‘Dodge Ball’

Kathryn McDanel is a photographer whose photographs demonstrate a zest for life by capturing secret little moments that comprise humanity.

Dodge Ball

I am fascinated by the sensitivity of human fingers. When reading a book, I am able to tell if I have accidentally turned two pages, instead of one.

Dodge ball has been described as “modern day stoning.” That’s the definition stated in 2012, by the character of “Kurt” played by Chris Colfer on Glee. The thought process makes me laugh. I am by no means some pain enduring, butch boy. I have only been punched once in my life, when I was a pre-teen. Ironically, the person who knocked the wind out of me was the same guy who defended me a decade later in high school by punching someone else (coincidentally named Kurt) in the stomach. This was my cousin, Glenn. I don’t consider us to have been close in our youth. But by the time he and I were in the same high school, we built a relationship that stands strong to this day.

Glenn’s daughter, Sarah (that makes her my first cousin once removed, or maybe my second cousin...I can never figure these titles out), lived a few blocks from me for a short while. I felt very protective of her, though she sure didn’t need my protection. She ended up leaving New York City and moving to a southern state with a warmer climate.

We played dodge ball at Montrose Elementary School in South Orange, NJ, in front of a wall at the rear of the building, next to the stairs leading to the gymnasium. Maybe it was banned sometime later, though I don’t think there was any political correctness uproar back then. I loved playing the game, both as the pitcher and a target. To play it correctly, throwing the big, rubber ball took power but not a whole lot of skill. I don’t even remember how the game was scored. It could be an accurate explanation as to why I am able to toss mooring lines with great strength for the motor yacht on which I work. After I graduated from my three years at Columbia High School, located in the sister town of Maplewood, the system of grades was rearranged. Starting a year earlier at grade six, junior high became middle school before sending students on to high school to complete the final four years.

The elementary school I attended closed its doors due to a decline in the childhood population. The building sits vacant. When I used to travel from Penn Station in New York City, to see my parents in New Jersey each week, the train passed the empty school building ahead of pulling into the trestled South Orange Station.

At the end of my time at elementary school, where I had been popular with my fellow students, there were rumblings of my soon being alienated. I didn’t know, let alone notice. Entering junior high was like walking into a field of landmines I had not been warned I would be expected to navigate. I was verbally attacked every day, from day one. I’m not sure this will make sense but that became my accepted norm. I never saw any of the kids with whom I went to elementary school once we moved on to junior high school, so I didn’t consider that they too might have begun treating me differently.

40 years later, my friend Jim, a neighbor from my days growing up, reconnected with me. He explained by way of apologizing for his part in something I was not even aware had been mapped out. The winds of change were set before we all graduated to the new, pink brick building. I had been under the delusion that my elementary school friends would have been allies. Jim’s confession confirmed that this was not the case, though part of me wishes he hadn’t said anything about it. Since none of the kids from my elementary school were in my junior high school “cycle,” I didn’t know anything about their turncoat discussions. (Cycles were how our school system grouped students of similar aptitude in junior high. You stayed together, attending different classes throughout the day.)

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about my experience at school before moving to the city to go to university. It’s become repetitious therapy. After six years, I had gotten so used to being a target that it hadn’t occurred to me that it would end once I left the suburbs for college. There were times growing up when it was unbearable — particularly my first year in high school. It was also something I began to believe was how it was always going to be. Oddly, if I recall correctly, the verbal abuse didn’t color my everyday moods. What I mean by that is not that I grew used to it. It often was brutal. But knowing it was coming became part of my adolescent reality. I was called a faggot while walking the halls at school and sometimes even when in an active class if a teacher turned his or her back, or wasn’t paying attention. Even now, though it happens very rarely, if someone yells a derogatory comment at me, I internally shake. I may flip them the bird or not give any evidence of a reaction, but inside I have a PTSD response. Having nothing to do with the taunts and what I now view as accusatory insults, I did not allow myself to be with a boy sexually until my second year at college, after I fell in love. I believe the verbal attacks during my pre-college school days were a result of my being flamboyant and feminine. I don’t think that the majority of the abuse had much to do with assuming there was any literal boy-on-boy sexual behavior. Whatever the case, I definitely stood out just by being who I am. Friends, adversaries, defenders and bullies: everyone in school seemed to know me. There were times I wished I had been invisible. I ignorantly imagine it might have been like being the one student of color in a sea of white kids.

