Forensic Files

Not my preferred TV fare, and yet

it confirms my faith in the power

of persistence. The plots lure me

into a tightening noose of evidence

that inch by inch secures the perpetrator.

Every program builds a bulwark

of protection for the truth to be revealed.

Every killer gets his just desserts

and mitigates my horror of what

can happen suddenly to anyone.

With such dogged detectives on each case,

guaranteeing that reason will prevail,

it’s easy to forget how threat of capture

provides no restraint against the worst of us

who come disguised as the best of us.

Sharon Scholl is a retired college teacher (Humanities) who convenes a poetry critique group and maintains a website, freeprintmusic.com, that donates her compositions to small Libeal churches. Her poetry collections, Seasons, Remains,Classifieds, Ghosts, are availabe via Amazon Books. Her poems are current in Sligo Press and Sea Crow Press periodicals.

Flowers

I think of each life as a flower

—Mary Oliver

Please don’t hate me for telling you this, but I’ve never much cared for flowers.

Oh, not because I sneeze and wheeze and choke and fuss whenever I’m near them, though that’s certainly a factor, and unlike Baudelaire, I don’t see them as mal

it’s just that (and I’m almost afraid to admit it)

I’ve never quite felt the rapturous rhapsody or drunken delight or blissful beauty or beatific grace that others, especially those who spend lots of time with their chapped hands in the muddy earth, get when prattling on about foliage, perennials, and open buds (the secret women’s places that were O’Keeffe’s raison d’etre)

and it has always made me a little sad.

Flowers are living things and we all want to live, now more than ever, and suddenly I’m basking in a photosynthetic glow. And I think to myself, maybe this time they won’t droop and die so quickly. Maybe they’ll stay around awhile.

(And then she had an epiphany!)

I vow to be partial to peonies à la Mary Oliver. Like the good doctor W.C. Williams, I will kiss every asphodel I meet in all the backyards of Rutherford, New Jersey. I will pray to the heavens about that mighty force that through the green fuse* drove that flower. I will chant, chant, chant to the sunflowers that William Blake adored (and that Allen Ginsberg co-opted while perhaps inhaling them a bit too deeply in his tenement haze).

And as for those resplendent open-mouthed tulips, so cherished in the Netherlands? Yes, yes, I can almost hear them breathing, just as Plath** did from her godforsaken hospital bed.

But without the melancholia.

*Dylan Thomas, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”

** Sylvia Plath, “Tulips”

Cindy Hochman is the founder of “100 Proof Copyediting Services,” the editor emerita of the long-running poetry journal First Literary Review-East, and the author of Telling You Everything (Unleash Press, 2022). Her newest book, I Am the Girl, is slated for publication in 2026 by Rain Mountain Press’s Cassandra Series. Cindy resides in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where she meditates, does tai chi, and studies the Russian language.

Only I Can Prevent the Collapse of Society

The morning is a whizz of cardamom grinding with espresso. Whiffs of extravagance. I begin the day sipping an oat milk latte with rose water. Journal, scroll, discover I have read both of my free Harper’s articles for the month. Sit in my armchair, legs atop a heating pad atop a pillow atop an ottoman. The inbox warns there is not much time for me to prevent the collapse of society and save every nonprofit or media organization I’ve ever encountered. Support the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s commitment to building international understanding, ensure dear Kenyon Review’s pages continue to represent a wide range of perspectives (though not my perspective) (which they’ve rejected) (...four times) (!), join Lambda Literary in preventing LGBTQ+ lives from being erased from public life entirely. I check, yup, these emails were indeed intended for me. I don’t click to learn more. What in this world can be done with knowledge alone?

My moment of indulgence ends, I have to go. I pocket a crumpled five-dollar bill, my keys. Bop down two flights of stairs. It’s too early for noise, yet my left knee yells. A teach yourself SQL in 24-hours manual sits in the landing. Does it contain secrets that could steer me towards treasure, stability, purpose? Yesterday the university invited a good percent of staff and faculty to separate. Voluntarily. Years back, for a class project, my nephew interviewed my mom about our ancestors. She told him they were slaves. Huh. He stared. Like volunteers who never signed up to volunteer—volunteers separated from their family. Oohh. He’s never about our ancestors again. A colleague calls the voluntary separation offer ‘consensual decoupling.’ We’re on reality TV. We could, perhaps should, take our silly prizes, head our silly ways. But optimism, delusion, sunk cost fallacy, and an awareness we are unlikely to ever be cast elsewhere convince most of us to continue competing for opportunities to continue competing for opportunities, despite knowing the producers might boot us off at any moment. Leave us involuntary penniless.

This might be the last season.

Someone huffs the train ain’t running because some fool jumped in front of it and didn’t even fucking die. Through dog dump, empty potato chip bags, and the contents of many garbage cans, I hopscotch to another station, where, down more stairs, it rains on the platform. Broken caution tap drowns in pools of brown water. One day the 1-train will no longer run. A woman sings ‘Killing Me Softly’ with her whole body. The Lauryn Hill version. I love New York City. That five-dollar bill passes from my black hand to her black hand, leaving me nothing to offer the next three people who, like the institutions who email me all day and myself and my colleagues, urgently need individual support. I regret not grabbing that SQL manual. We could have passed it back and forth. We could have arrived at our destinations with confidence, demonstrated skillsets, and fluency in whatever SQL is.

