Minuscule irritants in nasal passage of the cosmos, we insist on festering and aggravating, even destroying the dust particle on which we blew in.
While some continue solipsistic hedonism, others try to repair the sins done by action and prayer.
Watery-eyed, The Maker sneezes.
We end.
“Gesundheit!” an archangel declares.
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.
“Slide inside the crocodile carcasses,” the elders said. Bellies in mud, we slid through the werewolf fields; we moved inches as they sniffed, let us be. The wolves were entranced.
We stole their young; took them home to our pots. We ate. We danced.
Someday mankind will rule this world.
Steve Sibra grew up on a farm in eastern Montana. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals over the years including Matador Review, Shattered Wig, Jellyfish Review, and Gravel. He features frequently in the Seattle area and has read at Capitol Hill Art Walk, Lit Crawl and It’s About Time reading series. He is a participant in May 2019 at Poetry Brunch in downtown Seattle.
Winds whisper the sounds and sights of fall; fading flowers and falling leaves.
Dancing shadows slip away at dusk to appear again in the chilly dawn.
Golden wheat fields fall to the force of gobbling combines.
The Meadow Lark’s song signals change.
The harvest moon fills the night with mystery.
Charlotte McElroy is an 80-year-old retired teacher. She is finally following her dream: writing!
On Monday, the Cassie hivemind forecasts a global superflu, ninety percent lethal.
On Tuesday, Aspasia predicts five percent.
The differing projections hinge, it appears, on the mathematical solution to Rostwick’s Paradox, on which the AIs disagree, and which no human can understand.
Quite in the dark, we’re rooting for Aspasia.
Graham Robert Scott teaches writing at a university in north Texas. His stories have appeared in Barrelhouse Online, Nature, and 50-Word Stories. See more at hemicyon.wordpress.com.
Millions of microbes live symbiotically on every body, but this particular infestation was way out of control. Gaia had tried shaking them off, drowning them with strong showers, even killing them with heat, but through it all they persisted.
Finally, she stopped spinning and watched them float off into space.
Nathan Alling Long’s work has appeared in over 100 publications most recently in Manhattanville Review, Mud Season Review, and The Journal for Compressed Creative Arts. His collection of fifty flash fictions, The Origin of Doubt, was released in Spring 2018 by Press 53.
Walking the cows down the narrow road after milking, I felt protected by their company. The last light held enough reassurance.
While returning alone with the dusk pouring through the branches, the old ruin became the only presence, harbouring contrary spirits, and I ran.
Forty years later, I’m still running.
Patrick Mc Loughlin is an English Language Teacher in Ireland and dabbles in writing. He also dabbles in painting and music and someday hopes to do more than dabble. He lives in the west of Ireland where it’s hard to concentrate.
Unspeakable darkness, slowly illuminating into an alley with dipping gutters. Tenement houses, three mismatched shoes on each doorstep. Girls hawk their wares, calling out over the cobblestones, flirtatious, looking for customers.
God is forever hiding somewhere among the gargoyles.
I fall in love a lot, always with the same woman.
Jim Doss has published two books of poems: Learning to Talk Again and What Remains. He also published a book of German translations entitled The Last Gold of Expired Stars: The Complete Poems of Georg Trakl 1908 – 1914. In his spare time, he is an editor for the Loch Raven Review.
I kept my eye on you for a long time.
And what did I see?
Disobedience.
Blame-shifting.
Murder.
Lying.
Drunkenness.
And that was just the beginning.
Your poor use of free will
makes me reconsider your existence
as a race.
I will make my decision very shortly.
Deeply concerned,
GOD
John Lane is studying poetry at The Writer’s Center, and is an Army and National Guard Veteran who has been working in the aerospace industry for eighteen years.
Effie tells me she’s uploading herself to the cloud. “It’s for work.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’ll be like a bot.”
She tells me our minds are the future; our bodies are too slow.
I take her slow hand and say I love her.
She says she’ll send me a meme. :-\
Michael Mau wrote this story.
Who would win: a bear or a man with a baseball bat?
Ralph and I want to liberate the animals from pens and slaughterhouses. But after liberation, we think they should participate in humanity’s deranged games, like cage fighting. We think it will, oddly enough, promote understanding between the species.
Wim Hylen’s work has appeared in Four Chambers, Café Irreal and McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, among other places. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife and daughter.