With the exception of a woman named Darryl, I haven’t maintained any friendships from my college experience. She and I also attended high school together. During our senior year at Columbia High, we were in a few of the same electives, which is where our lifelong friendship took root. I have maintained a selection of friends that knew me from those volatile days. I look back and wonder how much peer pressure had to have been part of their existence. It was easier for girls, but for the boys who were in my life, they may have been ridiculed for associating with me. To my knowledge, all these guys were straight. This was the 1970’s. They most likely had to defend themselves. I don’t know if any of them thought that by being my friend meant that you had guts, but I do. In particular, one boy named Doug, a jock, who was a year older than I. Our introduction by his girlfriend, Anne, helped in forging our friendship during the roughest era. Anne and I had been in each other’s lives before the high school years. I don’t know how long it took, but I remember with clarity the first time Doug invited me to hang out with him at his house. Anne was there when the invitation was offered on a street corner, a few blocks from his home. It was a casual gesture that meant Doug had begun thinking of us as friends. For me, it represented something very significant.

It may seem unnecessary to my life as it is now to focus on events from a lifetime ago. My mother would be annoyed at the emotional stall. She used to spout how much she couldn’t stand it when people seemed stuck living in their memories. She felt it was easier to walk away from certain pieces of her past. That’s what I think. Mom once told me she never wanted to return to the shores of Chappaquiddick, on Martha’s Vineyard, where our family vacationed when I was a child. It was a time that could not be replicated. A photographic reminder was as much as she was willing to inhale. The sunsets and ocean waves; the sea glass and sand beaches. And the peace she found in the silence of watching a rising sun by herself, before the children all awoke.

Enduring words that cut invisible wounds or accepting the physical pain of being hit by a blood red ball thrown hard with intent, have both found a permanent place in my psyche. Private and significant.

For years, I would go to a gay bar in Chelsea. I would order my drinks from a straight bartender named Brian. When I stepped up to his station, without fail, he would cuff me in the left shoulder. It was his way of showing affection. To be clear, after the first time, it was at my invitation. It hurt and sometimes left a black and blue bruise, but I loved it. So I suppose that means I have been punched more than once. Just not in the stomach. On the day my dad died, Brian bought shots for anyone hanging at his bar. He then asked everyone to raise their glass, as he toasted the memory of my father.

Andrew Sarewitz has published more than 75 short stories (website: www.andrewsarewitz.com. Substack access is @asarewitz) as well as having penned scripts for various media. Mr. Sarewitz is a recipient of the City Artists Corp Grant for Writing. His play, Alias Madame Andrèe (based on the life of WWII resistance fighter, Nancy Wake, the “White Mouse”) garnered First Prize from Stage to Screen New Playwrights in San Jose, CA; produced with a multicultural cast and crew. Member: Dramatists Guild of America.

‘Holes in the Sky’

Michael C. Roberts is a mostly retired pediatric psychologist seeking creativity through photography. His photograph book, "Imaging the World with Plastic Cameras: Diana and Holga," is available on amazon.com. His photographs have appeared in several literary and scientific journals. His current work of minimalist images depicts the essential beauty in nature and constructed forms often passed without acknowledgement. This series of minimalist images is entitled: The Basics.

Holes in the Sky

We’re going to watch Alan Shepard punch a hole in the sky
we’re going to watch an American astronaut make history
the young nun says while wheeling a black & white TV
into her eighth-grade classroom on a May morning in 1961
and forty students stare and squint at the 12-inch screen
and at 3-2-1 blastoff! the nun makes the sign of the cross
while off to the side under a framed photo of the pope
a ghostly Galileo fails to stifle a sardonic snort
but nobody gets the joke and so they ignore him
and from the back of the room Yuri Gagarin insists
he already punched a hole in the sky a month earlier
but nobody understands Russian so they ignore him too.

Robert Eugene Rubino is a former sports columnist and adult literacy tutor old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and smart enough to solve The New York Times crossword puzzle on Mondays (other days not so much).

‘Weirdly Impressive Views from Rock Bottom’ & ‘Hard Stools & Dead-End Thoughts’

Anastasia Noelle Pirri is a Connecticut-based photographer, writer, and traveler. When she is not spending most of her time with her cat, she can be found enjoying the beauty nature has to offer.

