literary journal
Cross legged I sit,
on mountains of wisdom;
a cushion of reality.
Truths bejeweled on tree tops,
like golden apples ripe as ripe can be,
a breeze away from falling.
The morning sky flushed a dusty pink,
with brushstrokes of a happy, happy yellow,
an alliance of colour.
The sun perches on the landscape,
ruling the lands in it’s midst,
a welcomed surrender.
Tall I stand with grounded roots,
all is well;
all is well.
The stragglers walk past the last
of the sandwiches.
Why do so many egg?
My dad bloody hated the things.
His opinion counts for nothing now,
not even at his own wake.
A disheveled sausage roll
lies on a silver platter
all on its own.
Did it fall on the floor?
59 eaten and one discarded,
red-carded for some reason.
And it’s open season
for old folk to talk pish.
Oh, I mean reminisce.
Stories that change
each time they’re told.
The quiche looks withered and cold.
Three quarters wonder if they’ll be next,
one too many after paying respects.
Old bastards he hated
and a woman he dated,
conspicuous like
the stray peanut somehow in with the crisps.
Hollow words from the service ring in my ears,
he worked at this firm for 30 odd years.
The minister had no fucking clue who he was,
that one time he cried,
his tasteless stir-fries.
Half-eaten pork pie, a feast for a fly.
One hour in,
attention diverted.
Laughter echoes around the room,
betraying the hole in my heart.
He’s already forgotten it seems,
talk turning to bagels with too much cream cheese.
JAMIE GRAHAM is a Scottish writer and Seinfeld addict on the wrong side of 40. He’s recently featured in Pop to magazine, 101 words and (b)OINK zine. Find him on Twitter @jgrahamwriter
One was in love and carried a bird’s nest
in the cavity where his heart should’ve been found.
All have eggs growing in their lungs.
Some will hatch into birds that sing
from broken ribs. Some will hatch
into locusts that eat the body into remains.
In the square a thousand others remained
hypnotized by the sky where seven sundogs nested.
Three in white, three washed in the stain of hatched
eggs, and one real with tapering tails found
rushing toward collision like a song
swelling up from Tuburculose lungs.
One was in love and fell mid-lunge
into repose, forever toward, to remain
unrealized. One became a song.
Three built a well-pitched nest
out of One’s ribs. One would find
it romantic. Three sang to the hatchling
halos circling the sun. Hatch,
my sweet, said Another. My lungs
are tired of holding down. If I am found
at the end, let my hands remain
empty, One begged. Atop tower nest
the Faithful strike bells into song
hoping hope will blur the sky, singing
blues into indigo, indigo into violets that hatch
rainbows – both prism and prison – nestled
in the sky. Crack, crack, crack goes the red-eyed lung
as the eggs take the last remaining
breath as the body begins to founder.
One could not say he found
any of this romantic, apart from the singing.
Crack. Crack. Crack. Razor mouthed remainders,
faithful Plague Locusts, perihelion hatchlings
keen from an almighty lung
hallowed and hollowed like a nest.
The faithful find comfort in the nest
that sings, in lungs
that hatch and crack, crack, crack the remains.
Julia Beach Anderson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her poetry has previously been published in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mount Voices, and Keep Going, and has work forthcoming in I-70 Review. She lives in New England.
did you feel like a man
when you were shattering me,
splintering me with your nightmares?
you were the devil putting me through hell,
and i didn’t know where i could run to
to save myself;
my mother was always working and she took
your side most of the time
as if i could do no right and you could do no wrong—
only in nature and books could i find solace
the soft needled pines
remain my favorite hiding
place
all these years later when i visit home
because you made me an outsider in my own family
convincing me that i was a burden to my own mother
i have never asked for help
even when i needed it because i don’t trust that anyone
can save me from my turmoil,
and you’re the reason
i don’t always believe people when they say
they love me;
because your love was a lie
full of scorn and anger you cut a girl that was full of love
even for you, even as you kicked her
simply because father knows best
but he didn’t.
Where are you heading
You five score men?
United in separation,
Divided across sand
Cast out into silence,
Salt licked,
Weather beaten,
Backs to the land.
Where are you heading
You men of iron?
Cast in man’s image,
The modern day icon,
Measuring life’s passage,
Instructing his course,
Rusting to dust
Before a western horizon.
Where are you heading
You barnacled men?
Nature’s reclamation
Transforming our shrines,
Touching our moods,
Contented, downhearted,
Naked thoughts travelling
Through turbulent times.
