January 2019 | poetry
i am drowning under a raft of history.
i have nothing but
tanager trills in the dark,
a handful of wildflowers,
an ineffective rage.
i’m tired of growing vegetables
that die every year and must be
endlessly restarted by hand —
i want a yard burgeoning with blossoms,
overgrown, tangled, useless and thriving
by itself. i want
love like a field of wildflowers,
love like a mountainside spring,
cascading untamed, fragrant. i want
to grow a world where food
doesn’t have to be political, love
doesn’t have to be political,
the fucking wildflowers
can just grow where they grow without
being required to mean anything.
i cannot save this world.
instead i am growing vegetables,
tired annuals, non-natives, needy
and exhausting as colonialism,
to survive the world as it is
and try to help build a raft
that could hold us up
instead of holding us under
while the world around us
drowns.
by Kat Heatherington
Kat Heatherington is a queer ecofeminist poet, sometime artist, pagan, and organic gardener. She lives south of Albuquerque, NM in Sunflower River intentional community, sunflowerriver.org. Kat’s work primarily addresses the interstices of human relationships and the natural world. She has one book, The Bones of This Land, printed by Swimming with Elephants Publications in fall 2017, available on amazon.com and through SwEP, as well as several self-published chapbooks, available from the author at yarrow [at] sunflowerriver [dot] org. Her work can be read at sometimesaparticle.org.
January 2019 | fiction
The sound is faint, like the low grumble of an old man in his sleep, constant and all- pervasive—a unitary oscillating auditory net that suppresses spontaneous impulses and curbs undesirable actions. Holographic images in staggering colors pulse through the atmosphere, supporting auditory control, thus promoting emotional stability and forestalling anti-social impulses. All UniCitizens, like the dwellings they inhabit, the vehicles in which they are transported and the devices with which they communicate, are extensions of a unifying principle, components of the universal network that maintains a functioning society.
Life in the early 21st Century was messy and unpredictable. Terrorism, criminality and personal dysfunction prevailed. A multiplicity of information sources conflicted with one another, contributing to widespread confusion and disturbing behavioral patterns. Fear prevailed in a society riddled with contradictions. That is, until social scientists and engineers developed a panacea for chaos. Intensive Auditory Therapy has provided a comprehensive method to homogenize and control conduct, radically reducing the potential for anarchic and anti-social expression. It has transformed the troubled rumble of pre-UniLife into a unified buzzing hum, like bees at a distance, both a warning and assurance.
Despite Social Credit Scores that now weed out undesirable impulses, the quest for perfect social harmony is still occasionally subverted by expressions of errant desire that even the most precise algorithms often fail to take into account. Controlling human desire is a fragile and febrile thing, subject to resistance by the ambiguous and unruly qualities of the latent human spirit, impulsive emotions that even if rigorously suppressed will occasionally find expression in the side streets and back alleys of the maverick mind and delinquent heart.
Case# 45-41561X: Two middle-aged men, each assigned to a member of the opposite sex for life, are granted a UniWork break at a virtual eco resort in the Outer Hebrides, otherwise known as “islands of the strangers.” They grow inordinately close to one another and conjoin in sexual union for which they do not have official clearance. Each party desires to continue with this unsanctioned social breach, straying from their UniRole assignments and thus disturbing calibrated societal balance. The transgressors are prescribed multiple treatments of Intensive Sound Aversion Therapy and successfully returned to normative relational function. Case closed.
The social order, codified under the universal doctrine of ‘Each An Assigned Place’ is restored, forestalling any reversion to pre-Uni conditions when individual choice and irrational urges subverted cultural cohesion and threatened human survival.
by William Torphy
William Torphy’s poetry, critical reviews and articles have appeared in numerous magazines. Ithuriel’s Spear in San Francisco has published three books. Short stories have appeared in The Fictional Café, ImageOutWrite Volume 5, Main Street Rag, Miracle Monocle, Sun Star Review and Chelsea Station, the story for which was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. He works as an art curator in the San Francisco area.