Sheena Daree Romero is a humorist and doodler based in New York City. Her words have received a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellowship, won the Miriam Chaikin Prose Award, made the Longreads Best of: Reader Favorites list, and been published in outlets such as Taco Bell Quarterly, Autostraddle, and Passages North. Sheena’s visual art has been exhibited at the Massillon Museum and is forthcoming at the Urban Arts Space. She’s currently [pretending to be] writing her first novel.

Home

The place I carry

like a camel’s hump

so enmeshed it is in memory.

Details like the floral wallpaper

the pitch of a stair tread creak

a familiar rumble of water pipes

wind whistling past my window –

all of it stored behind my skull.

Once a farm house on a country lane,

it was swallowed by a city,

its gardens turned to islands in the concrete,

chickens still clucking in the yard.

It was my life, my childhood world

that vanished like a dream,

turned to landfill and chimney smoke.

Sharon Scholl is a retired college teacher (Humanities) who convenes a poetry critique group and maintains a website, freeprintmusic.com, that donates her compositions to small Libeal churches. Her poetry collections, Seasons, Remains,Classifieds, Ghosts, are availabe via Amazon Books. Her poems are current in Sligo Press and Sea Crow Press periodicals.

Alewives

We’re digging a moat
elbow-deep, for C & T’s castle
near the tide-wash line

where sand’s moist enough
to shape, and the overnight
die-off has scattered.

The odd one’s still silver & shiny,
really pops against
all those grayed-off with rot,

sunbaked as shmears of mayo.
The trench fills, fingers claw & scrape
buried rocks & pebbles,

flecks of sediment & shells
that wedge under my thumb
nail. The stench of die-off kicks up,

& the waves—refill, recede, refill,
cloud it all up into a stirred broth
that settles to a floating lattice.

S.D. Dillon has an MFA from Notre Dame and lives in Michigan. His poetry has appeared recently in SORTES, Last Leaves Magazine, and The Shortlist: Best of BarBar 2024, and he received the 2025 Visual Poetry Award from Bacopa Literary Review. He can be found on Instagram at @sddillon50.

Self-portrait with a dozen breasts

I am all of us. Spaced apart. Cushioned chairs a color we called mauve in the nineties. Waiting. Quietest whispers. Water cooler and Keurig machine. Plastic thickening our air’s carcinogenic load. A (pink) Christmas tree with (pink) lights and (pink) glowing orbs its only ornaments, one-day landfill. A row of (pink) bulbs backlights the check-in desk and a column of (pink) curves requests our IDs and insurance information. Our thumbs doomscroll. Our shoulders hunch in anticipation of the contortion to come: cold plates tortilla press dense tissue with twenty pounds of pressure in hot pursuit of the money shot. One of us wipes a tear from below her (pink) right lid. A (pink) nurse calls three of us back. A (pink) sign reminds us our breasts may be undergoing a range of procedures today so breasts that arrived after yours may be called back before yours. Mine are called back in a herd, reminding me of those New York auditions – “cattle calls” – where the directors knew within five seconds whether they wanted you. Here, it’s less rushed. No less degrading. I am a self, we tell ourselves. Early detection saves life, we internalize. This is care, we hope, trailing behind our breasts, headed to their interrogation.

Edith-Nicole Cameron (she/they) writes, teaches, and mothers in Minneapolis. She used to be a lawyer and before that an actor. They feel lucky to have had work published in various journals, including Literary Mama, elsewhere magazine, Brevity Blog, and River Teeth’s Beautiful Things.

When alone except for myself

I wish to linger

studying the textures of seasons

spending time/more time

quiet & un-rushed

no rough edges snagging my attention,

face toward future, eyes wide

here on a meandering path

inclined like a steep stair, getting out of breath

wanting, wanting, wanting to arrive

in field, in meadow

surrounded by wild taking its own course

all of me all of me surging

along the humming

continuum …

Karen Neuberg is the author of the full-length poetry collection, PURSUIT (Kelsay Press), and three chapbooks including “the elephants are asking” (Glass Lyre). Her poetry and collages have appeared in numerous online and print journals and anthologies including 805, Gyroscope, Inflectionist Review, Mackinaw, Nixes Mate, and Unbroken. She holds an MFA from The New School and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Memory

We made love all day, our loud

and insistent lives scratching at the door.

Saturday? Sunday? The only thing worth worshiping

was the mole behind your knee.

We made love all day and the next.

Clouds gathered, rained, and moved along.

Trees shed their cover, froze,

came back again green. We thumbed our noses

at time, and every mirror revealed us as dawn flowers,

wide-eyed and damp.

We made love all day,

knowing our lives must

break down the door one day

loud and insistent

and pull us apart.

Dudley Stone’s poetry is Pushcart Prize-nominated and has recently appeared in Neologism Poetry Journal, Written Tales, and The Headlight Review. He has a B.A. in Theatre from the University of Kentucky, studied playwriting at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the Kentucky State Poetry Society. Mr. Stone lives in Lexington, KY. More of his work can be found at dudleystone.com.

The Coming of Ants I

Go to the Ant, thou sluggard:

consider Her ways and be wise.

--Proverbs, 6:6

The pale sun’s slight

Heat can’t warm

The slender threads of life

Or weaving a dream

Of impossible hope,

Melt a messenger’s heart.

You open the apartment

Door into winter darkness,

Blinking snow-blind.

The coffee clock’s

Red digital timer

Pulses migraine.

