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A week later, sometime before or after dawn, I’ll leave my brother a message that he’ll delete before taking the time to listen to it. I’ll tell him: I’m sorry I couldn’t help him with his paper… That he’s smarter than I ever was… And that when I come back from the city––yes––we’ll watch the new Captain America movie… Even though I think Marvel’s falling off…

Then.

Because I’m sleepy. Or confused. Or that other thing that isn’t much of a secret.

I’ll lose the thread.

And start babbling: Throw out my old hockey pads… But save my helmet… I’ll need that… Gotta have that… Bury me in that helmet… Because I’ve heard things get rough in heaven… We’ll need mouth guards, too… Cause there’s a game… In heaven there’s a game… Of… Paintball… ?… Yes!… Between the clouds… And God has the best gun… Of course… Of course… And… And… And losers fall straight to Hell… And we don’t want to go to Hell… Buddy… So, we gotta come correct… With paint grenades… And football cleats… And better armor… Iron Man armor… The expensive kind we’ll order off eBay… Vibranium chest plates… Nanotechnology… And we’ll have to die at the exact same… So that we can be on the same team… Same color… … Same cloud… … … … Call me back… Captain Kill… My little Rosemary… Hail-Mary… We’ll take care of all of it… Run our shit… You know… I take the middle… And you… … … … … … … You go left, buddy… … … … Call me… … Call me… Call me… … … … … … Hey man… Call your brother… … With great power comes great responsibility… Ha-ha… … I do want you to come visit me… Call me, you ass… … … … … … 

---

Sam Berman is a short story writer who lives in Chicago and works at Lake Front Medical with Nancy, Andrew, and Reuben–all terrific coworkers. 

Death packs a sack lunch:
a little ham salad, some saltines,
and seven deviled eggs.

He lounges by the pool,
the end marked NO DIVING
in blood-red letters.

He throws off his cloak
to let the sun tinge
his ghostly white skin,

then runs down the list
he’s committed to memory—
heat stroke, heart attack, bee sting—

before settling on an old standby.
He spreads a little ham salad
on a saltine with the tip of his scythe

and watches the fat boy
who forgot to wear his water wings
run along the edge

---

Kip Knott is a writer, poet, teacher, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Delaware, Ohio. His new book of poetry, The Misanthrope in Moonlight, is available from Bottlecap Press. He spends all his spare time traveling the back roads of the Midwest and Appalachia taking photographs and searching for lost art treasures.

Carrying a dog that is almost dead
was like carrying a dog that was already dead.

I was driving home from work late night
when I hit a deer on the road to my house.

I saw him stutter-step toward the culvert
before he fell bloody and dead in the ditch.

I had to drive to school every morning
with that dead deer in the ditch knowing

that it was me who had killed him with
my pickup truck that I didn’t even want.

It was raining as I carried my dog
out of the rain and placed her to die

under the shelter and cried something
so awful, other people said they were sorry.

---

Hayden Church is a writer from Florida.

Peter Pan

Forgive me, women.
I am a cruel and insatiable man.
The saga of toys and afternoon naps
has never ended.
The bottle I clutch is a stronger one now,
and the thumb I suck it sometimes yours.

I cannot grasp what should be done
and there’s no kind of effort to do it.

You see, I say, I am a man.
And I’m oh so right for the times.

The Moment

When the cold grasp reaches from the dark and pulls me,
protesting, like a parade fist thrust high in the air,
I will remember the moments I knew it would.

It has always been there.
On the breezes,
under beds,
between pages and breaths,
on the highest shelves,
pushed back against the wall.

It has waited,
taking its time,
knowing that its time is all that matters.

I have seen it.
I have known this.
But I have been distracted by the antics of its effects,
And so I have ignored it,
making great efforts to,
hoping that, if I did not pay it any attention,
it would not pay me a visit.

But I will remember each moment I knew it would.
And it will.

---

Pat Boccuzzi is a recovering comedian turned writer. A fan of warm weather, he inexplicably lives in Boston, Massachusetts. His storytelling and antics have been featured on NPR affiliates and the Boston Globe. On maudlin nights, he fancies himself a poet.

