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HIGH DESERT Dusk, and the moon is three-quarters full and bright as a harpsichord note in the sky. And lightning flashes on both horizons and the sagebrush is high and the yarrow is like a mirror for the moon, and a bird sings, and then a human voice rises singing from the hilltop, and I don’t know whose voice it is and also I do: it’s my voice and the bird’s and the lightning’s and the yarrow’s. It grows darker. Clouds float over the moon, glowing. The human voice stops, and also it keeps going. LOVE POEM ON A GLACIER It’s how your hair is a river in the wind, or it’s how the cold air freezes us starkly into this moment and only this moment; no other moments are possible in this kind of cold, just here, just now. It’s how your eyes see like mine, open wide, moved by streaks of color in a pale sky; it’s how we both hear the same something in the wind and turn to look at each other, wide-eyed. Today we will stand in the spray of a waterfall, awake, thrilled, and later we will  dip our bodies into cold water then hot water, skin prickling in the heat, and then later, steamed, relaxed, freshened, we will discover each other like it’s the first time. Every time the first time. Your eyes the color of this glacier. Your hair the shape of water. FIFTH WATER In October, when the leaves were flames and the sky burned brightest blue, I climbed a trail with my children—teenagers, now, and much faster at climbing than me— to mountain hot springs. Neon blue creek water, steam hovering. hot clouds in cold air. Stones rust-slick, trees, grasping. At the top of the boiling creek, a cold waterfall. My son went straight to it, hid behind the curtain of water. He jumped from cold to hot to cold to hot, his face bright, his skin pinkening. Two little-big hearts, flush and happy in the pools,  both neither child nor adult, both adult and child, balanced on the edges of the rocks and on the cusp of the rest of their lives. These liminal spaces between the extremes, I tell them, are, ecologically,  where new things most love to flare into existence. Hot and cold. Dry and wet. Red and blue and orange and yellow spilling into and over each other, colors running like water and becoming,  always, who they are. The air crisp, the pine needles sharp. Buckets of golden light. Melissa Jean is a mindfulness studies professor, forest bathing guide, and creative writing teacher. She currently lives in Nashville.

supermoon aubade   before the iron sky turns amaranth & the morning star peeks through the blinds  i watch you sleep/follow the fall and rise of your breath’s cymbal jazz crash to the drip  of the corroded faucet/trace the rift in the sheet falling between our bodies/  touch your cheek the path from bottom lip  to scar to cleft/this wine bed pleasure dome  simulacrum of us/you are my blind spot & i free fall for you at will & will this dirty weekend habit hail the decrescendo of tonic interludes/ hear birdsong blue notes of thrushes/ their dawn chorus of woe  unraveling   this morning a coyote appeared out of nowhere or in the middle of somewhere between a rock hard place and the deep blue sea over the hill as the crows fly not far but a stone’s throw thataway from it all buff and no bite of the cherry with sugar on top dog in the knock down drag out fight tooth and claw against the nick of time to run like  the wind blows the hand that rocks the cradle to the grave rules  the world on fire where there’s smoke blowing rings running on empty in vicious circles around the bend over backwards and forwards and one step up to the plates spinning out of control freak of nature of the beast of burden of proof is in  the pudding is in the pie eating grin and bear by the tail end of the tunnel vision of love to the moon and the lucky star in the wee small hours of the red sky and isn’t it my night to howl  eucalyptus   after the storms subside i feel a mad urge to shed excess baggage with reckless  abandon. it has rained for three days straight & i’m about to shake my puddled roots to the core. how memory can build you up for the breaking, grind you ragged— leave you weakened & shaggy, your limbs thrown  akimbo, layers peeling slow & perilous, sloughed  snakeskin dangling in the wreckage. how long can you nurture a viper in your wearied heartwood  before you call it a snake in the grass. i’m rough & ready to break the bough, to bare my better  wilder version, an incendiary girl, all the rage, my bark every bit as fierce as my bite. Elle Cantwell is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in Ponder Review, December, Welter, Barrelhouse  and Roi Fainéant , among other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and is a winner of the Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize. A freelance theatre director and educator, she lives in Santa Monica, California.

The first night we met,  we lay under your freshly laundered bed sheets,  and you showed me your yearbook, named all the strangers  for me by first and last name;  when you met my four-year-old son,  he cut your throat  with an invisible cutlass:  you fell—clutched at your throat,  and let the laugh spill;  for your birthday,  I drew my right ear and framed it; remember?;  how when we made dinner, our mouths?; how there could be no seam found  in the flesh of them, how you said, I know one day I won’t want to do this constantly,  but I’m not there yet ,  how the Brussels Sprouts  you drenched with honey burned, how we ate them anyway  knowing the inside meat was good?; Terri Linn Davis is the co-editor of Icebreakers Lit, a chaotic, loving home featuring collaborative writing. You can find some of her work in Taco Bell Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, The Penn Review, Cultural Daily, Five South, and elsewhere. She lives in Connecticut in a 190-year-old haunted farmhouse with her co-habby and their three children. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @TerriLinnDavis and on her website www.terrilinndavis.com

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” My daughter Rogan was standing in our kitchen carrying a Size 8 sneaker full of Rachael Ray Chicken and Veggie kibble for small dogs. She’d found it in her bedroom closet. Her understandable reaction was provoked by my bombshell revelation: “Sorry to break it to you, but this was the work of a rodent. A mouse probably stole the kibble piece by piece from Winnie's bowl in the middle of the night, and stashed it in your sneaker.” “While I was sleeping in my bed four feet away?” she demanded. “I’m afraid so, kiddo.”  Our home is a suburban architectural mutt on a few acres of rocky, treed property. It was built in 1927 on a long-gone dairy farm, and has been added onto in every possible direction by weekend carpenters ever since. I figure that 4 generations of people and 600 generations of mice have called it home.   “Well, it’s gross!” said Rogan. “It’s nowhere near the grossest mouse offense that’s happened in this place,” I point out. “Did I ever tell you about the time I discovered poop pellets and a shredded oven mitt in that drawer beside the stove?”  Rogan glanced suspiciously at the drawer.  I continued: “Another time, I put my hand into a humongous box of Costco microwave popcorn in the basement and pulled out a nasty clump of shredded foil, pulverized kernels, and more poop.” “Stop!” begged Rogan.  My position on mice has always been PCWR (Peaceful Coexistence Within Reason).  I believe that complete control is unattainable.  But when the mouse community crosses the threshold and becomes complete assholes, action is justified and necessary, and the sneaker/kibble incident fits squarely into that category.  During the kitchen drawer and popcorn episodes, I was commuting by car to work, so I used enlightened, hippy dippy, “humane” traps - the ones that catch the mice unharmed. Then I’d drive the captives a few miles away and release them in a wooded park.  But these days I’m working from home, and daily trips to the rodent penal colony in the woods are unrealistic. So I opted for some old-fashioned snap traps - the kind that break their necks with one merciful thwack. This decision marked the beginning of a week-long journey through a tangled web of decency, civility, and the moral gray area that is modern pest control. A journal of the highlights: Sunday. I set eight traps using peanut butter as bait. Two are near the scene of the incident (Rogan’s closet), two are in the kitchen, two in the hall bathroom, and two in the basement. Monday.  No action. Tuesday.  One trap in the kitchen has snapped. No mouse.  Wednesday.  No action. Thursday.  No action.  Friday.  Significant action! One basement trap has snapped. It’s empty, but a mouse is lying about six inches from the trap in the shadows next to the water tank. Grabbing a flashlight, I study the mouse from above. There are no noticeable signs of life. Then comes the shocker. The tiny critter erupts in a single shuddering spasm. He/she is alive. I sprint upstairs and turn out the basement lights. I consider the options. I could kill the mouse. A fast boot-stomp would be fast and painless, but I’m emotionally incapable of administering that kind of justice. Plus, what if he/she is just in shock or a mouse coma? I decide to let nature take its course. Besides, I don’t even know if the mouse downstairs is the actual kibble culprit. Friday Night. At first, I sense closure. The mouse is gone.  A moment later, I’m back to square one. He/she is lying motionless about a foot from where it was this morning, but further behind the water tank. It’s covered in little dust bunnies from its arduous crawl. I tiptoe back upstairs, telling nobody. I’m starting to feel like Hannibal Lechter, with a potentially dying creature in the basement of my family's home.  Saturday Morning.   Before the coffee’s even done dripping, I’m down in the basement hovering over the mouse. It’s in the exact same spot. At least twenty seconds go by. Just as I’m about to declare him/her dead, it takes a single breath. I retreat. Saturday Afternoon. I slowly descend the stairs and gaze at the tiny and motionless being on the floor. I take a small stick and give him/her a little poke. No response. I turn the little body over. No visible injuries from head to toe. (And for the life of me, I still can’t settle the he/she question.) Confident that the end has come, I transfer the corpse to a piece of cardboard with the stick. Outside, I dig a little grave one shovel deep, and bury the mouse. I pause. I ask forgiveness.   I hope you were unaware of what was happening and not in pain. I hope you weren’t pregnant or nursing babies. I stop myself, go inside, and wash my hands .  I’m not a religious guy, but I do know that in the Book of Genesis, God grants humanity dominion over “every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” And so started the hunting, killing, cooking, eating, and enslaving of every animal within our sacred grasp. I don’t even  want  that kind of power, and if the Almighty is out there listening, I hope You consider rescinding it.  At best, we’re poor stewards. At worst, we’re perpetual and hypocritical fuckups. I’m not at peace with what happened in my basement, but in the end, I was just trying to keep my family safe and healthy. On the other hand, that’s all the little gray kibble thief was trying to do that fateful night in Rogan’s closet.  John McCally is an Emmy and Grammy nominated TV Producer and Director living in Connecticut.  He’s always wanted to explore writing in more depth, and this is one of his first accepted submissions.   He really hopes you enjoy it!

