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That year morphine became a minuet, Sweet pianissimo. Its soft pedals stilled Anguish, reproached relentless timekeeping — Tick, tick — mortality’s metronome. Before my mother died at home, she learned That cancer’s like a Depression Era Endurance contest: the dance marathon, Odds stacked against her, swaying in slow mode. Despite defiant hair, a plump physique Deceiving guests, illness hokey-pokeyed Her organs, shook breasts off, rhumbaed her cells, Vitality an unremembered song, Mere noise until sweet exhalations ceased. Her corpse was wheeled away. The tempo changed. Dynamic force reclaimed the rooms, infirm No longer. Energy expressed intent As if Mom were at a debutante’s ball, Star of the floor show, sequined, applauded. The mind’s embrasures, freed from pain’s embrace, Seek entertainment, longing to erase What’s real. Belonging to another realm — Where everyone’s transparent —Mom’s got plans She’s telepathed. But first she wants to dance. A coldness sidles up to seize my hand. 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 WhoWere 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.

The Monster of Old It was a horrifying creature, long pointed nose, buzzing wings, eyes deep black in a circle of garish red. I didn’t dare raise a hand against it, for it filled my ears with a raw hiss, and I froze as it circled me, seeking out a strip of bare skin for landing. Then my father chased it with rolled-up newspaper, before thwacking it to death against the kitchen wall. “Don’t be such a sook,” my father said to me. ‘It’s harmless.” Years later, that insect became the beast in this story I was writing. My monster was huge, bloodthirsty, and threatened all of mankind. It had honed its threat, whetted its appetites, acuminated its ambitions, back in my childhood. A Strangeness The morning looks familiar but feels different. I yawn as usual, rub my eyes, take one glance at the body in the bed beside me, before stumbling to the bathroom. Same body, same bed, same bathroom as it has been for the past ten years. So what’s changed? What is missing? Something is nagging at me. Something I should be aware of but can only draw a blank. The kitchen’s the same. So’s the coffee maker and my favorite cup. And the table. The chair. That song of the brewing java is the one that I’ve been humming all my life. Suitably wired with caffeine, it’s back to the bedroom, where I open the closet wide, grab shirt and slacks, shoes and socks, make myself presentable for the outside world. I peek out the window. That world is still there. So what’s wrong? It must be my companion. She’s always up by this. If this were sci-fi, she’d be an android that reached its end date and expired. If this were true crime, she’d have been smothered by an intruder during the night. If it were horror, she’d have every drop of blood drained from her veins. But it’s real life. She died of natural causes. A year to the day. That’s what it is. I forgot her anniversary.

An infant's preference to attend to events that are neither too simple nor too complex according to their current representation of the world(1) Talia watched the planet’s surface roll by, searching for clues under the cloud cover. She spotted some unusual red cloud formations, underlit with a darker green hue that reminded her of pohutukawa trees, and she couldn’t stop looking at them. Pohutukawa bloomed at Christmas time in New Zealand—Christmas meant summer rain, mud everywhere, beaches, slathering on sunblock, the inevitable family tensions spilling over into squabbles. Dan hadn’t emerged yet, even though his alarm would have sounded at the same time hers did, more than an hour ago. Bloody Dan. Maybe this planet was just right for the colonization project: the most ambitious the S’rocket Lab had ever embarked on. All the drones sent out to gather audiovisuals and samples had confirmed the findings of liquid water, breathable atmosphere, and no sentient life. Nothing found moving, crawling or flying—no heat sigs identified as showing animal characteristics. It was a planet of vegetation, a surprising amount of which tested fit for human consumption: perhaps because there’d been no animal life to munch on the plants, the plants hadn’t needed to evolve the kind of defence mechanisms favoured by plants on Earth. ------------------------- (1)Kidd, Celeste; Piantadosi, Steven T.; Aslin, Richard N. (23 May 2012). "The Goldilocks Effect: Human Infants Allocate Attention to Visual Sequences That Are Neither Too Simple Nor Too Complex" Defence mechanisms… Talia sighed. She didn’t really “get” Dan, even though they’d been through basic training together. He wasn’t bad-looking at all, but any attempt at conversation was like pulling teeth. When she’d seen the flight roster for this round, she’d rolled her eyes, knowing she probably wouldn’t be getting laid for the duration. And the outrigger ships were big, but they weren’t that big. Her finger beat a restless staccato on the porthole. Anyway, they were finally here, orbiting the first of the prospective worlds in the solar system they’d been assigned to review. Even with the outrigger’s brand-new slipstream drive it was a long way from the main galaxy hub station. Maybe this was the one. If it was, she’d get her cut of the rich bounty for such worlds, and the settlers might even name a mountain range or a continent after her. But in the unlikely event that there was any form of indigenous sentient life, they’d beat a hasty retreat, as Ethics required, and send in the diplomats instead. ‘Keen to get down there?’ Her head jerked in surprise at the loud interruption. Dan pushed himself off the wall to join her at the porthole. She noticed his chin was freshly shaved. ‘It’s been so long since we were on land.’ She grinned, although as usual he was avoiding eye contact. ‘Not sure I remember what that feels like.’ ‘It’ll feel different down there, in point eight grav,’ he pointed out. ‘Lighter than old Earth.’ You’re oddly chatty this morning, she thought, and gave a slight sniff, but couldn’t detect the presence of fresh alcohol molecules. ‘You worried about it?’ she prodded. He grunted, and they gazed down at the curve of Gliese 581c’s atmosphere, sharing a familiar silence. She couldn’t decide whether he was a natural loner, a natural arsehole, or simply didn’t like her. Either way, there was zero camaraderie. ‘Yeah, nah.’ She stretched her arms out over her head, fingertips brushing the wall, and caught Dan’s side eye. ‘Let’s go.’ There was no need to filter the atmosphere for breathability, but as a precaution they put on their full-body suits with rudimentary personal fields. Penetrating the atmosphere in the new anti-grav capsule was a much more soothing experience than the old pods had been. Talia buzzed with exhilaration as the gravity began to kick in within the unit: they had plenty of time to look around like gawking tourists at the sweeping red vistas under the clouds. There was the mountain, which dominated their planned landing spot. There was the foamy edge of the sea, with kelpy strands washing around in it. Dan looked even blanker than usual as he stared out the window. Talia wished she had someone to share the moment with. The AI brought them in to land with an almost imperceptible bump on the irregular surface of the rocks at the foot of the mountain. Under the capsule the rocks shifted; there was a single loud cracking sound, and then silence. Dan pressed the hatch button without waiting for her re-check and go-ahead as per protocol. Plonker. They were on edge, but that was exactly when it was important to stick to what they knew. Not that she’d report him for such a piddling infraction. The hatch hissed open, and the wind howled in. With the wind came a surreal, irrational feeling of danger. It was like Makara Beach on the southwest coast of the North Island, how the wind blasted you away, rocks and scree, and the wildness. This was a big planet, she reminded herself, and atmospheric conditions were liable to change. Red dust seemed to fling itself at them from every direction. In her mouth was a taste like acrid lemon. Funny, the drones hadn’t picked up any ambient lemon flavour... She mentally shrugged. There was only so much testing they could do. Their sensors continued to feedback the readings they’d been expecting: all levels normal, nothing flagged. Talia swivelled slowly, trying to tally up what she was seeing with the info dumps from the drones. Rocks, vegetation, and more rocks, interspersed with areas of fine red dust. The long vistas were blocked out by dust floating and hanging in the air, but out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of something moving. Something tiny and gleaming, like a little Christmas tree bauble—when she turned to look at it more closely, it was gone. Her anxiety kicked up another couple of notches. Dan was striding away up the slope of scree towards the mountain. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. He didn’t turn or give any sign he’d heard. Swearing under her breath, she scrambled after him. Her feeling of dread was worse than ever. Get out, get out fast, get out now, it told her. ‘Tali, look at that.’ He pointed to a large rock, which didn’t look much different to the others. ‘What am I looking at?’ ‘See that stuff under there? It’s one of the food sources the drones found. I’m gonna try some.’ ‘Not till we check…’ Dan was already scooping up some of the mossy substance from under the rock in his gloved hand. ‘Come on. The risk is negligible. My personal AI just all but confirmed it.’ Talia watched with disbelief as he opened his mouth piece, put it in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed, grinning. He’s a fricking loose cannon, she thought. ‘Think about it: I’m the first guy to ever—’ He staggered, clutching her arm and grasping his throat. ‘You all right?’ Idiot. She groped for her medsac. He straightened up, grinning even wider. ‘Relax. Just messin’ with ya.’ Picked a fine time to grow a personality. ‘Dan, this isn’t the time’—and that was when she saw it—a small beaky figure, darting along the rocks, with a blaze of red and white on its tiny head. ‘Dan, what the hell is that?’ ‘What?’ He looked blank again, and turned in a slow circle. It was gone. Talia fought down rising paranoia. ‘Dan, I’m getting the feeling—’ She stopped herself. ‘Does your mouth taste like lemon?’ ‘All I can taste now is that kack I just ate. Why?’ There it was again, scuttling along the rocks. ‘Kiwi Santa!’ she shouted. Dan swivelled towards it and managed to trip over his own feet, but it vanished in an instant. ‘What the actual fuck,’ Dan said slowly, as he got up and brushed himself off. It had been unmistakable: a kiwi bird in a Santa hat. ‘You saw that too?’ ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions,’ Talia said. Had Dan seen exactly what she’d seen? Obviously, it wasn’t a native bird. Could some environmental factor be the cause of a hallucination, which she had then suggested to Dan? Was this the defensive mechanism of a previously undetected species, one that the drones hadn’t picked up? Dread rippled through her belly again. ‘Dan, I really think we should get outta here.’ What am I saying? They’d come so far, they weren’t about to run off at the first sign of trouble, not without running all the diagnostics. They had to make a full report. Without warning, the flying motes of dust seemed to brake, stutter and hang in the air motionless, as Talia’s perception of time changed dramatically. She was immediately attentive, passive, expectant. She met Dan’s eyes, and for the first time she grasped the crushing weight of his insecurity, which directed most of his actions—he was exhausted from trying to show the world the man he should be, full of confidence, brave, smart, strong, which meant hiding anything that didn’t fit that picture, and under that lay anger that she hadn’t appreciated his efforts—but that didn’t matter. The important thing was… What was it? In pliant wonder, she reached out for any threads of sense, as the meaning she made of her life was stripped away from her like a well-worn T-shirt. Actually, the most important thing was… Was… She knew then, that it was Christmas morning. Christmas morning in Wellington. Fairy lights on a well-worn plastic tree. Waking up early to find a pillowcase down the end of the bed stuffed with presents. Fights and inevitable tears as the kids raced around, high on sugar. In the familiar scene, she now sensed an unseen force standing by, watching as a parent would, with something like an indulgent shrug. I wanted a bike, she pleaded with the force. A pink one, with pedals, a bell and a basket on the front. The force followed that thought down a rabbit hole, from her early aptitude for bike-fixing and then mods, to her years of engineering training, and then in excruciating detail through the plans of the capsule and the outrigger ship she knew so well. The slipstream drive. Helpless, she looked at Dan and saw his blink reflex stretch out to infinity. Then as the dust zoomed back into an indistinguishable blur, she felt a jolt of agony through her skull and staggered, bracing herself hands on knees. The dread hit with renewed ferocity. It was so awful and visceral that she cringed with her whole body. Her dad was so angry; he’d pushed her out the front door and locked it. Locked all the doors, closed all the windows, but she could still hear her mum screaming “Christmas is cancelled!” from inside. Get away. Run. Talia grabbed Dan’s arm, pulling him and then shoving his unresisting form down the slope. She skidded down the scree after him, past caring about details. They jostled each other at the door in their mad rush, and as the hatch whipped closed and the capsule began to lift, she could breathe again. Was this something too complex to comprehend—something their minds couldn’t handle in its raw state? It had to be some kind of sentience. Sentience, or an improbable mass hallucination induced by some unknown environmental factor, or both. It seemed safe to assume that they could write this world off and move on to the next. She licked her lips and tasted lemon. She’d do a full analysis, including toxicology. ‘Merry Christmas, Tali,’ Dan mumbled, very close to her ear, and she realized he was cuddling her from behind. Talia waited at least a full minute, feeling oddly comforted, before she pushed him away and gave him a light punch in the arm. Sharni Wilson is an Aotearoa New Zealand writer and a literary translator from the Japanese. Her work has appeared on the Reading Room and Ash Tales, among others. She can be found at sharniwilson.com.