North Star

holy guide of getting lost
unflinching witness to all who become
a part of the place they’re stuck
dragon-inked sky star of ever-changing shape
won’t you glow in glow out glow down
my feet can’t find
spaces to fill
places to leave
my dirty toes make
reluctant homes
of deepening holes
awaiting the awakening
light from your 8 points
spin your salvation heel-ward
before i’m swallowed
into loam and clay

Old Song, New Worlds

beneath my breast is an open beak
with a throat that gleams
and croaks an old song
a naked tune
that shines
I spring; small, tender
teary-eyed and strong
from the detritus of a spent dream
raw, precious, without polish
there is no thing in me or on me to hide
light is low, senses high
orange peel black tea and blossoms
call this hungry bird forward
there is ripe fruit, enough for two
me and the darker shape that follows at my feet
showing me with each bite
how to get free
bellies full from food sweet and bitter
we walk on
bare heels building new worlds
as we hum and howl
to the sky

---

Jessica Knight is an Arizona-based artist, tarot reader and seeker of the weird and wondrous. Endlessly inspired by what she can’t fully understand, she writes, paints and divines to get closer to it. See what she’s up to at www.cathartistaura.com

A tree hangs loose in autumn breeze

Listening intent for the next truth to make itself apparent

Whetting its roots against the blue river pebbles

Thirsting for an opportunity of adventure to arise

Perhaps, the next bird will bring more than the scent

On the back of its wings

Perhaps, the earth will hear its pleas for freedom and—

—wait, wait, are you even listening to me?

No no no, I mean it; don’t try to play dumb

You totally checked out

You looked like fucking Linda Blair with your eyes rolled back

And I definitely saw you wipe the drool from your lips, you nasty

Am I that boring to you? That you can’t even sit through

One goddam poem about the wonders of nature without tuning out?

Have a little respect! I pull my teeth crafting this shit

I agonize over the placement of words that so few people read to begin with

And you just march on in here and pretend to read my poem

For fucking what? What the hell were you expecting to find? Because

I sure as hell ain’t the next McCarthyBukowskiEliotSalingerWhitmanPlathBurroughsFuckwadMcgee

I. don’t. even. want. to. be.

All I want is to write plucky little poems without bleeding myself dry

But voyeuristic assholes like you just want to see me suffer

Right? Admit it. You came here to get off

To watch another living, breathing, feeling human being

Take a rusty fucking scalpel to the abdomen, dig jagged and deep

Slowly, methodically, orgasmically

You want me to pull, inch by inch, intestines from the gash

And arrange them on the page, just so, in a beautiful, grotesque cursive

That describes, in cancerous detail, the searing pain

That I swallow like a hunk of meat in my windpipe

So you can watch me choke sans culpability

Well, that numbness you feel—I refuse to be your metaphysical therapist

You’ve been so desensitized. It’s actually sad

You used to enjoy poetry about beauty and love

You used to connect with joy and the rising sun

But you’ve become so twisted, don’t deny it

You’re searching for snuff and you don’t even have the self-awareness to use incognito mode

You sick fuck.

Well, fuck you. You wanna feel something for once? Here’s my scalpel

It’s yours for the taking

But you’ll have to show me the blinding pink of your insides

And let’s just see what comes out.

---

Alannah Guevara is a poet-wife and vilomah. Find her published works by floating around in the aether (or in Revolution John, Isele Magazine, Toyon, and Rejection Letters). Alannah is the editor-in-chief of Hunter’s Affects: a lit mag for deadheads. Alannah is on Twitter @prismospickle.

My mother flew in—
we drove somberly
from all direction
a reverse vacation
emergency
uninvited and overstaying
its welcome

over the river
a bridge too far
Grandma’s daughter
announced our arrival
yet we are lost
in spite and
inside of
uncle’s spiral

he bled her dry
feeding her nothing
except burnt toast
so at least she’d stay alive
and to keep her warm
he gathered enough garbage
to block out the sky

Not a home, but a pigsty
where not even the rats
could stand a chance
among the mice, mummified

and why
are there hundreds
of rusty knives
beneath his bed
next to photos of women
he took
in various stages
of undress?

