Second Fiddle                                                

I woke up with an uneasy feeling; something had happened.

The Stock Market — something had happened in the world while I was asleep and the stock market had somehow been affected. I quickly opened my CNBC app.

Nothing … only a photo of Sen. Elizabeth Warren looking like one of the Furies, resembling a mother with a poker up her ass scolding her child. Below, another photo, this one of our President wearing a shit-eating grin that told the world he had just gotten laid.

I scrolled farther down.

I shouldn’t’ve. I was met by Bernie, scowling, not the face anyone would choose to wake up to … okay, maybe his wife, but she has to.

I clicked on WhatsApp; perhaps my publisher had sent me a message, as yesterday I had emailed him the proof-read copy of my novel. Nothing.

I saw there was an unread email. An acceptance for one of my stories? The email looked promising: “We enjoyed reading your words ….” Not a good beginning. Words? Not ‘your story’? I continued reading: “While ….” I stopped. I didn’t have to read further; another ‘unfortunately’ letter.

I patted the bed covers, as Roma, my playful cat, usually slept with me. But she wasn’t on the bed, nor had she been all night. Where was she, and where had she been?

I jumped out of bed. Not a good idea. I have neuropathy causing vertigo. I stumbled, hit the night table beside my bed and knocked over my 18^th century blanc de Chine lamp which came crashing down on the hardwood floor. At that moment, I wished I had laid down softwood flooring as my 18^th century Chinese vase was now in pieces.

I needed to unwind and cheer up. I asked Alexa to play songs by Edith Piaf, my favorite singer. “Non, je ne regrette rien”. Exactly what I needed. It took me back more than 60 years, to lunch with Marc and Vava Chagall in Saint-Paul-de-Vence.  During lunch, Marc asked me, “Qu-est ce que tu veux pendant ta vie?” I didn’t hesitate to answer, “J’espère que je ne regretterai rien.”

While Piaf sang I began searching for Roma. I looked in my bathroom where I keep her litter box in the shower. She wasn’t there. I went to my study; she often lies beside my chair. No Roma. I next walked to the kitchen. In the morning she’ll sit there, waiting for the wet food I feed her. She wasn’t waiting … but I heard her little cry. I looked, and there she was, on the heated floor of the conservatory.

“What are you doing here?” I asked as I petted her.

“Meow,” she said.

“Do you want some food?”

“Meow.”

“No? What, then?” She looked away. I followed her eyes.

A mouse.

During the night I had become second-fiddle to a mouse in Roma’s life.

E.P. Lande, born in Montreal, has lived in the south of France and now, with his partner, in Vermont, writing and caring for more than 100 animals. Previously, as a Vice-Dean, he taught at l’Université d’Ottawa, and he has owned and managed country inns and free-standing restaurants. Since submitting less than three years ago, more than 100 his stories — many auto-fiction — and poems have found homes in publications on all continents except Antarctica. His story “Expecting” has been nominated for Best of the Net. His debut novel, “Aaron’s Odyssey”, a gay-romantic-psychological thriller, has recently been published in London.

we were both nickelodeon kids

perhaps both the stoop kids,
the squids and fillburts of
our generation. asked by classmates
why we’re so quiet but deadpan existentialists
in our real worlds, when the uniform
sheds and we stare into the
glowing portal of somewhere else
from the sanctuary of our beds.
you cope with humor, he tells me
as we couch-lock and doom-scroll
together in harmony.
in therapy, i learn that my inner
child is being silenced and exiled
by all the other parts of me,
the drinker, the judge,
the caretaker, the obsessor—
my therapist tells me
there are no bad parts in me,
while i wonder if she was a disney
kid or a cartoon network kid,
leaps and bounds different
views on the world
(especially those courage
the cowardly dog kids).
my inner child may be in exile
from myself, but his can see
mine through a heart’s glued-together
pieces. they find each other somewhere
among all the adults in the room
and sneak away to a pillow fort
with cinnamon toast crunch and
reruns and laughing and—

somewhere else we’re still waiting
to know if we’ll ever leave the stoop.

