Firefly Magazine
VII
A Journal of Luminous Writing
Old Rusty Carnival Bus | Ivan Grebenshikov
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Table of Contents Old Rusty Carnival Bus | Ivan Grebenshikov..……………………………………………...…..1 Poetry Whispers | Paula Gibson………………………......……………………………………………..4 Written to One of My Selves in an Alternate Universe | Robert S. King..……………...……..5 My Cat was Made of Holy Water | Laura Manardo…….....……………………………...……7 Vestiges | M. Drew Williams………………………………………………………….………….8 A Pre-Raphaelite Journeys to the Coast | Aaron Lembo………………………..………….10 The Weight of Water | Courtney LeBlanc………………………………………....………….12 Be Vain Girl and Like It | Juanita Rey………………………………………………....……….14 Celestial Bodies | Elizabeth Gibson……………………………………..…………………….16 A Movement of Night with You in It | Cody Wilson…………………………..……………….20 Flash Fiction Papa Smurf’s Revenge | Safia Moore...………………………………………………………22 2 Lovers on a Hill in Romania | Alina Stefanescu……………………………………………23 Uncle Tommy | Katie Jones……………………………………………………………....……24 Rush Hour Crush | Christina Taylor……………………………………………...……………25 What Groupon Says | L. L. Madrid……………………………………………….……………26 Reincarnation | Jay Merill……………………………………………………………....………27
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Short Stories Limestone in the Winter | Thomas Elson……………………………………..………………29 Johannes | Lorrie Hartshorn……………………………………………………...……………37 Ostinato | Natalie Gorbina…………………………………………………………………..…40 Music | Kristy Kerruish……………………………………………………………….…………44 The Artists
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POETRY
Whispers | Paula Gibson
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Featured Poem WRITTEN TO ONE OF MY SELVES IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE | Robert S. King
You may never read between these lines or even along these lines, but would that words were wormholes. I can’t—can you?—break through the air sacs and star bags we live in, the bubbles that may burst or collapse and simply no longer are, thus never were. Then what does it matter or antimatter? When one mirror shatters into stardust, do we both die? I sense from the crackle of my hair and the scrambled signals of my inner ear
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that like me you are staring up to the membrane border of your world, poking your finger in the thick sky to make a wave or hole to heaven. So my words are yours. Perhaps, then, we shine in the same starlight tonight, the same electric air that leaks through on the string theory tying us together. I dream tonight that our voices cross the line, that our fingertips touch from opposite sides of the skywall, and upon the stars we get our wish and hear our echoes answer.
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MY CAT WAS MADE OF HOLY WATER | Laura Manardo
when I told my boyfriend that I needed a new liver. The only one I told was her, eyes yellow, fixed to me always like a blackened bulb. She cleansed me of my sins the night I opened myself up on the bathroom floor. I wanted to pull out an organ, a fossil. She cleansed me of my sins. My sins like a dark honey, a child on a mother’s back.
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VESTIGES | M. Drew Williams
It's difficult knowing that the tiny circles an index finger inscribed neatly above the door in a thin layer of grayish dust were put there by you before the sickness, cloistered deep in your heart, did what we
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knew it would.
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A PRE-RAPHAELITE JOURNEYS TO THE COAST | Aaron Lembo
Waiting on a platform he day-dreams about lost sheep and wild brambles. His easel rests against his rake leg. His grin widens as he hears the industrial click clack of a new steam train approaching, starting to slow down. Inside his jacket pocket is a small wooden box, inside this hand-carved box resides a pig’s bladder sealed with string, inside the pig’s bladder: powdered pigments of colour, his paints, kept safe before being mixed with an oily matter, crushed and cut with a sharp edged instrument. He carries a black bottle of alchemy which loosens his imagination, the flick of his wrist. An experimentalist who possess a scientific fidelity. He seeks to observe the rolling hills, the sandy dunes near the shore, waiting for a moment of stillness. Once found the easel is positioned correctly
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and he endeavours to express the microscopic detail. He wanders and smells each lily he passes, he gauges the cattle he sees in the distance, he notices the multitude of different birds flying overhead, searching for scraps of food. By nightfall he is intoxicated, slight hallucinations begin as he boards the train which brings him back. Clouds of black smog vanish into the indigo skyline while our artist envisages his muse, his stark-naked model who teases that he should join her in the rippling waters, she warns him about erosion, he looks at his multiple sketches and wails in his carriage, taking him back to London. 11
THE WEIGHT OF WATER | Courtney LeBlanc
You pull me down, your love the weight of water, capable of both drowning and quenching thirst. This is a time of treading water, I am fighting to keep us above the waves, our relationship slipping, the weight sinking through my wet fingers. I pull in long strokes, I learned to swim as a child, summer lessons at the local pool.
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I dip my head beneath the blue then turn and breathe the clear air as I surface. I drag us to the shore, lie back on the grainy sand. Catch my breath before wading back in. 13
BE VAIN GIRL AND LIKE IT | Juanita Rey
When I was sick, I seldom wore shoes at all. Now heels clip clop along the sidewalk, announce me louder than a drum major. And makeup never bothered my face much. How do you color bloat? But now tints have reentered my life. And my lips burn red and sultry. My hair saw a comb about as often as I saw the doctor. It’s still a mess but at least
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it answers to the name ‘wind tousled.’ For four months or more, I kept to myself, rarely saw my friends. I missed them sure but not as much as my vanity. 15
CELESTIAL BODIES | Elizabeth Gibson
Look at you, you really are the sun and it’s raining. I’m sorry, hey, I know clichés are annoying. But if they saw you, luminescent, there would be no doubt. I was the moon, I guess. They said I was your other half so what would that be – the sun doesn’t really need one, does it, it is self-sufficient in its excellence. It hurts. Not how much you don’t need me, you know I never cared. But how good you were. How stunning. You hurt the eyes. You made flickers in the night, made shadows creep up the walls. Wolves and Indians with my hands. Childish. But it
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was my job to be the childish one. How colourful things were with you. I could emit only waves, they swept from me in an angry puddle that I didn’t understand. I was such a happy soul, they say, but the anger, it scared me. Is moonlight supposed to be angry? I guess I pulled the tides. There were times I couldn’t imagine life without you, honestly, and I know that kind of talk would upset you – well, a little. It could upset me a lot. Maybe I was in denial. It’s raining now, so heavily, and when I look at
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you, your skin and hair, I can see ripples of light but I fear for you. I am the satellite, more than ever, I am orbiting you but am on the outside. Do you know I worry? I do wonder what happens in that head now, that fading beacon. I was very little alone. But I was. I existed. Without the sun the moon would not shine at all. But you, you . Trying to think of life without you seems stupid. Pointless. I love you, you know. After all this time. But from where I’m sitting, perched in some far reach of the universe and moving further away, I can feel the waves lapping helplessly at my sides, so helplessly. I can do nothing.
