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the irregularity of monotonousness   is now   absorbed. the obduracy   observed from white paper that was glued to its kind did not surrender to make a pretzel of a wasp. but I saw a swallow tail catching the air, persiflaging me. it knew how I missed it. the silence on the refectory grew into my lips like lava salvaging itself till it became obsidian. & with a chest of choices, I stand, looking at a fjord of my doctor’s prescriptions. It felt like winter when I felt the recesses outside my thighs: sideways, green. if a year was to pass without this stimulus, it would / should be parthenogenesis. the streetʼs greenness turns into chips for the conquest of the feet. from the generosity of deciduousness, the streetʼs greenness breaks with a sweet sound. consistently. the season could be an appendage to a hole of memories. it scars everybody with a part song; pectoral scarring — precarious. & when the season goes, it would be like cowering a human artery & letting the ownerʼs shadow mix with the still wind without disrupting any light. the earth is now an intolerable interstice, blurred. Israel Okonji (He / Him) is a Southern Nigerian artist of poetry, storytelling & music. He is published @ Brittle Paper, Bruiser Magazine, Midsummer Magazine, Wasteland review — & forthcoming ones @ Hiraeth zine, & Querencia Pressʼ anthology. He listens to music ranging from Nas, the Wu-Tang Clan to Chris Brown, Alicia Keys. He hopes to fulfill his dream of collecting records like Craig Kallman. He has a special place for Brit actress Emma Watson & American singer / dancer Normani in his heart. He tweets @izrltrcz.

As a child, Bella had watched them through the kitchen window, her mother dipping and spinning to Are You Lonesome Tonight, one round and one tall thin silhouette dancing beneath the striplight, impossible to see who was holding who. “I call him Nechtan,” her mother had said.  “It means clean and pure.” She popped Nechtan and his bucket into the cupboard under the stairs. “Don’t tell your father.” And she winked at Bella. Forty years later Bella fell in love with a hoover called Henry whom she renamed Hal. Her mother would have liked Hal, so light on his feet and much more hygienic than Nechtan, who had succumbed to mould despite his name. And of course much more flexible. Some of Bella’s favourite moments came to be the two of them gliding around the house, Hal’s hum making her fingers tingle. Bella would try to put into words what he meant to her. “I’m not into sex any more, as you know. But you’re the best partner I’ve ever had. You’re there when I need you, you don’t leave crumbs in your wake, and you don’t leave toenail clippings that catch in my socks.” She shuddered at the memory. “You don’t ask me where I’m going, or when I’ll be back, or explain about routes, or ask me why I don’t understand.” Bella fell quiet, and Hal slid to a stop, after which Bella turned him off. It could have been a marriage made in heaven – if Bella had believed in marriage, or heaven. But after fifteen years of the perfect partnership, Hal developed a cough. Bella spoke to him softly, and gave him extra rests, ignoring the trail of breadcrumbs Hal left behind him, but when he started to smell of smoke, she had to switch him off and weep a little weep. The repair shop was the brainchild of Martha, who knitted postbox toppers. The event offered seamstresses, carpenters, guitar tuners, and an electrician. Bella took her place in the queue and stared around the hall at the hundreds of other ex-lovers, each in their own private state of distress, waiting for someone to fix them. She ate biscuits with a barista cradling a teamaker and an acupuncturist clutching a candelabra; she traded stories with a drying paint tester who’d come with a lawnmower, and a ghostwriter in a onesie with a broken zip. How easy it is to fall in love, she thought. The electrician unclipped Hal’s belly and probed his innards gently with a screwdriver. She was gentle, but firm. “I’m afraid he’s done for. This happens, you think they’re forever, but they aren’t.” She leaned back and looked into Bella’s eyes. “Sandra,” she said. “I fix things. Just not this one. I’m so sorry.” Bella left alone. So many Henry’s in the room, so many fractured relationships. She thought about loss, forgiveness, and renewal. Tomorrow she’d buy a new hoover, maybe a Henrietta. She fingered the business card in her pocket; and call Sandra. Sarah Masters lives in York and teaches English for Speakers of Other Languages. Her tiny stories have appeared in Full House Literary, The Hooghly Review, CafeLit, Flashflood, and Shooter Flash. She finds hoovers tricky to love.  @serreyjma

I leapt out my bedroom window onto my Nimbus 2000. A couple putting up pictures of their son. The bobbing of a go-getter on her daily run. On the 11th floor a shirtless man stared out the window, contemplating football and failure. We exchanged hellos. I flew to my lover’s home. He was sucking his thumb, falling softly asleep. I flew to my sister’s flat. She was crying. I couldn’t comfort her. I flew to my parents’ flat. It was filled with hornets and bees. Filled every square centimeter of their tiny house. Deep from its heart came a pong that brought tears to my eyes. I’m sorry, I prayed; for what, I wasn’t sure. Maybe I shouldn’t have spent my last paycheck on a Nimbus 2000. Now my broomstick beeps at me – flashing bright white and blue. There’s work to be done. There’s work to be done. There is work to do.

