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2 Copyright 2023 The Parliament Literary Journal, ISSN 2767-2158 (print); ISSN 2767-2166 (online) is published quarterly. All correspondence should be sent via email to parliamentlit@gmail.com. All rights are reserved by the arsts and authors. All works in the journal are conal. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imaginaon or are used cously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is enrely coincidental. The Parliament Literary Journal and logo design are registered trademarks. Submissions are accepted for our themed issues and contests via Submiable; details on our submission requirements can be found at our website. www.parliamentlit.com

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 4/5 Nikki Gonzalez 6/7/8/9/10/11 Shannon Frost Greenstein 12 Humera Alisammond 13 Bri Narick 14/15/16 Michael Brockley 17 Janis Butler Holm 18/19/20 Bruce McRae 21 Unknown 22/23/24/25 Stephen Kingsnorth 26 Christopher t. Dabrowski 27 Diego Gonzalez 28/29 Bob King 30/31/32/33/34 Ellis Jamieson 35 Diego Gonzalez 36/37 Jeremy Mullen 38/39 C. Graham Campbell 40/41/42 Doug van Hooser 43 Diego Gonzalez 44/45/46 Fred Zirm 47 Unknown 48/49 Alan Bern 50/52 Jason R. Montgomery 53 Salma Lentini 54/55 Nicholas Barnes 56/57 Kevin Vivers 58/59/60 Liz Lydic 61 Hennesys Martinez 62/63 Edward Miller 64/65 Carol Lee Saoti-Hughes 66 Bill Baynes

4 “You are no more significant or enduring than a lizard or a potato.” An issue on the theme of mortality was inevitable. Much of my days, for two semesters worth of the year, are steeped in reflecting on and lecturing about my own and others’ mortality. You see, I have the privilege of teaching the course “Psychology of Death & Dying” at a local college. Though it’s only a few months of time that we gather, it’s a time of intense scientific, philosophical, emotional, and personal reflection. My students and I put it on the table. We put it ALL on the table. Our beliefs, Our fears. Our very (very!) personal experiences. I tell my students on the first day we gather that, to get the most of the class, they have to trust me. And they have to trust each other, as well. It’s a huge ask, of course, one that the Math Department or Physics classes (I’d imagine) don’t include as a caveat on their syllabus. But … BUT!... perhaps the English classes do? Particularly the creative writing ones. Because, I was thinking, doesn’t sharing your writing require so much of the same? Vulnerability. Trust. Arguments over differences of styles / beliefs? But that willingness to put it all out there reaps the greatest benefits. The learning comes from the sharing. Forgive me. I’m meandering here with my thoughts. This happens when I turn philosophical about the nature of life and its finiteness. Let me ground myself a bit here, placing myself firmly in front of my classroom . . . If you were in my class, the first assignment you would receive is called “The Personification of Death”. The task is this (based on the work of noted thanatologist Robert Kastenbaum): “Imagine. You are sitting in your living room, simply relaxing, when Death walks in the door. Death, that is, as a personified form. What does Death in this bodied form look like? Reflect on it. Picture every detail. And then? Then DRAW it.” (Take a pause here and think of yours? Before reading any further, close your eyes and imagine it yourself. Death approaching you as a personified form. Maybe draw it and send it to me?) It seems silly, doesn’t it? Starting off a semester with sketching and coloring. Childish, even. And yet, see the variety of responses that come in -- male or female? young or old? scary or peaceful? -- and, look even deeper, still. See how those personifications reflect our own emotions about death. Scattered throughout the pages here, enjoy some of the actual returns from my students over a decade’s span. And now I’ll direct your attention back to the quote at the top of this letter. These hard-hitting, 1

5 truthful words (that our ego works overtime to protect us from) were formulated by the most beautiful mind in all of psychology, Terror Management Theory founder, Sheldon Solomon. Consider: we are, in fact, no better off than a lizard or a potato, in that we will come to the same ends as both. We will, just like them, die. The difference, however, is that we are AWARE of it. We, with that extra mass of cerebral cortex that evolved over our limbic system, know and can reflect on the understanding that this -- all of this around us -- will come to end. Just as we will, as well. Now, I can geek out for pages and pages (and pages!) about Terror Management Theory and the implications of all of this AWARENESS of ours, but let me bring it back full circle to what I tell my class: Put it on the table! Think about these things. TALK about these things with others. Shut down the taboos that surround the topics of death and dying and share openly your beliefs, your emotions, your experiences. Make conscious the reality of death and, rather than let it defeat you, let it INVIGORATE you, let it DRIVE you. Just as the writers and artists of the following pages have done. It’s my hope that reading this special issue will not just be enjoyable -- as you experience other literary and art works -- but that it will encourage you to become aware of the thoughts in your own mind and let them out -- be it through conversation or on your own pages. It’s important. I promise. I’m hitting you hard right off the bat with Shannon Frost Greenstein, a most extraordinary role model for taking the ache of loss and creating from it, even building from it. Stephen Kingsnorth, a writer whom I feel, issue after issue, astounded and humbled to be privileged to publish, wrote a poem of just seven lines for this one that stopped me completely for days. I’m not even kidding. It’s sitting with me, a silent but heavy companion as I write this even now. And truth be told, each of the works selected for these pages were the ones that instinctively make me hold my heart as I read them. Or made me vocalize something -- a deep, deep sigh or a “holy hell!” reaction. My hand went to my chest at the very first line of Ellis Jamieson’s story and it stayed there long after -- maybe to make sure it was still beating after I had held my breath reading. Fred Zirm elicited a “HA!” so loud the people on an adjacent park bench smiled along. Bill Baynes closes these pages because he conjured for me someone I loved dearly and isn’t it nice to go out with the ones you love dearly? Thank you to all who contributed. Thank you to you for journeying with us through these pages. Nikki Gonzalez

6 To the Med Student Whose Anatomy-Class Cadaver is My Best Friend Her mother called and said she was dead after 38 years and a stomach full of whiskey and pills. Do you know any funeral homes in the city? she asked. I don’t know her life up there. Twenty years of memories flowing through my hippocampus the journey from who I was to whom I might someday be always with her by my side. That’s because you never understood her I want to say. That’s because she never fit in. Too smart for her own good, cowed by the weight of depression and angst, an “other” in every sense of the word, her father was the one who made the correct decision. We’re donating her body to science her mother says, another phone call emerging from the sea of grief. We think that’s what she would have wanted. She would have. ###

7 To the med student whose anatomy-class cadaver is my best friend: She didn’t like pizza. She always shared her weed. She had a work ethic like none other. She loved fiercely and without judgement. She was an artist. To the med student whose anatomy-class cadaver is my best friend: She always took care of me when I was drunk. She stayed with me when I was lost in darkness. She held my hand each time I chose to modify my body. She came to my baby shower even with a sprained ankle and introduced me to all my favorite art. To the med student whose anatomy-class cadaver is my best friend: We would spend hours, evenings, entire seasons driving in her car, windows down, cigarette smoke winding sinuously into the dark of the summer nights, music flowing and gossip bubbling and dreams being birthed, hopes for the future hesitantly spoken aloud without fear of mockery pining over boys, arguing over boys, crying over boys, always returning to the sanctity of our friendship for comfort. To the med student whose anatomy-class cadaver is my best friend: Please see her tattoos. Please see her journey. Please see her heart and her struggles and her victories and her worth. Because she might be your anatomy-class cadaver but once, she was my best friend. Shannon Frost Greenstein

