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Late 50s: I was a Middle Child. Just a middle child. Special in that way. I was a middle child, by default. One of seven, the fourth in line, the first boy. Oh glory, a son to take over the farm! That never happened. But not really and truly in the middle, not the only one in the middle. By default, I became the middle child of seven, when there really were only six. Default. Whose fault? Late 60s: Middle, muddle, all in the mix. Pitter patter, what’s the matter? The oldest sister changed the order by an act. She became a mother when in her early teens. What to do? Where to go? The parents said that she and her unborn baby would always be loved and would stay in the family home. The family first, to hell with what people thought! The family would have a new baby. She would be special. She would have a home and a family. Within a few years my oldest sister left home; she could not bear being a teenage unwed mother. She wanted her wings; she took to flight. The baby was raised by my parents. My niece became my sister. Late 90s: By then both mother and father had passed away, before their time. I was still a middle child, with three siblings older and three siblings younger. A middle child by default. Middle, muddle, get in a huddle, there are storm clouds on the horizon! Tick tock. Time is passing. Click clock. Time passes. Lives pass over to the other side. Too soon. Still a middle child, but now one of four. I was a middle child. John RC Potter is an international educator from Canada, living in Istanbul. His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have been published in a range of magazines and journals, most recently in Blank Spaces, (“In Search of Alice Munro”, June 2023), Literary Yard (“She Got What She Deserved”, June 2023), Freedom Fiction (“The Mystery of the Dead-as-a-Doornail Author”, July 2023), and The Serulian (“The Memory Box”, September 2023). The author has over a dozen upcoming publications in the coming months, including an essay in The Montreal Review.

The house in Madison was loud and crowded with my aunt’s granddaughters, who were home indefinitely from school. Mom and I ended up eating lunch alone in the kitchen, while my aunt attempted to corral the girls into the living room for homework time. Mom was keeping nervously quiet; she had told Jimmy that he would have the house to himself for once, and so she didn’t know what else for us to do but hang around my aunt’s house until it was late enough to head back. It was Sunday, and a pandemic; there was nowhere else for us to kill time. I suggested, then, that I could make something for dinner that evening, which would require us to stop for some ingredients. Mom agreed immediately. “You could make your pizza,” she said, suddenly excited. “I’m always so jealous when I see the pictures.” I was about to say that I’d like to make something else, but then I thought about it. We had been hard pressed since I’d arrived to find anything that Jimmy and I would both enjoy, and pizza was vague enough to be just about anything. So I said, sure. Let’s do it. By two o’clock we were riding down the long stretch of Wisconsin dairyland back to their house in Illinois, looking for some good cheese. My phone led us to a farm store on the side of the highway amidst a sea of rolling hills. They appeared to all be different shades of green, varying by distance and the amount of sunlight. There was a small patch of dark cloud over the field ahead, but which appeared to be passing us by, like a ship sailing quietly in the distance. The store looked crowded so Mom and I waited around for a few minutes in the unpaved lot, looking this way and that over the hills and trying to keep the wind out of our hair. Wisconsin was turning out to be less flat than I’d thought. We used to drive out here when I was a kid, spending what felt like days trying to escape the same endless field of corn. That was the way I came to imagine the vast majority of America, from Pennsylvania all the way to the Rockies, one flat expanse with a road running through it. She asked what kind of cheese we should get for the pizza. I wanted to say something surprising—curds filled with briny olives; havarti infused with flakes of red hot pepper. But I knew it was just a question. Mom liked to hear me talk about cooking, which I had never enjoyed as a kid. I told her we should get something that would actually melt, and plain enough that Jimmy would consent to eat it. She allowed herself a chuckle. I was surprised how spending the day doing nothing could feel so pleasant. Our only objective had been to see the family, so now anything else felt like a surprise. The bell rang over the door and a couple came out with a large paper bag. We threw on our masks, peeked through the window, and went on inside. Mom was our designated shopper, so