Home.
So warm and sweet like ginger tea on a Sunday morning.
Little ones giggling about absurd things, as they should be.
The world no longer a drab, but rather vibrant and brilliant;
I wonder if this is how dogs experience colorblindness.
The opponent was no longer a rival, but a friend;
Makes me wonder who the true enemy is.
Everyone spoke so softly that it felt like clouds were brushing
against my ears.
The absence of strife seemed somewhat strange...
This is not home.
Home is like unsweetened chocolate and high expectations,
It’s sour and harsh.
It’s as sharp and piercing as the leading edge of grass.
With arguments starting just to simply be involved in something.
Grey and thick air; maybe that’s why it’s hard to take a deep breath.
No reason for the enemy to be the enemy.
I guess it’s just inherited.
Why is this home?
When everything about it seems more like a nightmare than a dream,
How can this be the place I call home?
My eyes were struck by light as the sun struggled to peek through
the drapes.
I cracked them open, and I smiled.
Knowing that type of tenderness must be true even in a world
like mine.
Considering that it is impossible to appear to know something
that does not exist.
Perhaps it wasn’t a dream or a nightmare;
It was hope.
The Birds by Benjamin Harnett
We caught the end of the movie on the hotel cable
in Missouri somewhere, after we’d overdosed on edibles
(take half, the guy said, but he meant half a dose
not half the gummy—well) I fell into it first,
a great roaring, a splitting of time and sense,
its finale was interminable, and deep,
and I felt it might never end.
Home, from the trip, metaphoric and literal,
I observe that the character of the birds
at our feeders has changed
since Summer ended. Gone
are the rows of dainty sparrows
waiting their turn,
the plethora of different finches,
no more starlings and cow-birds, all fled,
grosbeaks, and woodpeckers,
replaced by sublimely lovely titmice,
with their ombre bodies and dark eyes,
many chickadees, who mince about,
or bluster all puffed up,
until the Jays storm in. God
how these latter loom larger in inches
than I ever remembered,
(they’re corvids did you know!)
and strut about with affected
menace, angry. I should like to be a bird
or at least a poet, one day,
if only out of penance.
—
Benjamin Harnett is a poet, fiction writer, historian, and digital engineer. His poetry has appeared recently in Poet Lore, Saranac Review, ENTROPY, and the Evansville Review. He is the author of the novel THE HAPPY VALLEY and the short story collection GIGANTIC. He lives in Cherry Valley, NY with his wife Toni and their collection of eccentric pets. He works for The New York Times.
Lovettsville by Hannah Gagnon
I sometimes eat lunch alone at a table on a busy sidewalk by a shopping center with brand new buildings. There’s a fancy new pizza place, a gym, and it looks like a new fast-food restaurant opening up across the street. There’s a new development of houses behind me that seem to have multiplied since I last came here.
I can remember a time when all of those buildings hadn’t yet been built, and in their place lay acres of empty fields. When the only road through town was a tiny little main street lined with old country homes that were more often than not a little run down, but held generations of character. When there were family-owned ma-and-pop shops, and when the sidewalks in the summer were filled with barefooted boys running about with wooden bats over their shoulders.
We used to all meet up at the pool in the morning. Seeing who could do the coolest dive, swim the fastest to the other side, or hold his or her breath the longest. The lifeguards used to blow their whistles and yell at us to stop running, but we did it anyway.
After swimming all day, we wandered around neighborhoods, feeling the dirt under our toes, and peeking out from behinds red maple trees to admire historic homes. We played games, and ran up and down the dirt path.
The sun would set over the mountains behind us, which meant it was time to grab dinner at the old-fashioned pizza place across the street. They had live music and the best fizzing, fruity soda I’ve ever tasted.
One by one, my friends traded their dirty white tank tops and jean shorts for trendy crop tops, Nikes, and the latest iPhone. And one by one, the fields where we used to play hours of endless baseball in our bare feet were replaced by stores and restaurants. And one by one, the ma and pop shops where I used to buy soda -- the kind that still came in glass bottles -- closed down.
Now, my shoes pinch my feet as I walk on the fresh asphalt in the crowded street. The homes I once admired must have shrunk, or perhaps I have grown. The people I used to swim with are now lifeguards that blow their whistle and yell at kids to stop running.
—
Hannah Gagnon is from Knoxville, MD. She has worked as a Digital Marketing Coordinator for a non-profit and is an emerging creative writer. She is currently a student at Hagerstown Community College. She enjoys writing poetry and short fiction about nature and the mountainous region where she grew up.
Button Woman by Clare Woodring
Push me down.
Press me small.
Thread your needle through me.
I don’t mind--it doesn’t hurt.
Just please, don’t sever our strand.
I will grasp onto your loose strings.
Attach me to your favorite sweater.
