​Kingfisher, kingfisher
What makes you so sure
When you dive in
So bravely 
You´ll rise up again

Halcyon's dream 
Calms the perilous seas

Kingfisher, kingfisher  
A treacherous stream 
Hides your turquoise body
In a fortress of driftwood  
Your blessings, your death wish
Foam into screams

Halcyon's dream 
Calms the perilous seas
On a fish bone raft
Meandering through summertide
He charts the unyielding waves
Scours the souls for betrayal

A lone tempest gently rocks you
Cradle walls of different hues


Martin is a young author whose drawer supply of poems has outgrown its dimensions, so he decided to start sending them around. Since his job in biomedicine is very evidence-based and scientific, he ventilates by writing poems and rock songs and by singing, screeching and moving in the choir of Prague´s RockOpera. He sings and plays the guitar in a metal band called Porcelain Shards.

They shared debate around the flames, 
a glowing fire, domestic shrine, 
thus sacred turf the site for pitch, 
that like the peat, the team was sweet,
whatever referee had said.

These Antrim sods of Ireland, North,
that stood, still, watching Bushmills turn,
Scotch planted, like the Black and Tans,
as coppers in a sentry stance,
stir dancing gold of liquor burn.

As shots were fired and bellies gripped,
bloodred vein creep of colour, cheeks,
they laid down arms, await refill,
the cause to weigh, old arguments,
that giant step that staked the land.

They look out, castle in the air -
where all washed up, across the bar,
in place of wake they celebrate,
for who knows where the future lines,
save all agreed that Bush retained.


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 Whisky Blot. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/ .

I am a moth and you are the light, 
I think about you day and night. 
I am starting to realize that there is a glass, 
This not-seeable barrier I cannot pass. 
Just being there, you keep me warm, 
But now I realize, I am just part of a swarm. 
The same path every night I repetitively flew, 
So badly, I want to be next to you. 


Michael heath is a a registered nurse living in South Florida. He wrote this poem after his first heartbreak, 15 years ago. 

“I have brought the melancholy of my heart
up the hill
to the wild roses in flower”

-Yosa Buson (1716 - 1784), translated by W.S. Merwin

Yosa Buson stared at the bloody circle before him. The noon sun was directly overhead, and its sunlight poked between a handful of white ocean clouds, the sunlight reflecting off the blood’s deep, oozing red. The result looked like a rose in full blossom, plucked and thrown carelessly into the wind. 

The sounds of the townspeople began to creep back into his consciousness. The muttering gossip of the victim’s neighbors peppered into Buson’s ears. He felt the close perspiration of the poor fishermen around him; the summer humidity did little to comfort the grisly scene. Thirty villagers had come to see this man’s execution, yet no one knew his name. They knew only what he’d done two nights ago.

“Excuse me. You there. Excuse me.”

Buson looked down to his left at an aged fisherman. The man’s flesh was torn and leathery, like the stunted skin of a turtle. 

“Oh, sorry. I apologize . . . my mind was elsewhere,” Buson said.

The old fisherman grimaced, revealing only a few remaining yellow teeth. “I understand. You look like a young man, traveler. First time seeing an execution?”

“Sadly, no.”

“Hm. Guess blood’s still flying across the country. So much for our hard-earned peace. Our daimyo hasn’t been here in all his life, I guarantee that.” The man took a step back and casually bowed a respectful angle. “I’m Beniya. A pleasure to meet you.”

Buson kindly returned the bow. He felt his white kimono stick to his sweaty back. “Friends call me Buson.”

“Strange name for these parts. Strange day for all of us, I suppose.” Beniya turned and looked across the slim road to the rapist’s body. “Did you know her . . . the victim?” His voice was low, breathless.

“Briefly. I knew her name.” Buson felt the sentence leave his cracked lips like bitter wine.

“She was a real beauty for a town like this. Yes, she was. Shame. At least she’s with her ancestors now. No place in this world for an orphan.” Beniya bowed again and walked off toward the market. The rest of the villagers gradually dispersed back to their daily chores, their boats, their weaving. Buson watched four boys tiptoe toward the corpse to get a better look. The two samurai were talking quietly to each other, the executioner leaning on his sheathed katana. One saw the boys and swore them off.

With his hands behind his back, Buson stared at the bloody rose-print. He couldn’t strip it from his mind. This tragic, bloody ferocity had coursed through a killer’s veins minutes ago. Enthralling. Paired with the sun, it was a shade of red Buson had never seen recreated by man’s hands, not in Edo, nor in Kyoto. Mankind’s truest paint is hidden until death, he thought. As he slowly picked up his pack and straw raincoat, he felt his head spin. His knees wobbled until he caught his balance. Blood was on his mind. Blood and loathing.

Takahama’s only izakaya was full that night. Men packed shoulder-to-shoulder drank the town’s unique brew of sake by the pitcher-full. Buson sat on the last stool of the restaurant. Back slumped like his shoulders were melting down his chest, he stared into the clear liquid sloshing around his cup as he tilted it left and right. The paper lanterns hanging from the izakaya’s wooden posts shed warm, flickering light across the small restaurant. Behind him he felt the pleasant coastal breeze. Cold specks of rain danced in from the night and kissed the nape of his neck. 

He remembered when he’d been here five moons ago. Hanako had been piling used wooden plates and ceramic cups from the bar, careful not to make eye contact with anyone. Anyone except Buson. Her long hair had been tied in a tight bun behind her head, casually held in place by a long black hairpin. A scarlet ornamental flower crested the top of the pin. The flower was a splash of color in contrast to Hanako’s pale skin and grey kimono. Beads of sweat had raced down her forehead. Buson had imagined he could feel her anxiety on his own back, and he’d wished he could take it, keep it for himself. When her duties were clear, she had come over to Buson and chatted about menial things. The color of the moon, local gossip, the new Buddhist bhikkhu in town. It hadn’t mattered what she’d said to him. It was the way she traced her hair behind her ear, the way she smiled with half a grin when she spoke of her dreams. 

Now two mature women were tending to the bar. Both wore the same grey kimono. Both wore deep frowns set like stone. Buson shot back the rest of his cup and slammed his hand on the bar for a pitcher. The night weighed against him, waiting to ambush him when sleep would inevitably roll along. The dreams would stab silently, without expression. Buson could feel the sake burn in his chest and the tips of his ears. The room began to spin, just like he’d hoped it would.

A few pitchers later, Buson stumbled through the quiet night’s muddy streets. He hoped he was moving toward the town’s meager ryokan to spend the night, but he wasn’t sure of his steps. Uncertainty, he thought. That’s me tonight and tomorrow. Forever. What is a poet if not a vagabond? His mind swam in the warm mud seeping between his sandaled toes. He was missing something, looking for something inside his organs. Hollow, like an oak infested with wood beetles digging through its branches. A young woman appeared at Buson’s side and grabbed his elbow. She was leading him toward a wide, lit house. In the dark, Buson looked up at the clear sky. Stars spread themselves haphazardly across the night. All of them swirled around one another. Hypnotizing. Buson stopped the girl and rubbed his eyes. He looked again at the stars and saw them for what they were: innumerable eyes of a spider staring at him, gods watching his thoughts closer than he’d ever know.

The following morning, Buson’s nausea eclipsed his nihilism. He had a feeling he’d wretched a few times last night, but he couldn’t remember. The ryokan’s staff were pleasant to him, but stiff and forced. After tea and a small bowl of rice, Buson paid them well. As he exited the sliding door, he paused and got the attention of the ryokan’s owner, a middle-aged man with pock-marked cheeks.
“Pardon me,” Buson said. “Who’s the current bhikkhu at the temple?”

“His name is Yamanoue. Been here for over thirteen moons by now. Go easy on him.”

Buson shared a bow with the ugly man before heading south, uphill. The morning sun was veiled by low clouds streaming in from the sea. Buson inhaled the rich scent of brine as he plodded up a heavily worn trail. The grass here was practically dancing it was so alive. Emerald ferns on either side of the trail fought for Buson’s attention. He heard a woodpecker rattle away somewhere in the shaded forest.