C.R. Smith is a Fine Art student whose work has been published in such places as 101 Words, Ink in Thirds, Train Flash Fiction, Ellipsis Zine, Zero Flash, Spelk Fiction, The Horror Tree, Glove Lit Zine and Ad Hoc Fiction.
crsmith2016.wordpress.com Twitter @carolrosalind
There comes a morning when the air has changed.
Your face tips, snake-like to the dawn, tasting, testing, inhaling.
The season has turned once more. The still familiar mantra –
Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer, now delights.
There comes a morning when you wake to the sound of hunters’ guns.
The swallows have left, and the empty skies speak.
Cloud castles, mythic and voluptuous return to the island.
They threaten but never promise rain.
Mushrooms, scabrous tumours, orange, fecund and fertile,
ooze from the earth, cowering from the searching seasoned hand.
There comes a morning when you tighten your dressing gown and search for socks.
You retreat inside to drink your coffee. The Archbishop prays for rain.
Gilded dawns and roseate dusks dazzle. Nights draw in.
You hope this year it will be cold enough to buy bundled firewood.
Christmas scents the air and the faithful fast.
Rain rolls in and fills the dams. Snow settles on Troodos.
There comes a morning when you pad outside in bare feet
to drink your coffee in the soft air. Floral confetti speckles the grass,
fields glow gold and green. Scarlet poppies and windflowers stain the verges.
For lunch you pick lapsanès, fluorescent yellow wild mustard,
or agrèlia, slender spears of bitter asparagus,
to fry in olive oil and eggs, drizzled with lemon.
There comes a morning when the swallows return from Africa.
Joyous parabolas of flight as you watch and smile with delight.
Year after year, they rebuild their dun-coloured nest above your door,
raising fledglings high above the gaze of the neighbourhood cats.
Sun scorches the earth, baking the air thick, resinous and hot.
The sea summons you. A siren to salve and soothe the heat.
There comes a morning when the template
of time comes full circle. You smile.
Once more you tip your face snake-like to the dawn.
The days grow short. Persephone departs.
There, in the lamplight,
Lamplight
Old lamp,
lambent, stand bent,
you have clumsily
spilled light onto
my desk, illumining
many long nights
on a foreign desk,
next to my keys,
Keys
She opens doors
she is a powerful person who
knows people who know people
she opens doors and yet her face
is like a keyhole void and inscrutable
and I can not imagine what shape
is the key that would open her up
lies my phone,
which I can see
I Can See
like hairs, the threaded mountain paths:
wisps on vast and varied tracts of land,
high lakes where wrens and pitpits take their baths
in shade of whitebark pine in clustered stands.
There nestled on a languid bend of bank,
I spy beside the riverbeds, a town,
with people trading goods, and thought, with thanks,
toward towers and meeting minds, I head on down.
To think what delectations lie below,
my wond’ring buoyant heart does beat so fast,
to know how wise my wand’ring lets me grow,
through novel sights and sounds in each place passed.
Oh how wise, wond’rous, far-flung, do I roam,
yet only lately, lonely, think of home
from my spot
on the bed, with
a message from you
Message from you
A square blue pane of light; message from you,
I’m trying a triolet, so you don’t start with me.
I let the light fade, evaporate like morning dew.
A square blue pane of light; message from you,
again, washing the wall, I am all taut sinew,
but I won’t move, I can stand feeling guilty,
A square blue pane of light; message from you,
I’m trying a triolet, so you don’t start with me.
Which I know is
full of honesty
Honesty
Honesty softly
falls like rain, uncaring and
gentle, on us all
that means an argument,
which I was never good at –
but still, I would reply,
if I weren’t so very busy just right now
writing a poem called Lamplight
Keys
I Can See
Message from you
Honesty
Jamie Stedmond is a young Irish writer, currently based in Dublin. Jamie is pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at University College Dublin. Previously publications credits include The Bohemyth, Cagibi, ZeroFlash (forthcoming), and Paragraph Planet.
shadows swing from cypresses
their stinky orangutan feet reaching out
into the unordinary blue night
the branches are draped with togas
in both dream and day
dyed with phoenician purple
as your id strangles your ego
with a newborn’s swaddling
stirring tropospheric anger
and among the tired people
a maelstrom of misunderstanding
thunder’s sonic drum
sweeping them into their
thatched huts as they shield
their dusty faces
with dessicated branches
while one can only wonder what
the flies feel,
as nature the master angler
reels them to oblivion
reason is out of season
on this primeval plain
a storm which we feel to be real
without having seen it
wet ink smudges
a flock of blackbirds flying
over the page’s edge
product of authorial imagining
inside a vortex of apoplectic clouds
couriers of disaster
squelching tribal laughter
while in their communal rooms
they pray
for the fortitude of light
lost in the weeks
of inconsolable torpor.
