father, a paltry sum from the State Department  for our Somali roommate, Omar. Student-rich, we opened our doors to friends  from the University and anyone else who’d heard there was a party on Twelfth Street.  This was the sixties—free love, free sex,   and free dope if you could score it. We kept our hash in Omar’s hair— a real afro since he was a real African. Jugs of hearty burgundy, blotters of acid, reams  of rolled joints, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, bongs, the Beatles, the Stones, Ginger Baker,  Eric Clapton—the Cream of our rockin’ crop. As the night wore on, our basement apartment took on the sheen of a fumarole, so dense were the clouds of cigarette smoke mixed with lofty vapors of grass and hash. At its crescendo someone I didn’t know, had never seen, asked if he could borrow my ‘65 Mustang. I handed him the keys and passed out. What a miracle when he brought my car back two days later! They were not long, those days of wine  and roaches. After the cleanup (who needed  ashtrays when the floor was so broad and  inviting?), we realized that we were broke,  penniless, poverty-stricken. Still, we dined  like kings: spaghetti and ketchup during  the week, canned tuna, and Fritos on the weekends. We got back to the garden. We were golden. Unfinished As a young man I finished every book I began, which got me through some heady stuff: Plato’s Republic , Nietzsche’s Zarathustra , Sartre’s Being and Nothingness . How many times I thought, I can’t go on; I’ve had enough. I’ve got to put this book away. Youthful idealism kept me going. Now, at 73, where every breath is a blessing, every sunrise a gift of light, and time a tyrant  who may run out at the drop of a blood pressure,  I get a few hundred pages in and assess: Is this book worth a chunk of my life? I completed Ulysses , but wanted those precious  hours back. As for Don Quixot e, let’s just say that I don’t suffer fools past page 200. Throughout Swann’s Way , I fought off self-destructive impulses (revolver or rat poison?) until I left the cork-lined room, Marzipan, and the other six volumes to the murky shadows  of someone else’s dusty library. And with Vanity Fair —just how many mean girls and boys did Thackery think I’d put up with? Abandoning these great works of literature amounts to sticking out my tongue at the brandy drinking,  cigar smoking, pooh-bahs who feel compelled  to tell me what I should enjoy. Hey, did you hear that the new Michael Connelly thriller is out? Harry Bosch is still hunting down the bad guys and living up to his motto: either everybody counts, or nobody counts. Benediction Thank you for the goddam birds singing.         Thomas Lux Thanks for any novel in which snow or tea  or preferably both, play at least a minor role. Thanks for late afternoon light in Pittsburgh—how it shadow-calms our journey toward night. Thanks for the cosmos that celebrates chaos in the Northern Michigan winter sky—the ringed moon and heavenly blur of the Milky Way.  Thank you for the chirpy voices of Gus and Grayson,  my neighbor’s kids, as they kick ball and yell at each other: You pushed me, That’s a foul —ancient melodies  of brotherly love/hate that fills my heart with hope. Thanks for a chicken, rubbed with salt, pepper, lemon, olive oil, thyme and butter and roasted to a blessed brown, hot out of the oven. Thanks also for its fragrance that causes tongues to lick happy lips. Thanks to Jack Ridl who teaches me, on his YouTube broadcasts, to sanctify the quotidian and slurp  my tea with unabashed abandon. Thanks to Otis, our neighbor’s dog, who hates  to go outside and gets revenge by rolling happily in his own shit for half an hour. Thank you for the quiet gleam on wet Hawthorn  needles when the sun comes out after days of rain. Thanks for the friendship of the many poets who inspire me, who make every day a benediction in stanzas and lines. Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His sixth full-length poetry collection is Miracles That Keep Me Going  (WordTech Editions, 2023). His poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Salamander Ink Magazine,  and elsewhere.