Unlike Edo, Takahama’s Buddhist temple had not been added upon over the past hundred years. As Buson stepped through the temple’s arched gateway, he noticed native ivy overwhelming the wooden structure’s accents and angles. Through the gate, twin healthy beech trees stood side-by-side in the center of the temple courtyard. A flock of crows perching in the two trees cawed and croaked, a shrill break in the temple’s otherwise still atmosphere. Buson looked behind him, down the winding hill to the small village below and the sea beyond. Even from this height there was a limit to how far he could see—the clouds were a solemn wall hiding the horizon. Perhaps when the sun has had its say I’ll look again, Buson thought.

He stepped further into the temple grounds. From what he could sense, Buson seemed to be the only person up here. Directly in front of him and on the other side of the trees lay the main hall. The front doors were open, and Buson could see the lower half of a bronze Buddha within. But for his purpose, he needed to find the bhikkhu. The temple’s rusty bell stood outside the lecture hall, a building no larger than an ordinary home in Takahama but far more ornamental. Here, too, ivy bordered the building’s curves and edges, as if the encroaching ivy hoped to hide what lay within. Feeling his sandals pull against his toes, Buson shuffled toward the meeting hall. As he approached the sliding door, Buson heard brief footsteps behind him. He stopped and turned. 

A tall, calmly smiling bhikkhu stood to the side of the bell. He wore a brown rakusu over his robes, the rakusu neatly sewn together with a brick pattern throughout the garment. Buson thought the over-robe looked more like a large, adult-sized bib. Even with the oversized Buddhist robes, Buson could see the man had been a warrior. He had the thickly muscled neck of an ox and the posture of a plank. A vertical scar raced down his forehead and left cheek. His bald scalp shone in the overcast light.

Hands and sleeves together in front of him, the bhikkhu bowed.

“Welcome, pilgrim,” he said, his voice deep and melodious.

“You must be Yamanoue,” Buson said, returning the bow.

“That I am. With whom do I owe this pleasure?”

The sun peaked out from overhead and caused Buson to squint. “Most know me by the name Buson,” he said.

Yamanoue’s expression lifted. “You don’t say? Truly, the poet from Edo, the one who studied under Master Hajin?”

Buson grinned. “I’m afraid so. One and the same.”

“The honor is mine, senpai. Master Hajin’s poetry is what led me to The Way of Buddha, away from war and worry.” Yamanoue bowed again, this time deep, almost to the waist. “What brings you to our humble temple?”

“You, actually. I was hoping to have a conversation.”

Yamanoue nodded. “Certainly, certainly. Please, follow me and we can discuss The Way.” He walked past Buson, up the steps, and slid the wooden door open to the meeting hall. Buson followed him. The interior of the meeting hall smelled of wet wood. There were no ornaments inside, other than a small Buddha at the front of the hall. Tatami mats formed the structure’s flooring. Yamanoue smoothly knelt to both knees in the middle of the room and gestured for Buson to join him. As Buson knelt, his nausea returned to buffet him. He reached up and rubbed his forehead.

“So, senpai, what do you seek?” Yamanoue said.

Buson sighed and shook his head. “It’s . . . not easy to explain. See, I’ve lived many things, and I’ve felt them too. Spring’s first thawed mud on the mountains. A young samurai weeping while he holds a dead infant in his arms. Bears ripping into each other under a full moon. I’ve been there, lived there in those moments. That’s what I write. Master Hajin taught me well . . . but it wasn’t me that lived those moments. I was only a reflection, a pool begging for ripples.”

“That is your dharma, no?” Yamanoue said.

“Yes, I suppose so, but let me explain. I thought I knew dharma—the principles, the duty, the me among the nothing. But . . . but then I met her.” Buson exhaled and looked up at the ceiling’s long pine beams stretching parallel to one another. “I first came to Takahama twenty-six moons ago. I was only passing through, see, on my way east for an autumn festival. The gods saw fit to dump their tears on us that day. The thunderstorm was impenetrable. So, dripping wet, I stumbled into the izakaya for shelter. I was the only one there, other than the owner and a young woman . . . Hanako.” He said her name like it was opium.

At the name, Yamanoue leaned forward slightly. Buson knew that the bhikkhu had known her. Hanako had spoken highly of him.

“There was nothing else to do but talk and drink since the roads were flooding. I learned that she was old enough for marriage—I learned that very quickly—and that she was an orphan. She talked to me like we’d known each other since childhood. And the way she laughed when I shared my poems . . . no one laughs like that. The veil of deluge behind me, I found the flower that’d been blooming in the dark. Hanako.”

“Did you pursue her?”

“No . . . as soon as the rain ceased, I rented a bed and dreamt of her. But when morning came, I did what I knew: I moved on. Traveling, always traveling. Like nature, eh? I made plans every chance I got to come back here. Every time I planned how I’d propose to her, take her away with me back to Edo, or maybe settle in Kyoto. I structured how I would profess my love. Poem after poem—they were all her. But whenever I walked into that izakaya, I would only reflect what she was. I could only observe and swallow the moment, feel it swirl in my belly. Sometimes we talked for hours. She liked me. I knew that from her eyes. Clever and keen. As if she were taunting me to ask her.”

Buson raked his fingers through his hair. “I never did.”

Slowly, Yamanoue asked, “Is it regret, then?”

“Guilt. Guilt, that’s what it is.” Buson allowed his chest to boil. “Because I always left and always returned, I always moved, yes, but I left her alone by staying alone myself. There was no one else for her. No one. An orphan girl in a piss-town, serving sake day and night to drunkards and peasants. And what happened, Yamanoue? Not me, that’s for sure. She was taken, snatched, raped. And you know what I was doing mountains away that night? Staring at the open stars, thinking how wonderful it is to be alive and how I’d surely share my life with her this time.” His nostrils flared with his breathing as his nausea flipped his anger on its side. He looked down at his open palms. Empty and shaking.

Buson heard the bhikkhu inhale and exhale a deep breath.

“I am . . . sorry she had to feel the pain she did,” Yamanoue said. His voice quavered. “She would visit here often to learn The Way of Buddha. She was pious, yet original. She knew she’d lived a difficult life. But she also knew Buddha’s truths, just as you do, that existence is suffering, and that suffering has a real breeding ground . . . attachment. Craving. She saw past them.”

Buson met Yamanoue’s eyes. “How?”

“To see past the future is to see the present. Nothing, absolute nothingness. She awoke her buddha-nature and cleaved to letting go of all of this. She discovered what’s beyond the mind. Beyond the tools of reason. So . . . when she died, I imagine she already knew she’d exist still, the very same existence she witnessed in zen.”

“I can’t not crave her,” Buson said. “The past is not some rope I can let go. The past and the future are my hands, my left and my right. I can’t grip a decision without feeling what isn’t there. That’s the nothingness you worship, isn’t it? Well, it’s a devil to me. I cannot move without feeling my own bones’ oppression.”

A single crow barked in the courtyard. Yamanoue parted his lips, but he paused and shut them again. Finally, he asked, “Do you know of Takahama’s Shinto shrine?”

Buson frowned. “No. I wasn’t aware there was a shrine here.”

“Few people know of it. It’s far in the hills, and the path is no more than a cluttered deer trail.” Yamanoue rose to his feet. “You can find the trailhead behind our temple’s main hall. Legend says a local kami still visits its shrine. I think there you may find the setting for your search.” He surveyed Buson. “Strange that a traveling poet is missing a yatate. I think you’ll probably want one when you reach the shrine. Here, it would honor me if you would take mine.”

Yamanoue walked to the Buddha at the end of the room, leaned behind it, and pulled out a small, rectangular wooden box, a corked gourd of water, and some spare parchment. He brought them to Buson and presented them. Buson rose and accepted the writing set, bowing.

“Thank you, Yamanoue. I’ll go find this hill,” Buson said.

Yamanoue clasped his own hands together. When Yamanoue bowed farewell, Buson thought he could feel the potential serenity of a sweet, inarticulate gravity press against him, empty beyond nothing. Buson took a few steps backward before turning his back to Buddha and heading toward the Shinto trail.

At this elevation, mainly cypress and cedars crowded the thick forest. Although past mid-day, cloud cover remained overhead and crept through the vegetation’s intertwined branches. Paired with the stagnant, humid air trapped under the forest canopy, the raw richness of life overwhelmed Buson. The trail was fragmented but still discernible enough to follow. It continued onward up-hill, driving through meandering rivulets and run-off. Buson’s feet and legs were quickly caked in mud. The trail had wound on itself so many times that Buson had lost his sense of direction. He knew only that the path went forward and backward. The choice was linear.

