Sayantani Roy
The edges of the day
Goan winter
Cormorants at dusk
Sayantani Roy
Sayantani Roy works out of the Seattle area. Her photography and haiga appear in Rappahannock Review and Contemporary Haibun Online.
Shyla Shehan
Because the moon is moving away
from Earth 1.5 inches each year
I know someday this will all be over.
The churning of the tide will soften
as her reliable waxing and waning
disappears. Infinite gravity governs
absolutely. Each action yields equal
and opposite reactions causing continents
to shift. Tectonic plates push and pull
their godlike weight in tug-of-war.
I agree to a road trip with my daughter.
She says there’s a place she trusts
to get the job done right. The notion
of getting a second earlobe piercing
makes me wince. To put my faith
in a stranger’s hands feels like an act
that goes against nature. My body
is void of ink. I haven’t ever gathered
fortitude enough for that commitment.
Nothing lasts a lifetime.
School. Friendships. Lovers.
Houses. Cars. Careers. Plates shift
inch by inch, seasons change.
Impermanence has become
a permanent fixture of my faith,
trusted as the sunrise each day.
But my daughter has also become
a trusted friend. Engaging in this act
of exposition honors that, however small
a show of hope that what has been born
of my body and raised by my hand
can withstand natural forces of change.
When the needle goes through my ear
that brief pinch of pain, I’ll say a prayer
to the moon.
Please don’t leave.
Shyla Shehan
Shyla Ann Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the US Midwest. She holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska, where she received an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has been featured in The Pinch, Moon City Review, Midwest Quarterly, Anti-Heroin Chic, Drunk Monkeys, and elsewhere, and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is the co-founder and curator of The Good Life Review and lives in Omaha. For more, please visit shylashehan.com.
Meggie Royer
Crawlspace
Veronica opened the paper bag of tomatoes, inhaling their earthy scent. Big Rainbow, Early Girl, Jubilee. Her favorite, heirlooms, were stacked at the bottom. They always had such beautiful cross-sections. Outside the window, a trail of birdseed stretched to the banks of the creek, raspberries clustered in rows along the hill. A thunderstorm was building at the horizon, clouds so dark she estimated ten more minutes before the rain fell.
A man cleared his throat behind her. Veronica jumped, dropping the lone Brandywine on the floor. She braced for it to erupt, but it landed with a dull thud and a minor leakage of seeds. Grabbing the tomato, she dusted it with her shirt. Jonah was back from errands. “Sandwiches?” he asked. “Sandwiches,” Veronica answered. They worked in a team, slicing the rye and the bulbous red fruit, spooning wads of mustard onto the bread. As they added their finishing touches, the clouds burst, emptying into the creek. This was good, Veronica thought. It had been so dry, and the animals needed the water.
As they ate, Jonah fiddled with a chisel he’d left on the table. Blue rust spanned its length like moss. “What’s up?” Veronica queried. “Nothing,” Jonah said. “Just, you know. Long day.” Veronica nodded. One of the goats had wandered to the door in the storm and was battering its horns against the wood. Rolling her eyes, Veronica shooed it from the entryway and back out into the yard.
As she turned back to the kitchen, Jonah was nowhere to be seen. His plate lay empty in the sink, save for a thick stream of red juice. The goat attacked the door again, incessantly now, as if timing its pummeling with the thunder.
Curious, Veronica climbed the stairs to their bedroom. Maybe Jonah had laid down for a nap. As she reached the landing, she startled. The hidden door to the crawlspace was open, its darkness a still column. Jonah looked up at her with a terror so naked she nearly felt a brief current of remorse pass through. The body inside was partitioned perfectly, limbs stacked in neat rows. Veronica thought of the tomatoes. Sighing, she lifted the chisel from her side and slowly positioned it in front of her chest. A floor below, some of the cattle had joined the goat, hooves striking the floor in tandem. With her eyes closed, Veronica could almost imagine the sound of applause.