Artemis  asks me if I ever noticed she is a mirage of weeping willows, thorns hiding under ditches,  and deer in headlights. asks me what I’ve taken from grassy pockets on hillsides and if it felt good in the back of my teeth. asks me if roadkill is a slipper for sin or a bucket for the sick. asks if I’ll ever stop making homes in holes as fresh as graves. Her foxes and coyotes are growing huffy. asks me if the hunt is always screeching or never screeching.My  throat holds life’s pursuits. Artemis asks if I have a child, will I scrub nature from their feet or follow their nosedive into rushing water. Backside Hymn A stitch of clouds on my exposed back to keep me a being above grass. As a teenager, the doctor told me my spine curved toward my heart. It wouldn’t affect- Yet even when sun barks at me to open my eyes, swollen shut with dew, I lean toward what’s left behind. The results come back again and again and again instruct to pound my right foot forcefully into the dirt, like I’m not scared of it and ask my body to know this life is right. From the Mouths of Great Aunts It seems like life is just repaving driveways. But the way she tells it, if it’s with someone you love that’s enough. She paints the white house through her tongue and teeth. Kneels sunlight, that is always already breaking through. It seems like life is just getting parts  for the broken-down mower. But that’s enough for me, to hop in his truck on a weeknight, and feel like we’re following the wind, even though I know he knows the way.But we both believe in the magic of gravel roads and evenings of orange and pink pouring themselves  over it.It  seems like life is just waiting for the other. But that’s enough, because in my waiting I can  stretch out. Wind is the flapping flag of memory. You don’t remember living until you’ve done it long enough. And one twenty-year-old day I became aware I was living. My movements are closer to now than on time . I burn when I look at my dog and realize this moment is already memory.The same burning when I look at photographs. I can hold her but by the time I meet myself her fur is no longer sanctifying my palms. I have no answer for this, no answer for the wind that feels  as if it’s already passed through.The only thing one can do is continue to feel it. TW: Mention of Death. On a Sparse Summer Tuesday Trying to coax out a spiritual experience, mirage of a miracle, as I brace blurred homecoming. Arrival can be profound. Guilt that it’s her I came for, Grandpa is a faded knick  in my memory. I never get out of my car because I’m too scared the grass is holy because I’m too scared the grass is unholy. But on a sparse summer Tuesday, I can’t thwart the call to flip the plastic bird on her birth year, right side up. I hold off the piercing ring of my stomach. The panic of fresh pavement. Acorns outline corners of her. I want to swipe ‘em,  shove ‘em into my pocket’s craters. As if she had grown them. As if a present living thing had touched her and waited for me to feel. Time Time hightails the weight of memories leaving me with the sagging hold of moss-coated sores. is threaded  between swatches of freedom. is ill, reminding me the sweetness of a fever cannot be revived. sits in the back of teeth  like an abiding tombstone. The more I chew, the more it spits on rain-drowned ground.   cackles when I try to form it into a flight of butterflies, specs of dust, or dying hair follicles. Forming We can sit on ledges that exhibit what has been birthed, shed our bathing suites, We can transform into any being. Cicadas on the hunt for prairies, that one good song everyone stands  and sways in unison for  at a folk concert. We can share a patch of earth, alive or wanted dead, braided by flocks of phlox. We can barrel into the world,  be the wind that knocks lovers out. We can read homegrown stories, paste their clippings on tongues of all awkward and open mouths. We can both lay on your side of the bed and become one person who always leans toward the cool side of life.

