May/June 2015 Issue

executive editor

r.l. black

layout editor

dino laserbeam

© 2015, unbroken/Contributing Authors

Unless otherwise noted, all accompanying photos are under a CC License, with the only

changes being that some of the photos have been desaturated.

Font used in cover creation, inside banner, and author titles by John Holmdahl

Contributing Authors

Aaron J. Housholder Kelsey Dean

Alyssa Pierce Kyle Hemmings

Ana Prundaru Linda H.Y. Hegland

Anton Rose Maureen Kingston

Azia DuPont Michael Daley

Bryan Verdi Michael O’Neill

B.R. Yeager Michael Prihoda

C.C. Russell Mimi Overhulser

Christopher Iacono Nate Maxson

Dalton Day Nolan Liebert

David Greenslade Paul Soto

David J. Kelly Penn Javdan

David Spicer Rachel Dull

Erin Moran Sandra Anfang

Eva Roa White Sarah Glady

Glen Armstrong Shane Vaughan

Grace Black Sharif Shakhshir

Grey Bauer Shinjini Bhattacharjee

Howie Good Shloka Shankar

John Grey Spencer K.M. Brown

Jon Wesick Sylvia Heike

Judith Lloyd Tabitha Chirrick

Karen Ashburner Tom Snarsky

Kathy Steinemann Vanessa K. Eccles

Keith Nunes William Doreski

Kelly DuMar

Reducto ad Humanis

by Nolan Liebert

We live in corpses, but we give them life. Rise up. With crying eyes bleeding skin silent tongues

screaming ears moral bones loving death, we vision, we visions. We are all the colors, woven,

looming up, connected through fading hues, saturated and stretching ourselves into thin slices of

population, a chromatograph of death. Rise up! We hope we die we live in corpses. We resurrect

every bloody dawn. Take warning.

Nolan Liebert hails from the Black Hills of South Dakota where he lives with his wife and

children in a house that is not a covered wagon. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming

from Gone Lawn, ExFic, Map Literary, An Alphabet of Embers, and other publications. He

can be found on Twitter @nliebert.

Accompanying photo by Alyssa L. Miller

Symphony of Worms by Howie Good

Life here is dangerous. Even the body eventually turns hostile toward its only occupant. Look at

me, a symphony crawling with worms. Stay up late enough you can feel the dark begin to

vibrate. The I Ching advises, “Wait in the meadow,” meaning caring for the cow will bring luck.

Please do it no later than next week. We might want to go walking, skating, sledding, etc.,

through Manhattan while following the directions of a map of London just because we can.

Howie Good is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently

Beautiful Decay from Another New Calligraphy and Fugitive Pieces from Right Hand

Pointing Press.

Accompanying photo by [AndreasS]

Of Flies by B.R. Yeager

When we and the century turned 14, we scratched at our names with overgrown fingernails until

our faces smeared blank and indiscernible. We printed plastic guns shaped like our dicks and

chased women from their homes and towns. When we peered into their mouths we saw neither

teeth nor tongue—only negative space; a black hole. When we leered at their skin we saw the

flesh of a balloon.

We promised to fill them with knives and bullets and our very persons. We promised boxes of

shit on front doorstops and suicide by SWAT team. We promised it would never, ever stop.

We had no choice. We felt our substance dissolving under the weight of freshly perceived ideals

and gravity. When we gazed into the flickering colors and words behind glass, we glimpsed a

planet dying across its surface. We knew the truth (deep deep deep inside) but saw we could still

be okay. It could all be okay. The world could go to hell but it would still be okay, so long as our

lives remained tiny and comfortable.

B.R. Yeager lives in Western Massachusetts with messed up teeth and a shitty disposition. His

work has appeared in FreezeRay Poetry,Mixtape Methodology, and is forthcoming from

Cheap Pop, Pidgeonholes and Cartridge Lit.

http://bryyeager.wordpress.com

Accompanying photo by Vanda Mesiarikova

Head Emerged by John Grey

I filled in a form that says I am the only one with these particulars: fish in orange mud flown

over the continent and two oceans besides. Foot traffic—always foot traffic for all the good of

touch of something familiar. The forest opens from beneath things, gives birth to me in the

ghostly dark of the technician’s lab. Closer to earth, I’m picking glass shards out of a woman’s

back. Good stuff and bad stuff - these are the borderlands. The earth offers more gravity than a

black hole, sucks me in, has great passion for the fact that I am never on my guard. Later,

hallowed of eves and sleeping in a haystack, I crack my knuckles, hand over every cent I’ve

made without saying a word. I have a creative mind, I tell myself. I always seek the positive.

Besides which, I boast a great collection of mismatched shoes.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review,

Rockhurst Review and Spindrift with work upcoming in South Carolina Review, Big Muddy

Review, Sanskrit and Louisiana Literature.

Accompanying photo by Joe

by Paul Soto

I think her mind looks like a sad slab of marble, hopeless white with gray, dissolving veins.

She’s always looking for someone else to sculpt something out of her. I don’t think she’s been

single for more than a month since her sophomore year of high school, back when she still did

ballet and hadn’t begun romantically smoking cigarettes. One time, in January, she started using

my words. Not that my words are mine, of course, but you get it. We were beginning to laugh

less and I think that adopting “Fuck yeah. That’s crazy, man” was her way of saying “I want to

stay with you and at least spend the summer together.” I was trying to be very objective about

this whole situation but it seemed strange to me that she would say that now, a day after we

fought about why I didn’t text her goodnight anymore. I flipped on a Jefferson Airplane record

for her to listen to and went to the kitchen to make some rice and beans. I think I needed the

smell of garlic powder, more than anything, to help me get away from this unspoken mess. A

few minutes later, as the beans were bubbling along to “Somebody to Love”, she came in the

kitchen, spinning like a dim and broken carousel. She picked up a plastic lei my roommate had

left on the counter and crowned herself with it. Turning to me, she poetically offered her little

palm. She had mentioned once how she meant to someday pick up ballet again. She tried to

smile but her eyes looked like the glossy edges of a sad slab of marble. I didn’t give her my

hand, or my love, and acknowledging this, she hit the wall and ran to my bed where she shattered

into a thousand shards of sad marble, waiting for me, or anyone else, to build her up and sculpt

something out of her again.

Paul Soto is currently a junior in the Plan II Honors Program at the University of Texas at

Austin. He was born in Venezuela, calls the Rio Grande Valley home, and refers everything

back to J.D. Salinger. He hopes to develop his craft and his cooking for a few years after

graduating and will then seek an MFA somewhere colder than Texas.

Accompanying photo by David Ohmer

by Grace Black

He pulled a Houdini on my heart. I was watching his hands—I was told to always watch the

hands when a magician came to town.

He told me I had beautiful hands.

But it had nothing to do with hands in the end—It was the destruction of his words and his

sleight of tongue.

Grace Black is just another writer wearing down lead and running out of ink, one line at a

time. Coffee refuels her when sleep has not been kind. Grace Black writes poetry and flash

fiction and has been published in Three Line Poetry, 50 Haikus, 50-Word Stories, 101 Words,

and 101 Fiction. More of her writing can be found on her blog http://graceblackwrites.com.

Accompanying photo by Atelier

by Judith Lloyd

She reaches forward, never certain. His eyes are fixed on other matters. The curtains split over

themselves; there’s always another curtain, another partitioning off from a clear view of one’s

nature. It’s a matter of loss or depth, he thinks. Outside it could be raining. It may as well be

raining, she decides. After all, he’s more than three inches off the ground. Wings and wings and

wings and wings. Did she pin them on just today, he wonders, or is today the day she finally

decided to stop pinning them back? How a leaf associates itself to winter branches. How the wall

might be gray or pinstriped. Her skirt is so low she seems to float as she walks; the skirt is so low

she seems to move forward without the perversion of bent knees. The hemline is to help keep the

functionality of those wings a mystery, he’d say, but he doesn’t. He can’t seem to lower himself

to her standard. He’s nearly a foot shorter than her, after all, unless she’s only offering the

illusion of height. Pull it back, lift it up, part and turn it once more. There’s always another skirt,

another partitioning off, another matter obfuscating her true nature from his projected one.

Judith Lloyd is an artist, writer, and monologist who studied in the Iowa Writers' Workshop as

an undergraduate. She currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her first publication, Read It

Back, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2014.

Accompanying photo by Newsbie Pix

by Linda H.Y. Hegland

She swirled tea in the pot, jasmine flowers in the brew bloomed like stars in a night sky. The

teabags’ strings tangled; she remembered she had never been able to do a cat’s cradle. A game

little girls played, twisting and looping strings around one’s fingers. Her mass of string formed

knots and lumps, like a pot of over-cooked oatmeal. Soon no one asked her to play cat’s cradle.