As the TV flickers on

Announcing Dali’s death,

A telephone book,

Open on the floor,

Surges with black ants

Consuming numbers.

The Coming of Ants II

Among the veteran archaeologists, a story is passed around about a

team of diggers that disappeared from a pre-Columbian site when

there were driver ants in the vicinity after heavy rains. Only a

few artifacts and scattered bones were found.

On the hardened faces,

Cracked by forgotten floods

Stone sun-wheels

Still expose discordances

In the passage of ages.

Evidence remains

On the edge of ruins

For missing time,

For an archaeology of grief

In a faint trace of voices.

It was the same

During the last cataclysm

At Pompeii,

Huddling against the marble

In the cool, familiar smell.

Statues with stained feet

Stand naked in our

Anonymous prints,

While divining proceeds

To decode the planet’s pulse.

When the first black wave

Of ants surges across

The clearing consuming shadows,

Vipers, lizards, scorpions scurry,

Scratching away into silence.

The Coming of Ants III

Go to the Ant, thou sluggard,

consider Her ways and be wise.

--Proverbs, 6:6

The hills are loud

All night long

With the rustle of birds,

And the calls of canine and feline

Rushing toward the rapids.

Investing time with fear,

A shower of hoof-beats

Flow around the dark dawn

Of the first day, leaving

Only the smell of the herds

Seeping through the windows,

Nailed shut, leaving their sweat

And dust and silence behind.

By the second day, a droning

Hum becomes discernible.

After the light slips

Through the slits in the wood wall

And the tense air itches,

We doze fitfully, wakening

To the scratching of hive scouts

First breaching the light gaps

Beneath the doors. We gather

Together and preach the Ant,

Consider Her ways,

And are wise.

“The Coming of Ants I” was published in Transversions in 1995. “The Coming of Ants II” was published in Lynx Journal in 1998.

Edward Baranosky has painted seascapes since he was seven years old. His focus on marine-scapes, draws him back to visit his native home in the American east coast, for inspiration from the North Atlantic. His work emphasizes the present - in the ever-changing moments of water. As a poet-artist he crosses the channels and pathways between the visual and the textual. He continues to exhibit in the United States and Canada. Baranosky owns a small press EAB Publishing, for poetry chapbooks and related material. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Education: BFA 1969, Rhode Island School of Design, Major in Painting

War Metaphor (What is it good for?)

Without war
I’d never know Andrea Mitchell’s husband
            is Alan Greenspan.

Without war
I wouldn’t confuse my newsfeed with my pornfeed
           and dream of joining the Mile-High Club
           with blonde TV foxes.

Without war
I wouldn’t persist in thinking of strangers in masks
	   as neighbors but villains or superheroes in disguise.

Without war
I’d never choose to bury my head
            under a worn cliché.

Without war
I’d never find where I mislaid
            my fury and compassion.

Without war
I might have to finally make something
             of my life.
 

Dudley Stone’s poetry is Pushcart Prize-nominated and has recently appeared in Neologism Poetry Journal, Written Tales, and The Headlight Review. He has a B.A. in Theatre from the University of Kentucky, studied playwriting at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the Kentucky State Poetry Society. Mr. Stone lives in Lexington, KY. More of his work can be found at dudleystone.com.

My Watch Tells Me I’m Dead

It’s hard to believe my demise,

but when my watch says my heart

has ceased to beat, who am I to argue.

I paid so much for superior technology

I have to have faith in the product,

the IT crowd are geniuses after all.

When my watch tells me my blood

oxygen is zero, it makes sense

since there has been no breath

recorded since I put it on today.

A non-existent wrist temperature

must make me walking dead,

since although frozen, I am still walking.

My sleep duration sensor tells me

I have not woken nor slept,

no REM, core nor deep. I must be dead.

I will go out soon, look for an open grave,

lie down and try to have a little sleep.

It will save a lot of trouble later.

Rohan Buettel lives in Canberra, Australia. His haiku appear in Australian and international journals (including Presence, Cattails and The Heron’s Nest). His longer poetry appears in various journals, including Rattle, Unleash Lit, Meanjin, Meniscus and Quadrant.

Half a Tank

Late in the kitchen, the keys

hang from a nail, a question.

“Are you still secretly riding your father’s motorcycle?”

No, Mom.

Then why is half the gas gone?

Evaporation, I say, a slow leak.

She rinses a glass. The room ticks.

As I square my notes at the lectern,

throttle the right syllables, mic idling low.

Auditorium buzz, a woman caps her pen; it taps the rail.

The AV cart hums in the aisle.

On the console the needle

shivers above E.

After the talk the glass doors

push me to the ring road.

“Are you still secretly riding your father’s motorcycle?”

Yes, Mom. Yes.

I go at night, no plates, easy on the clutch,

headlamp boring a clean white cone.

The talk’s tank of nouns runs to fumes.

I learn his lean through corners;

at a red light the engine settles,

my knee finds the tank, the bars fit right,

his sound under me, low, steady,

half a tank and moving.

I cut the engine outside. In the kitchen

the keys answer with one click.

Sean Wang is a PhD student. His poems appear or are forthcoming in West Trade Review, wildscape literary journal, Wild Roof Journal, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Pictura Journal, ONE ART, and Open: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L), where his work was selected for the Broadside Series, among others. He can be found on Instagram at @sean_wang1997.

White Spot, Black Smoke

The carriage spat me out.

