April 2025 | fiction
When she came to live with me, my mother spent most of the day in her green velvet chair, which the movers had placed in the guest bedroom, along with some of her other favorite items – framed photos, her bookshelf, a lamp shaped like a teapot. The rest we put in storage.
She had bought the chair at Bloomingdale’s years ago. Button-tufted with birchwood legs and Victorian flair, it was the color of an olive in a dirty martini. Sometimes she sat and read the paper, but mostly she stared into space, trying to remember.
Do you want to go to the mall, I’d ask. To the supermarket, Target, the park, the movies, out to lunch, for a drive, on a walk through the neighborhood? All met with the same glazed stare, like she was the sole survivor of a plane that had crashed on an unfamiliar planet. I worked from home but tried to make time for her, to coax her from where she was hiding.
Finally, I dragged the chair outside, where it sat on the grass, an uncertain remnant of a bygone age. The back lawn was fenced. She sat there in her bathrobe, too exhausted for the usual niceties about the weather. Wrens flitted through the maples, cocking their heads in puzzlement. My bee balm returned, fluffy red stalks wobbling in the breeze. At night, I moved the chair under a soffit, where rain and the sprinklers couldn’t reach.
One afternoon, I went to tell my mother that lunch was ready and she wasn’t there. The chair was empty, save for a blue jay pecking the velvet determinedly, convinced worms lurked underneath.
I ran to my car, scoured the surrounding blocks. Mom, I shouted from the open windows. No answer except for a few lawn guys who gave me the stink eye. I didn’t want to involve the police. Wasn’t sure what she’d do if an officer approached. Finally, I pulled over and resumed the search on foot. It hadn’t been that long. I’d brought her more tea at 11 and it wasn’t even noon. Who was I kidding? It was way too long. Panic tickled my throat, like I’d swallowed a dragonfly. I’d made her wear one of those bracelets with her name and my address on it. But who would see it? She wasn’t a lost dog, where people checked the collar.
I started to run aimlessly, down cul-de-sacs and courts, sprinting past houses whose eyes were like vacant windows. I ran until I couldn’t take another step. Screaming Mom Mom Mom Mom. Then I heard a sound I recognized. Laughter. The gate was open. Beyond it, a swing set. Two figures on the swings. A girl of about five, with pigtails. And my mother. Her feet were bare, her chin tilted back. Arching her body away from me, she launched herself toward the sky.
Beth Sherman
Beth Sherman’s writing has been published in over 100 literary magazines, including Flash Frog, Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024, and she won the Smokelong Quarterly 2024 Workshop prize. A multiple Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net nominee, she can be reached on X, Bluesky or Instagram @bsherm36.
April 2025 | poetry
Going Strong
At eighty-one and seventy-eight, Mom and Dad
are still going strong. Halfway between twelve and thirteen,
Chance, our Beagle, is still going strong. Civilization,
at roughly seven-thousand years old, is still going strong.
In my dreams an asteroid is due to collide with America;
I announce, like a bored clerk at the DMV, that it’s four-thirty
and the sun is still going strong. Morning hits me like a slap in the face.
On the TV, a reporter predicts nationwide winter storms, snow and ice
and rain making travel treacherous. Stranded or delayed, our plans
are unchanged, for despite the carnage, the rubble, and the brutal cold,
life on Earth is going strong.
It Happened Here
In countless town squares, certain statues whose
antebellum lips have long been pursed in stone,
begin to smirk; still others, squirreled away in shame
to some macabre museum or mansion, seem to glow
in anticipation of the crane that will restore them
to their glory. Language too is being restored: disfavored
words, excised from public use, are forced into hiding;
mountains and bodies of water are renamed,
as though recently widowed; the gap between what
is said and what is meant is widened, until grammar
itself becomes incoherent; the sacred is made to be
profane and the profane is given sanction.
I observe a corpulent crow devour an Eagle, then
carry off its talons like a trophy. Covered in blood,
it lands in my yard and, briefly sated, preens its feathers
like a tyrant ironing his suit after a rape and pillage.
In my terror, I seem to hear him singing anthems,
making oaths, while all around his murder awaits
instruction. And throughout the land, the people,
knowing what they know about birds of prey,
having erected scarecrows and noise guns and
glimmering fences, stare in awe at the mutilated
livestock, the crops picked clean, as though
such violence couldn’t possibly visit them here.
Andy Posner
Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. His poetry has been published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.
April 2025 | nonfiction
A bird shit on my head today. It was at the bus stop. The shit is black and white. I am on my way to work and—
Drop.
I like my job. I get to teach people. I get to stand in front of a room. I get the attention. Normally, I wouldn’t get attention. Normally, I was nobody.
Drop.
Everybody is a nobody. I accept that. I still like being called “professor.” Even though I am not a full professor. I feel special. I feel like I am flying. Even if it is an illusion.
Drop.
I wish the bird shit was an illusion. I don’t have napkins. I don’t want to bother people on the bus. I don’t want to bother with the shit on my head right now.
Drop.
Birds don’t bother with shit. They shit where they want to. On the ground. On my head. It doesn’t matter. Their shit leaves them. It is far beneath them. But this shit on my head. It’s unavoidable.
Drop.
My hair is curly. The shit isn’t going to come out. It’s going to dry in there. It’s going to crust. My hair’s shape will be formed by the shit. I will literally be a shithead.
Drop.
I am used to shit in my hair. Inconveniences are a regularity for me. An email here. Oh, now seven emails here. All at once. You need to come to this faculty meeting. You didn’t grade my paper. You have one day to take this course offering. It’s in six months from now. You will barely make a living. And forget your free time.
Drop. Drop. Drop.
Maybe birds do bother with shit. It seems they are always chirping. Some must be annoying chirpers. Maybe those annoying chirpers command orders. Stand on this power line. Chirp with this frequency. Shit on that man’s head.
Drop.
I consider myself quite defiant. I know how to stand up for myself. I tell my bosses when I want more courses. Or if I have other plans. Or if I don’t like a policy.
Maybe the shit isn’t so bad. I can wash it out.
And maybe I can do more for myself. Not go for status. Go for appreciation. Make a stand. Tell them who I am. Tell them what I stand for. Even if they don’t care. I will be the one to change the world, the one who makes a difference in thought, a discreet social revolutionist, a martyr of sorts, throw my syllabus on the ground, set it on fire, even.
While slim, there is a chance that I could be a part of something bigger, create an even better life for myself while doing so, no longer be treated like a pleasant luxury, be treated like a necessity that is irreplaceable. I could be valued.
But then again, I feel like I’m valued. I just need to stick through it and—
Drop.
Christian David Loeffler
Christian David Loeffler is a fiction writer, teacher, and editor for Curious Curls Publishing. His work draws heavy inspiration from interests that span science, literature, philosophy, video games, and anime. His favorite book is J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, and he will not stop talking about it.