Couldn’t skip rope; couldn’t pick up jacks. Stones thrown too far in hopscotch, under the bushes

and out of sight. Never successful at being a little girl, nor at being a daughter. Not the sort of

daughter that her mother wanted. The proud woman who had been her mother. With the kind of

looks that adorned garages and barracks. Long legs, bright red lipstick, curves, and cautious

eyes. Wolf whistles from men; scornful asides from women. The mother wanted a lot, more. To

be a woman of manipulation, haughtiness, calculation. Wanting a daughter with golden curls and

baby-doll eyes. And when they emigrated from a country small to a country large. They flew on

an airplane – the baby brother, the mother, and the little girl. The father emigrated six months

before, would be waiting for them. She remembers nothing but that the brother was ill and cried

all the time, all the time. Landing in a big city airport late at night, nowhere to buy food or drink.

Not a blind bit of difference the mother said, only small change in her pocket. The mother now

crying with the baby brother. The little girl was courageous, she did not cry; she is sure she

remembered that she did not cry. Stewardess takes pity and brings stale sandwiches from the

plane. They ate small bites, ham and cheese sandwiches, through the early dark hours and into

the next day. The next morning, the father was still not there. They waited a long time – and he

was still not there. The mother set their suitcases in the middle of the airport terminal. She laid

baby brother, finally sleeping, on the floor atop his heavy blue pea jacket, smelling of dried,

vomited ham and cheese sandwiches. She sat the little girl, in her red, felt princess coat and

matching bonnet on top of one of the suitcases. She scowled at the little girl’s soiled, white

socks. The mother smoothed bright red lipstick on pale, pale lips. Pulled a comb through

disheveled hair, sat down on the other suitcase; tears long dried, eyes and expression hardened.

People, people, many people, had to move around them. Porters stopped and maneuvered loaded

carts around them. The mother sat with wool coat tucked around knees, silk-stockinged legs

placed primly side by side. She smoked a cigarette. When pulled from her lips the little girl could

see a red-lipsticked corona around the end. She watched the cigarette grow shorter and shorter.

The mother didn’t speak to her. The mother was as silent as birds before a storm. She was a good

girl, the little girl. She sat still and quiet. The mother ground the cigarette beneath the heel of her

shoe. The little girl watched the mother light another cigarette, head high and patrician. And then

another and then another. The father arrived hours late, not alone. He brought another man. The

mother would not show anger in front of a stranger. The father knew this. This man, the father

said, had offered his car to take them home. The man was jovial, pinched the little girl’s cheek. It

hurt and she didn’t smile. Somber-sides, he called her, and lifted the sleeping brother up from the

floor. Wrinkled his nose and handed him off to the father, took the suitcases instead. The mother

took the little girl’s hand, she must have taken her hand, and marched smartly ahead of the father

and the friend, leaving a dozen red-stained cigarette butts ground into the glossy linoleum. The

little girl stumbled along beside the mother, wishing she could be as haughty, as disdainful, as

sure as the mother was that the men would scurry along in her wake, fearing her derision and

contempt. But she was not that kind of daughter.

Linda H.Y. Hegland is a short story, creative non-fiction, and poetry writer who lives and

writes in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada. Her writing most often reflects the

influence of place, and sense of place, and one’s relationship with it. She has published in

several literary and art journals including the Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature,

ArtAscent Art & Literature Journal, Bricolage Magazine, Sassafras Literary Magazine,

Hermeneutical Chaos Literary Journal, Penumbra Review, and American Aesthetic.

Accompanying photo by cinnamon_girl

by Sandra Anfang

Every Tuesday he climbs up to the red brick house on Maitland Avenue. He wears his special

cologne. It’s Italian, and unfurls from the black calfskin jacket that he quickly unbuttons for

effect on his way up the flagstone walk. He comes to give the daughter piano lessons. The child

is clumsy, but docile. She watches him open his jacket on the way to the door. She stays with the

music but he can feel how hard she fights it, how she wants to be walking in the woods off

Ogden Road or playing in the sandlot down the block instead. The house fills with his spice. It

distracts her for a minute, primes her gag reflex; it’s all she can do to keep from running out the

door, out of her perfect life. His roast-beef-red face bobs along with the metronome. The

beginnings of a five-o-clock shadow creep across his cheek. Thirty minutes is an interminable

time; she doesn’t know if she’ll make it. Her corkscrew ponytail, curled with strips of frayed bed

sheets, keeps time with his bobbing chin. Always, his eyes on hyper-alert, darting around the

room like pinballs before returning to John Thompson on the music stand. He points to a

measure, his fingers fat as kosher sausages from Mr. Lipshitz’s butcher shop, where her mother

drags her after ballet school, still in her leotard. Mr. Onorato’s face reminds her of the roasts

hanging on meat hooks above the sawdust. She wonders if his cheek ever bleeds like her

mother’s pot roast when it comes out of the oven. The timer dings and she is sprung! Her mother

enters the room, skirt round as a patio umbrella, coke-bottle calves teetering on three-inch heels.

Red lipstick hijacks her lip line. Her perfume mingles with his. She drinks in his attention, a

parched camel at an oasis. It is always Tuesday. He could die today and it would be enough. The

mother makes small talk and laughs at his jokes. Her gold charm bracelet jangles. For her, it

could well be a Monday, or even a Saturday.

Sandra Anfang is a lifelong poet who began to write daily in the last couple of years. Aside

from a few workshops here and there, she is mostly self-taught. Sandra hosts Rivetown Poets:

A-Muse-ing Mondays, a monthly poetry series in Petaluma, and is a California Poet-Teacher

in the schools. She self-published four collections of poetry before beginning to submit her

work. Her poems have appeared in the The Shine Journal, Poetalk, San Francisco Peace and

Hope, West Trestle Review, and The Tower Journal. In 2014, she won an Honorable Mention

in the Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Contest, a First Place award in the Maggi Meyer

35th

Annual Poetry Contest, and inclusion in the Healdsburg Literary Guild's From the

Heart Chapbook (2015). Sandra is inspired by the natural world and the common threads that

bind us together.

Accompanying photo by Vladimir Agafonkin

by C.C. Russell

I suppose, if anything, I will miss the fog. The sky so wet that it has arched its long back,

hanging its belly low against the earth, clutched tight against its highways and valleys. The tails

of cars ahead – a long line of running lights as if prepped for takeoff. I suppose I will miss this,

the illusion of being held so closely by a world that has closed itself tight around you.

C.C. Russell currently lives in Wyoming with his wife, daughter, and two cats. He holds a BA

in English from the University of Wyoming and has held jobs in a wide range of vocations.

His poetry has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Rattle, and Whiskey Island among

others. His short fiction has appeared in The Meadow, Kysoflash.com, and

MicrofictionMondayMagazine.com, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for

inclusion in The Best Small Fictions.

Accompanying photo by kr428

by Kelsey Dean

Glowing Chinese lanterns and citronella candles, gentle on our sunburns, make evenings feel like

dreams. The cherries stain our teeth and we spit pits into the sand, which is so cool between our

toes it doesn’t feel like sand at all—not like the sand we know, not like the sand that burns our

feet and stings our skin. The moths dance around the lanterns, and when we look close, they are

feathery and soft and shimmery, not at all like butterflies. (In the daylight, all the insects with big

wings look the same against the glare of the sun.) We see everything so clearly in the quiet porch

lights and purple sky. Playing cards, the moon, a plastic checkerboard tablecloth, the Big Dipper.

The taste of July fills our mouths more sweetly than the fat slices of watermelon dripping sugar,

pooling in our palms.

Kelsey Dean spends most of her spare time stringing words together and training her hands to

draw the pictures in her head. Her writing and/or artwork can be found in several

publications, including 3Elements Review, Glint Literary Journal, Neutrons

Protons, and Arsenic Lobster. You can view her artwork here, and you can read more about

her in this Artist Spotlight.

Accompanying photo by Matt Callow

by Michael Prihoda

It was a summer of animal crackers and various disappointments. Funny how some lengths of

time get condensed, as if living boiled the minutes.

Michael Prihoda is a poet and artist living in the Midwest. He is founding editor of After the

Pause and his work can be found in various journals in print and around the web. He loves

llamas and the moments life makes him smile.

Accompanying photo by matinak15

By Anton Rose

Mum had been ill for a while but it didn't stop her from making yummy chicken. It was the

summer and we were eating outside. When the food was done mum gave me a plate with a little

foil parcel like a Christmas present. It was hot and when she helped me open it the chicken was

steaming and there was a funny green plant on top. What's that, I said. And my mum said the

green stuff was time and the white stuff was garlic. I didn't really know what she meant but I ate

it and it was really nice. Then my mum was carrying some bowls and she fell over and her scarf

fell off and everyone could see her bald patch. My dad called the ambulance and I got to ride in

it with the sirens and the lights. At the hospital my dad spoke to the doctor, they were whispering

and I think they thought I couldn't hear but I could, and the doctor told my dad that my mum

didn't have much time left, so I felt bad about eating so much of it even though it was tasty. Nana

took me home and before I went to bed I looked in the fridge and the cupboards but I couldn't

find any more and I hoped the doctor was wrong.

Anton lives in Durham, U.K. He writes fiction and poetry while working on a PhD in

Theology, all fueled by numerous cups of tea. Find him at antonrose.com, or @antonjrose.