ABCs of NYC

alpha males need to chill
before alpha females take the reins
careful now, they’re on to us
do not tarry, this is a modern verse
evidently versatile
forego your presuppositions
giggle at the mind made-up
holler at your reflection
ignite its resurrection
just do this in private
kisses in public
lovers in attic
moments in movies
numbers in phones
ostentatious window displays
public displays of affection
questions of guilt & retribution
running on hudson river piers
suddenly deciding to turn back
troubled by a mind at rest
underwhelmed by the glories that be
vulnerable, unafraid
wondering when you’ll meet again
xylophone. always.
yonder way, we discover a
zoo in central park like holden.

Azure Brandi graduated from NYU. Publication history: “Style” in New Croton Review‘s Spring 2023 Volume; “You Can Deny” in October Hill Magazine’s Winter 2024 Issue; “Persona as Art” in Virgo Venus Press. Forthcoming: “The Currents” in The Underground Volume 30; “On Beauty” in Afterimages by Thirty West Publishing House; “Earl” in Alien Buddha Zine #76; “Bowie Effect in Blue” in Soup Can Magazine.

Ghostblind

The dead would like
to know us better.
They gesture wildly
but our fleshy hereness
shines too intensely
for us to see them.
 
Between the streetlights,
the desk lamp,
and the microwave’s
digital display,
we’ve left no darkness
that’s dark enough to haunt.
 
Forgetting that the dead
are always with us,
we grieve their loss.
 
Only in horror films
do we remind ourselves
that life and afterlife
once kept fewer secrets
from one another.
The living and the dead
are now such lonesome souls. 

Tom Laichas is author most recently of Three Hundred Streets of Venice California (FutureCycle Press, 2023). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Los Angeles Times, Plume, The Moth (Ireland), the Irish Times, BarBar, and elsewhere. He lives in Venice, California.

Darkness Shaping Light

For now it flickers,
the porchlight left on
for the return of our souls.

We fear the bulb may crack
in the weight of darkness,
and not that far away
the lighthouse pulse
grows dimmer,
its revolution slowing down,
ghost ships in the night
wailing blindly for shore,
the light from our eyes
not bright enough
to lead them home.

Robert S. King, Athens GA, is cofounder of FutureCycle Press. His poems appear widely, including Chariton Review, Kenyon Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Southern Poetry Review. He has published nine poetry collections, most recently Developing a Photograph of God (2014), Messages from Multiverses (2020), and Selected Poems (2023).

Tattoo Artist

He comes back from Japan
with a dragon tattoo, the artist
says give me some skin, sticks
his barb in with the colors
of choice, and sets to his back-
breaking work, graceful circles

are a good way to start, he tells
his canvas not to move, this
will hurt but stay still, there will
be blood, the needle burns
but you’ll get used to it,
even come to crave the pain,

beg the artist to go ape, which
is to say epic, on your body,
turn the skin into a text
that keeps on unscrolling—
the most gruesome images
make the biggest impression.

I write this poem because
I too work with ink.

William Heath has published four poetry books: The Walking Man, Steel Valley Elegy, Going Places, Alms for Oblivion; three chapbooks: Night Moves in Ohio, Leaving Seville, Inventing the Americas; three novels: The Children Bob Moses Led (winner of the Hackney Award), Devil Dancer, Blacksnake’s Path; a history, William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest (winner of two Spur Awards and the Oliver Hazard Perry Award); a book of interviews, Conversations with Robert Stone. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Hiram College. He lives in Annapolis. www.williamheathbooks.com