They stand below the rim in a group and reach their fingertips to bump the ball toward the rim or away from it, toward another rim. Gispelli dribbles the ball short but back and forth. He bounces it on the zeniths of an ovicular orbit. Toward Carlton; away from Carlton. Teasing toward the hoop; feigning away from it. His sweat, by inertia, gives away his direction, falling slanted toward the backboard, like it was blown by a wind.  The sweat on the backboard is only cleaned after the game. Sasson, lean and lithe, blocks a close jumper. He wraps his arm around Gispelli to knock the ball out and draws a foul. Gispelli’s crotch, knocked in the foul, aches as he bounces the ball at the free throw line and crouches, coiling his body like a spring, before releasing the ball at the top of his extension. The ball floats and the stadium is suspended while the ball’s destination is calculated and recalculated every second by every watching mind. Gispelli misses the knee-length basketball shorts that went out of style not long ago that compressed less but also revealed less. As the ball passes precisely within the orange metal circle, Gispelli watches a bead of sweat drip from the backboard onto the court. The ball caresses the soft net, enveloped, and follows the drip to the floor. He bricks the second free throw and notices a flashed look of disappointment from Sasson. Why would an enemy root for an opponent? Moore, his teammate, rebounds a gift and kicks it back outside the three-point line in front court territory. Gispelli rubs the ball’s bumps seductively while holding it off to the side at his hip, with eye contact. Sasson is distracted. Gispelli bluffs left, then slides right around Sasson, straight to the basket through an open avenue and launches off his right foot with the ball perched high above his head on his fingertips. The ball kisses the backboard, knocks loose a few drops of sweat, and batters the rim before falling through. Was Michael Jordan the first to hold his palms up in disbelief? Gispelli knows how to distract Sasson. He hikes his shorts up to reveal more thigh, bunching the polyester. He bends over, wide-stanced, hands out and at the ready at the top of the three-line. As Sasson catches a pass from the corner, holding five fingers up high, Gispelli mirrors him, holding out five to the right, then five to the left, before Sasson decides on a drive or a pass, or just to waver, take his time, and play in the mirror.  The sweat on Gispelli’s quads shines. They all stand under the basket and raise their hands as if in deep reverence. Will the holy hoop deliver? The net jangles and snaps up as the ball passes through. Half the crowd boils over and sprays up. Three for Sasson. He holds his follow-through arm in the air as he skips backward down the court. Gispelli looks away after noticing Sasson’s carpeted armpit.  Moore, at the top of the paint, dribbles, looks up, dribbles again. Sasson readies for the rebound by resting a hand on Gispelli’s thigh. Gispelli doesn't look down. Instead, he hovers his left hand in front of Sasson’s crotch. As the shot goes up they collapse together, shuffling jerseys and sweat.  Wrighte punches the air. The sweat stains start to show. Gispelli’s family cheers him on; cheers led by his father thick in proportions, making it difficult to decipher how the pedigree could turn out such athleticism. Their all-star plays hard enough to make his father forget. Great game, he’ll say, and later, where’s the girl? Sometimes, alone in the garage, he wonders if his line is ending.  With Sasson on his heels, Gispelli receives a bounce-pass as if it were a thumb in the soft the way it shocks him, then springs and dunks, and hangs from the rim, swinging his legs. Sasson jumps to block, stuck between giving up and showing effort, and ends up with a mouthful of crotch to the face – points he doesn't mind losing. But the game? Give a team the advantage in atmospheric energy and the momentum shifts on a cosmic scale. Sasson comes in rough at Gispelli. What professional future did either of them have, beyond this moment? They’d decide it for one another, tonight. Sasson would have to win a championship, or at least make it there, to have a chance. Gispelli might only have to beat him. As he nears the rim, Sasson calculates his chances of a basket at 50/50 and kicks it back out to Chavey.  Chavey shoots, mid-range, and it ricochets out to Sasson who double-palms the ball and sends it home. He swings from the orange, just as Gispelli had, but Gispelli, instead of eating it, stands by the side and snaps his own waistband. Sasson strikes a power pose when he drops, grabs his crotch, and wags it in Gispelli’s face. Gispelli turns as if he hadn’t seen it. Sasson’s coach pulls him off.  