‘Horse School’, ‘Heart Study’& ‘The Secrets of Water and Air’

Sherri Harvey is an educator, freelance writer, photographer, and eco storyteller. She travels the world for projects that tell the stories of an environment in crisis and the people helping to save it, especially women. Over the past few years, she lived with a sociocracy struggling to find solutions for the water crisis in Spain, traveled to villages throughout West Africa learning about the plight of women in remote villages, worked with Orangutan Odysseys in Borneo to highlight the crisis of deforestation and orangutans, and followed a vet crew around the island of Phuket to create the documentary film, Accidental Advoctes in Phuket. The power of stories can unite cultures, share communion, and promote eco-change. Please see www.sherriharvey.com or @sherricoyote for more info.

Horse School

Joy trailed behind Faith
in elementary school. Older girls
taught them to canter and gallop and trot.
Fierce fillies in bell-bottoms and sneakers,
they pranced across the grass.
Other voices gave way
when their neighs saturated the air.
While they whinnied and nickered,
winter winds whipped
Faith’s hair like a mare’s rippling mane,
bared her slim ankles
with its trouser-tugging teeth.

The following spring
as Joy stood at their playground’s edge,
warming her back in the sun,
Faith arrived with a Boy Scout
ring on her lazy man finger.
“Billy asked me to go steady!” she squealed.
Joy snorted and pawed the ground.
Placing her hand on Joy’s arm,
Faith said with a sigh, “Oh, Joy,
we’re too old for horse school

now.” In the blurry recesses
of her mind, Joy still sees
the yellow yarn Faith wrapped
around the band to make that ring fit,
fiber fraying like the jute halters
horse trainers use
before moving on to the harder tack
of bridles and reins and bits.

Heart Study

Anxious to participate,
I enter the atrium—
all windows and light—
at the National Institutes of Health.
Pulse taken,
blood drawn,
echo- and electro-
cardiograms done,
I complete the stress test, then

proceed to an examination room.
A research nurse in maroon scrubs
slides a heart monitor from a six-inch packet,
places the device
in the space between my breasts,
points to the dime-sized silver circle
sitting like a doorbell button
at the center of my chest,
tells me, “Tap this disk to document

irregularities.” Back home,
I press that button
to record the arrhythmia I feel
each time my daughter leaves the house—
her wavy hair held back from her hopeful face
with a bright butterfly clip.
Beyond our threshold lies
a country where youthful dreams are
flatlined with guns and greed and grift.

The Secrets of Water and Air

Like a sleepwalker,
Delores Marah lumbers
along the trails of Shady Grove,
threads her way through tombstones,
stops at one
bearing her daughter’s name.
Mallory Dawn Marah,
engraved on a granite slab—a birthdate
followed by a dash.
Unrecovered, Mallory’s body
lies at the bottom of Lowe Lake
beyond the cemetery’s edge.

Phantoms fly from their graves.
Haunted whispers of remorse
swirl from inaudible tongues,
stir up summer leaves. Memories
of Mallory in a pink maillot
sprinting across the high dive
vault and spin and crash.
Dolores taught Mallory to tread water.
No one taught Mallory
to paddle fast enough to escape
the man who held her under water so long
she couldn’t swim away.

Never apprehended,
the man fled. The cops
closed the case, convinced
Mallory was just another runaway.
Mute swans snort and hiss.
Dolores trudges to the water’s rim.
She shields her eyes from the white
glare of the morning sun,
watches the swans lift off.
Faint voices buzz and hum,
carried away on the wings
of heavy bodies in flight.

Teresa Burns Murphy is the author of a novel, The Secret to Flying (TigerEye Publications). Her writing has been published in several places, including Chicago Quarterly Review, Evening Street Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Literary Mama, The Literary Nest, The Opiate, Southern Women’s Review, Sparks of Calliope, Stirring: A Literary Collection, and The Write City Review (Volume 4). Visit her at https://www.teresaburnsmurphy.com.