Accompanying photo by Isaac Wedin

Traffic by Aaron J. Housholder

The old man hunches on the sidewalk and stares at the cars passing by. He lifts his hand every so

often, waves once left to right, at anyone. The young man in the passenger seat sees him, sees the

soiled varsity jacket, the unbuttoned flannel shirt, ragged khakis, broken boots. The old one

stares fender high and waves at this nearest car. The young one shakes his head. “Crazy old

man,” he says as the car carries him past. Then he checks his phone, uses his flannel to wipe the

screen, swipes his finger across the screen left to right, looks for a message, a notification, any

mention at all. Behind him the old man shakes his head, thinks “Kids these days” but says

nothing, swipes his hand from left to right once more, stares.

Aaron J. Housholder teaches writing and literature at Taylor University in Upland, IN. His

work has appeared or is forthcoming in Relief Journal, Wyvern Lit, Chicago Literati, Cheap

Pop, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @ProfAJH.

Accompanying photo by Dirk Förster

by William Doreski

The horse crossing the road looks, through the windshield, more intelligent than the landscape

beyond him. Typical Nova Scotia, the balding pastures and misty roll down to the water. Inlets

everywhere, but where are the outlets? The electric poles strung across the pastures lace us into

the scene so that we can’t escape it. The horse has come to escort us to the apocalypse. The one

we will cause simply by believing it will happen. The horse neither believes nor disbelieves.

He’s a horse, not some weird priest or cursed allegory, not some disembodied symbol lost in a

mangle of French. Someone drove the French from Nova Scotia and replaced them

with….Romans? The horse is half of a mounted heroic figure. The less comical half. Grandpa

grew up here, but died before he could explain. Maybe he’s the horse. Wouldn’t surprise me.

William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and teaches at Keene State College.

His most recent book of poetry is The Suburbs of Atlantis (2013). He has published three

critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and

reviews have appeared in many journals.

Accompanying photo by Anne Worner

by Nate Maxson

The delta: where river meets ocean, mind over dark, matter over easy finally gives in, thigh-deep

towards the descent with shadows as reptiles, ideally sea-turtles (little things) moving beneath

catalytic brown tea spooned from the hardpan, swimming in it: we are improbable mosquitoes.

When I go there, following downstream from Iron Mountain, ground zero (more than one place

with that name) the litany of it in a cut of wine across grassless suburban moons separated from

blood or dream, bare and possible to conjure not the ocean but what comes before, the mouth as

it cleanses outwards slowing to blue.

When I go from this battery acid drizzle (the expected side effect, obvious and unspoken) when I

go striding into the future similarly poisoned hand in hand, but it’s the way there: the river

floating down till the very end like Huck Finn fleeing Thracians past painted soundstages till the

cheap lumber finally gives way.

We go under (get lost) in a dust devil kiss, dowsing wands that found it, spinning like compasses

in the north spin and swim and go into the aquifer under the Sonora with me while we hold our

breath we can scratch our names on its walls before coming up for solar power, either silt or salt:

a mirage when I am in the desert, hallucinating thirst because I’m quite adapted to it, no lack of

comfort but in sand-blindness, dark glasses streaked in the same substance.

One hand holding a picture of a silent film actress: wallet-sized origami of Maria above the

current like a rifle with the other, gripping your living ghost not afraid of drowning electric in the

breeze: a struggling wing free from its former animal, if I had thirst, if I had gills (same

difference from in here) from here, we’re all inside the mechanism that allows machines and me

to come in for a landing when neither of us can swim, or yell for help going under the voiceless

era isn’t over yet not really, all that honky-tonk music patches over deafness like a hole in the

boat with chewing gum.

Preparations unknown at their initiation: walking barefoot in a dim bathhouse (no one else here

but us) across cool tile quietly but I don’t remember the transition point down the drain I don’t

remember or drink, the desert and dream the water.

Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist. He is the author of several collections of

poetry, most recently "The Age Of Jive" from Red Dashboard Press. He discovered poetry as a

boy the way other people find religion or drugs and hasn't looked back since. He lives in

Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Accompanying photo by Janne Hellsten

by Shane Vaughan

I want to taste the salt on your lips, that sharpness you take from the sea, the sea which crusts

your hair in crumples, frayed and knotted like hemp, like our heart-and-gut; to take your tongue

in mine and wrap, warp, in one, in two, in one, and swallow the words down; I love you; I love

you enough to eat like a peach, soft with down, like fuzz; don’t fuss there’s a stone in the middle

to break my teeth on and release; feel the ridge of spine under mine and leave a dent of lasting

impression; catch my reflection in beads of sweat on your upper lip, crinkle-pink with lines

denting; fractured; parting; letting me in.

Shane Vaughan is a writer of poetry, prose and plays. He has been published in Cellar Door,

for which he won Best Prose, The Useless Degree, winning Best Flash Fiction, Roadside

Fiction, winning a slap on the back from comrades. He has a serialized novel on JukePop

Serials, runs an event called Stanzas for emerging writers, a theatre group called Cannibals

Not Canadians, a music podcast called #KantKopeOrchestra and works for the Munster

Literature Centre, where he makes coffee and tweets about poetry. He is currently writing a

play and has a zombie love story coming out Halloween, 2015.

facebook.com/StanzasLCK

Accompanying photo by DominÖ

by David J. Kelly

Far below the canopy, there’s enough oxygen to intoxicate any sober mind. Unsteadily, I step

from light to shade and back again, traversing deep, ancient roots. Great gnarled bodies with

weathered limbs still offer sanctuary to those that dare walk beneath them. Wandering through

Spring’s pastel palette, immersed in her melodies, I hear only a single set of footsteps and

wonder at the path they have taken.

back once again

between a beginning

and a new beginning

David lives in Dublin, Ireland. Despite a scientific training, he has a fascination with words

and the music of language. He enjoys writing Japanese short form poetry and has been

published in a number of print and online journals.

Accompanying photo by Nicholas Jones

BY MICHAEL DALEY

When the tree in its bones begins to green, bud to early leaf, an aura enlivens, and dormancy gets

involved with breeze, the rain and light. Suddenly birds not seen in these parts for some time

take to it, a squirrel begins to hide. Yet, beside the gym, intricacy of branching twists a budding

sycamore. The bark, peeling and pale, is the face of John Ruskin and his motley beard. Its

branches draw figures against the lightening sky; it’s hard not to feel consumed. We walk past

these artists, themselves their own creation, collaborators with sun and rain, soil and fertilizer,

preoccupied with our own branching of thought, the pace of our walk, serenity or a lack thereof

playing at our lips. I think of my student’s face texting a friend as she worked her way upstairs.

Such peace emerges with all else let go: doubts and fog and protestation, judgment, grudges, and

accumulated sleights. My unworthiness. As if my presence mattered, as if I’m imbued with

secret knowledge.

Cleansed of grief

under waking sycamore

mad clouds bloom

Michael Daley is the author of three poetry collections: The Straits, To Curve, Moonlight in

The Redemptive Forest, several chapbooks, and a book of essays, Way Out There. His

translation of Alter Mundus, by Italian poet Lucia Gazzino, was published by Pleasure Boat

Studio. His poems are also in recent issues of Gargoyle, Rhino, North American Review,

Bijou, Cascadia Review, Clover, and forthcoming in Spillway.

Accompanying photo by Sonya

by Bryan Verdi

The patter of small rain drops on the palm leaves by the porch; grey clouds from the south doing

battle with the sun, and winning, sending a chilly cold on the earth below; trees by the house,

leafless, branches exposed, become playgrounds for the chirping birds, indifferent to the clouds.

Without you or me it’s easy to see how similar this world, this tiny world, would be. The battle

of the sky would continue, the rain falling homeward, the trees finding their leaves, and the birds

would play just as they do today.

Bryan Verdi currently lives in southern California as an aspiring wordsmith and world-

traveler, hoping to establish himself as a human of value. His interests and hobbies include:

philosophy, literature, biking, nutrition, culture, permaculture, and hearty laughter.

Accompanying photo by Umberto Nicoletti

by Shinjini Bhattacharjee

Even at night, the door has no teeth. First, know that mirrors always carry selves in the dark.

There is a side of the mirror that bends towards your breath. Take two steps till you reach it, or

till the almond in your mouth begins to mimic the charcoal space created by the globe pushed too

hard. Begin to pluck out what you can’t see first. A breath, taken seven seconds too late, or a

word pulled out of your nose to check its feathers. The cotton scar sitting on your throat must be

able to climb out on its own. Don’t let your left toe murmur as it proceeds to hide the darkness

under it. When the people around begin to fail you, spin seven tornadoes on your dinner table

and watch them draw your songless-stunned simplifications. Know this too. There are two kinds

of solitudes. One that pauses your tongue when you say every thing. The other, when a bird flies

inside a window and dies because it doesn’t know the laws of refraction.

Shinjini Bhattacharjee is a writer and the Editor-in-Chief of Hermeneutic Chaos Literary

Journal. A Pushcart prize nominee, her poems have been published, or are forthcoming in

Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Gone Lawn, Crack the Spine, Small Po[r]tions, elimae,

Metazen, Red Paint Hills Poetry, Literary Orphans and elsewhere.