The decibels coming from Gispelli’s family are drowned out only by the double pair of powerhouse lungs owned by Sasson’s mom and sister standing, and often jumping, on the side opposite the Gispelli’s. Mamma Sasson treats the boys as her own. She knows her son finds his own place among them. Is it an adjacent place? She knows he protects himself. Sasson doesn’t remember his handiness in the junior league, as a toddler. Kids play. His mother remembers.  Sasson, against his best efforts, follows only Gispelli with his eyes as he watches from the bench: Gispelli for a deep three; Gispelli with a quick spin into a layup. Fouled. And one. Nails it. He won’t miss another.  Sasson looks for the pendulum in the pants, the slow circles. The male metronome that comes from a rhythmic dribble between the legs: a gambling club for members only, tossing their dicks on a roulette wheel.  Houston is down by eight with a minute-thirty left. Sasson goes back in while Moore lines up for a pair of free throws. The hole is next to Gispelli where Sasson steps in. Their forearms press together. Sasson says, bet you like that. Moore gets both points and backpedals after the second, trying to speed up the game. Gispelli won’t fall for it. He walks down the court. Sasson throws his arms up to get a reaction from the crowd. They answer. A steady foot stomp, faster than Gispelli’s dribble, builds from the very foundation. The crowd – Gispelli can’t tell which, doesn’t think about it – begins counting down the shot clock. Sasson’s mother and sister are shouting five, four, three… Gispelli fakes a pass right which opens a small window for him to drive left – not his favored side – to the hoop. He’s stopped by a tall wall so he pulls up for a jumper and misses. Sasson whispers as he brushes by Gispelli, you still had three seconds, beautiful. Wrighte yells at him from the side: What are you listening to the crowd for? You still had three seconds.  Gispelli’s father shouts at his son to “put the spell on ‘em.” His wife is screaming her face red. Her wish is for him to have a family one day. The Sasson family celebrates their clock trick – their jewelry and clothes flail around in a cyclone. Sasson’s sister’s hat is knocked off. They laugh and almost miss their kid on the court driving it down. Gispelli is in his way. Sasson is putting it home. His stride becomes a long hop, a declaration of pace, a ritual, a dance. A setup knock before breaking the punchline door down. Gispelli can’t get his feet set, so can’t draw a foul. Sasson springs up and slams mid air into Gispelli. Gispelli is thrown on his back and slides into a cheerleader. Sasson hammers the ball through the hoop – a pop and a swish. The crowd explodes. His hand bounces off the rim. Both ring. As he lands, his momentum carries him forward to stand above Gispelli. Gispelli is between his legs, looking up. Sasson looks down into Gispelli’s face and pounds his own chest. His teammates pull him away. The crowd is still exploding. Gispelli is helped up and ignores the taunting.  Houston’s fans make sound physical. They’re leading for the first time all game. Gispelli receives a pass like a hail mary halfway down the court. Sasson catches up. Gispelli takes Sasson to the basket. They are stride for stride. The stadium is dribbled by feet. Each synchronized step is an imitation of scale’s derangement, a dubious and yet exponential trajectory toward the unavoidable: the extramundane. Eternity resets, and resets again. The stadium, for the most part, quiets. Sasson feels Gispelli. They jump at the same time. Both arms outstretched, one with a ball. They are aligned at the fingertip if they are a foot apart. Sasson, his ego boosted by getting the out on Gispelli moments ago, instead of carrying this marriage to a draw, which would work to his favor, slaps the ball out of Gispelli’s hand. Foul. Gispelli to shoot for two.  Gispelli’s father bites his nails. Sasson’s sister and mother hold their hands pressed flat together in front of their mouths. Gispelli breaths out. Sasson is standing beside him on the lane line. Houston’s fans drown out jumbo jets – not a decibel from Nova’s. Gispelli misses the first. He only needs one to tie the game. He low fives his teammates and heaves his shoulders with a big breath to settle the nerves. He sees the hoop in his mind’s eye. Gispelli remembers only himself and the simplicity of that circle. The one that comes back around. The circle he finds in his teammates – then why wasn’t that circle complete? Gispelli lets it go. The ball seems to be going in, then jounces directly off the back of the rim to shoot out into the court again. Sasson grabs it and protects it. Gispelli rolls on him and bear hugs him for a foul. If Sasson makes both, Nova can still answer with a three. Two and a half seconds on the clock.  