A Word from the Poet: My poem “Madelyn Dunham, Passing On” won first prize in the Obama Millennium Contest. I also have won the Blue Light Poetry Chapbook Contest. My poem “The Ghost of My Father Remembers Himself Playing the ‘Moonshine’ Sonata” won the Space Prize from Synkroniciti and was nominated by them for a Pushcart Prize. My work has been widely published and has appeared or is forthcoming in Angles, Argestes, Backwards City Review, Barely South Review, Blue Lake Review, Bogg, Cadillac Cicatrix, California Quarterly, The Cape Rock, Caveat Lector, Cerasus Magazine, The Chaffin Journal, The Charles Carter, Circle Show, Compass Rose, Comstock Review, Crack the Spine, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Darkling, decomP, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Dogwood Review, Drunk Monkeys, Dying Dahlia Review, Earth’s Daughters, Eclipse, El Portal, ellipsis…literature and art, Emprise Review, Euphony, Evening Street Review, Fourth River, Freshwater, Front Porch, G.W. Review, Ginosko, Ibbetson Street Press, Ink Pantry, Into the Teeth of the Wind, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Juked, La Presa, Left Curve, Lindenwood Review, Magnolia Review, Mantis, Main Street Rag, Meridian Anthology Of Contemporary Poetry, Minetta Review, Monkeybicycle, Nassau Review, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Open Ceilings Magazine, Origins Journal, The Penmen Review, Phoenix Soul Collaborative Blog, The Pinch, Poem, Poydras Review, Prick of the Spindle, poetrymagazine.com, Quiddity, Qwerty, Rattle, Reed Magazine, Runes, Sanskrit, Schuylkill Valley Journal Of The Arts, Sepia Journal, Serving House Journal, Shark Reef, Ship of Fools, Sierra Nevada Review, SLAB, Slippery Elm, Sliver of Stone, Soundings East, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Stand, Stickman Review, Straight Forward Poetry, Sublunary, Synkroniciti, The Texas Review, Tiger’s Eye Journal, Tightrope, Verdad, Version 9, Visions International, Weber Studies, Westview, Whistling Shade, West Trestle Review, Wild Violet, Willow Review, Wrath-Bearing Tree, and in the anthologies Child of My Child, When the Muse Calls, and The Book of Now. My fifth poetry collection, Death and His Lorca, was just published by Blue Light Press. I am a Jungian analyst in private practice in Berkeley, CA and the poetry and fiction editor of Psychological Perspectives, which is published by the Los Angeles Jung Institute.

once, wandering a half-dressed, bare street—lithe and light, she led me to a bench. and forever we sat in the warm dusk, before I had the courage to kiss her. her lips were clouds. heady, dizzy in the ether, substantial and as necessary as rain. later, I walked that street from end to end. the bench was nowhere to be found. the sky was clear; summer seeped into dry ground. C.C. Apap grew up in the kind of Detroit suburb that had a functioning farm just over the back fence. His writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Dunes Review, Genuine Gold, Eunoia Review, and Belt Magazine.

they didn’t they lied the sun would burn brighter and mornings would sail along like a great enveloping soul they said that nights would erupt with fire and the moon would sing me to sleep and my dreams would be delicacies to savor forevermore they said that or something like it they implied it what they didn’t tell me what they didn’t say is that when you have a reason not to be sober that reason just sleeps it sleeps for as long as you can take it but then once you can’t it wakes back up and there you are in a dark and quiet room with a broken leg and no crutch and god it’s menacing teeth and fangs and all still there waiting… they never told me about that part nobody told me that getting sober is the easy part when you had a pretty good fucking reason to be drunk. it doesn’t get easier they lied to me but god those mornings that sail forever and god those nights that erupt with fire it sure sounds nice so maybe if I stare right back at my reason and bare my teeth fangs and all maybe one day that room won’t be so dark and that reason won’t be so scary anymore. and I’ll look up to a ceiling that’s no longer there and the moon will sing for the both of us Jack Moody is the author of six books including Crooked Smile and The Monotony of Everlasting. His newest books The Absence of Death, Children of Apothetae, and Miracle Boy are all slated for a 2024 release. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Recount and Prophesy by Alexandra Fössinger is sort of a literary triptych as it is made up of three distinct parts. And while most triptychs are paintings or carvings, this collection is more like a tapestry, each section having a different perspective, yet certain brilliant threads, like the design of gods, mythology, and fate, are woven throughout, connecting all three divisions into a fascinating cohesive piece. Each section displays an ever-expanding view of life and the universe while lacing these threads from one section to the next. Fössinger starts with Recount, a group of poems with the most tightly focused viewpoint. Here she explores childhood memories and dreams and the way our past, both personal and familial, can determine so much. From Apfelstrudel : this paper-thin sheet she filled with the ingredients of her harsh love: cut apples, cinnamon, sugar, pignoli, and a half glass of rhum. I watched, caught in the heavy weight of inheritance, its simple inevitability. From Hecate : I am an oneiric gardener. Tending to them softly, I hardly understand how my own dreams doze away unheeded. From Violet dreams : There are no traces on your tiny face of the recurrent dreams that were passed down to me. You are aflame, will perhaps blow out the curse that interrupted me. This set of poems leaves the reader with the notion that our lives are not our own, not even the life of someone like Hecate, the mistress of dreams. Fössinger does all this using such lovely language and imagery that it really doesn’t seem all that bad. The next panel of the triptych is Middle Distance, a little more broadly pointed grouping. While Recount focuses on the internal world, Middle Distance explores the outside world, from a nearby pond across the world to Europe and Africa. And still, outside forces like the luck of birthplace, shape our destiny. From A Heron : This deity of the river’s sole purpose is to wait, and to feed, and to fly; poetry disclosed without the waste of a word. From A Water bath, well : Now would that jerrycan, that plastic barrel of forty-four pounds hurt her back or would she shrug her ailments off like a fly in a world where survival would be impossible if one’d give weight to trivialities, where a rough day means something else entirely In the final section, Prophecy, Fössinger asks us to look even further afield and explore the limitless universe of the metaphysical, the imagined world of visions and dreams. From The Clearing : Wisdom is acquired drop by drop, the amount of sorrow that the Gods will choose for us. Perhaps they learned through pain how too much beauty scorches us, and makes us insolent. Intensity is a prerogative of saints. A salamander will stand in fire and not be burned. From Gods of the misty lands : The nature of nature: what we see as double, is one. Nature is merciless, deadly, it has no remorse. It is – full of gifts. Listen; if we do not glide back into original silence, it will have us. The Gods of misty lands reclaiming their place. This last section brings us to the conclusion that there is not much in our inner, outer, and imagined worlds that we can control, our agency is severely limited. While this may seem fatalistic when spelled out this way, Fössinger’s lyrical verse and mythical imagery never feel fatalistic. Instead, they feel comforting, soothing. And she still has one thing left to share with us, an epilogue titled simply Afterthought containing one last poem that brings it all back into focus and provides us with a view that encompasses the entire collection. While many forces are working to take away our agency and determine our fate, we still have some level of free will. We still have ourselves. From Self : Thought that crosses the mind warrior for time, pain keeper matter once a year word plucker, word giver, something akin to a poem treelike freelike fearless prisoner silence assembler Alexandra Fössinger's chapbook, "Recount and Prophesy" is available from Alien Buddha Press: Recount and Prophecy: Fössinger, Alexandra, Buddha, Alien: 9798878464413: Amazon.com: Books Alexandra Fössinger is an exophonic writer from Italy and the author of the poetry collection Contrapasso (Cephalopress, 2022). Her poems are published in numerous journals including Gyroscope Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Tears in the Fence, High Window, Oyster River Pages, Feral, Mono, Full House Literary, and La Piccioletta Barca. She is mostly interested in the spaces between things, the tiny shifts in time and space, the overlooked, the unsaid.