Accompanying photo by Dee Ashley

by Sharif Shakhshir

So you have this idea that you’ve caught in between your fingers. You cup it gently so that it

doesn’t melt out. Your thumbs cover the top so it doesn’t float away. You peek inside and you

see that you have something amazing here, something beautiful. It is something invisible that

you believe in. Something that will change the way other people look at the world.

You’ve seen what other people have done with ideas. They chew them up and spit them on

people. They put the ideas under their shoes so that they can feel taller. They roll them up into

tennis balls and lob them at each other, smashing each other’s down with rackets. They put signs

in front of their houses that read “Look at me and the idea I brilliantly have!” They use them to

power shrink rays and belittle others.

You don’t want to do these things. This invisible thing is the most violent shade of blue you’ve

ever seen. You want to show it to other people, but you’re afraid they won’t care to see your

idea. People might hate it, because they didn’t have enough ideas when they were young. They

might hate it, because it is the wrong color or simply because you are the one who has it. They

might crush it in between your palms, leaving you with idea goo between your fingers and under

your nails as you go dripping to a sink to wash your hands of it. You think that maybe you

should let go of it, but it is pretty and yours and deserves a chance to make other people happy.

This is what ideas want to be. They crave to be something people can love. They are pathetic in

this way. They are human in this way. This ethereal, fragile, invisible, colorful thing needs you,

and people will respect you for how you take care of it.

Sharif Shakhshir is a Mexican-Palestinian poet from Los Angeles County. He has studied

creative writing at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Southern

California. Shakhshir’s work is known for being aggressive, irreverent combinations of high

and low art. His work has appeared in Perceptions Magazine of the Arts, East Jasmine

Review, and the Writing That Risks Anthology. Shakhshir draws inspiration from Russel

Edson and various cartoon heros, sometimes literally as he is also a cartoonist.

Accompanying photo by superde1uxe

by Maureen Kingston

After it happened, his engine stalled, his legs abandoned ship. He should’ve let go then, slipped

out, slipped under, but routine was still strong in him. He finished out the day, clung to the

busted mast through eventide, until his grip failed, his palms flensed by slivers with a will of

their own, which refused to give up the ghost. Only his shot-up barrel chest ever made it home—

short-sailed, riven—it frayed into the arms of his family tugs.

Maureen Kingston’s flash fiction, essays, and hybrid prose poems have appeared or are

forthcoming in Apocrypha and Abstractions, CHEAP POP, Gargoyle, Gone Lawn, Gravel,

The Legendary, and Stoneboat Literary Journal. A few of her prose pieces have also been

nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart awards.

Accompanying photo by Hernán Piñera

by Kathy Steinemann

Your dark allure entices me. I surrender. Oh … oh … OH … such delight. Nothing can compare.

I want more … more … but I glance at my watch and realize I’m late for work. I curse. I grab

my car keys and turn toward you. You tempt me, promising sweet, supernal pleasures. My heart

beats faster. My pulse races. The taste of your boldness lingers, bitter on my lips. I yearn for you,

yet I resist the temptation. I have tried so many times—and failed. I hope this will be the day I

forget you, the day I abandon you. Forever. But your persistence is inescapable. You stalk me at

the office. And you’re there—tugging, testing my will—when I meet the girls for lunch. I can’t

evade you on the street. Yet I know I must try. I defy you, shun you, ignore you. As the day

wears on, recognition overwhelms me. I’m trapped. Ensnared. Addicted. When I get home, I

collapse on the sofa and try to sleep. But slumber eludes me. You’re near. I can smell you. I

remember this morning. I dream of your warm, mellow charm. The memories torment me, haunt

me, fill me with regret. At midnight I rise and join you in the kitchen, sad acceptance in my gaze.

I cannot combat your bewitchery. I voice what I’ve been thinking all day: Coffee, I loathe you.

Kathy Steinemann has loved writing for as long as she can remember. As a child, she

scribbled poems and stories. During the progression of her love affair with words, she won

multiple public-speaking and writing awards. Her career has taken varying directions,

including positions as editor of a small-town paper, computer-network administrator, and

webmaster. She’s a self-published author who tries to write something every day. Please visit

her at KathySteinemann.com.

Accompanying photo by Sodanie Chea

My Teeth Are Falling Out by David Spicer

I’m in a panic. Every time I bite a pizza crust, chew some licorice, or snack on popcorn, I’m

afraid. I have nobody to blame but myself, though I try to throw that blame at my parents, who

never demanded I brush, much less floss. Hell, they didn’t brush and had phony teeth before they

turned 50. I hope I’m luckier than them. I brush sometimes. I’m paying a fortune to my dentist, a

small, congenial blonde man without Napoleonic attributes. He’s a wizard who solves problems

with biters, grinders, and chewers. Root canals, crowns, fillings: he’s performed them on me. His

children don’t need to borrow money for dental school because of me. He and the family run the

marathon and travel to Montana every year. But I digress. Perhaps because my molars hurt like

holy hell. I hope I can wrangle an appointment. I bet I’m his favorite patient. Or maybe he and

his staff roll their eyes every time I call. Possibly not: he’s always calm. I’m not.

David Spicer has poems published in The American Poetry Review, Poetry Now,

Ploughshares, Yellow Mama, Bop Dead City, The Naugatuck River Review, and elsewhere.

He is the author of one full-length collection, Everybody Has a Story, and four chapbooks. He

is the former editor of raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis with his wife and

two Maine Coons.

Accompanying photo by David Mulder

ROBOT SUIT BY JON WESICK

Dear NPR:

I’m considering a late-life career change to science reporting. As such I’ve written this sample to

show I can write science articles just like the ones I hear on NPR. Any advice you can give will

be greatly appreciated.

Jon Wesick

OAK RIDGE SCIENTISTS INVENT ANTI-MATTER-POWERED, ROBOT SUIT

Wayne Holsack is an unemployed construction worker who injured his back in a fall in late

2013.

“When you’re rushing for a deadline, sometimes you forget proper ladder placement,” Wayne

said from his two-bedroom home on the east side of Burlington, Vermont.

I joined him and his wife of twenty-three years Dotty on a cold, November evening and sat on a

plastic-covered couch in their overheated living room while Buddy the Irish setter curled in the

corner. The religious embroideries Dotty does in her spare time decorated the walls and a

cornucopia of pretzels, potato chips, and Royal Crown Cola covered the coffee table.

“Don’t know how we’re going to get by now that I’m too hurt to work,” Wayne said. “We got

some disability money and the little bit Dotty brings in by selling her embroidery but the bills

keep piling up.”

After learning of Wayne’s plight, I traveled to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and asked Dr.

Gene Selfie if an anti-matter-powered, robot suit could make it easier for someone like Wayne to

do construction work. Dr. Selfie said it might.

When I returned to the Hosack’s in early December, Wayne had enrolled in accounting classes at

the local community college and Dotty was studying for her real estate license. I described Dr.

Selfie’s project and asked if Wayne would be interested in returning to construction work in an

anti-matter-powered, robot suit.

“That’d sure be great,” he said.

For now that remains a dream. This is Jon Wesick reporting from Burlington, Vermont.

Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of

the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published over three hundred poems in

journals such as the Atlanta Review, Pearl, and Slipstream. He has also published over eighty

short stories. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the

martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and

Artists contest.

Accompanying photo by Ben Rimes

A Collection by Spencer K.M. Brown

Yellow. The room held in a tranquil haze of sunlight, pouring through dusty curtains. An

afternoon, in between sleep and waking, calmly laying there. Her head on my arm, our hair

intertwined. Yellow. The color of sheets, freshly loved. Warm and inviting, like some sirens call,

a muse beckoning me home to my place on her warm bed. Yellow. Like the petals of freshly

picked sunflowers, bought for no reason. Just a simple act of love. The water, shone green with

the stems, through the textured vase. The flash of memories, of words, failing to recall a happier

moment than any I had spent with her.

Yellow. The color of my hair, my hand running through its rain-sodden strands. Water-logged

boots splashing through puddles, knowing where I went wrong—knowing nothing can change it.

My fingers grow stiff and cold as I bring a cigarette to my mouth, the freezing rain pelting

against my skin. A mini-series of reruns, playing back each day, each moment. Interrupted by

friends’ hollow voices, regurgitating clichés of, let her go, and, it’s time for a new start. But I can

only hear her soft voice, whispering in my ear with a gentle kiss.

Yellow. Like her coat, bundled tight around her arms and chest. Its soaking threads seeping into

the seat of my car. The raindrops on her face blend neatly with her tears. How long must I wait,

she says, how long can I? My tongue, neatly tangled behind my teeth, always unsure of what to

say, always unsure of everything.

Yellow. The color of the flame, illuminating our last dinner. And love is easy in the simple

moments. And all men are strong when compared to nothing. Holy. The touch of her skin against

mine. Blessed. The way her hair danced on her shoulders. Comely. The way her smile let me

know everything was all right.

Yellow. The color of the sunset from the airplane’s window, curling over cauliflower clouds. My

hands shaking, and with shallow breaths, I recall her yellow sheets, her soft, feathered skin. And

I can hear them leave my lips, all of my words. As gaunt as the very breath of smoke I exhale.

