I went on my own because I couldn’t get anyone to come with me. What had once been an orchard was now a graveyard for old tires, sprung mattresses, rusty paint cans, even broken microwaves, scattered over the slope like the indecipherable wreckage of some puzzling event. The trees, untended for years, had long since stopped producing apples and been twisted into painful shapes by time and storms and then overwhelmed by creeper vines and opportunistic birds and insects. I just stood with my head cocked to one side as if trying to catch every single word the crows said.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie co-edits the journals UnLost and Unbroken.

“To bare one’s soul is a difficult thing indeed,” Pappa said.

Poppa rolled his eyes.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

There’s a knocking on the spaceship door when there shouldn’t have been. For Chris-sake, I’m umpteen millions of miles from anywhere and here’s this knocking. It’s deliberate, and it’s the all too common knock of: knock, tiddly-knock-knock, knock knock. Is this a space hallucination? I’ve heard of them, but hell’s bells, I’ve only been up here for 50 days, surely it couldn’t happen as soon as this. Oh, mother, it’s peering in the port-hole now and looks just like me. I do feel a bit lonely now, maybe we could get along. I’ve just got to get this hatch open…

From Guest Contributor Len Mooring

It was a pleasure to burn. Of the eight, it was my most beautiful arm: the hillside slope of the shoulder, the tender elbow, that lilting wrist, narrow yet invincible. Had he seen it in the dance, or still in his Sistine posture, even Michelangelo would have known God is a woman.

The downy hair went up first, and then the skin, the perfect fingernails, the sizzling fat and muscle. There is always a relaxation in admitting the truth, even a truth that smells like sulfur and charcoal: I am the flames as much as I was ever the arm.

From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat

Brook’s poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and humor have appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror Magazine, Harbinger Asylum, MoonPark Review, Little India, Dămfīno, Nowhere Poetry, Rat’s Ass Review, Peacock Journal, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. In 2013, she and her husband Gaurav created Blue Planet Journal, which she edits and writes for. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University, teaches poetry and creative writing at a community college, and is writing a novel. See more at www.brook-bhagat.com or reach her on Twitter at @BrookBhagat.

I was the kid who sparkled when they walked in the door. The bookish brat who would make her father chuckle while balancing a mountain of literature above her head.

Until it was gone.

From Guest Contributor Alexandra Sullivan

Given the choice, I would want to be the sort of shrewd, goatish old man it’s said Rodin was, strolling the broad boulevards and ornate arcades of Paris after a productive morning in the studio, a young Russian-born French lady leaning lightly on his arm, and if her eyes were too wide apart for her to be considered a classic beauty, or if she didn’t actually read any of the books he recommended, he wouldn’t care, because it had just turned fall, and the air was like a crisp white wine, and they always felt at least a little drunk.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.

The rain is pounding on the window and I see water seeping through the sill. I put towels to block it, but to no avail, and the dogs are barking uncontrollably, pacing back and forth at the clap of thunder and lightning. With nothing else to do, I sit and wait for it to pass. A summer storm doesn’t usually last long.

I look out the window and see abundant sunshine. In the distance a glimmer of a rainbow appears.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

“Going to the wedding, are you?” The SuperValu cashier jigged the question as the wiry woman with blowzy white hair fished coins from her purse for the crossword lotto cards lying on the counter. “Here you go, exactly.” She plunked the coins down and scooped up her cards. “Hope you’re a winner. Spelling games are my pet picks,” quipped the cashier. “Yes, I deserve a good spell; even though these daily lotto spoil everything. I’ll be back in a short bit to bet on today’s talk of the town. I have a hunch the odds are running in my favor.”

From Guest Contributor M.J. Iuppa

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

We have walked about 30,000 miles together. That’s more than once around the circumference of the earth. On clear mornings a sliver moon greets us. Autumn brings magic. From summer’s green comes a cacophony of color. Winter evenings are deeply dark. Light the torch to check the footing.

“So what do you talk about?” A few have asked this. We communicate in silence. Each small step a giant leap for matrimony.

From Guest Contributor Sam Brody