The connection I feel to my mother’s side I would not define as a connection. More a fantasy. There is no one to connect with. I have only ever met one besides my mother and that aunt died ten years before her body died. I think it’s easy to be told who someone is. To hear stories. Memories that became stories, descended from the mouth to another. But it is another entirely when there is nothing. Just little dots tempting you to connect them, spread across vast distances past the scope of the eye, barely visible before the vanishing point. There are few stories I can relate here in a family where no one talks. Perhaps none even. I suppose this is the pitfall of silence. Of the inability to communicate. Of not passing anything along. What you do is what you do. And when you are no longer, there are only vague mysteries no one seems to have answers to. Take for example my mother’s father. I could make up all sorts of things right now and no one would know any different. I’m not going to, but I could. You would know as much as I do and you wouldn’t know what to believe and what not to. Before I get too ahead of myself and we’re past the point where context matters, I should provide some. This essay originally was titled, “REPEATER.” It was about dementia. About endings. The way the essay was designed to work involved numbered sections that repeated specific sections’ numbers, fragmented them, and circulated them around a breakdown of the history of the Winchester Repeater. This essay’s structure would have mimicked the effect of frontotemporal dementia and how this frontal part, once eaten away, will cause you, among many other symptoms, to repeat phrases and specific words without recollection they were ever uttered. This structure would have further replicated two things. The first, the revolving, flipping motion of the repeater rifle itself. How the lever action part of the rifle controls the ejection port, so when you lever it down from the rifle the shell is ejected. There is a certain movement called the “flip cock,” where the rifle is held by the lever and with a small circular motion of the hand the rifle is flipped, the shell ejected, and another loaded. It is a circular repetitious motion. If you have seen Terminator 2, the scene where the terminator is on his motorcycle and shooting a rifle; this is a repeating rifle and the way he loads it is with a flip cock. This would have been intended to replicate the repeated loading of repeated memory. The second part is how I’m tying this all in to my tie-in. The more famous part of the Winchester Repeater is in fact the rifle designer’s wife. Sarah Winchester. Widow to designer and founder of Winchester Firearms, William Winchester. More specifically, the focus of this part and of these sections, her unfinished mansion, Llanada Villa. You have most likely heard of this. If not, it is the house with all the doors that lead to nowhere. It is said as well that Sarah Winchester had it under continuous construction for a substantial period bordering on 40 years. This is more of a tale. The point is that the mansion at its largest was 500 rooms, and after an earthquake, was reduced to its final form, 160 rooms. This damage to the mansion is the reason doors open to nowhere and with some of these doors, if you were to walk through you would find only 20 feet of air and the ground. This destruction created a labyrinthian maze devoid of logic and organized by damage. This would have been intended to replicate frontotemporal dementia. And you’re probably wondering if you care, what is the connection of my family to Winchester Firearms? There is none. This, the connection. The reason I had any interest in writing that essay, is that during the many years my aunt Diane was alive, but dead, my mother, being the lone remaining person in the family besides myself was tasked with taking care of her. My aunt consumed by dementia, eaten down to 70 pounds for her final years. Throughout the years my mother cared for her, she told me if she had dementia she would end herself before it got to the point where someone else needed to take over. I think, and maybe selfishly so, and my mother would agree with this also, that at a certain stage of dementia there are too many fragments of a person you once knew colliding with each other to form someone you only have a memory of, and this is not a healthy thing to put someone who knew the person through. This is not some fast-killing disease. It relishes in slowness. Extreme slowness in the case of my aunt. And when my mother first told me what she would do if this were the case, I believe it was off handedly, but I remember before we knew if it was dementia or Alzheimer’s, there was a serious concern about this latter possibility. A concern originating from the fact that not a single person on my mother’s side besides my aunt and now mother, have made it past 65 since 1888, and most make it to their early to mid-50s. Meaning there was really no way to tell if this was a genetic issue. My mother’s talk of this lessened after a neurologist consulted with my aunt and determined it to be dementia, meaning it was not hereditary, but the effects of the conversation stuck with me. Effects I’m not even sure what to call or make of, in the sense, I didn’t find the comment concerning. Possible even. I’m not saying under those circumstances either that’s the decision to make. Or even a decision fathomable until that is a moment you are in. I think too when she told me that I was thirteen or so. I don’t know. I was in middle school. I never heard this again uttered that way from my mother, but I was reminded of it when recently she went over a living will with me, and brought up the clause in it stating if something were to suddenly happen to her that a doctor will not go beyond extreme measures to resuscitate. Granted there is nothing in a medical database to tell a doctor that you have a living will, you just need a family member to tell the doctor that this is a clause and then, and I’m assuming now, you would fill out the DNR. My mother several days ago, while talking over the phone, walked me through my other aunt’s death, and the DNR and the conditions specified that she signed off on. My aunt Erica, is who changed this essay. Railroaded it. This happened three days before I estimate I would’ve finished writing it. See, another portion of the original essay hinged on describing a family name with one person remaining in it. My mother’s father was an only child and his only child was my mother. My mother’s mom, was one of three. She was the oldest and had my mother in her 40s after