The day I turned 13
My mother took her mother and me
To the grocery store.
My Mom told me to choose an ice cream.
I don’t recall if it was after I’d chosen
(Already holding the frozen calories in my hands)
Or as I still stood in contemplation of the decadence,
That my grandmother came quietly next to me
And pinched my hip.
I looked up to see her
Eyebrows raised, lips pursed, she whispered,
“You don’t need it.”
Time stretched to match the distance of that grocery aisle.
I studied, for not a little while, the reflection of the fluorescents on the floor,
Bright blinding blurred above my burning cheeks.
I never said a word and don’t recall what I chose that day
Or whether I enjoyed the taste.
I’ve never since bought ice cream without some measure of this shame.
Today, when I’m feeling very brave, I’ll put ice cream in my cart— right on top—
On display, just daring someone to say: “You don’t need that!”
But other days, I cover it with romaine or a bag of seedless grapes.
Truth be told I do enjoy the taste of Ben N’ Jerry’s Peanut Butter World.
But truth be told, I generally pinch—rather than affectionately behold—
All the curves that since have made a woman of that girl.
Carrie Danaher Hoyt is a life-long lover and writer of poetry. It is her humble opinion that poetry is the highest form of human communication. Poems (she says) at once highlight what is unique and what is universal in humanity. Carrie lives in Massachusetts where she is a wife, mother and lawyer. Carrie has poems at twitterization.wordpress.com and forthcoming in amethystmagazine.org
In a good year it pricks up its ears to our expectations
and recollections as children and makes delivery of a great
ease: a cargo of thirty days, smooth as honey and as gold.
A ripening fruit of a month; yet with its half-swallowed
memory of winter is still a little jejune. All apparent
even-keelness, it recalls to me the Ionian sea
around a small Greek island that I passed one time
on the ferry from Brindisi to Patras. I awoke at dawn
on deck as the remaining freight of backpackers slept
about the corners and sheltered parts of the ship.
I watched as we scissored the sea from an ancient rock
where Odysseus or Byron might have docked and saw
how portentous a calm sea looked. June is like that in a way.
Kookier than July, more at sixes and sevens than May.
Jaki McCarrick is an award-winning writer of plays, poetry and fiction. She won the 2010 Papatango New Writing Prize for her play Leopoldville, and her most recent play, Belfast Girls, developed at the National Theatre London, was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the 2014 BBC Tony Doyle Award. Belfast Girls premiered in Chicago in May 2015 to much critical acclaim and has since been performed all over the US, Canada and is to premiere in Australia in May 2018. Winner of the inaugural John Lennon Poetry Competition, Jaki has also had poems published in numerous journals including Ambit, Poetry Ireland Review, Irish Pages, Blackbox Manifold etc. She won the 2010 Wasafiri Prize for Short Fiction and her debut story collection, The Scattering (Seren Books) was shortlisted for the 2014 Edge Hill Prize. Jaki was recently longlisted for the inaugural Irish Fiction Laureate and is currently editing her first novel and a second collection of short stories.
When they come I will tell them
I didn’t know.
It wasn’t me, I will say,
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know what I could do,
what difference I could make,
didn’t want to know
because knowing meant acting
and acting meant choosing
and choosing meant sacrificing,
so I chose not to know.
But I did know.
In another place
that I hid from myself,
I did know.
We all did.
And when they come
they will see that I knew
because I have been expecting them.
And when they come
they will see in my blind eye that I knew
and that I chose not to know
and that that was worse.
And not knowing will be no defence.
Sherri Turner is a writer of short fiction and poetry and has won prizes in competitions including the Bridport Prize, the Bristol Prize, the Wells Literary Festival and the Stratford Literary Festival. Her stories have also appeared in a number of anthologies. She tweets at @STurner4077.
And beyond
there is a space of darkened clouds
that lighten not with lightning strikes
where days are reconsidered
in such twisted ways
to appear so straightened there
and free
from destructive lie or taunt, beware.
Nestle close to The Cabinet, dear,
It and the space around
breathes clear and pure and true.
Embracing you.
A break from storms, that scream and whisper,
untwisting twisting voices of the mist misleading.
That is what It’s heeding.
Great sesh, me old mates.
Sweet-talk the fans.
Cool pad, Tom.
Speaking of Cougars, Julia
The old man with cancer
The fans and the curious (5% discount)
The old man with cancer was pretty cool.
Chuck it all in? We’re here for you. Darling
No need to worry about briefing the tradespeople! We do feel your pain, darling
We all do, darling (5% off) (cancer is cool)
Thinly disguised mature sex goddess
(not my words, darling)
Terrible pain, darling.