Sasson turns Gispelli’s trick back on him and looks him in the eye as he shoots. It’s a swish. Houston’s crowd howls. Sasson smiles as he hammers the ball into the hardwood. He won’t play around on this one. But he considers whether Gispelli will go for the three no matter what. Why go for a tie when the win is right there? He bends down, hovers there, then stands as if going to water a hanging plant, and, just, nudges the ball toward the hoop. It hits low on the backboard and bounces off the far edge of the rim which sends it straight up into the air, where it revolves. Its black lines shutter. It comes down heavy on the front of the rim and the sound of a diving board reverberates. It drops back to the court – without falling through the net – and is sent out of bounds by Chavey.  Two seconds is enough. Who else but Gispelli? No one even near the stadium speaks. Sasson, Gispelli’s magnet, follows him skirting about the court. The inbound pass, one-handed and thrown by Moore, leads Gispelli by a long way. Gispelli runs into the pass, grabs it, and turns. The clock starts. He steps deep with his left, testing the joints – which Sasson falls for, desperate as he is – then crosses Sasson over, and circles the ball back over his front-facing hip to turn it in the opposite direction. Sasson slides away onto the hardwood and dies. Gispelli is wide open at the three-point line. Eternity rests. He feels the shot through his toes and his bones through his skull. He feels Sasson’s touch again as he remits the ball to the authority of the hoop. The buzzer, louder than ever, yells operatic chills. Gispelli, in this moment, wonders if his throw determines anything. Does it matter how he does it? The ball sails according to the wind, the wind that blows his sweat. It’s off, he tells himself. He lost the tournament. Is it the nerves? Or is his best done?  The ball catches the edge of the rim to Gispelli’s surprise. It rolls from there. It rolls a circle around the rim and falls in, pushes through the netting, a portal to the extramundane, and returns to its love, the shiny floor, and the love it cannot have. The ping of rubber on wood, for once in the game, becomes the signal. Ballistic, the announcer says, ballistic.  Gispelli stands still, muscles gone lame, eyes fixed to the hoop. His teammates swarm him, handle him, push him around, rub his skin, punch him, wiggle him, tickle him, grip him. Pillars of people bounce around him. He rocks around but one piece in his field of vision stays still. Sasson is there, standing, stealing one last good look at Gispelli. Their eyes lock. Sasson turns, shoulders above his surroundings. Gispelli breaks from the admiration gripping him like a stone rolling upriver. He pushes people aside to get to Sasson and puts an arm to his shoulder to turn him around. They hug, then hug again. Gispelli whispers into Sasson’s ear: Sheridan’s.  Then Sasson’s gone. Gispelli falls into his victory. He interviews, hugs his family, his teammates, and Coach Wrighte. He laughs at Moore and Chavey doing a little dance for a camera. Someone puts a final-four cap on his head – he adjusts it and pulls it down then stands tall. All the lights and graffiti belong to him. How can someone just disappear? The peace and praise disorients him. He wants disrespect. Not accolades. His smile widens.  The lights and the excitement fade. Fans, after taking in one last look, turn to leave. Gispelli rides the bus back to the hotel with his teammates, singing their fight song over, and over, and over.  Sasson walks down a dark tunnel. He hears his teammates sob around him, sees their silhouettes consoling each other. What is the other chance at a late night win? He’ll take the proximity. The locker room is all tears and the coach’s echoed voice mumbles from the grave. Sasson is busy on his phone looking up Sheridan’s. He showers alone and hides an erection against the wall. Outside the stadium, a small cohort of diehard fans pity clap. Sasson nods to them, hugs his mother and sister, and outlines a midnight therapy. No one speaks on the bus.  At the hotel, Coach Wrighte tells the boys to get some sleep for the long drive back tomorrow, and not to forget about a week of school ahead. He’s used to dealing with the fallout, the occasional arrest, and the rare pregnancy.  