I’ll eat chocolate for breakfast
and smoke a cigarette for lunch
I’ll wear pajamas all day
and mascara all night
I’ll swipe left and right
and kiss indiscriminately
I’ll bring home an unmemorable date
and kick him out before coffee
I’ll be the person you fell for
and I’ll be single.
By Julie Reeser
Careful with his feet, slow with sound and swift with eye; she grew curious. A redhead – war-crier, she remembered they were called.
During the dark moon, another walker had circled her widdershins before tying a yellow ribbon around her waist. She worried at it, but couldn’t untie it. Instinct made her burrow deeper, and experience made her fret. Was she sick?
With deft hands the war-crier broke the ribbon from her skin. He smelled like good intentions. She fought a sneeze and rustled her leaves. He looked up and smiled. Then, to her delight, he began to climb.
Julie Reeser lives in a stone bowl in Montana. She is the author of Terracotta Pomegranate, and her work has been published by Zoetic Press, Timeless Tales Magazine, Black Denim Lit, and One Sentence Poems.
A place, where the sunlight
isn’t allowed to go,
and where the starlight
falls to ground, swimming
through endless dreams,
taking refuge to shadows …
A place, forbidden to the sun,
protects those unborn, unseen,
neglected and hidden.
The most beautiful flowers
bloom under the midnight sky …
The most unique blossoms
in the land of twilight …
By D. Avery
He sees himself as a learner and a teacher. Adventure, yes, but never conquest, he says.
He loves, he says, says love is a borderland, its borders permeable and transient, a place for walls to crumble, for barriers to come down, an exercise of dissolution, a pursuit of communion.
Each encounter, he says, is the coalescing of commonalities and of differences, exploring paths of shared experiences while discovering new paths that lead to new territories, unbounded.
Yet inevitably he withdraws, retreats behind invisible lines, already looking to the next frontier, while she surveys the breach, takes stock, shores up.
By Roy Gomez
Yeah … I’d run out of words. I’d driven all night, hoping to change Cecilia’s mind – when suddenly, out of nowhere, the gravel road came to a dead end. We parked on a high cliff. Way out in the gulf this one light blinked on the black sea. Cecilia never spoke. It was all on me. Clutching the steering wheel, refusing to accept it, I hated thinking we were done. Sure, sure, I guess I could’ve called him Cecil. It’s what he’d always wanted. It’s just so strange, you know. Cecil. Cecilia. I don’t even know this Cecil guy.
With fondness I bid thee farewell
Unfortunately you they very rarely sell
I mourn the passing of a shirt with a pocket
Along with ground coffee, bar soap and the photo locket
What should I do with my little notebook and pen?
And the business cards I receive to no end
People laugh and say just use your phone
But how in good conscience could that become my touchstone?
So please don’t tell me the next fashion decision to be dealt
Will be the elimination of my beloved pants belt.
By Frederick Ostrovskis-Wilkes
The drought is hard,
Soil that once bore the fruit
and fed the thirst of spreading roots
now charred, sand and ash,
A cancer spreading through the plain,
Dancing on the burning graves of
those that seek the weeping rain,
Drown them, flood their wounds.
Resilient, he stands,
Leather skin with arms of spears
and pride to fill the space of fear
ravaging the lands
A warrior bound in blood
and mud to these barren sands,
Waiting for the night to call,
The pale blanket of moonlight’s shawl
to hold it,
hand in hand.
