I've Tried

by Richard Jay Shelton

Ah, you say,

A better life?

A fancy home?

Money?

Social rank?

You can have it.

I’ve tried God knows

There

I go

Uncorking

Another bottle

Put me down:

A park bench,

Green grass,

An empty street.

I will sink…

Drowning in the deep of my bottle.

Roses in January

by Liz Minette

Yes, they are real,
strategically placed
in a refrigerated,
mirrored flower case,
point of sale at the
supermarket checkstand.

I select a red dozen
from the pale plastic
container overstuffed
with many-colored bouquets,
and which holds less
than an inch of water.

These roses probably
journeyed many miles -
heavily packaged,
bumped and jostled
against each other -
yet my desire for roses
in January outweighs all
this as their dozen heads
nod like satin buddhas
in my arms on the way
to the checkout.

I take them home
and divide them
between two vases.

Six stems each for the
tall blue glass vase,
originally delivered
with a gaudy bouquet
of sunset-tipped
carnations and fake
autumn leaves.
We kept the vase
because its color
is like water moving
under ice.

The other six roses
fill a clay jar,
the one my mother said
always leaks.

Days later, the roses
have unfurled some
of their petals,
dropping them to the
foot of the jar where
they lay like wet silk.

They drop their petals,
some curled, blackened now
around the edges like
an effigy set afire,
placed in the river, sent
downstream in memory.

Untitled

by R. Welch

At a certain point each Spring,
after the confidence of crocuses has been confirmed
and the daffodils have come, and gone
the Cherry trees turn the streets where I live
into ribbed pink throats
and to drive them is to be swallowed,
like a lozenge on a tongue.

In a week, maybe less,
Atlantic breezes will raise swirling pink clouds,
or, if the winds should fail, leave
cars and sidewalks blanketed by a blushing snow.

Death should come like that.
I'd like to be lifted through pink veils,
into light.
Or, lacking light
lie down beneath a rain of petals
and quietly disappear.

Addicted

 by P.B.

Addicted.

To your voice.

Your smile.

You’re my choice.

My addiction.

Infatuated.

With your words.

Your touch.

The laugh I heard.

You’re my obsession.

Intoxicated.

By your kiss.

Your lips.

The moan, that hiss.

You’re my poison.

And my anecdote.

The Disease

by Jarrett Fontaine

When you’re a teenager, summer is your life.
I had turned sixteen that June. The temperature never seemed to leave eighty perfect degrees. The sun would ignite the city on fire by day, with only the cold starry blackness to douse the flames hours later. My friends and I had become wild creatures of those endless nights. Lurking under street lights, loitering inside the 24 hour convenience mart, cruising until our cars begged us to stop. My parents thought I was working extra hours at the drive-in. I’d challenge my friends to childish shopping cart races through Wal-Mart, spreading out our arms and seeing how many things we could knock off the shelves and into our carts.
The thrill of getting kicked out.
I remember the bitter rush of my first sip of alcohol. And then my second. I always drank just enough to get slightly buzzed. Parties are better when you remember them the next morning. In July, fireworks-induced smog swelled up over us. We’d breathe the smoke in like oxygen. Sidewalks played host to our firecracker wars. I liked to shoot bottle rockets directly at the city hall building, smiling as they popped and bounced off the brick walls. Little black burn marks dotted the side. There were lots of walls in my town, most of which I couldn’t see. It was a small town, the kind of place that if you were friends with a cop, the city was yours.

Therapy Session Part 1

by R. Welch

[To be published in three parts.]

Hello Doctor. My name is Adam. Adam Nilson? We spoke on the phone yesterday? I really appreciate you finding a way to see me so soon. I know you must have a busy schedule.

I've never done this before, so I'm not sure how it works. Do I just start talking? Do you want to ask me some questions first? Really? That surprises me. Well, I'm not sure, I guess I imagined you asking me questions and then...writing down the answers I gave. No, not dictation! Just the...highlights. I even came up with some clever sayings that would be...suitable for print! But just as well - they don't seem quite so clever anymore. So I just dive right in huh? Welcome to the deep end of the pool...

I'm kind of nervous. Can you tell?