Weirdly Impressive Views from Rock Bottom

You’ll leave the earth one day.

It won’t be all smiles,
neon nights,
and cocktails in the sun.

You will dip low,
screw up,
incur emotional bruises,
and if you're lucky,
you'll get your heartbroken.

Don’t lose your cool.

It won’t seem like it...but there’s plenty
of reasons to maintain your optimism,
look to the future,
and there will always be an open barstool.

Don’t lose your edge.

Rock bottom can always go up,
long walks improve your stamina,
and feeling strange is better than feeling nothing at all.

Don’t give up.

You’ll leave the earth one day.
Don’t let the living part get away.

Hard Stools & Dead-End Thoughts

Life’s too hard to figure out...my advice: give up, you’re already beat...it’s all stacked against
you, anyway.
Last night looks bleak from the vantage point of a new day...ya got vibes of despair and other sad
sentiments, ejaculated at a poor time in the past, hanging on your brain, and from what I
remember the future had a better glare...but the finest smiles, done walked down the toughest
miles.
A sense of meaning, big or small, grabs traction in the chaos of life – and better men have faired
alright through worse free-falls.
Friends are fleeting, and heart is trivial these days. Unless proven worth-a-shit; you’re gonna
lose some souls before you go gray.
Don’t expect the truth to face your back, fighting forward. Most beliefs are nothing more than
agendas.
Love’s the only reason to live. It’s a pay to play system...and any heart that cares for you with
nothing in return is a privilege. The easy way is to harden your senses on the hike of life and lean
on a tough disposition.
It seems silly...but lighten-up...you didn’t ask to exist...and this digital world will self-pressurize
you into endless pursuit of accomplishment. Although, eventually, if you look out, on the long
drive of life, your pride focuses till it’s wins are simply long stretches of days and no pants full
of shit.
So, let some love eat you alive...there’s no point believing what you see, lies camouflage, and
truth are details you must seek.
Chase what you want. Words are worthless and actions live in eternity. Probably redundant to
say, but you gotta pay to play...it’s important...handle the bills first, though – funny how you got
to work, but the Government can live off your sweat. Nobody is looking out for you, and you
gotta take every damn thing you get.
Nike sloganized the point in our heart beats...get outside, sweat it out...who you were, slowly
fades. Tomorrow is coming and from my last Wiki check, it's the only thing we can’t defeat.
Harsh truths & Father-Time saves no sympathy. Do some favor to your mind and neglect
anything that doesn’t contribute to your precious mindset.
There are no rules, just perceived limitations, and you can contort those to fit the goals in your
imagination.
You died yesterday and today has a chance. Let’s smoke some hope; someday is playing our
tune, and directions full of regret is the wise partner taking your hand at the living dance.

Nicholas Viglietti is a writer from Sacramento, CA. He started writing in high school. After which, he served in the Americorps. He graduated from Humboldt State University. Now, he works for cheap checks and attempts to get words published under his name. Nicholas enjoys hot, lazy days by the pool with his wifey.

‘Arrow Twisters’

Caleb Ishaya Oseshi is documentary and street photographer. He tells stories through photography, exploring nature's beauty and human diversity. He is a participant of the UNESCO World Heritage Volunteer Program in Nigeria; he also collaborated with Kaduna Fashion and Art Exhibition (KAFART) as a Research Photographer (2023). His photographs are featured in Synchronized Chaos, Watershed Review, Readers boom and other publications, with exhibitions in Nigeria and the United States. He is a member of the African Photojournalism Database (APJD).

Arrow Twisters

He believes it was President John F. Kennedy who said, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” That’s the phrase that stuck in Fletcher’s mind. On the ceiling above his bed, he sees the gloating faces of all the people who’d been responsible for running him down, circulating half-truths, innuendos, and complete falsehoods about him. What they always referred to as his “checkered career,” when they’d smile coyly or nod as if they knew something about him, he himself didn’t know. There’s Randolph Farnsworth circling overhead, former president of Canard College; his fat leathery jowls flapping like some ancient church organ, his sleepy half-moon grain-fed eyes bleed daggers of accusations, sending yellow sparks flying, infecting any chance of sleep, releasing him from his nocturnal prison.