8 Your Requiem is on My Playlist You’d think I’d think you’d think I would think about you less as time passes, but I know you would know I don’t know what else to do. Your requiem is on my playlist, and sometimes, it’s almost like you’re still here. You’d think the vice grip of grief would eventually loosen, would eventually fall away like the links of a chain and usher in the sweet relief of healing, and this is partially true; but the flashes of memory that strike my hippocampus like lightning and render me mute in the moment never do lessen, because you never do avoid the searing blade of recollection; you never do forget. Your requiem is on my playlist, and sometimes, I have to skip to the next track. You’d think a cigarette wouldn’t find me fighting tears after two glasses of wine with a heart full of regret that I never called you back that night whenever I hear a melody that reminds me of the psychotropic-fueled shenanigans of our early-twenties, but it usually does. Then the tears usually win that fight. Your requiem is on my playlist, and sometimes, I can actually sing along. You’d think I’d obsess about your last moments in this galaxy – the echoing emptiness of your lonely apartment; the stench of alcohol; the darkness of your depression, still looming like a Sword of Damocles; even the bewildered panic of your fucking dog as you lay there silently and failed to respond – and, yes, you’d be right about that. Your requiem is on my playlist, and sometimes, I just replay it over and over again. You’d think I would use your death as a misguided source of empowerment, a promise to seize each day to the fullest because of all the days you will miss, my life as your legacy because you’re no longer alive to live a legacy of your own; but the truth is, I’m still mired in the mental illness over which we will no longer bond, the chaotic noise that fueled the psychotropic-fueled shenanigans of our early-twenties, the life sentence to which you eventually succumbed. Your requiem is on my playlist, and sometimes, I think you’d hate that. Shannon Frost Greenstein

9 You’d think I’d get a new best friend, but – as I think back to young adulthood, to college, to high school, to my thirties, to my twenties, to my teens with you always by my side; as I recall Anais Nin and Piet Mondrian and scenes from the campy horror movies which we first discovered together, sense memories which immediately teleport me back to your basement and your dorm room and your beat-up car; as I imagine how we could have been best friends in our eighties, quirky and cranky, still joined at the hip, a lifetime of communal experiences and shared delight in the rearview mirror behind us – well, I’m not even sure I want one at all. ‘At Your Funeral’ by Saves the Day is such a pretentious title…no one should be using the word ‘requiem’ after the 17th century. – Lindsey M., Oct. 1983 – Aug. 2021 Shannon Frost Greenstein

10 Shooting Stars Lose Their Meaning When You’re Dead I wanted to hate her, because she was thinner than me. But cloistered away behind the locked doors of the eating disorders facility, it is nonetheless the natural order of things to bond in the face of trauma. We became friends because of the torment we shared. Two ballerinas with fucked-up families growing up on either side of the Mason-Dixon, crushed under pressure and internalizing the mantra that less will never not be more, is it any wonder Anorexia would haunt us both long after we put the pointe shoes away? She was still sick when she left the clinic. The insidious methods of for-profit healthcare denied her further insurance coverage, and she returned to her Southern university to obtain an MRS degree with barely a dent made to her eating disorder. All she wanted was a baby. She married a good Christian boy and kept losing weight; she punished her body even as she begged it to conceive. But Anorexia is self-loathing made incarnate Shannon Frost Greenstein

11 and it forbid her the nutrition to grow a little one of her own. I wanted her to have a child with every fiber of my being. She once posted on Instagram about her fertility and her despair; she and her husband wanted only for God to show them their efforts were not in vain. Then they saw a shooting star, and believed it to be a message. She knew she’d get pregnant, if she just kept trying. These days, however, I’ve come to understand that what my friend and her husband interpreted as a divine sign was really just a meteor. Because shooting stars lose their meaning when you’re dead. In Memory of Sarah S.: April 1993 – March 2021 Shannon Frost Greenstein Shannon Frost Greenstein (she/her) resides in Philadelphia with her children and soulmate. She is the author of “These Are a Few of My Least Favorite Things”, a full-length book of poetry available from Really Serious Literature, and “Pray for Us Sinners,” a short story collection with Alien Buddha Press. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. Follow Shannon at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre.

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13 Eternal Internal Cradles Do you think she would hate us for what we’ve done? I didn't mean to hurt her I just wanted to fix us Maybe we didn't need fixing She doesn't need fixing I do - My inner child hates me Bri Narick (she/her) is a 2023 high school distinction graduate from Bellevue West high school, who plans on attending Hastings Private College on a Reeves scholarship, to double major in English literature and English Language. She was her high school’s graduation speaker, is third in the Nebraska state for Forensics Poetry, and has earned the NCPA Academic All-State Award in speech. In her free time, Bri writes poetry, reads a lot of Stephen King, and enjoys making those around her laugh. She hopes, and is working, to become an English professor, with numerous publishings in both essay collections and poetry.

14 Aloha Shirt Finds Mein Kampf Among the Books in his Library For J. L. K. Aloha Shirt Man discovers the book at the bottom of a stack of banker’s boxes. A paperback copy of the blueprint for genocide. In his haphazardly-shelved library, he stares at the black cover with the infamous red title. The tome crammed in among Atlas Shrugged and Wealth of Nations. One of the assigned readings from when he took summer school in 1970. The class boycotted the book. Afterward, he tossed it onto a pile of unread volumes with a few Ayn Rands and, still later, the Rush Limbaugh a bookstore clerk gave him as a Secret Santa gift. Who will ferret through these boxes after his passing? How will the stories from this inventory enlighten his survivors about his lifelong loneliness and his eccentric and unkempt ways? About the stain of malevolence among his last effects? Aloha struggles to his feet from where he’d knelt to thumb through the unmarked pages. As a young poet, he translated Bertolt Brecht’s Die Bücherverbrennung for a workshop at IU. The Burning of the Books. And ended the draft by repeating Burn me. Burn me. Now one of his friends seeks out history’s most reviled texts to redact into found poems. While a woman he once dated, the first one to ask him not to touch her, threw her son’s Of Mice and Men into the trash because she believed tart, hell, and crazy bastard were blasphemies. In the world he inhabits, no one will know the choice he makes. Still, Aloha hefts the encyclopedia of mankind’s screeds and hatreds, as he weighs what to do before his final loneliness begins.

15 A pickup truck travels on four rubber wheels and has an uncovered bed in the back, instead of a bench seat that is sheltered from rain and snow. Snow falls from the sky when the temperature dips below freezing. The truck’s bed hauls beer kegs and pit bulls and has two flags, once flown by an army that lost a war a hundred-and-fifty years ago, attached to the tailgate. The driver taxis his wife to and from her cashier job at Walmart. He has burnished a reputation as an expert in airborne viruses, military science, and voodoo economics. People worship plastic bags filled with pecan sandies and bottles of ginkgo biloba at the Church of Walmart. Experts speak louder than their posse of flunkies who wear red hats with the same four letters branded across their foreheads. Voodoo economics are the alibis and snow jobs that justify having the apple pies eaten by the same 500 men who have always eaten all the apple pies. The sort of men who never carry flags into wars. Posses chase horse thieves with the intention of hanging them. Pulling the wool over someone’s eyes is an example of a snow job. The people who have the expertise for covering people’s eyes with snow write histories. A person waves the special blanket or sheet they call a flag in the air so that everyone else will remove their hats while history passes them by. Michael Brockley Reporting to Mars from this Country of Archangels, Armadillos, and Apple Pies

16 Trouble Ball A friend once advised you to be satisfied with loneliness. With twenty-nine years of sleeping alone. With the lessons learned from eating from bowls of solitude. You live amid stacks of unread books. Amid shelves of CDs recorded by artists who die daily now as you tanglefoot your way into the middle of the seventh decade. All your companion dogs have passed on now, having nudged your hand with a dry nose for the last time. A ritual passed from Apollo, through Boz, Fibber and Logan, to Sadie, and Scooter, gone these last two years. For months, you haven’t spoken to anyone without paying for the conversation. Ordering a Cobb salad at Panera for $10.29, and a $5.51 peanut butter milkshake at The Barking Cow. A changeup from your usual Nutty Coconut and Triple Mango in an adult cup. Your ghost dog hasn’t visited your poems across these winter months, and now daffodils are thrusting through the March soil. On your walk this evening, the husky across from the school in the cul de sac arises from her porch for the first time. As you turn to retrace your steps, she braces herself as if you are trespassing where your shadow has become unwelcome. On your Runkeeper app, the steps of your route resemble a horseshoe open to the east. Sunset kaleidoscopes your vision. Until mirages prism beyond your reach, like gratitude. The husky paces the grass bordering her territory. Glaring like the baseball player who named his trouble pitches Bee Ball and Hesitation. You know better than to look back at what’s following you. Michael Brockley Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His most recent poems have appeared in the on-line Tom Waits anthology Whiskey Mule Diner, Down in the Dirt, and Wordpeace. Poems are forthcoming in Vagabond Dissent, Jasper's Folly Poetry Journal, and Last Stanza Poetry Journal.

