Beaten Down by Gary Beck
The myths of life do not reveal how to endure the intolerable. When the day's affront multiplies insolence, we fold our hands, nod heads in acceptance too beaten to resist, flee to…
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Issue #2
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Planned Obsolescence by Gary Beck
American's peculiar ideas have conditioned our belief in strategic bombing, so our leaders rant righteously while carrying a smaller stick, as we substitute technology for the human element, which allows us to…
Soldier’s Pay by Gary Beck
It is easy to forget casualties of war sitting in comfort far from danger zones. Shortly after World War II the nature of war changed and was no longer considered a national…
Drought by Barbara Braverman
There is a drought in the mountains and valleys of my writing room where Santa Ana winds whip through the window and leave dust balls that cower in the corner. My wastebasket…
White Doves Will Fly Above the Lie by P. M. Merlot
“White doves will fly from her wedding cake.” Those were words from a young mother’s dream of her daughter’s wedding day. My cousin’s words. An idea I could not imagine, but I…
Sadness, My Darling Waltz by Polly Buckingham
The violin plays sadness, my darling. A man returns from a place a bomb was dropped. The world will never again be what it once was. I arrange the pieces and retell…
Waking in a Church in Cedar Key by Polly Buckingham
first day of ground war, 1990 I'm standing on the outside of an old white house. My eyes look out the circles absent of dust on the windows, and my feet recover…
The Forgotten Land by Polly Buckingham
Here is where my heart beat outside my body. I could not stop ten years of motion, whole days swallowed by speed, hours lost and a mangle of names, Nick's, Munch's, Big…
Glass Pipe by Polly Buckingham
In a wide room of rain smells a gardenia bush grows between the floorboards. 2 AM: he stands, bends, sticks his thumb between the bricks in the road. Open window, empty attic…
Beaten Blues by Polly Buckingham
Don't call me, I don't want to cry no more. The fan's moaning 'cause the screws are loose, and the floor's wet with rain. Why'd you leave me, Baby? The fan's loose,…
Untitled by Tom Pescatore
Away from me you’ll fly, like this title, like my life, into the void, I have seen it happen, watch it happen now as snow sluggish, marches on white city from white…
23rd St. Works from Home by Tom Pescatore
23rd street fires, cars ablazin’, driver gettin’ his laundry and the story at the taco truck is building with each half known fact/each lie says, “anybody in there?” (the whole car is…
Dialogue by Mark J. Mitchell
—There is something you’ve forgotten, my friend. —I know. There was a book. —Yes. Small. Gold-bound. —That’s the one. My father’s first, one he found on some shelf in a sad ruined…
Baseball Weather by Mark J. Mitchell
The sky’s scrubbed clean as a five-sided dish. Birds have returned from the south and hold loud confabs in the trees. Moist air is cool and soft as newly oiled cowhide. It’s…
Beach Music by Mark J. Mitchell
She heard a fish song rising out of seaweed. She misunderstood. She thought it called her by name. So she dove in, head first, her good dress ruined. The fish still proclaimed…
Dreaming of Italian Food by Mark J. Mitchell
you belch low in your sleep, curl like tortellini sauced with purple wool, dusted with cream light falling off a romano moon.
You Were but a Ghost in My Arms— by Jordan Blum
—and a fragment in the ether in the spring of Our Hope, after confessions were made, before they took you away. When your father smashed frames and your mother was disgraced and…
40 Little Feets by John C. Kojak
Night fell upon Newtown on a chilly morning in December, A day that everyone there will always remember. Principals, teachers, mothers and wives, Young boys and girls with big playground eyes. Two…
La Petite Mort by John C. Kojak
La Petite Mort; Ah, Little Death. Oh How I Yearn Your Blissful Heavens High, In Lightnes, Grasping, Gasping, Out of Breath, My Spirit Soaring Upward As I Die. Au Revoir; Expired To…
Rejoyce! by John C. Kojak
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce A perfect specimen to be sure In whose works the whole world rejoiced For with clever wit and powerful voice He unveiled our illusions of grandeur Not a…