April 2022 | nonfiction
Fire runs screaming down the hillside like an insane deity, crackling in a forgotten tongue and making believers.
Fear is catching; animals running from death. Cars blaze by, people clutching steering wheels, deer-in-the-headlights-stares lamenting pets. There was no time.
Near the mountain prisoners dig a perimeter, pretending the roaring all around can’t harm them. Fire is searing light waiting for sacrifice.
Propane tanks are flying in the sky, do-it-yourself missiles launched from backyard silos.
Beetle-blighted pines ignite, squealing sap boiling before the explosion. Smoky air and ashes trying to be everywhere, falling like dirty snowflakes.
Red lights gleam in the darkness. Ambulances sing warnings, parading down streets, offerings in their wombs fragile as porcelain.
At the gas station vehicles cram together like bumper cars, people shouting at people who can’t change a single thing.
Cell phones in hand; everyone’s uploading their video: we are safe.
All over the country, people watch the nightmare that isn’t happening to them.
Here, fires happen every year.
Children sob for toys lost; parents worry about what comes after this.
The cots are all six feet apart at the shelters. Please wear a mask the signs say, but not everyone will. Truth is point of view; beliefs are arbitrary.
Fire is truth. Everything here will burn.
Josh Price
Josh Price lives in Northern California with his wife and dogs. He has forthcoming flash with The Los Angeles Review; South Florida Poetry Journal, The Daily Drunk, 365 Tomorrows and F3LL Magazine have published his flash fiction and CNF. You can visit him at josh-price.com, on Twitter and Instagram @timepinto, and www.facebook.com/sjprice1213/.
April 2022 | fiction
There is a rumble beneath the dormant kernels of wheat like hunger during the fast from humanity. Kernels of wheat germinate when the water content in the grain is about 35 to 45 percent by weight. The embryo struggles for food, pushing out the root searching for moisture.
There is a parasite in my mind, it pervades and perseveres and keeps me unique and alone, swimming in the blood of humanity, the words and thoughts that effuse from the wearers of flowered linen suits and dresses.
There is a whisper slicing through the bones buried deep in the mass graves in the field. Voices of the past offer words and stories forgotten beneath propaganda. Words from the grandparents are brushed off like dandruff on a black dress in October. ‘Can’t you laugh, grandma?’ ‘Can’t you smile, grandpa?’
There is an absence of memory, of history in the mind of the parasite. The parasite repeats again, and again, and again. Latch on, devour and consume, procreate and propagate, over and over, and over. The parasite is nameless.
There is a tear rushing through the heart like a kayak rolling over rapids in spring landing on the porous neutral soil. The soil absorbs the tear of the child, the grandparent, the nation, and the world. The embryo swells, its strength derived from starch, like the starched shirt props up the fearful child who grasps the hand of an unknown aunt before laying a rose on a stained wooden box.
There is a parasite in my mind that consumes my memory, my history, my heritage. The heritage is crumpled beneath the rubble and piles of twisted rebar and concrete shards. The parasite is never satiated.
There is a coleoptile to break the surface of the soil. Coleoptiles are the armor that protects the first leaf of the seedling derived from the swollen embryo. The mustiness of spring, the dank dirt filled with rows of dilapidated boxes, shudders when the surface breaks.
There is a child with my eyes, my cheekbones, and my mouth. There is a tearless child with my face beside the crushed chaff. There is a face that doesn’t know how to smile. There is a parasite that gobbles memory over and over like a cliched bottomless pit. There is a nameless parasite in your mind that is hungry.
Carol Ann Parchewsky
Carol Ann Parchewsky is a writer based in Calgary, Alberta. She received her MFA in Fiction at Queens University of Charlotte and her Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering, from the University of Saskatchewan. She is working on her first novel and a short story collection. Her fiction is published in and forthcoming in On the Run, Flash Boulevard, Drunk Monkeys, Stanchion, and The Drabble Advent Calendar.
April 2022 | poetry
Especially in winter
everyone knows coyotes
are tempted by lapdogs – on leash or off –
as much as by rabbits or mice.
Their wild eyes glow white like stars
in their dark dens. No coyote pup grows up
with Grandma’s yarn Shih Tzu gracing
its duvet. Or stays cute all its doggy years.
Better make yourself Big. Wave
your arms. Pretend to be wild
to protect little Gizmo who must
pretend to be human for you.
Paula Reed Nancarrow
Paula Reed Nancarrow is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and winner of the Winter 2020 Sixfold Poetry Prize. Print publications include Sixfold, Artemis and Whistling Shade, with work forthcoming in Permafrost, Paterson Literary Review, The Avalon Literary Review, and Night Picnic. Find links to poems available online at paulareednancarrow.com.