17 Skull Vase with Lilies Janis Butler Holm served as Associate Editor for Wide Angle, the film journal, and currently works as a writer and editor in sunny Los Angeles. Her prose, poems, art, and performance pieces have appeared in small-press, national, and international magazines. Her plays have been produced in the U.S., Canada, Russia, and the U.K.

18 In the Elsewhere Her death had secret compartments, hidden dimensions, undiscovered recesses. Her death had voles and moles and indices. There were colours no one had ever mentioned. Tables of intricate marquetry. A number of moments resigned to memory. Some deaths are small and devoid of grace, not a dog or an angel notices. But her death, her death was everything. It sank entire navies and rewrote history. There were motorcades and mastodons. A volley of wheels and comical noises. A stifled breeze. Milk teeth. Flapping curtains in a cottage on the Mediterranean. Her death had planets of ice and sand, with smart-mouthed moons and bright-eyed satellites. We are bereft and grieve wholeheartedly, her death the mathematics of distraction. Black night. Red dawn. Yellow morning. Her death an afternoon so blue the sky stood still and the priestess wept and the cat sprawled out in the midday sun and the prophet decried his warning.

19 Bruce McRae She died countless deaths, not only the one. Before she was born there was her death, its lively gospel, its spiritous draft. Like a hot knife or a summer squall. Like a green rowboat on the Serpentine. Her death withheld a redwing blackbird, a bloodstained apron, some silly bric-a-brac, a hairpin turn, a book of ancient poetry. Hard engines. Junk shrines. Temples to the air. A wayward molecule. The Cat's Eye Nebula. We stood in water up to our chins. We burnt our money in a bonfire. We shrugged off all our skins and still her death was an accomplishment. A five year plan. A pout. A pendulum. Now a queue has formed, a celebration planned. The other dead have gathered and are linking arms. The unborn have arrived in their starry vehicles, your death reduced to stones and bones. We can't walk or talk or be with you. We are alone and can never go home. All the fires of the sun shall never warm you.

20 Death-Black and Starbound This is Cain, a desperado in the deserts of his making. This is the killer sun, its fang. This is the dangerous earth, made more treacherous by man, who murders indiscriminately, whose violence is a way of beauty. And this is where blood comes from, the wound a second navel, Cain's mark a birthmark, a third eye, a scar. This is the gun as an extension of the self, an accessory to fashion, a doorway into dying. And here, the discandying bullet you can almost touch, the ribs a cage to this gunmetal bird, how the flesh will part and the heart embrace it; and the sinner who perceives this as the highest compliment. This is the house of death, its egg-and-spoon race, its unfortunate spree. The drum of death. Death's human-song. Death's wire. Death's broken wing. A sonless death. Death's acre un-daughtered. This be the lighthouse Death. Death the stalker, drifter, fossil, shade. Before me, some awful fly, unlike the angels of Mons. These words are of its voice. Out of the ground. Out of the air. I can see them. I see through them, the scarecrows shaking with cold, dusk seeping away, the gnarled pines bristling. And what if the woman had died in childbirth? What if Barabbas hadn't been set free? What if the suicide-assassin changed his mind? What if the tyrant touched the hem of God? What if the bullet froze mid-flight and hangs there still? And after the end, what then? When the light recoils what happens? Death, which is often in error, is never in doubt. Bruce McRae

21 Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his poems have been performed and broadcast globally.

22 Three Feet David Frank, died 18 months, buried Hither Green Cemetery, London A graveyard set in Hither Green, no metric here, nor room to stretch our bairn contracted to a space, a span for bridge to other place. These sods, the clods of earthly turf for now the resting case, boxed bones, but hither, green green grass of home.

23 Committed? From a sufferer of Parkinson’s Disease Most seem to say the night’s a drag, though I wrest vape from pillow, slip, and dangle legs from slippy sheets so they can kick through bedside air, until I slide, led heavy head, matt beard to board, so down to rest. It’s evenings when the hands crawl slow - a windup, time mite, slide, minute, of minute overtaking hour then ambling, climbing to the top. They creep, long watches of the light, while timepiece, not to be disturbed. I have my glass of tumbler thought, pills, tablets where my writing wrought, a would-be wordsmith stymied, caught in time-warp, blackhole, worm event. Who cares, like readership of three, triple, trinitarian, me. I write to save the counsel fees, to push back on allotted time when I have had enough of me. I’ve known the husband taking leave, brainstorm redressed, unbalanced mind, but wonder if my time has come? The plan is laid, strategy formed, with due disguises in the fray, to cause as little pain for loved, avoid committed, termed a crime. I’ll make fake news, a coverup, a cocktail, bottles down the drain. But did I follow through that dream, as kids and grands, in hinterland - no grief at stake, all be it sad? You may search columns of obits, the graveyards, scattered ash instead - but I’m left hanging, swinging legs. Stephen Kingsnorth

24 Sleigh Bells A western front has laid us low, now sunny aspect for the snow, while frozen cape protects bowed head where buzzard swooped, left pigeon dead. Skeletal tree beneath the yews where youths cavort, take time to choose their victim in a snowball dare; there misty air, like dragon flare leaves wispy clouds, soon disappeared. This holy hilltop commandeered, ground unsoiled, unsoled as yet, the blizzard stayed just as the debt, unknown, unrealised lest they weigh those fray bells, sleigh-play not slay. Stephen Kingsnorth War Memorial, Coedpoeth, Wales

25 Stephen Kingsnorth Dust It’s known that images outlast a word, or fact, number recall, so pupils learn best, as they see, the eyes best route to memory, when roots were strong, supporting growth. Where scenes encompass those we loved, geography, some key from map, or tea cup held when mother frail, cracked photograph or crockery; in sepia or welling tears, they speak as might Kintsugi art, with craft to bare love borne in hearts. As I live in my seventh age and bear foremost, memory loss, the prompts surrounding on my shelves bring within reach that love I’ve known. Though dust to dust not far removed, my helpers whisk things framed with cloth, and battered bits and pieces stored shine brighter, their site clearer, I. They help me, are a complement, and I’m complete, surrounded care. Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Parliament Literary Journal. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/

