‘They Quiet Now’ & Collected Works

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet who has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.

They Quiet Now 

An aimless walk 

through empty rooms. 

Lights switched 

on then off. 

Sickly light casting 

from the clouded moon. 

A horror of mundane 

fragility and smiles. 

A shadow branch 

lingers on faded frames. 

A terror of absurd 

normality and loss. 

A floorboard cold 

under padding feet. 

An ache shaped rise 

through sinking breath. 

Kind and unkind memories, no longer haunted. 

34 and I no longer see your ghost.

Love as the land 

Love is the greatest knowing. 

Like the fullest understanding 

of your home county. 

A stumble through 

wildest bramble, finding 

yourself, the trails, 

mapped beyond adventure. 

And, in the mapping, 

boredom, disappointment, joy 

and wonderful knowing. 

Love is the changing landscape. Seasons and man’s desire, 

a constant scarring of England. The drive of felled forests, 

planted gardens, shadowed 

by towering winter clouds 

over a looming headland 

or bluebells singing 

to a quiet copse, 

new secret beginnings. 

Love is the slow and firm hand. 

The lingering touch 

that has nothing to find new, 

but shivers in the ground 

made rich and familiar by time. 

The tracing, skimming fingers 

standing hairs on end 

like sheets of sunflowers 

fielded towards eternity. 

Love is as the land, somehow possessed and unpossessable by its nature. Love is as the land, forever shaped and shaping all of its wretched creatures.

Bournemouth in the rain 

Rain on the cold hard road, but soft clouds. Tyres on the rain, but still the widening sky. Naked trees lining, as if to grasp at stars with fingers that once held a babe. 

This land was once a garden, a lawn. This land was once a terraced garden, massive. 

In every crack is every event lived, every drop of drowning water and mother’s milk, lived. In the dull reflection of tarmac is the night, and in the night a car embedded into a fence. This town was once a haven, a future. This town was once a terraced heaven, infinite. 

The dark comes quickly now, its seasonal quickening blanketing the unhoused souls. Grey looming offices with yellow eyes fight with the memories of beer on breath. This road was once a bottle, suckled. This road was once a terraced bottle, murderous.

Men from the south 

Have you ever visited 

a Provence hilltop village? 

The immovable time? 

Menerbes say? 

Stained with wine and sun? 

There you will often find a plaque, 

hot to the touch, 

listing the resistance fighters, 

young and virile, 

who traveled north across the newly made border to fight tyranny and miss 

their sweethearts. 

Now, blonde Englishmen 

roam in linens 

to stay cool 

and drink their ancestors 

dry while marveling at the beauty 

and silence of the quaint arable land. 

How strange to feel the echoes so clearly yet be so detached. 

How privileged we are to walk the cobbles laid by hands long cold. 

To quaff the wine, flagged red and white beneath eternal blue. 

To cook like suckling bacon, oblivious and fumbling our french.

James Richard Walls is a poet from Dorset, UK known for his explorations of alcoholism, nature, death, his father, love, and longing. He began writing and performing at university while studying English and Philosophy. During this time he organised and performed at stage poetry events with the late Benjamin Zephaniah. His recent writing is heavily inspired by Jack Gilbert, Ocean Vuong and Sharon Olds. If not out on the Dorset hills you can find him on Instagram at @wallstonej.

‘What We Have Learned About the Victim’

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art

“What We Have Learned About the Victim”
(or, “If I Had Died that Night”)

I will return to dust, my body reduced by fire, soul released back to the sky
in smoke tendrils;

a branch becomes a stick; pared, dropped, shook from the trunk––in death, still
a purpose: creates shelter, feeds fire;

once: a guitar under water-falling trickles––each drop percusses a stick atop
the strings, evokes an ancient refrain;

I cry out, am cried out, am the cloud that hides the sun until I empty or move
on––the sky is constant; I will return to it.

Michelle Ortega has been published widely online and in print. Her chapbook “When You Ask Me, Why Paris?” (Finishing Line Press) is forthcoming July 2025.

‘His To-Do List’, ‘Forever in Service’ & ‘Enough with Wives’

Athena Rowe

His To-Do List

Erstwhile uxor, the once wife,
refuses to pour bitterness cocktails,
despite the many ingredients he left her.
Instead speaking to their son of him
she uses neutral tones, citing his virtues.

She ceaselessly has refused to defame him.
This evening though, after a second bourbon,
she tells true. She has long found her
self-pity bone sweet to suck on and chew.
By her adult son, she spits out the small bone.

“Your father,” she said, “was always going to
do something. Tasks I asked were on his to-do list.
He never refused a request. He’d say he meant to.
So, never tell me you were about to do this or that.”
The young man did not question her new candor.

