“Where did you hear that? She asked, blonde hair peek-a-boo covering her naked breasts.

“As soon as I finish hemming these fig leaves,” she winked back.

From Guest Contributor Reynold Junker

That summer when everything in his life seemed to be going just right, he finally contemplated cutting his hair. It had been over a decade now, and the summer heat showed no sign of dying down.

As the heat soared he finally cut his hair off, and both the women suddenly disappeared from his life.

From Guest Contributor Debarun Sarkar

Debarun sleeps, eats, reads, smokes, drinks, labors and occasionally writes stories and submits them. He can be reached at debarunsarkar.wordpress.com

Amanda glared accusingly from the living room doorway. Her father and brother didn’t even notice. They were engrossed in television. Their shared triumphant roar startled her.

Betty waited until the lights were out before indignantly reaching up and ruffling her hair back to the way she liked it.

From Guest Contributor Perry McDaid

I paint you by numbers, capture your features one by one… from the fair Irish skin; to the coal-black hair; to the rich, ruby lips; and the fiery-, emerald-green eyes.

Betrayed, my grip clenches. I see, I know your colors. I see, I know your lack of them.

From Guest Contributor Keith Hoerner

Back against the wall, arms at my sides, and my heart pounding in my throat and toes, I closed my eyes and let him explore the soft wetness of lips, the tight reluctance of tongue. My fingernails dug into my thighs, the way love, or maybe obsession, forces its way into the folds of your brain, seeping into your consciousness and taking over everything you thought you knew about yourself.

He caressed my hair and my face. The ground gave way, an unexpected and fragile molehill, and I found myself.

From Guest Contributor Stacy Gorse

I like watching my nails grow. I eat enough proteins to create dead cells to convert into nails and hair. Every week, I trim my nails, and every two weeks, my hair. But they grow back with a vengeance each time. When I forgot to trim my nails once, my infant brother got a large scratch on his face. I forgot to cut my hair, and my mother had a nasty fall entangled in them. No one comes near me now, except to cut my nails and hair. I’m the keratin child demon everyone has learnt to be scared of.

From Guest Contributor Namitha Varma

Namitha is a media professional based in Bengaluru, India. She has publishing credits in over 25 literary journals including Sahitya Akademi’s journal Indian Literature, eFiction India, Gone Lawn, Postcard Poems and Prose, 101 Words, Microfiction Monday Magazine, and Cafe Dissensus Everyday. Her micropoem has been read out on NPR Radio as part of the National Poetry Month 2014, and her works feature in two anthologies. Read more on her blog or follow her on Twitter.

Melissa, Greek for Queen bee, settled on soft grass. Her flaxen hair complementing an array of colorful flowers; crimson roses forming a perfect circle, stunning pink azaleas beckoning busy insects, clusters of lilac hyacinths and scatters of yellow, white and red chrysanthemums. Her lined hands picked lazily at the daisies strewn across the well-maintained green carpet as she listened to the animated gulls chattering overhead. To be part of nature was relaxing and relaxation healed. The river’s lively current swooshed at the banks beyond. She was at peace, just like her beloved Jacob whose dreary grey head stone overshadowed her.

From Guest Contributor Kerry Valkyrie Baldock Kelly

She understood Brooklyn. You needed the right glasses, the right shoes, the right jeans. And my God, the hair. You had to nail the hair exactly. If it looked like you were trying too hard, you weren’t trying hard enough.

But the sweater-skirt combination on that lady was going to kill when she wore it home for Christmas vacation.

I am the wind that yesterday lifted your hair against the orange sky, cooling your skin. Now, I have arrived to collect respect. I bang on your door. Scream through your trees. You ignore me? I carried the seeds that became these trees that brush the sky. I exhale against the oak standing rigid against my gale, refusing to bend. He groans and snaps before my fury. And you, you who hide in your pretty squares constructed of his branches, think that you are protected from my force. Hear the glass that breaks as I announce that I am more.

From Guest Contributor, Karen Burton

Karen is an MFA student at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO.

You are the hair against my belly, left too long in slick cooling foam. You are the pull of my arm as it leans closer to ground than shoulder. You are the gelatin near my breast where I am found waiting, one more time. You are sorted beyond shape, into one scent I’ll accept, one I push heavily against, a reminder of reverse birthing, of what inside might mean if wrapped, warped by artifice and vivid yellows. You are this sweetness I take instead of a lesson—a cabbage of greens kept to hide the reds left in your leaving.

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.