26 The So-Called Lesser of Two Evils AI, managing humanity, recognised that humans posed the biggest threat to humanity. Accidents, murders, wars - too many people died because of another humans. It would make sense to isolate humans - keep them in their homes. Therefore, the AI crafted a virus, and released it at an airport. The plague spread rapidly. All that was left was to blow the topic and declare a pandemic. Then, with the help of organisations and local politicians, the plan was put into action. Yes, the disease took some casualties, but it was the so-called lesser of two evils, because the mortality rate declined significantly. Christopher T. Dabrowski has published in countries around the world including Slovakia, USA, England, Canada, India, Czech Republic, Russia, Brasil, Spain, Argentina, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Sweden, Mexico, Albania, Nigeria, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Costa Rica, Peru, Vietnam, Turkey, Ukraine, Romania, Slovenia, South Korea, Austria, Central African Republic, Egypt, Columbia, Philippines, Nicaragua, Lithuania, Ireland, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Portugal, Tunisia, & Denmark. An abbreviated list of his works follows: Books in USA: "Escape" (2019 - Royal Hawaiian Press), "Anomaly" (2020 - Royal Hawaiian Press) Books in Spain:"La fuga" (2019 - Royal Hawaiian Press), "Anomalia" (2019 - Royal Hawaiian Press) Books in Germany: "Die Anomalie" (2020 - Der Romankiosk) Books in Canada: "The Prisoner Of Infinity" (2022 - Ukiyoto Publishing), "And On Earth without Changes" (2022 - Ukiyoto Publishing), "The Worries Of A Not So Dead Man" (2022 - Ukiyoto Publishing)

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28 Prolific Ghost Fuel The five -point palm exploding heart technique, quite simply, is the deadliest blow in all of martial arts. He hits you with his fingertips at five different pressure points on your body, & then lets you walk away. But once you’ve taken five steps, your heart explodes inside your body & you fall to the floor, dead. One space, no longer two, end punctuation. The same thing happens when someone who inspires you dies, even if it’s been a minute or decade since you told him so. The CliffsNotes version of The Remains of the Day equal, Wait! I may have misperceived the people & values I built my entire life around. Upon. Inside a friendship I discovered a teacher with relentless belief in his flock. Transpose the last sentiment. The falsity of the exclamation point because only after we see it do we realize that we were supposed to be excited from the start. No do overs & you’re out of mulligans. And what the day remains are, are the hours lefts after you do everything busy busy busy & then in the evening you finally get to sit in your favorite chair with that favorite drink & the cat that’s shitty to everyone but you & you’re finally present in that stress -releasing moment rather than busy busy busy. Maybe stop using busy as an excuse For Dean Young (1955 -2022) : Cor Cordium. And for Dobby, Jamie, Karen, Chrissy, Allison, & William. + Inspired by Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989), “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall” by Coldplay (2011), Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph by Lucasta Miller (2021), & Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk (2020). to take a break from caring so much? We all want to be a comma, not a full 8 stop, but in all likelihood we’re just another unanswered question mark, negatively capable more than positive, more unpositive-red-squiggly-line, unsure of anything ever anywhere. How Microsoft Word now dictates mechanics, copyedits, & since Word is now the lead vehicle in the parade of interpersonal communication & since communication is the vehicle connecting the battery terminals to your friendship, the truth is now algorithm updates are seeping into if & how we tell those we love that we love them—in a way they’ll always remember. Soon enough we’re all CliffsNotes, obituaries of longing. Spoiler: it takes two movies to finally kill him. A collection of all the moments right before the moment where everything changes. Dear Teacher, whose name isn’t written in water? Woven through it? So, we tell him. So we tell them. We tell them in a way that when we finally do walk away, just before we take that fifth step, we remember, they remember our earnest & electric gratitude for the fact that the last thing they did for us was to lay their hand, gently & violently, across our chest.

29 Dear Sadness, You didn’t begin with a tuxedoed musician in the grey brick dust of the bombed-out bakery storefront ruins in Sarajevo; the cello wasn’t invented only for you, but gosh she sure has you fully figured out as she moans the Adagio in G Minor. Longing is the door to belonging, which is why, despite the rubble of my faith, I still love church music, incense, & stained glass, especially the mournful chorus of Christmas melodies. Silent night. Holy night. Through insomniac nights I’ve come to see much of my anxiety is either fear or excitement, excitement that I get to engage someone-thing new—we will talk about those things that, frankly, make me excited, like the quiet dissection of you—fear that I’m going to be let down again, that I’m going to see the world for how it really is: rubble, arrangements to make more rubble, planning stages for rising from the rubble. Seeing just how disappointing people can be. You unite us, Sadness. You are the vagal nerve & Darwin as promoter of survival of the compassionate, for after all what’s-a-picnic-what’s-communion without pathos? I want to long because I’m at my best when I’m longing. Will we ever learn to appreciate those that believe there isn’t more than this? That excuse construction of terror & sadness through construction of an afterlife instead of appreciating the small beauty of a light shaft cutting through the debris cloud? Of course, not all tragedies are my tragedy to explain, to make sense of on others’ behalf, but also, ignoring tragedy perpetuates future tragedy. We can always find an excuse when we’re looking for excuses. Loss’ lessons as journeys instead of destinations; longing morphs into belonging when we slow time, allow it to elongate, allow ourselves to find fellowship in you. For Vedran Smailović, Tomaso Albinoni, & Remo Giazotto + Inspired by Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain (2022), The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (2008), “Miss Sarajevo” by U2 (1995), Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung by Min Kym (2017), and “Like a Scarf“ by James Tate (1994). Bob King Bob King an Associate Professor of English at Kent State University at Stark whose recent poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Full House Literary, Curio Cabinet Magazine, Olney Magazine, Moot Point Magazine, The Gorko Gazette, Drunk Monkeys, JAKE, Paddler Press, Aôthen Magazine, The Purposeful Mayonnaise, Spare Parts Literary Magazine, The Viridian Door, Ink Sweat & Tears, Bullshit Lit, The Red Ogre Review, The Dillydoun Review, Emergence Literary Journal, Narrative Magazine, Muleskinner, & Allium: a Journal of Poetry & Prose. He lives on the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife & daughters.

30 So Long We Become the Flowers The fallen tree below my heart hears my thoughts. Her dead and wrinkled leaves cackle above me. Stray strands of my damp hair, in silence, mimic hers, like curls of willow over my open eyes. My cheek, unmoving and pressed against her bark, feels the memory of a smile inside the muscle. She’s taking care of me. She’s trying to be soft for me, unlike the frozen ground beneath my crooked, broken knees. The arching shape of her becomes the shape of me, and my stomach sinks up into my ribs, lungs deflating. I think they’re leaking. Don’t go… breathes the bark into the slip of space between her body and my torn throat. She holds me. There’s a similarity between the patterns of my fingerprints and the inside of my tree, with all her loops and whorls and knots. Where my fingers lie, curled like a dead spider, they feel the pressure of the earth’s gentle pull, and the gnarled rise and fall of her bark, making sleeping places for the little things that crawl. I don’t think insects creep. We say they creep to make us feel better when they catch us by surprise in a web woven from our own unobservance. I think, instead, they take the time they mean to take, never rushing, never fussing, only thinking simply of survival. Behind me, I can hear the car hissing. The scent of oil blows through the air like sour breath from where it’s bleeding, the fluid pulsing out in sounds that could be gulps or gasps. A single amber indicator blinks at me in shock. From inside - or maybe outside - an animal howls. I think it might be stuck. It’ll stop soon. Above us, the moon tries hard to find me. I think we’re playing hide and seek. Camouflaged in the mud and muck of the forest floor, perhaps I’m going to win. The still standing trees around me watch her. Their crooked bodies lean in funny shapes, fingers reaching, stretching, curling upwards, scratching at the stars like hags’ hands. Are they trying to scare me or shelter me? Protect me and my transformation, now I’m theirs. The moon passes behind a cloud. God calls off her search. My fallen tree and I are alone again. Knots of moss and lichen look like tufts of hair across her carcass- white and grey - the colour of ash and ghosts. Her skin looks like (continued)