Yellow. The color of her dim bedroom light, coming through her window, splashing onto the

sidewalk where I stand. A battle within myself. Each side, pulling the knot tighter in my gut. She

said I must let her go. She said she could not take any more words. And I only want it the way it

was—the way we were. But not even I can hear my words any more. Words confined to a page.

Words that slip my tongue when I need them most. Words that never said very much at all.

I get out of bed and crawl into her dreams on nights I can’t sleep. Hoping maybe I can finally tell

her what I always held back. I still haven’t changed, still just a child. But you can be anyone you

want when you’re asleep. The thunder shakes the ground. I sit up in bed, counting the time

between flashes of light and the riot of thunder—one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand. I’ve

never been good with emotions, but storms make children of us all. The rain glides down the

windows and I sit in bed, licking the windowpanes, wondering who I’m supposed to be. If only I

could quench this thirst. No one else can see me, only the rain. If only I could let her in.

Emptiness fills the house like fog. I look around in the darkness, widening my eyes just to see no

one else is there. I can feel the fog at my feet, climbing up my skin. Tiny oceans, streams gliding

down the panes of glass. I only want to feel the rain but a barrier is firmly in place. Wind bends

the tree branches like broken bones. Lightning flashes reveal the veins protruding from the skin

on my hands—I need a drink. I remember her hands. The blood a pale blue beneath her cold

skin. Still, I long for something, someone who can keep me warm. Rain drips off the gutters,

splashing into puddles. Winter’s grasp thaws with a resolve of hope too bitter to taste any longer.

My mouth is dry as I watch the dark night drink its fill through my window. Always, it keeps me

at a safe distance. Like a child, reaching for a cloud, forever out of touch. A step, a letting go—

anything to become a part of the storm. But I sit here, watching it all happen. She couldn’t take

the watching anymore, she said, running off and joining in the beautiful storm. The thunder

keeps me from falling back to sleep, from finding her there. I sit and watch, as she gets carried

away by the wind. I sit, watching with sea-water eyes, out of windows, only now so perfectly

clear.

Salty tears dry stiff on skin. My head is like cracked egg shells, pale blue, speckled, like a robin’s

unborn song. My pillow case is damp as I lean up to examine it. Tears? Sweat? What difference

would it make anyway—no one can sleep on a wet, cold pillow case. My eyes chase shadows

around the walls. Branches slapping against the house. Nights have become lonelier. Wasn’t

always so, I suppose. But the smell of tears reminds me of the ocean. A honeymoon I’ve never

had. A peace that seems as feign as a romance novel.

Love is more than a touch, she once told me. I never liked being kissed by a grandmother but

strange how neglect breeds a longing for physical contact. The birds are up early and keep me

from falling back to sleep. Dreams are pointless now anyway. A lonely man is a lonely man is a

man who lacks confidence and envies pictures of a time so distant. A time when he wasn’t so

lonely. A time of wit, of charm, now sinking in an ocean. A mummy, a caged animal—never to

be touched again. Seven years old in school, show and tell, praying with squinted eyes to hold

the rare artifact of a Superman action figure for just one second longer. Knowing if you could,

you may leech some form of strength from its plastic bravery.

Coffee makes my heart race as I walk in the dark morning to get the paper. I think of what else I

have to do, what other way of expressing emotions. I’ve scared away all panic attacks. I only cry

in my sleep. Yet, hope runs abundantly through and through. The bleak morning, the foggy

meadow on the foothills of the mountains. My feet atop a gravel driveway. A paper, a cup of

coffee. The sunrise is God’s good morning kiss, my mother once said. And I stand in my robe,

awaiting that gentle touch of light. Awaiting an invisible connection.

The sun rose again, despite all of it.

And in the citrine moment, everyone looked like flowers in the end.

Spencer K. M. Brown was born in Bedfordshire, England. He attended Ave Maria University

in Naples, Florida. His stories have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including

Prime Number Magazine, Contraries, and Technically Speaking. He currently lives in

Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His debut novel will be forthcoming within the year.

Spencer K. M. Brown is represented by Jo Schaffer and Gateway Literary Agency.

www.spencerkmbrown.com

Accompanying photos by Tim Geers and nosha

by Rachel Dull

I won’t be able to tell you when you have barbecue sauce on your cheek, latte foam on your

nose, or a price tag affixed to your elbow, because I do not want to be the one to initialize the

embarrassment you did not know you should be feeling. Wouldn’t it be better for you to notice

your faux pas yourself, preserving the possibility that no one else saw? I will help you out by

staring at your dishevelment. Then, I will surreptitiously wipe my mouth with the back of my

hand, glance down to check that my zipper is closed, and run my tongue over my teeth looking

for debris in the crevices.

Italian parsley:

A ubiquitous garnish

For pasta and teeth

Rachel Dull is a professional data manager, classic over-thinker, and zealous friend. At last,

her creative writing degree from the University of Michigan Residential College makes sense,

though the math minor still does not. Her work has previously appeared in Hoot Review.

Accompanying photo by MOTOKI Plasticboystudio

by Kelly DuMar

I love to bring my father treats. A sweet distraction is a chocolate chip cookie. Something

mesmerizing is a book.

In an earlier stage of memory loss he read aloud all the far and near events from his Boston

Globe. Until he could no longer grasp the inky news, the noisy pages.

Look at what is lovelier. A children’s book has pictures any age can feel. Upside down, right side

up, turning page and page and page, back to front, front to back, this is how my father loves one

in his hands.

To see and hear a favorite poem there is an illustrated copy. The cookie first, with milk. Stopping

By Woods On A Snowy Evening is where I read aloud. The pages he turns. The pictures he

touches. His eyes contact mine. The sounds of words as I say them he watches. A rhythm is

forgotten and familiar. This can cause his head to nod, because yes. He believes a night of snow,

the harnessed horse. A stillness can be felt, the farmhouse near. He’s holding promises and

miles, the dark and deep. And shows me how I mean to be awake.

Kelly DuMar is a poet and playwright from the Boston area whose chapbook, “All These

Cures,” won the 2014 Lit House Press poetry contest. Her award winning plays have been

produced around the US and her poems and non-fiction are published in many literary

magazines, including Lumina Online, Corium, Poydras, Tupelo Quarterly, and Milo Review.

Her website is kellydumar.com

Accompanying photo by seanmundy

Cat Woman Sexy: Veterans of Foreign Wars by Kyle Hemmings

He happened to be the last customer of the day. A veteran of a war that I can't remember. Short

curls of silver hair, arms sinewy with tattoos of the names of ships he sunk. Or so he claimed. I

watched his neck veins pop during the roller coaster ride of a fuck. He died at the top. Probably

the best orgasm of his life: death itself. For a moment, I remained under his weight, his body, an

inland country now closed forever to travelers. I felt the warmth leave his skin and that I had

some remote obligation to kiss him on the head for a job well done. I slipped out from under him

and dressed. Thought maybe I should take something with me as a souvenir. No, not his wallet. I

didn't go through his pockets. I took his false teeth. Placed them in a Styrofoam cup of warm

water with a lid. Over 46th Street, I sleep with his false teeth under my pillow. I keep the

window open, the voices drifting in, so the teeth will get the urge to talk, won't feel so lonely.

When I finally sink into a dream, the teeth might sing me a song. Or maybe he is young and

handsome in his soldier boy's uniform and I'm the girl who's waiting for him. I"m waving to him

beyond the smoke and stench of burning metal and collapsing buildings. He runs through the

flames to tell me how much he loves me but the war has made him poor. I tell him, It's not your

money I want. I want the children you promised to give me, perfect as glass. No more dead

bodies. His jaw goes slack. Broken windows chatter.

Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. He has been published in Your Impossible

Voice, Night Train, Toad, Matchbox and elsewhere. His latest ebook is Father Dunne's

School for Wayward Boys at amazon.com. He blogs at http://upatberggasse19.blogspot.com/

Accompanying photo by Jeff Hudgins / Alabama

by Eva Roa White

The carp jumps out of the water with a body-length shiver that only leaves its tail submerged.

For one instant, it defies its fate and exists in another element, another dimension. Watching such

a feat sends a ripple through me that echoes those left around the apparition. And though all is

well with me today, below the surface, where the carp lives, the water is dark and muddy. Dim

and peaceful, the submerged reality is where I dwell; ready for an extraordinary leap into another

dimension of my life, ready to hold myself up and out against the odds, like the carp, for a

moment of transcendence and clarity.

Eva Roa White was born in A Coruña, Spain and raised in Lausanne, Switzerland. She has

lived in several countries including Saudi Arabia. She is at work on a memoir. Her fiction and

non-fiction have been published in Page 47 Online Anthology, Transnational Literature,

disClosure, Natural Bridge, Marco Polo, Buhito Press and The Common.