she went by herself into the Food Lion to grab the rest of the ingredients: canned tomatoes, assorted toppings, a few more packets of yeast. From there we rolled across the street to the gas station, where we chewed gum and sucked on Tic Tacs with our doors open, waiting for the pump to click. “We should watch something tonight,” I said, my thoughts having already wandered to that idle point after dinner when Mom and Jimmy watched television until they were tired enough for bed. “Sure,” she said, always amenable. “What do you wanna watch?” “I don’t know,” I sighed. “Whatever Jimmy won’t hate.” She scoffed, either at me or at Jimmy, I couldn’t tell. “You watch what you want to watch,” she said, “and he’ll be fine.” I didn’t think Jimmy would really hate anything, but he didn’t seem to care for much other than his lawn and watching old Westerns. He had each and every episode of Gunsmoke recorded on the DVR from when they’d aired on cable—rather than, say, owning them on DVD. The previous week I had put on a gritty sci-fi flick from the 70s, the old and grainy look of which I thought would appeal to the two of them; and Jimmy had clammed up, went off to bed early, as if I had made him watch something lewd. Since then I’d backed off, spending my nights outside taking walks around the neighborhood. On the final stretch of the drive I tried to make a mental list of the Westerns I wouldn’t mind seeing, but could only think of Back to the Future Part III and soon lost focus. With eyes closed I watched myself preparing the pizza, walking through each step and sorting out which could be done first and which would have to wait. I saw an empty kitchen with clean counters, all ready to be used. When we finally pulled back into the driveway, we saw that Jimmy had mown the lawn, laid down a fresh layer of mulch, and put up the new birdfeeder. In the garage were his dirty work boots, resting neatly beside the door. Back in Mom’s newly remodeled kitchen I cleaned up the detritus from breakfast, threw together my quickest recipe for dough, and checked the refrigerator to make sure we had everything. There were still hours before dinner, and I was trying to stay quiet so that Jimmy might feel like he still had the place to himself. He was in the living room watching his reruns, from which I could hear the faint buzz and bang of revolvers. Eventually I allowed myself to start on toppings, slicing up the vegetables and a pack of sausage and doling all of it into convenient little bowls. I had given up trying to think of something to watch, but then out of nowhere I remembered The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which my father had shown me in middle school. It struck me as one of my oldest and fondest memories, and yet I hadn’t thought of it in many years. I pictured Clint Eastwood squinting into the Spanish sun, a fedora casting shade across his face and a burnt cigarillo tucked in the corner of his mouth. It had all the hallmarks of Jimmy’s kind of thing: the outfits, the guns, the bleak waterless vistas. It felt strange to consider that we might both enjoy it. I figured that our enjoyment would be for completely different reasons—for all Jimmy would see was the imagery of the American West, while I would be privy to something else, some kind of art—and then I stopped. It all felt rather petty. Mom stopped in the kitchen to find some beer as she and Jimmy moved out to the porch for the remainder of the afternoon. The sun hung just over the neighbor’s roof, casting the backyard in a lazy kind of glow. “How you doing, hon?” she asked as she opened the fridge. “What does he want on his pizza?” I asked, looking up from the cutting board. “Like I know he only likes meat. But does he want the cheddar we bought? I think we have mozzarella in there, too.” She considered it for a moment, staring down at the case of Miller Lite on the bottom shelf. “Let me go ask,” she said, making a little rush out to the porch. I knew there was a stack of burger patties in the freezer that Jimmy would enjoy more than anything I might spend my afternoon preparing. It felt important for me to try. Mom came back into the kitchen without a word and went right back to the fridge. She began rummaging through the drawers, moving jars and tupperware to see into the depths. I didn’t know what she was looking for, but felt like I knew something about what she was going to say. “Do we have any slices of American?” she asked. “He says he only eats American cheese. I swear that I’ve seen him…” I thought about saying that American was not actually cheese, but I did not. I had put down the kitchen knife and was looking out the window above the counter. Jimmy was leaning back in his lawn chair in the middle of the porch, bathing in the warm light of the stained wood while behind him spread the canopy of an oak that stood at the end of the yard. Down the