Forever in Service

Oh great and noble,
generous and gracious,
hoary headed maternal unit,
you are kind and pious.
Why do you always atone?

You do for others ceaselessly.
Forever teaching Sunday school,
always volunteering,
donating pints of blood.
You are compelled to serve others.

Your own mother was severe.
She baked for church sales, only,
She hugged no one older than six.
Her daughters never pleased her
and she never praised them.

You neither resent her nor whine.
You would rather stand in chains
held to an oak than talk to a shrink.
I am not a priest, not that kind of father.
I am only a son, your son.

Yet I absolve you of all sins,
conceded, observed or imagined.
Would that I could press solace palms,
to each temple, performing a mind meld
and freeing you of your need to serve.

I would provide you such peace,
I would sooth you, heal your mind,
cleansing you of imagined guilt.
I don’t work 50-minute hours.
Perhaps my help is acceptable.

Enough with Wives

P.C., old man, how about one hour without
telling me again about your three wives?
All of us know too well you wore each out
having your babies, or trying to make them.

Christola, that was 40 and 60 years long gone.

And don’t even try to point to my many bits
about my girlfriends — not at all the same.
They were recent enough I can still smell
their fragrances on my shirts and sheets.

No, it is you who drill into our ears as we sit
on nail kegs at the co-op by the pot-bellied stove
or chatting captive on rocks with fishing poles.
We are still hearing of your womenfolk.

Can you go an afternoon without reminiscing
on Ruth and Mary and Nancy, the missuses?
Did nothing other than marriage and crops
happen in your long life of sameness?

In our semicircle round the stove, watching
the red glowing teardrop vents, do your best
not to spit tobacco across the room to an opening,
even though you can hit one while I could not.

Please stifle your bull about your Angus bulls
and leave some air for other stories, my tales.
It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day and I can tell timely
about my red-headed Kathy the fabric artist.

I am sure she was Irish and just as sure that she
adored me more than all your wives loved you.

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. Now one of the Hyde Park Poets, he has moderate success placing poems including in Progenitor Journal, Griffel, Gateway Review, Havik Anthology, SPLASH!, Reality Break Press, In Parentheses, Kind Writers, Fixed and Free Anthology and Dead Mule School. HeartLink published his Leaving the Party chapbook in 2024.

‘I’m Not A Writer’ & ‘To Feel Something’

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art

I’m Not A Writer

I never imagined my fingertips would wrap around a plastic black pen. 

Never imagined my limbs would run feverishly until the ink kisses the side of my index finger, leaving a hickey on the inside of my knuckles 

I never thought hours would fly by as I brought to life the night sky that pulled back the curtain of time and exploded all my dreams into a metro shower of possibilities 

But then again, I also never thought I would want to go back to that night 

The night when we laid our backs effortlessly across the feathery, moist grass As the sky slightly cried 

My caramelized skin, breathing to life as each drop melts into place 

Causing my rib cage to break with a breath that finally allows me to feel alive again And I notice that maybe I’ve spent my whole life decaying 

Maybe I’ve spent my whole life in a heart that never noticed it wasn’t beating 

Then you appeared 

Whispering a secret song, as your bottom lip rolled against my ear 

I love you, I love you, my dear 

Even as the sun overtakes, the moon and the stars fall to the earth and turn into flowers that bloom. 

Even when the water pulls back into the sea, and the thunderstorms awaken the rainbow's destiny. I love you until my heart can’t beat, and even after that, I’ll love you until life itself disappears from reality 

And for the first time, I look at you 

Beholding the almond shape dark brown puddles of your eyes 

I always thought blue eyes were the footprints that the angels left behind As they splashed in the puddle of a miraculous baptism left behind by a soul who finally let out the wailing deep bellyache of a songbird who accepted that beauty can only come after a good cry 

But staring back at you, I can’t help but feel as if every truth I’ve ever believed was a lie 

I never noticed that brown eyes can warm up limbs like a fire shot of whiskey as it travels the lengthen of your body 

I never noticed that brown eyes can bath you in the sweetest dark chocolate, making you crazed with a sugar-like addiction that crawls down the length of your tongue until you scream for a taste 

Allowing you to get lost in a cave of mystery while the darkness covers your flesh in a way that makes you feel safe

Because even if the world disintegrates and the ground beneath my feet shakes, I can still hide away in the mountaintop of your eyes until the rise of daylight 

The tip of my pen rips through the paper 

As my cheeks get soaked in the calling of the songbird who has possessed me Because all the “ I never” has rolled up my sleeves, past the bridge of my chest, setting up house in the dry, barren hole of my neck 

I use my right hand to cradle my left in a desperate hug, hoping that it can smooth the vicious shake 

Just long enough so that I can share our story 

I never thought that we would lay in the starch-white sheets tucked into the sides of a gurney As I moved the wires that tangle against your throat so that they are spread out over my chest, I rested my lips against your Adam's apple 

Holding onto your fragile blue-tinted pale skin as I repeat our secret over and over again I love you, I love you, my dear 

Even as the sun overtakes, the moon and the stars fall to the earth and turn into flowers that bloom. 