“We can call this a ‘Literary Documentary’.” “But, this has to be a Horror tale. It's in our contract. It's in our rules and regulations.” “Yes, we will give the audience the most bloodcurdling images imaginable through our dialogue. These images should prove more satisfying than the usual blood and guts and stalk and slash that come from a Horror story told in a more conventional manner.” “If you say so. If the audience ends up falling asleep, that’s on you.” “Trust me. People want something different. Once we get to the main details of our story, the minds of the audience will run off in directions that are far more personal and horrific to them than we could ever conjure.” “So, about this story. We have men, all of whom are healthy fathers with no known health issues, dropping dead suddenly from a heart attack.” “Yes. We put in our dialogue that this has happened recently to people around the author, who is an extension of the yet unnamed main character, and is a way for him to express his fears of mortality.” “Since, he too, is a family man who is in his 40s?” “Exactly. I mean, he just entered his 40s. But these heart attacks don’t seem to care about age. The victim just have to be a healthy male in those 10-years.” “But, you also want to connect it to current social issues?” “Yes, as the best Horror tales are apt to do.” “You’re thinking along the lines of a classic George A. Romero story?” “Yes. The best Romero genre pictures, like Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead , were able to articulate the fears of the time without being preachy or sacrificing entertainment value. And since we are supposed to be united here to work on a Horror script in the form of a dialogue-driven prose tale, Romero would be a great comparative point.” “Ok. But, what’s the connective tissue?” “The recent fear of Covid-19 and the shots that many of us, especially those who worked in the healthcare field at the time, were mandated to keep their jobs.” “So, the heart attacks were caused by the shot?” “Yes, or we could flip it and make the culprit the lack of a shot from the Covid-19-like disease in the story. We will have to create a similar, but fictional, disease to avoid sensationalism and not seem insensitive to those who passed away from Covid during its years- long, and still ongoing, reign. My only thought here is that having the heart attacks caused by a lack of a shot for our fictional disease is a little too political.” “So is the reverse end. But, the reverse end, the shot itself and the mystery of not knowing what was in it and the long- term effects of what it would do to an individual, especially one who had it forced on him or her to keep their job during the height of our fictional disease, adds infinite layers of intrigue to the project. It also helps pad the piece and make it more substantial. We can even add a subplot where our lead breaks into the place where they make these shots or kidnaps someone who knows what is in the shot, possibly an agent of the government, who is sworn to secrecy to never disclose what is in the shot. In so doing, our lead scares the information out of him or her. The options are endless with the corrupt government angle.” “Isn’t that option also sensationalism?” “It most certainly is. But, it makes for a more intriguing story.” “Intriguing in a conventional manner. For example, extended scenes of paranoia-infused suspense and governmental corruption and conspiracy. I thought we were trying to avoid these routine genre gimmicks. What do you want to happen? Have those heart attack victims come back as zombies? Maybe as part of something that was put in the shot?” “The governmental aspects are forever relevant. It has been overused, yes. But, it is still true. We saw how certain American citizens reacted when the Covid shots were administered. The governmental and the zombie angle are still very Romero, too. So it could work as well in keeping in that vein.” “Very is also a very unnecessary word. Writing 101.” “As long as it never hits the page it has never happened. Right?” “Writer’s Code 101.” “So, what do we want the film to look like?” “A blank page. Two people talking. A ton of brackets.” “It’s an arbitrary detail.” “What happens to our lead? Does he drop dead from a heart attack? Does he spend the rest of his 40’s in fear of the heart attack happening to find out nothing will happen? Does he find a cure?” “All arbitrary details.” “Life isn’t an arbitrary detail. Fate isn’t an arbitrary detail.” “An open ending seems to be the only option.” “Let’s just see where the story takes us.” “Maybe once our lead thinks he has an answer on how to stop the men from dying, the women in his life who are in their 40s find themselves in a similar situation. Is a twist like that too conventional?” “Let’s see where the story takes us. The beauty in telling a tale is becoming both audience and author and letting our unhinged imagination guide and surprise us as the plot moves forward.” “How will we develop our lead so that he is relatable?” “Don’t. Make him an enigma. The audience can come up with the backstory.” “Isn’t that also too conventional?” “Man has been telling tales since the dawn of time. There is nothing wholly new.” “The author is now the critic.” “My greatest one.” “The author now has a headache.” “My greatest one.” “Talk about a conventional ending.” “My greatest and also my most honest one.”                          END Andrew Buckner is a multi award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter. A noted poet, critic, author, actor, and experimental musician, he runs and writes for the review site AWordofDreams.com .