At one time, long ago, he’d taken the bumpy, winding road to the academy. He stared up at those smirking faces on the ceiling. He’d diligently studied, as best he could, he told himself, Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit. No small feat. He’d spent many hours with his nose in dusty tomes. And when he finally looked up, he found himself an Assistant Professor of Philology picking over words like old, dried bones when he realized what he really wanted to do was stand- up comedy. A far cry from philology, the study of texts both oral and written, establishing their
origins and their meaning. So why not a philology of comedy?

His friend, perhaps his only friend Halton Camsteed, who teaches stand-up comedy at Kempt College, where they both work, said to him one day as they strolled across the rolling green lawn of the suburban campus: “Last time I checked, you can’t learn to be funny. But I’m hoping I’m wrong.” He guffawed, pleased with himself.

Halton cast a long shadow wearing a wrinkled grey trench coat and black bowler hat. He’d made quite a name for himself on the campus comedy circuit playing a truculent Winston Churchill—the man who only ever wanted to raise calico Maine Coon cats but found himself thrust upon the world stage playing the hero against a mutton faced moustached maniac in jodhpurs and riding boots.

So, when Fletcher Mallory owned up to his secret ambition, it stopped Halton in his tracks. Students glued to mobile phones zipped by them, oblivious to the shifting ground under their feet.

Halton Camsteed clamped down on his rubber cigar, a prop from his act that had become so ingrained in his life he never left home without it. His smooth, round face and bulbous nose brought to mind a bygone era; he looked like a chubby vaudevillian, his clothes slightly too big, with a faint smell of cannabis clinging to him. But deep down, his creative wellspring had run dry. Things that had sparked his inspiration now languished in a jarring void. Even the gentle breeze and the sweet melodies of birdsong, once so soothing, now felt like a discordant cacophony, assaulting his frayed nerves. And the feeling of emptiness settled in, a heavy weight upon his shoulders, suffocating his once-vibrant imagination. But Halton Camsteed likes Fletcher Mallory. Poor Fletch didn’t know when to stay in his own lane. Stand-up? Mal? Fletch Mallory, for his part, felt passionate about stand-up. He came to this realization one rainy day as he was reading Cicero. He brushed his right eyebrow with a little finger. It could have been Pliny the Elder... anyway, he realized life is nothing if not a pantomime of sorts. All those egg-headed colleagues of his in the academy were nothing but posers pretending to be doing something serious when really the only thing that matters is humour, to laugh at yourself and this absurd world. He gazed around at the naked trees.

“Mal.” That’s what Halton Camsteed called his friend Fletcher Mallory. “Mal,” Hal said.

“Be good. Whatever you do.”

Mal’s gaze drifted upward to the fluffy clouds billowing overhead, transforming before his eyes into the sneering faces of his enemies, their expressions as shifty as the wind. Old professor Delby Carmichael, all rosy-cheeked and as round as a washtub, whispering behind that soft white hand of hers into Constance Fulbright’s slightly tilted silver head, her glossy red lips smirking snidely. And her eyes, those greasy lizard slits burning with recrimination, bored deep into his soul.

“If you really are going to start something new, you’ll need to be fearless, not worry about what anyone thinks.”

They strolled across campus on this cloudy day, pleasant enough for this time of year.

The bite of winter was long gone, and the promise of summer lay ahead. The birds nattered in the leafless trees as the two rather strange looking academics meander towards the busy street.

Mal is tall, over six feet, although his stoop betrays an average height. He has smooth rat brown hair receding in a wide balding swath down the centre of his small head. His nose, long and wide, stands out. With a touch of melancholy, his hazel eyes appear tired. His thin lips refrain from smiling. And while not exactly obese, his middle is as soft as a cat’s tummy.

“You need to consider yourself a pioneer,” Hal said. “Out there alone against the elements, with who knows what danger lurking behind every rock.”

“Or tree,” Mal contributed dully.

“Right,” Hal nodded. “They’re shooting arrows at you, trying to kill you, knock you down.”

“Then they twist the arrows.”

“You’re not listening, are you?” Hal sighed, shoving the rubber cigar back into his mouth. “If you’re going to do comedy, take risks, make mistakes, try new things... be audacious!”