Even when the water pulls back into the sea, and the thunderstorms awaken the rainbow's destiny. I love you until my heart can’t beat, and even after that, I’ll love you until life itself disappears from reality 

I am not a writer 

But I’ll write your story until all the ink on earth bleeds onto a page 

And even then, I don’t think I could find an end 

So I guess I’ll just- 

To Feel Something

Sweat drips down my bare chest 

Drowning my mint green cotton sheets with chocolate milk that pours out of every open pore Until it slides off the side of the bed frame, leaving a pitter-patter that overshadows my heartbeat In a way that makes me wonder if I’m alive anymore 

My rib cage pinned against my moist skin 

Rising high against the sunken design of a hollow stomach 

Mumbling the hymns of a ransacked sand dust, wooden pantry 

Hiding the family of three blind mice who stole my eyes to replace their sight before claiming it as dumb luck, while their paws are painted with my blood 

My tongue pulls backwards to warm my throat with a thick glob of spit 

Causing the center of my being to rebel in a quake that rattles the axis of my frame Sending a wave that viciously vibrates while my soul shatters under its weight Folding my bones in an origami fetal shape 

I tuck the sides of my pillow cheeks to bed in the palm of my hands 

Whispering a prayer that I’m afraid to speak freely 

As the light orange rays of the sun slowly crawl up my back 

Stringing together syllables that slipped through the cracks- hanging down my spine before disappearing as my breath escapes me 

The paint-chipped yellow walls cry out, echoing the pleads of someone who once roamed wildly Zig-zagging through electric green grass as it flows in a breeze against the base of her knees Nurturing the flesh left exposed on her shoulder blades with God's gaze 

Bouncing on the trampoline of vivacious joy that gave others cause to believe 

Now, her frame stays bent in an empty room 

As her cries replaster the holes in the wall 

With the misty scent of a human trying 

Shaking the dice with the hope of snake eyes 

Just so someone can hear her hissing- 

“Lord, please let me feel something”

Kache' Attyana Mumford is a poet, actor and creative arts therapist.

‘Wool and Iron’

Horia Pop is a French and Romanian artist. He writes and shoots pictures and movies. His writings and photos have been published in America. His next stage is to find a producer to help him finance his road-movie script.

Wool and Iron

It starts with the Rough Fell and Lonk sheep who nose and tug at the thin soil

of the Colne Valley and finishes at the nap-raised slice of the croppers’ shears.

First, the fleece is delivered to the weaver’s cottage, where crushed onion skins,

red cabbage, and nettles dye it into shades between dry earth and shallow sky.

Wool is a galaxy of invisible systems, threads, clumps and connections

lapping and overlapping in the fuzzy pin pricks of infinite give and take.

Children pick and combe the mess, working the fabric between sets of dark teeth

and straightening the sticky chaos, then, in the wide light of bedroom windows, 

yarn is whispered from the fleece by the fingers of veteran spinners working 

the treadles until a beginning and an end are calmed from the soft storm of fibers.

Feed and tension. A nest of wool is pulled into rows of coloured spindles.

Feet answer hands in the turn of the spinning wheel, limbs in silky rhythm.

Then it happens, something from nothing as warp and weft criss cross into cloth.

The hand loom speaks a hundred strung threads fixing a warm solidity

its tongue the flying shuttle sent back and forth, under and over, lap and weave

until material progresses at a rate of millimeters, surface and strength tied

into an expanding texture, pattern born from the deep time of dark hills

and the blues, greens and grays that wrap the light on the valley edges.

This is the cottage industry of cotton and wool, texture teased from air

and tricked into existence by the practiced hands of the West Riding.

Next the gentle smash of the fulling mill, where a water wheel hammers

wooden blocks at the cloth and it shrinks into a felt as thick as sunflowers.

Then to the tenterfield where it’s hung on hooks and stretched back to life

in the thousand shades of cloud that shift dawn to noon to dusk to black. 

And now to the croppers, who wrap a pair of iron shears around their waists

and muscle cloth to perfection without touching it. They persuade it smooth

by raising the nap, drawing out the hairs of threads with the prayer of a thistle

and then, heavy and exact, sweeping the blades low and close as if shaving

an earthy God with a razor of iron and bicep and complete focus.

It’s the croppers’ cut which prunes warm life from upland winds.