‘The Hollow of a Heartbeat’

Dylan Hoover (he/him) is a fiction writer from Erie, PA. He graduated in 2023 from Allegheny College, where he earned a BA in English and Creative Writing. During the heart of the pandemic, he studied abroad at Lancaster University in England. There, he unearthed interests in British culture, as well as a passion to write historical fiction. Dylan’s fiction has appeared in Wilderness House Literary Review, and his forthcoming photography in Great Lakes Review. He currently is a second-year MFA student at the University of New Hampshire. Instagram: dylhoov96

The Hollow of a Heartbeat

In the hollow where a heartbeat should have echoed,
I learned to dance in the silence of your absence.
The world, a canvas unpainted by your hues,
Left me colorblind in a kaleidoscope of what-ifs.

In the playground of forgotten whispers,
I swung high on swings of solitude,
Soaring into skies that tasted like lost lullabies,
Chasing clouds that resembled your fading smile.

I became an architect of imaginary embraces,
Building castles from the sands of your missed bedtime stories.
Each grain a testament to the nights
I wrapped myself in the quilt of your unsung songs.

In the garden of untended dreams,

I bloomed in the shade of an invisible sun,
Rooted in the soil of your unspoken apologies,
Watering my soul with tears of resilience.

Yet, in this mosaic of fractured fairy tales,
I found strength in the reflection of my own spirit,
A phoenix rising from the ashes of abandonment,
Wearing my scars like medals of survival.

Frances Locke is a Queens-based writer and artist, known for her evocative poetry and gripping fiction. Her work explores the complexities of human nature and the intricacies of everyday life, often drawing inspiration from her vibrant New York surroundings. Frances's writing has been published in various literary magazines, captivating readers with its unique blend of wit and depth. When she's not crafting stories, she enjoys hunting for vintage treasures and creating handcrafted goods.

‘Acid Graduation’

Photographer- Tall Eric

Acid Graduation

When the Youth Pastor of our Bible Study Team encountered LSD
at age 17
the evangelical fervor he'd developed sharing the word of God
shifted to a new savior

Our Oklahoma panhandle town held 7,000 souls
serviced by 11 churches and
a high school with 78 people in the Senior Class
74 of which our former Youth Pastor managed to convert
to acid
at the commencement ceremony in the florally decorated gym
where one speaker after another
including the valedictorian and students' choice winner
assured the congregation
we will all eventually be redeemed
because good news
they could personally testify
there really is a true path to heaven

MK Punky is the co-founder of the 80's hardcore band The Clitboys and author of thirteen books of fiction, memoir and journalism, MK PUNKY is the creator of the 365-poem interactive art experience "The Year of When."

‘Our; or, Upon Failing to Understand Adiabatics at a Cursory Search’, ‘Anthropic’, & ‘Mistaken’

Katie Hughbanks (she/her) is a writer, photographer, and teacher whose photography has been recognized nationally and internationally. Her photos appear in more than 40 publications, including in Peatsmoke Journal, Cool Beans Lit, In Parentheses, L'Esprit Literary Review, New Feathers Anthology, Glassworks Magazine, Azahares, Moonday Mag, and Black Fork Review. She is the author of two books, Blackbird Songs (2019) and It's Time (2024). She teaches English and Creative Writing in Louisville, Kentucky US.

Our; or, Upon Failing to Understand Adiabatics at a Cursory Search

Something in this
/// \\\ train of thought
/// we are \\\ screams
/// like
|| mercury
|| coalescing
// each \\ on the trunk of
// other’s
| tongue,
lumps of sugar
/ \ salivating
/ \ for the
/ \ sweet
/ \ abandon
/ in being \ of this
/ and-not-being \ madness
/ and/burning
allthesame.

Anthropic

one man
feeds another
in a desperate
display of power
hungry
foolishness

Mistaken

When did it begin to take root?
Was it growing with the clovers
across the mud-choked fields?
We tasted them too often.
Did it cinch itself over Huron
while we angled ourselves pontooned?
Crisping in the last week of summer,
our hands silvered with minnows.
Did the blaze of stars and campfire
fuel this rampage under your skin?
A surfeit of skunks presented
the danger we mistook for real.
Did it press upon your shoulder
when your arm slumped from its socket?
Was it not mud that freckled your neck
as you rode off alone? Your limp fingers
clacked among spoked trading cards
the rest of us kept pretending to be.

