‘Maltese Smuggler’

KJ Hannah Greenberg uses her trusty point-and-shoot camera to capture the order of G-d's universe, and Paint 3D to capture her personal chaos. Sometimes, it’s insufficient for her to sate herself by applying verbal whimsy to pastures where gelatinous wildebeests roam or fey hedgehogs play. Hannah’s poetry and art collections are: Miscellaneous Parlor Tricks (Seashell Books, 2024, Forthcoming), Word Magpie (Audience Askew, 2024), Subrogation (Seashell Books, 2023), and One-Handed Pianist (Hekate Publishing, 2021).

Maltese Smuggler

I’m a smuggler. A female smuggler. Disguised as a man in the year of 1780, I accrue lucrative bounties, guiding helpless ships to dash apart against Malta’s rocks, believing they are close to shore and safety. A weaved beard hangs from my face, disguising my feminine wiles, stitched together from the hair of shipwrecked bodies, bearded men thrown against rocks. I’m heartless. Ruthless. I brandish a true smuggler’s heart, charred and blackened by sinful greed. 

My name, San Pawl, is deceptive, duping others to believe in a holiness and devout religion that I shall never bear. My crew of male smugglers trust me, unconditionally, for I have brought them many bounties, riches that far exceed what they could make selling caught fish at local Maltese markets. Within me, they see a saint, one made from rock salt and the turn of tides. A symbol of constancy and fortuitous pathways. I’m fluid, bending in their wake, fulfilling desires of wealth and power. 

Smugglers’ Cave is where I wile away daytime hours, readying to attract ships to false light at night. I bob within a tied fishing boat, brightly painted in red, yellow, green and blue: the Maltese colours of fortune, but I’m hidden by the black cloak of the inlet caves, obliterated from view. I sleep in the boat, tucked in a cocoon of blankets, dreaming of freedom and love – tendrils of daytime pleasures to weave amidst my hungry hands, enclosed and sheltered as I am within a floating womb of wood, boasting primary hues. Green for vegetation, yellow for sun, blue for water and red for the soil of the island and its russet flares like a hare’s fear as it dashes to save its life. These colours protect me, ensuring ships with high bounties, sail, without suspicion, into my awaiting clasp.

Translucent blue is my sea blanket, protecting me outside the caves, surrounding as a watery halo. My band of smugglers return to the mainland by day leaving me mostly alone except for my odd trips for supplies, but I am blissfully alone. Harbouring wives and children, they seek to sell their illicit wares, but most hold a candle for me, a dim one, for it is not easily forged, a love affair between men, not in strict Roman Catholic households. They do not suspect me a woman. A woman knows such things. So, I buoy myself to sleep, left to guard our stolen treasures from chests that glint in streaks of sunlight like opening eyes, when the sun strikes its blade, as they tend to human duties. 

My recent shipwreck belonged to Italian royalty, bringing great wealth to Maltese shores. To me. Crowns, diamond rings, pearl necklaces and pendants line the perimeter walls of the cave, seeking a new wearer, feeling unseen in charcoal shade next to absent human flesh. I sleep turning a ruby ring, a bright large stone, within my thinking fingers, turning in repetitive circles as I drift to realms where I imagine the life of the true owner. Regal robes, grand feasts, awaiting servants, palatial courts, performing jesters, and pomp emit an aura, telling me a story of the ring’s past. I imagine that a young queen bore its gilded circle upon her slender finger, eyeing her reflection in its pomegranate sheen, ripe and fresh at court, betrothed to a much older, grey-haired king, finding only dissatisfaction in its reflection.

Such trinkets speak to me, channelling a new lifeline of sorts. For this ring, the wearer is shackled by familial bonds to a king she can never love for her heart is already locked to another, left behind in a land she can never return to. I sense its yearning as a pulse within my own veins, channeling a passage to my beating heart. For I, too, love an unattainable other. A woman. A siren. A maiden of the sea. By night she visits me here, as I ready to smuggle after an afternoon of mostly rest. Her tail powers her to this exact cave, shimmering with iridescent slices of the sun – a travelling light, is she. My own lamp. 

On her arrival, the cave illumines instantly by her presence, dancing glimmers of metallic skin reflect on the ceiling, beautiful spots of colour. Holding a large pearl held within her hands, she sings the song that I have grown to know, like a childhood lullaby. I have no semblance of her language, but am lulled by her dulcet notes, becoming synchronised with her as she emits a siren call. The melody laces my throat, spiralling into my essence: every bone, vessel and organ reverberates, enlivens with each note she brings into being. Securing herself with her anchor tail, she presents a closed shell, large and pearlescent, wearing a coral peach sheen; she slowly opens it to reveal its hidden treasure. An illuminating pearl, ethereal and mythical – nothing like the pearls I catch from shipwrecked boats. Its light permeates each cavernous space of me, filling my watery home, radiating to ships, far into the watery distance, far flung from the island. 

My men await the nightly light which beckons a new shipwreck, positioned strategically as we are as a band of smugglers along the northwesterly coastline. They know nothing of her sorcery, her dark magic upon me, nor do they care, as long as bags of coin become theirs to spend.

