In This Issue
J.R. Solonche, Featured Author
Books There are too many. They should be pulped. They should be pulped to make useful things. Cardboard coffins, for instance. I’d like to be buried in unread copies of Moby Dick. Old Photographs I don’t like old photographs. Old...
Glass House Almanac
I cannot vote myself out of this scent. Planting sunflowers, planting children, the same thin place for a woman. A ritual grown from winter’s improbability. Smoke, ice, ancestral fingerprints. Around this cold evidence, planets painted by a noble hand, lanterning the...
As Though Playing in Your Head
I fucked up my knitting in the sauna. The wool fraying with sweat, animal tiring of infrared, birds zorbing like orbs of candles, by me, showering in the dark. Alright, and the dog rotates in the air above my bed in my sleep she knows this is a different day the rest...
The Plum Thief
Dark sunset blooms above my veins, Human valleys in marrow eruption. Amaranthine plum-drip bruises Mark me crimson thief, orchard’s fox. Botanic sangria slither, my throat a pink road, Summer’s death the wine of rot and endings. Plum thief wears mortal wound,...
Anniversary Dinner
Because sweetheart, this life is a born escape artist, a migrating fever, a convict tattooed in invisible ink, without mercy or nostalgia. – Tony Hoagland Dear, you tell me you hope for another 25 years together. You, who used to skew toward ballerina-looking...
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, he has published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, hybrids, interviews, and plays in nearly 200 journals...
Luck with an F
When my children ask me who won the world, fear grabs all 78 places American women used to think of as autonomous. Here in Spain, the news corners me from 5000 miles away, its claws sharp but intangible— a lucky escape, friends say. Luck, that four-letter...
Minseo Jung
Minseo Jung is a junior at Seoul Scholars International Art and Design, and her work primarily focuses on identity and the exploration of self. She understands herself by expressing her personal experiences and emotions through art. Using creative ideas and...
Night Drive
Steam rises in swirls, wisps, moves like a candle snuffed out, then smoke curling. This road on a Wednesday night in the middle of Italy is dark except for the headlights that cut through the fog, barely, and the city of Macerata in the distance. I know this land. I...
The Darkness White
Alexi’s father was the family's artistic soul, and his legacy influences Alexi's appreciation for abstract art. Throughout his life, art and drawing provided Alexi with solace and joy, yet he never felt the need to share his work. After his father's passing in...
Kristin Lueke
i ask the sun too much each plant i’ve kept alive so far i call my friend. each of my friends has its own quiet prayer, it’s called how i’d like to be cared for— for instance, from a distance, please & gently, within reach, without expectation but...
The Light Was Never Ours
On the bank of the Seine in the heath and heart of the sun’s playground— that's where we lay. Our heads rest on a cushion of plight as we sink further into the fields of lush river violets, violets smooching our petaled cheeks— blanketing our freckles from the...
Julien Griswold
I invent a time machine to go back and witness the moment before my birth certificate signing, my parents’ silent prayer before clicking the pen To Julie, once, Julie, now, Julien, forever, my heart. What if your name was Antoine or Rebecca or Augustine or Vicky or...
On Death
I was born almost dead, the cord wrapped around my throat. A doctor(ate) actually said the words to me: “You carry Death close.” Death has stood by my side, time and again, and said, “It’s not her time yet.” I’ve accepted it. Damaged lungs from 9/11. Volunteering in...
Espadrilles
In the Guadalajara market, I bought a pair of straw espadrilles. When they fell apart months later, I realized the soles were made out of car tires. I fed the tops to a goat at the side of a dusty road. Years later in Friuli near Venice, I bought a pair of velvet...
Nesting
There is something very large building a nest in the parkway by the house I grew up in. The house where my father still lives. He takes walks in this parkway. It makes me nervous. I guess I first noticed it after my mother died. It looked like a large pile of brush in...
Comedown in a Club Bathroom
The boy’s feet are bound to the floor, body held before a mirror. Cold lake, the glass spinning his near-naked body into fable, or cautionary tale. How, how it sings back. Diamond-toothed doppelgänger. The chambered hallways of his heart bisected, something like a...
Chronoscope 262: March like thaw water
Sun again: that geode cold light that briefly splits the granite sky: storms there: storms there: darker because of this temporary brightness. The first shadows in a week like inkfade ancient tattoos impermanent crease crosshatched on the last of...
Sastry Karra
Jaganadha “Sastry” Karra, originally from India, moved at 24. He has worked in IT for 27 years and has lived in Delaware since 2024. In his spare time, he enjoys outdoor photography, particularly of waterfalls. He explores nearby state parks with his...
Airport Prayer
If I count the times I cried today, I would need more than two hands— an 81 year old passes through security and tells me her mother just stopped driving yesterday at the age of 108; a woman at the counter hands me my coffee and says Here, baby; and when we are lining...
Taegyoung Shon
Taegyoung Shon is a Junior attending BC Collegiate in Korea. She won several awards at elementary school science imagination competitions. She makes various pottery works inspired by looking at the Internet or Pinterest in her school. She also enjoys going to...
Dinner parties
She lived to host dinner parties. It was a need, a compulsion, to fulfill it she would look for the most absurd reasons. Like the time she bought a purse and messaged our group: Guess what it’s dinner party time. I just bought a purse. Or when she had a fight with her...
Interview
It’s a pleasure to meet you…just water is fine… Thanks for taking the trouble to give me a chance. So, you’ve made it at last to the back of the line and the candidate worth just a cursory glance? Inconspicuous as the invisible man, I’ve a resume anyone sane...
Jean Wolff
Jean Wolff has had group and solo exhibits in various galleries in New York City and internationally. In addition, she has published 153 works in 104 issues of 61 magazines. She was born in Detroit, Michigan, and studied fine arts at the Center for Creative...
Unbidden Image
I can’t unsee firefighters hanging around our living room like uninvited guests at a party waiting with my wife in case her heart attack arrives before the ambulance does, each man scanning the room inch by inch as if flames might burst from a bookcase,...
Local Boys
In brown and grey demob suits, stoked up well with Woodbines, the three of them, from the same regiment, were thrown up cheek-by-hip on the platform: Tim, Spence, the younger David. They were packed into a wooden-slat-seat train and Spence, a chunky pugilist of a man,...
How to Touch the Dead
I’ve rehearsed this in my mind countless times– Put the broom or cardboard scrap on far side of carcass Place scoop– something thin and stiff yet flexible, at near edge Draw broom towards scoop– towards myself This is where the problem lies– no matter what tool...
José Being Himself
When I entered the parking, there was a problem. A BMW SUV with a Connecticut license plate was parked right in the middle, blocking access to the specialty food store. I was angry. Why the fuck couldn’t that dumb bastard park in one of the nearby spaces, instead of...
needle blight
it is human nature to want to build something substantial and wonder why our bridges fall like fever. upon conversion from spruce to roof, the eastern hemlock remains square-shouldered unhungry for sun. a hospital falls in the forest and everyone can...
Spencer Jones Ate the Last Dodo
CNN: American reality show contestant kills, eats protected bird in New Zealand Clad in their best, their most expensive, Lululemon, Nike, P.E. Nation, Versace, or Adidas, flexing their abs on national TV, traipsing all over and screwing up the last protected wild...
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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