Heat puckered loose tiles,

raised grit to bite my shoe.

Snow sealed the oily seams.

Platform glass ticked. A hairline ran.

Late for the change at Central.

I ground the cigarette in my palm,

kept the pain a coal I could pocket.

A click under my heel

pulled me back, the neighbor’s toy trestle,

rails sprung, the lash of coupling slack.

A whistle cut the air; the clock replied.

Yard-lights came on in the old layout.

The carriage exhaled black smoke, took my seat.

Grit lifted in its wake. I swallowed it,

thumbed the stub out, went to my knees,

crawled toward the white circle ahead,

the headlamp pooling on ice.

In the hard white quiet,

the ice gave back my face in soot,

flattened to gloss as it thawed.

I wiped with my sleeve, coarse wool.

Black came up on the cuff. The oval stayed,

a lens around the crack, a track

still traveling under the light.

The white spot thinned, then thinned again.

Sean Wang is a PhD student. His poems appear or are forthcoming in West Trade Review, wildscape literary journal, Wild Roof Journal, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Pictura Journal, ONE ART, and Open: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L), where his work was selected for the Broadside Series, among others. He can be found on Instagram at @sean_wang1997.

Viewfinder 

Reflected 
back

into
the viewfinder

of my Canon
Powershot,

whose lens cover
I take off, now,

is a tiny,
circular 

mirror—
then the cracked,

mud-streaked
image of hood,

hibernation,
and face 

kept within
this displaced,

silver-lined
object

I’ve discovered,
which someone

else has left
between

the branch
and trunk 

of a tree caught 
in meadowland

off paths close,
just behind home. 

While Stepping into the Same Creek Twice

Although
I’m not

Caesar
crossing

the Rubicon,
with camera

angled
in hand

I step
into the same, 

cold creek
twice.  

Alex Missall studied creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. His poetry collections “A Harvest of Days” and “Morning Grift” are forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (2026). He resides in Ohio, where he enjoys the trails with his Husky, Betts.

Three Words Too Late

Late night and by the time I reached her door, the sky had already started crying for me. Fat, cold drops fell in uneven rhythms, soaking through my coat and hair, turning the street into a river of reflections. Streetlights and regret pooled together beneath my feet. The rain had that particular scent it gets in early autumn, when the first chill crawls under your collar, reminding you that things are changing, that summer is gone for good.

Still, I knocked. Once. Twice. A third time, softer, as if I could undo the first two.

The door opened a crack.

And there she was—barefoot, hair tangled from sleep, eyes red from nights that had gone on too long. She looked like she’d been waiting for something, though maybe not for me.

“Eli,” she said. Just my name, nothing else. It landed flat between us, the way a bird hits a window, soft, stunned, and already falling.

Inside, the apartment smelled of toast and rosemary. She used to plant it in little pots on the windowsill, said the scent helped her remember her mother. Now the plants were wilted, stems drooping, soil dry. On the table sat a half-drunk cup of coffee, gone cold. A thin rim of lipstick marked the edge like a fading heartbeat.

White noise emitted from her cellphone. She always said she liked the whoosh because silence sounded too much like goodbye.

“Why did you come here?” she asked, voice low, the way people speak when they already know the answer.

“I almost didn’t.”

We stood there a long time, the air thick with everything we’d never said. The rain behind me and the static inside her apartment seemed to fuse into one long sigh. If faded love had weight, the room would’ve buckled under it.

She crossed her arms, the sleeve of her sweater slipping to reveal the scar on her wrist, the one from that summer we rebuilt the old boat her father left behind. She’d cut herself on a nail and laughed it off. “A mark of stubbornness,” she’d said. That was her. Always moving forward, even when bleeding.

“I was wrong,” I said finally, my throat burning around the words.

Her gaze drifted toward the window, where distant lightning drew thin white veins across the sky. Her face caught the flash, and for an instant, I saw the woman she used to be, the one who believed in me.

“Eli, don’t.”

She said it softly, but it landed like a blade.

“I just need you to hear me.”

“I’ve heard you,” she said. “I heard you every time you didn’t say anything. Every silence was an answer.”

I wanted to tell her that silence was just fear wearing armor, that I hadn’t known how to speak without breaking something. But all I managed was, “I thought we had time.”

Her laugh was small, sharp.

“We did. You spent it.”

Lightning again, closer now. The air felt charged, as if the storm was feeding on what was left between us.

I looked around the room. Everything was the same but slightly wrong. The books we’d collected still filled the shelves, but there was dust on the spines. The photo of us at the lake, she’d turned it facedown. The afghan her grandmother made hung over the arm of the couch, its loose threads like life unraveling.

“You still live like I’m coming back,” I said before I could stop myself.

She met my eyes then, a weary calm settling over her face. “And you still talk like words can fix what time broke.”

She turned away, walking toward the bedroom, and that movement—so small, so final—was the sound of a door closing forever.

I should’ve said it then. The three words that had stuck in my throat for months, that had burned every time I swallowed them back. I love you.

But they felt useless now, too light to bridge the distance I’d built. She was already walking toward another room, into another life where I didn’t exist.

“I love you,” I whispered anyway, though I don’t know if she heard.

She paused, hand on the doorway, just enough to make me hope, but didn’t turn around. “No, Eli,” she said quietly. “You loved me in theory. Not in time.”

The words cut clean, no malice, no heat. Just truth.

And then she was gone.

