Scales

July 2023 | fiction

Scaly edges pierce eggshell: my oval microcosm of speckled beige – limited, yet a thinly protective sphere.

Siblings dispersed, hatching to dilating day-lit skies and mother’s sheltering feathers.  Feather-winged, like her. Fitted into a puzzle. Her pieces.

Not so, this fate, for me.

My edges are sharp, toughened as steel cornices. I choke on flames – knowing I’m different.

I patter discontentedly, innately perceiving a world – one elongated ahead as taut elastic. One where scales are not accepted nor hot-flame breath. An existence where a man can crumble to ashy dust from a plume of distaste, cannot be tolerated. Mankind will view me as a villain: disdain pouring from clenched lips.

As fragments of shell cascade amidst held wings, unopened fans of propellent force, I admire belted rays of sunlight. Bands warm troughs and peaks of my verdant skin like a reduced in size mountain range. As my wingtips expand, more shell dispels, flaking before my beating heart.

Man will fear me.

They will come – summoning blood spill.

I sense hellish flair, even now, within teething, infantile hours, coursing vivaciously.

None will survive belly-deep roars, nor cast sight away to a more tender species, petting absentmindedly whilst entangling fingers into furred oblivion.

I am the future.

Here, and now, my clawed feet stomp the earth, grounding eggshell roots to powdery forgetfulness.

Upwards, I soar to shaky plains where God stands by an easel, casting futures with daubs of metallic paint.

 

Emma Wells

She is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with various literary journals and magazines. She enjoys writing flash fiction and short stories also. Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 and her short story entitled ‘Virginia Creeper’ was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021. Her first novel is entitled Shelley’s Sisterhood which is due to be published in 2023.

George L Stein

July 2023 | visual art

Salisbury Bridge

george l stein

george l stein is a photographer living in northern new jersey and focused on art, street, decay, portraiture, and surreal genres. George has been published in a number of literary magazines such as the Toho Journal, Midwestern Gothic, After Hours, Wrongdoing Magazine, and Fatal Flaw, among others, and had work shown at several galleries, including Praxis (Minneapolis) this month. Online, insta @steincapitalmgmt and at www.georgelstein.com.

the all

July 2023 | Best of Net nominee, poetry

& just like that                  aggrieved

or not                            thrust flush

against metal

 

the all of abandoned farm machinery

& all but barn of a house

nettled/ in shambles

 

of razor grass/ rooted/ my feet

stumbling close enough

to peace for breath/ waist high

to the ground/ the all of green caterpillar

 

& algae towers/ peaked up

in cicadas’ buzzing

make for rest

supine back against dock rust/ lake lap

 

& grass hungering for legs

leaving me for just a moment lying

back in black brilliants’ flame/ bursting

swallowing whole

in my dreaming sleep              the all              of everything

 

Mara Adamitz Scrupe

Mara Adamitz Scrupe’s publications include four full collections. BEAST (2014 Stevens Manuscript Publication Prize, National Federation of State Poetry Societies, U.S), in the bare bones house of was (2019 Brighthorse Books Prize in Poetry), Eat The Marrow (2019 erbacce-press Poetry Book Prize UK; shortlisted 2020 Rubery Book Award UK), and REAP a flora (2023 Shipwreckt Books). She has selections in generational anthologies by Southword/ Munster Literature, Stony Thursday, and 64 Best Poets/ Black Mountain Press, and poems in key UK and US journals including The London Magazine, Mslexia, Magma, Abridged, and The Poetry Business/ Smith Doorstop. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, she has won or been shortlisted for significant literary awards including Arts University Bournemouth International Poetry Prize, Magma Pamphlet Publication Award, Gregory O’Donohugh International Poetry Prize, Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize and National Poetry Society UK. She serves concurrently as Lance Williams Resident Artist in the Arts & Sciences, University of Kansas, and Dean and Professor Emerita, School of Art, University of the Arts Philadelphia.

Contemporary Stuff

July 2023 | poetry

Reading poetry online takes me

down the rabbit hole of the next poem

and the next, and oh, I like this poet

and how did they even come up

with gold leaf or orange sweat.

Outside, Spring is in the world.

 

My husband’s down the hall

drawing machinery on his computer.

He says he’s not an artist,

but those clear, concise lines

are strong enough to swing on.

Lay down your mouse, my beloved.

 

Look! The pine tree across the way

has released a cloud of golden pollen.

 

Patricia L. Scruggs

Patricia L. Scruggs is the author of one poetry collection, Forget the Moon. Born in Colorado, she spent ten formative years in Alberta, Canada before taking root in Southern California. Her work has appeared in Burningword, McQueen’s Quinterly, Inlandia, ONTHEBUS, Spillway, Rattle, Rip Rap, Cultural Weekly, Crab Creek Review, as well as the anthologies l3 Los Angeles Poets, So Luminous the Wildflowers and Beyond the Lyric Moment. A recent Pushcart Prize nominee, Patricia is a retired art teacher who earned her MFA at the California State University, Fullerton. She and her husband of over 60 years are parents of two and grandparents of three.

No Anything

July 2023 | poetry

  1. June-ish.

We drove by William S. Burroughs’s house

to see if we could feel his

aura from the street. We were confused about

why he lived in Kansas, of all places—

because we’d only ever prayed to leave it.

 

I was young and dumb and didn’t know

half the story behind this cynosure

who looked like my grandpa.

But I knew how I felt after reading Naked Lunch:

Stoned, mostly. And a bit revolted.

 

You, though, were smitten

with the wasteland of his words.

Obsessed, really—

keeping his books, dog-eared and disguised

from your mother’s eyes (or so you thought).

 

I watched you leave Kansas as a

high school dropout turned

stripper turned

drug addict turned

prostitute.

And I started to wonder where it all

went wrong.

 

I ran into your mom at the store a while back.

Through tears, she claimed it was those

damn books.

 

I thought back to your childhood:

No dad.

No sugar.

No skirts.

No boys.

No fun.

No anything.

Except taking care of your little brother

while your mom got tanked.

 

So I said to her,

“I don’t think it was the books.”

 

Erika Seshadri

Erika Seshadri lives on an animal rescue ranch with her family. When not caring for tame ritters or feral children, she can be found writing.