Unable to gather enough sunlight to thrive beneath the ancient trees, few shrubs and ferns lived on the forest floor. The forest seemed oddly forlorn and forgotten, despite its life. Looking ahead, Buson could see a break in the tree line, where the hill finally plateaued. Breathing hard, Buson tentatively approached the forest’s edge. He rested his hand on a healthy fir on the border and tried to make sense of what he saw.

The “hill” was, in fact, an ancient, isolated mountain peak overlooking the northern sea. A solitary grey torii gate stood planted on the cliff’s edge. The rest of the peak was carpeted in waving, pale grass, the canvas for blooming red rose bushes chaotically spread before the torii. A cold breeze swept against the clifftop, swaying the roses enough to catch crimson petals and gently carry them wistfully against Buson’s chest, before his feet. He could smell their wild liberty. The wind had ushered the clouds south enough to allow sunlight to bathe the cliff. Buson stepped forward and saw a large ball of copper fur beside the base of the torii. Intoxicated by the scent of the roses, Buson inched forward, careful to avoid the thorns beneath the blossoms. 

It was a fox. Dead and on its side, the female fox’s eyes and mouth were shut. The edges of her mouth were slightly curved, as if she were sharing a dream with someone she loved. Someone who’d stay by her while roses covered her fur under the sun and under the moon.
​
Buson stared at the fox like his soul had found breath. His eyes filled with tears that the wind flicked away. He shrank to his knees and pulled the yatate from his kimono, the gourd, the blank folded parchment. He spread the paper across his knee, opened the yatate, let his tears and water mix into the inkstone. The writing brush dipped into the ink and flowed on its own, captivated by its master’s heart. When he finished the poem’s seventeenth syllable, Buson’s limp fingers let the brush drift into the grass. He inhaled the sea, the wild roses. The nostalgic kiss of loneliness drifted across his lips, a clear prophecy that they would surely meet again.


Truman Burgess grew up in the Pacific Northwest and the Shenandoah Valley. He has a Bachelor's of English and currently works as a writer for St. George  News in Southern Utah. When he's not writing, you can find him dancing with his wife or climbing trees with his kids.

1

​​She has a peasant's face, the kind Mao would have wanted to see on a CCP poster during the Cultural Revolution: It's pleasantly round. Her cheeks have no high, affluent cheekbones, indicating wealth and aristocratic breeding. No. Her face, its roundness, gives one the impression that she's from peasant stock, perhaps a village in Hunan province, far up a remote valley that is only reachable by footpath. The village is a cluster of crumbling, mud-splattered homes. The roofs leak. At a communal well, old women who chew betel nut and have no teeth often gather to drink tea and gossip about a girl in a village in another valley (a village they have never been to), who has left home to work in Shanghai. They're sure a boy is involved. A girl who isn't pregnant would have no reason to leave the village until she's married.

2

Back in the sixties, when the rice paddies in this village shined with black spring mud, young women, their heads covered with scarves or straw hats--the peasant girls Mao would have favored--were calf-deep in the mud, stooped over, planting rice seedlings. They all had blissful CCP smiles. This girl with the round peasant face might have been in the black mud back then, working cooperatively alongside these CCP poster girls for the good of the country, but in modern China she has her own ideas about her future. The Cultural Revolution was long, long ago; she has only heard stories of it, handed down to her by uncles, aunts, grandmothers, and fathers, stories of their friends who died of despair or disease at the hands of Red Guards waving Mao's Little Red Book in one hand while holding shackles in the other.

3

​She lost her virginity when she was seventeen to a married cousin with a son who lives in the same village. Virginity had been a burden to her, and once she was free of it she felt she was in command of her future. She becomes eager to explore that world outside of her village. The married cousin was the easiest way out. She leaves the village after meeting a man on WeChat who lives in Shanghai. He's married, but she doesn't care if he is. She's not interested in marriage. She only wants to put that village behind her. The man puts her up in a modern flat in the Luwan District, the former French Concession. People in the building keep to themselves, don't ask questions. She quickly adjusts to this and no longer wants to return to her village, even on the Chinese New Year. She only sleeps with her lover nine or ten times a month. Maybe they have dinner out but always go to a hotel. He doesn't want to be seen with her in the flat, which is just fine with her. She has a lot of free time. She reads the Moments on WeChat of celebrities, watches movies, occasionally goes to a bar at one of the better hotels and meets a man and sleeps with him to earn some extra spending money. Some of the men are Western. They are kind, interested in her, and pay her well. She meets some other girls, too, who are the mistresses of rich Chinese men. She and the other girls sometimes talk about their lives, compare lovers. They all know that they can't go on living like this forever, but while they're young it's a good life, theirs. One night her lover tells her he doesn't want to use a condom anymore. She knows why, too. When he's drunk he tells her what she had suspected: that he wants a son. He has a daughter by his wife, but he needs a son to carry on his family name. The one-child policy won't allow him to have another child by his wife. He begins to weep, begging her for a son. She thinks he's weak and foolish. She does become pregnant but has a secret abortion and leaves him when she meets a man in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton who lives in Shenzhen. He is an executive at a software company there. She's had enough of life in Shanghai.

4

​This man, too, sets her up in a flat in one of the better areas of Shenzhen, the Nanshan district. Her flat is similar to the one she had in Shanghai, one bedroom, a living room, kitchen, bath, terrace. She's gotten used to this kind of life, private with pleasing surroundings, where people don't greet each other when they pass in the hallway or ride the elevator together. From the terrace, where she sits from time to time at night drinking French Wine, Pinot Noir, she looks across Shenzhen Bay to the mountains of Hong Kong. She can't see the city, only the mountains of the New Territories. On a weekday she and a friend, whom she has met on WeChat (a girl from a village in Hubei province) venture into Hong Kong for a shopping spree. They buy lotions and creams and shampoos, soaps and perfumes that aren't for sale in Shenzhen. The girl from Hubei buys a lot of expensive makeup. But this peasant-faced girl doesn't wear makeup. She's known even before losing her virginity that her face, which is out of place on her slender neck and rakishly thin body, is what draws men to her; and she's learned over the past few years that it's her eyes that cast the spell. She keeps her lips clasped when she smiles. Men are never quite sure what's on her mind.

5

​In Shenzhen, too, she sleeps with men other than her lover to make some extra money. She begins to prefer Westerners, because she can't speak much English, and they can't speak much Chinese. The conversations are more direct and honest. They communicate using the translate function on WeChat. They are often looking into their phones rather than the other's eyes. She likes it this way. There's freedom in it. One day the software executive, after sex, tells her that his wife is going to divorce him. He weeps. Too many men are weak, she thinks. She resents his weakness. She thinks of her village and where she's come from while he's weeping. She's known what it's like to face a nothing future, and this man has never experienced this. One night when he's drunk he asks her to marry him. She demurs. He won't give up and sends her message after message on WeChat, at first as many as fifteen, then later fifty, and when the number hits a few hundred she blocks him. He stops paying the rent on her flat. She had expected and prepared for this.

6

​With the money she's saved she rents a room in the Longgang District. It's dark and smelly, and the view out the solitary kitchen window is of a paint factory wall. Men and women who work in the factory come and go in their blue company uniforms. Many speak in a Hunan dialect. She begins to feel that her life is returning to that nothing life she had in her village. She sometimes regrets she didn't marry the man she blocked. She considers unblocking him and getting in touch but resits. One day she's had enough of her self-pity and decides to take control of her future. She makes a plan. She continues to go to the best hotels in Shenzhen and meet men and sleep with them, to make enough money to feel that she has the means to escape that dark room, but she doesn't know what kind of escape she'll pull off quite yet. This worries her from time to time. For the first time in her life she has trouble sleeping. She becomes fearful of aging. One evening at the Shangri La she meets a man from Germany who has come to Shenzhen to buy children's toys. He works for a German toy store. They spend ten days together. He takes her to lunch and dinner. The restaurants are always expensive ones. They communicate by using WeChat. He makes jokes, tells her she's beautiful. She thinks he makes her feel happy from time to time, but she isn't quite sure. She smiles, but her smile remains puzzling. She doesn't want him to know how he makes her feel, that she has never been happy with a man. This troubles her a little, but she accepts it. One afternoon he takes her to a building near the Hong Kong border where there are optometrists, tailors, and vendors who sell cheap electronics, and shops that have fake designer bags and Rolex watches. He buys several dozen fake Rolex watches to take back to his friends in Germany as souvenirs. She comes up with an idea to have a future for herself. She tells him that she could work as his agent in Shenzhen, to negotiate the terms for glasses, men's suits, women's dresses, children's toys, and fake watches, anything he wants.

