Megan Mealor

Mary Jane rang an Irish refrain,
drunk on Ten Bells whiskey.
Her unpolluted apron ablaze,
she surrendered a scarlet shawl
and her weary wildgrass heart
to the rogue incubus cloaked
in the serrated fog, haunting
every step of squalid streets,
preying on its darkest shadows.

She placed the native beauty berries
upon her wooden churchyard grave,
marked with the Unfortunate’s brand
she seared upon her own scars
when she abandoned everywhere
that could tie her to anyone.

In the end, there was nothing
she would not do
for a fire.

MEGAN MEALOR resides in Jacksonville, Florida, and works full-time as a mother, writer, and pet-sitter. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in Digital Americana, 4 and 20, Midnight Circus, The Rathalla Review, Obsessed With Pipework, Hello Horror, Dark Moon Digest, Belle Reve, Skidrow Penthouse, Broad!, Deep South, Black Heart Magazine, The Belleville Park Pages, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Rat’s Ass Review, Better Than Starbucks, The Front Porch Review, and, most recently, a ten-poem feature in Sick Lit Magazine. Her writing style is patchwork potpourri infused with venom, volcanoes, and raw clarity.

Mark Bonica

You were just out for a walk
you tell Virgil when you run into him on the path —
just taking the dog for a stroll in the woods —
you’re pretty sure you know the way forward
or back.
the path may not be straightforward,
but you’re confident you haven’t lost it.

Virgil gestures to a gaping hole,
a gash filled with darkness
where the leaves and rocks
have been pushed aside,
a hole that was not there
the last time you walked this way.
The hole is big enough to drive
your minivan down into it,
and maybe even do a three point turn.

His gaze says,
one must go down in order to ascend,
and the two of you stand looking into the black
while your dog pulls at his leash.

You consider the lions and panthers of your life.
You realize Virgil is here by invitation.
What have you lost? you ponder.
Is today the day to make the descent?

MARK BONICA was a soldier once, and young, but neither of these anymore. These days he teaches management at the University of New Hampshire where he enjoys helping launch young people on their own grand adventures. His poetry and fiction have appeared in the Loch Raven Review, Words Dance, Oak Bend Review, Vagabondage, and others.

Marie Marshall

Strife always comes too soon, to hell with
single spies! The catlike tread in Whitechapel,
the single shoeprint in mud, the sky of Norfolk,
the helter and skelter to outrace a team of Slovaks,
the inch-by-inch through flock wallpapers fingertip
to thumb in measurement becomes (in a mind)
the navigation of deltas; so carefully trace in
beautiful serifs, italic, on the bald label thus:
C A T H E R I N E   E A R N S H A W,

and kiss the petals. Sepals, the cupping hand,
the necessary, a map of theosophism, a magnificent
ice garnered from the profits of Thornton’s of Milton,
carried in a sweethearts bosom to Sevastopol,
rumoured in opiate dreams thus: ’m cmng fr y,
my lst lve, my dmnd, my chng trsr, brth fr m.
O lobes of the calyx, o stamen, o evening pink,
o Thorne, style and stem, morning pink, shades
of skyleap from Nell Trent’s cheek to blood

[Cuff, porlocked by the arrival of a telegram,
“Assistance needed urgent at Rue Morgue,”
packs nothing but a slim valise and leaps to
his old calling!] all the time making Thesauri
of redness to populate his diary prose; he laughs
at his conceit and at the sour syntax of his dreams,
wonders who’s concealed behind the firescreen
ready in ambuscade; and yes, he finds to be torn
between home/rose and the great detection game.

There are no blind allées, no cryptogrammed
plaint on “Juwes”, just broad Haussmann blvrds
and little back-rue cafés where dwarved painters
pick out night belles and dancers to immortalise —
and though Cuff may unveil, or pluck from a
sweetheart’s bosom, the name of the murderer,
(shake hands with Dupin), a Svengali or a simian,
he reflects on the ol’ delta journey, the long century,
my rose, my Catherine. On. His. Moustached. Lip.
 

MARIE MARSHALL is an Anglo-Scot in late middle age. She has a humdrum 9-5, and she writes to keep what’s left of her sanity. She has had three novels published (one more pending) and two collections of poetry, one of which was nominated for the 2014 T.S. Eliot Prize.