In This Issue
Only real bitches play bingo.
I’m talking the bitches who bring their own dotting pens—the variety pack that includes the bonus glitter pen in fuschia. The bitches who bring their own refreshments and candies for when their blood sugar inevitably drops when the bitch across the room yells bingo on...
The Everything Life
It was after a single glass of Gruner that I decided to throw it all away. I opened the “everything drawer” in my kitchen. Everyone has an everything drawer, right? A drawer crammed with the innumerable yet unremarkable artifacts of life. From a young age, or maybe...
Prison of Thought
My life is obsession without passion, compulsion without end, disorder without rhyme or reason. A chemical maelstrom dragging my free will into the crushing ink-black of hopelessness. Hands bleed in perpetual cleanliness next to no god. Grey matter overclocked,...
Lawrence Bridges
Lawrence Bridges Lawrence Bridges is best known for work in the film and literary world. His photographs have recently appeared in the Las Laguna Art Gallery 2023, Humana Obscura, Wanderlust a Travel Journal, the London Photo Festival, Light Space & Time...
Pahadisoul
Pahadisoul Pahadisoul (Akshita Sharma) is a gifted cinematographer and photographer based in the vibrant city of Mumbai. With a heart that beats for storytelling and an unshakable love for the great outdoors, she has carved her niche as a visual artist who breathes...
The Orchard
My father hated coyotes, implicated them in every “missing pet” poster we passed. I didn’t understand, not really, until they took my dog. They must have been just beyond the fence, eyes glittering an amber light, like yellow flames in the dimness, yipping,...
The Twilight Zone
begins with dissonant strains of the national anthem, further distorted by the rink’s poor acoustics, accompanying the humming exit of the Zamboni machine. In the white glare of overhead lights, they signal it’s time to “get in the zone” for the free skate...
Moon Child
We drank Tang, just like the astronauts, but stopped short of breakfasting on freeze-dried eggs. Saturdays, Dad melted Crisco in the fryer, dropped little meteors of batter into the bubbles, served up fritters with real maple syrup. Sixties kids had it made in the...
Helen Geld
Helen Geld Helen Geld, a former graphic designer, now focuses on the creative process of photography and art. Her photographic work expresses the beauty and mystery of antique objects. Her work has appeared in such journals as Poppy Road Review, The Blue...
Mission Report: El Eclipse de la Grande
La Manzanilla, Jalisco, Mexico, Thursday, July 11, 1991 10:50 am I am writing in a thatched hut a half mile down the beach from the village. The surf crashes on the shore. Supplies 2 jugs agua pura 2 cameras Tortillas 1 can chicken meat which tastes like dog food 1...
The Goats
Even before the car turned into their driveway, Wilma and Edgar could see they had visitors. “Is that what I think it is?” Edgar said to his wife of forty years. “I believe so,” she answered. “Oh, well.” He peered out at two small...
A Romance to Night
In the crisp death of summer, a cat falls from a broken branch. The moon sings, amused by paw half-crushed under the stares of a passing car. Vacant children drive purposely through the blaze-maze of gilded cul-de-sacs scattered with condoms and crushed...
Stanley Horowitz
Stanley Horowitz Stanley Horowitz's work was exhibited in the 2008 Heckscher Museum Biennial show on Long Island. During the past two years, he was a featured photographer for The Wayfarer, and covers have been published for Rattle, Buddhist Poetry Review,...
Girl #4
Back there, someone crowned me. Yes, me! — Where do you think I got these carnations? I’d like to unclaim candidacy, but there’s already a Klimtish woman threading my hands with rings while someone calls for shin ribbons. A man cradling five pincushions coaxes...
Lila Byrne
Lila Byrne Lila Byrne’s passion for art began as early as she could hold a pencil. She has since taken many art classes, including programs at RISD, Pratt College, and Stamps at the University of Michigan. She has designed logos for various businesses in the...
Heat
I once was the hot new thing. You too? The new kid who stirred the id. I had some cheek; the classroom and rehearsal hall were my geek. If hot was or is your lot, some snot lives who wish you were not. They snide and snark, hide in the dark seeing if our bite is as...
Migration
he passed through brackish streets filled with disintegrated rubble and dilapidated homes unmoored from their footings strung together by sagging electrical lines extinguished of power and children’s playgrounds with rusted jungle gyms lonely and exsanguinated of...
Mark Anthony Burke
Learning to Dance Hooked on the two-four sorcery, bass and drum, dances at St. Jerome’s, I held up a wall for half an hour before I could ask the one whose eyes turned ice to water, spun home through the dark between the streetlamp pools of light. Lost in a trance for...
Leslie Brown
Leslie Brown Leslie Brown has an MFA in Creative Writing. Her digital work appeared on the cover of Zoetic Press, “NBR: World Tour,” and Variety Pact Art (Winter 2023/24). She was recently published this summer in Phoebe Literary Journal. For the past three years she...
