by Kat Yeary When I was manic for a long time,Einstein’s disembodied headcame out of the wall and explainedthe architecture of consciousness to me. Only took him an afternoon. He walked me right upto the first thought,which was a feelingwe couldn’t find the word for. To me it looked like a drum madeof a living skin, with a high efficiencylight bulb in it. And it was breathing. I laid down on it and felt it beat through me. I felt it say,It didn’t have any purpose.Afterwards,I …
by Sheriff Olanrewaju each head carries a spiky dagger, so big, against whoever incurstheir anger around the sandy fortress, often compared to Mount Sobi.what creatures brazenly boast of menacing mandibles to strike uninvited ants?like the Indian haladie, deep in their muddy mansion, basking in the elationof the masses' inaction, they cut all incoming chunks with their two edge blades,without resistance in their base, where public revenues slip into private avenues.is empathy now a malady at …
by Susan L. Lin The Human Animal vows never to eatan octopus or a squid. What she really meansis she will never ever eat another one again.They are her favorite nonhuman animals. She loves the way they squeeze their boneless bodiesinto the tightest spaces like contortionistsor magician’s assistants, completing the ultimatedisappearing act. She loves the way they mimictheir environments and change colors more fluidlythan the mood ring on her index finger. But she also loves the way their …
by Keith Gaboury As I drove to the hospital to visit my friend Billy during his chemo treatment, a stray lightningbolt struck a eucalyptus on the side of a wooded road. When the trunk collapsed 100 feet ahead, Iskidded to a stop. Out the door, I walked up to the tree and spotted an alabaster poodle cowering within thebranches. I would have crushed this stray if the stray bolt didn’t strike. How did you survive? Ispoke in a reverence as I scooped the lucky survivor up. I’ll name …
by Margaret Elysia Garcia His proposition arrived as a notification from a kink dating site she’d eagerly signed up for and then promptly forgot. His message came between a reminder for her annual colonoscopy, and an announcement that her insurance premium was increasing, along with several ads by her favorite shoe designer which she, of course, opened first. Christopher was not a stranger to her—she’d met both him and his wife at a BDSM convention in Los Angeles back when Monica thought …
by Deborah L. Davitt The words written by wavesare always unwritten again washed away by the next rush of waterlifting the sand in a stormthat lashes at your anklessucks your feet deeper into the shore the words written by stormsdon't last much longer ephemeral runes wroughtby lightning's jagged arcsand pronounced in thunder's voiceterrifying, sudden—and then gone it shouldn't surprise then,that your words didn't linger traced in the air like a storm,electric as they werein …