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You are setting, my love and I have no idea how my existence will change when you disappear from it. Oh, to walk over and hug you! But that was never us – we had masses of space between us, I don’t know how much, I’m just a poet, not a scientist – in case you had somehow not guessed.
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A MOVEMENT OF NIGHT WITH YOU IN IT | Cody Wilson
The bed hardly moves when you do. You whisk away my warmth like a twirling dress. I feel the silk of cold tug at the hairs on my arms. You move to the floor to adjust your spine, disappear below the curve of bed. From the bathroom, your ankles pop like a settling house as you bend them against the tile. Cold now creeps the sheets. I kick my legs for friction, a protractor sweeping halves, a search party for your almost skin.
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FLASH FICTION
Trees | Ivan Grebenshikov
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Featured Flash PAPA SMURF’S REVENGE | Safia Moore
Satch was the ugliest streak of piss this side of the Atlantic. He farmed with his two sisters, Maud and Martha, unmarried and unloved. Gaunt they were, no feminine curves or softness, all angles. But at least the women were spared the nose. An inflated carbuncle, a chameleon flirting with the seasons, it defied an accurate description. Satch's nose had us searching the dictionary for words like vermillion and magenta . Although occasionally blue, it was the shape spawned his nickname, Papa Smurf; perfect for a bachelor farmer and all-round pitiable bastard with a smurf's bare arse in the middle of his face. Some nights we climbed onto their roof. They had no telly to muffle our steps on the slim grey slates, so we crept on our elbows like squaddies. We dragged clods of turf out of our pockets, still moist, the grass intact, and dropped them down the chimney. We shimmied off the scullery's low roof and dissolved into the woods before belching smoke brought Satch into the yard. ‘God forgive ye,’ he hollered. Behind him, one of the sisters, livid, screeched, 'We'll geld the lotta ye!’ Satch finally cracked when we fastened a bride’s veil to a ewe, tethered her to the bumper of his old Ford, and painted ‘I do’ on the bonnet. He waited until last orders, then barged into the Harbour Inn, double barrels first. ‘God forgive me,’ he said, raising the shotgun. Silence. Nobody laughing now. Satch turned the weapon, positioned it precisely, his overlong arms at last a blessing as he shot his nose clean off. They say not a sound passed his lips until the next morning in hospital with Maud and Martha by his bedside, bewildered. He didn't open his eyes, just whispered. ‘Who forgives God?’
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2 LOVERS ON A HILL IN ROMANIA | Alina Stefanescu
The shortness of breath was bigger than all the other firsts we’d shared thus far. Only the view and its accounting. A hill we climbed above all others to ascend into the space above the Transylvanian village. To keep it below. We were so proud standing on Dealul lui Pipa — the pianist and the poet— our hearts stacked like hay against the seasons to come. You said time will fly and then we’ll be married. Oh, the words fit me like a heavy brocade, a clash of flesh against fabric. You promised them anyway while I offered you the music. Wind whistled through the spaces between us. I relinquished the words without saying they betrayed us. Did I remove my white embroidered blouse so you could admire the projectile effect of frozen nipples? In that summer after high school we celebrated by backpacking through Europe before packing off on separate scholarships. Love hot on our cheeks at night I read articles aloud over the phone. That was later. Too late. Go back to a hill with the extra ten pounds on your frame, a bucket of golden curls, you had never been so handsome. Never so desired as then. Already the landscape subdued two lovers on the shepherd’s hill. The sun had teeth. Clouds altered the world willy-nilly. Two months boarding trains, sleeping in shipyards, pillars of unrepentant flesh. Your eyes loved me to pieces. The pieces came later. Two months without touching a piano as I scribbled in notebooks never thinking how strange it was you thrived without music. I buried you alive— the taste metallic, an old crave, a girl who savors blood sucked from un-scabbed mosquito bites. 23
UNCLE TOMMY | Katie Jones
Uncle Tommy’s been for dinner. My mother’s older brother, her favourite. Uncle Tommy’s a drinker. A smoker and a gambler, too. He likes a bet on the horses. The ‘Gee-Gee’s’, he used to call them when I was a kid, riding me up and down on his knee. He always turned up when he’d had a big win. Bursting in the back door of the house, shouting, where’s that pretty little niece of mine? I got something for her. Mum would push me forward, and Uncle Tommy would swing me high, the skirt of my pinafore dress rising up. He’d kiss me on the mouth, the hairs of his fat moustache rubbing coarsely against my soft cheek. He stank of whisky and ale and cigar smoke. I hated this ritual and couldn’t wait until I was too big for it. He threw his cash around, bringing large, strange coloured teddy bears for me; flowers for Mum and a good bottle of whiskey for Dad. Dad would insist on opening the bottle after dinner, and they’d both get drunk and sing rowdy bar-room songs late into the night. I still have a stack of those awful teddy bears lurking in the back of my wardrobe, tiny iridescent fibres occasionally making their way onto my clothes. Uncle Tommy had a big win on the horses today. He doesn’t bring the teddies anymore, I’m almost a woman now, he says, with a wink. I can hear him singing a sad lament with Dad downstairs now. Once Dad falls asleep, he’ll make his drunken way up to bed. Mum thinks he sleeps in the spare room, on the makeshift bed she leaves for him. She never notices the stench of cigar smoke and whiskey saliva staining my pillow case. 24
RUSH HOUR CRUSH | Christina Taylor
Monday morning; trapped in his smile I don’t know my left from my right or forwards from backwards. There’s something about the way he looks at me that roots me to the spot. I move only when the huddle of bodies behind pushes me forwards almost into his arms. Despite the cold rain steam rises from my body. ‘Where to?’ he asks. I want to tell him I will go wherever he goes but instead I bite my tongue and mumble I don’t know. The edges of his mouth lift up for a second, bright as a new born sun; I blink to let my memory capture it. There’s a volcanic tremor in my hands as I search for coins in my purse, hand over the money and let my fingers graze his. Now I’m charged with enough energy to last all day. Basking in his heat I shrug off my coat and take in the scenery; the snake tattoo on his neck shimmering in broken rays of light, strangling him to silence. His clenched fists, raising the tendons in his arms like rope. I wish those arms would tie me up and never let me go. I ask if we’re there yet. Dusk darkens his face with a frown. ‘Soon,’ he grunts, a man of few words. He doesn’t need sonnets to proclaim his love; I know it as I know how to breathe. ‘See you tomorrow then?’ I say as I get off the bus. He doesn’t say goodbye, just drives on. 25
WHAT GROUPON SAYS | L. L. Madrid