We attempt to clean
but stay busy
gagging
dry heaving
with nowhere to turn
is it bile
or another
lump in our throat
neglected, in spite
of the burn

both toilets are full
of attempted
dysentery
and if you’re thirsty
there are plenty
of bottles
of piss
(his collection of S.O.S.
in jaundice)

All I want to ask:
why do we say uncle
in place of
mercy
when impacted

like rooted bone
decayed to fang
agape, he
has been
extracted

---

Gabriel Hart is a writer from California’s high desert. His two volumes of poetry Unsongs and Hymns From the Whipping Post are out now. His debut novel On High At Red Tide will be out in spring ’24 from Pig Roast Publishing.

Techno blasts through the speakers at 150 bpm shaking the room. All heartbeats were synchronized. The only way to tell your friend who dragged you here that you’ll piss yourself if you don’t run to the bathroom is to lean in real close. Your hand on her shoulder, sticky, the true stench of humanity fills the room, bodies facing one another, your nose may brush her ear as you say, “Bathroom.” She looks you in the eye and nods. Hands held tight, you may wiggle your way in and out of thrusting bodies. You haven’t touched this many people in ages. You are struck by how intimate this very unromantic moment can be. Their eyes generally remain closed. Or I suppose, how would you know? You can barely make out a single face, only undulating silhouettes occasionally illuminated by hazy strobe lights.

The snaking line leading up to the toilet moves quickly. A drunk acquaintance places her hand on the back of your neck and places her head on your clavicle. She tells you how much she loves you. You say it back for good measure. She sees the rest of her friends whom she arrived with and runs off. Another moment passes that stays only within this night. Somebody’s drink splashes onto your $20 eBay Dansko clogs. The sole has been tearing away from the body anyway, it’s about time for a new pair.

You approach the entrance. Stepping forward, the ground feels a bit odd, lumpy even. You walk towards your goal anyways, you’re about to piss yourself remember? You look down and notice the ground walk upon is an out-of-place carpet. A tuft of hair sticks out of the part nearest the sink. Carry on. The tiling is black and reflective. A crying girl sits on the sink sighing unintelligible sighs to her supportive, lucid, friend. The lucid one with the long black hair helps her down with an arm around her shoulder. They exited the bathroom and headed towards the Uber.

You and your friend enter the first empty stall together as is tradition. It is narrow, and adorned with stainless steel opposed to the tiles on the other side of the locked door. A blue light bulb makes visible the sharpie signatures surrounding you two. “@king.val.68” “Clear eyes, Full hearts, Can’t lose” “GMK”

You go first, carefully hovering over the piss-lined, stainless steel toilet seat. Your friend digs in her around her purse, her shoulder towards your forehead. She pulls out a dime bag filled a third of the way with white powder, her cracked iPhone 13, a Chase credit card, and a piece of a deli straw. She faces the phone with its back towards the light tipping the baggy forwards, carefully tapping the powder onto the phone. She cuts the powder into two fat lines with the short end of her credit card. Straw in her nose with the other hand on the line, she inhaled. You pull up your underwear and jeans in the same motion. She gestures for you to partake in the ritual and you accept. As practiced, you mirror her actions. Inhaling, you feel an electrical current striking through the back of your skull. Your corresponding eyeball to your chosen nostril begins to water. She unlocks the door and you two head out only to be met with the image of yourselves in the panoramic mirror.

She says something inaudible. Before I have a chance to respond, she grabs my hand and we head back onto the dark smoky dancefloor. My head throbs to the beat. I begin to feel light, like a helium balloon, like I could float up out of this club and into the sky. The feel of her skin against mine returns me to Earth. We’re in the heart of the crowd. Someone’s crouch is on my ass. My mouth is breathing down a stranger’s neck. She lets go of my hand and I lose her. I make a slow 360 to find a comfortable and find my nose pointed towards a silver chain reflecting red light. Tilting my chin up I am facing someone beautiful.