street would be the main road where there stood the general store, which would surely have big orange blocks of American cheese for burgers or sandwiches or whatever people used it for. Mom continued to mutter into the light of the refrigerator. “Didn’t we have some in here this morning?” “It’s fine,” I said, without looking away from the window. “I’ll run out.” “You don’t have to,” she said, unconvincingly. “He’ll be fine.” A few minutes later I was patting my pockets, checking for a wallet and phone. I continued to feel unsure of myself until I was out the back door, launching off the porch and already halfway across the freshly hewn lawn. It was a relief to really move, to stretch the legs, the blood rushing from head to toe. I felt the blades of grass, a pleasant kind of bristle, through the thin material of my shoes. “Make sure you have a mask!” Mom hollered, her voice drowning in the open air. I thought about how it must have sounded to the rest of the neighborhood, like a parent’s call to their child heading alone into town. I waved my hand through the air to show that I’d heard. I had yet to enter a grocery store since I’d left New Jersey. It felt strange to drift so absent-mindedly through the automatic doors, to not be rushing to get out as quickly as possible. The place was empty. How unbelievably pleasant to loiter in the snack aisle, debating with myself over the different varieties of chips. The alcohol here was slightly cheaper, and the dairy section felt incongruously large. My basket filled itself with unexpected purchases, and I left with bags in both hands. The sun had finally disappeared behind the houses and trees, while heat continued to radiate from the blacktop. I would have said there was a universal pleasure in the feeling of heading home to make dinner. Along the walk I reflected that my time with Mom and Jimmy had been restorative, if nothing else. It had given me so many long walks and good hours of sleep. I imagined saying these things to the two of them over the dinner table that night, because it was the kind of thing that would make Mom smile. It was after six by the time I got back into the kitchen. I went straight to work, cranking the oven and removing the cheese from the fridge. I thought about putting on some music but quickly forgot. Once I’d dusted the counter with flour and threw down the dough, all the extraneous thoughts fell obediently away. I struggled to get the first piece of dough into shape. The shortened rising period had made the texture slightly unfamiliar, though I was also out of practice. I knew the crowd wasn’t picky, but still I decided to make the second pie for Jimmy in the hope that it would come out looking more professional. I threw down the remainder of dough and topped it with sausage, the necessary layer of American cheese, and some shredded mozzarella which I was sure wouldn’t kill him. In the oven, the grease from the sausage spread out across the melted cheese, giving it a mouth-watering sheen that reminded me of late nights in New York. In the end some rather large bubbles rose in the crust, which pushed the toppings and cheese into piles and ruined my attempts at aesthetics. “Don’t worry,” Mom said, as we looked down at the pizzas on the table. “Your father used to love the bubbles.” She said this in a lower voice so that Jimmy, who was fetching the paper plates and an assortment of condiments from the fridge, didn’t hear. She was trying to make me feel better, but I’d heard this story before and wasn’t quite so sure that it was true. I gave a grunt and went back to making even slices with the pizza cutter. I took the slice with the largest and most unappealing bubble and dutifully set it on my own plate. Jimmy ate continuously and in silence, as usual, while Mom and I took time between each bite to smack our tongues and take sips of water. I kept my eyes to myself, as if I did not care what anyone thought. After a few bites I realized that the pizza was good. Maybe it was even really good. You couldn’t taste the difference between the varieties of cheese—they had all melted together and were now indistinct—but the crust had come out crispy and fluffy and flavorful, despite all the confidence I had not provided. Pizza speaks for itself, I thought. You just have to give it the chance. Finally I looked over to Jimmy’s plate. He was working diligently on his third slice and was heading for a fourth. I couldn’t help but notice the small lake of Ranch on his plate, into which he dipped each bite. I told myself this was understandable—everyone liked pizza differently. Even I used hot sauce every once in a while. “Good pizza, hon,” Mom said finally, wiping her hands after her first and only slice. Jimmy looked up, taking his cue. “Yeah, great job on the pizza, Jackie. You know I grew up with that deep-dish stuff—now that’s real good.” He paused