As a particularly large ship fastens on her emitting light, it steadies its course towards the shards of sharpened rock, its unbeknown stony shroud. Duped, it courses straight, drawn as a fish upon a meaty lure, headstrong and determined to secure its safe passage to sandy shores. As of every night, once a ship is doomed, placed on its path of irreversible destruction, she lifts herself to me, weaving her ebony locks into the boat. As is tradition, she invites me to kiss her, undressing my false beard, peeling back masculine layers that are not rightly mine. She knows too much, always has. I too, like a fish on a hook, succumb to my fate: her damask soft lips as velvet meet with mine, whilst her caressing hands hold my head. Instantly, I’m spellbound, intoxicated by marine beauty. Her eyes lock upon mine, deepest emeralds of the sea, telling me soundless tales of her origin and otherness. I drink each tale in, wishing for her to be truly mine, to lift her into my fishing boat, and for the world to stop spinning, with only the two of us locked in a timeless embrace. 

Yet, the kiss is always curtailed, distracted by the commotion of crew and ship, both blasted into the fangs of steel, the rocky outcrop of Smugglers Cave, and not as the sailors had hoped, onto the expectant slope of sand. Hollers and panic cries of help resound, ricochetting off the walls of the cave, until my love can bear the din no longer, quickly shutting closed her pearl, and disappearing into inky waters, swimming swiftly out to the deeper Mediterranean Sea. 

Back to seclusion. Back to her safety. Her kind. 

Sunken without her, left in echoic darkness, I tuck my feet to my body, rocking myself gently in the boat’s bowels, trying to break myself free from her happy bewitchment of my soul. Reapplying my façade of a beard, I ready to oar my way to the detritus outside, picking the ship’s great wares of wealth from atop the sea’s surface. My men await me, all hidden within the dark mouths of caves, readying to swim to claim barrels and treasure chests. 

The process repeats, night after night, week after week, until one-night changes my fate forever. 

As soft dusk, bruised purple skies, fall upon Smugglers’ Cave, I awaken, readying to prepare for another stolen meeting with my siren of the sea. I sit and wait. Plum sky forming to ebony rolls outside my cave, eradicating any last wisp of pearly light from within the cave. Hollow and alone, I continue to wait, summoning her from my soul to quickly arrive and begin our lovers dance as is nocturnal ritual. 

Time passes. 

More time passes. 

It stretches like malleable love. 

Bereft, I wallow, sinking into the underbelly of the boat, desperate to find a means of light, wanting only to search for her. My absent siren. So embroiled in love have I become that I nearly forget about the ensuing shipwreck, so fixated have I become on her lips, her tender kiss and caress. Everything that is her has poisoned my mind. 

Fumbling carelessly in pitch black waters, I find a disused gas lamp, and light it with shaking fingers, sweat streaming into my eyes from the blind struggle. As the oil ignites, a familiar world undresses itself to me: my rocky lair. 

Yet, alas, all is not as it once was.

The cave’s walls and stores are no longer lined and filled with treasure but lie empty, hollow from theft. Theft of the most grievous kind. Nausea rises in my throat as my heartbeats treble in speed as the sad realisation dawns: my love, my siren of the seas, has taken all from me and my merry band of smugglers. Our wares are depleted except for one object that glints lamentably as if in apology by the struggling light of the gas lamp. A tear instantly falls from my eye as I see what is left: the mark of the thief, wanting their identity to be known. 

On a single outcrop of rock lies her empty shell - without its pearl. Devoid of its heart and light source, my trade is over. No gas lamps could ever emit the same fantastical light to beckon ships to these traitorous rocks. Oaring my way shakily to the empty shell, I gulp away intense guilt and embarrassment of my gullibility to fall for her lies and deceit. 

Yet perhaps we are more suited than I thought: both thieves, stealers of others’ hearts and wealth. Clasping the shell, I tuck it into my c-shaped body, leaking sorrow onto its pearlescent glow, dimming now in her absence and abandonment of me. 

Slowly, the nighttime waves lull me to broken sleep where I dream of her ghostly fingers caressing my face: the true Maltese smuggler. 

A lover that I shall never see again. 

Emma Wells is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with various literary journals and magazines. She writes flash fiction, short stories and novels. She is currently writing her sixth novel. Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 with ‘Carbonito de Sophie’ and her short story entitled ‘Virginia Creeper’ was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021. Recently, she won Dipity Literary Magazine’s 2024 Best of the Net Nominations for Fiction with her short story entitled ‘The Voice of a Wildling’.

‘THE KINDS OF POEMS’, ‘OTHER PEOPLE’ & ‘TEACHER IN AN EMPTY CLASSROOM’

Rich Spang was born in San Francisco, living in many places usually near water and on islands. His scientist father was an award winning photographer and was never without a camera. Neither was Rich. Largely self taught, Rich was trained as an architectural draftsman, has been an art show roadie for a successful painter, a musician, a Scuba Instructor in Los Angeles and Maui and also a volunteer diver for the Seattle Aquarium. Rich’s “day job” was as an electronics technician and he has recently retired from Seattle Children’s Hospital where he provided IT support for the medical staff. Besides Photography, Rich is an avid reader and obsessive gardener.

