by LE Francis Twin stars, once twin bright,until the dog star set offinto early middle age. You burnedlike a backcountry grove, & youbecame the end of clouds & comets. You wrought newplanets of bone & mist & spite,to devise & reform, destroy& reset the atoms that madeyou burn. There was no definition clever enough to make youaccept, & no fact Read More
Author: Andre
October in California
by Abigail Stewart I. The sky was a lurid orange when Cara awoke. Her television set had turned to static overnight and the alien sun bathed her furniture in a thick ointment of russet light. Somewhere an alarm sounded, relentless and impatient. She rose, ran the water at her kitchen tap. Nothing but a sad trickle, then air. Her mouth Read More
More Poems
by Justin Karcher More poems about Cowboy Bebop. More poems about Red Bull, but the sugar free kind, cuz the 7-Eleven u go to was out of the regular kind & ur kinda addicted to the idea of having wings… even if those wings aren’t as sweet as they should be, cuz it’s so fuckin’ nice to fly over all Read More
Should
by Peggy Landsman begins by saying “Sh,”trying to hide the factthat it’s loud. Then all its letters all together,but very indirectly,shout “Hold us!” We must put our shouldersto the wheel,make the world as warm and as lovingas we believe it should be. Peggy Landsman is the author of a poetry chapbook, To-wit To-woo (Foothills Publishing). Her work has been published Read More
Bright Break
by Rickey Rivers Jr. My time away broke scenery. The protagonist found themselves in a different place and time,the antagonist nowhere around,the setting so much brighter. Oh, such brightness without you.Oh, such joy to be had.Oh, I sing a song aloud.Others stop and stare. I care not, blissful tears are sweetand my heart is like a harp. Loud is my Read More
Dear John,
by Stephanie Parent You didn’t look like your profile picture. You didn’t sound like your texts. Online you seemed sophisticated, experienced, telling me about your lingerie photo shoots, the erotic articles you were writing for online magazines. I thought maybe you were full of shit, but I was full of shit too. I wasn’t the girl excited about life and Read More
Halves of Things
by Clara Burghelea A bruise down the thigh or sinkingteeth into another flesh. A ring of sky,or the deafening storm. Dreaming of coffee all my life, then hives.Obsessed with soft leeches,choking at the sight of blood. To have and to hold, otherwiseeasy with the in-betweens. Inksliding on paper, then softly barren. Lying on the floor with you,naming all secrets, or Read More
Rock Paintings (2)
by Don Thompson Oblivion carries out its briefagainst color, relentlesslyturning the past pewter or dunso that once vivid eventscome back to us insipid,wrapped in spider silkand sucked empty. Yokuts memories are shards, basketstattered like abandoned bird nests—grave robbers’ leavings. But some murals must endure,sequestered in caverns no one ever found,unfading chalk and graphite pigments,cinnabar and volcanic ochre yellowimported from the Read More
Home Landing
by Yuan Changming Having nothing better to do, I kill Time by looking at a traditional Chinese painting on my iPad Much enlarged, it appears like A plain sheet of rice paper Smeared with ink. I view it In the presence of bonsai; I Drop several thick strokes to the floor Of history, leaving a few Read More
Seers
by Narmadhaa Sivaraja They observe,from the sidelinesbehind human boundariesmutely. Ghosts of past,felled by hunters,now shed skins, peeling,naturally. Wheels pass by,not unlike time,in twos, threes, and sixes—boundless. Fiercely defiant,owners of the land,masked in ashen white—eucalypti. Narmadhaa (or N) writes haiku, free verse, opinion articles, and flash fiction on The Chaos Within. N has a self-published travel haiku collection on Amazon Kindle, Read More