Accompanying photo by anamontreal

Graveside Wedding by Alyssa Pierce

All we needed was an empty graveyard and the knowledge that a thousand love stories lived

there. I wore a cream lace dress, cut above the knee. No need for a headpiece. You carried our

rings in your front jean pocket. A three-stone sapphire for me, because I've never considered

myself a diamond, and a coiled snake for you. We didn't have time to memorize the vows we

wrote. The crumpled papers added a sense of permanence to our promises. Our only witnesses

were whispers in the wind and faded names on stone. They know how to keep a secret. Even

Mother Nature knew this was meant to be. The Cherry Blossoms bloomed just for us.

Alyssa Pierce is a children’s author and blogger from Jersey City, New Jersey. She holds a BA

in English from Rutgers University and currently works in elementary education. More of her

work can be found at alyssapierce.com.

Accompanying photo by anamontreal

by Karen Ashburner

I have a simplified skeleton. I have the Life of Pi sitting on my desk. I am a comic book

character with no super power and not even the voice to say hello. I need you on your knees, the

moon behind your back. I need the blood in my heart scissored by the pulse in the tips of your

fingers, your legs holding tight to the air, neither of us swimming alone in the dark. I need death

flying overhead, the darkened river grabbing at our feet and both of us laughing. We will step

into nothing without getting off the bus; we will walk waist-high through the water without

standing up. Together we walk to the edge of social acceptance; holding hands we part ways in

misfortune. Tuck my hair behind my ear and press my face to the pavement. I will survive

because you will always be the boy with the curly hair and the sideways smile. Press your cheek

into the small of my back. You will always hear the bones of my hips in the palm of your hand.

Karen Ashburner lives and works in North Carolina. She has publications in or forthcoming

at Burrow Press Journal and Hermeneutic Chaos Journal. A list of her publications can be

found at www.karenashburner.com You can follow her on twitter @sweetrocketsky.

Accompanying photo by Bryan Brenneman

by Sarah Glady

1. Counters

There are a hundred dead gnats lining the edge of my freezer. Don’t worry, this is just like my

family’s fridge, he says—I am embarrassed, but glad that he is in my kitchen. He is old to my

home, more than familiar, but still accidentally breaks my ice tray trying to separate the cubes

and unweave the squares. I try to wipe up all of the bodies. There are too many.

2. Alaska

The whole first half of morning has been shrouded in clouds and bear-discouraging yelps, when

we climb Gavin Hill and Harbor Mountain. We have to find our names, from before, we have to

find where he and I put it when we came here, she demands—I was looking up, looking at the

stale snow and the fog. I had come to her to run away from my thirst and cactus and sorrow. I

had flown to her to untangle. There are too many questions in the desert. I am cold and at the top;

all we can see are clouds.

3. Cubes

He is new to me and wants to know why I love glaciers and need to go to Antarctica. He doesn’t

understand their value—he dreams about Patagonia, and so when I explain my adoration of the

bleakness, the intensity of the mammoth frozen cities, he only leans in closer and drinks his

water. Later, we will watch stories about the mountains and screens light us up and I will twist

our sleeves and fingers and ankles together.

4. Snowpiercer

The train is an arc, the train holds all life after the people sparked the rapid stampede and

suffocation by the glaciers. As we watch, we are cold. We are here, alive in the desert, and so I

will not pay for heat. Why don’t they leave and join the others in the field of ice, he asks—it is

too cold, I say, but in my head I am dreaming about surviving in the crashed bomber with him. I

sink deeper against his chest and braid more blankets onto us.

5. Mud

I told you I would take you on a drive—he says. We’re not sure where we’re going. Payson or

Pine we think, hoping for snow. First, we go through the desert. We go on back roads, illegal

roads, and we pick up bones, rocks. He’s trying to make a gift for his mom, for me. We head

north, I buy him a bear paw bottle opener keychain, at the gas station, but there’s no snow, or

bears, for that matter. We go further, chasing a dark cloud, until we are surrounded by

evergreens, and eagles, and the flakes pull down, silencing the rim. I wonder if we will kiss. We

don’t.

6. Glass

He calls me from the road. I can’t hear him in the record store. I got the picture he sent. It is

Texas, glossy and cold, encased in three inches of ice. His friend is doing well. He says they’re

being careful and that it’s beautiful. My stomach hurts and I think about a hundred more things

to ask him, but not over the phone. We’re going to snowboard in a few weeks and I do that

breathing exercise to the thought of letting myself fall off of the ski-lift into the snow banks

below.

Sarah Glady holds an MA in postcolonial literature from Arizona State University. Her work

can be found in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, PANK, and Cartridge Lit.

Accompanying photo by Liam Quinn

by Michael O’Neill

Quite some time has passed since we parted. And I was left behind in the damp numbness, the

valley of dull thoughts, seeping through my pores, viscous with pain, as if someone had drained

the everglades of our past and all that remained was the undergrowth, the half-trees, the

amphibians sucking for air through cracked teeth in the swamp of nothingness.

I couldn’t tell the difference between physical and emotional pain, so I was content with words

blackening my eyes, leaving bruises on my spine, blood trickling from my lips as if it were a

bullied verb. My eyes the melting glacier moments before the final crack releases the floodgates,

the waterfall taste of salt in my tears, these dripping faucets with broken knobs.

Quite some time sounds like a long time, but what is time deep down in the unticking heart, with

no second or minute hand to tell me it’s time to move on?

Michael O'Neill is a fiction and poetry writer residing in Chicago. His work has appeared in

Nanoism, unFold Magazine, Literary Orphans, and the Journal of Microliterature, among

others.

Accompanying photo by the awesome Craig Sunter, used by permission

by Shloka Shankar

The paper is folded in half. And then again. Creases appear like the ones on mother’s forehead.

Boundaries mark off each individual square. Boxes patiently wait. Images of the chess board, the

brick, or the wayward bridge come to mind. A Sharpie lies open as if ready to ambush.

Smoothening out the paper, the susurrus of expectation couples with a nervous sigh. More

definition. Swirls and twirls assault the page, and, in frenzy, portions are blackened and lines

crossed. Stained fingertips. The smell of fresh ink too strong now, almost orgasmic.

Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer residing in India. Her work appears in over a dozen

international anthologies, including publications by Paragram, Silver Birch Press, Minor

Arcana Press, Harbinger Asylum, Kind of a Hurricane Press and Writing Knights Press

among others. Her poems, erasures, haiku & tanka have appeared in numerous print and

online journals. She is also the founding editor of the literary and arts journal, Sonic Boom.

Accompanying photo by Järnet

Jig Saw by Penn Javdan

The damn dog got in the way. It wouldn’t let me jump. I hovered over the ledge of my building,

shaking and leaning, leaning and shaking.

Then there’s Roxy and me and the life we’re in. I’ve never known what it’s like for anyone to

need me like she does. If Eve and Kara and Layla and Scarlett were no different, why should

Roxy be? How could she? “Tell me you love me,” Roxy says. “I want to hear it.” “I do,” I go,

but I don’t. Because I just don’t know.

*

It’s just a matter of time before she lets go. I have to beat her to it. I want Roxy to run. I want her

to want to run. She’s tough. Her father was a bootlegging pharmacist who drugged his wife to

tiptoe behind her back and tell her she was seeing things. He cheated. He embezzled. He

skimmed. He evaded. Jimmy Champagne left Roxy’s mother with six-figure-debt and a baby. A

baby named Roxy.

Now this dog keeps slipping into our building. We live down the hall from each other and he

struts between us. The mutt’s always sniffing about, tail in air. He lands at my door. I peep

through the peephole. I survey his eyes as they squint in their deposits of amber.

This is my way out. I open the door, lead him down the hall, and install him at Roxy’s place.

*

Roxy’s too busy smiling to know I don’t trust her. She waits for me in bed as I lug home from

work. My hands are cast in clay clumps. I’ve dug enough ditches to fatten the earth ten times

over. “Take your shirt off,” she says. “Roxy,” I say. “You’ve got a fever.” I nuke her some carrot

soup. I pad her forehead with a wet towel. I read to her so she can sleep. It takes her forever to

fall but when she falls she falls forever.

She yawns herself awake and the first thing she says is, “What’re we gonna name him?” She

asks with her hand on its skull. They both stare. She in her pouted lips and it in its pointed ears. I

know what’s going to happen if I give it a name. So I say, “You name it,” which backfires.

“Fine,” she says, and names the bastard after me.

*

Spartacus usually wanders out then home but not today. I take the day off googling him in the

flesh, through alleyways, at the pier, under the bridge. I think Roxy’s going to hurt enough to

want me again. But she’s learned how good I am at hurting myself. How expertly I let everything

go to shit before it has a chance to.

So we shake on it. We agree never to speak. Not even in the elevator. Not even if we bump into

each other throwing our trash down the chute. But it doesn’t come to that. I move to the top floor

and take the stairs from then on.

*

I could tell her I found the dog, but I don’t. I keep damning Spartacus to the lobby but he keeps

pawing his way back. Then it just happens. I shove him in my car and drive to the vet and the vet

says it’s him and me or him just dying and I go, “Whadaya think I’m doing here?” and leave him

whimpering behind a cage.