We Were Twisted Ladders DNA Stores memory; I wonder what my body thinks of me. A molecular blueprint– Find me where the veins meet prairie, And you’ll find the way I held my fingers, intertwined With the dying. The way I held my sister’s lap and sang to her  A Bushel & A Peck, a hug around the neck, As my ribs concave– And I knew I’d have to leave her, eventually. We are double helixes, a spiral curve, Like the vertebrae that hurt  Before the storms cross from your state to mine, across highways Mowed down by water. The water that made us, I suppose. Or, I suppose, the order doesn’t matter. The spiral curves of fingerprints Remind me of ice skaters twisting with their frozen bodies Around the archways of the pond On a winter day, learning how to do a triple Axle. Learning how to fall to fly, Learning how to hold their ankle way up high– learning that They bend And do not break. I pass down my heritage Even if my heritage forgets me. A string, a shape that molds Before we understood the meaning behind our names. Before we understood That the way my body was formed Came from my Mom But not what she gave me. We are twisted ladders Of cells we cannot see, name from a lens Of looking that we don’t fully understand. The microscope tells us we’re all the same, yet unique. So, when I cry Do you hear me? When I change, do you feel that I lost What made me? If I could, I’d go in & pluck Out weary, violin strings Of meaning. Make me more compassionate here, Make the brain forget that day she told me I didn’t matter, There. I close my eyes and I almost feel the way she whispered me into existence, And then forgot to hold the rest in her hand, forgot the path to find What makes me, me. Telling me to stop writing Stop dreaming And to stand with two feet The feet she made And I should, I should, Be grateful for that . The Hollows for the [Motherless] Stars I would pop popcorn, even though it wasn’t a safe food. I’d say the word mother and hear all the vowels. “Why do you watch that filth?” She’d say from the corner. But for an hour, it didn’t matter where I was. For an hour, she would braid my hair and tell me that boys don’t matter – shopping does – and that when we fight we look cute after, and make up. Sure there’s that season where they go adrift too – but everything repairs itself again – with a burger and a coffee. I can repair myself, in only a man – if someone – asks me to coffee. If someone – anyone – makes me a Santa burger. If someone – anyone – tells me I look like Rory, but act like her in season one. And I pop my poptarts and laugh in strawberry– And I braid my own hair, the crumbles falling on the floor. I don’t pick them up right away, and laugh about sugar toes and dreams aplenty. Pretend it’s lint instead of moms on screens, pretend I’m made of air and eat carbs and no one will make fun of me – Pretend there are worlds where women are strong, And mothers wrap their arms around them, and only miss a beat for a season, And swing around again. (And, yes, I’m not a Dean). A Note from the Author: I enjoy writing about random pop/medical culture, and trying to extrapolate on those ideas into feelings.

I find little to be hopeful about, and yet, I tire of writing stories that suggest everything is just as bad as I think it is. Billy-Ray Belcourt tells me, “The creative drive, the artistic impulse, is above all a thunderous yes to life.”(1) It’s hard to believe. I drift closer to Clarice Lispector’s narrator in The Hour of the Star, whom I imagine chewing his fingernails off in an empty room. He tells me, “Let those who read me get punched in the stomach to see if it’s good.”(2) It’s satisfying, in a world that beats up queers in back alleys, to punch a reader in the stomach. Violence begets violence, and I am not immune to it. I have written a novel, and it ends without hope. I finished the first draft a year ago, and in every iteration it’s been through, the ending remains the same, a deep loneliness and cliff’s edge uncertainty defining the last scenes. I wanted my reader to feel   like the ending is hard on everyone. I wanted to punch my reader in the stomach. I’m tempted to say that this is what the story demands. This ending came to me, a carving of pain, and I can’t change it just because I want to. Well, says who? Am I not in charge here? A novel isn’t a beast to tame, it doesn’t claw at my door. I create it, and the arc of it is in my hands. So if the tragedy is not inevitable, not an immutable feature of the story, I get to decide what happens. To make that decision, I need to know what questions I want my reader to wrestle, what emotion I hope to paint behind their eyelids. I made of my ending a void. Is that the best I can do?  Clarice Lispector again: “What can you do with the truth that everyone’s a little sad and a little alone?”(3) Amitava Kumar: “What is the truth but the story we tell about it?”(4) I write fiction to create truth. Hold a question in your heart and it scalds you. Thread the question through a needle and embroider words on paper, and it transforms. Questions like what do we owe each other? and what does love look like, really? are ones that I can consider in fiction in a way I can’t elsewhere, because fiction is an experiment. I control some variables—plot, character, language—but the final result will be an explosion of the questions I choose to ask. And when the smoke clears, there is a truth. My novel is about the limits of love, and the result of my experiment was that those limits are hard and unkind. You won’t end up with everyone you want in your arms. And it was so satisfying, a confirmation that the cruelties I see all around me are real and that the pain I feel seeing them is just as sharp as I know it is. But if I say that I create truth with this book, then I have to reckon with that tremendous responsibility. Do I choose to put into the world a truth that asserts hopelessness, despair, and loneliness? I don’t think I should write happy endings for their own sake, but I do think cruelty for its own sake is worse. I used to be an optimist battling against pessimism, and now I’m a pessimist battling against pessimism. I sink my heels into the sand and the tide rises: pain is incalculable in this world.  