That vibrant scarlet striking against the snow like a bell ringer striking a bell, reverberating through your body, taking up your entire being. She entices me with her beauty, but her thorns tell me not to touch. The wind sings and she dances with grace. Her perfume is like the smell of the green earth that reminds you you’re alive. I love her beauty, I love her fragrance, I love her grace. I would like to take her to my wife. If she could see this rose the way I see it, then she’d understand the way I see her.

From Guest Contributor Kyla Syner

The snow and wind pelted my face. The inclemency hadn’t started until I was half-way to the subway station, and people slipped across the pavement rushing to get home. Vehicles honked at pedestrians cutting in and out of lanes, so I had to be careful. I tried not to think about the numbing in my fingers after forgetting my gloves at home.

When the train arrived and I boarded, I knew it would be a matter of time before I’d be snug by the fireplace.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Harvest missed, starlings busy with unworked seed, overripe corn, a laugh with the scarecrow – leave toward evening. Leaves of fall turn red like the blood fingering across the green linoleum kitchen floor after the thud of the back of your head, split like a too-ripe pumpkin. A widower falls in the kitchen, no one hears it, did it make a sound? The trees in the yard mourn the wood you stacked anticipating winter, as it dries, rots, quietly decays. Equinoxes later it splinters, skips off across tan, fallow fields in a cold wind, wet with the rustle of black wings.

From Guest Contributor Craig Kirchner

Craig thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus is being published and has work forthcoming in a dozen or so journals.

The birds flew by

They’re the same.

From Guest Contributor Daniel Duong

The wind in the woods sounds like a river. It whispers across my face, soft and sweet and holy.

The day warms. A robin twitters. Cicadas hum in the pines. Dave whistles the Happy Trails tune as we start down the path. And so the end begins, and I clutch this small, quiet death in my soul.

From Guest Contributor Jayna Locke

The angel of death once thrust his face perilously close to mine. I can still smell his lurid breath when the wind blows across the green scummy water. Although it seems longer ago, it was only last year that he climbed into bed and cuddled with you. The survivors cope as best they can. One walks all around the car and carefully looks under it before getting in. And so I ask him, Whatever happened to the right to be lazy? An 18-month-old slipping under the water when her mother left her unattended in the tub for just a sec.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie’s newest poetry collection, Heart-Shape Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is forthcoming from Laughing Ronin Press.

Tina sat in the back of a taxi on her phone. She looked up, and her breath caught.

A twisted laugh carried faintly on the wind.

From Guest Contributor Madison Randolph

Madison is a reader by day and a writer by night. Her works have appeared in Friday Flash Fiction, The Drabble, Bright Flash Literary Review, Spillwords, The Chamber Magazine, A Story in 100 Words, Free Flash Fiction, Microfiction Monday as well as 101 Words under the name Ryker Hayes. She resides in Oklahoma with her family and dog Belle where she spends her time sharpening her writing skills and drinking large amounts of coffee. Her works can be found here. She can be found on Instagram @madisonrandolph17

The wind is howling, and the snow is heavy. New Year’s Eve and Times Square are scarce with the host’s expression one of weariness.

Happy New Year.

From Guest Contributor Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

The wind is blowing. The strong wind means something from memories. Memories? 1978 Christmas.. Jimmy Carter used nukes against Russia. How do I know? Same reason why I know Douglas MacArthur in Korea had to be changed out so many times, making him look crazy. Because? The soul swapping allows that dead reality to live more. Same with JFK did the governor of Texas wear a cowboy hat? Or did someone else kill him? Thermonuclear war is not winnable. Alternative realities are dying right and left just 90 degrees from your sight is not funny. Laugh but Hawaii was nuked.

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

The slave driver’s eagles squawk and shift violently in the wind to dodge the endless barrage of waves crashing against the rocky cliff’s edge. By our scent, they know we are close, but they can’t see us.

I struggle to speak and strain through the invisibility incantation I have surrounding us and our boat, “Row boy! It was no illusion. It’s our only salvation.”

From Guest Contributor John Martinez