Category — New

Enjoy our fireworks display.

by Howie Good

Time to crack open that bottle
the previous tenants bequeathed to us.

We can drink to whatever you want -
lack of sleep, importune prayers,
another day of freedom from the landlord’s

fretful knock - then tumble into bed,
our bones loosened, our minds in happy
disarray, despite, or perhaps because,

it’s now light, and there’s a kind of war
outside our window, and the invisible sniper
in the gaunt bell tower is always watching

with bloodshot eyes for a clean shot.

by Persis M. Karim

Are the deep breaths
you’ve held in
when you knew
better than
to unleash
your tongue

Say it like it is

and the body can
no longer—

contain them.

by John Ian Marshall

Within these fields of intertwined grasses,
A smile, study of outstretched hands, dancing,

Dancing in a simpler past, blues tunes play on
A tiny, tinny radio, everywhere the kind of bliss

Which only occurs in dreams, spiraling, spinning,
The best of which we are awake in. Splayed

Fingers trace the tall weeds’ uneven tops, where
Even the ringing silence sounded so good.

*Tintinnabular: of or pertaining to the ringing, jingling of bells.

by Darla Himeles

I went out to buy smog today
after two years away from my
concrete Pacific, my crashing
head smelling waves
as I landed at the storefront
where smog is sold
as an eye shadow color.

It is not the same
as my heavy home horizons,
but it is perfect.

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by Fred Longworth

Do not try to save the day.
Allow it to slide off the edge
of the earth and into the gutters
below the horizon.

Let the maintenance crew
sweep it into baskets
and burn it with dead leaves.

Later, as the workmen hasten
westward, following the debris
of other sunsets, hail them.
Ask for the ashes.

Go to story…  MediaStorm

by Michael Gullickson

I touched your forehead for the last time,
and willed you to recognize I was there.

They said the ocean of your brain had stilled,
no more waves, rolling to the shore.

That no man or machine,
could ever stir them again.

Choose to disconnect, they said,
let go.

I touched your forehead, for the last time
and made it so.