That way I can be with you always.
Tie the knot.
I promise to keep you snug and warm.
You tell me you have outgrown me.
You scold me for being so constricting.
I thought you loved this sweater before.
You cut me off.
No scissors, blade, or seam ripper can hurt me.
Not as much as you.
But in your sewing kit, I will wait.
Once you are bored with your new project.
You may seek to thread your needle through me.
And we can try again.
—
Clare Woodring is an eighteen-year-old writer from Boonsboro, Maryland. She is attending Hagerstown Community College, where she is taking a writing class elective as she completes her degree.
XTPE 413557 by Bill Suboski
Drone XTPE 413557 maintained a height of four hundred feet, with a standard deviation of altitude of fifteen feet as it flew along the southern shore of Lake Erie. XTPE 413557 was the newest generation of monitoring drones. A combination of light-weight battery packs, high efficiency solar cells and next generation electric engines meant that XTPE 413557 remained forever aloft, only landing when informed by weather servers of impending inclement weather, or for servicing as self-detected.
Three days ago hospitals worldwide had overflowed with patients. By the evening of that day, one in one hundred people worldwide had experienced symptoms: nausea, severe headache, diarrhea and / or dehydration. By evening of that day the early cases were bleeding from mucous membranes.
Drone XTPE 413557 overflew the Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve as it passed Bratenahl. Its onboard software kept it centered on the shoreline but the small size of the Preserve peninsula allowed it to overfly the half mile square area as it approached downtown Cleveland from the northwest. To the left of its direction of travel were the docks of the Intercity Yacht Club, and, across Interstate 90, the five baseball fields of Gordon Park arranged in a pentagonal pattern.
The traffic lights changed and cars were parked on the road sides. But no cars were moving. There were no pedestrians. Interstate 90 lay bare. Every hundred feet or so a car might be stopped on a shoulder. Birds flew and chirped but aside from that the hinterland of the city was silent.
The next morning, two days ago, one in ten people had had symptoms and two in a hundred from the previous day had died. There was no regular programming. Stations were either static or constant coverage; curfews were announced and by the afternoon military vehicles began to appear. Experts on television declared it to be a new type of hemorrhagic fever, fast-acting and lethally airborne. By evening, two days ago, two in five had symptoms and one in ten had died.
The social web collapsed. Workers from all sectors failed to appear at their jobs. Businesses closed. Scant army units tried and failed to enforce cordon zones. Those few people walking on the streets avoided each other. Violence flared in ten thousand thousand spots across the world where warnings to stay away were ignored.
Drone XTPE 413557 flew past the 55th Street East Marina. The drone flew almost directly above the stone breakwater. On previous passes children would wave, imagining that somewhere someone was looking through a camera on the drone, but such was not the case. There were no children today nor would there be again. Drone XTPE 413557 began a sweeping hyperbolic turn to the Northeast, anticipating the two overlaid rectangles that formed Burke Lakefront Airport.
One day ago nine in ten had symptoms and four in ten had died. None of the infected recovered, all died. The prognosis was evident: symptoms mean death. Human society no longer existed. No one walked the streets. There were no looters. There were no good Samaritans. Some had fled the cities, driving to remote areas, hometowns, backwoods cabins. This had the effect of infecting all the highways and turning all inhabited landmasses into isolated pockets of infection; free zones bordered on all sides by infectious areas.
XTPE 413557 passed the airport and flew across the small faux bay that held the USS Cod Submarine Memorial. The drone passed Voinovich Bicentennial Park and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It had just completed a data upload to a remote server in Buffalo, New York, and had in turn been handed off to a server in Toledo. Pointers were reset and onboard memory was logically if not electronically cleared to zero used. Ahead to the left was First Energy Stadium.
This morning six billion, eight hundred million humans had already died or were dying. The survivors were in outlying and rural areas although many of these had been infected by arrivals from cities. There were people in remote locations, the high arctic, McMurdo Station, and hermits and various other social isolates. Some of these regions had enough community and population to survive for several generations.
XTPE 413557 passed over Edgewater Park Beach. A young man wearing only shorts lay dead on the sand. The areas around his orifices were now a dark rust color. He lay expressionless in the morning sun. An orange rind and a half eaten sandwich lay beside him on the sand. XTPE 413557’s formerly southerly direction now became northerly again as it followed the curve of the coast back out into the lake on the journey west.
Everywhere an infected human breathed became a lethal zone. To exhale was to shed virus. Survivors had limited resources and as supplies became scarce they would fearfully forage into unknown territory. Often they would bring infection back to their band and the uninfected zones grew ever smaller. Those desperate few who had early fled the cities were almost always infected and their arrival meant death. Thirty days after it began there were only seven million survivors left, trapped in small areas.