Now, don’t take this moment to gloat.
There’s no high road for you here.
My memory’s failed to collapse
like I did in the one grass stain of shadow
on our newly paved way home.
You left me behind, knowing
I didn’t have the backbone for it.
But should I have seen it then, digging
at the base of your bobbing blond skull?
Did it chase you down in your furious sprint
through the sun’s broad stroke of August?
Swathed by the hazy, bulldozed ghost
our asbestos-stuffed school had become,
you moved at a speed I’ve never learned to match.

I didn’t see you come back
by the time of my revival,
but there you were, staking claim
to your own crush of green
beneath sugar maple mercy,
sunburnt and smirking beside me.

Steven O. Young Jr. is knitted within the Great Lakes' mitten, where he earned an MA from Oakland University and occasionally slathers soundstages with his body weight's worth of paint. His latest literary homes include Revolute, Barzakh Magazine, Havik, 300 Days of Sun, and Washington Square Review.

‘Vital stats’, ‘The Purloined Hearts Of Southern Command’, & ‘Not Joes’

                            Artist - Christine Simpson, www.christinesimpsonphotoart.com

Vital stats

Perhaps in the next war
we can put every soldier's face
on a bubblegum card.

Force civilians to collect them,
thousands of new ones every day,
and issue update stickers
for all the wounded,
the missing in action,
all the dead, the deserted,
captured,
the executed.

I love stickers
as honors won,
medals given,
ribbons earned.

The public, (that is,
the non-combatant parts of the world),
may sicken of the fight
just a little quicker.

I suppress the idea
because it would really be perverted,
in true war, to where we would
only collect faces of the enemy.

waiting for 'our' official updated dead,
wounded, or captured stickers,
we would take the 'others'
to poke out their eyes with dart tips,
burn their faces with flame,
boil the disfigured cards to mush...

which we would use for magic spells
and prayers for death and plagues
and our teeth would rot out by the fistfuls
from the bile we poison ourselves on!

How easily war gets away from us.

The Purloined Hearts Of Southern Command

Ms Hometown Rose
was recruited by error.
She received the draft notice
via mistake of her
shortened surname.

An unnatural twist that
birthed empathy.

She sent her photo
to the first Joe
who showed it around.
Naturally.

She got other letters.
Naturally.

Her picture showed
a real honest to goodness goddess,
a stateside beauty queen with
girl next door give-a-damn.

She kept copies of her letters
from over three hundred Joe's
under her bed, in files, boxes,
on her side of the attic.
In time, they would all
come home, or die there.
In time, they would all forget.

Naturally.

Beauty queens get buried
with all the other memories of the war,
all the things real life sweethearts
and wives might not understand.

Her letters died in the fires
of a jealous ex-husband
who never served in war,
or, as she puts it,
just never served.

Not Joes

In a war with some name,
we, the not-Joe's, did not go.
Never went. Never knew.

It was a test given
and not taken,
graduation held but not
attended, an
initiation of fire
not felt.

Most of the generation
un burned
un scarred
un healing
marches on.

The sound of the missing drummer
flying the blank flag,
vacant colors,
without declaration
or distinction,
knowing what it is
to be left alive.

Burdened with virginal courage,
un expose guts,
un tried fortitude.

Lucky in the draft,
lucky in life,
we drink without the
grateful tastes
of the seasoned survivor.
Unworthy of the actual
survivor's guilt
denied to civilians,

we live our
non-veteran lives, and
most likely meet our fates
with non-valor.

Unless, we do our duty
to cherish, cradle, and
deliver on this peace dividend,
paid for by the dead,
and those who's duty
was not to die.

Mark Kessinger was born in Huntington WV, attended college at Cleveland State University, lived in Oklahoma City and now resides in Houston TX. He is a two-year recipient of a creative writing scholarship from CSU, a founding member and president of the Houston Council of Writers, and former editor of Voices from Big Thicket. His poetry has appeared in many publications and four anthologies.