7

​Within a year she has made enough money as his agent to move out of that dark room facing the paint factory wall. She rents a small flat in the Yintian district. It has a kitchen, bedroom, and a terrace. There's a view of the Minsk, an old Russian aircraft carrier, now a tourist attraction, in the harbor. From time to time men whom she has connected with through the German man come to Shenzhen on business. Some ask her to sleep with her. If the men make her smile, she does. It's satisfying for her to sleep with the men she wants to. Some of them give her money, though she doesn't ask for it. She takes the money. Not only does she need it, but to refuse it, she feels, would be rude. She's not having sex for money. That was another life.

8

​Her business grows. She takes English lessons at the Open University, learns to write emails in English, to communicate with men, and now a few women, who come to Shenzhen, looking for products to buy and import back to their countries. She has clients from all over the world. One day an American man comes to Shenzhen who works for a company that makes drones. He's there to negotiate a price for the motors for his company's drones. She acts as his interpreter. They go to several companies, searching for the best deals. He's married, has three children, lives in some city in California. He's almost twice her age, nearing sixty. They have lunches and dinners together. She wonders why he doesn't ask her to sleep with him. They get along well. He's witty. She makes her smile naturally. Now and then she breaks into laughter, rare for her.

9

​At the end of the week, late on a Friday, when they are sharing a taxi back to his hotel, she is the one who propositions him. She hadn't planned to do this. It just seemed to be the natural thing to do, suggest they spend the night together. He looks at her and thinks for a moment, and she is nervous. She has never felt this way with a man before, unsure of herself. He puts a hand on one of her thighs. He tells her that he'd like that. They spend the night in his hotel room. There's more talk than sex. In the morning she feels that she has slept well. They spend the next day at the Mission Hills Golf Club. He talks to her about golf. She has never given golf much thought until this day. But he is so passionate about the game that she becomes interested in it. For the rest of his time in Shenzhen they sleep together, and when he leaves she feels she might cry but stays in control of herself, as she's always managed to do.

10

​They stay in touch, using WeChat, sending messages to each other several times a day. They tell the other good morning and good night. She continues to sleep with other men, only because she needs them from time to time to satisfy herself. Several months pass before the man from California says he can meet her again. He wants to attend a conference on maritime security in Singapore. They meet in Bali and stay at a resort that has cottages on the beach and a restaurant near a shimmering blue pool. They spend more time sitting in beach chairs in the shade of palm trees, looking out across the Bali Sea talking about their lives than swimming or going on tours of the island. As their time together shortens to a few days, they talk more and more about their futures, how to come to terms with these long separations, hoping that they'll arrive at a solution, but they don't and she, after returning to Shenzhen, starts to post anonymous Moments on a fake WeChat account, writing about her relationship with this man. Her Moments attract thousands of readers. Within a few months, her posts are some of the most popular on WeChat. She meets the man every few months, posts Moments about her affair with him, and reads her followers' advice on what to do, but all these solutions seem foolish or beyond her grasp and, well, it's the feeling that she's a celebrity that is important to her, if but as an anonymous one.

11

​After a while, she stops receiving texts from him. She thinks that maybe his wife has found out about them and forced him to delete her as a contact. She likes to think that she can forget about him, but even after a week or so she hasn't, and she wonders why he hasn't contacted her. It isn't like him to be like that. He would have at least said goodbye, it's over, my wife found out, something like that, and then she could move on with her life, and so she starts to wonder how she can find out what, if anything, has happened and uses her VPN to bypass the Great Fire Wall to do a Google search and track him down. It doesn't take her long to find out that he had died in a forest fire in a town called Paradise. He died with his wife. His house was turned to ash. She has difficulty understanding how this could happen, that a forest fire would catch the two of them while they are in their house and burn them to death, but she has to accept it and does.

12

​About two weeks later she receives a text from someone in her village in Hunan, who tells her that her father has died. At first, she doesn't think much about the text. People die every day. Her lover died a horrible death. Her father was old and, well, death comes to old people. It's the suddenness of death that frightens her, the way her lover died, so unexpectedly, the way people die in car accidents or slowly die before their time from a disease they had been carrying around with them for years, perhaps since they were born. Their death was predetermined when they were born, these people with certain diseases, she thinks, and she wonders if she has a disease that will show itself before her time. She begins to wonder how her father died, and this begins to affect her work; she can't concentrate on making connections between foreign buyers and Chinese suppliers. And so to put an end to this and get her business back on track she decides to return to her hometown.

13

​In a way, her village has changed a great deal. There are new, modern homes where traditional brick and mud ones had been, and many people have cars. The road to her village is, to her surprise, paved and maintained. In another way, her village hasn't changed at all. The people there are suspicious of strangers, even her, who wear designer clothes and have expensive shoes and wristwatches. The cousin whom she used to rid herself of her virginity has three children, in violation of the one-child policy, but up here, in a village in a remote valley, no one from the central government is likely to check on him, or others, on how many children they have. The doctor at the local clinic, who visits from time to time, and the nurse, don't have any interest in how many children a family has, because they, too, have as many as they like, or are willing to accept bribes. It's that kind of place, her village, which is still stuck in the past in spite of the modern homes and the cars and the new road. And then, there's her mother, who tells her she's heard she's a prostitute.

14

​Her father's corpse is laid out in an ornate red coffin trimmed with gold leaf. She can't even recognize him, to her surprise, the mortician has done such a poor job, maybe using photos of him as a young man to give him a degree of never-known affluence and dignity. But she never remembered him as a young man. He had a hard life as a farmer and his wrinkled, leathry face showed it. But it doesn't matter, all that thinking of her father. Or that her mother accuses her of being a prostitute. She says goodbye to her father, to her mother, who really has become unrecognizable, too, shriveled up like a raisin. She hires a university student from the village to drive her to Changsha, where she catches a flight back to Shenzhen, and feels, as soon as she starts to walk through the new terminal building, that she is home. That little muddy village in Hunan has nothing to do with her.

15

 ​That evening she opens a bottle of South African Pinot Noir and drinks it on the balcony of her flat while eating cabbage and shrimp dumplings. As she drinks the wine, she looks out across Shenzhen Bay at Hong Kong and contemplates her life and wonders if she will ever share it with a man as so many other Chinese women do. She's an outcast and she knows it. After a few more glasses of wine, she realizes that she has always been an outcast. She drinks more wine. The sun sets and she opens another bottle and drinks and continues to think about her life and concludes that other women wish they lived a life as free as hers. They are the ones who are entangled in unhappy marriages, tied down with the educational expense of a child. She drinks. A few stars appear. The waters of the bay are dark. She sees the lights of a ferry as it crosses the bay from Shenzhen on its way to the Hong Kong airport. Seeing the ferry gives her the idea of going on a vacation somewhere alone, a country she hasn't been to, in Europe, possibly even Japan, because it's so contrary for her, and other Chinese, to go to the country that is so despised by many Chinese but not her. Japanese design and its culture have always fascinated her, and knowing that many Chinese hate Japan makes it a particularly appealing country to visit. She knows it has many specialty shops where she can buy electronics she has only read about, austere, elegant jewelry, and the latest rice cookers that will probably never be available in China. Perhaps she'll buy an expensive watch, a pearl necklace. She's fine with her decision, going to Japan alone. She no longer needs a man. She drinks some more wine. Yes, she'll go to Japan, stay in a fine hotel, the Keio Plaza in Shinjuku, shop on the Ginza and write about her experiences on WeChat, to make other women envious of the life she leads. 


James Roth lives in Zimbabwe and parts of the American southeast where snow is rare, if it falls at all. He writes fiction and nonfiction in most genres but leans toward noirish stories and creative nonfiction. His stories have appeared, or are forthcoming in, “Close to the Bone,” “Fleas on the Dog,” “The Bombay Review,” “Mystery Tribune,” "Crimeucompia: It's Always Raining in Noir City," and the "Careless Love" edition, and “Verdad.” He has a novel which is set in Meiji era Japan coming out in late 2022. Before coming to Zimbabwe, he lived and taught in Japan and China. He likes to say he was "Made in Japan." His parents lived there during the occupation, but he was born in an Army hospital in the U.S., to his lasting regret, and that of his mother as well.

