Dead Flies and Other Sorrows

I read aloud a story in the newspaper about a café in Japan where all the employees have dementia–this leads to many mixed-up orders and laughter from customers and waitresses. I look at you and say, “Isn’t that wonderful! They’ve found some joy from that cruel disease?” You don’t answer; instead, you ask, “Shall I make tea?” It is one of the routines we still have. I nod and add, “I bought Bourbons. They’re in the cupboard.”

I don’t care for the chocolate biscuits, something about them reminds me of the Queen’s Guard, all upright and unvarying, but they’ve always been your favorite. When you used to do the shopping, you’d always buy a packet and some Garibaldi for me. You’d tease me, calling them ‘dead fly biscuits’ saying, “You know they call them that for a reason, and it’s not because of the squashed currants. It’s because of the way they taste!” And you’d smile and kiss me. I miss that.

I hear drawers slamming. I get up and try not to groan; you hate what you call my ‘old man noises.’ As I walk into the kitchen, the radio blasts ‘Women’s Hour,’ I ask Alexa to lower her volume. You snap, “I was listening to that. It was about living funerals. Where did you put that new lemon squeezer?” I must have a blank look on my face because you roll your eyes and say, “The Kennedys’ housewarming gift. I’m going to make lemonade.” I don’t have the heart to tell you our housewarming party was over twenty years ago, and the thing you are looking for is long gone like the Kennedy’s, him from a heart attack, her from breast cancer. So, I say, “I thought we were having tea? I don’t think we have enough lemons to make lemonade.” I don’t add that you never liked lemonade; you said it tasted of empty promises.

A program called ‘Songs that Won the War’ has started. Bing Crosby is singing, ‘Moonlight Becomes You,’ and you say, “Shall we dance?” And although I feel foolish, I take you in my arms. I imagine we look like the couple on our cuckoo clock as we waltz around the kitchen island, you with your blonde hair curling around your shoulders and me with my ruddy cheeks. 

I hear the front door open, and Francis, our daughter, calls out, “It’s me, Dad. I’ve got your shopping.” I quickly look around; it seems like we’ve just survived an earthquake. As I start stuffing everything back into the drawers, Francis walks in. “Oh, Dad, what on earth is going on?” I feel my face flush as I say, “It was your mother. She had a longing for lemonade,” I gesture to where you are swaying as you listen to Vera Lynn sing ‘I’ll be Seeing You.’

I can’t bear to look at Francis’s disappointed face, so I start unpacking the groceries and say, “Did you get Bourbons? You know they’re your mother’s favorite.” Francis goes to the fridge and takes out a bottle of lemonade. She pours two glasses, offers one to me and takes a long swallow from the other. Then she says gently, “Dad? Remember, Mum died ten years ago.”

Adele Evershed is a Welsh writer. Some of the places her work has been published include Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, and Janus Lit. Adele has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Finishing Line Press published her first poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places.

Topanga Ranch Motel

Loiterers in the PCH parking lot
with long-lapsed meters, unchecked,
listen to the waves,
pulling smoke
from a near-gone joint.

The Topanga Ranch Motel,
a semi-perilous dash
across the road,
sits like a movie set
or a movie star,
something quoted
from Nabokov’s landscape.

Motel, a now-defunct portmanteau,
devoid of lodgers’ luggage.

However, now, there’s
a double-pastiche that reveals itself
like the full moon
dialoguing with the neon below:

The Ranch lassoes the past,
while now we park outside
for even shorter stays
(a picture, perhaps)
at this California curio
of the not-so-distant past.

A Click and Hug

I always thought Kali would return
as a dolphin. She loved swimming
the butterfly stroke in our lap pool.
We shared dreams of joining a pod
when we saw them as we motored
out to a tucked-away ocean cove.
One day—afterward—anchored
and alone, I realized she’s been home
all along—in our walk-in fireproof safe,
its skin mottled from coastal living,
the doors like welcoming arms.
Lately, we’ve been spending every day
together—sharing, not holding back.
In her secreted poems, I’m learning
what I didn’t know about myself, and
so much more about her. There’s so
much to say as I write in the margins. 

Richard L. Matta is originally from New York’s rustic Hudson Valley. After university studies in the Midwest, he eventually landed in San Diego, California where he and his dog make the most of the weather and San Diego Bay. His work is published in Hole in the Head Review, Healing Muse, San Pedro River Review, and elsewhere. 

Page from a Seneca Falls Notebook

Late dusk, and a woman looks up
from a prayer book to follow nightbirds

she can’t identify. Through a window
growing cold to her touch, she watches

freezing rain slicken the dark into brightness.
Weather melts contours in the middle distance,

and her gaze turns glassy as if someone calls
to her out of a far-off year. 

From a road flanked with hemlock and cedar,
a pickup u-turns. Its high beams

brush a neighbor’s daughter
who’s run outside. Eyes closed,

her tongue tastes snow at the edge of the storm
that just now dusts the river.

A curtain ices over in a window
left open above her.