Sam Kemp is a poet and lecturer at Northeastern University London. He teaches creative writing to students from a range of disciplines and leads various modules on poetic craft and technique. He hosts the Radical Writing Podcast and is interested in psychogeography, nostalgia and motorcycle cafes. You can find his work in the Mechanics Institute Review, ANMLY, and Streetcake, and his chapbook, Maps to Arkham, is available with Nat1 Press. www.samkempoetry.com

‘Bugs’

Cynthia Yatchman is a Seattle based artist and art instructor. She shows extensively in the Pacific Northwest. Past shows have included Seattle University, the Tacoma and Seattle Convention Centers and the Pacific Science Center. Her art is housed in numerous public and private collections.

Bugs

Roma gazed out the window at an owl sleeping in the eucalyptus across the quad. Movement re-focused her eyes on the ersatz stage, a steel blue flecked, glossy linoleum half-encircled by desks. Across from her, two male students rolled their eyes, occasionally flicking taps at one another's thighs. Professor Swander, called Murph for some uniterated reason, stood before the chalkboard backdrop. In a collared shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, his straight, gray hair under a black Breton cap, he was a wizard cloaked as Everyman, and everyone knew it, well nearly everyone. 

Before class the first session, not two weeks ago, the regulars initiated new students to the practice of arranging the "stage" and its audience of desks. Roma gleaned that Murph's classes had long waiting lists. She marveled that, as a freshman, she had gotten in. 

"Alright, now we're all going to sing 'Sentimental Journey."

Opening a vinyl-sided cube, Murph unsleeved a black, ten-inch disk and placed it on the turntable. He swung the needle-arm to the disk's edge. Crackles and scratches overlaid an alto voice. The two thigh-flickers went on with their separate amusement. 

"Roma," Kevin hissed. "What's the answer to number 2?"

"B," Roma spoke from one side of her lips without turning her head. Immediately, she felt that she was betraying Mr. Scaglia, a roundish man who always wore a suit and tie. He seemed like a nice man and a good teacher.

She had met tall, blond Kevin at parties before. Now that they had this class together, they were sort of friends.

Mr. Scaglia, started collecting quizzes, As if he had noticed nothing, he addressed Roma. "Miss Collins, what's GDP and why is it important?"

Roma answered.

He scrutinized Kevin. "Mr. Highwater, what are some of the economic indicators used to measure GDP?"

"I hate thish fuckin' class." Kevin stood abruptly, entangling his feet in the cords to the overhead projector. He saved himself by splaying his hands on Roma's desk.

Mr. Scaglia approached. Cold sweat breeched Roma's skin, fearing that she would be asked to take sides.

"Come with me young man," he said even-toned, as if stating tax brackets.

The teacher reached for Kevin who swatted violently, contacting only air. Mr. Scaglia waited. Before the outstretched hand could touch his shoulder, Kevin recoiled nearly toppling into a row of desks. He relented and, allowed Mr. Scaglia to steady him out the door.

The flicking eye-rollers opposite her awakened Roma's embarrassment for Kevin. Her sympathy transferred to Murph.

Arms over shoulders, the class swayed to the music. Roma thanked her lucky stars ending up between Murph's graduate reader, and Andrew, a serious student. Andrew artlessly raised the right, then the left leg in his knee-length shorts. His hand's pressure increased on her arm at each left step, distancing her from the two flickers at the end now kicking each other's shoes.

After class Roma cycled around campus to the Goleta Beach. She locked her bike to a tree in the grass verge between parking lot and sand. Doffing her shoes, she delved her toes in the warm, massaging grist. 

She had adopted the habit of studying at the beach living on Rhodes, a street on a hillside above Pacific Coast Highway. Short and quiet, few knew it existed. Neighbors there would not have tolerated big crazy, but her family's little crazy stayed inside the apartment. Atop the garage, the compact living room strained with TV, her younger brother's music on the stereo, or his raucous friends wrestling. The eight by ten kitchen scarcely dampened the waves cataracting down the doorless, steep wooden stairs to her room. Whenever Roma needed to study, she headed to a tranquil spot on the sand.

She was on the beach less than an hour having already read Mac Beth three times. In sophomore English, she surprised herself by liking Mac Beth. She surprised her counselor, opting for Shakespeare junior year with the college-bound students. In the years of junior college struggling to undo her disappointing high school career, she read it again.

The Goleta bike path followed the slough. No streets or traffic intersected. To her right, hills blocked the ocean view. To her left citrus groves displayed ripe, orange and yellow fruit. Sloping, green changed to a flat tract of one-story houses. Roma turned.

The house on Rhoads Avenue differed in every way but name from the apartment on Rhodes Street: the latter tall and narrow on a hill, the former flat on flat land. The Rhodes apartment was on the second floor except for her large, dank room. It had clearly been a patio, now enclosed, evidenced by the concrete floor and green corrugated fiberglass roof. Her new room on Rhoads was a small dry-walled box. Rhodes carried sounds of her brother and of her mother chatting with Judy, the flight attendant in the studio apartment aside Roma's room. Rhoads reverberated quiet in the sparsely furnished house.