THE KINDS OF POEMS
There are love poems
and there are death poems.
The former are odes
to young people.
The latter are elegies
to the old.
But slowly
and inexorably,
the young age
and the poems
eventually teeter between
the grace, the elegance,
and the inevitable.
Eventually.
the love poems
and the death poems
merge into
the substance and consequence
of life poems.
Those are the ones
I’m writing now.

OTHER PEOPLE
They point at me on the street,
shout, “He’s the one! He did it!”
They don’t give chase.
They don’t call a cop.
They figure pointing and shouting is enough.
Others join the chorus.
Some lean out of windows.
Others cry out from passing cars.
I have done so much to fit in.
I dress like others.
I comb my hair neatly.
I hold down an ordinary job.
I join in sports talk.
I even laugh at the same jokes,
Yet, there’s something about me.
Even I can sense it.
I point and shout at myself sometimes.
“He’s the one! He did it!”
That’s nothing I haven’t said already.

TEACHER IN AN EMPTY CLASSROOM
He writes his name on the blackboard.
Then chalks up a map.
And then a formula,
followed by an equation,
some historical dates,
and a parsed sentence.
There are the people in the world
who need to see this stuff,
to remember it,
and, if they and he are lucky,
to understand it.
He stares out the window.
He looks at his watch.
Now where are they?
he wonders.
Now where is anyone anymore?

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Tenth Muse. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories and River and South.

‘Back to War’

Carol Radsprecher is a Brooklyn-based painter and digital printmaker. She earned her MFA in painting from Hunter College, CUNY, in 1988. Her work has appeared in several solo shows and numerous group shows and has been published in many publications. Carol is always eager to voice her opinions on everything, even things about which she knows very little. She loves cats and other animals (as well as doing nothing, watching TV and movies, reading, fulminating about what’s happening in our country and world, and sleeping). In her work she combines distorted figuration with abstraction. Her website is https://www.carolradsprecher.com.

Back to War

June 25, 1944

I know Morse check.  I can hand-send check.  It’s climbing back into a B-17 I’m not so sure of.  First training flight on the radio in the morning so it all comes down to this.

I’m thinking about that Red Cross girl back at the flak house. My last day there she’s in the dining room off at a table by herself so I sit down.  She tells me her RAF husband went out over France the day before.  No chutes but it’s night and no one sees his plane go down either.

I tell her that last part is good.  Guys go out all the time and then show up weeks later in a POW camp.  And then some never get caught at all.  I tell her how we got agents all over Europe working to bring these guys home.

She asks about me and I say I’m off to radio school.  She listens real close but that don’t match up with what she just told me.  Then I get it.  She’s still trying to do her job even with what she’s going through.

She’s no quitter and I ain’t either.  Thing now is not to forget it.

June 26, 1944

Sorriest excuse for a B-17 ever.  No name.  Peeling paint.  An old E series used only for training.

Pilot out on the tarmac says we’ll be fine except for the flak over Long Island.  Lousy joke but the trainees all laugh.  Most never even been on a B-17 and this thing’s got them even more worried than me.

I climb in and take a look out the waist port.  So far so good.  Lift off is smooth.  Then all us trainees take our turns at the radio.  Checklists switches frequencies.

We all do some hand-sending and give our position over the headset.  Then they open the bomb bays and we learn about hang-ups.  How to pry bombs loose with a six foot crowbar while standing on the catwalk between bomb racks.  Looking down at Long Island Sound it somehow don’t seem near as deep as that Channel.

Everything goes better than I expect and I wonder if it has to do with this notebook last night.  I was a nervous wreck before writing here but then after I fell right off to sleep.  Who knows but it sure can’t hurt to keep it up.

Back at the flak house in my last meeting with Spencer he asks how I feel going back.  I say it reminds me of football in high school.  How after the first practice I’m covered in bruises but then after a few more the bruises are all gone.  I say there has to be something inside us that tells our muscles to toughen up and not show the hurt.

Spencer says primitive brain and I laugh.  Then he talks about how each cell in our body is a living organism unto itself and how they all work together to keep us alive.

I tell him how at one practice my arm swole up to twice its size but then the next day I’m back out on the field like nothing happened.  That’s how it feels going back.  All my cells are working together now to make me stronger.

June 27, 1944

Still haven’t written Betty.  It was up on the deck of that ship bringing us stateside when I figured out why.

Those last letters between us were all about our plans for the future but now I think that’s where it went wrong.  All I really need to do is climb back into a B-17 and finish my tour.  And I ain’t even started yet so that’s when I stopped even trying to write.

Staring out from that deck.  Waves just go on and on and on and on.

It was on that deck when news of our landing at Normandy came over the loudspeaker.  Some of those yahoos think it means the end of the war but I say all it really means is if we’re still on that beach in the morning we’re staying.