Drone XTPE 413557 flew past the Lakewood high-rises and adjusted it’s heading again. It was now flying almost entirely west and only slightly north. It overflew the small peninsula of Lakewood Park. Somewhere in among the trees a hungry dog barked and snarled at the movement.
There were small breeding populations, but there was nowhere to expand into that could be considered safe. In 2132, one hundred and fourteen years after the first case, the last human being would die. Twelve years later from now drone XTPE 413557 would develop a critical fault in a motor. This would cause it to drift out over Lake Erie, and a day later, it would be torn apart by a thunderstorm.
—
Bill is an aspiring fiction writer with a background in computer programming. He is still trying to decide what he wants to be when he grows up. Born in Indiana, Bill is a transplanted Hoosier living as a Buckeye by way of Canada and the Netherlands. Contact Bill at [email protected].
River Sprites by Michael Theroux
Fingertips of trees caress the river’s skin
Leaves on the water slowly, slowly spinning
River claims this harvest year out, year in
Forest’s fallen glory, fall’s golden winnings
We go to the river to sit in quiet wonder
To watch the leaf rafts follow one another
Wait upon the setting sun, whose
Slanting rays are the caress of a lover
Remain so still, breathe slowly
Suspend motion, watch closely
There is Magic here, light and fragile
Something shines, something sparkles
The very Aire seems thick
Should we be so blessed
To witness these misty creatures
Riding their sun-splashed spin-craft
Dancing to the river’s rhythms …
Perfect, centered meditation
Will not avail the soul of Man, as
The bliss glimpsed in this moment
Still, calm crystalline
The pools of our Lifesong
Flow deep within our being
Below our darkest fears
Above our brightest joys
A memory, settling, imbedded
Speaking of grand antiquity
Lilting from halls so long forgotten
Only Pan still plays the fanfare
Ah! Now rise, and lead a pure new life
Carrying within you, a precious treasure
None may steal, few even guess
An essence nuanced so deep within
There’s one more thing: a fee
Due, before your dying
To set you indentured soul free
To also dance upon these waters
Take heart! There is a greater a gift
Than even this, that I have now given
For with the treasure’s soul claim
Comes the very gift to free you
Just once, in one special moment
Of golden sunset on still dark waters
In late autumn, leaves a-floating
Bring one fresh soul to the river
To calm them, to heal them
Of wounds of their barbed path
Speak gently, mover slowly
Then, nodding to the River
Feign sleep, breathe gently
Teacher, with all your skill
Guide one soul to knowledge
Of Pan’s most gentle dancer
Ballerina, on stage of alder
Sent to spin upon the water
A twist of mist, a sparkle
A high note in the river’s laughter
Spirit or sprite, water nymph
It matters not to name her
Better to wait in breathless delight
As the light ripples around her
There! That’s payment in full
But understand, that in this moment
In this giving so gently shared
I freely give my dearest treasure
In years to come, Chaos will scream
Stars collide crashing around you
You will walk in peace, depth of soul
Shining love from this, that charms you
Giving, you release that so closely held
To one new soul, then awakening
This requires strength beyond belief
Once given, cannot be retaken
You will learn, as I
The Sprite’s most Magic measure
The greater joy of letting go
Of your soul’s most guarded treasure
—
Michael Theroux writes from his home in Northern California. His career has spanned botanist, environmental health specialist, green energy developer and resource recovery web site editor. Entering the public-side of the creative writing field late in life, at 73, Michael is now seeking publication of his cache of art writings which may be found, or will soon be seen, in Down in the Dirt, Ariel Chart, 50WS, CafeLit, Poetry Pacific, Last Leaves, Backwards Trajectory, Small Wonders, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Preservation Foundation / Storyhouse, Cerasus, The Acedian Review, the Lothlorien Poetry, City Key, Wild Word, and Fixator Press.
Why Not Like Mummies? by Sharon Kennedy-Nolle
To go down tightly bound
to a stiffened history, a scrolled truth
of seeped ochre, carmen resin
oozed through tunic threads stuck to skin, papyrus crisped,
and tight henna curls tattooed across a leathery scalp,
stenciled gold about the centuried bone specimen…
Deliberate calm prevails in the excavated air
among the compact sarcophagi cache
of cats, crow, a gazelle
all necks wrung, club bound,
and a hundred servants subdued
to do each day’s bidding in faience blue;
spotlight on the offal pickled in canopic jars,
tidied jackal, blanched baboon stare
a moon-bleak answer back,
blanking out the last breath.
Not this frass haven you haunt.
Not this Medusa mess left of us.