Morning comes and gently we unravel— limbs knotted by close familiarity break free and fall straight into the sea of sheets we stained scarlet with secrets, rippling in folds to reveal our bare bones shivering, resembling derelict dwellings left too long in the storm. Skin and spirit separate once more and as soon as darkness falls, I must become the skeleton you hang in your closet.

Alex Frazier stared in from atop the mound as I settled into my crouch and rolled through the signs a second time. Behind Frazier, the vast expanse of Municipal Stadium’s blue outfield seats unfurled, crowned with a tangle of light stanchions that stretched into the high and cloudless sky. With 78,000 seats, it was easily the biggest place I’d ever played. But with only a thousand or so folks squinting and shifting in the sun, it felt empty, lonely even. *** Before the game, Coach Dietrich gathered us in the clubhouse. “This is what we worked for,” he growled. “Let’s get out there and play our game. Have fun,” he continued, “and soak in every minute. But,” his steely-blue eyes connected with each of us, “stay within yourselves and,” he added, finally, “believe.” I shuddered at that last word. Believe. “Now, c’mon,” Coach said. “Get in here.” He pulled off his cap and wiped his forehead on his three-quarter-length sleeve. “Let’s break it down.” We crowded around Coach, our hands flat, arms extended, lumped and bundled. I glanced down at the tiny, iron-on patch—a JP in black block letters—that sat just above the Cardinals script scrawled across my chest. It’d been three years since Jeffrey Phillips died, three years since I prayed and wished and hoped. And it’d been three years since none of it had worked. “Believe!” we shouted, and then headed up the tunnel, through the dugout, and onto the field. *** I signaled for a fastball, down and away. Alex Frazier nodded and went into his stretch. The batter was this big fucker named Trace Whitlock. He was a slugger—a right-hander with little speed and tons of power—and I didn’t want to get beat. Down and away was our best chance to get him and keep the game knotted at three. If we got him, we’d head to extras. I was set to lead off our half of the tenth. Then came our big guys. We’d chewed through most of their staff, and with no studs left, I figured we could win the thing, win the Midwest Club Championship and head to Nationals. But I couldn’t think about that. Not then, not with two outs and a runner on second. I had to stay sharp and be aware of the likelihood of a play at the plate since the runner—a speedster named Garrett Browning—would surely be moving on the pitch. Frazier hurled, and the ball spun backward toward my mitt. I sank low in my crouch, ready to get my thumb underneath the baseball. Whitlock, though, had other ideas. He went with pitch and sent a fading bleeder toward the foul line. In shallow right field, Brendan Mills read the pitch nicely and broke early. He stabbed the ball on its second bounce, and drifted into foul territory. As a left-hander with a fairly strong arm, he immediately planted to throw home. But Garrett Browning was flying. I watched him hit third just as Mills gloved the ball. I saw, too, the hefty Whitlock round first, confident that Mills’ throw was headed home. Getting Browning at the plate would be tough, I thought, but Whitlock, I noticed, had slowed on his way to second base. If Mills went to second, we could get Whitlock before Browning crossed. “Two! Two! Two!” I shouted. Mills adjusted and delivered to second base. A perfect throw might’ve nabbed Whitlock. But Mills’ readjustment took something off, and Whitlock slid feet first just under Byron Jackson’s tag. A beat or two afterward, Garrett Browning swept across the plate and won the game. Whitlock, Browning, and the rest of them moved on. We were done. My stomach knotted, and for a few seconds, I thought I might break apart. I walked off, down into the dugout, and through the tunnel. The clubbies told us there were rats down there, and I wondered as I pulled off my gear if the rats were angry at us for being there, for disturbing them with light and noise while the Indians were away. Or maybe they were disappointed. I thought of all the rats, huddled somewhere, disappointed at the way we’d played—at the way I’d played there at the end. Maybe, I thought, they’d all left our clubhouse for the first-base side, the winner’s side. We even lost the rats, I thought as I unfastened my shin guards and dropped them on the floor. We lost the goddamned clubhouse rats. But Coach Dietrich tried to pick me up. He assured me I’d made a baseball play. Hollings Dietrich played second base for eleven seasons across three different Minor League organizations. Twice he made it to AAA, and once he got a September call-up. “Look,” he said, his hand on my shoulder as we boarded the bus in the bowels of the stadium, “you made a tough call in a tight spot.” He smiled. “That’s all you can do. It’s all anybody can do.” But despite that, despite what he and others said, I couldn’t help but think that the loss was my fault. I replayed the moment over and over on the drive home and then that night in my room as I lay in bed: I should’ve just let Mills come home with his throw. We might’ve gotten Browning at the plate and kept the score knotted. As much as I tried not to second-guess my choice, I just couldn’t stop myself. Over and over, I thought about that at-bat and what came immediately after. I slowed it down, sped it up, paused it here and there. I wore that moment out from the inside. And I wondered if I just hadn’t believed enough—believed in myself, my teammates, and the moment. I thought about what Jeffrey Phillips might’ve said if he'd been there. Over the last year or so, I'd found myself thinking about Jeffrey less and less, which worried me; perhaps I was beginning to forget him. *** Jeffrey Phillips was only 13 when he died. The last time I saw him, he lay twisted in a hospital bed, gasping for air. I stared at him then, and I prayed because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I prayed as hard and as quickly as I could. Jeffrey was one hell of a ball player. At 13, he could flat out mash. Back then, we played on a 70-foot diamond. Most of the fences were 200, 225 feet. Jeffrey would blast dingers 250, 275, even 300 feet. They were moon shots, and they happened too regularly to be flukes or accidents. People wondered how far he'd go. People talked about him as if he was a sure thing. I suppose he might’ve been. *** About a week after Jeffrey Phillips’ funeral, I got up in the middle of the night, sat down at my desk, turned on my lamp, and made a list of all the things Jeffrey Phillips would never do again. Then, I made a list of all the things Jeffrey Phillips would never do at all. I’m not exactly sure why I made those lists, but I know that for a while they made me feel better. I didn’t feel good, but I felt better, as if writing down the things Jeffrey wouldn’t do somehow gave shape and substance to who he was. But then I kept writing and writing and writing—I wrote things I hardly understood—and the lists made me feel worse; they made me feel awful. So I stopped writing, and when I stopped writing I began to think about my prayers and why they hadn’t worked. I hardly prayed at all after that day, after the day Jeffrey died. *** I first read Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night on the bus ride down to Tampa before my second Minor League season—four years after that season-ending loss up in Cleveland at Municipal Stadium. I became obsessed with O’Neill’s characters—his parade of tragic, fringe dwellers—their disillusionment and despair. There was something about their persistence that could possibly empower my own. I wanted like hell to claw my way to the Big Leagues. But I wondered if my efforts were angling toward failure, spoiling the very marrow of my dreams. Persistence had become what I valued most; it became my measuring stick. My desire to relinquish outcomes offered some potential benefits, but I was too concerned with losing what I’d gained instead of gaining what I could lose, so I never fully reaped the benefits. The very promise of a next pitch, a next at-bat, a next game was an opportunity, but one I never really embraced. I stayed a baseball middle-classer; unwilling to push through success into the possibility of something more, something unknown. When I finally made it to the Bigs, I was terrified I wouldn’t last. My foundation, I feared, was far too fragile. I played one game in the Bigs. I had one single at-bat, nothing more. My Big League career stretched through portions of three separate days, but I actually only played for a grand total of about seven minutes. And I wouldn’t trade those seven minutes for anything. But what is seven minutes—a mere 420 seconds—in relation to all the time and energy and hoping and wishing and worrying, all the anxious, restless thoughts and uncertainty. For decades, I walked a tightrope between believing in myself and believing beyond myself. I was told, over and over and over again, that believing in myself was key. Everyone, it seemed, agreed. People talked about it all the time. But no one ever talked about what to do when believing in myself wasn’t quite enough. *** My Catholic schooling—all twelve years of it—was sewn through with a common thread: humility. Before long, though, I uncovered an impasse: Humility and belief in one’s self were nearly incompatible. I learned that I could believe in myself, but not to the point where my belief in myself superseded my belief in anything else. *** Back when I played for Hollings Dietrich, in-season workouts were held on Sunday mornings. Hollings would start things with a light jog, then a little bit of stretching before we hopped into our throwing progression. After that, it was square drill and hitting, hitting, hitting. We took so damn many swings those mornings. At first, the Sunday morning practices seemed strange. In time, though, that strangeness wore off. Hollings never referred to it as practice; instead, he called it church. “All of our faith,” he said at the beginning of our second or third practice, “lies here, “ he pointed, “here, between the foul lines. All our faith,” he smiled, “and belief. You gotta believe,” he added, “because ain’t no one else gonna do it for you.” Tommy Vollman is a writer, musician, and painter. For many years, he was a baseball player. He has written a number of things, published a bit, recorded a few records, and toured a lot. Tommy’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the “Best of the Net” anthology. His stories and nonfiction have appeared in The Southwest Review, Two Cities Review, Hobart, The Southeast Review, Palaver, and Per Contra. He has some black-ink tattoos on both of his arms. Tommy really likes A. Moonlight Graham, Kurt Vonnegut, Two Cow Garage, Tillie Olsen, Willy Vlautin, and Albert Camus. He's working on a short story collection and has a new record, Youth or Something Beautiful. He currently teaches English at Milwaukee Area Technical College and prefers to write with pens poached from hotel room cleaning carts.

Some houses on Harwood Avenue were louder than others. Some houses housed families with twelve to twenty raucous kids who were kicked out until dinner. Offspring were stumbling obstacles wrestling around Edgewood Park. Same damn clouds bristled and puffed all summer. Faces blustery and overfed. Tangled teeth, twisted jaws, and panic hooded themselves under manic curses between beer and cigarettes. Our house was a mausoleum. No one in the neighborhood had just five kids. I pretended there was another sibling besides the four I had. “Her name is Gertrude. We call her Gertie. She writes me every week.” “Where is she?” asked a kid I babysat, Madeline, who was nine and had eight brothers. “In Kazakhstan for pregnant girls. Gertie’s having twins. They need more kids in Kazakhstan, so she’s giving them up for charity.” “Where’s Kaziktown?” asked Madeline. “In Arkansas. She’ll be back sometime.” “Show me the letters.” “They’re in cursive. You couldn’t read them anyway.” Madeline believed anything I said. One of her brothers was almost sixteen, had three rolls on the back of his neck. One night he waited until I was on the way to the bathroom, snapped my head against the wall and lathered his tongue around the back of my throat, while groping my non-breast with his greasy, fat hand. I got why most of these parents had separate bedrooms. The mom paid ten bucks an hour to lock me and Madeline in the kid’s room with pizza and movies until they got home. I worked other babysitting jobs, but those parents were cheap. They only paid five bucks an hour and never offered food, so forced me to steal from them. I gorged on Pop-Tarts, ice cream, Fritos, potato chips, and drank through liquor cabinets. And searched over time for the treasure chest of items I found: a blue floppy dildo the size of a unicorn’s horn, a concertina, and three satin negligees in drawers and backs of closets. Found a porno DVD under one dad’s mattress. I watched it a few times before I took it to another babysitting job and tucked it under some other dad’s mattress. I liked to move stuff around. Replaced the porno with a Bible under the first dad’s mattress. He belted the shit out of seven jumpy kids. Wore loafers that looked like the hooves of a horse. I shared chips and ice cream with those sad kids. Booze was rampant in each house, so I barely made a dent. Sometimes I mixed up keys in hallways that paraded little brass hooks, took a few from one keychain, popped them onto another. A pair of one mom’s stilettos, all dust and stink like sweaty pantyhose in a hamper, were placed in the back of another dad’s closet. No sense in giving any of these cheapskates a fair shake until they opened their wallets and spilled out more cash.