One report has the Luftwaffe going AWOL.  Funny how they always told us our job was to destroy the German war machine but we all suspected it was really to lure up their fighters so our new Mustangs could get a crack at them.  Live bait some said.  So now I think maybe being bait ain’t so bad if it cleared the sky for this invasion.  And so maybe something is finally making sense.

One nice thing here at Mitchell is all the newspapers.  New York Times and five or six others.  My first week here all the headlines were about Normandy.  Now they’re all about trying to break out from those beachheads.  And casualties.  Lots of casualties.

Another trainee asked if I want to go into New York City if we get the chance.  Says he knows this club where they blow some smooth horn.  That’s how he says it.  Smooth horn.  I say sure if we get the chance but it don’t matter.  Only thing now is getting back to England.

July 2, 1944

Cornwall.

We did a refuel in the Azores so I go take a look at this little town next to the airfield.  Dirt streets.  Wooden wheel carts.  I mean those people are poor.

This church has a sign out front saying Columbus stopped here so I go in.  A priest is setting up the altar so I’m there in a pew when what has to be the whole town starts crowding in.  They fill up the church and then the coughing starts until the whole church is hacking away.  I finally have to push my way out afraid I might catch double pneumonia.

Off the English coast we get some weather.  Big boomers and lightning.  My stomach flips and I can’t figure it.  Storms never caused me a problem before.

Then I think maybe it was those numbers running through my head.  Back at Mitchell I heard that a B-17 crew member has a fifty percent chance of making it.  Since I’m a quarter of the way through that means until now I only had a twelve point five percent chance of going down.  Not so bad but then every mission after that the percentage goes up until it’s nothing to bet the farm on.

Need to avoid that stuff in the future.

Train to London in an hour.  Switch there and then on to Kimbolton.  First I’ll find the guys.  No old home week.  Just see how they are.  And then Betty’s letters.  I’ll write after I see what she says.

On the other hand there might be a Dear John waiting but I can’t think about that.  Can’t think about any of it.  Just have to see when I get there.

July 5, 1944

A Corporal checks the active crew list.  Then he checks another off to the side and there they are.  Last mission to Hamburg a week ago.

Talk about a kick in the gut.  It’s not like they were long lost buddies but we were crewmates together for over a year.  Guess I just wanted to see someone I knew for a change.

They got me in an orphan barracks.  No set crews.  Just guys to fill in where needed.  It’s different here.  Everyone off in their own world.  Reminds me of boot camp.  Back then it was my cousin Burton on my mind.

He was six years older than me and took me around in his hot rod.  Still remember the time he stops at his girlfriend’s house and she comes running out in just her bra.

Then he’s off to the army.  I get a letter saying he needs two hundred bucks.   Mom says I’ll never see it again but I send it anyway and then every month after that a nice new twenty shows up in the mail.

He’s in the Philippines when the Japs overrun it.  About two years later Aunt Leeya gets a letter from this guy who escaped saying he and Burton were on the same prison ship when they see an island in the distance.  Burton jumps overboard trying to swim to it and the Japs shoot him dead in the water.

I enlist in the Army but then the Air Corps needs volunteers.  Never could land a heavy so they sent me off to gunnery school.  Got those wings on my chest.  Who the hell did I think I was?  But then Betty liked them so I guess they served their purpose.

One night at Jefferson Barracks outside St. Louis her brother Babe takes me home with him for dinner.  She’s the youngest of five so we all go out to this Italian place for drinks.  Hard to believe it was only a year ago.

I got some letters here on my bunk.  I’ll start with the oldest first and work my way up to the latest.  That way I’ll find out where I stand in her own time.

July 8, 1944

Full bird Preston is at his window when I walk in.  He says have a seat and then sits down across from me.  He mentions me being on Schweinfurt Three.  I say yes sir and he says I flew lead that day.  I say yes sir.  I know.

He stares at me a second and then touches my file on his desk.  You know I played high school football too.  Quarterback.  California State Champs.

If that’s what he wants I can talk football all day so I say tight end.  Memphis City Champs.

He asks about my training.  I go through it all but see him glancing out that window more and more often.  No mission today so it’s not B-17s he’s looking for.  He turns back to me.

Guess you want to know why I called you in.  There’s been some changes since you were here.  Crewmen come in younger all the time and it would be a big help if you could give these new guys the benefit of your experience.

He searches my eyes.  Is this what he wants?  I say I’ll help where I can.

He says good and eases back in his chair.  So how was MItchell?  I answer they kept me busy.  And now you're back.  Ready for work?  Just waiting on my name to be called.

Well we’re even busier now since Normandy so that shouldn’t take long.  Glad to have you back Sergeant.

At that he stands and I get up to salute but instead he reaches over and shakes my hand.  Then he says something I don’t expect.  If anything comes up stop back here to see me.  Anything at all.  You know where I am.  I say yes sir and pull the door closed behind me.

At a distance Preston is all starch and creases but face to face like that he’s okay.  And no one can accuse him of leading from an armchair.  He flies lead on the toughest missions and you don’t mind following someone like that.

So any time now.  Feels like I’m finally where I should be.  Just a little behind schedule is all.