Collective shock, a feeling of inadequacy (pilates! the pool!)
An abyss of anxiety beneath your mask of self-control
(But let’s not beat ourselves up) (cheap cancer for the fans)
Just wanted to get that off my chest.
Your incredibly brave, flat-screen TV
Oak-effect laminate flooring transubstantiates pain into art
None of the trauma diminished, I’m sure (darling)
You are our friend (I am an actor)
Badger reset: liberal blinkers off please!
With our pilates and our real ale (and our erotic prints)
We will slay the demons that stain our memories.
Were you a bird then, mate? (I don’t want to pry) (I am an actor)
We all have issues, genderfluid
You seemed bored, and frankly so was I.
Eternal gnosis ffs! I was only looking for the loo.
We feel your pain. (Though I was a teensy bit peeved)
Cancer is 5% off.
Okay, gotta go.
Dan’s short stories have been recognised in several competitions and anthologies. He was runner-up in the Flash500 short story competition 2017, and was also shortlisted for the Sunderland University/Waterstones Short Story Award 2016, the Wimbledon BookFest prize 2016, and the 2017 Fish short story and Retreat West flash competitions. He wrote sketches for Dead Ringers (BBC Radio 4), won Carillon Press’ Absurd Writing competition (2014), and has also made two appearances in Christopher Fielden’s To Hull and Back comic-writing anthology (2015, 2016).
A journalist and former slush-pile reader, he is also a book reviewer for the Press Association.
Our limbs are numb with bed heat
rippled from storm-wrecked sheets
with the scent of animal, rut stained
wisps of matted hair, raked skin
We’re sex-shocked, faces hollow
coal-eyed, swallowed
and sweated, ferrets
slithering from the bloody burrow
Shattered plates on the carpet
collateral damage from the tango
that swept table space for body parts
which we ate like cannibals
Naked, febrile after the kill and kill
squeezing teabags on the sides of mugs
we infuse the moment
in short, hushed sentences
Under steaming water we swim
our hands in each other
then dress and grieve the covering
of addictive fruit.
We sit, your head in my lap
I scoop your tears in the crook of my finger
and drink them. You say you’re not crying
We listen to Mahler
and hear the darkness of passing cars.
Lights descend from the purple sky
we drive to the airport to watch planes
and whisper names of countries.
Steven John lives in The Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, UK and writes flash fiction, short stories and poetry. He has had work published in writing group pamphlets and on short fiction and poetry websites including Riggwelter Press, Reflex Fiction and Fictive Dream. In December 2017 Steven won the inaugural Farnham Short Story Competition and has won Bath Ad Hoc fiction four times. Steven has read from his work at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Stroud Short Stories, The Bard of Hawkwood and The Flasher’s Club.
Twitter: @StevenJohnWrite
Bright water rooms
of sleepy encounters
as ballads hidden in grasses
wonder and wait
Moving water as shadows
in love with morning light;
so far away, so close to perfection
within the celestial masterpiece
Voices speak with certainty
in the gardens where sunlight
is the wafer and the grail and
peace floats like a mist above the trees
As the wind dies down and all is still,
the river and the moon learn to pray
in mountains bright enough to hide the sun
in the timeless core of the visible world
Christina Murphy’s poems appear in a range of journals and anthologies, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology.
A bronze statue of the haughty patrician still stands sentinel by city hall. The city elder
founded the company town that bears his name as a steel mill’s dormitory a century ago.
His steely vision, now immortalized in burnished bronze, built the world’s first billion-dollar
corporation. But his ken did not extend that far into the future, or encompass all the collateral damage.
Today, the city is a putrescent carcass of boarded-up chop suey joints, vacant homes,
abandoned haberdasheries, bygone lunch counters, and shuttered storefronts.
The main drag is an unending graveyard of dead dreams, plywood-patched tombstones.
Bulletproof plexiglass counters guard the few remaining liquor stores and check cashing places.
Fast-food restaurants are locked up tighter than a Fort Knox vault, many vacant lots look like a hockey
enforcer’s gap-toothed smile. The whole litter-strewn, graffiti-tagged city is disintegrating slowly.
Back when, the patrician never left the gilded parlors and grand ballrooms of New York City,
and really took no more than an offhand, avuncular interest in his namesake burgh.
He stands tall and eternal in gleaming metal as vacant apartment towers and barred-up businesses
decompose all around him. His legacy is the burnt-down house, the weed-choked lot,
the for-sale sign so faded as to be illegible. The patrician lords over these American ruins,
after the mill was mothballed, after the workers gave up, after the homeowners skipped town.
