Issue #5

Remembering Tom Petty

(1950-2017) It was 1985 and I was a sixteen-year-old Adonis, washboard abs, a face that made grown women swoon, and more swagger than Mick Jagger on his best day, except that I…

Writer Pains

Forehand by Conor O’Sullivan

Forehand Luke and Patrick stood on a patch of grass facing away from the row of white painted cottages. A family walked down to the beach, carrying a picnic basket and towels…

Sandhog by Thomas Locicero

Sandhog for Paul Rohan Old scrapper, skin for gloves, calloused knuckles, broken nose that made your face fit your voice: Brooklynese classic-poet-quoting boxer belying your fourth-grade education— Milton, Chaucer, The Bard in…

Morning Vibes by Rachel Pond

Southern Belle by Nells Wasilewski

Southern Belle I am southern belle. Made up of many complexities: unreadable, impetuous, frivolous, unpredictable, and oozing with old south charm. In disagreeable situations, manners prevail. I defend the helpless, cry with…

Thumbs Up! by Alan Swyer

Thumbs Up! Having scoured articles and blogs galore, plus advice columns and rants on Facebook, Resnick knew it wasn’t meant to work this way. The key to Hollywood – to getting an…

Insult & Injury by Anna Keeler

Insult & Injury Science is less forgiving of my ideas because storms can be dissected, and I cannot. I can trap a tornado under a cylinder and watch it braid a heart…

On the Side by Peter W. Yaremko

On the Side She loves me definitely of course but for a little thing on the side who makes her whole. One from column A one from column B better than none…

Scales by Jim Meirose

Scales “Come in!” came a voice. Hurley went in and confronted a bald, well-built man in a wife-beater undershirt with an electric guitar strapped on, playing scales slowly, with no amplifier, to…

Driving the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile: A Love Story by Matt Mason

Driving the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile: A Love Story Forget, please, the psychology of such a statement, but I wanna drive the Weinermobile, I wanna do I-80 in a hotdog hotrod; and, frankly,…

Whether by Robert E. Donohue

Whether The sanitation trucks gather from around the city. They bear down on the narrow residential streets of Queens, moving masses of slush and debris from the past week’s back-to-back storms, opening…

Flight Pattern by Phyllis Wentworth

Flight Pattern I once knew what they are called. In one short reach I could satisfy the wondering. But my arms are wrapped against the cold spring wind, the wind that funnels…

Thanksgiving in California by Charles Albert

Thanksgiving in California November has a lovely way of mixing gold into the grey, as tiny amber cones that dot each redwoods’ evening silhouette A vee of geese, in honking verse, pass…

Pieces of Moves by Samuel Cole

Pieces of Moves Another long pause. The man—let’s call him Theodore Castle—folds the newspaper and throws it in the trashcan. The woman—let’s call her Jocelyn Castle—finishes the coffee and lifts the newspaper…

The Mystery of Mila By John May

her picture stops me I see an ancient spirit rewarded with a new life learning again the wonder of love father still surprised at sudden miracles mother flowing food warmth sunshine and…

Carolyn on the First Real Day of Spring by Luke Evans

Carolyn on the First Real Day of Spring Colors of a waking city flash, reflect and turn blind eyes away. “I am that double rainbow,” she tells me, “fading and short-lived, soon…

Lydia-F by Bruce Levine

Lydia-F The discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 solar system and seven planets 40 light years from earth re-ignited Bryce Danford’s desire to become an astronomer. Too poor to go to college full time…

Her Life by John Grey

Her Life She’s a teenage beauty in thrall to various males – so, when the important political announcement is made, she checks her cell phone again – when the Orca breaches the…

Between the Leaves by Aubrey Buck