Hello?

by Eddy James

Slanted ceilings dripping with spiderwebs.
The walls shudder, like a dead man’s last breath.
Floorboards lie rotting beneath careful feet.
Halls wander. They have no end. Forever.
Wrought-iron bedframes sit cold in the dark.
Bathroom stalls with no one inside. Empty.
Dust motes hang, suffocating on the air.
Anemic sodium streetlights outside.
There is a dying heartbeat here. Listen.
One small, single word, remains unanswered.

Lady at the Kitchen Table

By Emily Grodin

 

Late in the afternoon

When the sun peaks through and almost splits the room in half.

She emerges.

Floats through the room like a weightless balloon caught on a soft current of air from an open

window.

Some may call her frail,

Wrinkled lines and thinning skin,

But in her bright eyes there is a strength.

Hope and confidence still upright in a sea of blue waves eager to turn this vessel over,

She will not be moved.

The room fills with sweetness,

Roses freshly trimmed.

Warm cookies dipped in milk.

Her soft hands embrace a cup of tea,

Warmth engulfs her face as she lowers to sip.

All of long memories will fade with the steam,

A puzzled look settles in.

What’s been home for forty years now unfamiliar,

Glances around the room become as rapid as her beating heart.

She moans a desperate sigh,

Sadness pouring like the pitcher overturned splashes milk onto the floor.

Her brightness has faded just enough,

Each time a little more.

She awakens but was never asleep,

Lifts from her wooden chair her thin frame and stands tall.

Perhaps another cup of tea.

The Pills that Rattle

by Alex Raske

 

The pills that rattle, they make my rain so safe

For angels, ghosts, and demons, reason’s fake

My brain’s all prattle, my will’s so thin, a wraith

For he whispers, that dull, infernal snake

 

Insanity unlocked, Solomon’s Key

Dantalion knocked, Gabe opened the door

Oh God, oh please, oh why did you save me?

I’m left so scared, on far, forsaken shores

 

Oh sleep, that elusive, ephemeral shade

Flees me like a nymph, I a foolish Zeus

On this my peace, my demons make their raid

My exhaustion chokes me, an old worn noose

 

God, this darkness grows, an old, breathing lack

I feel so stretched, I’m borne upon the rack

 

My Home

by Lauren Kane

 

Loud laughs echo across the hardwood floor

A warm blue room that had once been my own

The gorgeous red leaves that I’ve seen before

That is what awaits me when I get home

 

My sister just loves her bright hazel eyes

It matches my mother’s who she adores

But contrasts to my dad’s, blue as the sky

That are just like mine, reflecting vigour

 

But despite the look that makes up that place

More gorgeous than what can be told in words

The thing I miss most, that look on my face

When I’m in my favorite part of the world

 

Four of a kind, we just fit like a glove

Just joy emits with the people I love

Free Form

by Victoria Gioia

There is something freeing about remembering my past self.

My evolved self remembers my dead self with fondness and nostalgia.

I love her. Her attention to detail. Her artistic touch, the way she crafted a scene.

The way she warped the world around her, plucking strings and pulling ropes

to set the stage for her own upbringing.

The way her mind worked like a movie camera. The way she knew, from the beginning,

how she wanted to look back on something as if it were shot on an old cinema reel and recall

lush, soft velvets and the color and scent of pine in her mind’s eyes and ears and nose.

How culture and subculture were reworked and rewrapped and renewed in her hippocampus,

how she saw the 1980s through a movie screen and the 1940s through the radio and thought,

“This takes me back.”

There is something freeing about knowing that her goals were recognized.

Her hard work payed off, her effort was not betrayed.

By the time I see the Golden Gate again, I will have made all her dreams come true.

 

 

Backstabber

by Evan Jimenez

You see that little runt

Cowering behind the law

I intend to make him bleed

I want to carve into his stomach

I crave his screams of agony

Won’t you please hear me out

Isn’t this what we both desire

To rid ourselves of a certain tiny snitch

Who’d rat us out If he didn’t fear us

You know what happens

To fugitives like us