we can sit next to each other
looking out in the same direction
at our life smudges
together
Category: contemporary society
TWO POEMS – Catherine Redford
The air is suddenly sweet-smoked and humming,
and I’m back in the incense-wreathed
Lanes of 90s Brighton
ONE POEM – S.M. Tsai
White fabric sagging
Exposed lipsticked mouth
Small exposed mouth screaming
Exposed mouth with nose ring
FLASH FICTION — Hibah Shabkhez
They do not know that the sun terrifies me.
Kaleidoscope — Jenna Clake
The horoscope said: You are a fish. You will come to understand this. She found this funny because it seemed like something more suitable for a fortune cookie, and because she had once had a boyfriend who, during arguments, told her that she kissed like a koi carp.
Three from Color Wheel — Salvatore Difalco
Underscoring the onset of nausea on the pier, feelings of self-loathing
also bubble up to the surface. “I get seasick in the bathtub, man,”
declares a ponytailed dude in Plymouth pink.
Something You Can Feel in Your Teeth — Hannah Stevens
Neither of them talk much in the morning. Somehow things are more difficult in the early hours. She feels more fragile, more lost, more oppressed by the narrow confines and the lack of light.
White Noise Inside the Supermarket: Reading DeLillo during a Pandemic – Michael P. Mazenko
Wandering the aisles of my neighborhood supermarket, the kind of place Don DeLillo once wrote evoked “a sense of replenishment … and fullness of being,” I tread cautiously out of suspicion and respect for the potential “airborne toxic event” that is the coronavirus pandemic. As the world continues to pass milestones of Covid infections, I…
Scheherazade — Lydia Waites
He studies me for a second before facing the road again, his jaw set. My breath is caught in my throat. I clear it, arranging my thoughts. It was just an outburst, a loss of patience: I am safe.
ONE POEM – Aidan Dolbashian
That cow can’t walk. She’s all lame. I won’t touch her hooves.
ART – Manon Parry 
‘a visual stream of consciousness where your imaginary and erratic thoughts come to life.’
TWO POEMS – Patrick Landy
the slow inflections of the wind
where rivers run like scars.
The moon hangs quietly
in the blackened air, halved and emptied, decaying since dusk
Porridge 