Deanne Richards

The glacial glow of mediocrity was the venom, full of fire that dulled his dream. A guitar of ice with chords of frozen popsicles stood in the corner. The reflection of his past was like a dog sniffing foot prints. His belly was a paunch, pie shaped, a chunk of cement.

The other one was a toxin produced by an organism of praise. He lapped it up to excess and spat it back to the audience. There was a collective rousing with cell phones waving in a crowd of disappointment. The cliff was now too high, and he longed for hungry guts.

He was flatlined in an aura of mail. His heart was full of zip codes. His apron was torn from parcels of forgiveness. The truck was full and on time, but he still longed for the celestial notes that raised him out of the bins of licked envelopes.

The other one became the collective whisper that roused the others out of their sleeplessness. The tinge of pungent chemicals siphoned through the air and swayed to the beat of the chosen one. He didn’t play the hand of an ordinariness so deadly. His vitals were yummy and his aura electric with a silhouette that roared.

He ate his dullness for breakfast and choked on regret the size of a pineapple. His dreams hovered above him like a balloon that he couldn’t reach. Prairie dogs visited him with hugs and kisses in a condo made of dirt. He drank coffee full of rusty nails and kicked tubs of stones that had no postage.

The other one had one-night stands and sons who jumped from a penumbra. He didn’t know where he was. His home was a myriad of hotels trashed by an attack of earthliness. His soul was a closet full of empty hangers. There was no one close by, just the echo chamber of the crowds cheering for more of the malignant puff of phantasm.

DEANNE RICHARDS is a digital artist and writer who resides in Santa Fe, NM.

Christopher Morgan

The villagers took hammers
to the black mountain.
Broke the granite
until it was barely alive.
Made an example
of its rocky skin, carried
home in suitcases.

Just after the air came alive
with hunger. Birds fell
in clumps, softly pattering
the ground. Deer shrieked,
terrified whistles. Vegetables
and fenced fruit rotted. Wells
soured. Cattle dropped
where they stood. Eyes sprouted
where clouds had been.
It was a bad night
for sunsets — that night
it almost didn’t happen.
The sky locked its gaze
upon the villagers
during the whole procession.
Atop the earth’s ridged spines,
the town began to rumble.
The suitcases poured forth stones.
And each stone sought out a man.

CHRISTOPHER MORGAN is the author of “Shadow Songs” (Sad Spell Press 2015) and the Co-Manager of Nostrovia! Press. He grew up in Detroit and the Bible Belt of Georgia, before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he received his M.A. in Creative Writing and American Lit. The Reviews Coordinator for Alien Mouth, he also edits for tNY Press and Arroyo Literary Review. He loves fables, hiking in the redwoods, and happy hour margaritas.

Matthew Chamberlin

The prisoner behind the door cries softly: I am free
and undulates upon the sands beside a distant sea.

I hasten up the attic stair and fumble at the lock
fall in upon the empty room where sits a quiet clock.

Long seconds pass incredulous — the pendulous design —
the innerworks of brass and spring encased in lustrous pine —

how came it here, whose shameful need to measure out the day
in dying rooms where darkened suns and seasons, shunned, decay?

Beetle-footed, apprehension chitters to me, rolling dung-balls
down the dim-lit halls, a tiny voice extolling

mutely, as I drift — its dark regard attends to farther lands
than I know of, wide ancient wastes of winds and endless sands —

but come to think, did she who came so long ago collect
these things, insisting they were gods — in madness I suspect.

those paroxysmic times aroused demented fantasies
but hers — hers pulsed somehow, her talk of singularities

within each clock. Insanity! Conceive of this: a boll
of seedling worms that swallow time at every hour’s toll!

The holy men who, pillar-braced, expounded on eternal grace
grew dark to hear of gods so near, and so infernal.

Crucifixions failed, though. Vast incurable flocks amassed,
a singing congeries swinging thurible clocks.

All as one they trill the worm-song! Convolving through the halls.
He comes, he comes, they hum, and crack their clocks against the walls.

We prisoned her within these rooms — long years I held the key —
through the floors her susurrations filtered down to me.

The songs she sang so soft and low and ever slowing — from
below my own rough singing rose to join her gentle sough —

And none must ever know! I turn, intent to disappear —
but cannot go, for something pulls my limbs and holds me here.

I shout aloud — but cannot hear — I fling me out the door —
and slam it shut — then look around — the clock stands on the floor.

and wakens, wheels softly ticking! Whereon I gape agog,
as coiled chain-weights shudder, leaping swiftly cog to cog

Visions birthed of meshing teeth commence, of marbled bones
that spill immense from ruined graves beneath a hill of stones.

I grip it up and peevish peer beyond the clouded glass
where through a tiny aperture the stony planets pass.

Vast surfaces wheel into view across the boundless cold
and tumble out of mind once more immeasurably old.

There ships as great as cities wait, aslump in hasty weft
of scaffolding, which crumbles slow into the ashy drift.

What am I witness to, what end? Could in a clock expire
as well as misbegotten hours whole galaxies entire?

Beauty throngs within me! Welling quickly from me spilling
comes my lonely ululation, swelling to a trilling —

I crouch and caper by the stair! Then pluck up wheel and spring
and leaping naked in the air I swallow every thing.

The clock’s cold entrails move through mine as joyfully I jape
then void upon the bloody steps an earthy clicking shape.

With time adrift as blue as babes abandoned on the floe
I belch a noxious gnomon breath to measure ebb and flow.

While this upon the floor, new thing, gives birth to swelling song,
I raise it high for all to see and gambol through the throng,

whose eyeless faces weep in joy as pendulous they sway
I dance above their humming heads and frolic in the fray.

In rhythm to my noisome dance She whistles from the dune
and calms the restless ice-wolves gathered underneath the moon.

MATTHEW CHAMBERLIN teaches at James Madison University in Virginia, where he also writes. He has work forthcoming in Strangelet, Apex and Star*line and a published poem in Mirror Dance.