Stephen Curtis Wilson

January 2025 | visual art

Buckeye East

 

Wilson is a designer and photographer. Central Illinois has been his frame of reference for a lifetime. His well-seen perspective provides him with an intimate, unique notion of the artfulness of this region, quintessentially Midwestern. He was a medical and generalist photographer and writer in the healthcare and library science fields for 36 years. He received a BA from the University of Illinois and is an Illinois Artisan for Photography. You may view more of his work at stephencurtiswilson.com

C.S.I.

January 2025 | poetry

(an early Halloween)

 

Mildred has a gash on her forehead where

the hatchet from her boyfriend split the bone.

Nearby, there is a skeleton hanging by its left

foot from a small maple-oak across the way.

The rail fence is shattered where the van

with thirty-two immigrants went through it

and they got over the earth in a hurry, never

coming back.  Above, the blue moon not

the slightest color of blue is more brilliant

than a neon planet made of platinum, brighter

than anything I’ve ever seen on an August night.

 

Which reminds me, once at 1:30 in the morning

when I was seventeen at Mt. Gretna, out in

the middle of the woods, near a picnic area

drinking stolen beer with other/college kids:

ghostly through the trees…

and a lone, rich baritone voice from Broadway

sang a love song to his lady for the night…

(he’d been Li’l Abner, they said)

no music, the most beautifully romantic thing

I’ve ever heard  —  fifty years later in jail

thinking about it.  In the meantime, they put

my bed on the porch roof to be funny… oh, it’s nice

to be the butt of jokes, and the one everyone

hates… seems like, as if to have been born was

to wear some kind of putrid curse around your

face like a necktie for people to piss on, that’s

what it is to be bullied from six to seventeen—

when it stopped, and I pulled the trigger of the

shotgun 14 times where they sat.

 

 

[true incident in pieces, but I never shot anybody;

no matter how much I might’ve sometimes wanted to]

 

Richard Atwood

Born in Baltimore, Rick has lived in Denver and Los Angeles, currently in Wichita, Kansas. He has published three books of poetry, and been published in several literary journals: Karamu, Oberon, Avalon Literary Review, Mochila Review, borrowed solace, Penumbra, ArLiJo, The Raven’s Perch, and Iconoclast among others. He has also authored 3 screenplays, 2 large stage plays; plus an m/m erotic-romantic fantasy, with a GOT ambiance… no supernatural jazz, and a strong moral thread woven throughout (Chronicles of the Mighty and the Fallen, under the name of Richard McHenry).

Linda K. Allison

January 2025 | visual art

Blue Morning in Bar Harbor

 

After forty years in finance, Linda K. Allison is having the time of her life writing, photographing, and exploring this amazing world. Her writing has appeared in The Milk House, Moon Park Review, and The Bluebird Word, among others. Her photography has appeared in The Sunlight Journal, Persimmon Tree, Burningword Literary Journal, and elsewhere. She lives with the love of her life among the trees in the aptly named The Woodlands, Texas.

Hyungjun Chin

January 2025 | visual art

Fungal Rock

Prunning

Stem

 

Hyungjun Chin is a Sophomore at Cornerstone Collegiate Academy in Seoul, Korea. He is very interested in describing historical events through graphic design or 2D drawings. He has tried various ways to express his feelings about historical events through Photoshop and Illustrator.

Suspended in air

January 2025 | fiction

At home, we are preparing to paint the living room walls pale yellow. Its summer. The heat is oppressive. There are cobwebs in every corner of the walls. The spiders have weaved their webby homes in our spacious one. They are in clusters, like spools of grey cotton thread dangling from the walls. I see the spiders suspended in the air, unfazed by the height, and drop to the floor. I am scared of heights. Of falling from the rooftops of restaurants we often visit. I am even terrified about diving from the diving pool in our club swimming pool. I am trying to understand why. I usually dream about falling and wake up screaming loudly. Why does it happen only to me? My husband thinks it’s irrational. My kids laugh at me. I am afraid for these eight-legged creatures. The mere thought of them falling and dying gives me shivers. Why can’t they build their homes in the shrubs or trees outside? The ferocious summer heat drives them indoors. Perhaps the pungent paint smell will drive them out. Seasons will change. In the meantime, I see the spiders continuing to spin, suspended in mid-air. The sight is scary as I watch them with bated breaths, their delicate movements adding to my unease.

Swetha Amit

Swetha is the author of two chapbooks, Cotton Candy from the Sky and Mango Pickle in Summer. An MFA graduate from the University of San Francisco, her works appear in Had, Flash Fiction Magazine, Oyez Review, etc. Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.