July 14, 1944

Three straight days to Munich.

Funny how they bunch them like that.  No time to think.  And it works too.  You eat.  Fall in the sack and next thing you’re back in the air.

We flew middle position all three days.  Day two we lost a fort on the edge but none on days one and three.  I didn’t even fire my Fifty until day two but those Focke Wulfs were so far off it was mainly practice.

Every half hour I send out coordinates.  About half way there the target’s cue signal is triangulated from England and I pass it along to the navigator.  He guides us in and then hands off control of the plane to the bombardier who sights on the target and releases our bombs.

I see what Preston means about these new guys.  Before take off this rookie waist-gunner is looking for his chute so I tell him I put it in the radio room.  He thinks I’m trying to steal it so I ask if he wants to trip over it while on the Fifty.  He still doesn’t get it so I finally yell at him I got my own.  How the hell can he get this far without even knowing where to stow his chute?

But then I feel bad so I go back and offer him a stick of gum.  He takes it and I give one to the tail gunner and bottom turret too.  Then I figure why stop there so I make a trip through the bomb bay and up to the rest of the crew.

All three days my hands are okay so maybe Spencer was right.  Eleven down and nineteen to go.  It’s okay to keep count so long as I take them one at a time.

July 16, 1944

In Betty’s last letter she says she hasn’t heard from me in so long all she can think is that I’m too busy to write.

In my letter back I say I’m sorry.  That I was thinking about us and our plans so much I got distracted and it was dangerous for me and my crew.  I tell her how I went through a rough patch but I’m past it now and want to be with her more than ever.

I don’t say what that rough patch was but here’s my take.  I froze on that Fifty because our plans for the future didn’t line up with me being dead the next few seconds.  I can be either here or there but not both places at once.

Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter because so far it’s working.  There might be a future out there for me but for now it doesn’t exist.

July 21, 1944

Two days ago the train hub at Frevent.  Then yesterday Leipzig.  Number thirteen.  I never paid much attention to that number before but maybe I should have.

A thousand heavies with a five hundred fighter escort.  FWs and Me109s harass us all the way there.

On the runway before climbing up the tail-gunner tells me he has a bad feeling about this one.  He says these 17s feel like a coffin to him and he’ll bail out at the first sign of trouble.  I say we all will but only as a last resort.  But he’s not listening so I shut up.

We’re on our bomb run when the other waist-gunner calls out over his headset he’s hit.  I look back and see a four foot hole where my waist gun was.  Then I see him down on the deck holding his leg.

It’s a gash below his knee but the artery’s okay.  I flush it out and sprinkle some sulfa.  Then I press a bandage to it and motion for him to keep up the pressure.  That’s when I see that tail-gunner hovering behind me so I wave him back to his gun.

When I get back to my headset the pilot’s yelling for everyone to shut up and give him a head count.  We all sing out except for that tail-gunner.  Pilot tells me to check on him so I start back.  That’s when I see him.

He’s sitting motionless in the back of the plane like a statue so I get back to my headset and tell the pilot but he goes quiet.  Guess he decides to just let it go until we get back.

Some morse comes in that fighters are massing over the Channel so we should take the North Sea route back.  I pass along the new coordinates and we brace for the long ride home with that hole in our side dragging us back.

I take a hypo to check on the waist-gunner.  His face looks like a kid who just got slapped and don’t know why.  No pain though so I skip the morphine.

Our engines rev overtime to keep up with the others.  Then just before the North Sea flak starts up and their fighters meet us.  I hear FIRE over the headset and see flames shooting back past that hole in our side.  Pilot says prepare to bail out so I grab my chute but then he says DO NOT BAIL OUT!  IT’S THE FORT IN FRONT!  I REPEAT!  DO NOT BAIL OUT!

I look down the fuselage and see that tail-gunner hooking into his chute.  He’s got his emergency hatch open with his eyes glued on those flames streaming past.  He looks ready to jump but that don’t make sense until I see he’s not wearing his headset.  He can’t know those flames aren’t coming from us.

I yell and wave but he don’t look.  I beat on the fuselage with a wrench but he still don’t look so I start back to him.  Then he does look.  He looks straight at me and goes out the side.

I scan below for his chute but see only the North Sea.  Survival time down there is maybe a minute.

I report he’s bailed out and send the coordinates.  Coming into Kimbolton I shoot a flare out my top hatch to signal we have wounded but it’s not just us.

A fort skids off into a field with smoke pouring out.  I see men piling out running for their lives.  That fort on fire in front of us didn’t make it back either.

Yesterday put a stop to any idea I had about a quick end to the war.  Seems like it just started all over again.

Harvey Huddleston's short fiction has been published in The RavensPerch and Mystery Tribune among many others.

‘Edinburgh, Then’

Elizabeth Agre

Edinburgh, Then 

We thanked the hand that sprinkled gorse on Arthur and let wild Narcissus bloom, let him open his bright yellow mouth to the re-emergent sun. 

The cool, damp earth held us upright. The clock gave us grace. Friend, come over, stay a while. Linger by the heart, won’t you? And maybe the fire too. 