Newly arrived in Ann Arbor for graduate studies at the University after five years of personal sabbatical in Europe, I knew no one. It did not take long to find an apartment, some used wheels and to check in with the Institute while awaiting the formal opening of class registration. 

Every July the town has a massive art festival on its downtown streets. With nothing further to do, I wandered from booth to booth examining works of art and chatting with the artists. Despite living in France and Italy, I know nothing of art, just that certain blends of color are pleasing and classical designs hold layers of meaning for me. In addition to the artist booths there are those for organizations such as the Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Alliance Française, and Michigan Drone Club. At one such booth an enthusiastic young woman, not attracting as much attention as I would have expected, was touting the virtues of geo-thermal energy. Pleased to have found someone to listen, Kitty invited me to join her in the booth. 

Never have I met anyone so knowledgeable about geo-thermal energy. Never have I met anyone so enthusiastic. We passed the rest of the afternoon talking and passing out literature. The effort seemed educational rather than directed at recruiting members or soliciting donations. Her black shorts and black running shoes highlighted her light-skinned legs. Her black tee-shirt with red block letters reading “Geo-Thermal” below the scripted “Go For,” highlighted the rest of her. After three hours, Kitty said, “Some of us are having a party tonight. Why don’t we get dinner together and then you can come along.” I had no reason to refuse.

“Since you are new to town, I can give you a walking tour along the way.”

She proposed a Japanese restaurant, a personal favorite as sweet soy sauce goes well with anything. I chose the beef teriyaki. 

Kitty chose sushi, tuna maki and salmon nigiri. “Isn’t it amazing that they can prepare raw fish that people like to eat?” 

We shared a small bottle of warmed sake, offering numerous toasts to new towns, to adventures, and to geo-thermal energy. 

“Excuse me, but I have to use the little girl’s room. Be right back.” 

I enjoyed watching her leave, the tight shorts twitching as she walked toward the back of the restaurant. Moments later a black cat dashed toward me from the back of the restaurant, stopping beside the table to sniff the air, before scampering out the front door. The server shrugged. “Must live in the neighborhood. I see it often enough.”

Kitty was gone longer than I expected. “Always a line for women,” she laughed, suggesting we go to the party as it was after 7. We walked toward Burns Park, a wealthier neighborhood.

“A longtime professor of geology, Professor Bubb, is out of town and letting us use his house.”

Arriving at the party, we climbed the stairs in front to enter a crowded foyer and living room. Kitty found me a place to sit on an old red velvet couch and went to find beers for us in the kitchen, obscured by the crowd, squeezing between them to the obvious delight of some. She returned with two cold cans of Scratch Ale, with a devil head caricature of “Old Scratch” on the can. 

“Artisan brewing is a big thing now, especially in Ann Arbor. This is one of the best. See if you like it.”

After a few moments of conversation as the crowd thinned to other parts of the house, “Oh, I see some people I need to talk with. Will you be okay?” And she disappeared.

I savored the beer, considering what I might do next, reflecting upon how juvenile this party seemed after five years in Europe. I remembered college parties whose only purpose was to put a lot of people and beer in one place. 

The living room furniture belonged to an earlier age. The one item alien to a Victorian sitting room were the lamps, whose Tiffany shades would belong but whose bases were made of black or gray igneous rocks, a geology professor’s affectation. The bulbs were red, barely visible as the summer sun in Michigan does not set early. 

A woman with straight, long black hair was seated opposite me across the room. She was staring at me. Her eyes bluish-gray. Her eyeshadow was black as was her lipstick. I smiled. Her expression did not change. Her tongue moistened her lips. I looked at my beer, took a sip. She was still staring. She soon rose, wearing thigh high cage stiletto boots, and walked across the room toward me.

“May I sit down?” 

I shrugged.

She sat on my lap, pulled my head toward her and began kissing me passionately with the taste of alcohol and tobacco on her lips. I accepted the kisses, wondering what Kitty might think if she returned. When the passion had faded, she said, “Now that we have been introduced, my name is Charona.”

“Unusual name. I don’t think I have heard it before.”

“It’s Greek. There is a large Greek community in this part of Michigan.”

After the usual chit chat of people who have just met, she got up from my lap, took my hand and offered to show me the rest of the house. We walked into the kitchen so I saw where Kitty had found the beer. I grabbed another. Charona said that the professor kept his papers and other valuable upstairs so that was off-limits. We descended the steps beyond the kitchen. Amidst the regular party noises I heard murmurs, uncertain of their origin or import. There were moans, of pleasure, and of pain, sometimes indistinguishable, one from the other. And the click of her stiletto heels on the tile floors.

The lower level seemed larger than I expected, with many rooms and longer corridors. Suddenly a door opened to the right, ahead of us. A man tumbled out onto the floor. He was middle-aged, his hair already white. I reached down to help him. His eyes registered fear as he stared at me and then at my hand. He grabbed for my hand and began to cry. As I helped him to his feet, a large, muscular arm tattooed with swastikas pulled him back into the room. The door slammed. 

Charona’s eyes narrowed. “It is late. Probably time to go.” When we had returned to the living room, its sole illumination against the night was the lamps, their red glimmer reflected on the rocks that supported them. A black cat rubbed against my shins and darted toward the kitchen. 

“This may not be your kind of party.”

“Before I went to Europe, a college party, gathering to drink beer, splitting off for kinks, had more appeal. Will I see you again?”

“Perhaps. We are here most weekends, but you have to come to party—and for kinks.” She winked. 

Kitty appeared from the direction of the kitchen. Her hair was disheveled. Her face was flushed and moist. She was wearing a different top, black but without lettering, than the one she had been wearing. 

“Sorry we got separated. Hope you had a good time.” She took the hand Charona had been holding and led me toward the door. 

We walked the half block to the corner. She turned left as I turned right. “Thanks for inviting me, Kitty. It has been an interesting evening that passed quicker than I expected. Hope to see you again.” She waved.

After a few moments of reflection, a few more steps, I looked back in her direction. A black cat was disappearing down the street in the direction of the house.

Although Ann Arbor is a medium-size town with a large university campus, I expected to run into Kitty or Charona but never saw them again. An online search of “Go For Geo-Thermal” a few weeks later brought no results. I have returned to Burns Park, unable to locate the house. Indeed, the University of Michigan has no department of geology, just Earth and Environmental Sciences, and only one Professor Emeritus of Geology, whose name could never be mistaken for B. Z. Bubb. 

Sometimes a small black catalyst triggers the search for mislaid memories of that strange time. Is it that shadowy speck, scurrying just ahead? 


An American retired to his wife’s native Singapore, Samuel “Sam” R. Kaplan holds graduate degrees in Economics and Russian Studies. A longtime member of the US Society of Professional Journalists, he has also taught English conversation in France and Italy. Working as an economist at the University of Virginia Cooper Center for Public Service to produce economic projections was perfect preparation for his current project of writing fiction. 

I have wasted so many things 
In my life

Love 
Time 
Money 
Youthful energy 

But I have never wasted
A drop of whisky.
Poured it very carefully,
Drained every glass,
Finished every bottle,
The empties displayed like trophies.

I allow it into my room every night.
Better than sleeping pills,
Kinder than a stranger’s caress
In a cold room at midnight.


Saul Bennett is a 43-year old poet from a small town in the North Of England. He is an observer in a working class dimension. He has had poems published in Moss Puppy, Roi Faineant, Vocivia amongst other publications in the U.K. and USA. He can be found on Twitter @SBennettpoet.

​The curtains were glowing when Camilla’s alarm woke her, and for the first time in her life, she cursed the sun. She decided that, for once, she was going to get what she wanted that day. She knew it was Sunday because Sunday was the only day she got up early. She rose, hobbled over to the toilet, sat down, and remembered that she still had not learned her solo sequence for Mass that morning. 
She walked back around her snoring husband and went outside to get the newspaper. The neighbor’s evergreen clashed with the pale Bermudagrass around it. It was a bad tree for that yard. Anyone could see that. What was wrong with those people? Twigs were growing into branches and the tree was calling to her (in a waltz cadence): 

I'm getting bigger and you can do nothing, you can do nothing, you can do nothing! 

I'm getting bigger and you can do nothing, you can do nothing, you can do nothing! 

