Author Archives: Dale

Animals by J M Jackson

The slaughtered cow’s blood had pooled beneath its gaping neck and reaching tongue. Only the whites of its eyes were showing. The concealed pupils were looking for answers towards the back of the beast’s skull. A battered boy looked on dispassionately. “It was a p-p-p-p-political war,” he said to the white man interviewing him with […]

Bullet Goose by Erik Fuhrer

There was a goose who lived in my grandmother’s attic. It had lived there since the first world war and had bullets in its flesh where feathers once grew. Its daily clickaclink rang in our ears each morning as it dragged its cyborg body across the unfinished floor. Every now and then it would bury […]

Division by Mark Renney

It smells in the lobby. I grimace and step from the main entrance and out, onto the scuffed tarmac. I gaze across at the tower block opposite. ‘Jordan, get back here NOW,’ a woman’s voice. I hear but can’t find her, but I spot Jordan striding swiftly and full of purpose. She keeps close to the […]

Location by Iris N. Schwartz

Late autumn: I’m cold, wind-strewn, jacket-less, alone. Somewhere in New York State. (I study license plates.) Two fives in my jeans pocket. How did I get here? Where’s here? I say to myself, “Gina, Michelle, Dorothy…don’t panic.” How can I not be disturbed when I don’t know my name? When, now, I’m here, but, ten […]

Bedouin by Sneha Subramanian

n. Bedouin – colloquial for desert surpluses as human. Dwelling is a mist-colored cavern full of discarded newspapers lined at night with desert storm remnants as the face of morning. An entity who has dissolved home and stored a concrete house within beige sand granules, gifted with an oasis on occasion by the desert. n. […]

Imagine the Chair by Kit Kennedy

Go to the border of what you remember. Trace your fingers along the small arc of shadow where dark cranberry curves on the seat of imaginary green. Remember if you negate the chair, you wipe away the person sitting there. Kit Kennedy serves as poet-in residence of San Francisco Bay Times. She has published 5 […]

Fist by Daniel Bennett

I stopped attending church once we moved to the town, but the portion of time it had occupied felt unrealized and almost obscene. I had explored the river. I had ridden my bike across the rape fields at the back of our house, and found another patch of ground where turnips grew in regimented rows. […]

A Spell of Patches by Paul Bone

Most place its origin when the high school running back, with a likely future of theft and marijuana, sat two hours one night with his grandmother’s needle, thread, and thimble to fix the Harley-Davidson eagle across the shoulder blades of his denim jacket. He took a handoff at the next home game and at the 30-yard line […]

The Secret by Sandra Anfang

She cornered me on a flight to Fort Lauderdale. The beautiful aerialist had language on her side. I heard the impossible tale of her lover, the firefighter, how he survived the explosion. How The Secret brought it all to pass. I try for listening, neutrality, force my mind wide like a stubborn green coconut. I struggle to […]

Word of Moth by Marion Michell

Worst days pain ricochets like shooting stars with pinball crushes. Oh the love! Coins, slot, more? Even your voice becomes unhinged, that last door. Words duck and dive, hide behind femur, kidney, clavicle. Tongue cannot reach. The keyboard hisses. Coffee cools in favourite cup. Bottoms up! You’re braced to write, comb the lamellae of cognition […]

Depending on the Horizon by Cate McGowan

Yes, the boys and I fashioned retrofitted, hand-me-down bikes—spray painted speed machines tooled in overgrown backyards and empty garages, made tough like each of us to withstand Georgia red clay, easement trails, steep hills, kid-built ramps. After-school afternoons, we’d pedal muddy paths as if the real Devil chased us, scooting down creek bank inclines, picking […]

Aversion by Sheldon Lee Compton

Eggs. Egg. Anything white. Anything oval. Come to think of it, anything yellow or white and oval. Or scrambled all over, you know, sort of thrown around and fluffy? And yellow and white, the two of them together. With white specks all through the yellow, smelling of butter. In fact, butter itself. Because butter can […]

Hidden Valley by Ricky Garni 

I mumbled. Then she mumbled. Out in the street, they mumbled. In the streetcar, the driver, well, he mumbled. The car horns mumbled. The cat darted out of the way of the pick up truck, mumbling. There was an explosion. It mumbled. Who can explain all this? It’s this way: the city is underwater. Has been for […]

V. by Donald Ryan

In five minutes the universe will expand, opening around him, turning stars into melodies and melodies into suns, burning a fugue of flames, igniting in him sparks of creativity in the form of firecracker stanzas, exploding crescendos, comets of colors.  In five minutes he will breathe in, breathe out, then turn on the television but […]

Teen Mirror by Julia Kantić

The anxiety, the torpor, the ennui, they are all parts she gets from me. Even the hyper parts, the rip the skies aparts, the foul tongue, the need to stand in shadows at parties, the talk-of-the-town inside the head, then out, repeat, repeat, do not close your mouth, do not pass go, do not collect […]

Jumpcuteye by Mark A. McCutcheon

A May Monday evening: windy, which isn’t unusual for Edmonton; and warm, like 25°C warm, which is. You’re parked curbside under tall elms reaching towards each other over the boulevard, waiting for your girls at their music lessons. A teen passes your car on the sidewalk, reading her phone like you were reading yours before […]

(20) The Honourable, Miss Phryne Fisher: Lady Detective by Anne M Carson

The Hotel Windsor, Melbourne Australia When Phyrne farewells thrift, she welcomes haute-couture—a whole suite at the Windsor to house her capacious wardrobe and a ladies’ maid (Dot, rescued from the street) to tend it. Only her first day in Melbourne and already she’s bought a flamboyant satin and fur ensemble from a city courturière. She’s […]

Her Skin by Lucy Palmer

She sleeps the sleep of the drugged, body furled in a comma, breath steady: in, out, in, out, my own personal metronome. The scar snakes silver on her arm, a beacon in creeping moonlight. I trace it with my finger like a surgeon with a knife. She doesn’t stir. When it happened, it was ugly; […]

The Demon Tree by Alisa Golden

The demon tree was swollen with bloom. We stepped lightly around it, not so much to prevent the demons from awakening, but because the demons had started ripening and falling, and we did not want to step in one. A boy approached, carrying a stick. Other boys approached, carrying bigger sticks. People pushing strollers hurried […]