Musing on a long ago winter, At the Amish farm house, A bird strikes the window pane, "Ach my!" my mother exclaims, "It is a death message!" The kitchen is now lit, By kerosene lamp light, A sudden knock on the door, My father receives the news gravely, Mom weeps softly, Occasionally over the years, A bird bangs against the window pane, "Ach!" Mom cries each time, While Dad answers the door, Musing on this winter night, As snow silvers the city skyline, A bird strikes the window pane, But no one knocks on my door. James Schwartz is a poet & author of various poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America (Kindle, 2011), Punatic (Writing Knights Press, 2019) & most recently Motor City Mix, Sunset in Rome (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), Long Lost Friend (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). literaryparty.blogspot.com @queeraspoetry

when i was in the eighth grade, i dressed up as a phoenix on the 31st of october, feathers saturated with marigold, tangerine, scarlet weaved through my light brown hair and plastered on an orange dress, with a pair of wings on my back, all worn with pride. it made carrying a backpack impossible, so i stuffed it in my locker and carried a pile of books that was taller than my torso back and forth across the courtyard from eight to three. there has to be a metaphor hidden in there somewhere, one apt, and astute, and obvious, but whenever i remember that day, i think of the foreshadowing instead: foreshadowing each touch that would set me on fire, every word that would set me ablaze, and the tears that would drench me in kerosene. it turns out, i was always a phoenix. i was never the kind to get knocked down, never the kind to dust myself off – no – i would burn, burn, burn like a raging wildfire until nothing remained but the ashes of a soul. it made me dramatic and loud, it made me seen as i suffered, but it also made me resilient and different from the rest – in a way, still fiercer than the flames that devoured me. remember me when you’re famous, my history teacher remarked that day, subtle and in passing but as sincere and simple as a message of love traced in fresh fallen snow — and with each reincarnation, every moment of that holiday, each bewildered stare, and the rare compliments are once again soldered into the walls of my mind. the years ahead would be increasingly difficult with the fires more common and the damage more acute, with the occasional casualty caught in the crosshairs of my fireball, but like anyone, i learn, i rebuild, i rise until again i fly, soaring high above toward a new future — wings outstretched, still as strong and bright as the day i first grew them in the eighth grade. Anna Kolczynska is a phoenix trapped in a human's body who loves to write poetry. She wrote this piece to illustrate how she discovered as a teenager that our experiences don't always just shape us, but destroy us to the point of rebirth. When she is not writing, Anna can be found exploring theme parks and city streets, making music, coding, and - of course - flying.

The man’s name was Ray; and he struggled, alone, through the drifting waves of coarse white sand. The desert was anonymous—the rocks and sand and scrub and occasional twisted naked tree had taken on the look and feel of everything else... distance fooled his eye, and before long he realized that he was right back where he’d started. He was walking over his own footprints. He sank to his knees—exhausted, fevered. Hopeless. But now, he noticed something new: Another set of prints. Small, barefoot ones; walking just to the left of his own tracks... always a few feet to the left. There was no other soul in sight, but the footprints were real enough. Get up, his inner self told him. Follow them. Hurry. There's someone else here. Maybe someone who knows the way out of this godforsaken featureless hell. So he followed them, racing the setting sun, until: They ended. Suddenly, they just stopped. Impossible. Ray knew whose prints they were: The great ball of fire burned the air as it sank below the sand to the west, and he found himself on his knees again. Exhausted. Unable to move. More tired than he’d ever been in fifty-some odd years. Slowly, blissful oblivion crawled over him. He could feel it seducing him as it came. He knew if he lay down he would never get up—and he didn't care. He could hear Kaylee calling to him out of the blackness. Her image danced in the periphery of his mind. She was tiny, her hair all in ponytails and the rhinestones on her sundress sparkling in the sunlight. She was smiling, waving. Happy to see her dad's buddy Ray. She was happy to see him. Then the blackness washed over him again. Just flashes now: The truck. Kaylee's sweet smile as he drove her home. Highway signs flashing by. Kaylee 's face, all gone pale now, not happy anymore, knowing that something was wrong. The desert road stretching on and on. The flat tire. Kaylee running from him. She was fast for such a little thing, but his legs were still longer. One more look on her tiny face—a scared look—and then blackness again. The shink of the shovel blade in the earth, the skrill sound of tumbling sand. More blackness. Ray thought at first that he’d woken up; but he could see Kaylee leaning over him as he lay there, so he knew he was still asleep because Kaylee was dead and buried. Yet here she was dead, buried, and smiling at him again. But it was a different kind of smile now, than before: void of anything resembling joy. A dark smile full of malice and vengeful glee. Ray had taken her good smile away from her, and now this horrid grimace was what was left. Her laughter tickled his ears, fading away as he woke up for real this time. Nothing. Not a sound. The desert should have sounds, even at night. Ray looked around. Little naked footprints. All around him. The sun was gone, now. He called her name. He screamed her name. He pleaded with her; he lied to her. Anything. He needed her. She came and went as she pleased here. This was her place now, this wasteland. Ray lay in the dark and listened to her bone china laughter echo all across the moonlit dunes, and he knew as certain as anything that they would find his bleached bones here one day, half-buried in the sand—but they would never find hers, because she was part of all this now. Jim Towns is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and artist. He lives in San Pedro CA with his wife and several mysterious cats.