That’s an interesting word, Mal mused, as they strolled across the brown-green turf.

Derived from the Latin ‘Audax’, meaning brave, bold, foolhardy even. And there’s also the 16th century notion of ‘impudence’ in there somewhere, and what about the implications of ‘shameless’ and ‘impropriety’ that still cling to the word like a foul smell?

“If you’re going to be successful... in your own mind,” Hal continued, the rubber cigar flopping between his teeth. “You shouldn’t concern yourself with the opinions of others. Comedy, after all, is about taking risks.”

“But I’ve already made a ton of mistakes. And you saw me last night at the Bull Circle Pub. Those faces haunted me all night, just staring blankly up at me.”

“You haven’t found your groove yet, that’s all. Everyone has setbacks, bumps in the road. In comedy like everything else, stretch yourself, push the limits of your abilities, see failures as temporary, an opportunity to learn and grow.” He stopped, looked into his friend’s sad hazel eyes. “Everyone makes mistakes. It was Einstein who said, ‘a person who never made a mistake, tried nothing new.’”

“People look at me like I’m crazy, leaving philology for stand-up comedy. I’m not like you. You’ve always wanted to be a comedian, ever since you were a kid.” He touched his right eyebrow again with his little finger. “The way they looked at me last night. I could see the recrimination in their eyes. Who does this guy think he is?”

“You can’t let them get to you. The arrow twisters don’t know it. You might not know it. But they’re your best friends. They’re helping you to grow. Get better.” Hal leaned in. “Comedy is a mindset. I keep telling my students that. I believe it was Churchill who said: ‘Success comprises going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’” He glanced across the sprawling lawn as a little black and tan Yorkie raising a leg against a scrawny maple tree. “Or something like that.”

“So let me get this straight,” Mal said. “So, when that heckler yelled, ‘why is this man smiling?’ he wasn’t criticizing my uneven dentation?”

“Just another arrow twister man! That’s when you must push yourself to the limit.” They stopped at the edge of the lawn. The traffic on the busy road in front of them roared like an angry beast.

“If you want to be a pioneer, accept the arrows coming your way. We all do. That’s the way it is, man.” He placed a firm hand on Mal’s shoulder. “You think it was easy for me, but it wasn’t? Do you think I enjoy dressing like a tramp in this ridiculous outfit? Do you think I relish this stupid rubber cigar or wearing a bowler hat?”

“But that’s who you are,” Mal said, shocked by his friend’s sudden candour. “Everyone
laughs when they look at you.”

“Exactly,” Hal said with a hint of melancholy, glancing back at the busy traffic. “Behind my back I’ve heard them say, ‘those who can do, those who can’t teach.’”

“And those who can’t teach, teach teachers,” Mal added unhelpfully.

“Don’t you see?” Hal pleaded. “You either grow or... you die. These are the only options.” There was a sudden change of expression on his round face. Almost luminous, Mal recalled, just before Hal stepped off the curb and into the path of an oncoming Express bus. Fletcher Mallory adjusted the oversized bowler hat. Since retrieving Hal’s hat from the roadside after the accident, he has worn it to honor his friend and for another reason. He felt as if Halton Camsteed’s flair for comedy clung to it, and so he wore it as a sort of talisman, and with beneficial effect. Ever since, that silly hat, two sizes too large for his puny head, gave him a mysterious connection with his now departed friend. Every time he stepped on stage, the crowd roared with laughter, no matter what he said or did. Could it be this was the philology of comedy he’d been looking for?

He looked up at the ceiling over his bed in the dark, all the faces of the arrow twisters now laughing their heads off—all except one. The beaming moon of a face of his old friend

Halton Camsteed stared down at him. In that twinkling moment, he believed he saw his friend’s lips mouth the words, “Illegitimi non carborundum.”

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” Mal said aloud to the crowing night. The secret to success, his friend was telling him, was not to be afraid of the dark, or of making a fool of yourself in public.

P.W. Vaughan dwells intentionally on the shore of a small innocuous lake at the eastern edge of the vast continent known to many of its original inhabitants as Turtle Island. Vaughan has numerous nugatory publications, including two fusty self-published novels on Amazon and original music on SoundCloud, both tagged with the anodyne meme By Rushton Beech. His award-nominated humorous short story Plato’s Flan published in The Danforth Review (2002) was unfairly alleged to have contributed to the online publication’s untimely demise.