A new stay-at-home-mother, Eloise savors the reading of her Groupon emails, which possess the same whimsical acuity as her daily horoscope. The big data knows what she needs, often before she herself does. When the pregnancy weight that everyone promised would melt away with breastfeeding instead clings like an apron of fat, her email suggests Hydroxycut supplements ($19.99) and Zumba ($26). A half-joking, all cruel remark on pudge , from her husband Adam—and Groupon’s evening blast commiserates with a wine-and-chocolate subscription ($34.99, monthly). Account settings altered to save credit card information . Eloise hides the booty in the walk-in closet. Between Baby’s crying bouts she sits beneath Adam’s button-ups, drinking wine and devouring truffles, sucking the nougat like marrow from a bone. Refreshed and a touch fuzzy, she slips out to coo to Baby. No more breastfeeding tonight, and anyway, Baby prefers Eloise tipsy. BreastFlow bottles ($9.05). Adam sleeps in the guest room. He no longer touches her, not even deigning his breath to trouble the nape of her neck. With prophetic certainty, she knows Adam is cheating. He won’t leave if she doesn’t confront him. Does she want to? She’s an okay mother but would make a terrible single one. He befriends formidable lawyers… She can’t outmaneuver him. Deal of the day: Lovehoney Lelo for advanced vibrator users ($99.99). Purchased without hesitation. An argument starts over the bank statement and ends with a backhand. Ends with Adam apologizing, blaming Baby, work, stress, and you—just look how you’ve let yourself go. Ends with mea culpa flowers and take-out. Numb, Eloise checks her email. Barnwood framed canvas family portrait ($48.99). A $10-off coupon pops up. Eloise’s finger hovers over buy-now . Baby wails. Putting the tablet away, Eloise vows to do whatever Groupon recommends tomorrow.
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REINCARNATION | Jay Merill
I see him through the window of the store in Pimlico pretending not to notice where I’ve gone. Then he turns away as if he doesn’t care if I’m here behind the glass or if I’ve left for good. But I know he does. I count to five slowly, see his head turn back. Poor boy. He likes to play it cool but that’s not really him. ‘Filippo,’ I call. ‘It’s Fuzz.’ You couldn’t be blamed for thinking that scruffy little beast out there was Fuzz but no, it’s me. It became my nickname after all my hair dropped out. When Filippo the Flamenco dancer died. I hold up his fave dog-dinner, swivel the can. Dog’s watching me intently with his sceptical look. Wonders if I’m going to buy it or put it back, I know him. He’s every bit as suspicious as his namesake. He makes me smile. Likes to keep his eye on things, afraid the world will fall apart if he forgets. Sleeps the night through with one eye open. Old Filippo was just the same. That’s why he got drawn in by skunk and booze. Needed the release. Dogs, you’re safer with. Don’t know about all the stuff you can get into so they’re better off. After Filippo had gone I thought I’d go insane. Was desperate but didn’t want to share my sleeping-bag with anybody else, we’d been that close. I lay through those first nights; could hardly move for grief. Then the opposite: I started walking for the sake of it. Got to the point where I couldn’t keep still. Found this stray dog hanging round on Tachbrook Street all a-shiver. A hairy bag-o-bones. Picked him up and slipped him into my inside pocket, keeping my hand tight round him. Little fella, just a pup. Things went quiet and I wondered if the poor sod was dead. Then all of a sudden he started licking and my hand felt moist and sticky like when Filippo kissed my fingers one by one. It jolted me. So seemed only right and proper to call the little fella Filippo too. They’re alike in so many ways, the two Filippo’s in my life. Hard to imagine they’re not one and the same. Both smelling something rotten when it’s raining. Both looking at me a bit old fashioned like with a question-mark and furrowed brow. Both cuddling up close in the sleeping-bag, nights, as if they didn’t ever want to let me go. Old Filippo may be dead and gone but his spirit lives on is the way I look at it. When he sees me go to the till the tail starts to wag and his ears prick up. He’s dipping his head, pawing at the air. There’s no sight like a happy dog for lifting you. I click the can of his much loved meaty dinner and Filippo prances round in circles, stamps his feet, begins to twirl. 27
SHORT STORIES
Untitled | Ivan Grebenshikov
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Featured Short LIMESTONE IN THE WATER | Thomas Elson I. Shirley and Jacob Lawson had been alone and cold since the evening of their third anniversary, when she was buried for the first time. Jacob knew Shirley was engaged in an extramarital affair. He witnessed one of her assignations while hidden inside their bedroom closet, then planted bugging devices in their bedroom and discovered the truth of her camping trips; nevertheless, he resisted his wife’s demands for a divorce unless they first attended marriage counseling. She chose a marriage encounter weekend. Years earlier, Jacob, a master carpenter with cropped black hair and a clean-shaven face that announced he would do anything for acceptance, had latched his eyes onto Shirley’s classic mid-western face, Irish breadth, and Norwegian strength common in that area. To Jacob, this tall, intense twenty-six year old was unique. I had to have her.
Insatiable. Shirley, tall with flawless hair and teeth, more socially adept and ambitious than her husband, worked as a paralegal at a large law firm in Berdan, the county seat. Six months earlier, she enrolled in a seminar in Kansas City, Missouri. Her five foot ten inch glide across the meeting hall caught the eye of Dan Bierley, a senior prosecutor in the County Attorney’s office. He maneuvered himself next to her just as the opening speaker began. The evening of the seminar, Shirley and Bierley made an attractive couple at the Restaurant on the Plaza. The owner designed it to resemble a club he visited in 29
Canterbury, England. Nothing like it in Kansas City. Probably nothing like it in Canterbury either, but to Shirley, it seemed glamorous. She was flattered by Bierley’s attention; he basked in the change of pace from his marriage. They remained together the entire weekend. II. She was always a quick learner, and learned the one thing men wanted most when she lost her virginity at the age of fifteen. That one thing may differ in specifics among different men, but, in the end, it could be reduced to a single, crystalline thing – an illusion. She possessed a preternatural skill to discern which illusion a man craved. She thought of herself as merely delivering her part of the bargain – exchanging goods and services. To Shirley this was the price of living among intrusive men. Her first husband wanted the illusion of the helpless virgin – Shirley wanted the freedom to be away from her parents. He granted; she acceded. Two and a half years into their marriage, he committed suicide. She consoled herself that he was mentally unbalanced - plus there was his insurance. Her second husband, Jacob, wanted a strong, authoritative woman, and treated sex as if it were a cabinet project with assigned steps to be completed in strict sequence. Bierley wanted a freedom-loving colt willing to roam anywhere. Over time, however, his passion descended into possession, then a sense of entitlement, and then into an almost cold exercise of power, which, at first, mesmerized, then frightened, and recently repelled her. III. For their third anniversary, Shirley arranged to meet Jacob at the Ninnescah Restaurant in Berdan. Shirley planned this dinner for weeks, even to the point of calling Jacob to remind him. He drove to pick her up; they had an argument about which car to take and took separate cars, arriving at the restaurant within minutes of each other.