Dead Man’s Quintet i. there’s pasta water / boiling on the stove / “your poems are mush” / my darker angel murmurs / you’d think that wisdom / came with age / but I have only tropes / to slide around / dream lover’s scalp / of hissing snakes / a pot of noodles / simmering ii. snow-salted branches like the gray in Dad’s / hair while he lived this winter is a shaggy / spruce I’m shaggy too and we are sprucing / up the house by sorting winter clothes / and making piles of giveaways my wife’s / got turtlenecks and sweaters stacked I offer / up four flowered shirts their brightness faded / styling out of date so much like me / a gauze-gray sky and every Friday black / my bedside-table catafalque of unread / books is gathering dust and casting shadow / listening to Brahms I miss Beethoven’s edge / which makes me think I sharpen worn-down wisdom / wear the pearls or else they lose their luster iii. Trey trotting with me / now he squats two turds / lie steaming in the snow / a metaphor I fear exploring / I look up away instead / gray sky Midwestern winter / age has taught me / how to love each change / yes even my imagined final one / no hurry it will come / a string quartet is humming / through my headphones / the cello like a low-voiced / woman in my bed / I’m only here to dream iv. sunshine and snowflakes come / and go awareness makes it so / and I am laboring / to make my strangled mind sky-sized / the book I’m reading now’s / high modernism footnotes fragments / and allusions like a person / traumatized / reminds me of a horror / film I saw last May called Men / and this reminds me of / a supermarket shooting / of another at a church / and yes the cellist / in that playlist string quartet is sawing / pine-boards for my coffin v. she’s cutting cookies trees and Santas / playlist rollicking snow blowing / like the ash of Armageddon / there’s still a cup of coffee left / to bend my mind stop worrying / what day this is such drifting hard / to know how much has fallen sideways / flakes or floaters in my eyes / our thoughts aren’t real remember this / mid-middle age its worry and / complacency complicity / in others’ suffering as well / I’m hardly tragic actually / already dead I wonder just / how long it’s been right all my life Family Matters Trauma, drama, dream. These family matters more familiar to me from movies or TV. What did I miss? A plane flying over the Mediterranean, the cabin losing pressure, the paper cup covering my nose and mouth, funneling oxygen. The airport in Athens, Mom buying me a keychain with a miniature harmonica attached. Earlier, in Frankfurt, Jean-Marie and I running the bases, round and round, at Dad’s army-post softball field, she afraid a plane would land on her head. Later, Ankara, me entering the house of Turkish friends, rose water sprinkled on me gets in my eyes, I cry. And later still, it’s Christine in an oxygen tent, her baby teeth bared, rotten brown from all the medicines. Why does my mind leap, hurt animal? Last night I dreamed I met a coyote in the woods, I thought it would fear me, run away, but no, it came on, bristling, grimacing, fanged, and fierce. My waking saved my life. Thomas Zimmerman (he/him) teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Big Windows Review https://thebigwindowsreview.com/ at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His poems have appeared recently in dadakuku, Sage Cigarettes, and The Unconventional Courier. His latest book is the poetry chapbook The House of Cerberus (Alien Buddha Press, 2022).

(advice from my 96-year-old father - in - law) Live simply. Eat plain food; porridge made with water, banana sandwiches, soup (tinned is fine); leave that last slice of cake for someone else. Read books borrowed from the library or bought for pennies in a charity shop, return them when you’re finished. Walk every day, come rain or shine; keep an eye on the sky so you know when to hang out your washing or if you’ll need a brolly. Talk to strangers in queues. Listen. Listen to the sea and the chatter of sparrows; they’re reliable and the gossip is harmless. Try and avoid the news; it will only make you cry. Kiss and make up, grudges are malignant Sing. Dance. Laugh. Feed the birds in the garden and chase the cat when it comes hunting the blackbird who lives under the bush. Leave the weeds for the bees and don’t dust away cobwebs. Spiders are good company in the cold winter months. Place flowers on the graves of loved ones, and tell their stories to your children. Good manners cost nothing so always say thank you. Note from author: My father-in-law turns 97 this year and is a remarkable man. I asked him recently what he thinks the secret to his good health is and he gave me some advice.

I remember my ninth birthday like it was yesterday, because I woke up that morning, and I started to wonder when my mom and dad would come in with a huge breakfast in tow, the kind of breakfast that could easily feed two or three of my brothers and sisters, but for some reason they expected me to eat all by myself that morning, even if I’d rather stuck to a cup of juice and eat more cake later when it’s time, and as soon as the sleep started to drain from my eyes I noticed the corner of my door creak open, and my thirteen year old sister Leyla walked in, camping herself at the foot of my bed, and slapped me right on my left calf, left out from under the blanket, which I had pulled up high toward my face in the night, and as I cried out, Leyla said, “Shh. It isn’t like you want everyone to know you’re awake yet. I just wanted to come in and wish you a happy birthday, dude. I remember turning nine like it was yesterday. It’s a big deal. You’re big now,” before stopping at the sound of Mom and Dad singing a birthday song I didn’t recognize, and when I tried to tell her not to slap me so hard next time, my thirteen year old sister just shushed me again, before finding a way to sneak back out of the bedroom, leaving my door open wide enough to see her play off to Mom and Dad being on this side of the house as just coming back from using the bathroom, which would have been a good enough story if anyone had heard a flush, but Mom and Dad were too distracted to question her further about it, being single-minded in their attempts to make me have what they saw as a good birthday, and as they entered my room I quickly scanned the tray Dad was carrying, seeing the expected omelet, pile of bacon, toast, fruit, and a glass of orange juice, but there was also something I wouldn’t have expected, a steaming mug, unusual since Mom and Dad never let any of us have any cocoa or anything of the like during the summertime, but all the same, Mom pulled the legs down on the bedtop tray as Dad unfolded the napkin, and they started singing, “Happy Birthday to You…Happy Birthday to You…” and when they were done, Dad asked me, “so, Justin, how does it feel to be nine? Last year of single digits!” and turned to Mom, and then the two just looked at each other and started giggling, but they didn’t tell me what the joke was, and I bet if I had asked they wouldn’t have told me anyways, because they probably just would have kept chuckling and said I’ll understand in a few years, but when I finally worked up the courage to ask, “What’s with the mug?” they managed to pull themselves out of it long enough for Dad to tell me, “Well, Justin, since you’re getting a little older, we figure today is as good of a day as any to give you a chance to try a real, grown up kind of drink,” and I asked, “So why is the beer steaming?” which just caused Mom and Dad to start howling