Smelling the Flowers

by Salvatore Buttaci

How long had she been lying there? Looking up, she saw a tall tree poking at the August sky. Bright sunlight filling the spaces between branches and leaves nearly blinded her. One thing was certain: she was not dreaming.

She heard the cries of a far away bird. What brought her to this? She flexed the fingers of her left hand. Then she tried the right but she could not will her fingers to even wiggle slightly. If only she could turn her head from side to side. Tears pinched free from the corners of her eyes. Her lips beat mutely; inside her head a litany of prayers raged: Help me, God! Help me! I don't remember! With her good hand she touched her temple and came away with blood.

Stop it! We will not panic, she told herself. There's got to be an explanation. I was walking in the park on my lunch hour. I tripped. I banged my head against the stone walk. No. More like I was running down the street. Someone had a gun. I ran here to hide. Did he find me?

Janey's Turn

by Judith Mercado

I came up the companionway, soggy towel in hand. Why I thought hanging the towel on a lifeline would dry it out, I don’t know. Nothing dried in the muggy air of this stagnant Dominican Republic harbor.

My wife Janey stood in the cockpit, staring at a sailboat just coming into the harbor. I clipped my towel to the lifeline and held onto the forestay as I watched Janey.

She unhooked the VHF radio mouthpiece and spoke into it. “Stargazer, Stargazer, No Moss Here calling Stargazer. Over.”

Even with perspiration glistening on her forehead, Janey looked as if she had just felt the breeze of an air-conditioner. I, on the other hand, felt like someone who hadn’t taken a bath in six months, which wasn’t far from the truth. I hadn’t stepped into a real bathtub since leaving the Chesapeake to pursue Janey’s dream of living on a boat. It was a dream I first found out about upon my retirement as an international hydroelectric engineer.

I let my arm drop and headed for the cockpit. Face it, I loathed being in this tropical cesspool. I still couldn’t figure out how I’d let Janey talk me into this. 

Sole Survivor

by R. Welch

You remember the moment with a clarity
it would take a new and better language to describe,
though not much after.
Just the long falling.
10 or 15 seconds of heat and light
and then, this void,
whose edges you've yet to discover.

Witnesses report you left a
trail of blackened feathers as you fell.
The long plume of smoke hung in the sky for days
as if the arc of your descent demanded a stillness
even the desert dared not disobey.

No one found the place where you lay,
in an arroyo, just beyond the charred reeds.
You ate insects.
Chewed lichen off bits of bark
and drank from a pool of brackish water
until those who came to rescue you
packed their vans and drove away.
It was on the banks of the vanished river,
beneath a cobalt dome of falling stars
you came to understand you were alone.

*

Somewhere,
in the basement of some city whose name you can't recall
the detritus of your former self
rises from the floor in shapes that resemble
teaspoons and lampshades.
Tricycles and Tupperware.
But this is an illusion.
They are the cast of shells of a family of cicadas.
They are the bones of all that might have been.

Meanwhile,
thousands of miles away,
you have groped your way from day to night
and back to day.
The healed fractures have left a limp
And the burns have scarred your skin to a fine leather,
dark as coffee.
And you like the color!
You think it suits you.
You have fashioned tools from sticks and stones -
future fossils for the next age to ponder.
In fact, you picture all you see as a site
swarming with scientists, gathering their evidence.
You leave what clues you can.

Here is the crater where his body must have hit the ground.
There is the burrow where he slept
on this pile of petrified rags.
They will wonder how it is you came to this place.
What made you stay.
They will wonder how it is these things happen to people's lives.
How they soar. 
How they shatter when they fall.

It all goes on

 by P.B.

Take two steps back and look

Tell me what you see

This didn’t play out just like a book

There’s no happy ending

It all goes on

One foot out and you scream

It’s your way or no way

Are you mad or blowing steam

It’s not just you

It all goes on

You’re right and he’s wrong

That’s all you see

But he’s the one still standing strong

He knows the truth

It all goes on

He’s been here before

He’s got years

He never really knows for sure

But he knows in the end

It all goes on

He’s lost so much

But what’s he gained

Has he lost his touch

Or finally found it

It all goes on

When it all boils down

We’ll find our side

Look around

Loyalty runs deep

It all goes on

Take two steps back and look

Tell me what you see

Do you want what you took

When the small voice asks

Do you tell him

It all goes on