waiting for the bus at the world’s edge 

i stand, rain tasting like unanswered prayers. behind, the station groans, its peeling paint a wound too ancient to mend. i wait, knowing the bus a lie. then, he arrives, a man assembled from some malignant elsewhere, his suit too clean for this squalor. cruel slits for eyes pierce the void. a stagnant puddle mirrors us. that’s when it sees me, and i it—the thousand-eyed, thousand-mouthed thing, clawing at a non-existent door. an impossibility made real. i try to scream, but silence, iron-heavy, chokes my voice. the man smiles, a chasm splitting the earth, a smile that bleeds the sky. he nods, not to me, but to the rising thing, its hunger primordial. he breathes dust, bone, the air before the world’s end. i watch. the thing emerges, slick skin pulling free like a lost nightmare, teeth gleaming in the gloom. i am paralyzed, mute. it grows, limbs elongated and warped. i blink. the puddle, the thing, the man—vanished. the street is empty. only the iron taste lingers, a swallowed secret. 

Marvin Smith is a poet from Ohio. He prefers to let his work speak louder than his bio. His poetry is inspired by the absurd, the uncanny, and silence.

I Know That My Redeemer Liveth

The hour is announced short,

Westminster Chimes missing
a middling B, ringing

in our heads, remembered,
duller, less loud,
than the struck G,F, and E

No one is fashionable today.
The count comes in too soon,
off-beat; vanities burn
out of time, in the difference,

smoke

the color of lungs
drying, sucking
raw air between buildings,

history breach born

before the first chime
of the series on a fixed scale
of what must be noon.

Matt Thomas is a smallholder farmer, engineer, and poet. His recent work can be found in Ponder Review, The Thieving Magpie, and Common House. Disappearing by the Math, a full-length collection, was published by Silver Bow in 2024. Cicada, Dog & Song, a second full-length collection, will be published by Serving House Books in 2026. He lives with his family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.  

Hundred-Acre Brook

Its blue line on the map begins amid
close-together contour lines,
at 1900 feet, miles from any trail.

Must be a spring up there.
It’d be worth the bruises and scrapes
of bushwhacking to find out.

This one joins Shannon Brook
below the waterfalls. Afterward, it is all
Shannon Brook—like a wife

taking her husband’s last name,
though still herself.
One stream, then, down to the lake.

The goal of working backward
to its source would be
to know the brook, beginning to end:

its lifespan, so to speak.
(Except that it still keeps on coming.)
If I ever did locate the spring,

I would kneel to drink,
and return refreshed for whatever day
the sea will receive me.

Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and Covid Spring, Vol. 2 (Hobblebush Books). His own poetry books, Wooden Nutmegs and Magnificat, are available from Encircle Publications.

Thereafter Blues

At the crossroads between Claireview Street and Millshire Avenue, two men, by happenstance, met each other below the streetlight that shined a lonely beacon beside snow-covered fields, stretching into a darkness of blue. One man tipped his hat, though his face could not be spoken for, and the light above him shadowed his features as he reached into his pockets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“Lost?” He said to the wanderer and held out the open pack—only two were left, but he insisted: “It’s alright, take it,” he gestured to the hatless man. “I asked if you were lost.”

“I was just heading out of town,” the hatless man said, looking back the way he came.

“Out of town? With no proper footwear?” He asked with sincerity, pointing at the man’s lack of shoes, and the holes in his socks. The hatless man was utterly confused, but this confusion only mounted when he glanced down at his feet and saw he had no boots on at all.

There was a surprising jolt through his body in this realization, but it faded into numbness as he closed his eyes and recalled the moments before his meeting below the light: tires screeching themselves of rubber, the wailing of engines coming right at him.

Opening his eyes, the man was still holding the cigarette out to him when a rumble broke the silence between them. Headlights cut through the snowfall, and upon their entry, so too did the shrieks of terrified children, and the grinding of the battered vehicle against asphalt. As it came into their view, he could see then that the front end of the car had been crushed, and atop the shattered windshield sprawled a mangled figure without shoes.

Jesse Hamilton writes, “I am a writer from Michigan who enjoys dabbling in many genres and going wherever the ideas take me. I have only been writing prose for a few years, and have only been published in a few small publications, but I aim to keep finding my voice and experimenting with it.”