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At the table, Jacob shuffled his cloth napkin from left to right, and then said, “Are you still planning to take that camping trip?” Shirley was silent. She had discussed this multiple times. Her camping trips were her business. Whom she went out with was her business. Her dwindling interest in Jacob was her business. Jacob then brought up their marriage counseling. “We had that marriage-counseling weekend just a month ago.” She heard the eagerness in his voice. “When we checked-in that first night, I was surprised that you made reservations for us to share a room.” She remembered that first night, they had made love; she made sure their second night was even more intense. When she met his eyes, Jacob continued, “I thought we were there because of marriage problems. But you acted like we had none. Like it was our honeymoon.” During their sessions, she had told the marriage counselor, “Things are improving. And we’re getting along better.” When the counselor asked about their intimacy issues, Shirley said, “No problems there,” blushed, and added, “Ever.” She smiled as she recalled her strategy. Shirley looked at Jacob, then she looked for a waiter, and said, “Don’t. Don’t spoil this dinner. We’ve been over this before.” “It’s already spoiled. Spoiled by your camping with other men. Who are they?” He looked down at the saltshaker, caught her silence, hid his hands under the table, and joined her in searching for a waiter. They both flinched when the waiter arrived with menus, a water pitcher, and a steady patter of questions. Specials? Drinks? Appetizers? How would you like that prepared? Which vegetable? You have your choice of ... And for the gentleman? “When did it start?” Jacob asked after the waiter left. “Don’t.” “When did it start?” She had been determined not to talk about her affairs. Now she sensed an opening. “Right before you hid in the closet that night.”
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Three to four months earlier, Jacob had secreted himself in their bedroom closet. Her calendar had an underlined note – DB. In fact, her calendar had the same initials under multiple dates.
I need to tell him. Just get it over with. She started taking, and within five minutes, Jacob shot from the table, his chair hit the floor, and he abruptly walked-out. Shirley, calmer than she thought, remained seated. That wasn’t so hard . She watched as he stomped flat-footed over the snow-covered parking lot, and smiled as he scraped ice off the windshield of his truck. Thirty minutes after Jacob drove away, she gingerly walked outside. The wind burned her bare legs. Inside her Toyota, she turned on the engine and then the heater. She hurried over the slippery streets to meet Bierley at their usual spot – a little-traveled street a few blocks from the restaurant. Inside her parked car, she heard a crunching sound and then her door opened; she felt the repercussion from a slap on the roof of the car. A gloved hand clasped her left shoulder. “Dan – What are you-” He interrupted, “Why the hell did you take so long?” His voice strained, “We were supposed to be together.” “We need to talk. Can’t we just-“ He interrupted again, “Tell me why the hell you stayed in there so damn long? You start sleeping with him again?” “Dan, let’s talk.” “Of course, we’ll talk – in my car.” He pulled her out of the Toyota, shoved her into his Lincoln. Once inside, she hunched forward, then huddled silent and quivering with her thighs pressed against her chest. Cemented behind the steering wheel, Bierley demanded a justification. “Well? Tell me,” he said in a baritone whine, then hit the steering wheel. “Now,” and he hit the steering wheel again. Shirley tried to swallow. Throat too dry, she coughed, repositioned herself, kept her arms around her legs. “I can’t- I can’t be with you,” she said.
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Bierley’s eyes fixed on her exposed legs, then his finger pointed directly at her, “And, don’t doubt for one damn second, one way or another,” he spit out his last four words, “we will be together.”
Her jaw tightened, “I can’t be the other woman.” Her voice barely audible, “I won’t do it.” As if that would alleviate the situation. That evening, twenty miles from Berdan, temperature below 30, wind above 40, limestone in the winter cold, inside a grove of trees, under the fallen leaves, and beneath the upturned soil, Shirley was buried for the first time. At Shirley’s second burial, the minister droned his solemn words - repeated as if inside a cathedral. The smell of loam drifted from the upturned mound a few yards behind the casket. Russian thistles grasped the cemetery fence as a whistle of wind slapped the canvas, surrounded the open grave, then spread like a rug and circled the casket. The sun ricocheted off the whites of the men’s eyes as their pupils darted. Women in black, heads lowered, readied their white handkerchiefs. Her dark casket shone beneath the mesh canopy under which her family sat - recognized but unknown to Jacob, who stood a safe distance apart. Dan Bierley was also a safe distance apart as he leaned against his Lincoln parked on a cemetery road fifty yards from Shirley’s casket. IV. Weeks later, at five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. “Mr. Lawson, Mr. Jacob Lawson, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say ... You have... If you cannot ... Then one will be ... Do you understand?’” Nothing. “You do understand?” More declarative than interrogative. “You are under arrest for murder-in-the-first-degree of Shirley Lawson on or about the ...”
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His wife dead. Police in his house. Arrested for murder. Too much confusion. A burial. An avalanche. From that point on, Jacob heard only white noise. Inside the courtroom with its raised judge’s bench, in front of the spectators’ gallery, were long counsel tables. The lead prosecutor sat next to the jury. To the right of the prosecutor, at a separate table, sat Jacob Lawson and his court-appointed defense attorney. “Are you ready for the charges to be read?” The judge asked the assistant county attorney who nodded, but did not bother to stand. Neither Jacob, nor his court-appointed attorney was asked. The judge read from the white sheet of paper prepared by the assistant county attorney. It had taken Dan Bierley one phone call and two exchanged favors to be assigned as prosecuting attorney in the Jacob Lawson criminal trial. “As death is a part of life, so decomposition is a part of death. The autopsy revealed Shirley Lawson’s death was caused by three gunshot wounds to her head and throat, which produced massive brain injury. Her stomach held remnants of the same food served at the Ninnescah Restaurant,” said the pathologist as he began his testimony before the jury. The pathologist responded to Bierley’s questions, “When discovered, her tongue resembled a gray-brown that looked like the bottom of a dried-up, dirty leather shoe sole.” Jacob’s court-appointed attorney sat mute. When asked about the rest of Shirley’s body, he said, “Her hand had decayed into putrefied, parchment-like skin that looked as if a glove had been peeled halfway down.” Bierley asked, and the pathologist described the purple-red purge fluid that flowed from her oral and nasal passages. He paused, wiped his forehead, and continued, “The bloating from the accumulation of gas pushed Shirley’s eyes and tongue outside their cavities.” He waited again, then said, “After that her body broke open and released gas and fluids.” The defense attorney remained silent.