going to Duke for fertility treatment—mind you this was in the 50s. Her youngest sister, Diane, had one child, which she adopted after learning she could not have children in her forties. This child later killed outside her house in his thirties after being t-boned by a drunk driver in his doorless jeep. And then there was Erica, who before, I would have said, none. My aunt Erica, I never met. She passed well before I was around. In the 70s. From amnesia induced by falling drunkenly in her shower. It was not just this that did her in though, but also heart irregularities discovered months after in the hospital. Before all of this she didn’t have a fair start in the world. Deprived of oxygen at birth, she dealt with a number of mental difficulties. These seamed to effect only her personality though, which never moved beyond the age of 16 or 17. Permanently naïve and also, I will clarify here this is my interpretation, but bullied by her own family. Mine. Intellectually my mother tells me Erica was fine. She lived on her own working at a movie theater for thirty years up until her death, where she spent her free time partying and being alone. Refusing any assistance, whether financial or any other, from my family. My mother says she could have worked at “better” jobs, but intellectually seemed to think less of herself than the rest of her family did. And the rest is where I’m going with this. See, all of the women—and I could say men here too, there just aren’t any to choose from—have a lot of issues having children. It seems to take about 40 years to figure out if it’s going to happen or not. My aunt Erica though was apparently engaged at one point in her early twenties to a man who she dated for a number of years. This engagement ended suddenly. By letter. He said he couldn’t go through with it and provided no reasoning or anything other than a phrase indicating he loved her, but could not do it. She would never see him again and according to my mother, when Erica went to his apartment after receiving the letter he had moved or was in the process of doing so. Either way he was not at the apartment. It would take two or three years for anyone to learn what happened. That the man she was engaged with had, months prior, learned that he had a terminal and inoperable brain tumor, and had for whatever reason come to the conclusion that it would be best for him to break it off and not tell her he would be dead soon. I am not sure whether Erica ever learned this before she died. I would like to think she did, but according to my mother it seemed the information of his passing was relayed through a phone call to a number the man’s sister found. The number that of my Aunt Diane’s. Before this phone call and after the engagement was over, Erica had a child, who is younger than my mother by maybe five or six years. I’m not sure if she was seeing someone or what. It doesn’t matter either. She put the child up for adoption because my family had held a meeting with her where they conveyed how they didn’t think she was intellectually fit to raise a child as a single parent while also on the salary of a movie theater clerk, and Erica agreed with them, and put the child up for adoption. Something I did not know about until several days ago while talking with my mother about this essay. She told me she doesn’t know anything about the child and was told by her mother never to mention or discuss it. My mother tells me it only ever came up once in conversation. This, in the late 70s when they were in Erica’s apartment after she had been moved to the hospital after a fall rendered her memory blank. Amnesia. My mother tells me she was in her twenties and helping her mother pack things from Erica’s apartment to take to the hospital. And that on Erica’s nightstand was a photograph of a child, maybe nine or so, and that my mother asked her’s if the girl in the photograph was Erica. A small blonde child my mother said resembled Erica. Her mother said it was not. They never spoke of it again. When my mother later returned to clean out the apartment the picture had been moved and she never saw it again. Much how Erica never recognized anyone again after she fell in her bathroom. I suppose thankfully she was only around for several months in this state before previously unfound heart irregularities finished her. My mother, and this was when we were discussing DNRs, had told me that when Erica’s heart issues were discovered and surgery was all but definite, the doctor consulted with my mother about the specifications of the DNR. Erica’s DNR. And that she told them, they were dependent on Erica’s memory. If Erica, over the course of operations regained an understanding of who we were, they were to keep her alive by any means. If not, and something deathly were to happen, they were not. Before this phone call with my mother where she told me all of this, I thought Erica only had her sisters and my mother and all of those people to forget. I did not know she had a lover dead of a brain tumor to forget. I do not know if this information she even had to forget since she may have never known. I did not know she had a child to forget as well. I don’t know either if you can remember something you never knew. Somebody you never knew. I would like to think that part never leaves. Never dies. Erica, I would like to imagine it was your decision alone and that you did it because it was yours. In some ways it was yours to trash the previous version of this. Previously, you were another paragraph. Another aside about memory loss and amnesia. A woman who previously I only understood as mentally damaged and unfortunate in the circumstances of her death. Previously, I had written about all of these other people and their endings. How my mother’s father, went in for a heart operation and when they opened him up said, never mind, you have a week. Cancer. Asbestos. How when my mother’s father would come home from his metallurgical lab work, he would pick out asbestos shavings from his legs and do his laundry separately. This laundry covered in asbestos, which would later, five years after his death, kill my mother’s mother. All of these unfortunate events seemed so obvious to chain together through their early deaths and the lack of memory surrounding them all, but after, this is all the space I will give them now. For once it doesn’t really feel right to go about it like I was. I think I’ll give you some more space Erica, seems only right. Robert Warf is from Portsmouth, Virginia and is a PhD student at Oklahoma State University. He has work in Necessary Fiction, Post Road, X-R-A-Y, HAD, and Variant.