When Haven’t I
The first human cremains I should have seen? What kind of question is that? I have an answer -- my mom’s. I did not see them because when they were done (is that the right way to put it?) I was living 300 miles away. I had them overnighted to her mother, 1,200 miles...
Dragonfly Puzzle Box
I. Honeyed mystery of mahogany, oak, walnut, teak, Fall’s tawny offerings sanded into curves, smooth invitation to touch, like the sun-warmed thigh & rising hip of that sunbaked young woman you once were, drowsing on a black sand beach in Santorini, water beading...
Stephen Curtis Wilson
Remembering Reid’s Photographs by Stephen Curtis Wilson In late 2020, Wilson was contacted by a family member of Reid Larson, owner of Reid’s Mobil Service Center in Edwards, IL. Reid would soon retire after over 50 years working with cars and trucks and 40...
Seo Jin Ahn
Seo Jin Ahn Seo Jin Ahn is a sophomore attending Chadwick International School in Songdo, Incheon, South Korea. His art practices are to create photo and video-based images. He developed and harnessed his skills in the forms of photography, cinematography, and the...
Featured Author, Michael Loyd Gray
Busted Flat in Baton Rouge I woke up to Janis Joplin’s whiskey raw voice on the radio. Shiner abruptly turned us south toward Baton Rouge, tapping his hands on the steering wheel. That’s all it took with Shiner, a whim, a change in the wind – song lyrics. We’d...
Goodnight Apostrophe
(*For the runaway bunnies morphing into boys) Good night you crooked little grapnel, hanging on to possession with the deference of a widow’s walk. Good night to all the graphemes — back slashes & sashaying greater thans buckling brackets upon ballroom blitzes....
The Nature and Psyche Project
The Nature and Psyche Project Emily Candler Davis' Opus, The Nature and Psyche Project, is a visual storytelling endeavor from Acadia National Park, a little heart-shaped island off of the coast of the United States. The images capture a human story or element...
Stephen Curtis Wilson
Stephen Curtis Wilson Wilson explores rural communities and urban neighborhoods searching for reminders of humanness, culture, and community. He was a medical and generalist photographer, writer, and communication specialist in the health care and library...
Scott Urquhart
Scott Urquhart Scott Urquhart is a volunteer on the frontlines of Russia's genocide against the Ukrainian people. He has been in this area of great contention since, working with schools and humanitarian aid across the country.
Lullaby to Bacteria
May you sleep in slushy apples, the acid mash of stomachs, seafloor chimneys smearing the deep with tartars of smoke. I coo to poisonous beans, noxious Botox twinkies, and hum at naughty bonbons of streptococci. Let your dreams carry hordes through...
Arrives Like the River
The scent of the river on his skin, late, hair and swimsuit wet from Barton Springs. Nine or ten at night, the candles dead. She’s fallen asleep or she’s pretending. It doesn't matter, she’s nothingness, blue tulle and white dreams. He sheds the trunks, gets in her...
Cindy Wheeler spent 25 years working as a songwriter and touring rock musician, founding the critically acclaimed bands Pee Shy and The Caulfield Sisters, and releasing three studio albums, multiple EPs, and singles with Mercury Records and American Laundromat Recordings. A recording of her poem “Things You Do on Your Knees” appeared on the album “LIP-The CD With a Big Mouth” alongside poets Eileen Myles, Anne Waldman, and Exene Cervenka. And a recording of her poem “Knee Jerk” appeared on spoken word compilation- “What’s the Word” -alongside the work of musician/songwriters Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys) and Alan Vega (Suicide). Most recently, her haiku “Covid-Ku” appeared in the “The Best Haiku of 2022 International Anthology” (Haiku Crush). New poems will appear in SoFloPoJo (South Florida Poetry Journal) later this year. For the last 8 years, she has studied at The Writers Studio in New York, working with the founder, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz, and was part of his Master Class for 3 terms. She is currently working on a manuscript. She is co-owner of the beloved New York City vintage clothing institution Beacon’s Closet and considers herself a modern-day ragpicker. She lives happily in Brooklyn, New York, with what some might say are far too many cats.
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DM Frech has a BFA and an MFA in dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and is a member of The Muse, Poetry Society of VA, The Writers Guild of Virginia, James River Writers, KPC Writers, Virginia Writers, and so on. She writes poetry, children’s books, fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, and is an avid photographer. DM is also an award-winning writer with creative work in the Writers’ Journal, WayWords Literary Journal, The Journal of Writers Guild of Virginia, The Poet’s Choice, Noble House, Burningword Journal, Streetlight Magazine, New Feathers Anthology, and The Bangalore Review, and soon in Virginia Writers’ Club Journal. Finishing Line Press published her poetry chapbooks: QUIET TREE and WORDS FROM WALLS, which can be found on the FLP website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads. By the grace of God, she walks the earth, explores humanity’s struggle to exist in a universe of unknowns, and, when in doubt, hugs trees. DM can be followed at: amazon.com/author/dmfrech
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