JC Alfier’s (they/them) most recent book of poetry, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Press (2020). Journal credits include Faultline, New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, River Styx, Southern Poetry Review, and Vassar Review. They are also an artist doing collage and double-exposure work.

Adrenaline

All those morning rituals interrupted
By a foreign feeling deep within
Something never before experienced
The only pulse I’m used to feeling is
The jackhammer in my chest
When our eyes lock
But this,
This is something new
My fingers tingle
And what I can only describe as static
Races right through me
How the hell did this happen?
I think I’m travelling back through time
I can see the fountain at the church
And hear the bells of Saint Mel’s ringing
Blonde hair, blue eyes, blue school uniform
Nothing but blue skies, do I see?
There’s a disjointed rhythm playing
1 2 3 4 3 2 1
And crash
I’m back on the kitchen floor
Can this be real?
I see you standing before me
I know you’re shouting but I can’t hear
Can someone please move this car that’s parked on my chest?
I don’t even register the paramedics’ arrival or the sirens
Is this what a crash team looks like?
Then, just like it does in all those movies
Everything
Fades
To black…
I come to – hooked up to a monitor
There’s a steady beeping in this tiny room
And there you are slumped next to me
In a back-breaking plastic chair
With your head down on the bed
And a hand slipped into mine
Touching gently, not allowing me to slip away
’Cause you told me before
I’m not allowed to leave you – not ever
When the young trainee comes in
He checks the monitor and my chart
This wakes you
And you smile happily when you see me with some colour in my face
“Someone will be with you shortly,” the trainee says with a stony look and leaves
Leaving us to wonder what comes next
And your smile quickly turns to distress
I’m in limbo now
I feel okay, but uncomfortably numb
Like so many others this day, we’re now left
Waiting for the news
And more than an hour passes by
In hospital time
If you don’t already know
It’s a lifetime to some – an eternity to others
In that time I’ve done a mental inspection of my body
I haven’t been operated on (thank god!)
Then the doc breezes in
His white coat flowing like Superman’s cape
Chart in hand and just as stony-faced as his colleague
He’s got just one sentence for me before he goes
He says: “Darragh, cut back on the coffee!”

Darragh Coady is an Irish composer of gritty poems with an occasional social conscience. His poetry has appeared in The Frogmore Papers, Book of Matches, and Void Magazine. He has also written for Poetry as Commemoration and performed as the featured act at Culture Rapide in Paris where his set was described as “Volcanic.”

Change of Diet

Inevitable I’d lose faith
in beans and franks tuna salad Cheez Whiz
when confronted by that killer whale of first love
and decades later my synapses
have not recovered
the memory of lying on the floor after
with her on the bed beside me
reaching down to trail her fingers across my cheek
wreaks havoc
palpitations
strummed numb.
I could have died at that very moment
and been just as happy still.

***

On the Lam with the Beach Boys

After the carnage
of the 60s
we stole Phoebe’s cab
and hit the road
Carl and Dennis strapped to the roof
Brian, Mike and Al in the back
hunkered in a funk
singing harmonic jeremiads
perched on their psychedelic hemorrhoid rings.

Too intense.

Here we go
burning down the highway
so young so young so young
the wind kicking up
storm rolling in
waves of rain
hydroplaning down the Ventura freeway
the boys leaning out the windows
hanging five
hanging ten
hanging in there
remembering all of the women
who wouldn’t bend
to their music
but danced the night away
danced in the streets
danced them to the end of love.

Rick Adang graduated from Indiana University with a BA in English and a Creative Writing Honors thesis. He taught English as a foreign language for many years and is currently living in Estonia. He has had poems published in Paris Review, Chicago Review, and many other literary magazines.

Faces on the Water

flowers on fire
scarecrows cover
their eyes

as long winds
spread the space
between words

evening descends
within a gray mist

and by chance
ghosts walk by

under uncounted
stars

over a field
of mischief

Dr. Roger Singer is the Poet Laureate of Old Lyme, Connecticut. He has had over 1,000 poems published on the internet, magazines, and in books and is a 2017 Pushcart Prize Award Nominee. He is also the President of the Shoreline Chapter of the Connecticut Poetry Society.

ALAN CATLIN

Fog

We hadn’t known a fog
could be all consuming

that long familiar paths
we’d walked a thousand times
could be as treacherous as
a minefield

as an obstacle course
with immovable objects in it
or a hedge maze there
was no known solution to

Walking out, we were lost
in no time, were separated
by impenetrable mists no light
could penetrate

We called out to each other
but our voices were muffled,
were inaudible as segments
in a dream we wouldn’t remember
once we woke up

***

Clouds

After a week of rain
the clouds fit into sky
like plaster death mask molds

the wind transforms
changing their shapes until
a panoramic sky is
a museum of dead faces
crying out in pain

If we were still looking
for answers from the heavens
we now know that none
will be found

Alan Catlin has two the final two books of his Carpe Diem night life trilogy of books scheduled for 2023: Another Saturday Night in Jukebox Hell (Roadside Books) and Last Call for Lazarus (Impspired Press).

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.