Still, hope sprouts in vacant lots: an art gallery here, a new donut shop drawing long lines there.
The corporate paterfamilias may have given up on this town, but the people haven’t.
Joseph S. Pete is an award-winning journalist, an Iraq War veteran, an Indiana University graduate, a book reviewer, and a frequent guest on Lakeshore Public Radio. He is a 2017 Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee who was named the poet laureate of Chicago BaconFest, a feat that Geoffrey Chaucer chump never accomplished. His literary work and photography have appeared or are forthcoming in Dogzplot, Stoneboat, The High Window, Synesthesia Literary Journal, Steep Street Journal, Beautiful Losers, New Pop Lit, The Grief Diaries, Gravel, The Offbeat, Oddball Magazine, The Perch Magazine, Rising Phoenix Review, Chicago Literati, Bull Men’s Fiction, shufPoetry, The Roaring Muse, Prairie Winds, Blue Collar Review, Lumpen, The Rat’s Ass Review, The Tipton Poetry Journal, Euphemism, Jenny Magazine, Vending Machine Press and elsewhere. He once wrote the greatest, most compelling author bio of all time, but it was snatched up by a blue heron that swooped down and carried it off to the sea, so he was forced to attach this rubbish instead.
C’est la vie.
Night:
Transmission trembles
Little brother’s voice crackles
Over Oceans
His wife
Hemoglobin’s heaving
Each hour is critical
On my dresser
Two succulents
The hardiest of plants
Nestled in a vase
Left one looks limp
I make it lean
Against the upright right
Place them
Under my bedside lamp
In the light of which
I read and read and read
Gets tiring
But the bookmark doesn’t budge
Morning:
She’s still slumping
I break a bamboo skewer
Plant it in the vase
Tie it to the tremulous one
With a black thread
Evening:
Away from the skewer
Broken at a right angle
She lays listless
I gently pluck it out
Wipe off the soil
From its roots
Lay it on a paper towel
Sluiced
Not by water from the faucet
Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar is an Indian American. She was born in a middle-class family in India and will forever be indebted to her parents for educating her beyond their means. Her work has appeared in print and online. She is also Pushcart nominee for 2017.
So let them accuse It
of obstructing the view!
The Cabinet Of Heed has teleported Itself,
Or was Itself made manifest,
Before two sisters now
Who in high elevation pull out the drawers,
Ever selecting,
Perhaps reflecting, but
An afternoon is spent.
While the wind teases their hair
And rattles about the oak,
Profane sing-songs all about:
This is new!
It’s in the way
of we poor tourists in the clouds!
Something for the Louvre!
Call Security!
Get a selfie first!
Who placed It here?
What crane employed?
What devious hands are behind this installation?
The sisters have read and
Dare not defend, while all about
The mutters and shouts.
Security take aim
Should this be some gift from Troy.
Oscillation in the air
Tugs the sisters’ dancing hair,
Drumming on what remains of sacrificial trees.
Felled oaks breathe still
Whisper other words
Deep within:
The words two sisters read today.
Now, away, away, away…
My hand and pen have fallen out.
The flow of thought from brain to paper
no longer travels
with hand’s consent.
I’ve lost my grip:
something has nobbled my fingers
and the nib
now plays diminuendo
feeling its way across the page.
How loose, how easy the keyboard:
a mere touch will elicit
surrender
and words come –
with promiscuous pleasure.
But there was something, surely romantic
in the kiss of a pencil on parchment,
the cushion of my palm caressing its face,
my pride in forming elegant letters;
such confident consonants, the swirl of my vowels.
The keyboard proffers
plastic wafers
like after-dinner mints,
a postprandial game of Scrabble
perhaps?
ELLIE REES gained a Phd in Creative Writing from Swansea University this year. In an earlier incarnation she was a teacher of bright young things from all over the world. Now she is teaching herself to be a poet. One of four finalists in Cinnamon’s recent Debut Poetry Collection competition.
our goodbyes
spent shotgun shells
no bared teeth or raised hackles
not even a whiff of threat
he returns to his wife
and I slink into an unshared bed
holding fast to things unsaid
sewing needles clasped between my lips
when I finally confess him
to a friend over sweet tea
her face forms a cold front
her unasked question chills the air
well what did you expect?
M. STONE is a bookworm, birdwatcher, and stargazer who writes poetry and fiction while living in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her poems have appeared in San Pedro River Review, SOFTBLOW, Calamus Journal, and numerous other print and online journals. She can be reached at writermstone.wordpress.com.
The Cabinet of Heed 