I stood there, damp and stupid, staring at the half-empty coffee cup, wondering if love really dies, or if it just lingers, pacing behind closed doors, waiting for someone to let it out.

I left her apartment quietly, closing the door without another knock. The stairwell smelled of dust and rain. By the time I stepped outside, the storm had passed, leaving the city damp and gleaming, as if it had been crying for both of us.

The inside noise gone, replaced by the faint hum of an outdoor AC unit, and the arching of a neon sign about to go out. It struck me then how strange it is, the sound of ordinary life continuing after the extraordinary has ended.

I walked aimlessly, hands shoved in my pockets, feeling the weight of everything I hadn’t said pressing against my ribs. Each puddle reflected her face, each flash of passing light looked like forgiveness until it wasn’t. I felt like my love had just missed the train and I was left standing in the station with a suitcase full of words. How I wished I’d said some of them earlier.

I stopped and turned toward her building, more out of ache than hope, expecting only the dark outline of her window, but desperately hoping she’d be standing in the window, watching.

And there she was.

Not just standing.

Not just watching, but waving, with both arms slicing overhead, frantic and bright, like a beacon desperate to guide a lost thing back to shore. I didn’t need to hear the words, to turn and hurry back, ignoring the splashing in the puddles. I wanted to hold her in my arms until she barely had breath to breathe. I’d never hold back telling her how much I loved her again.

I flew up her stairs, heart pounding the way it should have months ago, and when she opened the door, she said, “I changed my mind.”

I didn’t speak—I couldn’t. I just pulled her into my arms, into everything I’d been afraid to give her, into the moment that made every unsaid word collapse into one truth.

Her lips met mine, breathless and warm, and between kisses I whispered the words like a vow I’d been saving my whole life.

“I really do love you.”

M.D. Smith of Huntsville, Alabama, writer of over 350 flash stories, has published digitally in Frontier Times, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bewilderingstories.com, and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats.

https://mdsmithiv.com/

North Star

Gabe was late for a registration renewal appointment at the DMV, so he was overjoyed to see a tight but available parallel parking spot at the curb across from the building’s entrance. He backed carefully into it at an angle, cranked his steering wheel to straighten out, and before he heard it, felt his rear fender meet metal.

“Shit,” Gabe muttered and inched forward.

He left his car idling, scrambled out, and inspected the results. There was a small indentation in the front bumper of the late model pick-up he’d struck, as well as a scratch that had transferred its white color to his fender. He wasn’t sure, but thought it might be possible for the dent to be tapped roughly into place and the scratch to be rubbed out somewhat. But that wasn’t what the sinking feeling in his gut told him. Gabe glanced around him where he saw no other vehicles or pedestrians present, then blew out a breath, got back in his car, and hurried up the street where he found parking in a paid lot.

He jogged back to the DMV but was told by a clerk that too much time had lapsed to keep his appointment, so had to sit with all the other walk-ins waiting for the number he’d been issued to be called. Forty-five minutes later, he finally completed his transaction, and pushed outside with his temporary new registration. His eyes traveled immediately across the street where he found the pick-up truck gone and a red sedan occupying its previous space. Like a passing cloud, relief combined with regret enveloped him.

“It wouldn’t have taken more than a minute for me to scribble a note along with my phone number,” he thought. “And I missed my damn appointment anyway.”

The gray afternoon had already begun its descent towards gloaming, further diminishing his spirits as he started walking back towards the parking lot. Along the way, he stopped abruptly when he saw a narrow, low-lit tavern called “North Star” at the next intersection. Its name and assortment of bright neon window signs greeted him like an unexpected beacon.

~

A heavy-set man named Warren dressed in enlisted Navy camos sat inside at the bar nursing his second draft beer. The bartender was slightly older, fortyish, and stood working at the prep sink listening to Warren explain how he came in to celebrate recent robbery charges he’d faced just being dropped.

The tavern’s name was a nod to its proximity to the naval base and was a popular watering hole for sailors. The bartender was used to hearing their varied stories, so just responded with a short nod and asked, “What were you charged with stealing?”

“Bunch of nothing, really.” Warren pursed his lips. “I live on the first floor of unaccompanied housing. Guy next door is an Indian, Native-American, whatever. He discovered some things missing from his place one night after he stood graveyard duty…a little cash, an old laptop, bunch of Indian artifact crap. MPs got called. They investigated, found his window pried open, and uncovered grainy time-stamped security camera footage showing the back of a big guy like me in camos climbing inside. It had been raining, and they also found mud on my boots consistent with prints they found outside that sailor’s window.”

“No kidding.” The bartender’s voice had taken on a hint of apprehension.

“Nope.” Warren took a swallow of beer. “Had to appear before ‘Captain’s Mast’.” He watched the bartender frown and clarified, “NJP, Non-Judicial Punishment hearing…where they decide guilt, punishment, or if it’s bad enough to elevate things to court martial proceedings.”

“Okay.” The bartender dried the shot glass Warren had used to knock back before his last beer. “So how’d you get off?”

Warren took another swallow and huffed a chortle. “Guy down the hall showed up at my hearing completely unannounced and told the CO I’d been in here drinking with him all that night, we’d got too soused to make it back to the base, so we stayed over together at the hotel around the corner until the next morning. Said he paid and even had a credit card receipt which he held up to prove it.”

“That really happen?”