then, mid-bite, worried that he had said something rude. “But I like this a lot, too,” he amended. “Really, really good stuff.” He continued on to his fourth slice. In a few minutes he was finished, wiping his fingers with a paper napkin. Then he stood up and began removing things from the table. Mom lingered for a moment, then got up to help. Together they put the kitchen back in order, moving things from one place to another until the counters were clean and the dishwasher was running. I sat in silence at the table under the slightly dim light of the chandelier, nibbling at my slice that was no longer warm and staring absently out the dining room window. I was imagining what we would look like from the street, my silhouette centered in that square of light while the profiles of Jimmy and my mother crossed through the smaller and more narrow rectangles of the kitchen. Surrounding it all would be nothing but a bluish darkness, that fuzzy world of a Polaroid taken at night in summer. Mom returned to her spot at the table, holding a bag of baby carrots she used for snacking. She offered them and I said no, thank you. We heard the TV come to life in the next room. “How’d you like the cheese?” she asked, finally. “It was good,” I said, trying to sound enthused. I looked down at my half-eaten slice, at the little air bubbles in the crust. I tried to say something, paused, then tried again. “The crust was pretty damn good, wasn’t it?” Mom smiled. “Yeah. I liked that it wasn’t too thick.” She bit in half a miniature carrot. “Did you still want to watch a movie?” I took my time wrapping up the leftovers and running my hands under some warm water at the sink. I brought a fresh bag of popcorn out to Mom on the couch, and she unironically gasped in excitement. She seemed too distracted to notice that I’d put on a hoodie and a pair of old flip flops. For a moment we all just stared at the television, waiting for me to decide whether I’d sit down or just walk away. “Jimmy said we can pause it whenever,” she said. “Just let us know what you want to watch.” Jimmy’s focus didn’t break from the screen. It was no longer Gunsmoke but still the American West, only newer and more colorful. A figure rode on horseback across a grassy field, with mountains in the background. It struck me as being Montana, to which I’d never been. I tried to imagine what it might be like for the three of us to stay up and watch a three-hour movie together, and it made me aware that I was very tired. I looked down and saw the part in Mom’s hair, her eyes lit from the screen, and a handful of yellow kernels. I looked back to the screen and saw a shiny pickup truck riding in the grassy field, which suddenly shattered the illusion of fantasy.

get rid of that picture convince my parents i’m fine kiss someone take apart an eraser put the eraser back together stop time make the perfect sandwich remember how to breathe restart time touch something i’m afraid of take something leave something lose something find something Abby Coe-Sullivan is a young poet/short story author based in California, U.S.A. Growing up, her best friends were Anne Shirley and Alice (formerly in Wonderland) and she adores a good grilled cheese sandwich.

The demon walks into the coffee shop and moves toward me, his cloven hooves tapping on the ceramic tile floor. He is late, and I will have to console him. For now, he is still walking, walking toward me. I stare at the stringy goatee hanging down from the indent beneath his lower lip, I stare at the patchy fur on his torso, I stare, I stare. He grins, and it tricks me. I forget why I am staring. His face. It is a blur. Blondish, reddish hair, pasty skin, and pinkish grin, a flash of wet shiny teeth, too white, too white to see. And all the while, he continues to move toward me. He gets closer. His pendulous belly, his round rump, his knobby knees sway with each clipped step. His blurred face smiles as if he’s won. I know what he is. I could banish him. I have a choice. I have a choice, and I let him stay. Let him slide next to me, let him knock a knee into me, let him press one furry thigh against me. I was never cursed, so I never knew I could be. The demon says. The demon says that I am pretty, and I am hungry so I eat his words. And his face is too close, and his body is too warm, and his breath is too dense, and he pushes the air down around me. He. He holds the air down around me. Shirley Chan is writing a memoir about growing up in a Chinese restaurant. She is an alum of Tin House and Writing by Writers Tomales Bay, a Rooted & Written fellow, and assistant prose editor for The ASP Bulletin. Her work has been published in Longleaf Review, Paranoid Tree, HAD, (mac)ro(mic), UX Collective, and NYC Midnight. When the words part of her brain needs a break, Shirley embroiders. Learn more at irleywrites.com and hang out on socials @irleywrites.