Entering the back door, Roma saw Carol's pear shaped back at the sink.

"Hi, Carol." Roma set her books on a stool. "Doin' anything exciting tonight?" It was a gratuitous question. Carol, a doctoral student, was about as exciting as her mousy hair.

"George and I are going to see The Fisher King." Carol dried her hands with a towel.

"Let me know if it's any good."

Carol left. The house was empty.  

Roma sat in the living room to read. Every passing car distracted her. She looked for something on TV. Its two channels had a sit-com of young adults playing adolescents and a nighttime soap with big hair. She went to the kitchen phone, picked up the receiver, and depressed the one, the two, the one . . .

"Excuse me, ladies," Mrs. Dufort distracted Roma from her distraction. 

She had been fighting against the undercurrent in her legs and chest to think about Graham Green. Mark Forrest, six foot four, lanky, cut, a little geeky behind his wire-rimmed glasses, had sat next to her. They'd been talking before class about the priest character as if he knew her.

"Amanda, Myra," Mrs. Dufort addressed two girls in the doorway. Flannel pajama bottoms and slippers showed below their jackets. "You'll need to go to the office and get a tardy slip. Don't come back until you're dressed appropriately for class."

Myra and Mandy laughed making their noisy way up the hall.

"Hello." Myra answered the phone.

"Hey, what are you girls doing?" Roma knew Mandy would be there, too.

"Hola, chica!" Myra recognized Roma's voice. "Nothin'. Are you here?"

"No."

"You should come down. There's a party at Twenty-Eighth and Hermosa."

"No, by the time I get there, I won't be able to park, and you guys'll get bored and leave."

"The fair's this weekend," Myra reminded Roma. "Come down tomorrow and meet us there."

"Okay." Roma brightened at the thought of going home and something to do.

The next morning Roma climbed the exterior stairs to the Rhodes apartment. Her brother Sam actually set down his cereal bowl and turned from the TV. 

"Hey." He smiled.

"Hi," Roma replied. "Mom home?"

"No, she's at the store."

Cartoon sound effects followed Roma through the kitchen and descended the open stairs. Already her room was changed. In the middle a card table stood with shoeboxes and scrapbook albums. Sam's bike leaned inside the sliding glass door. A pile of her mom's clothes neatly draped the bed.

Myra laughed aloud, hunched, her thumbs hooked through Taz's belt loops as she followed him through the kitchen. Eyes like slits, Roma, Matt and Amanda traipsed behind. Taz opened the door into the garage, a trapezoid of light diving its concrete floor. An added interior wall lined the width of the garage with egg-crate batting. Mandy shut the kitchen door behind her. In the sudden, pure darkness, they all broke out laughing.

Taz illuminated a turntable with a miniscule light. Giggling, Myra and Amanda pushed Matt upright and off of them on a pink chenille covered couch where they had landed. Roma sat down on its arm. Taz carefully cleaned the black, revolving vinyl. He strapped a bass guitar over his shoulder, its solid body blocking most of his. Dark hair hid his face while he tuned the strings. The instrument blocked Taz's slight body. He adjusted an amp and set the stylus. Deep notes resonated through Roma, but her shiver came from Taz's playing.

In Manhattan Beach, the first three blocks perpendicular to shore are narrow alleys alternating with "walk-streets". Walk-streets are not really "streets" but triple wide, concrete walks faced by house fronts. Parking is a nightmare at best. A weekend, during the fair, it was nearly impossible. Roma turned the car up a steep, alley and paralleled partly obstructing a garage door.

She followed a narrow ingress between two houses. At the front door she pressed the "bell". A shorthaired blond woman her mother's age smiled through the kitchen window. The door opened.

"Hi, Roma." Beth raised her hand in a small wave hello. "I haven't seen you for a long time. " She opened both palms upward, "What brings you by?"

Roma deliberately faced so that Beth could surely see her lips. Please, flat fingers circled her heart, might she leave her car behind the garage. Roma's fists gripped the invisible steering wheel. She balled her hands one behind the other, thumbs atop index as if readying for successive thumb wars. Beth agreed as long as the car on the right could still get out adding that Roma might see Taz at the fair.

In the middle of the walk-street, Roma gazed west. She couldn't see the sand only three cement hillocks dense with houses. She could see the water. The waves were big. The houses that she surveyed were unrecognizable. Some had added cedar-shake siding, others rooftop decks. A very few remained single story. The cinderblock and stucco two-story opposite, where her family once lived, was now clad in cheap wooden siding with a gaudy, octagonal, stained-glass window. The fence around the front yard had been removed.