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The pathologist’s testimony culminated with a photograph of Shirley’s skin at the time of her discovery, accompanied by a description of the enzymes and bacteria that began to self-digest Shirley’s body. Then he said, “We know she had been dead for several days, because of the color of parts of Shirley’s neck, abdomen, shoulders, and head, when her body was discovered.” Bierley asked his final question for the pathologist: “Is it correct that, when discovered, parts of Shirley Lawson’s skin looked like the golden brown skin of a freshly roasted chicken these jurors might sit down to eat this evening?” At this point, the defense lodged its only objection; it was sustained, but not erased from the jurors’ memory. The photograph of Shirley’s roasted chicken skin was not withdrawn. Next, a waitress testified that she served the couple dinner and that Shirley sat with her skirt hiked up past mid-thigh. She also testified that while Shirley remained seated, she saw Jacob slam his palm on the table, knock over his chair, and leave the restaurant. At the conclusion of the trial, the Court guided the jury, “There is little, if any, doubt that Shirley Lawson was murdered. Three bullets were shot into her head and throat. The only question for the jury is the identity of the murderer.” V. A few years later, unable to concentrate, the prisoner drifted. His mind wandered to images of people unseen for years. His brother, now over sixty, his niece at least thirty-five. He saw old friends, imagined their children, grandchildren. He saw Shirley look at him, then disappear. He had experienced enough. Now just forget. No point. No hope. No escape. Fall asleep. Inside a metal building with closed, unmarked doors on each side, the shackled prisoner walked past gray metal racks holding the institution’s purchased food items – cans of peaches and lard, bags of beans and spaghetti, gallon bottles of ketchup and mustard. Strong hands guided him into a connected building, a smaller metal warehouse with
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cold floors. Straight ahead was an opening the width of a loading dock door. He stopped. The door descended. Hands pulled him to the right side of the closed door. His eyes widened. The guards tightened their grips. Six men wore dark blue or darker gray suits; another wore a black cassock with a Roman collar and held a Bible. No words. He raised his right foot onto the first step. He needed assistance. Left foot, then right foot. Left, right, left, right, left. He stopped. An element of irrationality was required to continue. He heard a gentle male voice: “Son, let’s go.’ A moment later, the same voice, “Can you do it by yourself?” No movement. Hands lifted him to the next step. Right, left, right, left, right foot, followed by left. Both feet now on a level surface. “Wait.” His gasps and shallow breathing were familiar to the dark suited men. One man stepped forward, opened the manila envelope, and read, “State vs. Jacob Lawson. Denial of Writ and Order of Execution.” His final appeal denied. “Last words?” None came. Jacob’s mind rushed. No more time. No place left to go. “Any last words?” Nothing. Only the sound of the trap door as it slammed, and the weight of Jacob Lawson descending whipped the rope tight.
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JOHANNES | Lorrie Hartshorn
We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt. Can I tell you how it was? The earth like a saucer under that wide, grey-gold sky; the sun never rising more than a stretched hand above the horizon? Something rolled over the ice that summer – over us – leaving behind it a mark that would never wash away. I don’t know what brought us up here. I was too young when we came to remember anything from before, and it was understood that you didn’t ask. There were only three of us: Mother with her careful grey eyes, me, and Johannes. Our little house, with its tin roof and slanted walls, stood in the middle of the icy flats that, even now, seem to stretch on forever. Once a month, there was Wilhelm, who came with groceries and admiring eyes, and took some of the money Mother kept in a tin box behind the hearth. In winter days, Mother warned us to stay close, and so we did – tethered by some invisible cord that we knew not to stretch. Summer days brought more freedom: Johannes and I would creak out on to the porch that ran around the house, spreading our fingers in front of our faces and peering through their shadows to see how much time we had left before dark. Johannes couldn’t keep his fingers the same distance apart, and generally left them tucked in his mittens, but I got to be quite good at it. More than three fingers of sun meant several hours out of the wood-smoke dark. Those precious days, I’d stride away from the house toward the horizon, the safe, resented gravity of home tugging at my back. When we were younger, I let Johannes tag along with me but, as I grew, I shook him off. Wounded but uncomplaining, he stayed by the porch, watched by the empty windows as he scraped snow into clusters of short, fleeting friends – a stalk of grass for a mouth, sticks for the arms, and holes gouged by pointed fingers for their eyes. Mother unleashed cold fury on him once for
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pilfering dried beans from the pot, so he stuck to what he could find on the ground after that. That summer was a fractious one, and tempers flared like sun on ice. Mother spent more time than ever tucked in the dark corners of the house while I, fevered with my teenage years, loved and hated everything with all the passion and no reason. Johannes padded quietly between the pair of us, bewildered by the looks and long silences, wide-eyed and needy in his worry. His fingers, when not tucked in their woolen mittens, found their way frequently to his mouth. I ask myself now whether we really had three fingers of sun left that afternoon. Memories are fickle: sometimes I see myself there on the porch, fingers spread wide, fat wedges of pale gold light between them. But sometimes, when I wake in the dark quiet, I see only lines of vivid red between fingers that were barely apart. I walked away from him that day, away from the house, as I’d done so many times before. I left him there in the sparse sharp grass, and I walked out toward the darkening horizon, wishing with everything in me that I could run to meet it and half convinced I was going to try. The last view I had of the house was of the windows reflecting the flat, endless plains like a mirror, and of Johannnes, stout in his blue coat, scraping together another friend. * * * There is nowhere Johannes could have gone. I don’t tell you that in exasperation, or to prove some kind of point; it’s simply the truth. The land out here is as flat as gets – there are no cracks or crevices he could fall into, no hidden rivers under the ice. No visitors came and went, and there were no tyre marks or foot prints, as though anyone could approach without us knowing, anyway. Nobody came about Johannes – there was no one to come, and it was for the best. What could we have told them?