Here at the epicentre of all I sought are a million things I long to avoid, salvation only arriving through danger, suffering merely receding from my causation. Here in this green-tinted, fog-filled sprawl slipping beyond horizons whichever way I turn, let there be something, anything, that understands and have it guide me to where clarity might take over. Lawrence Moore writes from a loft study overlooking the coastal city of Portsmouth where he lives with his husband Matt and nine mostly well behaved cats. He has poetry published at, among others, Sarasvati, Pink Plastic House and The Madrigal. His first collection, Aerial Sweetshop, was released by Alien Buddha Press in January 2022. His Twitter handle is @LawrenceMooreUK

Abbie Hart (she/they) is a 19 year old poet from Houston, TX currently living in Worcester, MA. She has been published over 30 times, and is the editor in chief for the Literary Forest Poetry Magazine. In her spare time, she learns useless skills, daydreams about pottery, and does her best to be a nice warm soup. Her first chapbook, “head is a home,” is forthcoming through Bottlecap Press. Her website is abbiemhart.wordpress.com.

A woman with the ability to shoot milk from her nipples was arrested for assault Tuesday after temporarily blinding Congressman Roger Mashpee while he was enroute to a meeting with representatives from the dairy industry. Irene O'Meara, 31, was seen being ushered inside a police vehicle following her arrest. The three-year-old and infant with O’Meara at the time of her arrest were placed into the custody of O’Meara’s sister. The incident is believed to be part of a larger protest against Initiative 461, which would relabel all white potable beverages other than cow’s milk as mylk. This is said to include the liquid produced within human mammalian glands (the liquid formerly known as breastmilk). Candice Barnes is a congressional staffer who passed O’Meara earlier in the day. "She was pushing one of those double-seat red strollers up Capitol Hill. I thought she was a homeschool mom on a field trip. She looked tired. She certainly didn’t look like she was about to commit a crime," Barnes said. Others reported similar sentiments. Several remember seeing O’Meara open a single-serving box of soymilk and hand it to her preschool age child, who attempted to consume it but spilled most on his infant sibling while his mother, behind him, unbuttoned her shirt in order to deploy her nipple guns. “Yes, she’s had the milk-shooters her entire life, at least since she [developed]. No, there was never an issue growing up. My sister is extremely trustworthy and peaceful. She won’t use her nips unless she feels she has absolutely no other choice,” said Colleen Kampke, 34. Kampke added that her sister is “an awesome mama and an extremely informed consumer.” Women with the ability to shoot milk from their nipples is a rare but documented trait with recorded incidents dating back to at least 1566. Attempts to isolate and reproduce the ability had been a longtime focus of biologists and geneticists throughout the first half of the twentieth century. In 1929, an international team was assembled and assigned to the study. The end goal would have been an army of milk-shooting warriors. Progress on a lacto-army stalled when sufficient numbers of research subjects could not be located for study. Researchers followed up on countless“friend-of-a-friend” stories. Funding was cut when many of these turned out to be pornography. Mashpee’s wife, Brenda Miller-Mashpee, appeared at the family residence later in the day to give a statement to reporters. “I don’t understand why people are so upset. Milk is good for you. Drink your milk, kids,” Miller-Mashpee said. Members of the anti-dairy industry protest organization known as Milk-It report that O’Meara’s name was not listed as one of their contacts, but add that they allow members to enroll anonymously. According to Graham Stader, a representative with Milk-It, “We are against Initiative 461 as it seeks to lower the status of alternative milk products and preserve the role of cow’s milk as the only acceptable form of the beverage.” The story spread quickly on social media. Dozens of lookie-loos, apparently hoping for a repeat performance, gathered on the site Tuesday evening holding empty milk jugs and wearing swim goggles. Police cleared the area by nightfall and it has remained clear as of press time. Mashpee was treated at Slattering Memorial Hospital and released. No other injuries were reported. When Alice Kinerk is not writing fiction, she loves to play Scrabble. She recently memorized the two-word list, now she’s working on the three-letter words. She’s been published or has work forthcoming in Oyster River Pages, South Dakota Review, Rock Salt Journal, and elsewhere.

