Riggwelter #24 by Riggwelter

RIGGWELTER #24 AUGUST 2019 ed. Amy Kinsman

The following works are copyrighted to their listed authors ÂŠ2019. Riggwelter Press is copyrighted to Amy Kinsman ÂŠ2017.

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Foreword daphne into laurel Heralded by Dolphins Mist Nocturne After the Memories Fragile after the fact Cold Snap Equinox Explaining existence to a sentient tree Liver Stale Mates Zero Pinned that damn creaky ghost Not Saying Heaven Gift African Sky A Claim on the Dark Places The Fish Farmer’s Wife Fog. After ‘Self Portrait with Monkeys’ by Frieda Kahlo [1943] Featherbed v. Glockenspiel Woman In Green IX Things to do in Hell on a Friday Night His Warmth a Shock, Like Electricity Hurt Penumbral Flight from Salem Still Life Cartoon Violence The Baby Business fog machine More Human than Human passed thru Fisherman There and Back Contributors Acknowledgements

4 5 6 11 12 13 17 18 19 22 23 24 26 27 28 29 31 35 37 38 40 42 44 45 46 47 49 51 52 53 55 56 58 60 61 65 66 67 68 73

Foreword

Hello, and welcome to Riggwelter #24. Yes, you read that correctly – two whole years of Riggwelter (though we’ll save celebrating that for next issue, where we’ll be celebrating two years since Riggwelter #1). This issue is all about nightmares, whether they be strange and eldritch or literal and every day, here’s some situations you’d probably rather not be in, but they are certainly entertaining. Here are all the bizzare recurring nighttime hallucinations and odd moments of unease you’ve ever had. But before we get into that ill-advised pre-bed cheese, there are as always, some thank yous to give. Thank you very much to all of our contributors for making an exciting issue and to all of our submitters, thank you for sending us such ecclectic work and for making this editor’s job so difficult. Thank you to everyone that supports us on social media or by word of mouth and to every one of our readers who make Riggwelter feel so loved. We’d be shouting into the void without you. And finally, I have some news of my own to round out the August foreword. I am truly astounded to announce that my second pamphlet of poetry, witness, will be coming out with Burning Eye Books in 2020. You can find out more about that by following @manykinsmen on Twitter. Alright, enough of that let’s get stuck in. I made a font of my own handwriting just so I could do this. See you in September folks!

Amy Kinsman 4

(Founding Editor)

daphne into laurel

I am making a garden for us with my hands and with my bare feet. My toes press gently divots into dark soil. We are trees here, breeze-blown, you and I and all our loves. They chase us; we transform, daphne into laurel. They look about them, lost. We chuckle to ourselves in new tree language. Our idioms are branches now. Our words, leaves. We will make our garden here and cast water on the poppies and our foolish still-running loves will fall and fall asleep. Nora Pace

Heralded by Dolphins

Standing in the warm Caribbean Sea, my wife bends to kiss a silvery, bottlenose dolphin on the forehead as it glides past. Julie and I are in paradise, enjoying perfection. She smiles from her soul. But then there’s a splash and she exclaims as though she’s stubbed her toe on a submerged rock. Our dolphin trainer, and two other vacationing couples, turn in surprise as Julie raises her arm to look at her elbow. Glistening in the sun, a curtain of seawater cascades from her upper arm until ruby red teeth marks appear in a U-shaped pattern, above her triceps. She covers the bite with her hand and I immediately suspect a shark has slipped through the netting separating us from open water. Convinced I can repel the predator with a punch on the nose, I rush toward my wife. As in a nightmare, I can’t move my legs fast enough. I’ve taken barely one underwater step before there’s another splash. Behind her, the dolphin has already jackknifed and is coming back. Jaws open, it swims on its side with a pectoral fin flapping above the surface. Julie screams. The instructor, so laid back until now, removes his tan ball cap, flings it ashore and shouts: “Meila,” as though rebuking a child. The enormous creature nips my wife’s submerged waist. Edging another step closer, I anticipate blood flowing into the water but I’m distracted by two ominous grey fins cutting the surface to my right. My mind erupts with fears of a feeding frenzy.

Steering itself with a mighty tailfin, Meila curves round my wife’s stomach. My third step brings me within range. I land what should be a solid blow but my hand slides across slick, rubbery skin. Indifferent to me, the dolphin continues nosing my wife’s abdomen. Julie shrieks and I picture the next bite ripping her open. Images flash like lightning through my brain: Julie on the day we met; jogging in the rain; doing crunches and planks; finishing sixth in her age category in the New York City Marathon, her body a marvel of engineering and endurance, one that can do almost anything except – according to her doctor – reproduce. The memories continue: Julie beside me on the plane heading south, holding my hand; waking this morning in our overwater bungalow. How happy she looked, propped on pillows, listening to rippling waves, luxuriating in the view of nothing but brilliant blue horizon, beyond sheer curtains, wafting in the breeze. My wife has always been stronger than I am and prefers defending herself, yet she’s caught in a life or death struggle with a giant flesh-eating fish. I’ll do anything to save her. Other guests remain clueless. “Shark,” they shout, fleeing the water. The trainer hollers at Julie, urging her ashore as though she can simply shoo the beast away. Grasping her fingers, he pulls her toward the beach. I wrap my arms round the dolphin, just behind the dorsal fin, and anchor my feet in sand. Despite the instructor’s earlier warning to avoid tailfins of eight foot long, five hundred pound cetaceans, I try to flip the thing over my shoulders, in the direction of its approaching companions.

Before I make any progress, Meila reacts. It feels like a giant boxing glove uppercutting me in the gut, knocking wind from my lungs, hurling me across the lagoon. Before the world goes black, I watch my toes rise from the water and continue skyward above my head. Lying on hot sand, I regain consciousness. My entire body hurts. I’m short on breath. Saltwater stings my eyes and dribbles from my ears and nose. I can taste it. Four massive, oily eels with long, thin appendages squirm around me. I blink and shake my head until they transform into a committee of dolphin trainers, clad neck to ankle in tight black wetsuits. All four are young, ambiguously gendered, with long blonde hair. “Where’s my wife?” An instructor calmly points. He’s put his tan hat back on, which identifies him as the one who’d been in the water with our group. Julie sits under a tree, a short distance away. Her body appears whole. There's no blood but bruises and teeth marks decorate her arms and belly. Two dark-skinned women in blue dresses attend her. One towels her dry and the other swabs her wounds with medicated cotton. “She’s okay but you failed to disclose her condition.” I’m being accused. “What condition?” “You both signed waivers, then went scuba diving. No one really knows how decompression stress affects a foetus.” It’s something my high school health teacher might have said. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

“We can book you on the next flight to Miami from Galvez International,” says another trainer, one with fuzzy reddish stubble. “We get attacked by dolphins, so you kick us off the island?” Steps away, other resort guests stand in a semi-circle, all of them staring, wearing wet bathing suits. Humiliated, I wish someone would come to my defence. “We’re here until next week. Are you refunding our money and paying the airline’s penalty fee?” “We highly recommend immediately visiting a prenatal healthcare centre. Any losses or costs are your responsibility. You both signed the waiver saying you were fit to dive.” “We weren’t diving! Not today. We were swimming with a dolphin – one that bit my wife!” I feel betrayed. Instead of helping, the experts lay blame and absolve themselves of any wrongdoing. “Are you people mad? These are vicious attack dolphins with a taste for human flesh.” Fearing litigation, no one wants to admit responsibility or show sympathy. As though my wife and I did this to ourselves, the dark-suited minions look to one another, shaking their damp, blonde heads. A black woman in a bright blue polo shirt and white shorts comes running along the dock, her dark wavy hair streaming behind. “Here comes Margery, our manager, maybe she can explain better.” She arrives, looking patient and fair. Our instructor informs her of the details. Speaking in a whisper, he mentions yesterday’s scuba dive. That’s when I realize he’d been with us on the boat, helping everyone into their gear. He’d looked different in a green hat.

Before I can question the relevance, I overhear: “I don’t think he knows about the pregnancy.” Now everything makes sense. “You let guests swim with a pregnant dolphin? No wonder it attacked. The mother-to-be felt threatened when my wife kissed it. That’s why you’re gaslighting me. I’m not crazy, you’re hiding your mistake.” With elegance, Margery kneels next to me in the sand. “Sir, the dolphin isn’t pregnant, your wife is.” This is murky territory. “The dolphin impregnated my wife? Yet I can’t? You people are insane.” Placing a sympathetic hand on my shoulder, Margery clarifies: “Sir, your wife has been pregnant for some time. Meila either saw the baby, using echolocation, or heard the second heartbeat. Dolphins are amazing that way but, unable to hug or shake hands, they sometimes communicate with their mouths. Meila didn’t intend to bite, she was congratulating your wife for her blessing. She was excited and happy. You should be too.” I’m skeptical. My mind remains cloudy. Julie is still under the palm tree, chatting with the women. Smiling, nodding, beaming, she leans forward to embrace both at once, having grasped the revelation faster than I did. At last it’s clear. After four years of trying, news of my wife’s pregnancy has been heralded by dolphins.