Her upstretched hand clasped the large one not quite dragging her up the hill. She couldn't keep pace with those big feet without socks in topsiders. Each measured step of the hairy, muscular legs had to be made up with her five small steps. About halfway, he would let go taking two or three giant marches toward the summit. Then he'd turn around looking to the ocean then down at her. Pushing and pushing her little legs, it seemed to Roma like she was face to face with the sidewalk. Finally she would reach him, hugging one of his sandy limbs. He'd scoop her up in his arms then onto his shoulders setting her down at almost the top to open the gate for her.

The hillcrest verged between two worlds: the beach side concrete and tight-packed houses, and the park side beyond which the houses had street-fronts and yards with trees. Booths and canopies edged the left field. Along the railroad track, unused by trains since before her mom was born, a man led a small elephant, on its back a small girl in pig tails.

Roma descended the stairs into the park. She meandered through a maze of nylon awnings offering fruit flavored ices, measuring pitch speed, or painting children's faces. She watched people climb a net ladder only to have it invert at varying distances from the top. 

At the "Beer Garden", a roped section at the corner of the park, Amanda and Myra sat at a table shaded by oaks. Roma presented ID to a guy, not much older than she. On the elephant a boy of five-ish searched nervously for his mother. Spotting her, he smiled. Roma heard a voluble, familiar voice.

Miss Crane, who did indeed resemble a crane, her long neck on her skinny frame, wrote an equation on the chalkboard.

" Larry," she asked, "what should we do now?"

The boy next to Roma, his dangling feet swinging over the linoleum, responded, "Do what's in the parentheses."

Miss Crane drew chalk across the green plane, Roma watched Amanda whispering to Myra.

To a girl in the next group, "Yvonne," Miss Crane posed and turned to the board, "where do we place the decimal point?"

Timing it expertly, Myra whispered to Taz. The class, expecting Yvonne's answer, heard Taz, loud and clear.

"At der Wienerschnitzel?"

Myra, Mandy, Taz and his friends Doug and Ben sat in an oblate of chairs. Taz pulled his chair back to widen the oval. He was half a foot taller than when Roma had last seen him. His jaw had lengthened so that he looked more like his father and less like a dark version of Beth. He grabbed a vacant chair for Roma and set it between him and his two friends.

"What are you doing these days?" 

“I'm going to UCSB. I'm just home for the weekend. How 'bout you?"

"I'm moving in with a friend downtown." The sides of his eyes crinkled. Black pupils in sea-glass green reflected the shadows. "He's been getting me a little studio work. He's a keyboardist." 

"That's great," she said and meant it. Simultaneously she imagined an oppressive apartment with no outdoors. 

They spoke about their brothers, his working in an office downtown and going to law school, hers . . . They spoke about people from junior high and high school. Midafternoon sun approached the ridge. The shade shifted behind the table. A dry, offshore wind blew in. 

Doug announced, "We're goin' home, maybe go in the water."

Taz stood looking toward Mandy and Myra, "You wanna come with?" 

Mandy and Myra locked eyes. Mandy shook her head. "No," she answered for both of them.

Taz lowered his gaze to Roma.

She and Taz walked down to The Strand. On the left, they passed a few three-story houses. Each had a short, definitive border separating small, hard-scaped yards from skaters, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Opposite, past a three-foot cinderblock barrier, the sand stretched 200 feet to the ocean. People and colorful towels dotted it for miles. Taz opened a solid gate in a low, brick wall fronting an aging, two-story. The afternoon glare on the concrete made it difficult to see, but within the wall's shadow, Roma saw a bounce. She stopped for a second. 

Taz said, "Oh, that's Bugs."

Roma cooed bending to pet the small, gray bunny. Bugs hopped lazily away, staying close to the wall and its strip of shade.

Exiting a sliding-glass door, grabbing their surfboards, Doug and Ben said, "Hey."

Entering, Taz explained that this was the guys' apartment but that he stayed here more often than not. The only window in the dark room was the sliding door. There was a couch, coffee table, and a TV on a crate. To one side was a bar counter, behind it, a sink, hotplate, toaster oven, and fridge.

Once in swimming gear, Taz and Roma dodged cyclists and skaters to the deep, scorching sand. In painful joy, they trotted to the water's edge.

Roma watched the waves roll in, clear, even, big.  She watched their smooth faces breaking feet higher than her head. Taz strode in, his trunks hanging tenuously below the ripple of dark ribs under his new lean muscles. The small of his back pulled like the tide. He dove in then turned to her grinning, hair dripping black.

She went under the water unexpectedly warm, and came up next to him. A breaking wave pushed them yards toward the shore before their feet could purchase. It felt strange yet natural for him to abruptly turn and kiss her. Holding hands, they rushed into the next draw and plunged.