She dropped the newspaper. With slippers flopping on the pavement, she pushed through the gate to her backyard, opened the shed and grabbed the rose pruners. She walked straight to her neighbor's tree and started trimming. One branch, two, three, four... She held branches in her left hand, but most of the cuttings fell to the ground. Then she gathered everything into her arms and retreated, ignoring how the branches irritated her skin. She threw them into her yard waste bin, picked up the paper and went back inside. 

Ah, satisfaction!

She squeezed through the darkness of her living room. The "den of dreams," her husband called it. The sofa and TV were pushed up against the wall and she had not seen the fireplace in years. A treadmill, grand piano, harp, nautilus fitness set, harpsichord, cello, organ, and stair master filled the room and made it all but impossible to use. She squeezed past the items and into the kitchen, brewed herself a cup of coffee and made breakfast.

She ate, went back upstairs, showered, dressed, and made herself up. She piled her hair so that it swooped straight up and back. She knew that the eye shadow made her look like the Bride of Frankenstein, but without it she would look much older than her 68 years. Her ears sagged, but earrings covered up most of that. She puckered her mouth into a tight wrinkled smile, and saw, once again, that it looked ridiculous; but she still believed that this smile endeared her to others. 

A red Cadillac awaited her in the garage. Her husband stopped coming to church with her long ago. Damn him! She could not use his cravings anymore since he did not have them. At least he got her a nice house close to the cathedral. At least she could still give money, time, and direction to the church.

After zipping through desolate daybreak streets, she parked outside the parish office, pulled out her keys and slipped inside. She went to her mail slot. Camilla was not an employee, but she was on the Finance Committee, the Environment Committee, the School Board, and the St. Vincent de Paul Steering Committee. Her own slot had nothing, but the Music Director's box held a fat envelope. She wondered what was inside. 

The envelope called to her (with a bouncy, playful, taunting rhythm):

I know something you don't know, you don't know, you don't know! 

I know something you don't know, you don't know, you don't know!

The song thumped through her head, and she started dancing to its beat right there in the office, pumping her feet and her fists in front of the mail slots. Then she looked around. It was still early, long before the first Mass. No one else was in the office, and she had not turned on the lights. She took out the fat envelope and opened it. It was (ugh!) youth music. Who in their right mind would sit for that repetitive crap? Copy by copy, she tore it all to shreds, putting increasing muscle into each successive octavo. Pieces of paper fluttered to the floor in a widening circle around her. When she finished, she was gulping down wheezing breaths. She got on her hands and knees, gathered the torn music, and stuffed it all to the bottom of the receptionist's waste bin. She took deep breaths to calm herself and walked out the door without looking back.

Ah, satisfaction!

As Camilla opened the door to the empty rehearsal room, she remembered once again that she still had little clue how she was going to solo the sequence that morning. Then she saw a guitar hanging on the wall. 

She knew where that guitar came from. It belonged to the lead guitarist for the Spanish Mass. Those Mexicans. She once attended that Mass for a presentation of the St. Vincent de Paul. The Mass was a mess. Vendors sold sweets by the doors, children roamed the aisles during the sacred liturgy, and the constant din of talking never ceased. 

Those people met for other services during weeknights in the parish hall. The sound of a plodding bass intruded on her meetings with the finance committee and the school board. Those people were irreverent and destructive. She wanted nothing to do with them.

That guitar hung on the wall like a dead chicken, an insult to music and the sacred liturgy. It did not even have a proper guitar strap. Instead, an orange nylon rope drooped from the neck, and, on the other end, hooked into the sound hole. The hook was scraping away at the guitar’s face. What a horrible way to use such an instrument. 

The instrument sang out its defiance to her (in a Hispanic accent, and with the trumpet blasts of a Mexican Hat Dance):
​
I play for those you despise, whether you like it or not! 

I play for those you despise, whether you like it or not!

I know that you don't like me, but it's just too bad, too bad, too bad! 

I know that you don't like me, but it's just too bad, too bad, too bad!

She marched across the rehearsal room with her hands outstretched and tore the guitar from the wall. She grabbed it by the neck and raised it high, smashing two fluorescent lights in the ceiling by accident. White powder and thin glass rained down upon her head, but she had a pressing task at hand. The guitar came crashing to the floor, again and again.

By the time Camilla finished, she was left with the guitar’s neck in her hands, strings swinging freely, and wood fragments strewn about her feet. 

Ah, satisfaction!

Cleanup was the price to pay. She pushed the pieces onto some sheet music and threw it all into one of the cabinets in the back of the room. The debris covered up a set of bongos.

Now, what had she been thinking about? Oh, yes, that solo. It was a chant. She hated chant, especially Gregorian. And all chant sounded like Gregorian to her. Other people might say they liked it, but other people did not actually have to do it. Camilla had complained, and it seemed, for a moment, that the pastor might relent and allow the hymn instead of the chant. But then he made up his mind. Pastors could be such pains in the butt.

She took out the sheet music for the sequence. It had two sets of lyrics: English and Latin. She would do the English. She hated Latin.

She did try to learn this sequence the previous Wednesday, the one evening she had free. She had no meetings with the any of the committees. She was not visiting her mother, nor ushering at the theatre, nor having dinner with friends, nor working at the antique shop. That evening was free. She tried to plink the sequence out on her grand piano while the handlebars of her exercise bicycle dug into her back. After ten minutes she gave up. But she did get through the first three verses, kind of.
The director promised Camilla they would go through the chant together at the end of rehearsal. But they both forgot. 

As Camilla shook her head and paged through the chant, choir members started arriving. The director was late. Margaret, one of the altos, had a new pair of small wire rim glasses. She asked the others if she looked like a schoolmarm. Joe and Mona had just returned from their vacation in Santa Fe. Their photographs of the cathedral, the mountains, and the local street vendors showed a lovely town accustomed to tourists. Nancy's doctor had prescribed her a new anti-inflammatory that was working pretty well.

Erin, the director, arrived twenty minutes late. "Sorry! I had a hard time getting up this morning!" 

"Overslept again," thought Camilla. 

They rehearsed the Psalm, the Acclamation and the songs selected for that Mass. Then it was 7:52 and Camilla had to go. She flipped through the book one last time and blurted out. "Erin—I need to practice the sequence!" The director looked confused, then concerned. Then she sighed. 

"I think you're just going to have to wing it," she said. "Remember what I told you about sight reading."

Camilla closed her eyes and exhaled. Then she slapped her music book shut and walked off to the sanctuary. She sat in the cantor’s seat on the right side of the altar and reviewed the sequence again. The assembly would be following along in their missalettes. They would understand the words, but would they understand the music? She hoped not.

Monsignor Crowley waved from the back, signaling time to start. She got up to the podium and made the announcements.

She led the opening song but was not thinking about that. The Psalm went okay, even if it was dreadful and slow. Then came the sequence. After the introductory notes from the organ, she began. The first three verses seemed to go okay. For the rest, she simply raised the pitch of her voice when the notes went up and lowered it when the notes went down. The organ tried to accompany her, but it was getting one chord wrong after another. The words were interminable. Eight verses. The assembly sat quiet and stony-faced. Even the small children lay still in their mother's arms, dense as rocks, staring at her.

Camilla spent the rest of the Mass re-playing the chant in her head, trying to count how many mistakes she had made. The assembly looked at her, but no one else did: not the pastor, nor the director, nor anyone else in the loft. How bad was it? She wanted to get out of there.

After Mass she was alone in the musician's side of the sacristy, putting away her mic and talking on the phone with her old friend Dolores. The 9:30 AM Mass had already started. Brittany, a new cantor, began the sequence. Her voice was clear, young, and beautiful. It rang with undiluted confidence as she chanted in Latin. The voice itself spoke to Camilla, provoking her (like a 1980's hard rock song, with lots of guitar distortion):

You can't sing like me, poor dear! 

You can't sing like me, poor dear! 

You can't chant and you sound like an old lady! 

You can't sing like me, poor dear!

Brittany's voice was loud, and Camilla could hear nothing else. She looked around, went to the sound board, found the slider for the cantor, and turned it down. Brittany's voice faded to nothing.
Ah, satisfaction!

Camilla slipped out the back door of the sacristy. A young man and woman were coming down a walkway. The woman was pushing a stroller with a lovely baby. The woman asked the man, "What did you think of that Mass, dear?" Camilla hid behind a pyracantha bush and listened.