“Nah.” Warren finished off his beer, wiped his lips, and pushed his mug forward for a refill. “We were both in here drinking that night, that much was accurate. I was with some other squids, but he was by himself. We nodded to each other from across the bar. I did get pretty loaded, but went back to the base with my buddies before midnight while he was still here.”

“What the hell…”

“Right? What I thought exactly when he showed up with that story at the hearing.”

The bartender tipped the mug at the tap until a film of foam nudged its lip and set it back down in front of Warren. He shook his head and mumbled, “Why would he do that?”

The gaze Warren returned was glassy-eyed and uneasy. His mouth closed into a tight line before he said, “Want the real truth?”

“Sure.”

Warren used his chin to indicate the whiskey bottle between them and tapped the bar with his fingertip. The bartender poured a shot, watched the big man toss it off with a grimace, then return the same gaze his way.

The bartender waited a beat, then said, “Well?”

“The truth is…” Warren paused, shrugged. “Truth is, I think he was sweet on me. The way I’d find him looking at me all the time…staring, you know. We never spoke, but just a pretty strong feeling I got. In fact, happened that night in here. Sort of freaked me out, to be honest.” He shrugged again. “Anyway, will never know because he shipped out the next day.”

There were only a dozen or so other people in the tavern. No music or television played, so the collective voices were just a muffled din, and the air was close enough to create a condensation ring around the window’s edge. Another moment passed before the bartender shook his head again and muttered, “Wow.”

“Yeah,” Warren replied. “Go figure.”

Gabe entered then, squinting to adjust to the dim light. He took a stool one removed from Warren. When the bartender came over, he ordered a draft beer, too, then took off his jacket and folded it across his lap. Warren had turned to regard him, expelled an affable grunt when Gabe mirrored his glance, and pointed.

“The Nautical Star,” Warren said. “Nice.”

Gabe looked at the tattoo on the inside of his left wrist, then watched Warren raise his right forearm revealing a larger version that was almost identical. After they’d exchanged small smiles, Warren asked, “When’d you serve?”

“Went in right after high school and did my four years. Got out in January.”

“Deploy?”

“Twice. First time just cruised the Western Pacific. Second was part of an operation giving humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan.”

“That must have been interesting.”

Gabe cocked his head and said, “Sort of.” His shoulders fell a bit at the memory in contrast to the parking incident he’d just initiated.

The bartender set down his beer and sauntered off to the far end to serve other customers. When Warren extended his mug, Gabe tapped it with his own. They each took healthy sips, then the older man said, “Name’s Warren.”

“Gabe.”

They reached out and clasped hands. Warren nodded several times, studying Gabe’s troubled eyes, before asking, “So, brother, what brings you in here this fine afternoon?”

“Oh, you know.” Gabe paused. “Suppose the same sort of reasons most people come into a bar alone and order a drink. You?”

“Celebrating.” Warren watched Gabe give a grim nod of his own, then asked, “How about yourself?”

Gabe cocked his head again, lowered his eyes, took a long swallow, then looked back to Warren. “Opposite for me, actually” he said. “Guilt.”

“That so?”

Uninvited, the image invaded Gabe’s mind of his father’s firm, steady hand on his shoulder before getting on the boot camp bus. A kind of flush spread over him before he said, “Yeah, just passed up a chance to do the right thing.”

Warren felt himself blinking, then said quietly, “We’ve all done that.”

“Just the same.”

Warren watched the young man finish off all but the dregs of his beer and take a money clip out of his pants pocket. “Hey,” he said, a different sort of flush creeping up his back as he reached over and put his hand over Gabe’s. “No worries, soldier. That one’s on me.”

Their eyes met and held until Gabe said, “Appreciate it.”

Warren hesitated until he saw the bartender move off to clear a table before reaching into his own camo pants pocket and removing a wallet-like catch. Its top was covered with colorful, intricate beadwork. He kept the catch below the level of the bar, slipped a credit card out of it, and set it on top.

“That’s beautiful,” Gabe told him, pointing. “I grew up on a farm near the Lakota reservation. Reminds me of their handiwork.”

Warren gave a tepid shrug and quickly replaced the catch. “Don’t know,” he mumbled. “Some sort of Plains Indians, I guess.”

Laughter arose from one of the tables, followed by a clink of glasses. Gabe climbed off his stool and shrugged into his jacket.

“Thanks again.” He extended a fist that Warren bumped. Gabe gestured with his chin towards the big man’s tattoo, fashioned a little salute, and said, “Stay the course.”

Warren offered a reluctant nod in return. He adjusted his girth and rolled his shoulders as if they hurt. Turning forward again, he didn’t watch Gabe leave the bar.

Outside the North Star, it had grown colder, but the clouds had broken and the blue hour’s visages had begun. Gabe rubbed over his shirt pocket and felt the pen he always kept clipped there, then started retracing his steps back toward the DMV.

He said to himself, “I’ll just take a quick look through the neighborhood and see if that pick-up truck is around. It might have returned by now. If so, I can leave a note on my registration envelope.” He turned his jacket collar up against the chill and gazed off towards the western horizon’s streaked, vermillion tint. “You never know,” he whispered. “It might not be too late.”

William Cass has had over 380 short stories accepted for publication in a variety of literary magazines such as december, Briar Cliff Review, and Zone 3. Winner of writing contests at Terrain.org and The Examined Life Journal, he’s also been nominated once for Best of the Net, twice for Best Small Fictions, and six times for the Pushcart Prize. His three short story collections were all published by Wising Up Press. He lives in San Diego, California.

