What I Wanted to Say Over a Glass of Wine 

The plan
A glass of wine shared between two adults

The setting

The back porch
The moon hanging overhead
Sounds of the neighborhood carrying on in the distance 

I confess
To what I’ve been feeling
The emotions
Building over years and years
Of wanting 

I waited
I suffered
I told myself
I had to deny
All urges
All desires
It wasn’t meant to be 

You would understand
You would give permission
To be myself
Like your son

We’d finish the bottle
Perhaps a hug
The night would conclude 

Instead
Your excitement
Bubbling
Overflowing
Dominating all conversation
As you always do

He speaks
You respond
I’m silent

The gestational carrier
Waiting for her turn in the wings

I grab the bottle from the counter
I sit at the kitchen table
After pouring my glass

I sip
I watch
Hoping that the scenario will magically change

The screen goes black
And life carries on

Samantha Slaven is a poet living with her husband, Shawn, and dog, Vader, in Suburban Philadelphia. Samantha’s previous work can be found in the Spring 2023 issue of the Horror Zine Magazine, the Pup Pup blog of Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit (November 2023), and issue six of Collide Zine.

Flattery

My husband was a succubus and, after the kids left, he left me for his secretary. He will now steal her youth, beauty and ambition.  

Pre-marriage, he admired my painting. Post-marriage, he tolerated it. After we had children, he was outwardly hostile towards my art, mocking, so much so that I gave it up, even though I thought about it every day. 

Post-divorce, I had time to indulge myself. I painted and delighted in the reds and blues and yellows splodged on my hands. I made pottery, enjoying the slow moulding beneath my fingertips. 

And then what started as an idle revenge fantasy found seriousness. I finally found the courage to model nude. I imagined what my ex-husband would say; or, not say. He would have given me the silent treatment for a month. Which would be good, you would think, but His moods created storm clouds over the entire family. 

That day, the seventeen-year-olds trundled in. The teacher brusquely mentioned that it was their first time using a live model, me, and she said, ‘over to you’ and I took my dressing gown off and assumed position.

There were only three boys in the class. The good-looking one, with bouncy Harry Styles hair, the one who the girls’ eyes went to, began to cover himself. I briefly thought that he might be feeling sick. But, no. My husband said that I was unfuckable. But this teenage boy didn’t agree with him.

I tried not to smile. The boy was making such a meal of it, trying to hide himself and turning red. I was told to take certain poses. I didn’t want to sleep with this boy who was younger than my daughters. 

But, perhaps, contrary to His belief, other men might find me attractive.

Kate Lunn-Pigula has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Nottingham. Her work has been published by Litro, Clover and White, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Idle Ink, The Honest Ulsterman, Other People’s Flowers, Bunbury Magazine, and Thresholds, amongst others. You can find her at http://katelunnpigula.wordpress.com and on Instagram @katelunnpigula.

Mother Is the Best in the World

_____Our first meeting at the nursing home, just my mother and me, since the day we
entrusted her care to others. She gazes at me, her eyes void of the recognition that
once filled them. I’m a stranger now, not the daughter she used to comb hair for, not
the one she pampered with sliced guava sprinkled with my favorite sour plum powder.
My role has shifted; I am her memory keeper, her anchor to a drifting past. Only there
for her on Sunday afternoons.
_____I’m taking her for a walk in the nursing home’s garden, on a typical March day
in Guangzhou, where drizzles and sunshine interplay. These paths are no match for
the familiar trails of the park near our old home, where she once walked religiously
each morning. Yet, I hope to kindle sparks of those ingrained routines.
_____She wears the pearl necklace I bought for her with my first month’s salary, but
she no longer remembers it, and I don’t remind her.
_____Mother sits on the grass, damp with last night’s rain, her fingers brushing the
green blades – a touch of nature she’s always loved. Usually, I would caution against
the dampness, but today, I sit beside her, embracing the moisture, the earth, our
moment.
_____The garden comes alive – Hwamei birds serenade from the branches, and kapok
trees flaunt their fiery blooms, scattering petals like fleeting memories. In this
secluded nook of the nursing home, time pauses, allowing us to bask in a world that’s
ours alone.
_____I begin to hum, a tune so familiar, etched in the recesses of my childhood. She
joins in, her voice raspy yet warm, “Mother is the best in the world, a child with a
mother is like a treasure.” It’s the first nursery rhyme I ever learned to hum, with simple lyrics expressing a child’s deep love and gratitude for their mother.
_____Her hands clap to the rhythm, drawing glances from passersby. As the melody
fades, she leans in, whispering, “My daughter would always drift to sleep after this
song.” I peer into her eyes, crinkled at the edges, sparkling with a joy that defies her
memory loss. “My daughter’s favorite,” she murmurs. And I have to nod with a smile.

Huina Zheng, with her Distinction M.A. in English Studies, is a college essay coach and an editor at Bewildering Stories. Her stories appear in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, and more. Nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she lives in Guangzhou, China, with her family.

prediction

I stopped and tried to predict my next apprehension
you my mother my father my childhood
what is gone what never was what still could be
the wet grass in the morning the movement
from wave to particle from acorn to oak tree
from potentiality to actuality and the inevitability
of death the taste of wine the smell of garlic the breath
of the cosmos filling my lungs and the inevitability
of life my mind whirling not as engine but as transceiver
yet it delayed itself hid itself from me and when it arrived
was nothing like anything

Jacob Friesenhahn teaches Religious Studies and Philosophy at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio.