‘The Death of Conquerors’

Vanessa Aiello is a writer and photographer from Springfield, MA. She has previously been published in Mass Poetry's Future in Verse, The Wingless Dreamer, ArtWife, The Hemetera Editor, and CoolBeansLit for her writing and photography. She was recently named an Intercollegiate Poet at the Mass Poetry Festival, where she represented Regis College and recently graduated with a B.A in English and Secondary Education.

The Death of Conquerors

Like an earthquake or a great storm
Enough to shake kingdoms and empires
Such is the death of conquerors
Mortals raised as royalty
Suckled by Victory,
Gilded in invincibility
But not all die with dignity
A conqueror is a legend born
A mighty soul clothed in gold
With swords and men at his command
To claim all that his eyes can see
Some say that conquerors are chosen by destiny
Theirs is a tale forged true
Made in the crucible of war
Their innate defiance against all odds
Etches their names in the hearts of men
How high they rise, on the winds of success
Hands reaching for the sun,
Unchallenged and untamed,
Fearless and exuberant
Until a dark hand claims their crown
Hurling even the greatest into the grave
Gazing down from His pale horse,
The plundered crown perched on His skull,
Sits a lord who will not be denied His due
A toll no earthly king can pay
Nothing can stop His demand
No soul can escape His scythe
Blood, not gold, drips from His ancient blade
Proving that legends are but men
That great names can be forgotten
That mighty kingdoms can be undone
Like a silent whisper or a loud roar
Enough to shake kingdoms and empires
Such is the death of conquerors

Onyeka Ndukwe, a Canadian artist currently residing in Ottawa, Ontario, is a lyrical poet* whose work has graced the pages of esteemed publications. His 1st poem titled "Trust Half Spent" was featured in the Praised by December anthology (2021) published by Wingless Dreamer. Beyond his poetic endeavors, Onyeka is an avid history reader and occasionally indulges in anime, forging a creative path that blends artistry and intellectual curiosity.

‘MY WORDS’, ‘THRESHOLD’ & ‘GHOST FINGERS’

Erin Brown was born first thing on a Monday morning in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia in 1995. She has grown up to be a poet, writer, and filmmaker. Her writing has been published in Blank Spaces, Anodyne, and more. Her most recent short film, PERIPHERALS, premiered at the 2022 Atlantic International Film Festival. Erin is lucky to have a job where she gets to make art with friends.

MY WORDS

I am a paper plane
soaring through the mainland
past houses and people on bikes
I wish I had met once or twice.
Watching through windows,
was I made to be hollow?
All I leave of me are fingerprints.
I am soaking in sin.
You remind me of my worth
as a delicate fruit.
I stumble upon
My lonely Muse.
I don’t want my time
eaten alive.
My lips are rusted over.
My Kingdom falls with each word
That echoes, reverberating against your cavernous walls only
to fall lower, ever lower.
I, desperate to be loved, am cursed.

THRESHOLD

Waves crashing over
white knuckles
blue, holding onto seaweed
as if it could save me
I’ve been slipping
Do you know what you did?
We stop by the fence, the wide divide
underworld clunking, churning
embers alighting red expressions
demons conversing and convulsing
in laughter
I used to be the keeper of my keys,
but you ripped away my throat
and took out my ribs
now I can’t speak or think
I am a canary that can’t sing
Is everything I have enough? You take
until I am nothing, you pour your thoughts

into my brain like filling up your golden chalice
but I am not to be drunk,
I am mortal
You on your throne of souls
Molding me into a faceless mirror
Surveying me with your face of faces
If I had regained my voice, if I had been stronger
Would you have lifted the haze?
When it is all over
Would you dance on my grave?
Land simmers above
like cracked crème brulee.

GHOST FINGERS

Ghost fingers
around my neck
lifting up to caress
my ears, so all I hear
are your fingerprints
and your breath
Ghost fingers feel different,
splicing through my skin
like ice – a promise
Ghost fingers don’t melt, don’t
have me hoping
for something else
My temperature rises
ribcage shudders
voice caught on your words
like a leach, desperate
to taste, or to feel

your Ghost fingers seek flavor
you say other girls don’t have –
what you found in me –
making me deadly.