The man pushed his hands through his hair, and then let them slap down on his thighs. "The Mass was fine, except for that awful cantor. Good heavens, how can that poor girl still be singing at the cathedral?" 

Camilla stopped breathing. She circled round the bush as they passed, careful to remain hidden. 
The man went on. "And that sequence was the worst! I don't think she got a single note correct! What a laughable disaster!"

After they rounded the corner of the presbytery, she emerged from behind the bush. A song in her head pounded like dynamite. (Screamed to the grinding refrain of a typical alternative rock song):

They hate you! They hate you!

They think you're shit! They hate you!

Camilla watched the young family from behind the corner of the presbytery. "Who are they? Who are they? Where do they live?" 

She had to find out. She saw the couple put their baby into a white Sienna and climb inside. The last three letters of the license plate said "7C4." The car pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street. 
Camilla tromped to the office, head whirling with such vigor that she could not walk in a straight line. The receptionist would not arrive for another 30 minutes. Camilla pulled out her keys and let herself into the office once again. She whipped through parish records, tearing pages and letting folders fall to the floor. She gulped heavy breaths as she leaned on the file cabinets. 

Then Camilla remembered the parish directory with family photos. One was lying on the receptionist’s desk. She collapsed onto the chair and gawked at every photo, nose only a few inches from the pages. Her vision was becoming like a dark tunnel, but she had to find that family. Faces and words marched by, and her world closed around that book. 

Finally, in the letter M, she found them. The McNamara family photo had a lovely husband, wife, and baby girl. She looked around the desk for something sharp, and her hand swooped down and grabbed a ball point pen out of a large cup. She accidently stabbed her wrist on a letter opener and blood started to flow. The office was tilting. She clung to the desk with one hand and raised the other hand high. It came down, again and again, smashing the point of the pen onto the photo of the family, leaving gashes across the father, mother, and baby girl. Camilla’s blood got all over the desk.
The walls spun and Camilla fell to the floor. The fluorescent lights were the only thing she could see. The rest of the room was turning black. She could not draw breath. The world was sliding away but she had gotten her satisfaction.


​Mike Neis lives in Orange County, CA and works as a technical writer for a commercial laboratory. His work has appeared in Amethyst Review, Rind Literary Magazine and elsewhere. Besides writing, his outside activities include church music, walking for health, and teaching English as a second language.

No children allowed,
Said the sign on the door.
 
Mean men,
Drink in this bar.
 
Wild women,
Roam here free.
 
They wear
Too much make-up,
And laugh too loudly.
 
They have dyed hair,
High heeled shoes,
Long cigarettes between painted lips.
 
Men with moustaches,
Beards, Battered baseball caps,
Crafty, knowing eyes.
 
The children are not able to catch
A glimpse of their future.
As the sign on the door,
Said they are not allowed.


Saul Bennett is a 43-year old poet from a small town in the North Of England. He is an observer in a working class dimension. He has had poems published in Moss Puppy, Roi Faineant, Vocivia amongst other publications in the U.K. and USA. He can be found on Twitter @SBennettpoet.

Hurley suspected the horseradish on his hot dogs had gone bad before he had the foil totally open. Something smelled fermented. In a weird way. 

There were typically lines at flea market food stalls, so Hurley always brought his own, wrapped tight in aluminum foil he used at least twice before it went into his recycling. Leftover hot dogs with horseradish were a favorite.   

Hurley didn’t entirely trust his old nose, so he asked a younger passerby for an opinion. 

“Do these smell funky to you?” Hurley said, waving his partially unwrapped hot dogs under the surprised teenage boy’s nose. “Not James Brown funky, but like I might suffer for it later?”

“James Brown?” the idiot kid replied blankly. 

Hurley sighed, then gave his lunch an easy underhanded toss into a nearby trash bin. 


Brian Beatty is the author of five poetry collections: Magpies and Crows; Borrowed Trouble; Dust and Stars: Miniatures; Brazil, Indiana: A Folk Poem; and Coyotes I Couldn’t See. Beatty’s writing has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Conduit, CutBank, Evergreen Review, Exquisite Corpse, Gigantic, Gulf Coast, Hobart, McSweeney’s, 
The Missouri Review, Monkeybicycle, The Quarterly, Rattle, Seventeen and Sycamore Review. In 2021 he released Hobo Radio, a spoken word album with original music by Charlie Parr. Beatty lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota. 

In the darkest recesses last night,
I managed to successfully resolve
a number of open issues that had
plagued me since my youth, no small
task for a single night's work.

I decided that the Hardy Boys
had, once they were old enough,
joined the LAPD, one made it
to Lieutenant, but both were involved
in an excessive force investigation
and resigned and move to Idaho.

Nancy Drew grew tired of crime solving
and married a young Wall Street
analyst, but decided to divorce him
and got to keep the house in Greenwich 
in exchange for the one in the Hamptons
which needed so much work.

And as morning was about to dawn,
I noted that Charlie finally sold
the Chocolate Factory, took the money
and invested it in a string 
of marijuana dispensaries and moved
to a small island he bought in the Bahamas.


Louis Faber is a poet, photographer and blogger.  His work has appeared in The Poet, Alchemy Spoon, New Feathers Anthology, Dreich (Scotland), Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Erothanatos (Greece), Defenestration, Atlanta Review,  Glimpse, Rattle, Cold Mountain Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, Borderlands: the Texas Poetry Review, Midnight Mind, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among many others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He can be found at https://anoldwriter.com and at https://bird-of-the-day.com.