*

Roxy finds out I lied. “You didn’t,” she says. “You wouldn’t.” She drags me to the vet because

“If you make me go alone,” she says, “I’ll never forgive you.” I don’t know what to say. So I say

she misunderstood, that “it was a check up,” then bring him back to my apartment.

*

Spartacus stays. He follows me everywhere. He’s gained twenty two pounds and drools and

jumps into my lap every time I fall through the door. I’d been looking for somewhere new to run

to but everyplace always ended up being the same. So I stay put and it’s just me and this dog

until Roxy tries again.

*

I catch her on my ledge like a tightrope walker, stretching from end to end. “I wanted to see what

it’s like,” she says. But it’s more than that. She shakes so Spartacus pounces to fangsnatch her,

then slips. It’s eight floors down. I look out and see the ditches I’ve dug. The biggest one being

where I’m standing.

*

They demand you be grateful. That you see the bigger picture. I do. I am. I’m trying. “There’s

war,” they say. “There’s famine. And cancer, don’t forget about cancer. Be grateful for what you

have.” But that’s the thing. Roxy is what I have. What I have is Roxy.

Spartacus was an abandoned service dog. Trained to know where to turn and when to stop and if

to keep going. He knew better than I did. I’m thinking of that damn dog as if he’d never slipped.

I want to tell Roxy everything. That what she believes is true. That the one we want will want us

back and is out there and it doesn’t have to be this hard. That in the case of Roxy and me, it’s

Roxy and me. I want her to be my first real friend. I want someone to finally know who I am.

*

You try jamming these puzzle pieces in places that don't fit. Your reason to be or not be with

someone should be because you want to be or not be with them. Not because of fear. Not

because of some threat.

“You don’t have to live downstairs anymore,” I say. But Roxy’s full of silence, hooping her keys

around her finger, meditating on forgiving me once more. I try to think of a single time I’ve

forgiven her for anything. I’m blank. Roxy’s the most forgiving person I know. I imagine our

roles being reversed.

I know what I would do.

Educated at Harvard, Penn Javdan has lived in Northern California, Toronto, Paris, NYC,

and Boston, Massachusetts. His fiction has or will appear in Whiskey Paper, Gravel

Magazine, Freeze Frame Fiction, and The JJ Outré Review, among other publications.

Accompanying photo by Wetsun

by Azia DuPont

Calm down my dearest of dears, a celebration should be exploding from your chest. Like 4th

of

July fireworks, a parade of lights & confetti & maybe you can even see the stars in the sky—it’s

a perfectly clear summer night & I want to bask in all this light.

Your heart should feel warm like the fresh apple pie I baked for you; it’s sitting on the

windowsill. It’s resting. (You should be resting).

I took my time.

My fingers meticulously massaging the dough

Forming the letters of your name—

I baked you into the pie.

I baked you a pie!

I made a home!

For you!

In the pie!

I made you a nest of sliced apples with cinnamon, a blanket of woven sugar which means please

rest your head & stop thinking of all the abortions & suicides. Please remember that sweet

crystals can still encapsulate the tongue. Please remember my tongue. Please remember the

wings growing from your stomach, each butterfly flutter emerging from your throat like a factory

of hope. You are hope when you want to be. You are beauty when the tears are rainbows so

much different than the black rain flowing from your eyes right now. I’m scared.

You’re scaring me.

You’re just an echo of a smile.

I miss your smile. Your oversized teeth. Please give me a smile.

You give me a smile & I’ll give you sweet air so much air & we will float into the sky like

escapee balloons & when we look down you’ll remember how small we are & how free.

Everything will be okay,

okay, my dear, okay, my dear?

Azia DuPont currently resides in Northern Iowa. She founded the online small press, Dirty

Chai in 2012. Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Dead Flowers: A Rag |

Bohemian Pupil Press, Queen Mobs Teahouse, Similar:Peaks, Calliope Magazine, The

Screaming Sheep, Peacheslitmag, Scapegoat Review, Haunted Waters Press, among others.

You can find her online via Twitter @aziadupont

Accompanying photo by Lisa Harbin

by David Greenslade

Why is the corkscrew weeping? It weeps while listening to the Maramureş folksong, “Ce te

legeni bradule” (why are you swaying oh fir tree). And the object is far from Maramureş. The

corkscrew is not unhappy in Verona. It’s a logical exile – better pay and a brighter future. But

everything smells different – the meat, the hay, the dust and especially the corks. Why are you

weeping oh corkscrew? I simply weep for my homeland. The scent of my homeland. My distant

and faraway homeland. Măi dorule, măi.

David Greenslade writes in Welsh and in English. He currently lives in Wales after long

periods of work in Japan, the USA, eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Recent books include Ibtisiam al Habsi and her Zanzibar Court,(Ministry of Heritage and

Culture, Oman) and Rarely Pretty Reasonable (Dark Windows Press, UK).

He is a prizewinning essayist and short story writer with work translated into several

languages and is widely published in UK literary magazines.

Accompanying photo provided by the author.

by Ana Prundaru

Balancing a blanket around my shoulders, I carefully slid out of your embrace and into the

shower. Plum colored dream images mingled with flocks of worry under the steady stream of the

blow-drier. In the kitchen, I doodled on a Post-it, as the coffee maker spat up mocha. The first sip

jolted me awake, causing a short circuit in the cockpit control panel that was cloaked inside my

brain. Shivering under the sharp blade of honesty, I remembered that our relationship had meant

to come to its end a week ago. Yet, sticky-sweet memories and doubts about the future led to the

coin toss, which in turn had been in favor of us remaining a couple. After another sip, I glanced

at my artistic work, secretly hoping that a solution would unveil itself on the yellow paper.

Unsurprisingly, the early morning creation was pointless and out of control; much like my life. I

had considered pro / cons lists and self-help books, but there was no grain of clarity in either. I

had to face it: Decisions weren't my thing.

Fingers wrapped around the mug, I tiptoed back into your bed. As my breath drowned among our

naked bodies, I traced a triangle on your chest. All I knew was that between those lines, I was

whole.

Ana Prundaru is a translator, writer and visual artist living in Switzerland. Most recently, she

has contributed works to Cactus Heart Journal, Lumina Journal, Citron Review and Drunk

Monkeys. When she isn’t working or pursuing creative endeavors, Ana volunteers for animal

charities, practices yoga and serves as a poetry reader for the online journal Fruita Pulp.

Accompanying photo by Ricardo Samaniego

Colony Collapse Disorder

by Dalton Day

Aubrey Plaza sees a dead bee lying on the sidewalk. She wonders quickly if the science of this is

accurate, if it’s true that bees lie when dead, or if they simply hover a little lower. She googles

these questions, both of them responding with panicked articles on colony collapse disorder. But

these articles aren’t helping her. She knows all about colony collapse disorder. Aubrey Plaza is

the person who came up with the name.

Dalton Day is a terrified dog person & MFA candidate in The New Writer’s Project. He is the

author of Fake Knife & the forthcoming TANDEM, & his poems have been featured in

PANK, Hobart, Gigantic Sequins, & Everyday Genius, among others. He helps edit FreezeRay

Poetry, Souvenir Lit, & can be found online at myshoesuntied.tumblr.com &

twitter.com/lilghosthands.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of prose pieces from Dalton Day featuring Aubrey

Plaza. Be sure to watch for Aubrey Plaza in forthcoming issues.

Accompanying photo by Todd Huffman

The Large Hadron Collider by Grey Bauer

At the right magnification the spaces between stars are filled with other galaxies and physicists

keep splitting atomic particles and finding smaller pieces to name, and the Fibonacci sequence is

in artichokes and hurricanes and the inner ear and last year a baby with AIDS was cured and it’s

living and growing right now. What I’m saying is that it’s ok, it’s ok, just please hold on,

because your downward spiral follows the path of seeds at the heart of a sunflower, and the

darkness you see may be autoimmune but they’re finding cures for self-harming bodies, and

they’re going to have people on Mars by 2030 and that’s a hundred and forty million miles away

and the stars will all look different from there and they’ll see different galaxies between them,

too. You’re not a problem, you’re not a wrecker, they found the god-particle by smashing things

together until they broke.

Grey Bauer is an aspiring developmental editor and graduating senior at the University of

California, Davis, who likes to mash ill-fitting parts together and see what sticks. She writes

mostly science fiction and crosses literary forms because structure is for rockets, not for

writing. Further works including poems, plays, short stories, and the occasional fanfiction can

be found at archiveofourown.org/users/GreyBauer/

Accompanying photo by Fernando Mafra

by Erin Moran

I've started drinking green-grey arsenic water instead of beer because the doorman doesn't smile

back and I can't forget the way your jaw would clench when you drank too much. That was only

one of the bad habits I picked up from you. It wasn't until I woke up screaming from that teeth-

crumbling nightmare that I decided to quit all of them. I don't think a mouth-guard will help.

I've heard that whiskey works well for forgetting but I think this water works too because my

toes are turning black and I'm starting to feel faint. I don't have to repaint my toenails red and

there's not much use in buying make-up anymore.

This place was once bright and warm but now sunlight seems artificial and it's getting hard to

breathe. "The coughing keeps me up at night, but otherwise I feel fine."