This story originally appeared in American Writers Review.

Jerrabomberra

Hard scrabble country with poor soils,

rocky ridges and slopes of scree,

makes for tough riding, slow uphill

and down, picking the safest line,

recovering as wheels slip sideways

on loose rocks or slippery roots

at acute angles, striking pedals

against boulders, losing momentum

facing obstacles, slowing down

to rise up and over fallen trees

and jagged rocks whose propensity

is to rip a tear in the wall of your tire.

I am not the only one who shudders

at the thought of riding here,

and on steep slopes of loose rock,

surrender and get off and walk the bike,

but we all take up the challenge nonetheless

and return for another ride.

Rohan Buettel lives in Canberra, Australia. His haiku appear in Australian and international journals (including Presence, Cattails and The Heron’s Nest). His longer poetry appears in various journals, including Rattle, Unleash Lit, Meanjin, Meniscus and Quadrant.

Lamentations of a Magdalene

1.

Out there in the place that all the town’s teenagers call the Glory Land, there’s a little retention pond surrounded by thickset cattails and high grasses and a big red barn, nearly tumbling over on itself in the field. Violently green grass, as far as the eye can see. Spreading out like an ache towards the wire fences and the upside-down windmill—my God, they should have fixed that up, but once the old man who owned the farm kicked the bucket, they let it rot.

Riker’s sprawled out in the back of his dad’s truck. Not a breeze in the air, just a stale hold, a finger-bruise grip around the farm. All that cuts through is the wooden decay smell and the grass. Brushing against his skin, there’s a spot where you’ll fit right between his arm and his flank.

“That’s what the town is,” musing, love-happy, relaxed. “Rot on rot. Nothing worth sticking around for.”

Here comes his childish grin, the big toothy thing taking up the lower half of his face, and he smells like sweat and musk and like the tobacco he bought out of town that he chews and spits. And chews and spits. He’s here in Pine Grove and plans to die here, free and clear, which feels almost like a waste. Outside of the limits, there’s cities and different kinds of grocery stores and movie theaters and enough things to do on the weekends that people don’t bother going to church. To stay in this place would mean to relax at the teeth in the back of your neck like a dumb puppy, full of mother’s milk.

Riker sighs, brushes the dark, dark hair behind his neck and lets the sweat slide from his hairline down his neck. His kisses send shivers over more bare skin, sticking together out of sheer want, the sharp need to have someone know, to be there to witness each other like this. All under the glass bottle blue sky.

There’s only one way to figure out why God gave us bodies, what those bodies are for. No use hiding from it.

Then, he’s producing the flask—stolen from his dad. Come to think of it, most of his stuff comes from his old man. His hair, the way his nose slopes, how small his pupils get when he’s really thinking about something or when he’s considering another go-round. One time at church they were both in the second pew from the front and one hand of his—a big mitt of a hand—was cupping Riker’s neck, tight. A collar in the fresh light. After that day, Riker came up and talked about the old field in the back of the Darden place called the Glory Land, where there’s a little pond that might have some fish and good, fresh air. And nobody else there. Just two bodies and the red truck and the old barn.

So, maybe God really doesn’t see you take his mouth, lips between teeth, hissing, hands along damp shoulders, collecting sensations. It’s so hot outside in the summertime.

“Wanna try again?” he asks.

Could have been that he was saying the Lord’s prayer. Just another stupid eighteen-year-old boy in the back of a car. But then again, he’s also a Godly son and a shepherd of the earth and the giver of every nice sensation that’s ever been felt. All combined in the hot air and the blasts of birdcall.

Now, other kids are probably on summer break, if they go to school, and when they go to school, they go back home and don’t think twice about the whole thing. Don’t give too much thought to how lucky they are to have that.

Here, there’s the Glory Land. Here is the back of a truck that shivers in the blanketing heat. Here’s a boy more handsome than anyone else in the youth Bible study with his arms open wide and body bare. There’s time lapsing as the sun crawls over the clouds and surely there’s parents at home waiting, fathers with their arms crossed and mothers with their lips jutting out.

“Riley,” he says. “Riley, Riley, Riley.”

And you come when you’re called, because there’s nothing better than surrender, than domestication. Man’s best friend is woman, created for him. Glorious helpmeet, see where the sticky skin meets sweat meets blanket borrowed from Mom and the air is so cool, like something shifted in Heaven when his jaw meets your shoulder. Like a shooting star, it crashes down. Hard, but forgiving, like the upside-down windmill, still wanting to turn and turn.

And turn.

2.

When it happens, it’s like things were always supposed to be that way. On one knee, he is, in those chinos from his dad’s closet that bag around his thighs and knees, muscular like the farm-boy his mother raised him to be but still so small that he cuts new notches in every belt belt he gets. Her, clasping her hands by her jaw, hair pulled back in a sweet updo, giving of the smell of bridal all the way from the front pew. Like she’s the Virgin Mary and she’s rocketing toward her wedding night, going all silly over the way his big blue eyes blink up with her. Oh, just look at her. It’s hard to be mad about it when Riker’s gaze is so magnetic, he could have had any girl in the chapel he wanted. Could have had anyone, yes.

At least now, he knows what to do. Or that’s what he told his buddies at the youth meeting. Didn’t give names, not specifics, he’s better than that, at least. No, he just told everyone that he had some practice, knows how to take care of that Jane Westman, keep their marriage bed happy.