31 Ellis Jamieson an ocean frozen in the moment of a storm. Black and brown rise and fall in waves and meet in pools of my dripping red. I sound like an ending rainstorm. Pat pit … Pat… Pat pit… The leg of a spider touches the edge of my hand. I feel the faint vibration of a memory of something that could be fear but isn’t. I watch him. Another slim, delicately-jointed leg. Then another. His tiny, seed-shaped body appears over the crest of my hand, and he begins his careful journey. In my observance of him I feel every empathetic emotion and none. He’s too small to feel the way I’m capable of feeling. If I’m still capable of feeling. I might crush him and not feel a thing. After all, my wide pupils are bigger than his whole body. Yet, I observe, his legs could encompass the entire soft shell of my eye if he ever found himself inside my skull. Unaware of me, his hair's-breadth limbs brush and kiss my knuckles, the broken bones beneath what’s left of my shredded skin, each his little mountain until at last he steps from my hand and back onto the dark and buckled hide of my tree. He exists already as a ghost within the hollow cave of my ear and I swear I can hear his footsteps, his heartbeat, his thoughts. Right beside my open eye, I see her, dressed in black and ashen white - a slit up each leg of her eight-legged, moon-shadow dress. The wind that prickles the ghost of goose flesh on my skin passes over her without a thought. She doesn’t move, poised against the peak of bark and sitting so serenely as if she doesn’t even know my friend is there. She knows he’s there, my little crawler, crawling on his little hands towards her. Close behind her. Right behind her. On her. Mounting her. I see the first of his long legs slip in sync with hers. Moonlight captures the movement of her head as she leans back and, cheek to cheek with his soft spider flesh, she bites. Now she moves, and so does he while I, so close and yet so far removed from them, observe and wonder at my first sixteen-legged spider. How exciting. How horrifying. How simply numb I am to see their little bodies jerk inside the quiet of a breathless forest, where all their cries are nothing but my hollow imagination joined in empty, humming harmony with theirs. I have no inclination to interrupt her pleasure, nor his demise; only to observe. Just observe. As the old gods around my pale flesh shell observe me and mine. What do you want? My tree whispers. (continued)

32 The ghost of the person still inside of me whispers, but I don’t understand her. The words are a memory’s echo that make as little sense as the screams of my spiders. I want to live. I want to die. I want to exist, and not, and hang between, hiding from the moonlight in the arms of my fallen tree, feeding her and loving her and allowing her to softly bite me back into the earth with her until we are the mud below my broken knees and backwards twisted feet. This. I want this. I watch my spider crumple from the back of his lover as she pulls him off and into bite-sized pieces. His limbs no longer twitching, eyes, for all I ever saw them, the exit wounds of a soul that maybe never was. And what would you do, whispers my beloved dead tree, if I made you like me? The roots within her soul reach up and out of the earth, winding around my cold, crooked legs. Their antennae search and find the poking bones breaking out of me like crocus shoots. I feel her pull. I ask, What do you want? Memories of the moment when she tells me what she wants fade before her words are formed, but leave a lingering softness of reassurance and warm pleasure, like drinking wine. They seep inside me like sap; sweet and sticky. So I tell her what I’d do, I would drink the rain… and dance in wind… and sing through birds… and laugh in leaves… and love like spiders love without feeling or fear or pain… and I’d be happy Ellis Jamieson (continued)

33 Ellis Jamieson Her core, where all the rings collide, sings; Happy… Her broken bow moans and I feel her breathe down, feeding all the parasites that grow on her. The eating spider doesn’t notice anything, the red seed of her body pulsing with every gentle bite. Happy…I remember this… I remember it too. Vaguely. To call it a dream would be too visceral: the shape of bones below the surface of an unmarked grave. I remember the smell of other things than cold and dirt. I remember what unhurt felt like on my skin, and I remember when feeling at all was a peaceful war inside a living shell that breathed and beat and bled at every exhausting moment of its own existence. Now it’s just the shallow footprint left behind to wait for old gods to find and feed on. But the footprint of happiness is still fresh enough that my tree can feed, and for her I remember happy. I remember the drink the stranger bought me. I remember his breath against my mouth when we danced, and the moan of music in my ears, his quiet earthquake laugh, and the murmur of suggestion in my ear. I remember the frost of new night air and the smell of cigarettes inside his car bringing a rush of sacrilegious longing. I remember the moonlight losing sight of us below the trees as we rushed by. His flashing smile. Hands on me. On my leg. Stuck down inside my waistband. Not on the wheel. And all his love, like spider’s love, that loved me so well it left me here when I so willingly gave myself to him for him to kill. The car has gone quiet now. No more hissing. No more howling. Everything behind me is gone. * I feel the bulbs of mushrooms blossom slowly down my back through the holes the birds make; feathered gardeners plucking holes in their new tatty-sack for fresh life to (continued)

34 Ellis is a queer, non-binary writer, based in the north of Scotland. They write prose as well as plays, and enjoy working next to their fire while the winds howl outside. Their work has previously been published in Shoreline of Infinity, Briefly Write and on Yorick Radio Productions Podcast. They also won the 2023 Flash Fiction Prose Purple Writing competition. sprout. My deflated cheek has turned to pulp below the weight of my sleep, and time has curled my hair into the moss. Where my skin has peeled away like sheets of dampened wallpaper, I feel an itch like worms’ teeth as what’s left of me begins to ripple. Above, the sky has turned to soft, corn blue. The crows are back again. They call my name, landing on the limbs of hags to call for me. Below me, I hear her singing, Stay with me… But the clouds have long-since passed over the inside of my eye to make space where my soul once was for the new ones that my little friend will lay. Finished with yet another lover, she crawls inside. I am home. Ellis Jamieson

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36 The sound of the Apocalypse It starts on a pleasant summer afternoon Ferris Bueller blue skies first your neck hairs stand up then that godawful sound begins you can hear it through the open windows a high humming staticky whine like the endless revving of an angry motorcycle for minutes nothing happens people stand around what’s going on? like they’re gonna tell us I heard it’s a power line nah I worked power lotta years THIS ain’t that what then I don’t know Then you hear a gunshot in the distance and it finally triggers everyone you run back inside—shout pack rush and speed smack dab into the traffic jam at the end of the world which morphs into the tailgate party from Hell You pace the famine highway up and down you want the BBQ very badly it smells sweet and spicy and good but you cannot—you dare not you’ve seen what meat they butcher your eyes sink into the black holes of their sockets but you won’t eat—you’re not that hungry yet so you stalk the BBQ truck back and forth a reluctant vulture at the feeding site as the hurdy-gurdy vibe of doom grinds on

37 The Family of the Grand Matador Kept His Statue of the Bull Jeremy Mullen Even though he had been gored through his heart in a fight— they kept it to honor their family patriarch who often said that he admired his foe that el toro was a symbol of life all of us live as we live and die when we die and neither can we change Jeremy Mullen is from Highland Park, New Jersey and has been writing poetry for 35 years. He has been featured in each of the last four issues of This Broken Shore, a NJ literary journal. Apocalyptic poetry is kind of his obsession--especially since the pandemic.

