Before I had finished explaining, the guy in the dream woke up.

He walked away from the tree, so that when it fell, no one could hear, and so, perhaps, silence fell.

An audio file deleted by mistake. The lecture never attended. Ideas misunderstood.

A red sun bedded by the sea. Bare feet in wet sand. Seagulls fast asleep. On one leg. Sacred to Aphrodite and the White Goddess of the Moon. Voluptuous and gullible.

As far as I know.

Robert Witmer

Ashlyn
Ashton
Braxton
Brooklyn
Caitlyn with a c
Creston
Cresslyn
Eastton with two t’s
Eeston with two e’s
Evelyn
Jazlyn
Kaitlyn with a k
K8lyn with an 8
Kingston
Lynton
Packston with a k—sorry—with a ck
Pakston with just a k
Paxton with an x
Qaitlyn with a q
Quinnlyn
Quenton
Quinton
Remington with an i
Rem‽ngton with an exclamation point—sorry—an interrobang
Rem!ngton with an exclamation point
Southeaston
Tonlyn
Tracelyn
Trenton with just an o
Trentön with an o with an umlaut
Westlyn
Weston
Zayton with a just a z
and double-z Zzayton

mock orange blossoms
keeping up
the Joneses

Joshua St. Claire

welcome come in are you okay sit down make yourself comfortable tell us what happened tell us everything the whole story we will listen carefully harvesting whatever information is of use to us discarding the rest then we will issue our judgement on you on your essence and on your existence we never could tell the difference but anyway please just sit down and relax and give us the fucking information

Irish sunrise
the inevitability
of imputation

Tim Murphy

My sister has been in and out of hospice care. On a chilly December day she says “It’s as cold as death”.
“Can we say it is as hot as death in summer?” I ask.
“Have you ever seen a warm hospital or ER?” she questions me back.

hidden stars
slowly reappear
early dusk

Mona Bedi

enters through double glass doors.
Her body leaning, red crochet crowning her head.
Dangling tubes connect to the green oxygen tank
she’s pulling with her right arm. In her left hand,
an old worn sax case.

Trumpet and bass call to each other, bebop, bebop.
Rhythms fly into the air from JP’s electric guitar.
Fingers swim across the black and whites.

Sitting next to me, she sways
to Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology.”
Then the MC announces:
And now we’ll join Ruby, playing Green Dolphin Street.

Slowly she opens the patinaed clasp
and lifts a worn brass sax; one arm steadies her tank.
The wheels clank-clack up steps onto the stage.

She slips her mouth on the reed. Strong vibrations
build to a crescendo. The room becomes the music.
People tap. Their earlobes dip to the offbeat.

Slinging her sax aside, tubes and tank invisible,
Ruby sings like a yellow-tipped whooper swan
flying.

Norma Bradley

Dear Editor,

The numbers you cite in your post-election article of November 8th tingle my bullshit detector. I understand your passion for the subject about which you expound, but not every reader is as gelatinously swayed as you might have hoped. Your “fuzzy math,” to quote a hero of yours, is just not up to the task of calling into question two centuries of unbroken small “d” democracy. But I realize that fact steps on your sound-bite. “Rigged election,” is a loaded phrase. I suggest you bolster your source material before shooting it off.

Regardlessly,
John Q. Public

Peter Newton

an ancient Norse saga piling up on the photocopier
illustrated with animals that might be extinct already
or maybe just manifestations of the id

charcoal sketches
of my doppelganger
blink once for yes

Melissa Allen