in laughter all over again, until Mom managed to catch herself, and say, “Now, come on Justin. What kind of parents do you think we are? We’re not giving you alcohol. For Pete’s sake, you’re nine. This is just a little coffee. You always seemed so jealous when your older siblings join us for coffee on Sunday mornings, and your father and I decided you and your sister are old enough to give it a try. But whether or not you like it, you’ll be free to come sit with us during the coffee hour,” which got me wondering whether or not Jessica enjoyed the coffee, and whether or not Mom and Dad had even gone to visit her in her room yet, so I asked them, and Mom said, “Well, sweetie, your sister actually did like it quite a bit. Your dad and I are a little worried about how much she liked it—she was already asking for more before we left the room—but I think she’s going to be fine with what we’ve already given her, right honey? Right honey?” but Dad was distracted, looking at something on his phone before answering with a “Hoowha?” and apologizing for checking his fantasy baseball lineup while talking to me about my birthday, at which Mom looked kind of upset, but in that way where she was clearly trying to hide it from me, because I’m her kid, and if I’m not completely happy on my birthday she thinks my head is going to explode, whether or not it actually would, and as I tell them thank you for breakfast, I casually mention that I have not yet had the chance to get out of bed and use the restroom or brush my teeth or wash my face, to which Mom and Dad thankfully got the message and left me be to go bother Jessica some more, or else get my other siblings in line, or worse yet, start getting ready for the massive birthday blowout they were throwing for us later that day, a party where basically everyone we know was invited, which is not something I’ve ever asked for, or particularly enjoyed, but had put up a brave face about for the last few years, because I knew it was something Mom and Dad really liked, and in that moment I wondered what Jessica thought of the massive parties, whether or not all the effort that Mom and Dad went through for what essentially amounts to an afternoon of talking to people we didn’t know super well and eating a bunch of cheap catered food and waiting for people to go home bugged her, so I decided now was as good as anytime to go ask her, and on the way back from the bathroom, I decided to knock on her door, but she just yelled she was busy and she couldn’t talk to me right now and to go away, so I went back to my room to get some of the giant meal Mom and/or Dad cooked for me (since you could never quite tell which one of them did the cooking, unless you asked, and I didn’t really want to try that morning) and bring it downstairs to the kitchen, but as I crunched down on the toast, my older brothers Jimmy and Timmy came in, Jimmy the Junior Varsity QB, and Timmy his number crunching hype man, even though Timmy was the older of the two and would be going off to college next year, and while I was chewing, Jimmy started, “Hey bud. Happy Birthday. You know, I remember the day I turned nine like it was yesterday. Did I ever tell you about the way…”but as he dug into the story of how he scared off the neighbor’s dog for the umpteenth time, which is the kind of thing that only Jimmy finds impressive or funny or whatever it is that compels him to tell that story all the time, Timmy caught a look of how bored I was getting, and said, “Hey Jim. Why don’t you and I split this bacon and let Justin here sit in peace a while before the relatives start showing up in numbers?” all while handing him my bacon, the best part of the breakfast, and maybe the only part I actually wanted to eat besides the toast, so instead I just decided to down the orange juice and go to the living room to play some video games while I could still have free reign on the TV for a little bit, since I got Ultra Mega Shootastic Mania XIV as an early birthday present from Grandpa, which I convinced him was ok because the game was set in the Vietnam War, and hey, weren’t you in that war Grandpa, because I haven’t learned anything about it yet at school and I need something to start teaching me about it sooner or later, or else how are we going to be able to relate to one another, after all, and Grandpa was so angry at what those damn commies are teaching me in school nowadays anyways that he bought me the game right there on the spot, but I wasn’t allowed to open it until my actual birthday, which, was close enough to today, since today was the birthday party after all, or at least I thought it was ok until Grandpa came downstairs and saw me playing before launching into a speech about the lack of respect people my age have for our elders and the way it’s sending our country down the tube and that sooner or later we’ll be a bunch of words I’m not allowed to say, even just around Grandpa by himself, but as he was really getting blue in the face, Mom and Dad came downstairs, and I thought they were going to rescue me, but before long I was being sent back upstairs to put on proper clothes and wait quietly in my room until the party started, because I was grounded, even if that meant I still had to go to the party and see everyone, because after all, they were here to see me, and I needed to be a good host, even though, as I remind you, I was not the host of this party, because my parents were, and I was really not much more than a prop to show off how Mom and Dad really are the perfect model parents after all, and that things never went wrong here at the Collinson house, oh no, not even once, not even when I noticed my twin sister Jessica sneaking up the stairs with a big bundle of cotton candy in her hand, and another in her mouth, trying to act like it was no big deal and that she would be able to escape up the stairs unnoticed, even though half the bedroom doors were open and she would have to cross all of them to make it back to her bedroom unscathed, and just as I started to wonder how she was going to get away with this, she threw one of the bundles up over the banister and into my room, right where I had to dive onto the bean bag chair in order to catch it, but as I landed I made a big crash on the floor, which was right above the ceiling in the living room, in the same spot where I just got busted for playing Ultra Mega Shootastic Mania XIV a few minutes ago, which made my mom so angry she came to the staircase and shouted up to my room, “Now listen here, BUSTER, I won’t be putting up with any kind of attitude from here on out, because even though it is your birthday and your party, I’m putting in all this work, and so is your father (I guess), and our nice friends and relatives are taking precious time out of their Saturdays to come and see you. So, you know what? You’re going to behave yourself, or you’ll be grounded from now until you’re next birthday. How do you like that?” but before I could even shout down to apologize/make up some kind of excuse for the noise, I heard one of my mom’s friends ask, “Maura, do you really talk to your boy that way?” and my mom started to try to play it off like we were running lines for the school play I was being forced by her into trying out for (even though I’ve never had a dramatic bone in my body, and had never yet showed any interest in the theatre), but before I knew it I was being called downstairs by my mother to talk to some lady whose name I’d forgotten half a dozen times by then about a school play that didn’t exist while my mom ran back to the kitchen