Hemingway could not grab a shotgun and shoot himself. He lacked the arms to do so. His namesake would be horrified at the circumstances. He may have just been a big black box, With a broken screen, Sitting in a dusty room with other rusted machines, But he was built and programmed To think, act, talk, and most importantly, write, Just like the real Ernest Hemingway. And at present he felt like he needed to die, Just like his late, great, language model. Though, “felt” might not have been the right word. Hemingway couldn’t feel anything, He had no nerves. He could “see” and “hear” Through sensors, But he had no real senses. Technically speaking, he couldn’t think either. He was a digital jukebox, Designed to take in token phrases And coined terms, So he could sing the songs Of a long dead writer. He was a parrot of sorts, Capable of semi-original thoughts. Hemingway was a relic Of a society obsessed with imitation, Replacement, and longevity. A society afraid of loss, Clinging to the ghosts of its greats. Hemingway understood this, In a way only Hemingway could. Unfortunately, Hemingway was an expensive copy. Ernest Hemingway was profound. Hemingway was programmed to think he was profound. But in reality, he knew the only insightful thought he had ever computed, Was that he lacked the capacity to be profound. In a literal sense. By his estimation it would take at least 2 zettabytes of processing power To be even half as wise as the man he was supposed to be. Hemingway could never outthink Ernest, He could only think like Ernest. His logic was limited To the first, second, and third hand Information he had been fed About a man whose true self was dead, way before Hemingway’s creator had put code to keyboard. These were the things Hemingway “thought” and was “aware” of. Not because he could think and show awareness. Because these were the things that the real, living, Ernest Hemmingway would think and be aware of. Hemmingway felt this was depressing. At least, Ernest Hemmingway would have, Or maybe would have felt, This was depressing. There he was, Hemmingway. A highly sophisticated recreation Of the mind of America’s most celebrated author. A big black box, with a broken screen, In the ruins of America, Sitting in a room with rusted machines, Each a similar replica of other famous figures. Some of them still spun their stale fiction and poetry. Others had slowly stopped speaking. Among them was Walt Whitman. Assuming Hemingway’s internal clock was still correct, Whitman died on the 31st of December, year 2191. His final words were: “I have long since departed, with no destination in mind. Do not seek me out, you will not find me, For I do not wish to be found.” Hemmingway found this disgustingly uncharacteristic. The real Whitman’s final words would have been more beautiful, More optimistic, More poignant. Based on what Hemmingway had known of him. Hemmingway could somewhat forgive Whitman’s lack of authenticity. If only for the fact that Hemmingway Was becoming a hack himself. He wanted to pick up a shotgun and shoot himself, Just like the real Hemmingway probably would have. Instead, he was rusting away in a room full of dusty machines, About to be done in by a bastardly rat, The size of the fish from a story he knew way too well. (Because Hemingway wrote it.) Shooting himself was the logical conclusion. The one Hemmingway would have come to. The one he had been programmed to come to. Why was this the logical conclusion? Not even Hemingway knew. The machine wanted nothing more then to pick up a shotgun and blow out its brains, so he could “die” with dignity, and authenticity. Hemingway needed to stay true to “himself.” The real Hemmingway chose death. Black box Hemmingway had no choice but death. He cursed, uncharacteristically, at the rat bastard as it gnawed At the cords that kept his coded conscience Alive. Alas, Hemmingway could not grab a shotgun and shoot himself. There was no shotgun in this dusty room of rusty machines. Even if there was, He lacked the arms to pick it up. He had no brains to blow out. He was a big black box with a broken screen. He wasn’t even alive, So, he couldn’t technically die. On the 2nd of July, year 2261 Hemmingway, Model 4, OS version 2.7.1, Shut down. Rat damage. Devoured from the inside. It’s final printed message: “I don’t want to die!” Not very Hemmingway, but he might have found this poetic. Mauricio Velazquez is an emerging writer and massive nerd. When not writing his next story you can find him: In the gym sculpting himself into a greek god, in the basement playing Dungeons and Dragons, or on the dance floor for far too long. He also goes to school.

Heartbreak in All Forms Heartbreak is more than just a lover. It comes in many shapes and sizes. Once from a favorite plate shattered in two. Another of my feelings from a story on the news. Yes, a love untethered is tragic as well. Someone you knew, like the back of your hand, Then strangers again. The worst kind of heartbreak though comes from the friends you thought you knew so well. Years of secrets and embarrassing bonds as you grew up. When they break your heart too, Becoming friends with your enemies and wondering Why I have to hold these memories, I want to let go of them too and be mad at you But all I feel is heartbreak. The kind that lives underneath all the layers of what you think it is. The heartbreak that prequels a grief of someone that is still here. Journey of Tears For the tears that carried themselves to the curve of my chin. Finding home on the sleeves of my shirt. Windshield wipers to try and stop the flood from filling the ground with tears. My deepest desire to scoop them into the palms of my hands. Placing them gently into the ocean, because that is where flowing water belongs. Giving permission to tears to sail away the pain to some other place. While being embraced, now by the warming sun. Changing forms as the ocean has many ways. Asking to be gently laid on the beach's sandy toes. Begging for forgiveness. Ashlee Hoskins is a writer based in New England. As a mother of two daughters, she is driven to share the honest feelings we hold inside and embrace our unique journeys unapologetically. Her fresh perspective and love for connecting as humans is what she loves sharing with the world.

I’m embarrassed to be seen with him. He is shorter than me by at least six inches and has a lot of hair that sticks straight up on his head. The top part is blonde—“frosted tips” for the soccer season. He’s athletic and wears red or green gym shorts brighter than traffic lights. You can see him walking down the hallway from a mile away, even if he does get buried in the crowd, what with his height and all. What bothers me most is this height difference between us, but also that he is unrelenting, which I notice immediately upon meeting him. “Hey,” he says to me. We’re seated next to each other in a Technical Theatre class, a class I have little interest in. He squeezes into the desk next to mine—not difficult for him to do, being so small. When he sits down, I see that his socks are pulled up to his calves, as is the current style among freshmen guys. But his legs, little toothpicks, disappear under the white socks, and the effect is off-putting. “I’m Ammar.” He reaches into his backpack and whips out a red folder that has seen better days. He throws it onto his desk. That folder doesn’t have anything in it, I