myself at fifteen and twenty-two
sit down together in a half-imagined
coffee shop to compare notes.
she, my seven-years-ago self,
looks me up and down with curiosity,
quick insecurity-laden belligerence,
and speaks a challenge:
“you haven’t changed much.”
I say, warm and aching,
“oh, my love, believe me: I have.”
Maria Cargille wrote this story.
It happened to our saurian cousins.
It will happen to us, too.
Crushed and pressurized, our bones trapped between billions of layers of sedimentary rock. Extracted and refined, our blood poured into barrels of premium petrol.
What types of vehicles will our bodies fuel?
Who will sit behind their wheels?
Parker Davis is a writer, a reader, and a complicit consumer of Earth’s dwindling energy supply.
I dig my heel into ground. and water fills the dent I make as soon as I pull my foot away.
As a child I’d stand for days at water’s edge casting and reeling. All that ground’s gone now, loosed by storms and salt water, just a ghost, a dent.
Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Heavy Feather, Brawl Lit, Moist, Okay Donkey, and other journals. He’s also had pieces included in Best Microfiction and Best Spiritual Literature. His latest collection is Fight Nights (Blue Horsey Press, 2025). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.
Raffaello Romanelli’s statuary on Belle Isle connects the Old World to today, bridging Dante Alighieri to Detroit city.
For nearly a century the monument of the great poet has gazed stonily at beach‐goers as Motown mixed with techno and summer sunshine turned to winter snows, between occasional community restoration.
James Schwartz is a Detroit based poet and author of various poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America and most recently Big Island Beatnik. See more at literaryparty.blogspot.com.
If I had power to save that hour
I wouldn’t be time’s slave.
Each hour is lost and time’s the cost
I’ll pay to reach my grave.
The hours accost and each has bossed
my sinews, heart, and soul
and each I’ve crossed left me time-tossed
within life’s salad bowl.
Ken Gosse usually writes whimsical, rhymed verse. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, later in Pure Slush, Home Planet News, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Spillwords, and many others. Raised in Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife live in Mesa, AZ, with rescue dogs and cats.
My notepad is full of poems about love, back from a time I didn’t know much about it (though I thought I did), but love must be learned by living through its highs and lows, my notepad growing as I grew to find myself this grown man writing about love.
Ran Walker is the author of over 40 books, most of them microfiction. He teaches creative writing and lives in Virginia with his wife and daughter.
I found a bottle on a sandy beach. It was full of time. I had so many unfulfilled dreams and always told myself that was because I always had too little time. But I had to finally admit the truth when I tossed that bottle back into the endless sea.
Don Nigroni is a retired labor economist with a master’s degree in philosophy from Notre Dame.
A baby. A beginning. Exciting! Eager anticipation of the end goal: Adulthood! Every growth step welcomed.
If lucky, the journey continues, rewards received: Grandchildren! Cute and cuddly morphing into talented and fun. Finite time parenting yielding eternity of grandparent ecstasy.
Then, horrific awareness. No one prepared us. Grandchildren grow up!
Eileen was dazed when the truth was revealed. Boyfriends, girlfriends, drivers’ licenses, graduations, jobs, even marriages. Suddenly, outings and stories and sleep overs had become history, and the toys have become dust collectors.
It’s a sight to behold, that slick of teenagers commuting home from the beach. All salt-encrusted eyelashes and lobstery shoulders, screeching like a murder of crows.
Time travelling. My youth—I can almost reach out and touch it.
The train window reflects my denuded reality… but I’m still 1985 inside!
Gabe has been writing and editing for 30 years, from her home base in Sydney, Australia. She doesn’t plan on being replaced by AI any time soon.
The copse of corpses is haunted by centuried ghosts and the ashen remnants of their skeletons. As I travel, they whisper to me in urgent gasps.
To be is to… To be is to…
I allow the whippoorwill’s song to drown out their voices, yet still I walk, pondering pines.
Katelyn Jane Pontzer is an aspiring writer from Georgia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy.