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Spirit of the Bidet, Lise Colas
“A large bulbous thing sprouts out from it and then another protuberance like a nose. I kneel down on the floor and gaze in awe at the embryonic form taking shape. I soon have to make room, as a perfect stranger is attempting to extricate his long legs from the plughole. He is now perched on the side of the bidet. He wears a tweed jacket and a smart yellow waistcoat and check trousers. He dusts himself down with a handkerchief.”
Two poems: I Saw You There Dickinson (#1027) & Success, Mike Good
“and so it seemed you did Stop for Death – / Filling your Cart with Grass-Fed Meat –”; “It comes down to possession. I thought this watching Sidney Crosby score on a breakaway. It was a beautiful thing to see.”
Lady Zubaida’s Maid, Michael Díaz Feito
“Abduh argued that we also breathe with the djinn, because they are real and they are just bad microbes. Now I wonder if Maram believed that, if a potent mix of banal fact and horrifying magic compelled her to commit the crime. We never spoke about belief.”
Lessons in Lepidoptery, Melina Papadopoulos
“We always return to the moon. / It waits howl-spangled, record-scratched / across all the best night ballads”
Two poems: Not What We Expected & Termination at the Crime Scene, David Spicer
“I’ll reveal this: when she and I felt / like gluttons and punished ourselves, / we ate and drank in The Purgatory Café,“; “Climbing out of the drooping earth, / we organized a search party, / found the corpse under the moonlit maple”
Visitation, Tony Clavelli
“There’s a noodle shop tucked behind two equally run-down dry cleaners in a narrow alleyway that dead-ends and which is always full of puddles even when it hasn’t rained. Fiona eats lunch here every Thursday.”