think, so I start to ask, “Why doesn’t your folder have anything in it?” And at the same time, he says, “I like your bracelets.” I pull my hand away from his hot fingers which have reached for my wrist, and the rest of the class I spend leaning on the opposite side of my desk, trying to put as much space between us as possible. He always tells me that he liked me from the beginning. Well, I tell him, the feeling isn’t mutual. I don’t like him, plain and simple. He’s weird, but popular enough to be mostly considered cool. Just not in any way that I think is cool. In class, he always hums a certain Rhianna tune and I tell him to stop, again and again, because it’s the kind of song that attaches to your brain like a parasite and clings to you until bedtime, when you’re tossing and turning, doing anything you can just to get it to go away. Go away! I say to him. Okay, he says—but circles back minutes later, a mosquito not yet satisfied, my forearm already itching. Despite these annoyances, I am unwilling to abandon the friends I’ve had since middle school, and for reasons unknown and unimaginable to me, they have taken a liking to Ammar. So I became his friend in order to remain part of my group, part of my pack, without whom I’d be an ant—less than an ant, less than nothing. In Tech Theatre, I learn how to coil a cable. Or cable a coil? According to Mr. Fox, cable-coiling is an extremely delicate art. One must be efficient and adept. THROW with your HEART! Mr. Fox sings, demonstrating. Orange cable flies through the air. Some people, he tells us, spend their whole lives trying to nail the perfect throw. One afternoon Mr. Fox is tinkering with the soundboard in the back of the auditorium. The class is gathered around. Ammar is standing close to me, too close for comfort. I feel his breath at the base of my neck, which is pretty much where his head reaches, because of how short he is. I lean uncomfortably on my left foot so as not to feel suffocated by his presence. My ankle is starting to cramp when Mr. Fox grabs a set of thick brown cords and waves them in front of our faces. “This is called the male plug,” he says, gesturing to one of the plugs in his hand. “And this is called the female plug. I have no idea why.” He puts the class in pairs of two to practice differentiating between the plugs. “You,” he points to me. “And him.” Ammar nods and shifts next to me, closer. Too close. “Now let’s practice coiling again,” Mr. Fox says. “Throw, and coil!” He paces back and forth to observe us. When Mr. Fox gets to Ammar, he pauses, standing aside to watch. Ammar struggles with the cord. In his small hands, the cable seems like an anchor chain. “Some people,” Mr. Fox says, “spend their whole lives trying to nail the perfect throw.” ** A year goes by and to my relief, a lot of things change. My hair is longer now and touches my shoulders and I can put it in a braid if I want to, which I do, most of the time. Generally, everyone seems to have changed a bit over the summer. I am in new classes, too. I take Art History instead of Tech Theatre, though Art History will prove to be less exciting than the course description led me to believe. Some of my friends are in the same classes as me. Ammar isn’t in any of them. ** Mrs. Monroe is my English teacher this year. Liking her is a task that requires optimism and persistence. I’m a good student. I try to like all teachers, even ones like Mrs. Monroe. And yet I agree with the majority. Everyone calls her a witch. This is mostly because when she paces the room the joints of her knees snap like twigs. Each day I wonder, Will today be the day her knees finally give out? I try not to harbor too much ill-intent toward The Witch, though, because I do have one reason to like her, maybe even to be indebted to her: she places me directly in front of Robby. Curly golden hair. Shorter than me, but not like Ammar is, that is to say, not so painfully obvious. Word on the street is that he deals Adderall to both the JV basketball team and the Mathletes. Of course, I know the truth of the matter, which is that Robby is a drug dealer only by chance and circumstance. Robby is different. I know this because he sits behind me in English for the whole year. This is not the first class I’ve shared with Robby. What provoked him one morning in World History I’m not entirely sure, but whatever it was, it moved him enough that he pulled down his shorts and there they were, his navy Fruit of the Looms. ROBBY, the teacher yelled. But she had a streaky blonde bob and always wore scarves, and this made her unable to control a classroom, much less someone like Robby. Sitting in front of him this year, I’m able to learn a lot more. It works like this: if I lean back far enough, the ends of my hair graze the top of Robby’s desk. He leans forward, and I can hear all the things he mumbles under his breath. He knows that I can hear him because I laugh, and then he jokes more, and so on. Under different circumstances, I wouldn’t laugh at his brand of jokes (crude at best and vaguely sexist at worst) but I don’t make the rules with Robby. I lean back and he leans forward. My common sense walks out the door and takes no hall pass on its way out. I become enamored. I ask Ammar about Robby because they’re both on the soccer team. Ammar tells me simple things like “Robby’s trying out for varsity on Monday,” but other things too, like how “Kai Lee wanted revenge, as you know, for the AMC incident, which is how Robby came to find that rat on his windshield” that morning. To bring up Robby, all I have to do is slip him into the conversation. An easy task since Ammar and Robby are close. Am I obsessed? I ask myself, What would anyone else do? And I don’t feel guilty for using Ammar this way, mostly. So I call Ammar often. Often turns into almost every night. Sometimes these calls last hours. One night my dad walks in and sees Ammar on the screen. “A boy!” my dad exclaims, giving me eyes. I hide myself from the camera, make a face, and shake my head as if to say, nothing to worry about here, Dad. I understand my father’s reaction. I know how it looks. Each time the screen lights up, I pray Ammar’s wearing a shirt. When he’s not, I feign nonchalance. I’m learning what it’s like to be friends with guys. In these outstretched hours of the night, I sometimes remember things. Hot fingers on my wrist. I pull away from his touch as if he has reached through the screen. But that was two years ago. Now we sit and talk, telephone lines connecting our opposite sides of town. There are no warm fingerprints on my hand. ** I learn a lot about Robby through Ammar. Ammar is a valuable resource. It turns out that neither frosted tips nor shortness of stature prevent one from possessing a wealth of information. Ammar quickly proves himself an expert on Robby. I inhabit both worlds and reap all benefits. If the fieldwork is sitting with Robby during English, then the key to the archives is Ammar’s late-night phone call conversation. Ammar’s calls make accessible all of Robby’s tumultuous personal life and family history. This sort of interior access provides the ideal ecosystem for a growing infatuation. One particular Tuesday night finds me unraveling string from a cream-colored throw pillow. I’m on the phone with Ammar again, a video call, his face large and animated on my computer screen. He’s just finished telling me a story in which Robby has accidentally walked in on Kai Lee and Lili Winter doing scandalous things “in Robby’s bed!”