What about numbing the pain with a vice? Was it worth the risk of toxic renegade? Chavey says he’ll go out when Sasson tells his roommates he’s going out anyway. Atlanta’s air opens its legs to an improved mood. Sasson says he just wants to drink. On their way to Sheridan’s, out of a ride share and onto the street, Chavey asks Sasson what’s up with him and chicks. Sasson stares at the little world of lights ahead. He says he has a girl back home. Chavey says, man, we all have a girl back home. Sassoon says, yea, but you don’t have my girl back home.  Gispelli orders water. The bar’s frequency suggests tuning out. He sees Moore at the far end of the bar eyeing a shot glass in front of him as if it were a cobra poised to strike. Sasson walks in with Chavey by his side. Moore takes the shot, grimaces, coughs, hacks, and moans in pain. Sasson, walking by at that moment, stops to help. Moore is letting out long grunts that rattle his throat. What was he doing, smoking a vodka-soaked blunt? Gispelli explains this is how Moore takes all his shots.  “He’s fine,” Gispelli says. “He hates the taste.” “Then why does he drink?” “For the payoff.” Gispelli pats a recovering Moore on the back. “Did you really beat that buzzer?” Chavey says. Gispelli shrugs. “I got lucky.” “Of course he beat it, Chavey,” Sasson says. “We don’t lose to punks.” He and Gispelli share a glance.  “A drink for the winner, then,” Chavey says, wedging himself to a place at the bar.  Gispelli leans into Sasson’s ear. “My dick still hurts,” he says. Sasson doesn’t lean. He just says loudly, “Then you’re in the right place.” “For what?” Now he does lean. “For your dick not to hurt.” Chavey turns with three shot glasses. “You better beat Kansas’ ass,” he says.  “I’ll drink to that.” They cheers and drink. Sasson wipes his mouth. Gispelli woofs. Chavey turns back to the bar, grabs a gin and tonic, just one, and says, “I’m broke. Dancefloor.” “Warm it up for me,” Sasson says. He and Gispelli step away from the bar to a less crowded spot.  “You played great,” Gispelli says. “I just wish I had longer shorts. Those short shorts beat me up.” “I’ve been saying that ever since they went out of style,” Gispelli says. Sasson twists a pinch of Gispelli’s shirt near his waist. “My dick looks better in them,” he says. “Hard to imagine.” Sasson is choked. Gispelli says, “You see that dark alley outside?” Gispelli leads Sasson to a side door hidden in a shadow of the club and slips out into the alley next to dumpsters and puddles. The court can be so bright. The line to the club is not far off at the end of the alley. Moonlight from the alley forms a silhouette around Gispelli as Sasson follows him that reminds Sasson – no, creates new reason for – why he came out. What he’d been touching all day, all his life, finally coming to him. Gispelli’s outline is complete. A circle. As Gispelli steps into the alley and turns, Sasson grabs him and, instead of pinning him against a wall, holds him gently and their lips meet. A warmth of release from a lifetime of agonizing restraint passes between them. Their bodies come tight together. Sasson wants to fall into the alley’s puddles. They hear a whistle directed at them from the end of the alley. Gispelli cuts off the kiss and turns his head. Sasson doesn’t. He grabs Gispelli and forces his face back.  "What are you listening to the crowd for?" Sasson says.  They return to the circle. Parker Wilson is a writer and editor living in Manhattan who exercises more than he writes. He is a recent MFA graduate and spends his free time running in Central Park and losing pickleball games. He has work published or soon to be published in The Cincinnati Review, Bruiser, Robot Butt, MiniMag, Defenestration,  and MIDLVLMAG , among others. Instagram: @parkerreviewsbooks

Biting Back When I was five I bit a boy / he had followed me down the slide / pinned my arms / and tried to kiss me / the teacher seeing the bloody marks / never asked for my words / she just gave me the ruler / and as it was picture day / my mother had to pay for a photo of me scowling / and missing the bow from my hair / the boy was cooed over and consoled / but at least my resistance was branded on his cheek  When I was thirteen a boy bit me / and called it love / we danced to Chanson D’Amour / and he told me / everything sounded better in French / then he sucked my neck / a would be vampire / before they were sexy / my frenemies seeing the bruise / soft and harsh as muslin / shook me with bullets / slut / tart / skank / the bite disappeared / but the scars from the words never faded When I was twenty-one I bit my lip / as I followed my mother’s coffin / through the fug of white lilies / and purple shrugs / the taste of blood / clung