jumping spiders how to begin the story of that house, that house of never too much heady wine and hard cheese, house that thumped earth, wind & fire on repeat, its dappled chamois walls eternally itching to be disco lit, lava lamps swerving in purple counterpoint, house of sweat soaked bitter enders and stragglers, stray cats and terriers, house that saw more than its share of annual italian family melodrama at the holidays, its door slams as expected as nonna’s gnocchi or ma’s pizzaiola, house of the falling porch and squirrels in the crawlspace, always something lurking in the crevices, always something on the edge of broken, that house of love and lies, oh, how i loved and hated that house, that house of living breathing ghosts that knew a secret history, that house of no apologies, that house full of quiet dread and creeping, i kept a jelly jar by the bedroom window to catch and release all the frequent fliers and crawlers, those six-and eight-leggers who traveled through the cracks to set up shop in that house, how they filled the emptiness, those ladybugs by the dozens sunning on the sill all summer long, the bark beetles taking a break from devouring the giant beech tree, the occasional bumblebee losing its way from the daisies in the garden, once that house hosted a family of jumping spiders emerging behind the turbo toilet whose flush could wake our city block, it’s said that jumping spiders can see the moon, i scooped them up with the lid and set them free out back, thinking all they wanted was in and all i wanted was out of there. full malibu in my dreamhouse playtime with barbies always started with swimsuits & splits they pressed pink lips against lips against necks then full malibu striptease their hands stirred every part of their bodies fingers brushed wisps of blond hair pressed blonde hips legs interlaced rubbing tribbing breasts to breasts crotch to crotch lite brite threw primary colors on curves ken watched from the teal fashion closet on occasion barbie let g.i. joe take her from behind while her friends took turns pleasing her from the front then forgot about joe when it was naked girl time on pillows road trip ma & i are on the road to virginia beach got up at 5 a.m. to beat the traffic out of chicago packed the cooler with ice & tab & grabbed our bags with bikinis & cutoffs slipped into flipflops left a note for dad & marco & packed the corolla we take this trip every summer just us girls when we hit the skyway i load my yellow cassette deck cue freebird our theme song roll down the windows thick industrial air blows in our hair & ma smiling i see her soften flying far from our quiet home purple beech tree mourning doves sing perch-coo. b movie foreshadows crawl on anemone. grey nimbostratus shroud. the strong female lead lets her imagination run rampant in the blue hour. wears her cat eye thick & expertly winged. smokes only for glamour & atmosphere. excessive wardrobe changes dripping in zirconia & chameleon. the moon in a star turn all simmer & slink. gratuitous dark alley liaison a jump cut away. plot convoluted variation on a theme— girl sees impending doom but the patriarchy wears the white lab coats. she removes all sharp objects from the house in an overabundance of dream wringing. there will be a crime. the ocean will take the fall. it’s déjà vu all over again— the moon is the obvious suspect & no one ever sees it coming. Elle Cantwell is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in Ponder Review, December, Welter, HAD, and Barrelhouse, among other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and is a winner of the Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize. A freelance theatre director and educator, she lives in Santa Monica, California.

The first time I meet your baby, it spits up milk on my shirt. We might as well call it what it is. Vomit. Baby vomit. A spray of who knows what because it’s only on liquids right now, right? Regurgitated breast milk seeping through my shirt and bralette. Haha. Full circle. You laugh. I pull a towel I don’t think is clean from behind the couch cushion myself. You won’t take back the baby. I asked for this kind of treatment, coming over here now like this. With my nine hours of sleep and washed hair. With my button-up shirt that came off a hanger in the closet and not a pile of laundry on the bed. I came over with my man and somehow both the men have drifted away, nowhere to be seen. And they left the baby. To be closer to the breast, I’m sure — the breast with milk, not my dry breasts. My breasts that have nothing nourishing to offer. And maybe that’s why the baby threw up on me. Trying to ignite some unholy change in my cells. You won’t take back the baby no matter how much meaningful eye contact I make. You’re leaning your head on the back of your chair, shutting your eyes. I see the sleep come over you like a receding wave pulling the water out of grains of sand on the beach. The baby, now that its stomach is settled, is slowing down too. It becomes a still warm thing in my arms like it wants me to know it’s not just an it. It’s trying to lull me into love with its harmlessness, its little fingers, translucent eyelids, wisps of hair, and nostrils that move with each breath. The baby and you sleep. The vomit dries on my shirt. Thao Votang is a writer. Her work has been published in Salon, Hyperallergic, Sightlines, Southwest Contemporary, and Lucky Jefferson. Her first novel will be published July 2024 from Alcove Press.