Meggie Royer
Meggie Royer (she/her) is a Midwestern writer and the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Persephone’s Daughters, a journal for abuse survivors. She has won numerous awards and has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has been published in The San Antonio Review, The Rumpus, The Minnesota Review, and other notable publications. She thinks there is nothing better in this world than a finished poem. Her work can be found at https://meggieroyer.com/.
Michelle Morouse
St. Mary’s Call Room 403
Dr. G. laughed when colleagues refused to sleep in call room 403. The 4 East wing of St. Mary’s once housed pediatrics, then orthopedics, then maternity. They said people had heard things in 403—the rattling of long-gone nuns’ rosaries, a woman crying for her baby…
She didn’t believe in ghosts. Even if they were real, couldn’t someone have died in every room of the hospital? Didn’t every call room look haunted? They stank of old dust and bleach, with a sweet, roach powder undertone, and the shower stall curtains were stained with orange mold.
Dr. G. seldom got a chance to sleep, but she’d volunteer to take Room 403 when she was on. When she did make it to the call room, she’d fall exhausted into a REM sleep. She dreamt of doing CPR on her favorite patient as a student, kneeling on the edge of the bed for leverage, feeling a rib crack under her hands. She dreamt about willing her hands to stop shaking the first time she did a spinal tap: slow, full, damp breaths under her mask. She dreamt of standing in surgery in her third year of medical school, two months post-partum, breast milk leaking through her gown. She dreamt of the plastic surgeon who teased her because her left eye was lower than her right, something she’d never noticed. He said it in front of the nurses, “Easy fix. Botox.” As if she had time for that.
Dr. G did a lot of night shifts, with one colleague on maternity leave, and another recovering from surgery. The more she worked, the further she fell behind in her own life, even forgetting her own wedding anniversary. She was overdue for doctor’s appointments, her mammogram, and her routine colonoscopy.
The dreams worsened: an elderly man in a lower body cast, who shook his fist, “We routed the Kaiser!” then clenched his chest, and a girl with stringy blond hair, dark circles under her eyes. She thought about trying a different call room but discarded the notion as silly. She was just overworked.
One night, Dr. G admitted ninety-five-year-old Sister St. Catherine. “I ran old 4 East. I loved maternity, except when we lost a baby.”
Dr. G. did get some sleep that night, but at 2 a.m. she awoke, and found herself staring at a woman whose left eye was lower than her right.
The woman was thin. Too thin. Bald.
Michelle Morouse
Michelle Morouse’s work has appeared previously in Burningword and in various journals, including Third Wednesday, Vestal Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Gemini, Midwest Review, Prose Online, Bending Genres, Best Microfiction, The MacGuffin, and Unbroken. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. @michellemorouse.bsky.social
Jim Ross
Can You Help My Cat and Dog Live in Peace?
Jim Ross
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding career in public health research. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in nine years, he has published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, hybrid works, interviews, and plays in nearly 200 journals on five continents. Photo publications include Alchemy Spoon, Barnstorm, Burningword, Camas, Feral, Invisible City, Orion, Phoebe, and Stonecoast. Photo-essays include DASH, Kestrel, Litro, NWW, Paperbark, Pilgrimage, Sweet, and Typehouse. Recently nominated for Best of the Net in Nonfiction and Art, he also wrote/acted in a one-act play and appeared in a documentary limited series broadcast internationally. Jim’s family splits time between city and mountains.
Print & Digital Issues
Featuring:
Issue 116, published October 2025, features works of poetry, flash fiction, short nonfiction, and visual art by Paula Burke, Wes Civilz, Eileen Vorbach Collins, Deron Eckert, Benjamin Erlandson, Don Farrell, MFC Feeley, Pete Follansbee, Nicholas Haines, Karen Kilcup, Alice Lowe, Mary Ann McGuigan, Miranda Morgan, Michelle Morouse, Kaitlyn Owens, Jim Ross, Sayantani Roy, Meggie Royer, Shyla Shehan, JL Smith, Sarp Sozdinler, Carlin Steere, P. J. Szemanczky, Jim Tilley, Hannah Voteur, Frederick Wilbur, Myfanwy Williams, Stephen Wilson, and VA Wiswell.