—
A graduate of Vassar College, Sharon Kennedy-Nolle received an MFA from the Writers’ Workshop as well as a doctoral degree in nineteenth-century American literature from the University of Iowa. She also holds MAs from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and New York University. In addition to scholarly publications, her poetry has appeared in many journals. Chosen as the 2020 Chapbook Editor’s Pick by Variant Literature Press, Black Wick: Selected Elegies was published in 2021. Kennedy-Nolle was winner of the New Ohio Review’s 2021 creative writing contest. In 2023 her manuscript Not Waving was a semi-finalist for the Two Sylvias Press Wilder Prize, University of Wisconsin Poetry Series’ Brittingham, and Felix Pollak Prizes, and the Brick Road Poetry Contest. Not Waving has been named a finalist for the Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Award. Recently appointed the Poet Laureate of Sullivan County for 2022-2024, she lives and teaches in New York. Kennedy-Nolle has been awarded a Poet Laureate Fellowship for 2023-2024 from the Academy of American Poets.
A Weighted Blanket by Brittani Watkins
Women walk around so heavily,
Bearing the brunt of mankind, dragging expectation & double-standards,
Woven baskets for hands, frayed & worn,
Time has calloused them, stretched thin & hardened under pressure,
Her strands of hair tie the collective, guiding & secure,
Braided with heartbreak & resistance, an intrepid balance that endures,
A weighted scale descends to break - men often conspire, from love to envy,
They intend to take,
The female vigor recoils these attempts with love and infinite prowess,
Lovely tenacious bones, bestowed imprint of strength & pursuit,
A movement within a woman is a movement within time,
We carry generations and ancestral mastery,
Bound & carried - the world shall behold such an honor.
—
Brittani Watkins is a Freelance Writer hailing from the historic town of Williamsport, Maryland. She enjoys writing poetry, essays, and short stories within the realm of various subjects – such as history, art, travel, politics & philosophy, as well as macabre themes of death, horror, and the supernatural, and the societal structure and theory of feminism, mental health, civil rights, poverty & class. When not writing, Brittani reads voraciously, attempts to paint landscapes & portraits, and daydreams of her ensuing travel adventure with her husband, Barry and their canine companion, Cairo.
Eggs by Jennifer Maloney
At night I curl beneath the quilt, made of silence, darkness,
cotton, embroidery,
I coil against myself under its weight and feel the night upwell
with whatever dreams
I may wade through or sink into like a mound of flowers.
I bend and press my face to them, the scent of Mother’s Day and
funeral homes,
the purple fragrance of Easter, and colors start to spiral like a
spinning egg,
bedecked with bright lacquer and ribbons.
When the eggs start dancing like girls in wooden shoes, tuck
their fists against their hips, tip their heads from side to side and
whistle, kick their carved clogs, kerchiefs bobbing in time, red-
cheeked as Hummel figurines—when the eggs start to dance,
you know they’ve probably gone bad.
Which is too bad because they’re absolutely darling: perfectly fit
to the palm of one’s hand when they aren’t dressed like Hansel
and Gretel.
A dozen elliptical children, white, brown, speckled, smooth,
they’ve been waiting, patient as stones, for weeks in the refrigerator,
waiting to be fried or boiled, scrambled, mixed into cake batter or
fried rice.
Waiting with still solemnity, uniformity, in prayerful rows, bowed
heads, eyes closed, ommmm...until, one day, one of them squints.
Casts a jaundiced eye around the place, mutters what’s it all for,
anyway?
and sighs in existential ennui, understanding that life, after all, is
not about fulfilling a purpose, but is in fact utterly absurd, devoid
of reason, and so decides why not,
why not and begins to spin in place like a dervish,
scrambling its own brains but at least going out with some sense
of autonomy instead of this endless waiting, for what?
To be used? No—to be of service, murmur its brothers and sisters,
who then return, once again, to their mindful breathing.
—
A writer of fiction and poetry, Jennifer Maloney is a disabled woman living with chronic illness. Find her work in Litro Magazine, Literally Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Neologism Poetry Journal and many other places. Jennifer is the co-editor of the poetry anthology Moving Images: Poetry Inspired by Film (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing, 2021) and the author of Evidence of Fire, Poems & Stories (Clare Songbirds Publishing, 2023) and Don’t Let God Know You are Singings (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing, 2024). Jennifer is also a parent, a partner, and a very lucky friend, and she is grateful, every day, for all of it.
Pages of a Dream by Isabelle Kline
Down the yellow brick road and over the fence,
To a world full of dreams where nothing makes sense,
Fiddle-dee and don’t give a damn,
But I do not like green eggs and ham!
Its elementary, my dear, says the man on Baker Street:
If you linger near sewers, Pennywise you will meet.
As I live and breathe, is that Mr. Darcy?
How would I know – it’s written in Farsi!
From cover to cover and from one to another,
There’s a prince, a gorilla and an ugly stepmother!
All the places you’ll go and the hands you will shake,
When you open a book, you can dream while awake!