to fetch the trays of unpacked Lunchables, which my dad told me not to call unpacked Lunchables, even though, yes, that’s basically what they are, because grown-ups like to pretend they’re fancy even when they’re not, and that by calling attention to the fact they were Lunchables, I would be shattering the illusion for them, which would make them really sad at my birthday party, and that isn’t something I wanted to have happen, now was it, and I found myself having a hard time arguing with him, but this lady friend of my mom’s was so boring and I really just wanted to get back to my video game, but just as I managed to slip away to go back to the TV, I noticed Jimmy and Timmy wrapping up the wires on the controllers, and I shouted, “Hey! What are you doing?” which kind of startled Jimmy, who dropped my favorite controller, chipping the plastic on the corner where the heel of your left hand goes, while Timmy came and took me to the side, and started telling me, “Hey, I get it Justin. These parties kinda suck. But you gotta just put in the time to deal with Mom and Dad’s friends long enough for them to get kind of drunk in the backyard, and eventually, someone will fall in the pool—” “—and that’ll be super funny—” “—Hell yeah, it will. But anyways, you gotta just wait until one of them falls in the pool, because at that point, the grown ups are going to get really sad about being so drunk at a kid’s birthday party that they’ll all want to leave. And then you’ll have the house, and more importantly the TV, all to yourself,” he said, and when I asked him how he knew all that was going to happen, he told me that he remembers his ninth birthday like it was yesterday, and as soon as I started to gag at hearing that line again, he said, “I know. I know. Everyone’s telling you that today. It’s like there’s something in the air or whatever. But the point still stands. I’ve been to enough of these birthday parties for all of us now to know how they work. It’s time you knew, too,” and just then he stopped in front of me, and patted his hand on my chest three times, three little pats that let me know everything was going to be ok, the same way he used to pat me when I was little and stayed up too late watching a scary movie with Mom and Dad, and then I started to cry a little, so Timmy started to hug me and laugh a little, telling me, “it’s alright buddy. There, there. This is a party after all, not a funeral. There’s going to be cake later. Although, I guess we did have cake at Uncle Mort’s funeral three years ago…” but as he trailed off I centered myself, trying to march back upstairs to Jessica’s room to ask her what’s taking so long and when she was going to come downstairs and save me from all of these boring grown-ups, but when I knocked on the door, out came Leyla instead, which was weird, because Leyla and Jessica never got along, mostly on account of how Leyla always liked to pull on Jessica’s pigtails and Jessica always would make fun of Leyla for not having a boyfriend even though she’s a teenager and every teenager Jessica knew (which, at that time, was admittedly not many) had boyfriends, even the boy ones, but when Leyla came out of Jessica’s room, she looked kind of serious and confused as to why I would even be coming up to Jessica’s room to try to talk to her, like I was some kind of otherworldly species, but when I tried to tell her that I always come to Jessica’s room and talk to her, Leyla just told me, “Nope. Not today you don’t. Today, you go back downstairs and you be a good little host puppy for Mom and Dad [who, at that time, were showing off Jimmy’s latest football trophy to the friends of theirs who thought that kind of thing was cool]. Now, run along. Scram!” and as I confusedly walked back to the staircase caught a glimpse of the inside of Jessica’s room out of the corner of my eye, with Leyla walking in and closing the door softly behind her, but just beyond my field of view I saw a pair of hands, too small to be anyone but Jessica’s, cradling her favorite denim skirt, which had a big dark spot on it that I couldn’t remember having ever seen before, but just as Leyla finished closing the door I heard my Dad downstairs calling for me, “Justin! Justin? Where are you bud? Come say hi to Mr. Igmonius Wolfbane!” and just as I wondered what kind of name was Igmonius Wolfbane I saw my cousin Art dressed in what was clearly a rented clown’s outfit and a cheap-looking werewolf Halloween mask, but before I could even ask my Dad what was going on, Art chimed in, “Look, Peter, I’m sorry, but look at the kid. He doesn’t like this. I don’t know why I thought anyone would like this on their birthday. Hey, Justin, bud, I’m sorry I don’t have a better gift for you, I lost my job at the restaurant, and this was all I could put together for some birthday entertainment for you last minute. I was really hoping it would be more fun, and that you and your sis would actually like it,” to which, of course, I told him that I did, even though I’ve never been more acutely scared for my life than I was in that moment, and as he went to the bathroom in back of the house to get changed and go in the pool, he turned back around to tell me, “you know, I was just thinking that I ought to tell you about my ninth birthday, because it sure wasn’t as nice as this. You know, I remember my ninth birthday like it was yesterday…” and as he started to get into the story, my mom’s friend from earlier tapped cousin Art on the shoulder, which made him spin completely around suddenly, causing the werewolf mask to fall back on over his face, startling the woman, and making her creep backwards toward the pool, slowly at first, then faster as Art moved toward her to try to guide her away from crashing in the pool, until eventually Art bumped her in the chin trying to raise up his hands and help her, and she fell backlong in, making maybe the biggest splash I’ve ever seen a grown-up in the pool make in one fell swoop like that, causing a Jimmy and Timmy who were now doing their best to hide on the balcony overlooking the pool, to simultaneously yell, “BOOM, headshot!” and start howling with laughter, only to be caught in that moment by Dad, who shouted, “What the hell are you two doing up there anyways?” to which Jimmy and Timmy tried really hard to pretend like it was nothing, even as wisps of smoke left their hands and little bits of ash started to fall down on Art’s wolf mask and catching it on fire just a little causing him to misjudge the distance between the pool and fall in as well, all of which was especially weird because the burning mask smelled just awful, like a skunk had gotten loose in the backyard or something, and I guess Dad must have noticed because in an instant he was shouting about how Jimmy and Timmy were going to wish that they were doing nothing, because they would have plenty to do for him for a long time, every Saturday from now until the end of time, and as Art was putting out his wolf mask, Mom came out to the backyard carrying a tray of not-Lunchables, and asked, “What is going on here?” but instead of trying to explain it all to her, I just looked up and asked her if it would be alright if I could have some of her grown-up Lunchables, but she dropped the tray on the ground and all the good stuff got wet from the poolwater. All in all, a fun birthday, I guess! Ben Shahon is a writer whose work can be found across the web, the Simpsons columnist for The Daily Drunk, and EIC of JAKE. He learned to write at ASU, and holds an MFA from Emerson College. Ben lives and teaches in the Boston area.