38 Spiritual Growth Boot Camp My life was floating along nicely and then death stomped in kicking my butt awake. I did not choose to enlist in this Marine Corp and its bootcamp. I was dragged kicking and screaming into it. I went through a tsunami of health issues over a five year period which included emergency heart surgery, installation of a pacemaker, two hip replacements, anemia after several months of being unable to eat solid foods, Covid-19 with three years of brain fog and a couple of bouts of very painful Gout. I reluctantly retired and stopped driving. Grief flowed along the ever-present trail of life skills that were dissolving. The only place I felt safe was in my apartment, especially sitting in a recliner. I was not sure if I was afraid I was dying or wished I was dying. So much of me was being lost every damn day I wasn’t sure what would be left. I did not really care if I didn’t drive any more, but it scared me that I couldn’t. I, a formerly avid hiker, could only walk short distances with a cane. As a life long spiritual student with a love of Buddhism I could no longer do as the master instructed the student to “chop wood and carry water,” either literal or symbolic, without risk of lopping off a foot. Death and I looked each other in the eyes and ‘decided’ we would hang out together for a while in the universal Boot Camp of its design. I do wish I could say the death met its match in me and backed off. But anytime Death (Big-d) faces off with the Big-e (ego) it eventually wins. So now we sit together. It looks like his chair is considerably more comfortable than mine. As we hang out, my kinda new, kinda friend (frenemy) teaches me. I want more time, ten more years and I’ll be ready and then I get it. It isn’t about quantity but quality. If I want more the only place to get that is NOW. Death says, “Graham, wake up now. Wake up every minute.” My drill instructor tells me that I just did the equivalent of fifty push-ups. Big-e still wants more. The soul wants deeper. Big-d chuckles. Facing death brought the gift of alerting me to the limitation of time for all humans. I don’t have any more breaths to fritter away. I am more awake in every moment, well most moments, well more moments than in the past. I wonder if being more honest with myself is a very likable side effect of all of this. Being present also means present to the grief of things lost. I’d love to drive alone to the ocean one more time, well actually, fifty more times if I get one. I still want another ten years to add

39 C. Graham Campbell to my seventy-five. But if I get that I’ll want ten more minutes. Perhaps I should become a vegan to stave off the inevitable. Big-e fancies itself as a good bargainer. Big-d chuckles again. Even in the midst of all these gifts, I’m present to the sense that I might be willing to give up what I’ve gained if I could just have my fifty-year-old body and self back. But that does not seem to be in the cards. Big-d, having a good ole time, is again chuckling in the seat next to me pointing out every time ego pops up. Words are now unnecessary, the giggle is enough. Time is limited. Find the quality let go of the quantity. Find the Eternal Now in each moment. The great certainty of death and the uncertainty of when are not always an enemy. At this point my companion, as any master drill sergeant would do, slaps his hand on the table, starts screaming, “Private Campbell, don’t get ahead of yourself. There is still a lot more on the way. Don’t you forget I’ve been here forever terrifying people and I have a lot yet to teach you. Your seventy-five years is just a puny little drop in the sea. So, Private Campbell, who are you. Right now, tell me who you are. Answer my question. Who are you.” He is leaning over pounding the table and staring right into my soul. “Well, sir, about all I know for sure is that I am your student, preparing to respond to your next question.” Drill Surgent says, “Not Bad Private.” C. Graham Campbell, Ph.D. was born in Canada and immigrated to this country with his parents at the age of three. He is a seventy-five- year- old retired psychologist and a late blossoming author. He has a master’s degree in theology, a doctorate in pastoral psychology and training in Spiritual Psychology. He retired in 2020. He now spends most of his time involved with family, writing, meditating, and exploring what being an elder means. His work has previously appeared in Family Networker, Natural New England, Bacopa, Ravin’s Perch, and Evening Street Review. He is currently working on a book on Nature Mysticism.

40 Calving Glaciers There is a constant gentle knock at the back door. When I answer it is the breeze, the cool evening air, the yellow sun spilled on the horizon. A chipmunk stares at me, turns tail and dives down a hole. Disappears like yesterday, last week, all the years. It’s the ghosts of memories knocking. A reunion of the stumbles, bonfires, flat tires, fireworks. Geysers of my twenties that still steam predictably. Faded and distended tattoos of unforgotten names and faces, and unforgiven words. Their scythe haunts me. I search their vapor trails. Wonder what distance separates us. If there is any chance you reach out like Michelangelo’s god, touch what you remember of me. Is it a sweet or sour taste? One that was spit out? Or indifferent and forgotten? The past is a calving glacier time’s ocean melts and swallows. Though ageing’s dimming light still sparkles on the water’s surface.

41 Doug van Hooser I want an ending that is a string to a kite. The long creak of a warped board loose from its nails. Even in December be a leaf the wind cannot twist free. Coda

42 On My Last Day I Will Know Jealousy Parts of life remain destroyed buildings, reminder of the war between desire and action, between past and present, between you and me. I have never known how to forgive the flowers, accept they bloom and fade. Thanks to the snow the sun is blinding on winter days. The misery of rain allows germination, the plant to leaf, to stretch and reach, to seek and seed. I will always want to know what I suspect, that the line that joins the dots is random and the result Rorschach. My trail a test I interpret again and again. Searching my pockets for another meaning. Doug van Hooser Doug Van Hooser splits his time between suburban Chicago where he gives fictitious names to baristas and southern Wisconsin where he enjoys sculling and cycling. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications. He has also published short fiction and has had readings of his plays in Chicago. Links to his work can be found at dougvanhooser.com

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44 Oral Hygiene So much of floss is loss mostly waste wrapped round your fingers to keep the center tightrope taut between your teeth as you scrape them clean and try to defeat the decay that will come anyway despite the minute debris you flick onto your own face frozen in the mirror.

45 Fred Zirm Matryoshka for Meg And so the generations nest inside each other like reversible Russian dolls: the woman who is my child has a child within her now who may hold memories of me for future family tales, just as I recall my father’s strength and my mother’s touch when I think of infants in my arms. Thus, the bigger begets and is begotten by the small when we embrace and are embraced by what we are and were and will become, doll within doll within doll, with our love bearing one another, the holder and the held, back to the cradle and back from the brink again and again and again until the very beginning meets the very end.

46 When I walk the lamp-lit streets, my shadow shifts with each new light I pass: behind, beside, beneath, before behind, beside, beneath, before -- each pool of brightness, a sundial day, a long night of dimness in-between. By this measure, each block I circle is half a month, and I’ve walked more months than I have lived, only to return to a home, either warmly lit with welcome or so dark and cold my shadow disappears. Shadow Walking Fred Zirm After earning a B.A. and M.A. in English from Michigan State and an M.F.A. from the Playwrights Workshop at University of Iowa, Fred Zirm taught English and drama for almost forty years at an independent school for boys in Maryland. Since retirement, he has continued to direct plays but have also focused on writing. His poetry, flash fiction, and creative non-fiction have been published in more than a dozen literary journals or anthologies, including Still Crazy, Voices de la Luna, NEAT, The Rejected Quarterly, cahoodadoodaling (Pushcart Prize nominee), Greek Fire, Poeming Pigeons, and Objects in the Rearview Mirror. Fred’s poetry chapbook, Object Lessons, was published in January 2021 by Main Street Rag. He once spent a month traveling through Greece by bicycle on his own.

47 Death, Personified

48 Retired children’s librarian Alan Bern has a hybrid (poetry, prose, and photos) fictionalized memoir, IN THE PACE OF THE PATH, forthcoming from UnCollected Press, is the author of three books of poetry, and is cofounder with artist/printer Robert Woods of the fine press/publisher Lines & Faces, linesandfaces.com. Alan has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and recent awards include: Winner, Saw Palm Poetry Contest (2022), Honorable Mention for Free Verse in SouthWest Writers Annual Writing Contest, A Diversity of Expression (2022); Honorable Mention for oh Winnie

49 Alan Bern light enchapeled Littoral Press Poetry Prize (2021); Flash Fiction Finalist for Ekphrastic Sex (2021); First Runner-up for Raw Art Review’s Mirabai Prize for Poetry (2020); a Medal from SouthWest Writers for a WWII story set in Assisi (2019). Recent and upcoming writing and photo work: HAUNTED WATERS PRESS, Thanatos, CERASUS, Feral, The Hyacinth Review, REUNION: The Dallas Review, DarkWinter, and Mercurius. Alan performs with dancer/choreographer Lucinda Weaver as PACES: dance and poetry fit to the space and with musicians from Composing Together.