to my words / why her / it’s not fair / and there is no God / still the sunflowers / in the garden of remembrance / coddled hope / so I rinsed my words / over and over again / trying to get rid of the stains When I was thirty I bit my tongue / as another prince turned into a frog / the blood bubbled up / but this time I gaged as I tried to swallow / and in the swirl I tasted all my rage / what else was there to do / but spit out all those red globby words / and as I walked away / as free as the day moon / my last words—bite me / fell like cherry blossoms  / or a long forgotten truth The Nature of a Wall Slipping into Stop and Shop / slush in the groove of me / I am greeted by an orange pyramid / a sunshine triangle / in which to lose any lingering winter blues / arranged like a puzzle / it dazzles / and dares me to take just one  I am reminded of a book / from my library years / when all it took to banish the season / was an afternoon gulping down words / well before my thighs resembled dimpled peel / and when I was still sweet enough to think / most people were good Oranges are Not the Only Fruit / a book squashed full / of pips and pith / about a lesbian / in a religious family / the mother wanted to exorcise the gay out of her / so she starved her daughter / in their best parlor / it’s the sort of book that might be banned here  But in Britain it was put on the school syllabus / so we got to discuss / the juicy symbolism / of an orange demon / or the power of a pebble / to guide you home / and one idea wound its way around me / the nature of a wall / is to fall Leaving the supermarket / I find it difficult to balance my plastic bag / on my arm / it swings back and forth / like a worry  / and then barring my way / a perky Big City Big Dreams Barbie / brought to life / in Wilton Connecticut  She wants me to donate / to the Republican candidate for President / that orange fruitcake / I tell her that orange is not the only fruit / as I take one out / and drop it in her bucket / suddenly she becomes undone / calling me a name I’m surprised she knows Other people / skirt around her / as if it’s 2021 and she’s not wearing a mask / a woman with a child / even tells her she’s a disgrace / like her candidate / and weird Barbie snarls about how he built a wall / to make America great again I tell her about the nature of a wall / and as she packs her stuff to leave / people cheer / and I feel a ray of warmth / maybe next election / we will realize / America was always a fruit salad / and that’s what makes her great  Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer who now lives in America. You can find her poetry and prose in Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, Janus Lit, and many other places. Adele has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for poetry and short fiction and Best of the Net for poetry. Finishing Line Press published her first poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places. Her second collection, The Brink of Silence is available from Bottlecap Press. Her first novella-in-flash, Wannabe, was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2023 and her short story collection Suffer/Rage (Dark Myth Publisher) has just been published after Adele won the Open Contract Challenge.

CW: Cancer When you wait for your estranged sister’s surgery update, on April Fool’s Day, it feels like The way skydiving must feel (I’m too scared to fall into sunsets; I crave stability of ocean’s motions, of vertebrae under the skin): all encompassing, a void, the moment you pull the chord and come out laughing that she’s still real. You’re still here. A cosmic joke, Or a sunset run backwards. We haven’t spoken since she uninvited Me to her wedding. A union we were not. If you want to pick apart the petals at the root: I’m hard to love; she loves my mom too much. They checked her neck and found a swell That shouldn’t be there. I rub my neck –  my muscles – in Colorado, wondering what it feels like to be Her. All I feel is tender skin, and pick-pocked scratch marks, A flare. We are swans, not geese, I swear. We want to belong together. I’m guessing repairing, and learning if she’s okay,   is akin to  the distance between  you two,  which seems unbearably vast. Yet,  earth and sky are actually Just a leap/faith/jump away. Her arms could be a ripcord; I could be the one holding the welcome sign, When she lands in another place– Wherever the belly And the wings And the humming takes her. I could be there. Leslie Cairns holds an MA degree in English Rhetoric and has upcoming poetry in various journals. She enjoys writing about mental health, community, and identity.