As I lay in bed I realize that I haven't thought about you (or my teeth) in months. I haven't

thought much at all. I've stopped biting my fingernails (they've stopped growing) and I haven't

touched any drugs (not even the ones the doctor gave me). With this realization, I feel my jaw

unclench and I stop coughing long enough to sleep.

I've started drinking arsenic water instead of beer because I know no one's shoes will stick to the

half-dry puddle when I drop my cup.

Erin Moran is a Philadelphia rookie studying journalism and English at Temple University.

Her work has been published in Flux, one of the University of Pennsylvania's student-run

publications. Find her at hellinaheadband.blogspot.com to follow along as she tries every ice

cream shop in the city.

Accompanying photo by 顔なし

A Brief History of Abstraction by Glen Armstrong

If not for the non-corporeal tendencies of abstraction, we would be invited to the marriage of

Science and Rat. Dignity would be the best man, Test Tube the maid of honor. We have been

saved from the tight shoes and expense of attending for now, Science preferring to remain

unkissable and somehow, in Science’s thinking at least, above it all. Love has no hands with

which to slap Science silly, no way to clutter the rooms of this couple’s strange, ceramic

dwelling.

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and

teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called

Cruel Garters and has a new chapbook titled Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) and two more

scheduled for 2015: In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters

Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cloudbank.

Accompanying photo by Christoph Rupprecht

Possessed by Vanessa K. Eccles

You speak to me of decency when such a word was never written in your diction or demeanor.

Her—where is she? Someone sliced her from temple to tip and folded her inside out. She stood

there staring at me with empty sockets, like some starched morbid costume. Like a caricature of

someone who once existed but never in that exaggerated form. No, you never belonged because

she never belonged. We were both lost in some fantasy that seemed innocently beautiful, but like

those old children’s nursery rhymes, were really dark and deadly.

Your love in her heart bled an ancient poison that morphed her into someone new—some super

human with truth seeing eyes. Your lies, your lies, O how I see them now. With a snake’s tongue

you slithered her with deceitful whispers disguised as sweet nothings. Every touch of your lips

left her more and more defenseless.

Until.

Until she met him.

He’s everything you weren’t.

The girl you knew died with one single kiss from the lover of her soul. A curse broken, a

newborn emerged to see the world truly for its features. No more wicked games of solitude and

company.

You stand in front of me a stranger, only known in a parallel universe, replaying scenes you built

in your mind. Your carnations melt as I’m delivering the sad news. Strangely, her death seems so

sudden to you, when for me, it was years of painful agony.

You came proposing a wedding and will leave immersed in the private funeral of a love once

possessed.

Vanessa K. Eccles is the executive editor of Belle Rêve Literary Journal and is the founder of

the writerly book blog, YA-NA Sisterhood. She's been published in over a dozen literary

journals. Her debut novel, FABLED, will be released in May 2015.

Accompanying photo by Paul

Earthen Between

by Tom Snarsky

The red sand coagulated further into mist than either one of its excited states could account for

on its own. Each state had a ridiculous legislature, of course, but such bodies would not even

begin to suffice for the sand’s purposes. This was emergent sediment with a gaseous agenda.

Within the boundaries of possibility and expectation, diffusion was just another thing for it to do

or pull at, like a recreational drug or a juicy scab. Naturally the desiccated subject, its property

rights intact, became interested in transformation. It licked its lips and googled all the requisite

information, scouring Wikipedia for a sense of itself qua desert, though not in a limiting way;

consulting the salt in the sea air, it was seeking a solution. It knew what it needed to do, and

though it did not lack the proper tools, it understood that the dialectic would be strange and

perhaps uncomfortable. The very notion of stability seemed to be at stake, although it knew from

its intimate experience with dunes that that was precisely the wrong sort of stability to seek to

preserve. Gradually, then, it enacted the shift. With time, it established a new normalcy along the

gradient, and it managed in the end to sublimate completely. At the conclusion of it all, the sand

felt like a tablecloth in a magic trick: spectacular, although primarily so for having vanished

without breaking anything.

Tom Snarsky is a Noyce Teaching Fellow at Tufts University in Medford, MA. His poems

have appeared or are forthcoming in After the Pause, Shadowtrain, Otoliths, Cricket Online

Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Braintree, MA.

Accompanying photo by Anita Ritenour

by Keith Nunes

I'm an island shrinking away from the mainland, a sod at a time, I don't laugh, too busy waiting

for the disappearance of an original idea, I remember being happily attached, but misnomers and

misunderstandings and tails with malice cut holes in the stitches, a clarity that resembles

reasoned thinking has replaced love and hate and disappointment, I'm coming to an

understanding with the natural world - we are merging, I am losing myself and yet, enlarging.

Keith Nunes (ex-Melbourne, now Tauranga, New Zealand) was a newspaper sub-editor for

more than 20 years but he now writes to stay sane. He’s been published around NZ (Landfall,

Takahe, Trout, brief, Poetry NZ, Catalyst) and increasingly in the UK and US, was highly

commended in the 2014 NZ Poetry Society international poetry competition and is a Pushcart

Prize nominee. He lives with artist Talulah Belle and a coterie of nutters.

Accompanying photo by Don McCullough

by Sylvia Heike

I cannot begin to know how it feels to be an elephant, and even less how it feels to spend, to lose,

fifty years in chains. Spikes impaling grey skin, living on human garbage, beaten with sticks.

Upon rescue the elephant cried. Cried! I had no idea elephants could cry, only that they might

want to. While looking to know more, I stumbled onto the white coat glacier. According to

science, elephants cannot cry by definition: they can only “produce and shed tears.” There is

something human and nothing elephant in that notion, how everything depends on definition--

even tears.

Sylvia Heike lives in Finland. She writes flash fiction, short stories, and is working on her

novel. Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Mad Scientist Journal, SpeckLit,

101 Fiction, and other publications. Visit her at www.sylviaheike.com

Accompanying photo by Art G.

by Christopher Iacono

You push those pedals, motoring the wheels on the winding road. The wind whips, the sun sears.

The light rides metallic blue, skips among the spokes. A red sign glitters: the guardian. You

squeeze the brakes and jerk the bars. Tires shriek, the road is scarred.

Beyond the sign, a car roars. And then another. You sit and watch from the invisible line you’re

forbidden to cross. With each car that passes, the longing grows, the longing to escape from the

rules forced upon you.

The tires roll, back and forth. A gentle push onto the line. The first step. Another push. And

another. One more — you made it. Over the line, the other side, the forbidden land. Your heart

races. Should you go back? You wipe the sweat, you look ahead. No, you can’t go back.

You push those pedals. You crash through the rules and leave them behind. The sign gets

smaller, your mouth gets wider. Your first taste of freedom.

Christopher Iacono lives with his wife and son in Massachusetts. Besides writing fiction and

poetry, he has written book reviews for Three Percent and the Neglected Books Page. When he

is not writing, he copyedits and proofreads marketing materials.

Accompanying photo by __MV__

Fool’s Gold by Tabitha Chirrick

Gilded feathers melt away and you burn up, a crowing phoenix, calling me to rise from the ashes.

To face your legacy, the way it haunts me. Every day a journey in your footsteps, ambling

with blood-filled shoes smearing behind your harrowed trail. Every footfall a struggle to forget

you. I never asked to fall in love with a hero. In the end, I never did.

So from the red-stained soot I rise, to become the idol you strove to be. I’ll outlive your golden-

hyped legacy. The one of the man the people knew, but didn’t. Each step forward pressing out

the blood, your memory, slipping through like in a sieve, one drop at a time, until all that’s left is

what waits to be discarded.

I’ll abrade the surface to reveal what lied beneath - the tarnish I refused to see - and show

everyone the hero you were never meant to be.

Tabitha Chirrick is a writer of all things speculative, taking inspiration from her comic book-

ridden childhood. She makes her home in the gadget and burrito-filled splendor that is Silicon

Valley.

Accompanying photo by Elisa Moro

by Mimi Overhulser

I have a goat, the goat loves the weeds. The weeds love the sun, and the sun loves to beat down

on the tin roof. The roof glistens for the sun, glistens and shines off the sky. The sky has no idea

what to do next. The idea is small and lives in a dirty half-flat rubber ball left by the child. The

idea is tired of the goat, and the goat only eats what touches it. It is a tall weedy thing that

doesn’t need the sun. The sun leaves, the tin roof stays and gets cold, the sky fills with stars. The

stars don’t worry about anything, and the ball with the idea sits in quiet and practices its shape.

Mimi Overhulser earned her MFA at Virginia Tech. She has been published on-line in The

Mississippi Review and 42Opus. She creates and performs evenings of poetry and instructs a

series of poetry workshops, Accidental Acts of Love in New Mexico where she teaches at Luna

Community College in Las Vegas.

Accompanying photo by mcamcamca

Thank you once again for reading Unbroken. As always, a huge thank you to our amazing

contributors for allowing us to showcase your work; we consider it an honor.

Be sure to come back for our July/August issue, and go check out our brand new project, Unlost,

a journal of found poetry.

Until next time, Happy Reading!