It’s not fall yet. It’s still light ‘til eight and the kids want to stay out past that on the trampoline that squeaks now with every bounce, its round net keeping out the cucumber-loving mosquitoes, the raspberry-loving bees, the cool night-loving spiders. The sky goes sherbet and then gray and raindrops fall but stop just before you get them to come in and then the sky is bright on one side, and the baby is jumping and pointing: light! (spin) dark! (spin) light! (spin) pink! And it’s time to do pajamas and kitchen and bills but you don’t.

You jump.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook is the author of Only Flying, a Pushcart-nominated collection of surreal poetry and flash fiction on paradox, rebellion, transformation, and enlightenment from Unsolicited Press. Her work has won contests at Loud Coffee Press and A Story in 100 Words, and it has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror, Soundings East, The Alien Buddha Goes Pop, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. She is a founding editor of Blue Planet Journal and a professor of creative writing. Read her work and learn more about Only Flying at https://brook-bhagat.com/.

Robots Contest Entry:

One day everything stopped. I remember the terrible silence that followed the constant humming we were used to. Our beloved machines were made redundant, years of technological progress erased in an instant. We had become lazy and were set back decades. Over half the population couldn’t drive, (car accidents skyrocketed), people went hungry, (they had forgotten how to cook) and some left their homes for the first time in years. Then scientists said they found the cause, a virus, and soon the machines were back online. But the new hum sounded wrong, like a swarm of bees waiting to attack.

From Guest Contributor Paula Henry-Duru

It was boiling mid-September, Freshman Gym, 30 kids in blue and white trying not to faint, two bees hounding us, Mrs. Jenkins scowling at our clumsy volleyball.

But in that gym, Brian was a long-haired demon god, always moving, lean and all instinct, feasting on shiftless opponents and becoming the postscript to everything I would ever write about my youth, not always the point or the signature, but an afterthought never to be ignored.

From Guest Contributor Steve Bogdaniec

Perhaps it’s the abundant sunshine, or the bees pollinating the flowers, or even the birds flying from tree to tree. Or, it could just be that Max is a happy man. Yes, happy. He walks around the neighborhood listening to his favorite group U2 on his iPod. His stride quickens to their song, The Streets Have No Name. He waves to his young neighbor Tammy, who is riding her pink striped bicycle.

Max turns, but it’s too late. The last thing he sees before the car strikes him is birds soaring above, and feet approaching.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Hands full of bees, Alice screamed at the sky. Sitting in the grass, blades tickled her thighs. Bee by bee, Alice lined them up. “I’m sorry,” said the speaker at a funeral attended only by the dead.

Alice lay down, tears falling into her hair. She didn’t want the bees to see her cry.

From Guest Contributor Michaela Papa

She consoles the dust for being lonely. The rust for being needy. The rot for becoming unstitched by rain. It is easy to whisper these things on the day of rest. When even birds decline seeding and bees stay inside hives. There was little moving in the sparse outside, save a cat prowling between an empty peach bucket and a splintered fish pole leaned against fence rails, its frayed point vanishing in the tale’s middle.

She sits with tears on her cheek. Cheek on her hand. Pinkie finger tracing glass. Watching her three level acres all forlorn, infertile, sour, outworn.

From Guest Contributor Catherine Moore

Catherine is the author of three chapbooks including “Wetlands” (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). Her fiction appears in Tahoma Literary Review, Illinois Wesleyan University Press, Tishman Review, Mid-American Review, and The Best Small Fictions of 2015 anthology.

Some morning, early, no sound from worrisome bees, refugees from last summer, moved twice, days after we decided to keep going, to lie, to lay together near the buzzing, pretending a world away from this one:

If I welcome you into my kitchen, to turn one of my forks over your fingers, flipping the metal into your palm, against knuckles, as you talk, too quickly, about what it means to leave her, what we can do with this freedom, I’ll mark the time, exactly, in quick numbers carved into the sink’s rough porcelain, unable, quite, to let the knife go.

From Guest Contributor, Kelli Allen

Kelli Allen’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the US and internationally. She served as Managing Editor of Natural Bridge and holds an MFA from the University of Missouri. She is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lindenwood University. Allen gives readings and teaches workshops throughout the US. Her full-length poetry collection, Otherwise, Soft White Ash, from John Gosslee Books (2012) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Gerald stared at the twenty-foot tower and wondered what it could be.

When examined up close, it obviously wasn’t any kind of rock. The old man who was charging one dollar for admission explained. “This here is one of the last remaining stings from when the giant bees invaded. It’s lucky the Earth doesn’t have an allergy or we’d all be dead.”

The green spaces in the village of Turnstell once served the needs of the entire community. Mr. Damhorst grazed his flock of sheep in the fields. Mrs. Graham was able to keep her honeycombs next to the woods. The Goldsmith twins collected berries for their homemade jam.

But mostly, people just really hated those bees.

“The queen bee thinks nothing of sacrificing a hundred soldiers to protect the hive. The queen ant goes even further, commanding thousands of her drones to forfeit their lives, all in the name of the greater good. But what you’ll never see is the Queen putting herself in danger. The Queen knows that without her, there can be no society.”

“We don’t want Charles inheriting one day sooner than necessary, your Majesty.”