This Election

by Peggy Landsman The stress I feel from this electionaffects my mind and my midsection. I read the news as vivisectionand no disease escapes detection. There’s never been a worse selectionof demagogues, the Trump collection, for public office whose rejectionwe must vote for this election. Peggy Landsman is the author of a poetry chapbook, To-wit To-woo (Foothills Publishing). Her work Read More

The Art of Self-Acceptance

by Rohan Sharma Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.― Lao Tzu The twenty-three months I spent at PICC forced me to grow in many ways. Many of the lessons I learned came not Read More

Spider in the Storm

by Rohan Sharma If you have never reached rock bottom, you have never attended the school of greatness.― Matshona Dhliwayo Spending time in what is known as the “suicide wing” (back in the jail next door known as DC) was an altogether different experience. They only opened the door for five minutes every morning to converse with the psychiatrist, to Read More

Much Disregarded

by Rickey Rivers Jr. Depressing news, normalized. Can’t get away from, running like water in the brain, night thoughts. They run up the bill. Ironically I can’t pay them mind only attention. Sleep service is different from lip but leave a tip in my jar please. Help me with relief in form of speech and not pills. Trouble in the Read More

Conversationalists

by Visar Flour-sacks waving like flagson the windows in the afternoons. The people in this town sit by theirwindows, breathing on anything thatpasses. They sit on dead Volvos bearingBluetooth stereos on their shoulders,where the words are streaming, never ending. The caves in our skullshave become like whistles, to crack back sibilants at the world.Our tongues have ghosts in them, our Read More

Your Hometown Is an Apocalypse

by Justin Karcher Buzzfeed tells methat the world is endingjust as it’s always beenand they’re probably right the night sky where I grew upalways felt like a run-on sentencetoo many dashed dreamscompeting for spacethey all blended togetheryou could never tell the narrativejust that it was a desperate onethe stars were apostrophes that didn’t really belongbut we put them in there Read More