The 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health tells me that half of trans youth have considered suicide. A girl I almost dated tells me, “I like going places where people died and I like going places where people think about dying.” I write about gender and I look all around me. Is the graveyard real or created by endless narrative loops, the same story repeated and transmuted until it manifests in granite headstones? If I shut my eyes, I can imagine another world, the world I dream about, the world I don’t really hope for anymore. Give me an instruction manual and I will build that world. Show me what to nail together. Please, tell me there’s a way. Enough abstraction. If someone reads my novel, they are giving me their time and attention, and I am using that time and attention to make them feel empty. Hank Green tells me, “I feel as if my life is about constructing the right sort of armor, the right sort of strength, that lets the light through.”(5) Why can’t I change that ending to let the light through?  I seldom hope, but I am often joyful. Finding a future on this dying planet is impossible, but right now, I live. Hope asks me to ignore certain realities, but joy lets me stand in the moment and hold contradictions. Contradictions like: the world is cruel and people are cruel in it, and: I encounter care in every corner I take the time to dust. Contradictions like: I think we are all doomed, and: I am in love with almost everyone I meet. I am in love with everything that prolongs queer life. I want my art to prolong queer life. My novel ends without hope. Would it kill me to infuse it with a little joy? Sasha Fletcher tells me, “What do I do about being in love, he asks, and Sam says, only cowards do something about being in love, buddy. Everyone else, they’re just in love.”(6) Sick of death, I will write life. I will not write hope, but I will write joy, because it is as close as I can get. Let the world know that I am in love with it, and let it respond how it will. Seas still rise, cops still kill, and I am at heart a nihilist. If nothing matters, then nothing matters, and I am free to dance at midnight with a room full of queers. Death hangs over us, and we live anyway. It’s all we can do, really.  (1)  Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of my Brief Body, 2020. (2) Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star, trans. Benjamin Moser, 2011. (3)  Ibid. (4)  Amitava Kumar, A Time Outside This Time, 2021. (5)   Dear Hank and John, 2020. (6)  Sasha Fletcher, Be Here to Love me at the End of the World, 2022. C.M. Green is a Boston-based writer with a focus on history, memory, gender, and religion. Their work has been published by Barren Magazine, Full House Literary, and elsewhere, and their debut chapbook, I Am Never Leaving Williamsburg , is forthcoming in 2025 with fifth wheel press. You can find their work at cmgreenwrites.com .

It’s the morning after—she and I cry on the couch, cuddled, sobbing silently, save for shuddered breaths and hitching sniffles.   Your little ghost is in every corner of every room of the house. Your spirit now occupies all the negative space:   The green cushion by the fireplace; the empty bowl by the back door; the lack of weight on my right thigh;   The cold spot this morning in bed; the circle inside a vacant collar resting on a pine box.   White hairs stick to every piece of dark fabric like pollen. I wish I could plant a few and grow you again and again.   Sympathy flora wilts away, but you are forever His Mama’s Good Baby — the sweet ectoplasm falling from her eyes.   Letting you go is the first bitter taste of loss for my boys, but leaving you in love was the right lesson for them to learn.   You are the standard every future dog will fail to meet and a jab of thought that makes me misty-eyed every now and then.   Goodbye, Huck. You were a good boy. Jess Levens is a poet and photographer who lives with his wife, sons and dogs in New England, where he draws inspiration from the region’s landscapes and history. His poetry has been published in The Dillydoun Review and Prometheus Dreaming. Jess is a Marine Corps veteran and Northeastern University alum.

Making music He hated losing her. Like his clarinet, she’d felt good in his hands. But when he learned she’d hid his invitation to apprentice with a European master, he wet his lips and blew her out the door until the musical score of his heart no longer heard her melody. Out of breath, he wiped down the flared bell of his single-reed woodwind and readied himself to wait out the inevitable echo of her once wide-swinging vibrato. He knew that over time, with practice, it would flatten. Harp in the corner Jack’s retelling of his triumphant climb-up-and-down a spindly bean stalk is the tale she wants to tell. In her version, boy-sells-cow-gets-magic-beans then kidnaps her from the giant and brings her to a pitiful village where refined beauty – angel hair strings, smooth hand-carved wood – and the ability to make music when plucked, are unnoticed. She will say it’s her—not the goose with golden eggs no one can afford—who is the mammoth sky man’s most prized possession. “Wait until the eggs are cracked open, they’ll be empty, just like Jack’s words.” At just the thought, she will quiver with delight and strum herself silly, even if no one is listening. An award-winning writer and artist, Karen Pierce Gonzalez’s poetry and prose have  appeared in numerous publications. Her chapbooks: Coyote in the Basket of My Ribs  (Kelsay Books), True North, Sightings from a Star Wheel  (Origami Poems Project). Forthcoming: Down River with Li Po  (Black Cat Poetry Press), and Moon kissed, Earth wrought, Vision drunk  (North American publisher).