I selected a table as if I were buying it, cleared a lipsticked memento of a previous meeting, held onto my phone. Stared through a window made foggy by rain. Was a café the right choice? She was often holding wine glasses in her profile photos, in which she pouted unsmilingly, arms around friends and family. I knew those photos as if they weremy tattoos, as if they were my scars. In mine, I was alone. I smoothed my hair, blonde like hers. The doors cleaved open. Without the glass divide, shelooked like me. Like me, without the scars. I stood up. Sam Szanto lives in Durham, UK. Her debut short story collection ‘If No One Speaks’ was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2022. Her collaborative poetry pamphlet, ‘Splashing Pink’, was published by Hedgehog Press in July 2023. Over 80 of her stories and poems have been published/ listed in competitions. In 2023, her novel ‘My Daughter’ was longlisted for both the Yeovil Prize and the Louise Walters Page 11 Competition. She won second prize in the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition 18 and wrote one of the winning entries to the Southport Writer’s Circle Competition. In 2022, she won the Mum Life Stories Microfiction Contest and the Shooter Flash Fiction Contest and was placed second in the Writer’s Mastermind Short Story Contest. Her short story collection "Courage" was a finalist in the 2021 St Lawrence Book Awards. As a poet, she has won the 2020 Charroux Prize for Poetry and the First Writers International Poetry Prize, and her poetry has appeared in a number of international literary journals including 'The North'.

BOB’S “VARSITY” BARBER SHOP was located on the corner of Barton Avenue And Tulare Street, in a small shopping center Next door to the Post Office, and across The street from Roosevelt High School. There were three barber-chairs, and eight seats For waiting customers.. A wall-length mirror hung behind the eight chairs, And a similar one in back of the barbers; Bob, and his brother-in-law, Hank, Both graduates of Moler Barber College. On the counter behind them were hair clippers, Brushes and combs, brilliantine, And Barbicide, hair crème, pomade, scissors, A shaving cup, and brush, a straight razor, And a hand-held barber mirror. Bob had a picture hanging By the mirror, so it could be seen From anywhere inside the shop, Of an aborigine from Borneo Showing his teeth, a bone in his nose, Under the picture it said, with a species Of blatant racism that those times Blindly excused: “Willie McCovey.” Near the bathroom, a box of men’s magazines Full of stories of fearless males, bloody murders, And mindless females with sleek and shapely bodies: Argosy, King, Sylk, and Buck magazines, The National Police Gazette. In those days, men got haircuts regularly. The chair by the door was reserved For Bob’s customers. Anyone else Went to Hank for a trim and straight-razor neck shave. Bob’s special customers talked in a secret code While they were getting their hair cut. Language of the cock-fighting operation Bob organized and ran every Sunday afternoon Out behind the large chicken coop, On his secluded five-acre place In the old winery district of rural Fresno. There were cash bets, whiskey drinking, A boisterous display that went on for hours, While roosters armed with sharpened spurs Fought a bloody fight until one was dead. The raucous disregard for life continued Until it was too dark to see. Varsity players from the teams At Roosevelt High School across the street Rarely patronized Bob’s Barber Shop. Occasionally, the DeVeaux brothers Might come in for a trim on Saturdays, But mostly there were neighborhood working men Who knew each other’s names. After Bob finished with a haircut, Dusting a clean-shaven neck with talc, He went to a glass jar on the counter And removed a long black comb From the disinfecting liquid, Shook the comb, and used it to rake back Both sides of his greased pompadour Then pulled the front outward and down So the long protrusion of lubricated hair Took on the shape of a cock’s sharpened spur. Stephen Barile, a Fresno native and poet, was educated in public schools. He attended Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, and California State University, Fresno. Stephen Barile taught writing at Madera Community College, and CSU Fresno. His poems have been published extensively. He lives and writes in Fresno.