/ one hundred and seventy / You’re standing in the aisle of a plane, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 / one hundred sixty-nine / It is 1972. You're working a flight from Stockholm to Belgrade. / one hundred sixty-eight / Someone sneezes. Someone dings a flight attendant. / one hundred sixty-seven / Three fourths of an hour into the flight you walk to the galley in the tail, / one hundred sixty-six / tuck a wisp of your blond hair behind your ear, / one hundred sixty-five / the last normal gesture you make. / one hundred sixty-four / You feel the engines’ vibrations through your feet, a / one hundred sixty-three / shutter of turbulence then fire and sound and the world lurches / one hundred sixty-two / people scream / one hundred sixty-one / claw at themselves / one hundred and sixty / a howl so horrible that maybe you pass out / one hundred fifty-nine / gravity is wrong / one hundred fifty-eight / so wrong that it knuckles you against the galley’s lockers / one hundred fifty-seven / a food cart, heavier than ever before / one hundred fifty-six / rams against your ribs, breaks a few / one hundred fifty-five / a passenger shatters into the wall next to you / one hundred fifty-four / eyes twin budges of skull / one hundred fifty-three / doubled over like a safety pin / one hundred fifty-two / the world is filled with ragdolls / one hundred fifty-one / you try to inhale / one hundred and fifty / the most human of gestures / one hundred forty-nine / but even this fails in the / one hundred forty-eight / hurricane of nothing / one hundred forty-seven / your eyelids freeze shut / one hundred forty-six / your tongue lulls against your locked jaws / one hundred forty-five / the rest of the plane sheers away / one hundred forty-four / sheers everyone away / one hundred forty-three / confetti in a tornado / one hundred forty-two / less than that / one hundred forty-one / the temperature is -55° Celsius / one hundred and forty / something like -70° Fahrenheit / one hundred thirty-nine / your eardrums rupture / one hundred thirty-eight / frost forms along your cuticles  / one hundred thirty-seven / and inside your nostrils / one hundred thirty-six / did you know that wind can blow so hard / one hundred thirty-five / it becomes a maw / one hundred thirty-four / ravenous / one hundred thirty-three / you tumble / one hundred thirty-two / the tail of the plane / one hundred thirty-one / all of reality / one hundred and thirty / the horizon above and beside you / one hundred twenty-nine / so fast it’s simultaneous / one hundred twenty-eight / for the first time in this new world / one hundred twenty-seven / your lungs fill with air / one hundred twenty-six / the only right thing about all this / one hundred twenty-five / you wake / one hundred twenty-four / maybe / one hundred twenty-three / the most important mercy / one hundred twenty-two / your neck cracks as a whip / one hundred twenty-one / you shatter your upper molar / one hundred and twenty / the small things are important here / one hundred nineteen / the house key in your pocket / one hundred eighteen / a bit bent because of a sticky lock / one hundred seventeen / the garnet ring that has always been too tight / one hundred sixteen / the outline of the rip in your cardigan that you mended by hand / one hundred fifteen / these will be the things they use to identify your body / one hundred fourteen / these will be the things they mail to your mother in a neatly taped package / one hundred thirteen / centrifugal force / one hundred twelve / is called a false gravity / one hundred eleven / but there’s nothing false about how it / one hundred and ten / tramples you against the lockers / one hundred and nine / crushes the drink cart against you / one hundred and eight / you don’t know this yet / one hundred and seven / but that cart is saving your life even as it cracks more of your ribs / one hundred and six / your whole existence is reduced to / one hundred and five / cells and cells and cells / one hundred and four / faced with a physics problem / one hundred and three / the plane had been cruising at over 33,000 feet / one hundred and two / six and a quarter miles in the sky / one hundred and one / if you were walking it would take you two hours / one hundred / to cover this distance / ninety-nine / if you were running at a world record pace / ninety-eight / it would take you twenty-six minutes / ninety-seven / but you / ninety-six / you're about reach the ground in less than three minutes / ninety-five / at two hundred miles an hour / ninety-four / all of reality is condensed to cause and effect / ninety-three / as if this is ever not true / ninety-two / whenever the tail whips around / ninety-one / screeches against the wind / ninety / the windows are / eighty-nine / filled with streaks of brown and blue / eighty-eight / that old pilot joke / eighty-seven / the one that goes / eighty-six / when crashing / eighty-five / it isn’t speed that will kill you / eighty-four / it’s the deceleration / eighty-three / do you think of your grandmother’s stories / eighty-two / of Vikhor, the spirit of the whirlwind / eighty-one / do you think about the other Vesna / eighty / that other stewardess / seventy-nine / the one for whom the airline’s scheduler mistook you / seventy-eight / because you aren't supposed to be on this flight / seventy-seven / the most cosmic of jokes / seventy-six / do you think about how, right now, that other Vesna might be at the butchers / seventy-five / do you think about how it'll take her longer to receive a cut of meat / seventy-four / then it will for you to hit the ground / seventy-three / do you think about the passengers / seventy-two / still buckled into unmoored seats / seventy-one / a constellation / seventy / of bodies / sixty-nine / drops of rain / sixty-eight / do you think of the Croatian nationalists / sixty-seven / who planted the bomb in the luggage compartment / sixty-six / or do you think  / sixty-five / of gravity and all that / sixty-four / you curl your fingers into fists / sixty-three / the only part you can move / sixty-two / the worst of all dreams / sixty-one / you, half-awake  / sixty / primordially frozen by / fifty-nine / a silence that you know isn't there / fifty-eight / you hallucinate  / fifty-seven / not of death / fifty-six / not for you / fifty-five / not this time / fifty-four / and without asking, you know that  / fifty-three / when the plane crashes / fifty-two / when the falling stops / fifty-one / sometimes in a snowy field and sometimes on a wooded slope / fifty / the force will rip your three-inch stilettos from your feet / forty-nine / you'll break your left tibia / forty-eight / you'll fracture your skull and crush two vertebrae / forty-seven / you'll snap your pelvis in two places, three more ribs, and your right femur / forty-six / you'll be dying only because you won’t be dead / forty-five / but here’s your secret, the one that is going to keep you alive / forty-four / the one that almost disqualified you from working for an airline in the first place / forty-three / it’s your low blood pressure / forty-two / which is so low that to pass the physical exam  / forty-one / you drank enough coffee that you shook through the whole thing  / forty / so low that when the plane impacts / thirty-nine / your heart won't burst in your chest / thirty-eight / and there is luck here too / thirty-seven / a whole life’s worth, a world's worth / thirty-six / used in one moment / thirty-five / you don’t survive something like this without it / thirty-four / the only reason you weren't sucked out of the plane / thirty-three / like the rest  / thirty-two / was because you were in the galley, crushed by that food cart / thirty-one / the only reason your bones won't liquify on impact / thirty / is because the fuselage will land right-side up / twenty-nine / crumpling the bottom, not the metal around your head / twenty-eight / the only reason you won't bleed out in the wreckage is because  / twenty-seven / your low blood pressure will slow your bleeding / twenty-six / long enough for your screams to attract help / twenty-five / because you’ll be awake / twenty-four / of course you will / twenty-three / and the only reason you'll live long enough to reach a hospital / twenty-two / is because the first person who will find you, a woodsman  / twenty-one / of all things, was a medic in World War II / twenty / how’s that for luck / nineteen / how many coins will land on edge the moment the plane hits / eighteen / right up until a brain hemorrhage will put you in a coma for ten days / seventeen / you'll hear the doctors say you won’t live / sixteen / and if you do you won’t walk / fifteen / but you know that the first thing you'll do when you wake is to ask for a cigarette / fourteen / and a month or two later, you’ll be strolling around the hospital / thirteen / won't even have a limp / twelve / all thanks to what you'll say is a childhood diet of chocolate, spinach, and fish oil  / eleven / you know that in the future, whenever you board a plane / ten / which you'll do often because you resume you job as a flight attendant / nine / people will want to sit next to you  / eight / especially those who are afraid of flying / seven / but you aren't there yet / six / for now, you're still falling / five / a blink from the ground / four / what else is there to say but / three / here / two / it / one / comes / 


Patrick Kelling received his doctorate in Creative Writing from the University of Denver and is the fiction editor for the literature magazine Gambling the Aisle (www.gamblingtheaisle.com). His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and to Best New American Voices and Best Small Fictions.

In another 
Dust bowl town
Under the worn 
Garments
Of long conditioning
Across a river of rock
Immutable
Beyond the tune 
Of our creating
Into something unknown
And impossible
Agile
And forgotten
Through a crack
In the faltering sky
Where it’s hard to believe
We can still live 
In wonder


John is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology.  He is the author of four books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019), New Days (2020), and Fragments (2021). His work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children.

​Paradise is a sunny day
And a gently flowing river.
Watching the sunlight reflected 
On the water.
When I was a child, my Dad would
Take me fishing
On the River Trent and the River Ouse,
You would never know what fish would come out.
One day we caught an eel and we
Couldn’t hold it for long enough to get the
Hook out of its greedy mouth.
My Dad eventually did it and the eel looked at me 
With beady, reproachful eyes,
Before we placed it back in the water.
It wanted to make me feel guilty.
And then there was the time I was reeling in
A small roach and a pike swallowed it and we
Landed the green-speckled predator instead.
It bit my Father’s finger, and he swore.
We told my Dad’s friend and he laughed.
His eyes like the water sparkled in the sun.
River fishing is fantastic fun,
But those days are long gone.


​Saul Bennett is a 43-year old poet from a small town in the North Of England. He is an observer in a working class dimension. He has had poems published in Moss Puppy, Roi Faineant, Vocivia amongst other publications in the U.K. and USA. He can be found on Twitter @SBennettpoet.

​What does it mean to be
planted in one patch of soil
for your entire existence?
To stand there forever
because your lone leg
can’t go anywhere.
The struggle for survival
no less bitter, overshadowed
by this one’s leaves,
out-drunk by that one’s roots.
An orchestra of bark flutes
played by each passing wind.
The winds which one day
will lay you out
among the corpses of your kind
to slowly become the loam
in which you were born.
There is a sort of horror
to it all, so much beauty too,
reaching for sky and sun
like you really mean it.
Putting the rest of us to shame
who walk where we will
heads down, looking into the earth
and seeing nothing
for what it is.


Kurt Luchs (kurtluchs.com) won a 2022 Pushcart Prize, the 2021 Eyelands Book Award, the 2021 James Tate Poetry Prize and the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. He has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny)(2017), and his poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up (2021), are published by Sagging Meniscus Press. His poetry chapbook, The Sound of One Hand Slapping, was issued in 2022 by SurVision Books. He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The amateurs will be out,
tossing their cherry bombs 
in the street while a kid
with a sparkler chases
a dog down the driveway.
The couple at the festival,
numb from sun and cocktails,
holds hands while staring 
at the night sky.
The terrier seeks shelter
in the bathtub while a woman
out front passes out tiny flags
which we’ll wave in the air drunkenly,
insanely happy we don’t have to face
the boss and his usual scheme
tomorrow. Meanwhile, the ghost of 
a British soldier limps out 
from nearby woods as if
emerging from a dream.
 

​Bruce Gunther is a retired journalist and writer who lives in Michigan. He's a graduate of Central Michigan University. His poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, East by Northeast, Modern Haiku, the Dunes Review, and others.