There were plans for a party at Ava’s place to celebrate the moment when the continents would converge, when land would finally touch land again after billions of years of separation. Midnight was set to mark the Day of Connection, which is what the news channels were calling it, though it had lately been feeling more nefarious, like an impending crash, an earthy headbutt. There would be champagne and fireworks at the party—according to Ava’s invite—viewed from her apartment’s rooftop. Arthur had been forwarded the email invite from Florence. She and Ava were roommates who lived on the other side of the water fault zone, which, by then, had thinned out to barely the width of a creek. On the invite, she included a note that there would be dancing at the party, dancing for the end of the world. Arthur immediately RSVPed “yes,” but her end-of-the-world comment did not sit right with him. He had been filled with anxiety and dread regarding the convergence, akin to waiting in his small beach town for a hurricane to hit. Sure, he understood that all the scientists and engineers of past generations gave this shifting process the utmost, enthusiastic support. They called it a solution to climate change, a rebirth of the world, allowing the oceans to reorganize and heal. But it still felt wrong, attempting to reposition the earth like that, set it back to an earlier stage of Pangaea. Continents pressed into place against other continents like puzzle pieces. For some reason, Arthur had been waking up two or three times a night for the last few months due to car accident nightmares. Head-on collisions. Hit-and-runs. Rear-endings.  Arthur had not seen Florence in a number of years. They grew up together, lived down the street, and graduated from the same high school. Then, after college, she took a job on the other side of the Atlantic—which had been reduced by then to the size of Lake Michigan—where she measured recurring earthquakes that were caused by the underwater mechanisms tasked with drawing the continents together. By then, she had fallen out of touch with all of her old friends, so Arthur never received updates about her life: where she lived, what she did for fun, who she was dating. More recently, however, she showed up, out of the blue, at the funeral of a mutual friend of hers and Arthur’s. She looked nice in her lacy black dress and curly hair. It was there that she and Arthur briefly reconnected, and he learned that she regretted ever leaving town because she was so lonely where she now lived. “I wish we were all close by again, like the old days,” she said. “Or, like we’ll be again soon after the Day of Connection finally happens.” Arthur was distracted by how much he had, just there, fallen in love with her. He had always found her attractive, when they were in high school, but never came to loving her. Not in that way, at least. So this came as a surprise to him.  In truth, he doubted that the Day of Connection would really change anything. Here, there. Across the pond or nearby. In their little coastal hometown—everyone was still lonely. Stuck in loneliness. Just going through each day hoping for something different, which was likely the main appeal of the convergence. A new world. Still, the idea of Florence living nearby sparked something like hope in him. “That will be nice,” he said. Her expression brightened. “By the way, your number hasn’t changed, has it?” Arthur shook his head, feeling his heart throb slightly. “Let’s keep in touch then,” Florence said. “I need more friends again, now that I’ll be close by.”  Then she left, back home to her own continent on the other side of the shrinking Atlantic. A few days later, however, Arthur got a phone call, and immediately upon answering, he heard Florence say, “Arthur. Are you awake?” “I am,” he replied, having just finished cleaning up after dinner. “I need you to play along with me for a second. I have an idea.” And she proceeded to give Arthur a series of instructions, the first of which was to find something bright, like a flashlight or a lamp, and bring it to the beach, which was only a few blocks from Arthur’s duplex rental. She would be on the other side of the water, she said. So he grabbed a glowing lawn ornament of a giant mushroom and walked to what once, long ago, was the ocean. The water fault zone had been then reduced to merely a wide river. Incoming, like a slow car crash. “Turn your light on,” she said when Arthur told her he arrived. He did so, clicking on the glowing blue mushroom and waiving it overhead. He heard her quiet, airy laugh on the other end of the phone. Then, she turned on the flashlight on her phone and waved that, causing the microphone to pick up crisp, wrinkled gurgle of wind. “You can see some stars tonight,” Florence said. “Big dipper, maybe. That’s nice.” “It is,” Arthur said. He felt like she was fishing for conversation topics, felt ashamed of that. But for the life of him, he could not think of a second thing to ask that would be meaningful in the way he wanted it to be. So instead, they both sat across from each other on their own beaches, quietly commenting on the breeze and the shape of the sand, until weariness overcame them, and they returned to their respective homes, feeling like they somehow missed each other. For the party, Arthur put on a crimson suit, but he quickly reassessed, remembering on the invitation that the apartment rooftop would have a pool. So he lost the tie. Tried to find the balance between party and casual attire. On the other end of the water fault zone, Arthur was surprised to find how European the town looked. The trees were different, housing styles and shapes as well. Cars drove on the other side of the street. Even the people spoke in accents entirely unlike his own. He wondered, briefly, if there would be anyone from his continent at the party that he could connect with, but realized he didn’t care much even if there were. He was there to see Florence and only Florence. Unfortunately, when he arrived, Florence was busy helping Ava fix a large, inflatable movie screen they had set up next to the pool, upon which they hoped to project the TV countdown to midnight. So Arthur found a seat on an Adirondack chair next to skinny man in flipflops, who told him that it’s rare, but not impossible, for someone to live their entire life flipping coins that only land on heads. Statistically speaking, the man reassured him, that it would be rare, but not impossible. The conversation was not particularly interesting, so Arthur nodded, said, “Yeah,” and “Mmhmm,” until another partygoer took the seat across from them, thereby sharing the burden of this man’s monologue. More people joined the party, and more conversations formed across the poolside. He looked around but no longer saw where Florence had gone, but he guessed she was around, meeting new people, enjoying herself. He wondered if she had anticipated this moment like he had, if she had invited him for any reason more than just as a friendly gesture, a sign of goodwill.  