A gentle web spun across the city. A mother’s long arms waiting to catch a falling child. One fine thread always connected to that of another. 

Well, the clock had to run out of grace. And the daffodils died. And we have lost much of it now, to time and distance and ego and the slow drift. 

All wine turns to vinegar, that much we know. Still, on a crisp spring morning, won’t we look up like Narcissus? Mouths wide open for the sun? 

Wide open for it all?

Faria Basher is a (transplant) New Yorker and a woman of many, varying interests. Much of her life has been nomadic in nature, with time spent across the USA, the UK, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. She incorporates themes from this in her work.

‘Shooting Stars’

Eric Calloway

Shooting Stars

I could smell mud again
I liked it.
Same girl,
Under the same sun,
Walking in the same mud,
Shooting the same arrows.
But now,
Time had passed,
And the arrows had le their marks—
Red and purple scars
Decorating my hands.
I liked them.
They looked like stars.
They had grown with me,
Each session making them bier,
Shining brighter.
Archery always intrigued me.
Every time I’d shoot,
I’d leave a new mark on the board.
They looked like stars, too,
But there were many of them.
Looking like
The night sky.
In the early days
The stars on the board
Were far apart,
As if taunting me,
Staying away from each other,
Telling me,
“You’ll never get us together.”
But over time,
The stars began to gather.
Just like the scars on my hand,
The stars on the board
Had come together,
Not by force,
But by the slow, steady pull of time.
The stars on my hand
Were becoming permanent,
Shining bright,
Reminding me
at time itself had shaped me,
Just as it shapes everything.

Aarna Agarwal is a high school senior with a passion focus in STEM and Engineering. Outside of school, she is heavily involved in archery, the "Quest for Space" program for high schoolers, and advocates for women's involvement in STEM fields. In her free time, she enjoys listening to Taylor Swift.

‘Bulwark’, ‘Persimmon Tree’ & ‘Dread Persephone’

Elizabeth Agre hides out deep in the north woods of Minnesota along side the bear, wolves and bobcats

Bulwark

I am a bulwark:

Firm and strong against the forces

Of your enemies, which are

Unyielding in their assault,

Neverending in their vitriol,

Dogged in their pursuit,

Arising from the dark depths of your mind

To pull you under—

I will not let them pillage you

Or plunder your spoils

Nor lay you under siege.

I am your foundation:

Steadfast in my loyalty

Though you have forgotten your promise

And built over me

Breaking me

Lying to me

Erstwhile you sleep soundly.

I am your stability:

Solid in my presence at your elbow,

That you take for granted, leaning on me

Until I break

Beneath the weight of your need

Beneath the weight of my shoulders

Of our friendship that only serves you,

Rending me apart so that I am 

Nigh unrecognizable. 

Of course, that won’t really happen.

I won’t let it.

So go ahead and push,

Today, I will get back up, and tomorrow, too.

Over, and over again, I will take the hit,

Unwavering, solid, grounded, rooted

To the only thing I can really trust.

Myself.

Persimmon Tree

A Golden Shovel Inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks’ “The Rite of Cousin Vit”

My feet are frozen to the ground. No one helps me. Even 

The swallows abandon me in favor of taller, more fruitful trees now 

Laden with plump persimmons and rotting corpses. She 

Is beautiful, hanging from its bough with her neck at an angle, her toes just tickling the grass and—does 

She know, how I stand here, frozen in my tracks, staring at the 

Cold blue lips, once red and full, and big round hips, those dulcet snake-hips 

She used to tease me with. Oh, how she teased. You’d think I’d feel rage, instead I stand here with 

Indecision rooting me in place, and melancholy weighing me down, a 

Heavier weight than a man’s love—Theirs never compare to your kiss; all I have is the wind’s cold hiss.

Dread Persephone

I am the Dread Persephone,

Queen of the Underworld and Shepherd of Souls

Long gone and freshly sown.

I am the Dread Persephone,

Empress of the Dead and Guardian of the Damned

In the cold dark of Tartarus and the 

Sweet glow of Elysium.

I am the Dread Persephone,

Bringer of Chaos and Mother to

Rebirth and Ghosts,

Mystery and Madness,

Hunting and Nightmares.

I am the Dread Persephone,

Old beyond centuries, powerful beyond measures

Both mortal and immortal.

I am the Dread Persephone, 

Queen and Mother,

Wife and Daughter.

I am the Dread Persephone, 

And I am tired.

I dream of pomegranates and firm hands,

Great boughs and spring laughter

And, all the while, wonder where 

It is I do belong.

To whom it is I do belong.

I am the Dread, Persephone,

And above all, I dread

The lonely nights 

And quiet halls.

The living wights

And green-hedged walls.

Eva Nemirovsky received a bachelors in English Literature from the University of California, Davis, before moving on to a one semester mentorship program with mentor Gayle Brandeis at PocketMFA, and then a week at Tinker Mountain Writer's Workshop. They’ve published both poetry and flash fiction in The Ocotillo Review, and a short story, “Glitter and Gleam” in Pomona Valley Review’s 17th issue. They are a speculative fiction writer, focusing primarily on fairytale fantasy and magical realism. When they aren’t writing, they are rock climbing, drawing, or spending time with their cat, Apollo, in their home in Davis.