January 2019 | poetry
King Erasure
At your intervention which was nothing more
than a pageantry of post it notes
stained by a ballpoint’s opium ink
dangling on an inch of yellow adhesive
stuck to your armored chest,
you told us what you wanted to be-
a cold steel coffin of pink champagne
where a jewelry box gleaming with
dirty needles floated in the hands of ladies
in waiting who no longer spread their
legs like wings, sheltering veins of regal blood, as
your shimmering crown of aluminum foil
sparkled above a bath towel cape
hailing you King Erasure.
Commando Ballerina
The need to remember
not to remember
swallowing yesterday’s glassy swords
sharpened by trembling hands,
by fingertips calloused from
dancing on lighters
to the beat of blood beneath these nails
that kept me alive through the night,
is why ten little soldiers in
pink fishnet stockings
salute the light in my eyes,
twirling at dawn on the shores
of my face, like commando ballerinas disarmed.
by Daniel Edward Moore
Daniel lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His poems have been in Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, Columbia Journal, Western Humanities Review, and others. His poems are forthcoming in West Trade Review, Duende Literary Journal, The Inflectionist Review, Magnolia Review, Isthmus Review, Glass Mountain Magazine, Columbia College Literary Review, January Review, Under a Warm Green Linden, Yemassee and Cumberland River Review. His books, “This New Breed: Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians” an Anthology, and “Confessions of a Pentecostal Buddhist,” can be found on Amazon. Visit Daniel at DanielEdwardMoore.com.
January 2019 | Best of Net nominee, fiction, nonfiction
Virtually Identical
FICTION
‘I shan’t introduce you to my sister,’ said Kate. ‘You’ll fall in love with her. Then I’ll have to hate you.’
‘Fine,’ I said.
(I’m used to Kate’s pronouncements.)
We were driving to Sussex. Having decided to marry me, Kate felt I should meet her parents.
‘You and your sister,’ I said. ‘Are you alike?’
‘We’re virtually identical.’
‘Twins?’
‘Stop the car,’ said Kate. ‘There by those bushes. I need to change.’
I find it captivating: Kate’s ability to transform herself. From brisk solicitor to untamed party-animal. From formal dinner guest to fun-runner in baggy shorts and shapeless t-shirt. The Kate, who now appeared in a black skirt and white blouse, was the dutiful daughter.
‘I must warn you,’ said Kate. ‘My parents are prudes.’
To me they appeared courteous, welcoming, perfectly charming.
‘Samuel will be sleeping in the guest bedroom,’ said Kate.
(Another of Kate’s pronouncement.)
Did I see Kate’s mother raise an eyebrow?
‘Don’t come looking for me in the night,’ said Kate. ‘You’ll end up in someone else’s bedroom.’
Kate’s father’s generous measures of single malt meant that I fell deeply asleep, but I woke up immediately when the bedroom door creaked open.
‘Don’t turn on the light.’
I didn’t.
In the morning, she’d gone.
‘Were you alright last night?’ said Kate.
‘Last night?’
‘By yourself in your lonely little bed.’
‘By myself? But didn’t you …?’
‘Didn’t I what?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I slept fine.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Me?’ I said. ‘I’m the bridegroom.’
‘I thought you looked familiar,’ she said. ‘I’m Aunt Astrid. I’m potty as an aspidistra. Did you know there was madness in the family?’
‘Really?’ I said, looking round the marquee. ‘Tell me. I haven’t met Kate’s sister yet. Is she here somewhere?
‘Sister? Kate has no sister. Kate’s an only child.’
by Nicolas Ridley
Unarmed Combat
NONFICTION
It’s a pleasant day in early April. Winter is no more than a memory and today we are learning how to kill people. Or maim them. Maybe both. I’m not sure yet.