Procrastination can sometimes pay off. I had on my list of things to do, to read the book of poetry “Apprenticed to the Night” by LindaAnn LoSchiavo for months. Due to life events that brought me to my knees, I was unable to sit down to fully devote my attention to it, until after my grandmother Maria Alessandra’s funeral. Much to my surprise, what awaited me was poetry with a vulnerable look at grief, trauma, and connection to Italian roots, in a way that walked me through my very similar life experience. Crossing continents and years, the reader is left searching their memories after each piece. As we try to find the significance of life, through our own understanding, through our past and those who came before, LoSchiavo is guiding us to the essence of meaning through her words in this collection. “Cassandra’s Curse” reads like a fable brought to you through the lens of a life lived. So universal, so common you can reach back and add to the poem with your own stories of being discounted or silenced in the face of real terror and the feeling of being unable to let go of the feeling of culpability. The sentiment of accepted reality vs. doom, about the message vs. the messenger fuels something in the experience of the poem. Or maybe I just love a poem with an air of inevitability. “Grampa Umberto’s Fig Trees” is another that connected with me on a personal level. My grandfather, Guiseppi Turchetti came over to the U.S. from Naples in 1924. He moved to an overpopulated city neighborhood in Western New York, yet he grew fig trees in his yard. The description of the attachment and pride, the care and the utter worship of these mythological trees that harken back to the homeland was exactly my experience watching my grandfather try to conquer nature. Umberto’s acknowledgment that despite all of this, it is eventually out of his control was profound for me. Similarly, my grandfather’s response to any setback in his life was “Eh, what are ya gonna do?” So real, so exquisitely accurate was LoShiavos’ language, that I found myself reading it aloud to anyone in my family who would listen. All of which said the same thing. “This is someone who knows.” Later in the collection, the theme continues, with sensuous “Sticky Figs”. This poem reads like the first taste of something seductive. Food and sex being cousins in the pleasure principle, LoSchiavo teases out the words, coercing recollection of your budding desire. The appetite, craving, ripeness, and fascination as we come into our bodies and beings exist throughout this piece. I felt it connected in very few words with my memory of coming to physical maturity earlier than my brain and emotions were ready. As a child reared in a Roman Catholic extended family, “Stained Lass” was one that made me think of all my years being raised by atheists in the traditions of my ancestors. All of the questions I had regarding dogma and patriarchy further alienated me from my roots. Especially the lack of control over one's autonomy given one must submit to power unseen and masculine. LoSchiavo’s line “Swore death would be “the best day” of your life sums up the disconnection with reality and with the now that, so elusive, escapes us all. This poem illuminates the tragedy of unchecked dogma and its effect on how we view ourselves from the wreckage. It is often said that life is a dance, but death? “My Mother’s Ghost Dancing” was published by The Roi Faineant Press, originally. I chose this poem as it felt so personal, as my grandmother was reaching the end of life, and my mother began her journey with careful navigation to reconcile who her mother once was, and who lay in the bed in hospice. The release of the shackles of the body that decays, and frankly, lets us down, to the free and floating spirit that is the very essence of who we are is a celebration in this piece. LoShiavo ‘waltzes’ right into the hard stuff, with that silver lining that there is freedom in death, and there is life after it. “Apprenticed to the Night” is a collection that holds no borders sacred. It flows gracefully and explores key and universal life experiences. As we all take our paths through loss and reflect on those who have shaped us, we can sometimes encounter feelings of disembodied grief. This collection brings you closer to the fire of what you know to be true, but that we sometimes must push out of our minds to survive; it is inevitable and out of our control that we all come from somewhere and we all leave for something else, but what happens in between is where we find the significance. The timing of this exploration and celebration of life, death, and everything in between is uncanny, and I am sure, LindaAnn LoSchiavo’s collection will be one that came in the nick of time for you as well. Native New Yorker LindaAnn LoSchiavo, a Pushcart Prize, Rhysling Award, Best of the Net, and Dwarf Stars nominee, is a member of SFPA, The British Fantasy Society, and The Dramatists Guild. Elgin Award winner "A Route Obscure and Lonely," "Concupiscent Consumption," "Women Who Were Warned," Firecracker Award, Balcones Poetry Prize, Quill and Ink, and IPPY Award nominee "Messengers of the Macabre" [co-written with David Davies], "Apprenticed to the Night" [Beacon Books, 2023], and "Felones de Se: Poems about Suicide" [Ukiyoto Publishing, 2023] are her latest poetry titles. Kellie Scott-Reed is AEIC of this here press, and host of “A Word?”. She has been. published in many cool places.