Hungry Ghosts

There are hungry ghosts,
it’s a Buddhist thing,
roaming the streets,
looking to fill themselves,
although they are unable to do so.

You probably know a few,
consuming as if they were
never going to eat again,
the Lord himself having turned
His back on them.

And they are always busy,
scurrying around like the track
they are on was about to run out
of rail.

And so, we see them, and sometimes
they are us.

Like empty jars with the lids
shut tight.

Neal Zirn’s work has appeared in New York Quarterly, Mudfish, Blueline, North Dakota Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review, The Big Windows Review, and California Quarterly. He has placed eight times in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest. His chapbook Manhattan Cream was published by MuscleHead Press, and another chapbook, Up North, was published by Finishing Line Press, which will publish My Blue Sweetie in 2024.

Snow Is Alive

Snow is alive.
Snow is a swirling and falling living thing
That remains alive
If the air is cold enough
Even after falling
From such height.

Rain is alive
But only as it falls.
When it reaches the ground
It dies in its puddles
Or in seeping into the earth.
It seems more tragic and ferocious
Than the snow when it falls
And after,
When it lives or dies on the concrete
And the grass and the dirt.

I live somewhere now
Where it never snows
But it used to rain all the time
And soon it will again.
Drizzles and thunderstorms,
Deluges and hurricanes.
I live somewhere now
Where everything that falls from the sky
Dies when it reaches the ground
But I remember when I lived where,
For a short time,
Life fell from the sky
And then I walked inside it.

John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. His first poetry collection from Cajun Mutt Press is now available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C6W2YZDP .fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.

Driving Stick

____First thing in the morning she laid out her plan. She was going over to the East Bay to buy a used VW Beetle with a manual transmission. Even though she didn’t know how to use a manual transmission. The reason she needed a new car ASAP was because they repossessed her old one when she, inexplicably, and without telling me, failed to make payments. I was told my job, once I got dressed, was to be her chauffeur across the bridge, and to drive the Beetle back. Later I was to teach her how to drive stick, at least well enough that she didn’t leave the transmission as shredded metal in the road. I knew this car was a key part of her strategy for leaving me. Also, she knew that I knew, but nonetheless expected me to help in the destruction of my life.

_____Then, acting like she couldn’t help herself, she fucked me in the bathroom, me standing holding her up, like it was real. Yes, a part of me realized I was being manipulated. There was also a part of me that wasn’t so certain, a part that felt she might not really want to go, but instead wanted me to save her.

_____After the acrobatics she said, “We shouldn’t do that anymore, you have too much power over me.”

_____“What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “Isn’t that how it should be?” She ignored me.

_____All the mixed signals, me not knowing which ones to pay attention to, so I focused on all of them simultaneously. It made my head hurt as badly as my heart.

_____As we prepared to leave, I couldn’t keep it in any longer. I said, “This is crazy.”

_____“Don’t say that!” She spit it out with equal parts anger and anxiety. She sounded afraid.

_____She knows, I thought to myself. There’s enough of the old her in there, enough self-awareness, that she knows the damage she’s causing both of us. She knows she isn’t okay.

_____There wasn’t time to discuss it, however. There would never be time for that. Crazy be damned, we had to get over to Oakland to buy her a car she couldn’t drive.

James Irwin is a writer of stories real & unreal, also a media artist, arts critic, college professor, and communications pro. Awards include San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, National Endowment for the Humanities, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Rockefeller Foundation. He lives in northern New Jersey.

Weightless Hitchhiker

Have you carried a heavy burden,
a bucket away from a flooded basement or
a bucket towards a grass fire?
I’ve carried light to heavy weight,
union card and jackhammer,
groceries for seniors, piggyback girlfriends.

Everyone’s borne the kind of weight
that can be weighed using a scale.
But consider the weightless, a tune carried,
measles hosted then evicted.
The body may seem victorious
but can carry regret, unspoken, to the grave.

I gave a ride today to the near-weightless
hitchhiker—a honeybee—landing
seeking some dew, some salt in the sweat
in the worry lines of my brow.
I was stung for a moment by some
nameless fear, but quickly brushed it aside.

Dave Seter is a poet and essayist. He is the author of Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences (Cherry Grove Collections, 2021) and Night Duty (Main Street Rag, 2010). Educated as a civil engineer, he writes about social and environmental issues, including the intersection of the built world and natural world. On Instagram: @daveseter_ecopoet       
More at: https://daveseter.com/

Fattening Frogs for Snakes

These are my younger days
The days I remember
These are my younger days
The days I remember
Hands in my pocket
It’s fifty below zero

My love’s all in vain
Good morning moonlight
My love’s all in vain
Good morning moonlight
My smile and a shake
Made too many mistakes

Take me to the sunshine
I’ve been born blind
Take me to the sunshine
I’ve been born blind
Taste that spoonful
The strangest customer

Jakima Davis lived in Charleston, SC, CT, NJ, the Bronx, and Queens before settling in Mount Vernon, NY at the age of seven. She’s been writing poetry since 2000. Published many Give-Out Sheets and a Broadside by Marymark Press. She also published a chapbook by Marymark Press in 2016. Davis published two more Chapbooks in early 2021. She’s waiting for more poetry to be published. As of now, she’s posting her poems on Facebook to gain a fanbase.