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Mother retreated further into herself, knowing as well as I did that there was nowhere Johannes could have gone. In the winter that followed, I caught her watching me sometimes, pale eyes glinting in the lamplight. She never said it, and neither did I. When the cancer took her two years later, she went quietly and I sat downstairs by the fire as her breathing rattled then failed. Wilhelm took her away when he came two weeks later, and that was that. Now, when I stand on that rickety porch, I’m outside myself somehow. I see Johannes and me, like dark brush strokes on a pale canvas that would’ve been better off without such bold marks. We stretch down and away, shadows against the lilac snow, staring out to where we’ll never go – where the frozen Earth touches sky. I’m in front of him, longer, thinner than he is; his bundled shape pauses in the short grass, wondering whether to follow or let me go. And when I lie in bed at night, feeling the weight of the heavens pressing down on the roof, I know that this life, this world, is just too big to hide anything forever. I wait for the crunch of footsteps on the icy snow – for another dark stroke to be made on this pale canvas. Maybe the snow isn’t as white as it looks. Who knows? I’m just telling you how it was. How it is. 39
OSTINATO | Natalie Gorbina (A Jazz Étude)
Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus. Duke Ellington – Prelude to a Kiss Are you afraid of flying? There were no warnings, no “Dear passengers, please keep your seatbelts fastened. We are about to enter a turbulence zone”, as a balloon inflated in my chest and my body suddenly became incredibly light. It would probably be useless anyway, no seatbelts could be strong enough to stop the balloon from bursting and my ears from being stuffed up, to stop this fall – the first person to have a desire to claim the sky for himself must have felt like this – faster and faster into the abyss of her eyes. Only a dissonant chord, establishing the tonality for the following piece of – D ninth. G augmented seventh. C dominant seventh flat ninth. If you hear a song in
blue, like a flower crying for the dew... – music. A red twinkling spot disappears in the obscurity of the night and carries my dreams away – to the South, perhaps. That’s where all the dreams fly away safely hidden under the wings of ladybirds, right? And that’s where I would fly away if I weren’t here, under this rain, thinking about the number of bars in this, in our – D minor eleventh. G augmented seventh. ... that was my heart serenading you. – music. Thirty-two bars. Calando. That night, everything was too real and not real enough. That night, lying on the grass, she was kneading the clouds with her fingers, like the plasticine, shaping them into hearts – hearts for hopeless lovers, she said, hearts for... us? That night, being its slave and its conqueror, I thought I deciphered one more chord in the score of the universe, but even the silent oaks and the flickering fireflies and the smiling cleflike moon understood more than I did, because when she caught me
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staring and whispered “hi”, it sounded a lot like something else, and because when I tried to find the right answer, I couldn’t. I was just a beginner, learning to understand – D minor ninth. G augmented seventh flat ninth. My prelude to a kiss. – music. Con amore. Like the insane collectors of vinyl records, I collected different variations of this syllable, repeated them in my head, tried to discern their mode and tonality. Because later that night, when we were drifting off to sleep, she caught me staring, again, and whispered “hi”, again, a persistently repeating note, a riff, and it sounded a lot like something else, again. But I was just a beginner and I had a long way ahead of me towards improvisation, that is why when she asked me to listen, I didn’t hear anything. It was the next morning, she was standing stock-still in the middle of the path, droplets of the daybreak rain sparkling in her hair and her smile being more unfathomable in the rays of the reborn sun than ever before – a delicate flower welcoming the blissful dawn and possessing the knowledge of something beyond this palpable reality. Listen, she said. Do you hear it? Twigs cracking under our feet, songbirds twittering in the foliage above our heads, a steamboat murmuring in the distance?.. But she meant something else, her eyes told me, and I strained my ears, desperately trying to hear what she heard, to understand what she understood, but miserably, embarrassingly, disappointedly – failing. Was she disappointed in me as her pupil? Or was she, asked the egoistic voice in my head, tired of me as an obstacle standing in her way of understanding the meaning of the universe? But when her lips mouthed “oh, ladybird”, it sounded a lot like a promise, a vow and the fall of a fragile petal. And now (she could be so proud of me) I hear it everywhere around me – in the rustle of the bemolle-shaped leaves, in the crescendo of the wind, in the staccato of the rain – E minor seventh. A thirteenth. D ninth. C seventh flat ninth. If you hear a song that
grows from my tender sentimental woes... – music of the universe. ...that was my heart trying to compose a prelude to a kiss. And I close my eyes, welcoming the raindrops, letting them write their tune. Al coda. All
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the nights merge together into one endless night, a perpetual winking of the stars and murmur of the trees and her warm breath, and my thoughts are a disorganized clew, and the more I try to disentangle them, the more entangled they become. When I touch them, they turn into something fickle and transpicuous, and the water is everywhere, it penetrates my brain, my heart, my soul, bringing coldness and despair. Is it possible to die from having cold thoughts? Perhaps, I shall plunge into warm nothingness and watch, like daguerreotypes, the memories of the days that never were. I try to find the clues, the footholds, which would prove her existence, but miserably, embarrassingly, disappointedly – fail, again. I had no idea how old she was – she could be twenty, or thirty, or hundred of years old, and whatever she told me, I would believe her, like I believed when she said that she had witnessed the construction of Notre-Dame de Paris and the execution of Marie Antoinette. I knew almost nothing about her and, yet, I knew so much more. I knew that she would chase the sunrise across the whole world, so the sun would be perpetually rising, or fly away with that ladybird, because they are good omens, she said. If you make a wish with a ladybird in your palm and let it go, it will show you where your happiness will come from. E major seventh. C sharp minor seventh. Though it's just a simple melody with
nothing fancy, nothing much... So does it matter whether she was real or not? ...you could turn it to a symphony... And what is real in this reality? Where are its limits? Memories are always a combination of facts and imagination. It’s a zero plus something or a zero minus something, but it’s always a zero, tending to fill the emptiness, but incapable of doing so. I didn’t care what her age, weight, or her shoe size were, why would I care, all of a sudden, if she was real or not? It's nothing but another unnecessary detail, which has been preventing me from understanding her, understanding – B seventh. E seventh. A seventh flat ninth. ...a Schubert tune with a Gershwin touch. – music. I stop in the middle of the bridge right above the rails and pick up a petal, a fraction of my soul, and let it fall down, down, down, and it’s not swirling and spinning,
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but falling linearly under the incessant raindrops. A cappricio. What is death – a bass clef instead of a question mark. It’s a deep blue canvas full of holes, through which trickle down the tears of rejected lovers. I shall make a note to buy the strongest threads that I can find. But can I find threads strong enough to patch up the holes in my soul? E flat ninth. D ninth. G augmented seventh. Oh, how my love song gently cries for
the tenderness within your eyes... “So, did you?” “Did I what?” “Make a wish. If I’m your ladybird.” “No.” “Why not?” “Because I don’t want you to fly away.” I open my eyes and see nothing but blue shadows dancing in the sky. Drip-drop, drip-drop, the rain, tapping the rhythm of – D minor eleventh. G seventh. My love is a prelude that never dies... – jazz. Tomorrow, I shall search for you in the faceless crowd, again, and I shall recognize you in that woman’s swirl of hair and in that young boy’s smile. And when the spring comes, I shall pick up the flowers and send them pressed between the sheets of my endless letters to you. Violets, preserved between Heine’s verses, because his verses have the fragrance of violets, you told me once. They will return in a month, or perhaps, if I am lucky, in two months, but this time will be enough to cherish, just for a short while, an egoistic thought that you will – D minor seventh. G augmented seventh flat ninth. ...a prelude to a kiss. – answer me. Coda. Espirando. Are you afraid of flying? It sounded a lot like something else, a lot like: Are you afraid of dying? De capo al coda.
