My head rotates like the Earth around the sun, except at excessive speed.

As I walk onto my front porch, I remember what it’s like to feel the air against my face.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Rachel pulled her hat covering her face and walked. Curfew was about to begin, and the gestapo would be patrolling. She had an important piece of information tucked inside her left shoe and she had to get back to the safe house.

Soon Rachel would realize it was a trap.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Adrian jogged in the park, the autumn breeze against his face. He nodded his good morning to fellow joggers as he enjoyed the chirping birds.

It began to rain.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

The kid just ran out. I was only doing twenty-five in a twenty zone. You’re allowed some slack. He magically appeared from behind a van. I didn’t put the ice there that caused me to skid. I didn’t put a school gate by the main road. I wasn’t the one teaching road safety and I didn’t call myself on the phone, talking garbage. Yet I stand accused.

Was no one responsible for a traffic patrol? So unfair.

From Guest Contributor Duncan Bourne

Robots Contest Entry:

I was born in the rain and dark. “Cure me or kill me,” I begged the doctors in attendance. But apparently only when silent was I able to be heard. I’d been assembled by someone who couldn’t be bothered to read the assembly instructions. Seventy years later, I look in the mirror and see bits and pieces of a stranger’s face – a long, fleshy nose, protuberant eyes, a domelike Shakespearean forehead. My now grown children stand well off to the side, uncertain whether to huddle or flee. As I tentatively approach, I clutch a rose, shoulder high like a dagger.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s books include the prose poetry collection THOUGHT CRIMES, scheduled to be published in fall 2022.

The house stands camouflaged. Painted blue, it bleeds into the sky, camouflaged, hiding the deep-red hurt inside. “How do you appear so serene?” asks the inside to its out. How do you not give credence to the suffering within us? “I must maintain hope,” the outside says. “The pain within our facade is already causing stress cracks and chipping in my optimistic veneer. My face was once a cloud-like cream. Now its blueness, though mistaken for a sort of cheer—is actually the shade of sadness. When she passes, and finally ceases this struggle, let us rebuild, recolor, reinvent ourselves.”

From Guest Contributor Keith Hoerner

Nadia rushes through the streets. Gunfire and bombs go off in the near distance and people are scrambling, and screaming, knocking into her while sweat drips down the nape of her neck. Her breath is shallow from the heat and clouds of black smoke fill the air. She uses her sleeve to cover her face from breathing in the toxic fumes, but she coughs heavily. She prays her husband is safe, but she hasn’t heard a word since he left to fight for their country.

A bomb explodes creating darkness and the bridge collapses beneath her.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

I can’t bring myself to read the news anymore or even watch it on TV. There are just so many unidentified dead men with my face, just so many couples in their late thirties having trouble making a baby. Meanwhile, a small band of starving deer stagger out of the snowbound woods in search of help, but help has been repealed. Like the Oxford comma or the use of voiceover in film, the whole thing is controversial. And although it’s day, night thoughts are stuck in my head, and the only immediate alternative may be to cut my head off.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie Good is the author of Failed Haiku, a poetry collection that is the co-winner of the 2021 Grey Book Press Chapbook Contest and scheduled for publication in summer 2022.

Sam’s touched up face, slicked brown hair and embalmed body, reminded me that he really was gone.

Now I must break the news of my Parkinson’s disease. But not today.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Nothing hurts like the pain in my chest or the ache in my head. Thoughts of my grandma’s last embrace grip me. I look up, expecting to see her face in the clouds, but all I see is rain. Perhaps, her tears appear as raindrops, and her face is only visible to angels. I was once her angel. She took with her my wings, the same ones that gave me the strength to fly above obstacles. I hold her umbrella above me, her scarf wrapped around my neck. Some say I inherited her kindness, the only inheritance that truly matters.

From Guest Contributor Ernestina Aggrey