Short, Fast, and Deadly

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In the Morning

The dog barked like an engine
trying desperately to start, outside
the ground broke open in whispers
for each flake of snow.

by C. E. Frederick of York

For Pleasure

This blood is a cynical juice; it moves through a kaleidoscope, changing its hue every two beats. becoming a free-falling drop-splat as I tap into that. Seven drops. Seven splats. Seven: I'm crumbling into wishes upon hot winds, and I've conformed into something I'm not -- juice in un corps, tasted by lips della Mona Lisa, and pissed onto a picture of horny teens drunk on stashed wine coolers. I'm part of the senses.

by Joseph L.M. Sturm of Mercersburg

Houston

Lone Star, you can go nowhere, in less than half an hour. This little water stinks. Period. Grass cracks.

Tease,

O clap of thunder! 

Oil is good, Oil is great! God too. Your car is God too. Follow the church ladies’ hats, Bluebonnet. Praise pulled pork burritos. Smash fast Bieber piñatas, for fans of fuschia tissue paper rain and pelting sugar melting. Give up on salt. 

Discover the many ways to don a wet red bandana. 

by Christine Fadden of Indiana

another man

scuttling silver hands
in dirty water
he wants Loretta back−-
sets a psalm in her rib
the entire month
of August
smells of desire

by Helen Vitoria of Effort

OTR

He saw two lines. One dotted one not. A dead doe congealed before a buck’s head. He passed a tire anonymously arranged with some plastic parts. Another truck flashed its lights, confirmed the tone. Without the living there was no need for quotation marks. He wondered if the rest of his life would be like this night: Cormac McCarthy and cigarettes.

by Mariel Herbert of Hershey

Revolving Door

It looks a little silly. I am, after all, 350 pounds and, shall we say, over 50. Yet I go through the revolving door time after time. I’m paper that the wind keeps blowing into a lobby. The front desk clerk clears his throat, shakes his head, clearly not paper. He’s a bell. Ring him gently.  Hear him echo all over town.

by Kenneth Pobo of Media

 

Whitman at a Baseball Game

He likes that the entire New York Yankees team fits easily in his beard. The team likes it too because no reporters can get to them. During the 7^th inning stretch, he blurts that he saw two computer screens mating behind the bleachers. They looked like people, happier but flatter.

by Kenneth Pobo of Media

ice

how crystals can bend light

 

& narrative

in floating fissures

 

by Christopher Tiefel of Doylestown

All Wrong

Everything about you is wrong. You’re too tall for me, too hairy. Sometimes I imagine us having sex, but your arms are hairy, so your chest would be hairy, and everything else. The thought of your hairy belly touching mine is all wrong. Plus, you are married. Plus, so am I. So, don’t say you love the sound of my name. I can’t say your name aloud, it comes out a whisper, a half skipped-over beat.

by Rachel Mangini of Pittsburgh

 

On Longing

You are razor-edged crocodile teeth, wedge-shaped, a rabid furious snap drive through flesh & bone. A brown recluse biting, a monster under my bed. A short-muzzled rooftop assassin, malignant eyed, a gaping cruel-armed jaw of evil ferocity, savage fury, an extraordinary squealing sound with a bulldog grip, a pest of the waters. You stole my shoes & left me barefoot in winter. I am the wind.
 
by Helen Vitoria of Effort

He Told Me Once More to Remember to Remind Him to Tell Me Someday About the Time He Caught Jeff Tweedy Singing Along with a Jukebox Wilco Song and then He Passed Out on My Jacket While Reaching for My Drink.

So you and I walked back to Brooklyn before the morning brought more questions.
 
by Travis Macdonald of Philadelphia

Spring Forward

Two minutes of tears, four of despair, seven of over-thinking and nine of second-guessing. Thirteen for mindfucking, eight for withholding and nine for releasing. One for maniac laughter, two for a gulp and a sob, then five for the knuckles (two for hurting and three for soothing). Sixty minutes, all donated to Daylight Saving Time.
 
by Vanessa Weibler Paris of Erie

Completely Superfluous Comment from a Precocious Child

If grandfather's head were in his stomach
he wouldn't be choking to death.
 
by Thomas Busillo of Philadelphia

A Letter Never Written, Never Sent.

Dear Sam,
 
You told me once that God was in the water. So I dedicated my life after our divorce to the study of His works. A marine biology degree, endless scuba diving, even a few expeditions on research vessels. I was a zealot. But now, trapped at the bottom of the ocean with faulty equipment, I start to doubt those words. And I wonder if you know how dark and empty the ocean can be when you’re alone. 
 
Yours,
Kim
 
by A. T. Greenblatt of Devon

Alphabetcha

You have to be a letter. Reduce yourself from a name to a letter--less than a letter--blow yourself away into the silence behind a page’s silence. We’ll find you. Initialing documents puffed you up. That’s all over. Your initials got a divorce, don’t speak. Naked, not a single letter will cover you.
 
by Kenneth Pobo of Media

At the Last Moment

We hold each other close, a perfect dancing pose. The stars above us twinkle and the wind around us blows. Our dance is causing my skirt to defy gravity and his shirt to come undone. All modesty is lost, my head is tucked under his chin. This is our moment, our last moment, I say, the first truth I’ve told him. But he will never know that.
 
We are falling, dancing and the earth rises up to meet us.
 
by Aliza Greenblatt of Devon

Forget the Egg Rolls

Tell a person a thing will kill them ad nauseam. Then call it into question. Maybe a man in a Chinese take-out with greasy bulletproof glass explains how you are the same, moments after you learn what the chef mixes into the egg roll batter. You swallow hard, get back in your busted sedan with no air conditioning, and let the hot seat massage your shoulders. Move on, you think, forget the egg rolls.
 
by Mark Danowsky of Philadelphia

Not the Taste Experience We Were Looking For

We looked across the table at each other: the eggs tasted like peonies again. We boycotted the farm; they ensured that the milk tasted like marigolds. We bought our own cows; they made the bacon taste like anchovies. We got our own pigs; they slipped anchovies into the slop. We called off the boycott and set the livestock free, but we saw wolves ravening at the front door in the morning. You can’t fight the system.
 
by Jessica Knauss of Mountain Top

Summer Sound

My sister said there should be a robot named James with backscratchers for hands. The air conditioning unit hummed with the promise of tomorrow at the beach. I added a book-reading element to James; I wanted stories forever. James was central in a nightmare where the ocean plunged me below its surface so that I was unable to hear stories. He brought me to a lair below a coral reef, scratched my back.

 
by Nicole Monaghan of North Wales