IFEDIBA ZUBE: Jungle Justice

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

Four boys parade the street naked, their dicks swinging this way and that. At first they try covering them with their hands but when the severity of their situation sets in, they fold their hands in prayer, pleading for mercy.

Behind them, cowhide whips cut through flesh, bone, and will.

Ifediba Zube writes from the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital Nigeria. When she is not neck deep in clinical postings she is in hiding with a good book. She has been published in Hektoen International Journal of Medical Humanities, Windmill Journal, Bridge Literary Journal, Kalahari Review and Expound Magazine of Arts and Aesthetics.

HANNAH WHITEOAK: Green

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, , , ,

No one knows why color disappeared. Leaves browned. Flowers faded. Clothing looked washed-out. Even blood turned beige.

My son’s never seen a sunset, only gray skies.

The last green shoot attracted longer lines than the Mona Lisa. When I took my son to see it, he scrunched his nose. “Gross.”

Hannah Whiteoak is a freelance writer and poet from Sheffield, UK. Follow her at @hannahwhiteoak.

ALL PRICE: A Teardrop

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

Time dripped away for Carol. A leaking tap. A drain. So much not done; and she turning forty.

No drink today.

Rain plopped from branches outside her window. Beautiful. Free-flow. Timeless. A wistful tear.

She dropped her bucket list, penned in outrageous swirls, out the window to soak in simplicity.

All Price has been published in Crannog Magazine and Foxglove Journal.

RICHARD DAY GORE: God in Skinny Jeans

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

God sits in a diner, wearing skinny jeans, developing universes on an old PC.

Nearby, Betsy gathers strength for a breakup, a traumatic severing.

Her apparent anguish moves him to abandon godhood, connect as a human.

He stands. She leaves.

Her Bible follows her empty coffee cup into the trash.

After chasing his muse from Virginia to Manhattan, Richard Day Gore settled in Southern California, where he spends his time pushing
around words, paint brushes, and guitar strings. See more at richarddaygore.com.

TAMARA SELLMAN: Onset of Multiple Sclerosis, 1975

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

Grandmother said, Raise your arms!

Still, the pain seized the girl, her ribcage spasming. She dropped to the parquet floor, a cat on all fours writhing inside an invisible vice.

Then: release.

She heaved, young lungs refreshing, involuntary tears like raindrops to parquet.

Grandmother shrugged. Just a touch of pleurisy.

Tamara Sellman is a widely published poet and writer who works as a sleep health educator, healthcare writer, and MS advocate/columnist when she’s not crafting creative work.

PERRY McDAID: Nadia

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

Rage thrust brush through canvas.

A puncture through three days’ work: portrait of she who had gathered her stuff while he slept. Gone… yet she persisted like thallium poisoning.

Almost serenely he deposited the brush – loaded with the colour of his crappy life – beside the open tube of Prussian Blue.

Irish writer Perry McDaid lives in Derry under the brooding brows of Donegal hills which he occasionally hikes in search of druidic inspiration. He even finds it on occasion.

J BRADLEY: Truth or Dare

Amusing, Submissions, , ,

Jake decided he’d feed his cotton candy to the tornado outside our storm cellar. The tornado nipped at it, devoured it, and then moved on to other lives to destroy. The next day, the radio said something about cars and people and trees and shingles still stuck high above, cocooned.

J. Bradley is a two-time winner of Wigleaf’s Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions. He’s the author of Neil & Other Stories (WhiskeyTit Books, 2018). He lives at jbradleywrites.com.

KIKI GONGLEWSKI: The Conservation of Mortality

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

I remember your eyes shimmering like constellations the night we fell in love.

They say when we look at stars, space is so immense that we’re seeing light broadcasted from bygone histories. And even after death, our lives go on, conserved by light, traveling perpetually across the soundless, glittering darkness.

Kiki Gonglewski is a senior at Albuquerque Academy. She was a finalist in the 2017 state-wide “NM Girls Make Movies” screenplay contest, has won national recognition in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and has been published in the 2018 edition of Navigating The Maze, an international teen poetry anthology. Her six great loves in life are art, movies, Kurt Vonnegut books, astronomy, writing, and Korean barbecue.

MARK FARLEY: The Recollection Collection

Artistic, Odd, Submissions, Top Stories, ,

The lonely widower broke into abandoned houses. Careful overnight work pulled lines of wallpaper down whole. Safely home, he hung them up and rested his forehead against them—breathing memories of crayon scribbles, the height charts of those who’d grown, and frames of lost portraits burned by the fading sun.

Mark Farley writes novels, flash fiction and the occasional poem.