image curtesy of the Public Domain Review

by Ilana Maymind

I am sitting on a windowsill. My mom says not to sit here. She is not at home now. She is still at work. She just called and said she might be late tonight.
I love sitting on a windowsill. I love watching people moving behind their curtains. Sometimes they open them wide; then you can see even better. I love sitting here, especially on a sunny day. The windowsill gets so warm.
Mom says I shouldn’t sit on a windowsill and look into people’s windows.

image curtesy of the Public Domain Review

by HR Harper

We watch a rising tide together. We avoid the salty foam chugging up to our knees. But we welcome ebbing, with its slick metaphors and clickbait embarrassments. We entangle at the breakwater sitting cheek by jowl on top of the riprap, on these rocks quarried from the channel islands, Anacapa and Santa Cruz.  I look at you, my oldest friend, and see a brotherhood of strangers. I admire your handsome profile and my guts ask for the blessings of impermanence.

art by JJ Cromer

by Jose Hernandez Diaz

A man in a “Deltron 3030” shirt fell from his skateboard into a graffitied sewer world. The obscure world was in another universe. The name of the obscure planet was called “The Land of Abundant Language.” There were unusual, sentient beings on this planet. They were roughly 8 ft tall, with sleek bodies in the shape of star fish, red orange in color. They spoke a formal English, somehow, and always used ornate language, but not necessarily in a pretentious manner, they just seemed to sincerely enjoy expression and the adequate elaboration of emotion.

art by the author

by Helen Hofling

I subscribed to all the lifestyle magazines for advice on how to live. They have many useful tips, like wearing shearling to cultivate a Nordic sense of warmth, and contentment. I can’t afford shearling, but I fill up my browser tabs with aspirations. The magazines reveal secret regimens for a lustrous shell. They diagram which postures will help me stay happy and which postures will help me grow thin. They tell me the right kind of tealeaves to buy. They tell me how to read them. 

art by the author

by Cait McCann

Speech is a powerful lord, who with the finest and most invisible body achieves the most divine works: it can stop fear and banish grief and create joy and nurture pity.

-Gorgias, Encomium of Helen

Ekphrastic I

Where do I get off, comparing myself to her like that? My forehead is tied to my toes. When I make my body concave it is only an attempt to ease tension between two.