by Scott Bethay
1.
Profane, breathless June
air thick with perfume
of cigarettes and makeup
Made in America
by Margaret E. Gillio
After reading Jordan Salama and Adrienne Rich
See the dark trucks
across the street.
They encircle a man,
pin him down.
Draw the blinds, stop
answering the door.
We watch in a silence like a rushing river
where I drown. I fear this silence.
Learning to Live with Fear
by Matias Travieso-Diaz
Freedom is when one hears the bell at seven o’clock in the morning and knows it is the milkman and not the Gestapo.
– Georges Bidault
The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.
– George Carlin
The sudden banging on the front door startled Ricardo, who was not expecting visitors that early in the morning. His first instinct was to flee, but there was no back door through which he could escape, and his two-room apartment had nowhere to hide. He approached the door and asked: “Who is it?”
“It’s the Posse! Open up!”
Ricardo opened the door and was shoved aside as four armed men wearing brown military fatigues entered and encircled him. “Are you Ricardo Trovador?” asked their leader. “Yes, I am. But…” started Ricardo.
“Mr. Trovador, you are under arrest. You have ten minutes to get dressed and contact any friends or relatives.”
Read More »One More for the Pile
by E. L. McKee
Impossible to separate them;
like the grain of sand around which
a mirror-bright pearl is formed,
Read More »In View of What’s Returned
by H.T. Reynolds
A mother strokes her daughter’s hair,
carefully avoiding the ventilator tubing,
humming You Are My Sunshine through
tears and mechanical breathing
Submissions Stats 2026/I
From February 6 to March 30 2026, we received 53 submitted pieces for our theme call From grief to resilience, from joy to resistance, with the acceptance rate of 51 %.
And the precise numbers per genre?
Consolation
by Stephen Mead
Every Wednesday it has rained since the rainy Wednesday of your death,
those nights, that rain – comfort, comfort – bringing you again.
I fast to this but for fluids, my body’s parched plains thirsty for each teeming bead
& all that hush of shimmering liquid slate.
Random Two Cents & Teacups
by Émilie Galindo
Her advice –uncalled for and diagnosed from across the 9-to-5 arm’s length desk–was to crank down my features to a wary cinder block wall. To water down my hyperbolic & cartoonish emoting to tepid and tight-lipped detachment. If I had a cup, it’d be filled with years of those unbegged for two cents.
Read More »Traditions
by Gianoula Burns
Some traditions take time to fade, the stocking at the end of the bed, the laying out of carrot and mince pie for Santa on Christmas Eve, the lights that adorn the live Christmas tree much weathered with each year, mince pies and custard, fruitcake, all those things we have come to associate with Christmas, lovingly built up when children arrive slowly fade when they grow and depart. It takes time to dismantle, but with each year one or other vanishes from the celebration and we wonder whether they ever did exist at all, just memories that are stored and unpacked when reminiscences are the norm. They meant something, sometime to someone and then memory departs and traditions are buried with the people that gave them life. She now prepares two stockings per bed, one for each couple, but they no longer sleepover, she no longer has to wait till they are fast asleep to creep into their bedrooms trying not to make a noise while placing the heavily laden parcels at their feet. That time has slipped away, gone with those other things we scarcely remember, the children’s high-pitched squeals of delight when the sun rises. Surely, they’ll remember when she’s gone the burden of that love, or so she hopes.
Read More »Where exactly?
by Louis Faber
Look at this picture carefully.
They fill the streets, singing
carrying signs, demanding freedom
Read More »