50 Folar da pascoa When I was growing up our neighbor Jessalina used to make Easter breads with a hard boiled egg in the center. Folar da pascoa, but I didn’t know the name until I was 45 and googled it for this poem. The bread is sweet and soft. The egg is plain and still in the shell. She would sneak over the brick fence between our houses to leave the still hot loaves on the window sills of the bedroom I shared with my two brothers. I didn’t understand why she didn’t come to the door. I get it now. She came from Portugal. They knew grandpa was from Cape Verde and treated us all like long lost cousins who had been taken into the wilds by an ocean storm only to be found again by the fishing men. We were family to be reminded of man's ways. Jessalina told me the bread was pregnant with the body of the world. I felt like a predator. Her son had died in the long sometime before me. She kept an identical photo of him in a brown frame in every room. His body lay in the center of a cemetery in the Whittier hills.

51 Jason R. Montgomery This most recent apocalypse My auntie is prepping for this most recent apocalypse. Laughing, she references the Russian president in the same sentence as Serra, Burnett, and Cortés. Just another in a long list of apocalypse men. She asks if my brother sent me Potassium iodide yet. He has them left over from his thyroid. Which was removed 15 years ago. He told her she will need to take one a day once it all starts. It is just one of the apocalypse instructions she’s written on pink card stock from her scrapbooking supplies in her quick and tight handwriting. They sit by the computer she doesn’t really know how to use in her little office. There is also one that says: “Close yahoo. Open google mail (gmail) account. Better?” In her spare room, the one my sons call their bedroom, She has me assemble a wire baker’s rack That she purchased from Costco. Her supplies are cans of pinto beans, powdered Ensure, corn tortillas, and one bottle of Chick-fil-a sauce. Over dinner at La Fonda when I ask her for her plan Once all the food is gone, Or if there is no power during the summer when the heat reaches 120 degrees. She simply says, with a laugh, that I’d know from the other side of the world, “I will live or I will die just like all the rest.”

52 Jason R. Montgomery Jason R. Montgomery, or JRM, is a Chicano of Indigenous Californian/Mexican descent writer, painter, community artist and engagement artist from El Centro, California. In 2016, along with Poet Alexandra Woolner, and illustrator Jen Wagner, JRM founded Attack Bear Press in Easthampton, MA. Jason’s work engages the cross-section of Chicano/Indigenous identity, cultural hybridization, post-colonial reconstruction, and political agency. His writing and visual art bridges the aesthetics and feel from the early cubist collage movement and the Russian abstract movement of the 1920s with living and historical Transborder Indigenous and Chicano art traditions to explore the Post-colonial narrative through active synthesis and guided (re)construction. JRM’s work has appeared in Split Lip Magazine, Storm Cellar, Ilanot Review, Cosmonauts Avenue and other publications. Jason is one of 2021 Newell Flather Awards for Leadership in Public Art outstanding nominees and 2021-2023 Easthampton Poets Laureate. Jason is also the co-founder of the police abolition group “A Knee is Not Enough” (AKINE) in Easthampton, MA. They are also the founder of the annual Holyoke Community Ofrenda, the police transformation group A Knee is Not Enough (AKINE), and various public engagement projects.

53 Death, Personified

54 charon’s obol either god’s not real, or he’s impotent. the holy self-immolate on vietnamese streets and the wicked live in châteaus of ill-gotten gains. life’s default recipe is rife with ugly: 3/4 misery, 1/4 true happiness. utopia is so rare and hard to find. it’s been said, it rests on a george washington bed. under ridged copper and nickel clad linens, hidden somewhere among these 540 sextillion miles. chaotic decay is the only cradle in our earth nursery, our collapsing mother temple in time. faced with this dreadful trumpet, this liberating cataclysm, some take to a victoria or iguazú falls churning. and others strike up a dusty, flatlining hospital scene. in doubting hours, i’m reminded of an absent father. of the 7 wonders and a side order of toast. of the ustaše and the holodomor; rwanda and east timor. then it’s no elohim again. the uniformity of fibonacci ammonites returns to a coincidental genesis. so drink the dregs, whistle like a songbird in the latrine, smoke past the label, swallow the banana peel. there are no rules. use your tongue as a supercell umbrella atop the chrysler building. throw paper planes in sunday mass. but no red jerrycans and orange robes. stay away, dollar sign eyeballs. tomorrow morning, it’s a flip of the coin. so get it while you can, boys. cause i suspect heaven is a pipe dream, a grief pacifier. and all we know is not that much.

55 Nicholas Barnes bloody town Nicholas Barnes earned a Bachelor of Arts in English at Southern Oregon University. He is currently working as an editor in Portland. His poems have appeared in over forty-five publications including trampset, NonBinary Review, and Eclectica Magazine. His least favorite season is summer. His favorite soda is RC Cola. cerise & blanc yin yang cells. armed security guards. cartons of menthol green. shuttered houses. cars stuck on cloverleaf highways. shag carpets. side street camps. high rise office buildings. rich affluent zip codes. buck knife fullers. crows perched on lamp posts. seven still skies. wayfarers. lonely folks. narcan wasp bites. bodies left undiscovered. pearls held tight. jewelry districts. city morgue lockers. gentrified hipster locales. five-dollar fentanyl tablets. almighty, criminal cops. hospital waiting rooms. parking garages. cloudy brown needles. money grubbing hands. motel queen beds. tin foil & straw weddings. razor faces. forensic chalk scenes. seas of primal hatred. cracked veins. babies born blue. red cross donation centers. poets giving pints of themselves.

56 In Mourning

57 Kevin Vivers just bones on the forest floor Kevin Vivers is the recipient of so much luck and love from others that he doesn't know how it came his way.

58 God Intentions Case No: V-152-001-2022 Incident: Deceased person Witness Interview: Jane McConnelly I was the one who found her. With my legal right to entry, I offered to the cops who were banging on the door that I could just let them in, perks of being the landlord and all. I knew one of the officers, Sgt. Romero; he helped me out when I tried to get a neighborhood watch program together but everyone flaked out, and no, I wasn't going to run the thing myself. I just keep a bat by my door now. Someone wants to complain the day I have to use it? Take it up with the community watch dogs, I'll say. That’ll be sarcasm. I didn't know someone could die from Elmer's Glue, and I guess you have to technically say she died from asphyxiation from it, but let's call a spade a spade: she choked on frigging Elmer's Glue, ok? The bottle tipped from the counter or some such and poured into her mouth, and what she was doing on the kitchen floor sleeping is really the mystery to solve here. A suicide? Not possible. The thing to know about Kate is how obsessed she was with death. I mean, really hear this: the woman was terrified about life ending. She talked to anyone about it, believe me, I was one of such individuals who found herself trapped in the laundry room, for example, while Kate turned every subject around to death. Once, in the carport, I saw these wads of paper that didn't make it to the shared dumpster and so I picked them up and perused. Turns out they were drafts of Kate's self-written obituary. That's weird, I thought. Maybe it's for Facebook. Didn't know. Don't understand Facebook. Was still scratching my head about it by the next time I saw her when I'm watering my outdoor bonsai and she goes, swear to God, she goes, I just saw an end-of-life coach. Huh? Turns out there's a kinda shrink that talks to you about death. No joke. Kate says she thought it would help with her chronic anxiety about dying, and real honest, I (continued)