Together we chant the sergeant’s mantra:
One-two-three-four,
Step-on-his-jaw,
Just-to-make-sure.
‘Next!’
Last January we slept in our boots on Dartmoor. We learnt the lesson on the first morning. If you leave your boots outside the tent, they freeze like solid blocks of ice. The answer is to keep them on all night. This means lying on your back in your sleeping-bag with your feet pointing upwards. It’s awkward at first but you get used to it. When you’re fourteen-years-old, sleeping isn’t usually terribly difficult.
One-two-three-four,
Step-on-his-jaw,
Just-to-make-sure.
‘Next!’
This spring the school’s Combined Cadet Force is camping in the Thetford battle area. We have spent much of the week crawling through damp bracken and sheep’s droppings but we’ve camped in many worse places and will do again.
This afternoon a group of us has volunteered to undergo training in unarmed combat. It sounded more fun than signals, mortars or map-reading. We are in the care of our instructor: square, unhurried, amiable, Sergeant Jones.
Methodically, almost languorously, Sergeant Jones disarms, disables and dispatches us by numbers.
‘You take the arm. You break the arm. You twist the wrist. And over he goes.’
Perhaps it’s a little chilling but it’s also oddly hypnotic.
‘You take the arm. You break the arm. You twist the wrist. And over he goes.’
One at a time, we rush at Sergeant Jones with wooden weapons. Step-by-step — cool and unflurried — he goes about his business.
‘You take the arm. You break the arm. You twist the wrist. And over he goes.’
I’m not certain what we’re learning except that Sergeant Jones is the master of his craft. If we have to watch him very much longer, we may become bored and rather restless but, for the present, it passes the time.
One-two-three-four,
Step-on-his-jaw,
Just-to-make-sure.
‘Next!’
All afternoon the sun shines down on us benignly. Tonight the damp bracken and sheep’s droppings will remain unfrozen and we will sleep peacefully in our socks.
by Nicolas Ridley
Nicolas Ridley has lived and worked in Tokyo, Casablanca, Barcelona, Hong Kong and Paris and now lives in London & Bath (UK) where he writes fiction, non-fiction, scripts and stage plays. A prize-winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, his short stories have been read at Liars’ League (London), Rattle Tales (Brighton), The Speakeasy (Bath), The Squat Pen Rests (Swindon), Story Friday (Bath), The Story Tales (London), Storytails (London) and Talking Tales (Bristol). Others have been published in London Lies, Lovers’ Lies & Weird Lies by Arachne Press (UK), Ariadne’s Thread (UK), Barbaric Yawp (USA), The Linnet’s Wings (Ireland), Litro Magazine (UK), O:JA&L (USA), Rattle Tales 3 (UK), Sleet Magazine (USA), The Summerset Review (USA), Tales from a Small Planet (USA), Tears in the Fence (UK) and Black is the New Black & True Love by Wordland (UK). Godfrey’s Ghost, his biographical memoir, is published by Mogzilla Life.
January 2019 | poetry
The emotion that lies at the heart,
not shown in gestures and words,
cannot be measured or felt,
but for myself.
Disillusion, sadness and despair,
even rejoicing and pleasure,
have created tears, salty and hot ones,
that have leavened the soil where I live,
bringing forth flowers, fruits, children.
Have also nourished and ennobled my spirit,
paying the toll I owe to the lord of the fief.
I am sure they are leading me to Canaan,
the promised land where evil finds no shelter
and milk and honey flow abundantly.
Where the woman I desire is waiting for me,
at the door of my house, longing and needy,
wife and lover.
by Edilson Afonso Ferreira
A Brazilian poet, Mr. Ferreira, 75, writes in English rather than in Portuguese. Largely published in international journals in print and online, he began writing at age 67. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2016. His first Poetry Collection – Lonely Sailor – is coming soon, scheduled to be launched in London, November 29th 2018, with one hundred poems. He blogs at www.edilsonmeloferreira.com.