Marta stares into the fissure, flinching as the heat blisters her cheeks. Her boy, Kristjan, has been missing for eleven days now, ever since the first eruption.  All across the village, their houses are charred carapaces, resting on the snow like steamed mussel shells. Mothers tell their children, it is only Dreki , a dragon, waking from slumber. A story meant to soothe, but young eyes widen like startled fawns.   The preacher herds them into the scorched church-house. He beseeches the heavens, Guð blessi okkur . But God does not listen. A fog of sulphur seethes overhead and the livestock withers in the fields, hooves raw with yellowing sores.  The land is sliced. Lava simmers and rolls from the mountainside, searing welts into the ground. Red blood bursts from hissing pools like Devil’s breath. When they wake the next morning, the preacher has gone, leaving only his bible pages fluttering in the wind. They group by the ice lake. They cannot cross. The darkness beneath would swallow them whole. The elders say they must go around, travel south to the shore. But these are people of the land, they know only harvest and pelt, not tide and hook.  That night, they huddle in the empty cattle barn watching Aurora dance above them like an emerald flame. Fyrirboði, they whisper. An omen.  Dawn breaks. They tether the dogs.  Those on foot shudder when shadowed wolf-breath howls across the valley. Mothers tell their children, halda í, keep up, keep up! Marta drives the sled onward, tears flecking her face, still keening for her lost boy. Behind them, Dreki rumbles. When they finally reach the shore - stomachs raw with hunger - a snarling blizzard whips away the last of their hope.  There is nothing before them.  Nothing but merciless ocean and a wide, aching sky.  Kathy’s work is published in litmags such as The Forge, Lunate, Emerge literary journal, The South Florida Poetry Journal and Fictive Dream. She has won The Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Retreat West Flash Award and  The Hammond House Origins Competition. Other stories can be found in a variety of anthologies. She was recently longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50 and her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions and The Pushcart Prize. She is a PhD student at The university of Leicester.

Everyone was purely jazzed about the sun disappearing for three minutes. In her absence, the day went completely saturnine. Nobody’s hearts were lackadaisical, and abandoned cruise ships capsized meaninglessly in the harbor. If we weren’t so indifferent, this would have spelled out bad news in plain English. Everyone was perfectly chuffed about local sports, over which we shot death threats at our enemies in adjacent townships. We celebrated the solstice with the burning of antique furniture and the inhalation of fumes that allowed us to look into the past and realize that marriage was never in the cards, that the riverbanks would overflow and wash our homes into the sea, where we would learn, in time, to swim, and look beautiful while doing so. Sebastian Hunter is a writer and musician from Seattle. He makes maps for a living and reads books the rest of the time. He is published or forthcoming in Bombfire  and Boats Against the Current .

She makes him feel 'late' early. He has drunken three white liquid crystals and sits on the shards of a mirror called time. Now the lady saunters into the lobby. She complains about her roommate who has transferred the ownership of her necklace. She complains about the traffic. In the room no. 470 they mess up  the bed, round shaped, under  an oculus on the ceiling. Why are the mosquitoes in  an air-conditioned room? Why do they perish as if  they have lived the high and regret not paying the price sooner? The author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' and 'How To Burn Memories Using a Pocket Torch' has nine books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

When heavy rains come, the driveways and sidewalks flood with earthworms. Long, skinny, pink ones; fat, short brown ones. Together but alone, they evacuate the sodden dirt under our lawns to seek refuge on hard concrete. There they will die – smashed under tires or shoes, plucked up by predators, or slowly dehydrated to a brittle curl under the eventual sun. I want to rescue them. Tiptoeing across the driveway, I pick up a writhing earthworm the width of cooked spaghetti and drop it in my dry jacket pocket for safekeeping. Then another, no longer than my pinkie and just as meaty, goes into the opposite pocket. It squirms and fights against the absorbent cottony lining. Moving deftly down the drive, I deposit a third worm in the waterproof hood hanging like an open mouth at my back. I stare down the cement sidewalk. There are so many at risk. Suddenly frantic, high on salvation, I run through the rain, scooping them up in fistfuls wherever I can find them. Wet knuckles scrape and bleed. Soggy dirt lodges under nails. Soon dozens of worms flail and undulate in my barren pockets, the arid trap of my hood, the moisture-less sleeves of my coat. Save me , I hear them cry, save me . Still, they die. Megan Hanlon is a podcast producer who sometimes writes. Her words have appeared in Raw Lit, Variant Literature, Gordon Square Review, and other publications both online and print. Her blog, Sugar Pig, is known for relentlessly honest essays that are equal parts tragedy and comedy.