59 Liz Lydic started up the stairs once I heard the word 'anxiety.' Per the coach, Kate started this chanting ritual, talks to herself. This is so bad, saying all this about her. She goes I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying. Kate, stay focused. I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying. Crap went on for three hours every weeknight. I told her about a thousand times, suck it up and go to church, it'll make things a lot easier, and besides, down at Fellowship Baptist, they do these pretty good theater productions where sometimes a guy goes nude on top. She says she found her own church, creating. Creating? I asked. You talking about God’s job? Creation? But no. She proceeds to show me any and all kinda craft you can imagine made out of apparently whatever she feels like. Shows them to me each time I run into her, which, believe me, I tried to do less as time went on. She was, hands down, addicted to crafting. Literally could not stop, constantly dragging ass-full bags from Crafty Bin and Royal Dollar. Yeah, it started with the death obsession. Heck yeah. That's exactly the correlation. After the obit, the chanting, the coach, crap was being made in that apartment at breakneck speed. Not gonna lie, one day, out of itching curiosity, I used my key and looked in there. And let me say: the amount of paper and yarn and bits and scraps and pipecleaners and tongue depressors was one thing. Then there were the finished products, the dreamcatchers, shadow boxes, bookmarks, bunting flags, sock puppets - no crap! - doll dresses, what else do you want? Candle holders, purses made from denim pockets, leaf rubbings, it was a goddamn preschool in there. Painted sea shells, googly eyes glued on to make a face. A birdhouse with a tiny birdhouse outside the regular side birdhouse. It's... I was concerned, yes, by the volume. I'm not properly explaining the amount of these things, like every kind of craft had a Goldilocks soap opera behind it - a baby version, bloated-ass version, and then a regular one, like she couldn’t do just (continued)

60 one try of anything. If she didn't die from the glue choking her, it would've been that she buried herself in those goddamn crafts. Another time, I remember now, I go What are you doing with all your crafts? Donating them or selling them or whatever? and she goes I'm going to burn them all, and after I mentally clocked that I will need to report to the Fire Marshal that there’s a potential arsonist on hand, I started asking why she'd make something just to destroy it, then she started telling me about how that's healing for her, and jeez, look at me now, I'm really winding up like a clock. I’m talking to the point of gut-spilling and I feel bad even though I shouldn’t. I mean, she's dead, right? After the burning conversation, I took something, I gotta say that. I have to say it. I took something she made. One of her...It's a bird, a goddamn fabric stuffed bird. The fabric...Who uses a tropical pattern if you're trying to depict the bird? I don't get crafts. But I did take it. It was stuffed, a little bead for an eye, no feathers, just stuffed into that red and yellow patterned piece of cloth stitched to appear like a damn bird. What kind a bird is that supposed to be? The worst thing was that it sat on a hair clip. The heck is going to wear that? Who'd put that on their head? But, I had to have it. The bird. That damn useless bird. It was going to be burned. Everything was going to be burned. I had to take it. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Liz Lydic Liz Lydic is a mom, writer, and local government employee in the Los Angeles area. Her work has been published in McSweeney's, Moss Piglet, The Belladonna Comedy, Ruminate Magazine, The Offing, Robot Butt and others. She also does theatre stuff. lizlydic.com

61 Death, Personified

62 That High Lonesome Sound He came onto the porch holding the stock of the Remington under his arm and letting the long barrels dandle just forward of his trouser leg as if a gentleman sportsman of some kind. The fading light of the afternoon made him seem lost in thought or perhaps idle distraction except for the undersquare whiskey bottle which flashed now and then as he lifted it to drink. He set the bottle on a railing and opened the shotgun’s breech, slid out the hot shells, chambered two more. Again he muttered something. With field glasses the lieutenant reconnoitered the scene: his team setting the perimeter; the armed man at rest; the armed man in motion; the ramshackle house; the ingress; the egress; ways of escape; ways of no hope. And through the front window, something. Something there. On the living room wall. Some angular collision of color. The Stars and Bars. Of course. Looming visibly, every Johnny Reb’s coat of arms. Symbol of Southern pride. Souvenir of America’s original sin. Now the man came down off the porch and wandered into the wild disorder of his yard and stopped a moment, listening. He stepped over a discarded tire. With one hand he raised the shotgun skyward and squeezed off another blast. Then came another tip of the bottle to his lips. Good old Jack, he said. (continued)

63 Edward Miller On a bullhorn the lieutenant addressed him. I’ll give you about five seconds, the lieutenant said. Maybe three. Lay down that scattergun. The man closed his eyes. O happy day, he said. The lieutenant began counting. Ed Miller teaches writing at Madera Community College. Included among his areas of interest are outsider art, street photography, and the American vernacular.

64 Worn Days Through the broken gate and up the path-- partly mowed, mostly overgrown--the sun hovers over the pine line. Moments past become moments present, sand and milkweed under foot, the silken seeds of the pods unopened, full waiting for a future time to burst what holds back. Wind and sun must conspire to open carry faint beginnings to their end, some on the side of the road some on stone, some on sand--only few to find good ground. The air laden with the past weaving into future births that must be shed from bobbing, dying pods cupped like hands that will break. The sand yields signs of paw prints, hooves, leavings that say many animals have passed this way. They don't wait for me to walk among them, always leaving signs of movement recorded in, and on the ground. The past passing before me as I walk, sliding tall grass heads through my fingers, a lingering sent of rust and green in my palm, seeds fall from my hands. And I wonder how many times the sun has come up over this field, making my wanderings meager. How can all be always well, when the boards fade, the barn roof caves, and broken roof pieces let the rain fall in. When in becomes out, all becomes the home for nesting things. They weave webs in corners, (continued)

65 Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes scurry along beams, into small spaces-- they wait. Future time will so easily become past. My life will shrivel while long weeds thrive, no one here to pick up fallen shingles, shutters. The house will fall back, the path become unseeable. What survives will be what was here all along. Will my spirit return here join with wind and seeds along a horizon where trees become air? “Poetry is my 911.” Emerita professor of English, Carol Lee Saffioti-Hughes has also served as a librarian in a northwoods log cabin in Wisconsin, and is a former volunteer EMT. A member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and Root River Poets, her work has appeared in journals in four countries, with several poems translated into Chinese. Poetry has recently appeared in Of Rust and Glass, San Antonio Review, Dos Gatos Press, The Awakenings Project, Moss Piglet, Poetry Hall, Ekphrastic Review and many others. Saffioti-Hughes’s work has been anthologized in "Unsettling America" (Penguin Press) and the Root River Anthologies. Have gathered agates along Lake Superior, pine cones in the Cheqaumegon Nicolet National Forest, and hundreds of ticks along our hiking trails. Her most recent chapbook, "When Wilding Returns," is available from Cyberwit Press( www.cyberwit.net). Having suffered the death of a child, her work has appeared in several grief-related publications.

66 matters of importance tingles in fingers and toes thin black and blue skin the care of the feet the receptionist’s name placement of hairbrushes the route to the toilet annual driving exams the esteem of felines and that thing old men do saving scraps of tissue folded smooth and ready at the drip of a nose Bill Baynes is a man who thinks about mortality as a widower in a lonely world. Every year, he loses two or three of his close friends. Two of his children are in their sixties. That makes him 107, almost. Writing keeps him awake. He’s published three books of fiction with three different Indies: Bunt, a young adult baseball story; The Coyote Who Braved Baseball, a middle-grade novel; and The Occupation of Joe, a historical fiction novella set in Tokyo in 1945. Two other books are under contract. Bill has also published poems in several different literary magazines. He used to work in San Francisco as a writer/producer/director who specialized in public interest projects like HIV prevention, teen alcohol and drug abuse, nutrition and fitness, etc.

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