Bobbing over swells, diving between breakers, they waited to frantically swim toward shore and place themselves just where the ocean's force would propel them on the surface. Landing sometimes on their feet, sometimes scraping to a halt on the sandy bottom, they ran back in splashing. 

The evening sun still heated beach though it didn't burn their feet until they had almost reached The Strand and the arid offshore wind had encased them in a salty crust. Bugs was hopping and stopping in the now extended shadow of the patio wall.

In the shower Taz and Roma rinsed the salt from their skin and the sand from their hair. Their slick, supple bodies touched. Warm water and tender excitement washed over Roma. When they emerged, the apartment was dark.

"Shit." Taz uttered. "Those guys left without us."

Roma gave a perplexed look.

"We were supposed to go to a party at Pickfair to meet a producer, but Ben has the invitation."

Taz wrinkled his brow and paced for a minute. Relenting, his face relaxed into a smile. "How about The Lighthouse?"

Ten dollars? Myra's dad was a doctor. She didn't blink, but ten dollars was a lot to Roma. Every weekend Roma biked to the harbor to wash boat decks for spending money. Now she handed a ten to a bouncer. A sign declared "Two Drink Minimum." Her stomach tightened. She only had four more dollars, and she wasn't old enough to drink. What if they carded her?

The dim, windowless club, made darker by black pews on a square U of black risers, smelled of stale beer. Mandy sat on a pew next to Matt. Taz stood, barely matching Myra's slight stature, to kiss her on the lips. They sat. Roma, on the end, wondered why she'd come. 

A man in black jeans and a "Lighthouse" t-shirt asked what they'd like. When her grapefruit juice arrived and she realized that the cover included the two drinks, Roma breathed deeply. The house lights lowered. Moody, gelled spotlights hit the small stage and the brick wall behind it.

At one in the morning, the streetlamps lit wide, fading circles on The Strand. The offshore breeze warmed the air. A lone skateboarder passed opposite. Another couple walked ahead in the distance. Taz swung Roma's hand to the metronome surf.

"My parents don't listen to music." Taz spoke loudly in the quiet night. 

Roma had never thought of that. 

"I was three or four. I don't know why I was at my Uncle Walter's. I guess he was babysitting." Tacit. Four arm swings. Taz continued. "He turned on the stereo." Swing. "I remember feeling the bass and drum through the floor and then through me. I knew . . ." Swing.

Dawn grayed framed by the sliding glass door. Roma listened to the sharp, even crash of waves. Taz lie unmoving between her and the couch back, stomach against her spine, arm over her. She tried not to stir. 

The steely sky was starting to blue when Ben came through.

"Morning," he offered.

"Morning," Roma replied.

Not the rushing water from the faucet nor the clanking cups and utensils on the counter disturbed Taz. Roma delicately detached herself. Taz shifted. 

"Hey," he squint-blinked to the world at large then focusing smiled at Roma.

By coffee time, Doug had joined them. They exited through the slider mugs in hand. Slate water-walls pounded, visible broad as the beach was. The waves reached so far ashore that it felt dangerous wandering onto the sand.

They retreated, balancing barefoot on the dividing wall. 

"Look!" Taz shouted pointing beyond swells.

He overbalanced and dropped onto the beach. Doug, Ben, and Roma, bodies fixed, synchronously turned their heads. Rubber-gray silhouettes arched in a green face of sea. Roma remembered water rushing her to land, salt baking on her skin. She loved the ocean, but they belonged there. She jumped onto the sand next to Taz. 

Roma towel-dusted her gritty feet. Inside, she put on yesterday's clothes.

"I gotta go." She gathered bits and pieces into her backpack. 

Taz pecked her on the lips. They stepped outside where Doug bent, searching the corners of the patio.

"What're you doing?" Taz asked.

"Bugs is gone," Doug pronounced. He glanced up at them mouth open. He bounded over the wall to search The Strand. Taz investigated the side area. Doug shook his head saying, "I've already looked there."

From a neighboring yard, Ben walked into view and shrugged palms upraised. Taz perused another yard. Ben started the opposite direction from Doug. Taz hunkered to peer under the neighbors' deck.

Backpack hoisted over her left shoulder, Roma passed the two big houses and turned the corner to the walk-street. Her legs pushed her up the hill, face to face with the sidewalk.

Carla Del Conte has been published in The Easy Reader. She has a bachelor's in comparative literature and a master's in French. She has taught in California public schools from junior high to junior college.

