Short, Fast, and Deadly

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Law of Life

Why waste regimens if boundaries are meant to be broken, everything is complicated my love. Why make shrews’ ragweed’s that leave your logic spinning, the words delight my love. You just have to understand my allegories and you’ll know my purpose, nothing is eternal, and everything returns my love.

by Nicole Heredia of Hagerstown

All The Lonely People

I’d love to turn you
down, Eleanor, ma belle,
for writing the words
to a story
paperback writers can’t
deconstruct,
but
I’m a dead
(tax)
man.

by Joanne Rocky Delaplaine of Bethesda

I’m In Love With Two Poets Named Rocky

I’m in love with two poets
named Rocky. Neither one
stones, passway or
otherwise. They grooved
up sisyphean. They chapels
under my church shoes.

by Pamela Murray Winters of Silver Spring

The Absolution of July

Despite firecracker heat
transparently
like a passionate whisper,
tomatoes on the vine
bursting with red.

by Ben Rasnic of Bowie

ins Gras beißen

a quick note to self
set fire to self-portraits
no need to save face

by Craig Collins-Young of Rockville

And Then

Things that lead up to this: I tease you for playing Dungeons and Dragons, then say all young girls act like whores, especially her; I hold your hand to console you, feeling the stiff flesh that creeps up your wrist; you take 6 shots; I make you nachos; you go home cheerful, then wrap a cable around pipes in the ceiling, your feet touching the floor, knees bent, skin turning grayish pink, like the belly of a fish.
 
by Kelly Scott of Baltimore

Blindsided

Her departure left him wondering how an organ of meat and muscle could tear his chest like glass. The bottle still had a swig left: her bitter backwash, but he refused to drink it. He poured it in the sink, opened another, and drowned the shards in chardonnay. He was calm again. So calm he felt nothing. Laying on the floor, he said, This is not an exit, and pictured a life in which he'd never shared her taxi.
 
by Jessica McHugh of Frederick

*Italicized words found in American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Determined

With watery scrambled eggs and sausage patties burned brown, he would win. Nourishment meant health, strength. Eat so you’ll feel better, he’d been told for 80 years, by his mother, wife, children. These moments were his. His. His veiny, tube-infested arms rested; his family encircled him as he hovered between windows of consciousness above an empty tray. He’d eaten with a will worthy of more time. But he died anyway.
 
by Amanda Skjeveland of Hagerstown

from nothing something comes

Smoke. Disturb. Conceive. 
 
Forget.
 
Recover.
 
Illumination. Harvest.
 
Recommit. Thrust.
 
Love. Bleed.
 
Derive. Collaborate. Propel.
 
Extractions. Prolific.
 
Stimulation. Direction.
 
Aim. Oomph. Significance. Superb.
 
Reflect. Contemplation.
 
Copyright. Publish.
 
Sign. Release.
 
Promote. Ignition. Effect.
 
Timeless?
 
by M. R. Carter of Hagerstown

Looking Back North

That summer, she always woke with damp skin and tangled hair and campfire smell on her clothes. She smeared fireflies on her face for war paint and her mouth tasted like grass stems. She stroked the slick silky innards of milkweed pods and could always find the North star.
 
Now, her hair is set and her lips glisten in the streetlamp. Her heels click on the pavement and she thinks, the stars were friendlier then.
 
by Jessica Cripps of Hagerstown

First Date

The radio cries Nirvana and we hang our heads out of the cracked windows.  At the restaurant he fills the emptiness with red meat and the sound of his voice. I eat lettuce and drown my insecurities in cheap wine. On the way back, he grips my bread-dough thigh with his hand, leaving indentations as if he’s digging in his heels, as if he might stay here.
 
by Keri-Jon Faulkner of Hagerstown

Make Mine a Double

She smiled at everyone, but the grin she gave Sam was different. She gave him teeth. No one else seemed to get Libby’s...Miss Harrisons’...teeth. It was hard to be subordinate when she smiled like that, but coffee helped. It led his brain from the bedroom to the workroom and he was able to return to his toil. She was always there though: sprawled out in his mind and begging him to save her from her tiresome chastity.
 
by Jessica McHugh of Frederick

3:30

I am the asshole that steals your pudding from the lunchroom because a pudding might help with the grinding of teeth and the coffee pot is burned up, cooking the tar in its pit, make a mirror by grinding obsidian with my teeth, no, take one part silver nitrate, 26% distilled water and ammonia, add one part Rochelle Salts, the reaction when poured on glass will make a mirror, in the mirror you will see me looking out.
 
by Kate Wyer of Baltimore

Red Light Contemplation at the Intersection of Simple St. and Anamnesis Ln.

I remember cherry blossoms
and mango margaritas. Time
spent in the Windsor tower
was a dream. My ardent
senses awakened
from winter’s coma.
 
by M. R. Carter of Hagerstown

Sunday Service

We turn our heads and shudder as the crucified Christ’s beady painted eyes follow our movements. Dad’s church is better. Their Jesus isn’t scary. Mom says we need to learn our letters so we play Eye Spy during the service, seeing O’s in yawning mouths and ugly hats. Jamie stares at Christ’s cross and whispers that today’s crucifixion is brought to us by the letter t. The family behind us isn’t amused.
 
by Judy Samuels of Taneytown

Cry Out

I contemplated going off my birth control, but he’d already thrown it away. I planned a sweet surprise to tell our parents they were going to have a grandchild, but his Facebook told the world. I bought six different shades of yellow, but he painted the room pink. I read all of the books, but he knew best without them.
 
In the end, I called her "Ophelia", but he just called her "Kid".
 
by Jessica McHugh of Frederick

Upon Visiting Distant Land

Tired foot from shifting clutch. I see fire up ahead. I stop to find a woman with baby.
 
Her words are foreign to me, coming out as scribbled lips spitting syllables into a desert’s dusty vortex of thoughts racing as she keeps screaming.
 
I try best to stay calm, but her voice is not relaxing.

I’m reluctant to hold her baby as she spits up more words as blood to sanction my praise for stopping to help in the first place.
 
by M. R. Carter of Hagerstown

Walking at Night in Our Nation’s Capital

Another evening spent
walking along the outer perimeter
of police tape
sucking the yellow
out of a full moon.
 
by Ben Rasnic of Bowie

Silhouettes in the Setting Sun

The sun is behind us now, moved into southern hemispheres, away from our frozen face.
 
As the rest of the world is waiting to wake up we pose here as silhouettes in the setting sun.
 
We grab the early stars - one by one - rename them for ourselves. The night belongs to us. We discuss elements of love in a language of hands that speak with heart.
 
Losing her to Cancer was rough, unexpected to be seen on that hilltop again.
 
by M. R. Carter of Hagerstown