Eventually, Arthur abandoned his own group to stand near the rooftop ledge and look down at the city. Having never seen it before from this perspective, he tried to find the water fault zone, but it was too skinny to see, so he looked for signs of his own neighborhood on the other end, even his house. It was all different, so vastly different, the landscape before him. Different how? He could not say. But the air felt strongly of change, of anticipation, of people on the street looking over their shoulders, feeling as if the ground was still shifting and their bodies could not find stillness no matter how hard they tried. Arthur tried to feel hope, that all this chiropractic effort humanity went through to change the spine of the earth would do some good, would save them from flooding, from extreme temperatures and earthquakes and hurricanes as it had been intended to do, but he simply did not understand how that would happen. It felt simply like a distraction. Instead, he watched the faint combustion of fireworks in the distance until the sky turned dark and loudspeakers started playing music next to the pool that nobody was swimming in. Florence was right; there was dancing, though only by a small handful of individuals. The rest of the party simply stood to the side and watched, as if it were a show. Eventually, Florence found Arthur and tugged on his sleeve. “C’mon,” she said. “I want to show you something.” So Arthur followed her to the other side of the rooftop, where a small metal staircase led down to the top of a fire escape. The view was not necessarily better or worse than the spot Arthur had just been standing, but they were suddenly alone, unseen by anyone else, sharing in the quietness of solitude.  “The coast,” Florence said, sitting down and letting her feet dangle over the edge, “is that way, next to that line of street lamps. Do you see it?” Arthur looked. “Oh, there it is. I couldn’t before.” “I thought we would want to watch it happen.” “Yes,” Arthur said. “I always wondered what it would look like or if we would actually be able to see anything change. Like if the land shakes or if something actually happens differently. Like the land shifting into . . .” Just then, Florence kissed him. So he kissed her back. They drew closer to each other. And so on and so on. They continued as the ground gradually shifted onward, and in the faint, humid air, they could hear the partygoers count down along with the clock, down, down, eagerly waiting for the world to become something else entirely. Joey Hedger is author of the novel Deliver Thy Pigs (Malarkey Books) and other bits and stories that can be found at his website: www.joeyhedger.com . He currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

A freshly cut rose stood between the smiling couple, droplets of water clinging to its rigid stem. They reached across the corner table and held hands under candlelight. Jazz floated through the restaurant as if blown by a breeze. Windows yawned open. Curtains billowed. Smiles filled the room.  The host looked on. How long this couple had been together was unclear. He and colleagues had grown fond of gauging patrons’ affection – imagining the relationships of diners as they gazed, smiled, talked, and chewed. It was a romantic scene, and this couple fit right in. As the date progressed from stuffed grape leaves to risottos and wine, their affection grew. Eye contact, made. Gazes, caught. Smiles, shared. Kisses, given – more than once. The host watched all this closely, closer than he ever had before.  The couple wore clothes that suggested uncertainty around what the other would end up wearing. Formal yet fun. Sexy yet safe. A giddy, carefree romance surrounded them – the kind the host felt was common early in relationships. That puppy love. That thrill. He sighed, smiling then frowning, ashamed of having written off their affection as new. Could it simply be mature? Thriving? Enduring? True? The host couldn’t say but believed one thing: these two were eager to find love and were not yet sure they had done so.  They were the perfect target.  The date progressed to after-dinner drinks. For her, an espresso martini. For him, a negroni. Watching them, the host saw excitement, passion, ritual, hope. He saw the never-ending journey of courtship and the insurmountable cliff of desire. His judgment had by now, four kisses into this date, been made. He nodded to a colleague nearby who was already moving into position. On the couple’s way out, the host and colleague made their moves; him to the man, his colleague to the woman.  “Sorry, sir? Yes, can I pull you aside? I will just be a minute of your time.” The host smiled with an upturned palm that glided across his body – a perfectly executed gentle beckon.  The two men moved to a hanging pair of velvet curtains while the woman followed the colleague to a seating area near the bar. “Thanks. I know you’re just leaving,” said the host. “We appreciate you joining us tonight. Did you enjoy your time?”  “Yes, yes, a nice evening. Thanks.” said the man.  “That’s fantastic. It seemed that way. I want to let you know about a new, confidential service we’re offering to a select group of customers. After seeing your date tonight, I knew you had to hear about it.”  “I appreciate it, but we really do need to g-“ “Kissing, sir. Kissing.” The host spoke in a tone both matter of fact and firm. “It is kissing that triggers the system.”  The man had begun to turn away and stopped mid-turn. This left him in an awkward stance like an action figure with its upper body twisted to the side. “Sorry, what about…what system?” The host smiled and leaned forward. His eyes darted slyly from left to right.  “This room is equipped with a state-of-the-art camera system,” whispered the host. “The highest tech out there. Ostensibly for security purposes, our cameras kick on whenever two unique pairs of human lips touch. We have nine cameras strategically positioned around the dining area to ensure all context is captured.”  The man glanced over his shoulder and turned back, looking hard into the eyes of the host. “Sir, I…is this a joke? I really should be go-“    “Instant replay. Post-date analysis. For a modest fee, we can provide access to all…” the host checked the iPad on the lectern “Four kisses from your date tonight.” He grinned. The jazz continued, surrounding them. “Our recordings include the 10 seconds before and after. How did you get there, and where did it take you? Our footage can tell you. Think of it like a rollercoaster cam.”  “I…um. You recorded us? I don’t know,” said the man. He looked across the room at his date, who seemed in deep concentration as another staff member spoke, gesturing at something unseen.  “And how could you?” said the host. “You haven’t seen the footage. That’s the point. Once you see, you’ll know.” The host clasped his hands in front of his belly. The man looked ready to leave.  “You’re in a hurry,” said the host. “How about this: think on it. Take this card and enjoy your evening. If the mood strikes you, call the number. We can talk details.” A wide smile. A raised set of eyebrows. “And one more thing; let’s keep this conversation between us.” *** The host’s phone rang at around 3 p.m. the following afternoon.  “Hi, yes, I believe you gave me a card last night on the way out of dinner?”  The host leaned back and smiled. “Say no more. I’m glad you called.” “I just…oh, sorry.”  “What?”  “You said say no more.”  “Oh. That was figurative. Say more.”   “…More” “What?”  “…What?”  “Oh… I mean, speak freely.”  “Oh, sorry. Well, I don’t understand exactly what it is you’re offering me. I actually don’t know why I called,” the man trailed off.  “I know exactly why you called. To know. To analyze . The opportunity to see your past moments of desire, examine them, celebrate them, and improve upon them? It doesn’t come around every day. Think of pro athletes watching game tape. This is exactly the same.”  “I see...”   “I can tell that you do. Analysis of past performance is the foundation on which excellence stands! We’re extending that strategy toward relationships and romance. It’s a logical step towards being sure. Will you take it with us?”  The man agreed to come by the restaurant and have a look – no commitment required. When he arrived, the host led him down a dark set of stairs into an office with very bright lighting and a wall of nine screens. “Thanks for coming,” said the host. “Let me begin with our pricing.” The host pulled a rose and a red folder from a drawer. He placed the rose in a small vase on an otherwise empty desk.  “A one-date Kiss Review Base Package runs $30 per kiss, $150 max. A Three-Date Package, redeemable over two years, comes in at a discounted $20 per kiss. These both include 30 minutes of video analysis with a staff member per date. And for the add-on Rendezvous Recap option, add $100 total.”  “Rendezvous Recap?”  “That’s right.” The host nodded over his shoulder as he arranged camera angles. “An add-on to the Kiss Review Base Package, the Rendezvous Recap includes analysis by staff currently in loving, romance-filled  relationships who watch date after date after date. Recaps include notes on inflection points, objective reads of body language, and forward-looking advice on things like eating politely, eye contact and flirtatious smiling. These are folks in love  right now, who have an understanding of how to not only build it but retain it.”  “You said the footage covers before and after?” The man’s tone had shifted. Business-like.  “10-seconds on each side,” said the host. “We find that to be more than enough time to understand context; think leans, words, tones of voice, facial expressions… let’s pull up what we have.” He swiveled and pressed a few keys.  The TVs lit up with a black and white video of early in the date on pause. The frozen scene showed the man reaching his hand out to hers and leaning in suggestively. Her eyebrows were raised in a playful manner. The faintest of smiles hid on the edges of her lips.  The man squinted. He looked at the screen deeply. The host gestured with an open hand and spoke in a low, almost revered tone. “Your first kiss.”  The man spoke firmly. “Press play.”  Garrett Berberich is a writer from Schenectady, New York living in Baltimore, Maryland. His work has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine and Idle Ink (forthcoming). Reach him at  https://www.garrettberberich.com/  or on Twitter at @gberberich .

EXSANGUINATE Well Hell, I didn't even know  that sacrifice was expected until my sacrifice was made when it sprang monstrous  and bikini clad from my giant  rebirthday cake with a bunch  of dark barbed wire balloons and shouted, 'SURPRISE!' that made something sharp  and immediate grow pointed inside me like a new tooth  in the mouth of a shark all ready to roll for the  next splash in the water like you know… that cute heart,  the little red one, with the arrow through it? So sweet,  but really you know… there’s gonna be blood. ZODIACAL I'm gonna  go with the  forecast for Leo  because it rings truer  to me than the fish something about  a long tall journey  and a dark handsome  death which sounds ‘round about right  for a Monday. WHODUNNIT A love affair is like a chicken. Neither die from natural causes. And this time it wasn't  the butler. Oh no, this time this time it was you. Lindsay McLeod is an Australian writer who lives quietly on the coast of the great southern penal colony with (yet another ferocious Aussie animal) his adored blue heeler, Mary.