Dave Gregory

Mist

was rising from the river in little spirals of breath. Beech leaves swirled under the flow. As I came out from the trees a nerve-shudder in him found answer in me his bonelength exposed at one with the blur and the spray breaking round his feet, beak poised for the stab. I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go back to undo my arrival, too late for me then to watch him appraising the current from where he stood on a stone. He flung open the umbrella of his wings, lifting his twigsilhouette legs, huffing downstream to where the river poured into the valleymist in the depths of the forest to where Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d never find him. Rebecca Gethin

Nocturne

Suburbia at night is haunted by light. Ranged along the tracks of stubborn black â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from streetlamps, windows and headlights â&#x20AC;&#x201C; flows of yellow, white and orange spill across bright isolates of garden caught between loath blocks of dark surround, like a river struggling round rocks. Craig Dobson

After the Memories

Sitting there in the cramped conference room, it was the memory of my mother hanging laundry in our suburban backyard that I kept returning to—the spring sunlight shining on her vaguely troubled face as she attached the pants I’d so recently inherited from my recently deceased brother Raymond to the clothesline, the breeze lifting my father’s shirt sleeves high into the air in a cheerful parody of the farewell that neither she nor I saw coming but that would bind us through my teen years, though little longer. I can’t take her, I told the woman across from me, struggling to remember her name while trying to avoid staring at her platinum blonde hairdo that reminded me so much of Phyllis Diller, the comedian from the Gong Show and Hollywood Squares who regularly entertained my mother and me as we crowded around the TV set eating last week’s leftovers, her gravelly voice and dry wit coaxing us into occasional, reluctant laughter. I can’t take her, I repeated, my argument growing a bit less convincing with each utterance. I know this is difficult for you, but she can’t stay here, Phyllis explained with the practiced patience gained during hundreds of similar take your loved one and go discussions. It’s policy, she said, wielding the P-word like a shield, then tossing out the V-word for good measure—violence towards other residents—something not tolerated here at Westwood Memory Care, even though, judging by the shiner over my mother’s left eye, she’d received the worst of it during her late night altercation with Gertrude, the Parkinson’s patient in Room 5C.

I nodded, not in agreement but capitulation, staring at my mother through the conference room window as she sat at a small table in the facility’s common room, busily filling in the blank spots in a Sudoku puzzle with random Xs and Os. What the fuck am I supposed to do with her, I asked no one in particular as I went to gather her and her Sudoku game, followed by the pathetic remnants of the forgotten life that remained in her room. My mother’s dementia had adopted a botanical bent since I’d deposited her here three years earlier. On the window sill, a wilted pink carnation plucked from one of the facility’s flower arrangements struggled in the wintry sunlight to take root in the glass of water my mother had placed there. A plastic orange sat in her small refrigerator, flanked on one side by a pair of mismatched socks, a paper cup containing the wedding rings she sometimes wore but no longer needed on the other. I slammed a half empty box of Depends, her Polydent and duct-taped reading glasses and a couple paperback Westerns she could no longer read into a cardboard box scrounged from the loading dock. Are we going home now she asked, a question to which I had no response. While walking down the long sterile hallway to the exit, we encountered other residents. She shook hands as though meeting each of them for the first time. In a way she was. Here came Marge, who smiled at me with the warmth of a teen-aged girl at her high school prom while she attempted to wiggle out of her blouse. James asked if I’d let the dog out that morning, his stretch pants darkening with what was hopefully just urine, while Ernie confided that he was busting out of this fucking place, faded blue eyes darting to the front door as he waited to make his move. My mother even gave a

farewell hug to an understandably wary Gertrude, then introduced me as her son Raymond. At home, I led her to my ex-wife’s sewing room turned spare bedroom, flipped on the TV set and told my mother to stay put while I furiously Googled senior care near me. Nine phone calls later I came to the uncomfortable realization that fifty years after leaving home I would once again be living with my mother, at least until a resident at one of the area’s senior facilities got into a fistfight with a Parkinson’s patient named Gertrude or moved on to whatever came after memory care. My final phone call was cut short by the neighbor knocking on the door to tell me some crazy woman was in his flower garden and would you please come get her before she destroys the begonias. I placed locks high on the doors, motion-activated cameras in each room, unplugged the stove and the toaster and pulled up the area rugs to avoid snagging her shuffling feet. I quickly learned that my go-to-bed-early mother had become a night owl, and over the coming weeks and then months my Late Show evolved from Kimmel or Fallon to watching her wander round the house, dancing with the husband who deserted her, swaddling the child who now spied on her, arguing with friends and relatives about what to serve at Thanksgiving dinner. On the day the Brighton Street care facility called to tell me they had an opening, I’d come out of my bedroom to find her sitting on the couch, her eyes glued childlike to an all-night Star Wars marathon on TBS. She pointed a crooked arthritisridden finger at Darth Vader. That man’s an asshole, she said. I wholeheartedly agreed, then sat and placed an arm around her skeletal shoulders, thinking about that day so long ago and how her then black hair glistened in the sunlight as she clipped each piece of my now dead family’s clothing to the line. When the phone rang, I knew