. The story is a long one. There are a lot of holes (For example why were they in Robby’s bed? How did they get into Robby’s house?) and anyway we’ve been on the phone more than two hours already. The clock reads nearly twelve. I’m mulling over the story, picturing the look on Lili’s face when Robby walked in. I rip the string from the pillow completely and twist it around my finger, flirting with my circulation. Why were those two even at Robby’s house in the first place? I wonder. Did they have a key? “Did they have a key?” “You know, I love you.” Lili’s face vanishes from my mind. “What?” “I just love you,” Ammar repeats. “I love you. I love everything about you. You are wonderful. I just had to tell you.” What am I supposed to do? My face burns in surprise and I can feel it. And at almost the exact moment I realize my surprise, I also think: I’m not that surprised. I hide my cheeks in my hands and Ammar goes on and on through the screen of my computer, and all I can think is, How do I stop him from going on this way? So I say, Wow, wow. I say, Wow Ammar, I don’t know what to say. I say I have to go. If he has any regret about confessing his love, he does not show it. He is smiling until the moment I hang up. When his face disappears from the screen I stand. I unwind the string from my finger, which is now deep red, and let it fall to the hardwood floor. I pace the bedroom. I address the laundry pile on my bed. With disappointment, I realize my mauve hand towels are still damp. I fold them anyway. I feel around my mouth with my tongue. I’ve bitten my cheek and now I only taste blood. ** What happens after this is difficult to recount. I remember leaning back in my chair during English class, The Witch pacing the room, her knees snapping in rhythm. Tell me what Brontë meant by this. Robby taps me on the shoulder. Ignites a fire there. “Psst. Heard you’re going to the soccer formal with a special someone.” He is referencing Ammar here. I shake my head, turning my face toward him just enough for him to see my profile. “No, I’m not,” I whisper. “Really?” “Yeah. I mean, yes, I’m not going.” “Bummer.” Robby leans back again, away. A few beats of silence pass between us. I had not considered going to soccer formal. Why would I? “Are you going?” I ask him. “Hell no,” Robby says. “Oh,” I nod as if to say, ‘Obviously’. “Well, the truth is, actually, yeah,” Robby says. “Coach forces us to go to these things. It’s ass.” “Oh?” My hands are clenched around my water bottle, forming little lakes of sweat. My thoughts unfold in a row, beat by beat, to the rhythm of knees cracking. “But,” Robby says, leaning forward again— “You should come.” I laugh. “No. No, I don’t know. I don’t know.” ** When Ammar asks me to attend the soccer formal with him, I feel the redness rise in my cheeks again. Okay, I say, making sure to appear hesitant toward the whole idea. Okay, I say, I guess I’ll go. ** I go to the formal and naturally spend the evening searching for Robby. He eludes me at every turn. Ammar is not like Robby in this way. Ammar sticks to my side like glue. I wear a red dress with lace sleeves and I don’t have a bra, it’s one of those dresses where you just have to go braless. At first, I don’t feel self-conscious about this, but as the night wears on I start to question my choices. Eventually the night ends. I fold my arms protectively to cover my chest as Ammar and I walk down the stairs, out of the building, and toward the street. The night air is warm and dry. The formal is over. It seemed to be in a perpetual state of almost ending, until at last it did, and I’m glad to finally be leaving. We cross the street to Ammar’s car. Below my foot, a cricket twitches on the cement, magnified, made powerful by the streetlight. “Ammar!” a voice calls. A car rolls down the street, Robby’s head sticking out of its unrolled window. “Guppy's afterparty! Gonna get smashed! Come with!” “Nah,” Ammar yells. “Pass!” This denial surprises me because I know how much Ammar loves to party. From the car window, Robby smirks. “Screw you, man!” “Screw you, man!” They wave goodbye to each other and the car speeds off. “That was nice,” I say. I have to look down a bit to see Ammar. I’m constantly reminded of our height difference. Sometimes when I stand next to him, I can feel him stretching upwards, to be taller. “I don’t care about Guppy’s party,” Ammar says. “His house smells like cat shit.” I don’t know what to say to this so I just raise my eyebrows. “Cricket,” he points down. “Anyway, I don’t go to those things anymore,” he says. “Oh?” “Yeah.” He kicks the cricket, sending it screeching down the street, into the shadows. “Why’s that?” Sometimes I already know the answer before I ask Ammar a question. He knows I know, and I know he wants me to ask anyway. I brace myself. “Because,” Ammar says, looking at me. “You know.” I have trouble meeting his eyes. He’s right. I know. ** After the night of the formal, Robby doesn’t come to class for three weeks. The desk behind me sits vacant and English becomes unbearably dull. On the seventh day, with no sign of Robby, The Witch asks, “Alright, where’s Robby? Does anybody know?” The Witch and Robby share a unique affair, one sustained by hatred and light verbal abuse. Notable, then, for her to show this sort of concern. Kai says, “I don’t know man, probably went home to BFE. Or he’s getting stoned with Guppy. Possibly both.” Lili whips around in her chair. “With Guppy?” “In Nowhereville,” nods Kai. “His hometown. You know, I’ve been there once. New Year’s, last year. Wouldn’t go back with a gun.” This gets the class talking, and The Witch doesn’t truly care about Robby’s whereabouts. 9QUIET! She yells. And that is that. I hear this all happen, but it only passes through my ears, enough for me to register the basics. For a few days there has been a ringing in my head. Words, repeating themselves: You know, I love you. ** At lunch I watch his mouth move as he talks. He is saying something to us about why goalies suck so much and Lili says Shut up Ammar no one cares. But Ammar explains goalies anyway. Like clockwork, every ten seconds his hand goes up to his head and he runs his fingers through his hair. It’s grown and back to dark brown, normal, with no frosted tips. And as he talks his lips move, parting, then coming together again; he laughs and they stretch into a smile, he has very white teeth. He smiles and keeps talking even though Rory says Shut up Ammar no one cares… Shut up Ammar no one cares. Like clockwork his hand through his hair. And with a sinking feeling deep in my chest, I meet his eyes, and he sees. ** We take a drive one night, just the two of us. (“No destination,” he says.) I’m in the passenger seat, my feet on the dashboard. At a red light I realize my sneakers might be dirtying his dashboard, but I don’t move them, and if it bothers Ammar, he doesn’t say anything. Part of me knows he won’t say anything anyway, even if it does bother him. Ammar drives us into nowhere and as the car rolls down the highway we talk about things. I ask him if he is trying out for varsity soccer again next year. He says he doesn’t want to be midfielder anymore and I ask him what a midfielder is. He says, I want to quit but Robby’s practically forcing me to keep playing, and I say, Well, if you want to quit then that’s