Zoe Mae Huot-Link was born and raised in Maplewood, Minnesota. She is a winner of the Manitou Creative Writing Fellowship. Her work has been published by For Women Who Roar, The Antonym, Awakenings, among others. Find her work at: https://zoemae.art and @zoemae.art on instagram.

‘I Feel Like No One Will Love Me’

Pt. 1

Pt. 2

Pt. 3

Pt. 4

Pt. 5

Pt. 6

Eliza Scudder (she/her) is a writer who creates comics, flash fiction, short stories, and poetry inspired by her life. You can find links to her work via instagram @elizascudderwriting.

‘Pillow Dates’, ‘Sidewalk Stamping’ & ‘Yellowed Head’

Janice Kim is a Korean-American writer living in NYC. She takes photos regularly as a practice to keep appreciating the innumerable details every day that otherwise might go unnoticed. She believes that it is all about how you see.

Pillow Dates

Point and laugh, which I deserve.
I depended on my fantasies,
never realizing they could
slip or stride away at will.
Missing misty mistresses
long and frequently visited
at twilight or pre-sleep and
they performed to my script.
I cannot, even in fantasy,
couple with potentialities.
In self-guided pillow visions,
teasing shadows blow away.
Once, always in sight and touch,
love and lust objects are gone.
When intimacies might be fatal
even thoughts scream, “Peril!”
When tipsy, tired or loose, I
directed tiny thrills to play.
Now I cannot override the real
to command performance.
Love and lust become impossible.
Dreamed-of liaisons fade to sheer.
Could-be flings leap quickly
months, perhaps years, away.
The simple-minded joys
of pretend cannot survive plagues.
Where can the joy be if we never
know the next possible when.

Sidewalk Stamping

Pre-dawn in Woodbourne,
a suburb lush of tree and bush
tucked in the crotch on the inner city.
Two of us stand apposed, mom
skunk and I, the armed and the big,
with no intent to go at the other.
Under sodium-vapor streetlight,
my skin was wan Talbots green.
Mom toddled and waddled ahead
of her string of Steiff-worthy kits.
All were fuzzy, two thin white stripes
on each black ball body. Hers was
big as a grapefruit, her offsprings’
the size and shape of apricots.
Often she and I had eyed each other
early as we passed 40 feet apart.
She led her necklace of babies
through my backyard, then
my front yard, and finally crossed
the street as every morning they
shopped for breakfast foods.
That day though, she was bow-legged
at my front gate, caring little that
my car was beyond her raised tail.
Vectors and solid geometry
seemed not to be her forte.
She stamped each front paw in turn
as a warning. We shared a stare.
What devilment dared my stand?
I channeled the striped mom, stamping
(while remembering tomato-juice
baths I rubbed into our howling
Maine coon cat to de-skunk him).
Perhaps it was the dark and quiet,
my relative size or our familiarity.
She went still, then waddled South,
passing, and not gassing, me.
Fortune can in fact favor the bold.

Yellowed Head

McCarthy came with the house,
He long roomed as other seamen.
Dad gave Johnny the townhouse
only if McCarthy could stay put.
Now he walks with two canes.
His days mean sitting in his one room
on the shabby North slope of Beacon Hill.
On the second floor over Hancock Street,
McCarthy smokes cigarettes, often
with a friend who smokes cigarettes.
The never grand, well-past-old house
is deep into its third century
with white door frames inside,
all except to McCarthy’s room.
Nicotine and tars seep and curl around
that door header all the day and night,
painting the once-white a light gold.
Har, golden from Old Gold smoke.
His friend brings cans and airy loaves
and, of course, he brings Old Golds.
McCarthy leaves his room twice a year
— not for Mass (and he has no family).
Rather on St. Patrick’ Day he takes drink.
He climbs a stool for two stouts at The Red
Hat.
Then again he hobbles out on Election Day
— a vote for some Irishman he knows or
knows of.

Michael Ball scrambled from daily and weekly papers through business and technical pubs. Born in OK and raised in rural WV and SC, he became more citified in Manhattan and Boston. As one of the Hyde Park Poets, he has moderate success placing poems in numerous online and print journals and anthologies, and being a feature at several arts centers. HeartLink published his Leaving the Party chapbook in 2024.