This feels like the worst place one could possibly be – insurrectionists on the front steps, an unkindness of ravens in the yard, a side door that requires a sign explaining how to open it. I’m leaving for. . . I don’t know where. Maybe somewhere bombs would only ever kill the bomb makers. You can come if you wish. I can’t promise there’ll be roads and buildings made of spider silk or that lakes will gently bubble to the dreams of sleeping fish, but light will reach us even a million years after the source of light has gone out.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s latest poetry collection, Gunmetal Sky, is due in February from Thirty West Publishing,

They kicked in the door. Your wife screamed. A few of them were wearing white lab coats as if they were doctors. The world was behaving in ways you wouldn’t have believed possible a short while ago. With a “doctor” on each side, and people in neighboring apartments covertly watching, you were hustled down the stairs and across the street and into an ambulance. To this day, no one will talk about what might have become of you. Everything is either too hot or too cold; nothing is soft. Prepubescent girls have dreams eight feet high and made of steel.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s latest full-length poetry collection, Gun Metal Sky, is due in early 2021 from Thirty West

While you putter and sputter and wander room to room forgetting

They are waiting for your Howl.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook Bhagat’s poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and humor have appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror Magazine, Harbinger Asylum, Little India, Rat’s Ass Review, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. She and her husband Gaurav created Blue Planet Journal, which she edits and writes for. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University, is an assistant professor of English at a community college, and is writing a novel. Her poetry collection, Only Flying, is due out Nov. 16, 2021 from Unsolicited Press.

“You know what I’d do if we ever win the Lottery Jackpot,” she says while she crumples this week’s ticket.

I sure as hell hope we never win that freaking Lottery Jackpot.

From Guest Contributor Hervé Suys

Hervé (°1968 – Ronse, Belgium) started writing short stories whilst recovering from a sports injury and hasn’t stopped since.

We’re speeding in Mama’s 1955 Chevrolet Bel-Air. Mama’s talking about new names we’ll concoct. Lives we’ll live.

“Yes, Mama.”

From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri

Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, 50 Word Stories, (mac)ro (mic), and Ariel Chart.

It’s like a post-apocalyptic movie. A usually bustling city is eerily vacant. Essential supplies have come to include liquor, guns, and toilet paper. Who isn’t secretly embarrassed? Around midnight I take a puzzle apart just for the hell of it. The next morning my department holds a Zoom session on how to prevent cheating in online classes. Other professors mention they also have been having strange dreams. In mine, I’m eating Crown Fried Chicken on a bench while eyeballs the size of boulders roll across the grass and dirt, and a woman I recognize from TV weeps into her hands.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie Good is the author of What It Is and How to Use It (2019) from Grey Book Press, among other poetry collections.

The day is cold even by New England standards. Girls dump menstrual blood on icy sidewalks in some kind of protest. Myth is dead. Our high school biology textbook compared the body to a furnace. Mr. C, our very nice teacher, was killed that spring with his wife and baby daughter in a car wreck. There’s no point in speaking ironically to people who can’t understand irony. You’ll just end up having to publicly apologize. Freud said dreams are the day’s residue. It has to linger for a while, as if to warn we’re a danger to self and others.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

If it wasn’t for lack of encouragement growing up, I might have been an avant-garde artist, a Duchamp or a Warhol, famous for a star-like crack in a windshield, stick figures drawn on toilet paper, floors overflowing with blood. I carry a lot of photos in my phone. The only words anyone ever truly needs have all been cannibalized for parts. Still, when I announce, “I’m going to kill myself,” I don’t care what the police say, you better take it seriously. Saucer-eyed girls have been walking for a while now very close to a volcano with a beautiful name.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is the author most recently of Stick Figure Opera: 99 100-word Prose Poems from Cajun Mutt Press. He co-edits the online journals Unbroken and UnLost.

“Do you love me?”

When his love was gone, the reality hit him and it was very harsh. He wanted his love back in his life but it was impossible. He didn’t know what to do, where to go. He had lost everything. His love was gone forever. When things became unbearable, he lost his mind. He could feel those eyes staring at him. He could hear them laughing and screaming. When things went beyond the walls he tried to resist but failed. His dreams turned wet and became an illusion.

From Guest Contributor Sergio Nicolas

Nancy Botkin loves midnight. She stands on the porch, wind whispering. She watches moon drifting. Luminous, motherly, never leaving. A new day awakens. Possibilities rise.

She hides pieces of dreams, waits for the next night.

From Guest Contributor Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri

Mir-Yashar is a graduate of Colorado State’s MFA program in fiction. The recipient of two Honorable Mentions from Glimmer Train, he has also had work nominated for The Best Small Fictions. His work has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as 50 Word Story, Molecule Lit Mag, The Write City Magazine, and Agony Opera. He lives in Garden Valley, Idaho.