‘mouse’ & ‘the ballad of mona lisa’

Lydian Humphries is a multidisciplinary artist living in Flanders, New Jersey. If not hunched over his next project, he can be found enjoying a cup of tea with a cat in his lap.

mouse

the best gift i received
recently was a handful
of lint. my computer
mouse is fostered
by my dear friend
whose own is lost in
the depths of a library,
on some work table,
maybe never seen again.
another friend works
at a different library
and he takes abandoned
water bottles home,
so i wonder if it, too,
has been adopted.
the sensors in well
-loved mice work
sparingly, with jarring
movements across
virtual monitor seas.
with a handful less
lint, they might
be free.

the ballad of mona lisa

there's a version of her that looks like my mother
all middle parted black hair and unsmiling eyes
she was tuesday lunchlady and recess supervisor
now, she stars in my stress dreams about forced acupuncture

there's a version of her that looks like my first grade teacher
all middle parted black hair and compassion in her smile
she taught me how to count change
and counted on me to keep changing

there's a version of her that looks like home
moss-colored smock like my old heated blanket
veil as my foggy bathroom mirror

i can't say that i belong in the renaissance
all my queerness and disability allegedly won't fit
but maybe—maybe—she belongs here, with me

Mal Virich is a queer, non-binary, autistic, and disabled poet who tends to ruminate on self-identity, trauma, and the profound impacts of interpersonal relationships. Their debut chapbook a vivid dreaming was published in November 2024 by Bottlecap Press. They are currently in their fourth year of their undergraduate degree, studying creative writing, Spanish, and Chican@/Latin@ studies. Alongside their studies, they are a peer advisor and poetry reader for The Madison Review. www.malvirich.com

‘Chew the Wild Side on the Meat’, ‘Punctuality Prospers’ & ‘Hindsight Can Get Hazy’

Allison White is a writer and frequent traveler based in the Los Angeles area. Her work has placed in several screenwriting contests, including the Austin Film Festival for her feature "Waverly". She frequently tells stories of the often vibrant human experience, and what it means to be flawed and loved. She travels all over the world to experience this life, and see what the world has in store for her.

Chew the Wild Side on the Meat

I remember the monumental sight of dry, craggy and fang-like peaks; shooting into the sky from
the jaw of the earth. I was on the trail and the air’s increasing elevation was getting thin. My
phone was off and forgotten in the rig – it wouldn’t work in these mountains, and I wouldn’t
need it for the summer. No connection to the living rush of the concrete flow, back there, in
society. My pack was heavy – I had everything, but experience. Most of life can only be learned
in action – there’s no way to prepare. Happy souls are packed with failure that the rules can’t
teach. All these years since prove the basics true... go green, stoke adventure, manufacture desire
in the primal pumps of your heart and persist to personalized motives. Some flames smoke out
before the spark. I don’t know how the others felt, but I like to get deep, and lost, when I don’t
know what I’m doing... but if you sit and dwell, you never really get down the trail... so get in
thick of discomfort, go on with it, and you’ll never regret it. I repeated phrases and there was no
going back, now. I started to sweat, the trail ran steeply up the hill, and transformed into
switchbacks, cut into the mountainside. We climbed, aimed at the other side, and with each step
we were consumed by the woods. Civilization, the noise of the streets, the pace of society, greed,
the brutal consumption of our hours by corporate production, the hunger of the money machine,
and that illusive societal status, we chase like starvation, and it won’t mean shit when we are
dead; yes, it all started to fade, and our wild senses creeped out. Released by the sight of dead,
flesh chewed bones, which led to a mutilated carcass. Out in the wilderness, you enter the food
chain, and not at a prime position... keep alert, I thought. My legs seared with lactic acid, painful
notifications in the body like the iPhone buzzes when it receives a text. The synapses fired up to
my brain which said, where the hell you going; the damn bar ain’t this far, or fucking difficult, to
get too? I grieved the harsh loss of civilized comforts like sidewalk strolls to boozy ends with
friends, back in town. Change plays soft, false notes, on our memories. I clipped over the last
few yards to the crest of the ridge, and between those peaks in that rugged Idaho wilderness;
from the heights of busted lungs at the top of barrenly beautiful mountains, over raw,
undisturbed, enter-at-your-own-peril, backcountry glory, like observance of the sea pulls you in.
So did the void of that serenely remote, wild landscape. It beckons eyes that need to see the pain
beauty of truth. It’s an itch to be in the moment and connect with Mother Earth’s, the eternal
home and it’s thriving pulse. I stayed in those woods till the snow came, and I’ve never been the
same.

Punctuality Prospers

The day always arrives.
You should too.
The first step to survive.

Hindsight Can Get Hazy

The sun is fresh.
Flames spray the same way as yesterday.
Death is inevitable,
We’re born to be brave,
The tough ages get the extra decay.
Change slowly comes, nothing might occur,
When things get heavy,
You got lines with drugs to blur.

Nicholas Viglietti