‘True Blue’, ‘Flip Side’, ‘Shadow Boxing’, ‘Twenty-one Questions for the Dog’ & ‘Dog Dreams’

Elizabeth Agre lives in the north woods of Minnesota alongside the bear, wolves, and bobcats where she writes, paints, and takes pictures.

True Blue

I woke up this morning

to find True Love in my kitchen

lounging with coffee

in the winter sun of my window.

“Have you seen the new snow?

It came in the night,” she said like a little girl.

True Love? I asked

like I found a lost treasure

I had all along.

After rubbed eyes

came acceptance—

there were things I needed to know

like on the Master List of needs, where do you show?

“After food and water,” she said flatly.

“In subservience to sustenance,

though there is no real list without me.”

She began to loot my Christmas gifts,

pop chocolates two at a time,

overwhelm me

with her lack of self control.

She said she knew me so well

and my fault list was long

(though on the 27th page

she admitted she liked my songs).

She was well adorned:

silver and gold moons and stars

embedded her clothes

and braceleted to the teeth

she reeked of every perfume and cologne

but her eyes scared me if I looked too long.

She said, “I’ve been considering a Nor’easter today

though I don’t know.”

I offered my best pillow then, a shawl

but she just had to go.

She left with my shadow,

ran over the dog in the driveway,

and the wind blew ice and snow

covering up the pine trees until

I never felt so alone.

Flip Side

My shadow sees shadows

like an artist looks at the world:

the ghost-double of flowers,

twin trees that cross streets

—in measured exchanges—

the way dogs notice dogs

and babies notice babies.

It’s a kind of once-over

she checks form and substance,

in the lean of all straight things.

Her world is

a slanted duplicity

down to the slightest:

pine needle, bug wing,

the shadow of an eyelash.

She says, 

Only I will never leave you,

has imagined herself prone

along white satin lining

or ashes, uncountable.

I try to believe her,

but high noon and naked

or midnight on a new moon,

I'm alone.

Shadow Boxing

I liked it better

when she only disliked me

pranked me with projections

of Grim Reaper or Hangman

—a lunging dagger in the moonlight—

she had a knack for startle.

There was a time she danced before me:

late afternoons in the streetlight, winter

a friend when I had none, joined at the soles.

Now she is sullen

a useless duplicity

I drag around.

I can't say when, exactly,

which time I sold out

but we sleep in the light

of a city through my window

and when I bolt-up straight, shaken

she lays still,

posed,

makes me look dead.

Twenty-one Questions for the Dog

I wonder who you’re chasing,

or who’s chasing you?
Running your doggie vagina away

from a lecherous lover,
or defending our teetering A-Frame

as you twitch and yip
on our don'tsitonthecouch.

Your legs jerk and mimic 

your daytime run
when the ducks in the pond 

tempt and torment
stepping slowly into the water
before they swim clear away.

Do you have one by its 

green-black neck

—do feathers fly—

do you swallow?

Do you dream of me
and if you do, am I kind?
Do I stroke your soft black ears, broad head?

Will I dream of you tonight,

disloyal as love, my best enemy?

And don’t I have my own dog dreams?

Dreams where my world is transposed

in a blink, a tremor—

as I plunge down vertical hills

in darkness, or cross narrow ledges in wind

or find myself in that water place

which threatens and beckons—

do my fingers and toes tremble? 

And whose name do I call?

The stars form legends above our quiet house:

swaying constellations of mythological proportions,
night notions rising to a three-quarter moon.

If the dog dreams of me, am I good enough?

Dog Dreams

I never wanted to be the Alpha dog.
I would have settled for the scraps
trickled down the Pavlovian chain
mostly gristle and bone.
I would have been happy to simply follow your yellow scent
sniff aromatic cavities in damp dark.

I'd expose my underbelly
soft and thin-skinned
like any true subservience
caught somewhere between the clenched teeth
of fear and love.

In the black woods then
you would lead the way
and I would sleep easy
while you kept one eye.

And in the cold of winter
you would find 

the meager rabbit
generous raccoon
the feeble deer.

But, King is not always decided by King
and Queen is born Queen without say.

I strive for Epsilon,
get pushed to the front of the Greek alphabet
an unwilling matriarch, 

aching to put my tail between my legs just once.

Penny Freeland is NYC transplant now living on the beach in Cape Hatteras. She has been writing poetry and songs before she could hold a pen and had to memorize the work. Penny holds a BA from Queens College and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poetry has been published in renowned journals including Rattle, Big City Lit, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Eclectica Magazine, Red Booth Review, Austin International Poets, and other esteemed publications, highlighting her dedication to the craft of writing.

