July 2016 | fiction
That’s my bike over there. Uncle Calvert, who I had a girl crush on in middle school, painted it white for me, and my sister Jessie twirled blue satin ribbon around the frame till it looked like a barber pole. It’s parked next to the pink and white oleander I love, with flowers that smell like bubblegum, look like pinwheels, and now poke vine-like through the rusting spokes.
I rode it when it was mousy brown, reliable transportation, nothing folks would want to steal. Rode it down the street right across from me, where it dumps onto University Drive at the signal, which had turned green, my luck was holding. I’d hit all the lights like clockwork that morning.
The old Dakota pickup came rocketing through, hell-bent on squeezing a lemon from a hundred and fifty. I’ve done it myself. I sailed through the autumn air like I was moving through water, I could paint a scene for each second I floated, until I hit hard and sudden against something, couldn’t tell you what, call it end of road.
I sit high up on the light standard across the street, looking down on the traffic island, first sun casting a warm glow on the altar of my Schwinn, which is chained to the traffic sign and festooned on either side by mother’s lovely planters.
Here she comes, clutching her translucent caddy in one hand, crammed with spray cleaners and dust cloths, and a milk jug full of water in the other. She crosses the still-deserted street from the parking lot, old hips slowing her to a waddle. She wipes and primps, stands back to inspect, kisses the bike seat and handle bars, things I’d touched, with the lingering lips of a parting lover, the same sweet ceremony every Sunday morning.
by Ronald Jackson
Ronald Jackson writes stories, poems, and non-fiction. His work has appeared in Blue Monday Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Firewords Quarterly, The Gateway Review, Kentucky Review, North Carolina Literary Review, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and in anthologies and online venues. Recognitions include honorable mention in the Doris Betts Fiction Prize competition in 2012, third prize in Prime Number Magazine’s 2014 flash fiction competition, honorable mention in the 2014 New Millennium Writings short-short fiction competition, and runner-up in the 2016 Lamar York Prize in Non-Fiction.
July 2016 | poetry
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation
—Henry David Thoreau
Lying on a bed of nails
is not a bed of roses.
Maybe you happen to have been born
on one, and you just call it life,
in which the absence of petty quarrels and small brawls
forebodes larger disaster—your crazy uncle
going postal, your mother jumping out the window
before going into detox once again.
Or perhaps, at college, your professor
of philosophy, the defrocked Jesuit
who chain-smokes his Galois cigarettes,
will raise a question that will raise
another question, that will raise yet another,
and before you know it you’re in bed with him—
I don’t mean with his body but his mind—
and ten years later, at the age of thirty-five,
you will find yourself alone
smoking weed in a dark room in Seattle
while debating between ten pills or a gun
or going out to Starbucks for some coffee
because after all what difference does it make.
Or when your life is drawing to a close,
on some Sunday afternoon
on holiday in a small town on Long Island
you will wake up in a bed
with a woman you don’t know
who they tell you is your wife of fifty years.
Look, they’ll say, at the picture in your wallet,
that’s you, that’s her, those are your grown children,
your daughter and your two twin sons.
Don’t worry, you can learn to live with it.
In fact, it seems you have already.
by Carl Auerbach
Now that his four children are grown, he is pursuing a long-standing interest in poetry. He has had three poems and a short story nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Auerbach’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Amarillo Bay, The Baltimore Review, Bayou Magazine, Blue Lake Review, Brink Magazine, The Cape Rock, Chrysalis Reader, The Coachella Review, Colere, Confluence, Corium Magazine, The Critical Pass Review, descant, The Distillery, Eclipse, Edison Literary Review, Eleven Eleven, Euphony, Evansville Review, Forge, Freshwater, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Griffin, G.W. Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Licking River Review, The Lindenwood Review, Louisville Review, The MacGuffin, The Minetta Review, Nimrod International Journal, North American Review, Oregon East, Organs of Vision and Speech Magazine, Passager, Pearl, Permafrost, Poem, RE:AL, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine, Reed Magazine, The Round, Sanskrit, Schuylkill Valley Journal Of The Arts, The South Carolina Review, Spillway, Talking River, The Texas Review, Third Coast, Tower Journal, Westview, Willow Review, and The Write Room.
April 2016 | poetry
Whispering echoes
remind me of a
time of joy
Picking through
old toys of
translucent
neurons
The synapses
snap like lightning
inside of an acoustic,
closed off Super Dome
Electrocuting
the flesh of
negativity
within
Adam Brown
He has been published/accepted in Dead Snakes, Anti-Heroin Chic, Leaves of Ink, Writing Raw, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Indiana Voice Journal, The Stray Branch Magazine, First Literary Review – East, Section 8 Magazine, The Poet Community, Setting Forth- On a Literary Itinerary, Cavalcade of Stars, Red Rising Magazine, Social Justice Poetry, High Coupe, Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine.
April 2016 | poetry
Thoughts and prayers
The emptiest of gestures
Just a collection of letters posted for the world to see
A world so far from your thoughts
You’ve never prayed for
Really
Doing nothing never looked so useful
Click post
Move on
Feel good
The ring of notifications solidify your conscience
Your good deed done
Without wiping up one ounce of blood
Brushing away one tear
Circling one brass casing
The incendiary and screams are too far away to even silence you to attention
Your thoughts and prayers will have to suffice
They just have to
They must
For what am I to do with this horrific sight?
Held in my hands
Glowing on this tiny screen
Louis Raio
Louis Raio is a Poet, Photographer, Artist and class Clown. He’s a 32-year-old man-child living in his parent’s house. He takes pride in finding beauty in the absurdity of the world around him and takes part most times. He’s a top contender for The Heavy Weight Championship of Procrastinators and isn’t afraid of an entire pizza. He has self-published two books of original poetry and defies anyone to buy a copy! Coming from a large family he understands the importance of finding a good place to sit. He has a terrible fear of flying and death, two horrifying things that are not mutually exclusive. His OCD and Anxiety are fuel for his creative mind and will either make him the life of the party or the reason it ended early. Love him, because he loves you.
April 2016 | poetry
At low tide, they write words
in the dark, damp sand
pledging their love forever.
Later that evening,
while enjoying each other’s company
over a candlelight dinner,
high tide quietly relieves them of the commitments
of those sandy etchings.
The following morning,
without much ado,
they murmur good-byes;
each moving on to new beaches.
Roy Dorman
Roy Dorman is retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Benefits Office and has been a voracious reader for over 60 years. At the prompting of an old high school friend, himself a retired English teacher, Roy is now a voracious writer. He has had poetry and flash fiction published over the last couple of years in Mulberry Fork Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Cease Cows, Birds Piled Loosely, Drunk Monkeys, Crack The Spine, Gap-Toothed Madness, Gravel, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, One Sentence Poems, Theme of Absence, Yellow Mama, Black Petals, Near To The Knuckle, Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Fiction Press, Cheapjack Pulp, Shotgun Honey, and other online literary sites.