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MUSIC | Kristy Kerruish “ Karl Heindl is a gentleman without distinction,” had been Annabella's scathing assessment of the young man. It did not seem conceivable that Karl Heindl, a social climber with nothing to recommend him but a few pretty manners and a handsome face, should be the recipient of so great a gift. Karl Heidl would not be receiving any more invitations from her, that much was assured and he would have to continue his sordid foraging for a rich wife elsewhere. “He doesn't even play the pianoforte, ” Annabella said irascibly, plying her fan in the warm air. He did not. In point of fact Karl Heindl played no instrument, he had very little ear for music, avoided opera, and could not sustain a conversation on composers for more than two minutes without drying up entirely and looking to the floor - as if inspiration was to be found in the parquetry. Annabella maintained that to make a man acceptable, to make him eligible for the round of social gatherings, dinner parties, dances and petites
soupers , a man should know how to talk about music. It was therefore undoubtedly a deliberate insult on Frau Lendorfer's part that such an unworthy creature had been chosen by her to be bequeathed the famous Steinway in the latest draft of her will. Frau Lendorfer was dying in a rather slow and deliberate manner. She had been dying for years but now her considerable age made a prolonged exit unsustainable. She had summoned Karl Heindl to her home and made the invitation very public. Herr Heindl was not related to Frau Lendorfer and his acquaintance with her was slight - the invitation and proposed bequest had come as some considerable surprise. He had donned his best coat for the occasion and carried his grandfather’s ebony cane, all in all he cut a fine figure as he walked briskly down Schwindgasse stepping through the rain-washed autumn leaves. For a man of ambition, Karl Heindl had long since realised that society and acceptability within it was like smoke: opaque, intoxicating and transient. To be taken up by an elderly lady such as Frau Lendorfer, to be acknowledged her favourite and receive her gifts, was rich reward indeed for his hours spent in unprofitable flirtations. 44
Frau Lendorfer watched him approaching from her window and laid her long lace-covered fingers carefully across the piano keys – the notes hesitated and died the very moment the pommel of Karl Heidl's cane struck the front door. As instructed, the bobbing maid brought the young man through to the music room where he bowed to Frau Lendorfer and stood attentively before her. “Young man, we have met on several occasions – do you recall?” “We met at your niece's garden party last summer I believe.” “We spoke of the weather and gardens, we spoke of topiary.” “Frau Lendorfer. I was honoured to receive your invitation today.” “You know the reason I suppose, that I called you here?” “I do. At least I believe I do...” “Yes, I intend to leave the Steinway to you in my will. I wish you to give it a home, to care for it. To keep it tuned and polished...” “I am honoured...” “Honoured,” the old woman laughed to herself as if savouring the word. Karl Heindl, for all his fine rig, was not rich. Birth had not afforded him a prosperous upbringing although it had favoured him with a handsome enough face and elegant figure, which had won him a little status in society. Not all young men were so fortunate as to possess the gift of a fine face and all the favours it could bring. Such a public and generous bequest as hers would make the young man a much sought after member of her social circle. He would find himself gossiped of in society balls, young women - who had not previously given him a nod - would now fall in love with him across candelabra and canapés. “You are perhaps wondering why I have chosen you above and beyond all my relatives, why I am gifting you the Steinway.” “I did wonder.” Karl let his eyes stray to the Steinway. The grand piano sat in the window to the side of the music room - where it had been since the acclaimed musician's death. For many years Frau Lendorfer's husband had been the most celebrated musician in Vienna and his piano was regarded as the finest of its kind, its
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value because of it - unparalleled. While her husband lived it had occupied a corner of the grand ballroom at the rear of the house. A room which had sadly fallen into disrepair since the music faded and her husband was laid in his cold grave “There was a time young man when the world was beautiful, when I was beautiful.” The old woman said making her way slowly towards the instrument. “I would dance as my husband played. I would sing to his music, my hand resting upon his shoulder. I was foolish enough to believe that I would always be beautiful and that his music would never fade. I look in the mirror now and hardly know the withered face that looks back at me. My reflection is a stranger. I had supposed once that all things endure – happiness and youth. But seasons change, we grow old, the leaves fall from the bough and we are left with the ghosts of our past summers without ever possessing them.” She paused and ran her thin fingertips over the lustrous wood of the piano. “Since my husband's death, a score of years ago, I have promised them all the Steinway at some point in time: my niece Annabel most recently, my nephew before her, my god-daughter before him. For the promise they gave me everything, entertained me, flattered me, sat and pumped the ivory keys with the belief that the sound pleased me. It never pleased me for it was never my husband playing, no one plays as well as he did. For the promise they saw only their gain, the value of the instrument and what they might buy for the money on selling it: such facile avaricious fools.” She paused and dragging her shawl around her shoulders, took a chair and indicated for the young man to do likewise. “They failed the test?” Karl said sitting down, looking towards the windows where the amber sun played outside the veiled casements. He wondered why she had shut it out but then she had no need of it any more. He turned back to her. “They never heard your husband's music,” Karl offered. The old woman looked attentively at him searching his bright eyes for mockery or laughter, finding nothing but sincerity. “Do you young man?”