God, that ring. It’s worth it to take the Lord’s name in vain when that rock is sitting heavy on Jane’s finger. He says he’s been planning it since the first time he saw her. So, he says. So, he says. Was Riker planning this with his sweaty skin and hands so hot against your chest? Have it in the back of his mind, did he? When his sparse chest hairs brushed against the flannel blanket Mama loaned off because it was a picnic? It’s always a picnic. Entered the whole scene like some Don Juan and left like a ghost.

As if he’d even understand that reference. What eighteen-year-old boy would? Not the best, not quite playing with the whole deck, but Riker’s funny. Kind. Good with his hands and his hips. He’s better than the other boys, the ones that surround him now, clapping him on the back. Can’t wait to be in the wedding, can’t wait to see you with your wife, Jimmy’s a shoo-in to be best man, isn’t he?

Holy was his name when it crawled out of your lips and unholy is the body that held him inside once. First. Jesus Christ, Jane’s already in white, practically parading her unsoiled skin around the loop, showing off that massive ring. How’d Riker even afford a rock like that? But, there’s no way to blame him for taking a Westman, having a guaranteed house and a plot of land and a hard day’s work every day before he goes home to a lovely wife and ten babies and two dogs and a cat. Marrying into power, this bastard. Devoting his life to Pine Grove and to the church and to this young woman so fresh.

But he had his Magdalene. He had soft hands—bigger than Jane’s, so you couldn’t wear that ring even if you wanted to—cresting over his hair. Held the jaw open and the lips taut and learned all his lessons to be a good man. A gut punch to know that no one will ever understand just how this feels.

‘Cause Riker’s giving his toy back, but it’s not coming back untouched or unburned. Like a peach, a fingertip touch poses death to the woman in this town.

Now, slinking back towards the chapel exit. Organ harmonies like angel cries. In the back storage room is where Brother Amos keeps the supplies, the communion crackers and the knockoff Goldfish for the kid’s Sunday school. And the wine. No one drinks grape juice here like the halfhearted Christians of the outside. This church—Amos’ church—sucks from the Lord’s vein like mother’s milk, becoming whole from the savior like we were always meant to. So, maybe this’ll work. Uncork the thing and take a whiff of the mouth, breathing in the vinegar and old fruit smell. Kick off the sandals Mama got from the discount store and feel the hardwood floor underfoot, the cold reverberations of what could be a coffin if they let it. Wouldn’t that be a great surprise. Here lies Riley, dead because some half-stupid boy touched her once and then never wanted to again. So fucking melodramatic. The wine slides down, lighting a fire on its way, and you hope that it cleanses your veins. A controlled burn in a national forest. Natural devastation. Riker would know better than to stay with a trailer park girlfriend, only good for a spell until the ripeness fades and it’s just not good anymore. Like a knee right to the stomach.

They won’t find you until you’ve gone through the bottle. Mom and Rodney. Babbling on and on about how the wine was communion wine, how the Lord entered your body and wiped any trace of Riker away. They’ll make you take from your savings to replace the alcohol and then write a letter to Brother Amos apologizing. But it was worth it, feeling whole.

M. Anne Avera is from Auburn, Alabama. You can find her at writeranneavera.carrd.co

Bullfight

the ground rumbles but not by your hooves
the thousands and I will share your meat together
                          wave handkerchiefs of glory
after our eternity dance in this shady ring 
shade which grows smaller now 
more sun more hot july sun

to you in this final hour I forever swing the sword and cape in circles 
your blood drips to the dust and wishes to catch the gold
                            stitches on my pants but I must not let you 
I must show these people what we know they are capable of
cheers and shouts and stomps which shake the sand
                            like a hot boulder which strikes the earth
together we made the coliseum bleachers popcorn and tomatoes
your kin in our pens your adrenaline shots and bloody back
hind legs for roasting this is what we drew in the caves

they said on your back the sun was carried
our gods did all the work for you
the rounding you up and locking you in
                           putting you in yokes
I say bull when was the last time
you moved earth with yokes?

you do not pull the sun anymore
                 you yoke nothing except
                 the dust from my boots
and the weight of three espadas
                 hanging from your soft hump
which I will break like a pomegranate
I say bull we pull the sun now

Jack Anderson (pronouns he/him) is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at Wichita State University. His work has been published in Door=Jar and Greyhound Journal. He was a finalist for the 16th Annual Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest. When he’s not watching The Simpsons, he wonders why James Tate never wrote about Kansas City. He told me to tell you that poetry is awesome and should never die. So don’t let it. Instagram: @jack.anders0n

Doppelganger

I can’t tell you where

I went today

I’ll have to let

the flock-less mountain goat

speak for me

from an aerial view

she calmly walks alone

in a tidy field of grass

at peace with separation

until spurs of thought

tell her she is abandoned

in the lowest place

left to chew on her foibles

she may be wondering how

to get to the valley

of the shadow of death

just for a moment or two

before she lifts her head

hearing the calling bleats

and the sound of hoofbeats

rising above the stumbling blocks

helping her recall, there is

a place for her on higher ground

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Susan Shea is a retired school psychologist. Her poems have been published in or are forthcoming in ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Catamaran, Argyle Literary Magazine, Burningword, Peatsmoke, Passager, Folio, Ekstasis and others. Three of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and one for Best of the Net.