photo by Allison Guan

by John Sullivan

(A new situation comes into focus.  The bulbous / florid-faced / fake-smiley guy is talking to an empty suit draped over an empty chair.  Talking ardently, even strenuously, occasionally grabbing the suit by its lapels & hoisting it (gently) off the chair to speak to confront the suit (more or less) face to face.  You realize he’s talking to his father.)

aka “Doc Benway”

I … I … I always hated how you had to control us. 

photo by Allison Guan

by Shana Ross

Love in the time of distance

I tell her I have been re-reading Gertrude. She says I would write your autobiography. Referentially.  Unironically. Lovingly. Unwilling to trace possibilities to their dead-ends in the maze printed on the paper placemat, one fingertip at a time over and over until the future has been seen.  A marble run, a domino track, a Rube. Set off and unwatched.  We go about our day but in my ears is the clattering. 

art by Robert Rogers

by Baraka Noel

I’m sensitive. A smell can send me spinning. I cry for fiction more than life. Today, I saw this cavalcade of blue-black glistening flies vibrating on a dollop of canine feces. So many eyes kaleidoscoping over shit. So much dog shit on the streets. So much information.

I guess they call it empathy. As a child, I wished for synesthesia; now I shower in the dark to deprive my senses of context. I’m pretty sensitive. But, that’s not entirely why I wound up in a psych ward.

art by Carl Svantje Hallbeck, 1856

by Maureen Sherbondy

Matches

My father collected matchbooks under a glass table. He wanted visitors to know all the restaurants he’d been to. But no one ever stepped foot in his apartment but us four kids. There were no beds. He kept us on surfaces with no covers. We were his display items just like the restaurant names on paper. I wanted to sleep beside the matchbooks and pretend I was visiting New York restaurants. Once he took us to Cape May for a few days.

Image curtesy of The Public Domain Review

by Christopher Phelps

Capsular

My first thought was that I hoped the openings in the volcanic rock of my life would be something other than spider-infested holes, something other than empty time capsules, each with a note of I’m sorry, time ran out.

My second thought was for the spiders, which I didn’t want to insult. Couldn’t they be relocated to their own traps? Was this a specious logic?

My third thought was that we’re haplessly in charge of this rock,

image curtesy of The Public Domain Review

by Sara Flemington 

I pitched a tent on the beach for Jupe. It’d been a while since I’d pitched a tent, but this one was easy, it just popped up. We picked it up from the outlet mall on the way. So now, it’s like we can go anywhere, I told her. Because we can just walk, and when we are tired, stop, pop up our shelter. So, it’s like we are free.

Like wolves, she said.