‘when in the moors’, ‘pandora’, ‘saint francis de sales’, ‘hope & a cup of tea’ & ‘the stream of light’

H. M. Heffernan is a 26 year old writer from the Rust Belt city of Akron, Ohio. Heffernan moved to Durango, Colorado for college and took advantage of its access to the desert and the West. Here she cultivated her craft and developed her distinct voice, absorbed in ideas such as the myth of The American Dream, the idea of the West, the abandonment of the Midwest, Modernity, Absurdism, youth and age, the duality and beauty, tragedy, comedy of and in all things, and Vegas baby.

when in the moors 

was it our hair intertwined, entangled together into a sepulcher 

for tenderness that uprooted my understanding of what is solitary? 

was it your cheek pressed tightly against my womb 

that christened, purified the quintessence of what it is to care for myself? would the imparting of my soul into the roots of the chestnut tree 

make it so I may finally not be too little? would the imparting of my soul into the roots of your own blossom my longing to pass through life by your side into what is moral? what is true? what is good? 

I ask these questions to bestow my heart into your hands without having to look at you. 

I cry with the loneliness of a little girl lost while lamenting 

the beldam plea to simply be left alone. how could I ask you to care for me when this heart beats like the graying newborn bud of a rose? 

o wild bird. 

if you would not watch as my petals fragment at the reaching of your own, I pray you do not reach for them at all.

pandora 

she / the all-gifted / becomes in the palm of cruelty’s hand / mistaking him for tenderness / longing to kiss every morsel of goodness offered from his fingertips / daughter looks to father with the stalwart stone of unconditional love / of gluttony / father looks to daughter with the divine hunger of a poacher / a thief / the first fruit cannot be pardoned for it is foreordained to be devoured / she / the ill-fated / the fore-wilting flower / her longing to be everything for him met with shame / a kiss on her unclothed shoulder / a fist pulling at her hair / the ghost of her father’s croon / you must bear the knife to your throat that comes with trying to be good / you must welcome the curse of your roots of your wilt / you must take what I say you deserve / the ghost of her own croon / power as tall as the first fire rests within your hands / and hope as old as the first tree within mine / foretold father torrid and strong / how could they remember you when you offer them no death to emerge anew from? / forsaken daughter her hands stained with his want & his weakness & blood that tastes like the first fire / she carries this cross of dread for you & your father / she calls upon this deliverance of old / a swallow swallowing the sun / to scream hope into the gullets of her children / the soft wrist of a girl lost being held by the first the omnipresent the primordial girl lost / she waits to be donned with the crown of white lilies / to be called rotten and ruined and redeemed from doing it all over again / in her hand is the crown of white lilies / the deliverance of swallowing / the saccharine embrace of the molder the death the / death the sough within the death / to spoil / this is hope that festers in the arms of the daughter of the girl

saint francis de sales 

I am afraid you will let me kiss you only after you have passed away and all that I have left of you is in corner of my room 

I will hold your poor face and trace the scar 

above your right eyebrow because now 

love for you is made yielding my hair does not make tourniquets around your ribs and now I am the one eating I finally understand what you meant when you said to me the tenderness is made bearable for you only when the flesh is rotting so I will try again in another one of our lifetimes 

until you understand that I long for you as you are 

but I know pity has a holy place in love 

and you will always try to make yourself softer 

for me to hold

hope & a cup of tea 

the unknown here festers when / the sun leaves me for the evening / I cannot look at my reflection / there is no sunlight to turn my gray hair / so uneven / so ill-matched / with a face that has not aged with love / into the color of a spritely little rabbit / worthy of an eternal spring / I am heavy in the dark / I am a burden in the dark / I am a girl in the dark and I can feel god / pull at my sleeve to expose the supple healing skin / of my wrist to him / oh my heart I can hear you / crying your laments of a little bird / whose wound is made worse by / struggling in the jaws of fate / you are in the dark / I am in the dark / make haste my dear into / my hand where I will sing to you / where you will unfurl into my song / see the way the flower wilts when / hope becomes too heavy for its petals to bear / I think we are capable of saving each other / just let me hold you soft in my hand and / shield this wellspring from you when your goodness / needs a moment to be / and I watch you take a bite out / of my fear / and it bleeds like a living thing / a loving thing / it becomes a part of you that you keep safe / in your belly / and you say to me / even our fear can be made into light / when we are holding it together

the stream of light 

on this softest summer morning, 

I wrap myself in my shawl of lace that I washed in The Stream of Light the evening before. 

when the dawn sun holds me just right, 

I can feel the fish of The Stream rushing to and fro with a to-do list and the blades of grass bending closer closer closer to the torrent, 

longing to be dreamed away. 

I can hear the first stream that sung a lullaby 

to The Dying Lady as she rushed 

forward forward forward 

for love. I can see the mercy that is the durmast oak offering the drenched bee shelter from the hope she is not quite ready for. 

I can feel the ache of Orpheus as he looked 

back back back 

for love. I too love this softest summer morning far too much not to look back for her, making sure she is following me only to find her lost in The Stream of Light. 

she waits for me there.

Haley Nichole Green is a 22-year-old Appalachian-born poetess and aspiring farmgirl who currently resides in the rural Midwest. Alongside writing and reading poetry, she enjoys sewing and tending to farm animals. Instagram: @softproserpina