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“I hear the echoes. Your husband's genius was unsurpassed. He filled this house with happiness and laughter – with music. No - the other's did not hear him and so you chose me – the most unworthy recipient of your generosity...” “You are prefect.” “I am your revenge.” Karl rose and paced the room for several moments his head bowed in thought. Everything he had wished for was tangible. For a moment he could glimpse his future - how it might be. He wondered that he had ever aspired to this gossamer world. His youth, his beauty would fade - the man that looked back at him from the mirror would one day be a stranger; having lived his life in the half-light of petty values like the old woman before him. The Steinway should not dictate his life - youth and happiness should. “Frau Lendorfer - why should you suppose I would want your ghosts? That is what you are promising me I believe - your past - the phantoms of your youth and withered love. Do you fancy that you will strike a blow at those shallow doting relatives who have for all these years danced to your every whim? Do you hope that as they stand about your grave they will weep, not for the loss of you but for the loss of the Steinway?” The old woman merely acknowledged his words with a dry smile. “Frau Lendorfer – your actions prove only one thing. That you might value this instrument far less than your memories. To let it fall into such unworthy hands as mine – it is no less than sacrilege. How can I possibly own a Steinway? I take no joy in music.” “Dear me young man,” the old lady said with surprise. “You suppose that someone must be worthy of the instrument to possess it. It is just a thing for making music. It only happens to be worth a great deal.” “I do hear the music but not your late husband's Frau Lendorfer. I hear yours.” “Dear boy. I cannot play the Steinway.” “Since your husband's death you have played this piano Frau Lendorfer and your music has been sweet indeed and those fools have danced. For years you have accrued the benefits that the mere promise of your piano could bring. You have sat beside their hearths in winter on the promise of it, you have dined from their tables on
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the promise of it. Now you reap the satisfaction of denying it to those who once loved you most. No, I don't really believe they were ever more worthy of it than I but I do believe that you were never worthy of it either. Your husband played this piano to make the world more beautiful, he filled this room with music and people laughed and swept across the floor under the teeming light of a thousand candles. You have defiled it.” “Do you presume I will give it to you now?” the old lady cried. “Sooner or later you would have withdrawn the gift but only after I had danced a while to the tune you played, just as those others did before me, fawning and grovelling at your every whim... I will not dance for you.” “Such insolence. Leave,” the old lady commanded flailing her weak arm in the air and pressing her handkerchief against her withered lips. As Karl Heindl walked from her door that day the thought of his words chilled him. The autumn sky was a clear crisp blue and the weak sunshine felt warm and rich on his face. He had looked upon the Steinway and, for an instant, believed it within his grasp and felt avarice and corruption burn in his eyes. He could so easily become such a monster as Frau Lendorfer and have danced. Once the Steinway had been beautiful but, unlike Frau Lendhorfer, he truly believed that it could be beautiful again – such was the gift of its music. One day someone who played as finely as her husband would sit before it and see it for its music alone, its real music and the profits they reaped from it would be the greatest by far. That was his gift – he understood true wealth - and his reward was freedom.
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The Artists
Thomas Elson
Thomas Elson lives in Northern California. His short stories have appeared in several literary journals including the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Avalon Literary Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and Perceptions Magazine. Elizabeth Gibson
Elizabeth Gibson studies at the University of Manchester. Her work has appeared in a number of journals. She loves cats, turtles and stargazing, blogs at http://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.co.uk and tweets at @Grizonne. Paula Gibson
Born in the UK, Paula Rae Gibson is a self taught photographer. She has two books published, Diary of a Love Addict by Kehrer, and Rae by Eyemazing Editions,working on hand made prints in the darkroom with old second hand cameras. She wishes to evoke emotion more than fact.to make people feel rather than see.these images are part of a series that explore memory. Natalie Gorbina
Natalie Gorbina is currently working on her PhD dissertation at TU Dortmund (Germany). She enjoys playing with words. From time to time, they crystallize into stories. Email:
[email protected] Ivan Grebenshikov
Ivan Grebenshikov is a Russian-Swiss artist based in Switzerland. He is now actively exhibiting in Switzerland, Italy, Russia and USA. His current project is focused on receptive art therapy. 49
Lorrie Hartshorn
Lorrie Hartshorn has had short fiction published in a number of journals, including Compose, Severine, 1000 Words and Anthem. She edits Halo Literary Magazine, a journal of fiction by women. Katie Jones
Kate Jones is passionate about flash, and has published in SickLit, Spelk, and Café Aphra. She placed first in the quarterly competition Flash500, and also writes features and reviews. Kristy Kerruish
Kristy Kerruish was born in Edinburgh and currently lives in The Netherlands. She writes fiction and poetry and has recently had work placed in Dream Catcher, Spelk Fiction, Winamop, Dawntreader and Gold Dust, among others. Robert S. King
Robert S. King edits Kentucky Review and serves on the board of FutureCycle Press. Glass Lyre Press (2014) published his latest poetry book,Developing a Photograph of God. Courtney LeBlanc
Courtney LeBlanc’s chapbook, All in the Family, is forthcoming from Bottlecap Press. Read her blog at www.wordperv.com , follow her on twitter: www.twitter.com/wordperv , or find her on facebook: www.facebook.com/poetry.CourtneyLeBlanc . Aaron Lembo
Aaron Lembo has recently completed his undergraduate degree in Creative Writing and English Literature at Bath Spa University and his illustrated poetry pamphlet, Ekphrasis Revised, was published in 2015. 50
L. L. Madrid
L.L. Madrid lives in Tucson where she can smell the rain before it falls. She resides with her four-year-old daughter and an antisocial cat. @LLMadridWriter Laura Manardo
Laura Manardo is a recent graduate from Kalamazoo College. She currently does marketing for a medical company and you can find her on weekends writing poems about marine life. Jay Merill
Jay is a 2017 Pushcart Prize Nominee with recent flash fiction in 3AM Magazine, Hobart and tNY, two story collections (Salt), and is Writer in Residence at Women in Publishing. Safia Moore
A serial competition shortlistee, Safia has been published in various journals. In 2015 she won the Bath Short Story Award and has a flash in the 2016 NFFD anthology. Juanita Rey
Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in the USA for five years. She has worked many jobs while studying to improve her English. She has been writing for a number of years but only recently have begun to take it seriously. Her work has been accepted by Pennsylvania English, Harbinger Asylum, Yellow Chair Review and Madcap Poets. Alina Stefanescu
Alina Stefanescu is a poet who is currently working on a short fiction collection. More online at www.alinastefanescu.com 51
Christina Taylor
Christina Taylor lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her work has appeared in print and online in Firewords, Paragraph Planet, Storyboard, 101 Words and Adhoc Fiction. Follow her on Twitter @Chrissie72. M. Drew Williams
M. Drew Williams will begin his MFA candidacy at Creighton University this coming Fall. His chapbook, No Ghost Goes Unnoticed, was released by Leaf Garden Press. Find him here: m-d-williams.tumblr.com Cody Wilson
Cody Wilson lives in Arizona. He is an MFA candidate at Queens University of Charlotte and is a poetry reader for Qu. He has poems recently published in Kentucky Review.
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