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In barely a whisper he muttered the cat’s name. She sat, ignoring him, by the sliding glass doors in the dining room, where out in the yard two crows against a backdrop of new snow had her full attention. An imperious exhaustion suddenly came over him, and for the first time that he could remember he felt with absolute certainty that he would never make it to the bed. There was still a little bourbon in the glass. I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink. No no no. The cat did not move as she watched the crows. There there, he thought. There there. Ralph’s has been widely published over the years, appearing most recently in The High Window (UK) with poems forthcoming soon in Plume (USA) and Queen's Quarterly (Canada). His latest collection is A Passable Man (2021), about which Nina MacLaughlin in The Boston Globe wrote "These are physical poems, attuned to natural rhythms and those rhythms' effects on spirit and body both. ...Quiet wisdom, which is the best kind of wisdom, lives in his lines."

It’s nighttime, and I sit wondering if I might be serial killered out here in my own backyard. It’s unlikely, I know. So I remind myself, and then try to fashion out of this shield a bunker, or a boat, or just a bigger shield. I think I’m really sad and the strange night bird is whortling like a cartoon version of itself in this world that feels too real to be real. And yet, tomorrow is trash day.  Rent is due. I have to remember to defrost the chicken. Because I am still alarmingly alive, while more of this world will disappear tomorrow. My cat is at the window looking out, his paw holding down the blinds, which he knows is not allowed, and his face is so excruciatingly sweet, I laugh because no one is seeing this but me, and maybe the feral cat on the shed roof, and maybe the cartoon night bird. If I screamed right now, maybe they would join. And more and more would open their throats and scream and it would travel around the world. And maybe it’s already begun in some other throat, and it’s on its way to me now. I’m ready for that ecstatic choir of screams to lend my voice to. For seeing my parents alive until they’re old. For a love that feels safe. Feral animals welcoming me to their home. And justice. Or vengeance. Or maybe a god holding justice and vengeance behind their back, and saying “Pick a hand,” and I say, “Right! No, left!” And we laugh and laugh.

Maybe I’ll never die. Or maybe I will. Unknown pulses push through the space I’m also in. Thank you. Love is different than I expected. Or maybe this is something else, something as yet undiscovered and it is my job to describe it and make it real? Well, it’s nice and terrible and begins in the blood at the back of my throat. The leaves fall into the lake. My daughter sighs in her sleep and says, just now as I’m writing in this notebook, “I kinda don’t feel like saying it.” She burrows deeper into her sick daytime sleep, mouth just open, sweaty hair starfished on the borrowed pillow. The fan circulates the air coming in from the open, screenless window. Everyone else has gone on a hike to the falls. I went outside and pressed my ear to an oak tree. I heard nothing but my own skin scraping the bark. Another leaf falls, but the lake caught the sun and sent shards of its light into the room. I asked my daughter, “Did a bird fly in?” And she said, “No.” Then, “Well, maybe.” She sleeps now. My father has stage three non-small cell lung cancer. I called him and left a message. When you pass through that membrane we can’t perceive you clearly or maybe at all. Will it be lonely? For you or for us? We probably have a few months before we find out. It’s hard to perceive how the time after will feel to whoever I am then. Who I am now will be gone. My daughter’s mouth moves but this time she doesn’t say anything. I’m not sad, really, and I’m trying out gratitude rather than panic. She turns, stretches, wakes a little at the noises of the other children returning from the falls. One says, “I’ll just wait in the crazy room,” and the other yells, “I’ll meet you down there!” My daughter, fully awake now, looks at me. “I didn’t know everyone left,” she says. “I heard them. Or I thought I did.” “Were you dreaming?” I ask. She thinks about it. “I just saw a bird!” She points to the open window. “Or maybe it was just something falling from the trees.” Travis Nichols is the author of two novels on Coffee House Press, Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder and The More You Ignore Me, as well as two poetry collections, Iowa (Letter Machine Editions) and See Me Improving (Copper Canyon Press). With Katie Geha, he co-edited the anthology Poets on Painters from Wichita State University Press and was the tour manager for the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour. He currently lives in Georgia and works for the humanitarian relief organization CARE.org.

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.