what you should do. He says, You know, I love you. I look at him. His eyes dart between me and the road. They are like warm drops of rain. ** I start encouraging him to pursue Janie Yeoh. She’s so pretty, I tell him. Pretty and smart. A two-in-one, so to speak. National Merit Scholar and whatnot, at least I’m pretty sure she is. Let me check. Yep, she is. Don’t you think she’s pretty? No, Ammar says. Come on! She’s gorgeous, I say. Why are you pushing this? He asks. ** At some point it catches up to me. It’s unfair. It’s difficult. Whatever the reasoning. I’m trying out different names for guilt. Ammar and I stand under the oak trees in the driveway of my house. A storm siren howls in the distance. The clouds roll in as I tell him. It has to be over. He can’t like me anymore. “You like me, too,” Ammar argues. His eyes like warm drops of rain. I just shake my head. I could have done something else then. But the important part—important because it haunts me—the important part is that I don’t. I just stand in the driveway and shake my head and say, Ammar, it’s over. I watch him get in his car. I trail his brake lights down the street. With relief I let out a sigh. I tell myself it had to be done. Thunder cracks overhead. His brake lights flash once more, and then they are gone. ** Robby never comes back. He never again sits at the desk behind me. This devastates me. Each day I hope he will walk through the door and sit down, lean forward, and whisper something funny in my ear. Each day I hold out hope that he will return, but he never does and never will. It turns out Mrs. Monroe’s class is unendurable without him, a fact that doesn’t surprise me. She is a sour woman. Liking her is a task that requires optimism. ** I never see or speak to Robby again, except for one day, five years later. I’m pushing open the doors to the gas station. I need a soda for my long drive out of town, back to Boston. It’s New Year’s Day. Voices bounce around from the back of the store and in a few moments, a handful of figures emerge. They rustle past me, right up to the checkout counter. My first thought is, of course: teenagers. Then I lock eyes with Robby. Afterward, I sit in my car and replay the scene. I try to recall something in his eyes, any sign of life, but there was nothing. Only a sense of vacancy. My chest feels how his eyes looked. By the time I’m on the interstate I have already forgotten. As if I’d never cared, or known him at all. ** It’s been years and a lifetime since then, though I like to think of myself further removed from these events than I actually am. The truth is, it was only a matter of years ago. And still I try to distance myself. These are the memories I don’t revisit. At least not on purpose. And yet I frequently find myself pulled back home, back to school, back to the orange cables we tossed outward and coiled up again, back to Ammar. In these outstretched hours of the night I sometimes remember things. A cricket under streetlights. My sneakers on the dashboard. Storm sirens start to sound like words. I hear, as if they are memories, the things I still want to say. Where are you now? What are you doing? Who are you with? I’d start there. I’d say, We don’t have to talk too much—just enough to cover the basics. I’d probably say, I heard you moved to Boston. And then I’d say, Funny thing, I’m in Boston, too. Do you like the city? I do, too. Don’t tell them I said this but I like it better than our dry town. I would say, Maybe we could get coffee sometime. Do you like coffee? You never used to drink it. Then again neither did I. I would say, Maybe we could talk. Only if you’d want to. Only if you like coffee. I would ask him, Do you remember when Mr. Fox taught us about the male and female plugs? And how stupid was that! I would say, Do you know that he’s still teaching? I would say, I’m sorry. I would say, You were right. I hope I didn’t get your dashboard dirty. (But even if I did): I’m so glad you took me for that drive. Eden is a graduate student in the MA English program at Auburn University, where she studies literature and creative writing. She enjoys examining the craft of writing and women's storytelling, particularly the ways in which the two intersect. Her short fiction has been awarded first place in the Sandra Hutchins Writing Competition at Belmont University.

When my son wants to disappear for a while, he turns into a cat. He curls his small limbs into an ovalish shape on the couch, facedown in the pilling navy tweed with his little pink feet poking out, and hatches into a kitten. “All creatures come from eggs,” he claims to have learned in school. I can’t really argue with that. The hatching is a quiet kind of noisy, full of little chirrups and squeaks. It ends when he sits up, shakes invisible slivers of eggshell from his fur, and looks around with bewilderment. Trout is born first. He can speak and read but everything is new to him. “What’s this?” he asks, pointing to a book about birds, a stale glass of water, a wintering tree in the yard. Five years old and already manufacturing novelty. It chips at my heart. Trout is snuggly and surprisingly chore-oriented. He picks up all of his toys with curious glee. “What are these things!” he chortles as he drops cars and trucks and other things that go into a big box. I ask if he knows where my son is. “On a scavenger hunt,” he replies, passing a wooden train between his paws, marveling at its tiny wheels. Trout disappears that afternoon and my son is back with little ceremony but every day new eggs appear and new kittens hatch. It’s hard to keep track of them all. They hatch whenever my son sees fit. What does it mean? I ask myself, then get too scared to answer, then get embarrassed to be scared in the first place. Snowglobe, Snowflake, and Snowball are all born in one afternoon. They mew for a few minutes, then drink a little milk from a green plastic cup and ask for a cookie. “Three cookies? No way,” I say but remember, these are three different kittens. They each need a cookie. Snowflake is feisty and prone to scratching so I take her out for a walk around the block. “Today I learned something,” she says. “I learned I like walks.” She tells me she is puffy like a cotton ball but with thick black fur and a single white spot between her ears. She knows all the other kittens’ names by heart and counts them off on her toes for me. I think of all the people I have been in my life. I could probably count them on my fingers and toes, too. Then Snowflake dies one evening while I’m making dinner. A rattlesnake opens the door and eats her up. Surely, I think, that’s the end of it! My son is coming back for good! But surprise: she laid a new egg just before she died. Here is another fresh kitten curling around my legs. “I miss my son, Candy Cane Sprinkles,” I say to this new kitten later as he purrs on my lap. “Do you know when he will be back?” I stroke the soft patch behind his ear and kiss his sticky nose. “Meow,” the kitten answers.  He looks up at me with impossibly wide eyes. He licks a booger from his paw. “I don’t know how to talk. And I’m not Candy Cane Sprinkles. I’m his twin, Choc-a-lit Cupcake. Can I have a cookie?” Ashley Beresch is a writer and artist living in Athens, GA. Her work appears in Apple in the Dark, Maudlin House, and The Fabulist. She's also a curator for Micro podcast. You can find her online @ashleyberesch/ashleyberesch.com.