---

Jade Mar is a 23-year-old adventurer based in San Francisco, California. After her third University in 6 years, she is contemplating whether or not to drop out of college. She enjoys browsing forums and staring at the ocean. 

jademar.net

Myth

The billionaire becomes a balloon. The trillionaire is eaten on live tv. The weapon ends world hunger but also ends everyone without a certain type of ear. We escape unscathed. Who am I kidding? We’re not saved. We’re in the rubble. We’re in the muffled chimney. This is only winning if you look at the stars.

Unhurried Surgery

Scalpel. Deadbolt. Chainsaw . Monkey wrench.
The waiting room was being fumigated.
The ancient doctor would never be done.

3×3

Inside of a large trench coat, three children balance as man. They sit down for dinner. The sole visible skull orders three bowls of soup. When no one is looking, they break from the coat and with quickness slurp. Finished, they return to the coat and resemble a man. The waiter is impressed with this man, taking away the three empty bowls. When the waiter’s shift is over, he turns back into three children, splitting a cigarette, sifting through tips.

---

Benjamin Niespodziany is a Chicago-based writer. His debut poetry collection was released last year through Okay Donkey and his novella of stage plays is out now with X-R-A-Y. You can find more at neonpajamas.com.

In 2004, I slipped out of the pocket of Ian Thomas’ denim JNCO jorts and fell into the darkness
deep beneath the gym bleachers at Cumberland Hills Middle School. Ian’s jorts had a bulldog
patch on the back pocket. They were sick.

For Ian, the consequences of my neglectful dissapearance were fleeting; he had to wash his
dad’s car and couldn’t play Halo for a weekend. He had a new phone a week later.

Me? I faced a solitary prison. My battery stayed alive for a month, and everytime someone
called Ian, “Come Out and Play” by the Offspring rang out in the cavernous purgatory. My
neighbors? A crumpled up Gogurt wrapper. Dust. A desiccated Cheeto. A clove cigarette that
fell out of Ryan Ashbin’s pocket in 2006; crumpled up detention slips; later, an influx of Silly
Bandz and Livestrong Bracelets.

For nineteen years, I could smell only buttsweat and Axe; in 2007, a gym sock fell a few inches
from me and I prayed for the vicious odor to be fumigated. The massive quaking and
reverberations from pep rallys; the secret conversations. Usher on loop during school dances.

I have been a silent witness.

A witness to conversations soaked in the melodrama of existing, for a moment, as a thirteen year
old. You remember, right? How you simultaneously knew everything and nothing; sweaty, trying
desperately to latch onto something, anything that made sense. Everything single conversation
felt like forever, like it was the totality of everything. But I saw them pulled away by time, out of
the school, away and into the world. A collection of tiny moments, faded into the ether, that at
one time, to some kid, mattered more than anything else.

Vince Garcia scrambling up the bleachers, tears in his eyes, huddled at the top corner,
hyperventilating. Prinicipal Bennet following shortly behind him, his massive body creaking up
the bleachers, gently coaxing Vince to come back to class.

“It’s my dad,” Vince croaked. “He’s dying.”

Rosie Blair admitting to her best friend that she cut herself. Tom Gatlin coming out to his best
friend. Macie Howard breaking up with Danny Evans and dating Howie Grant and then getting
back together with Danny and Danny’s ex-Tracey Young jumping Macie and pulling her hair. A
debate that almost devolved into a fistfight over whether Bigfoot existed in San Andreas.

I have seen the years pass by through the cracks in the bleachers. On a cold December afternoon, light permeated the darkness. A hand grasped me, and pulled me out of the catacombs.

---

Jonny Bolduc is a poet from Lewiston, Maine. He teaches writing to seventh graders at a rural Maine middle school and is a devoted guardian to three cats.  His work has been previously published in JAKE magazine, he was a recipient of Frost Meadow Review’s Editor’s Choice Award, and Roi Fainéant Press.