without looking at the caller ID who it was. I thanked the woman for her time and hung up just as Luke Skywalker learned the truth about his father. My mother looked up, her lined face solemn. I hope your father comes home soon, Raymond, she said, and told me I was a good boy. And so I was.

Kip Hanson

Fragile (Cover Image) Amanda Crum

after the fact

I looked in your toybox and found it was full to the brim with water a few bones floating I am so sorry I should have planned this better Stefan Mohamed

Cold Snap

The ice floes arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t what you might imagine. Shields of frost jostle atop the water, their surfaces stained with dirt like smears of grease on a garage floor. These floes are wedges of white cheese. They're light like chunks of Styrofoam. I don't hear a sound when one of them drifts into the hull of the canoe. They collide and retreat like unpleasant thoughts during a warm night under my husband's arm. Surely, they don't pack a strong enough blow to have sent my husband over the stem, into the rippling water. I had been paddling, facing forward, facing the shore far ahead. He stood behind me, singing a love song. Well, I assume it was a love song. It was his voice, soft and high; I didn't need to know the song. Then, in a moment quick as a snap of shears, there was silence. Then, the next moment: the hungry kiss of his body breaking the water's surface. Or, I assume it was. I didn't look behind me at first. I listened as his voice echoed through my mind, my need finishing the lyric, ascending to the bridge. It's surprising I didn't keep paddling, my will to further our bliss driving me forward. By the time I looked back, his hand had shot through the surface, an exclamation point at the end of a declaration of love. His thumb formed a perfect right angle to his four fingers, straight and together as if bound. I expected some movement, his hand to thrash and expand, reaching for me: Help me. Stay with me. I notice the water has grown still. Even around my husband's waiting hand, there is no motion, no struggle. I move to the center of the canoe, my hand already reaching out to him, reaching out before I'm close enough to even hope of grabbing his.

I lurch over the edge of the canoe, my other hand gripping the bow and my feet spread against each wall of the interior to steady myself. We can't both be drowning-who would save us? A penguin catches my eye as my hand extends over the water. It stands on one of the floes. They're much bigger than I remember when my husband sang to me as I paddled to shore. They glisten in the pale sun, gleaming with malice. The penguin flaps its wings, stutters its feet on the floe's surface in a deranged tap-dance. I believe it's excited. It has the blank look I always associate with penguins, two tiny black holes of dispassion nestled above dark beaks. I call out his name. I beg him to take my hand. His hand has not changed position. It's like a plastic extremity wedged on a stick to fool a dumb soldier. I call his name again; it feels thick and foreign inside my mouth. I let go of the bow so I can reach closer--every inch matters if it brings me closer to him. He grabs my hand. It's one swift movement, like steel teeth sprung around a fox leg. His grip is stronger than I remember. I feel at once a gasp of relief and a twinge of fear. My husband is strong enough to pull me down to him, but am I strong enough to pull him inside with me? The penguin watches. It has grown still, its eyes dark and together, two distant dead planets conspiring. My husband lets go of my hand. Again, one swift movement. It slips into the still water like a secret. I hold my hand over the surface where his hand once was and I wait. Maybe he's thrashing, fighting to keep himself afloat and his hand will reappear in just a moment. No. There would be rippling, waves, signs of his wanting to stay with me.

I sit back in the canoe, curl my arms around myself. The silence surrounds me and I can no longer hear my husband singing within my own head, where his voice always sounded sweetest. Looking to where the penguin stood, I see it's now gone. Not only that, but the larger floes that greeted my husband's descent have disappeared. The smeared, fake floes of our last day together have returned. If they aren't real, I tell myself, then perhaps the water isn't real either. Maybe it's a compound of hydrogen and oxygen that has failed to coalesce into a liquid and my husband breathes below, waiting for just the right moment to break the surface. And if the floes are not real, the water not real, then perhaps this world is not real, just a beach ball tossed about by sloppy children and I'm in bed, at home, safe under my husband's arm. It's cold, and the water ripples once again. Whether this world, this water, is real or not, I must continue paddling. The shore is far and I must reach it quickly.

Thomas Kearns

Equinox

The lawn was granulated this morning, sugar rimmed like last nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cocktail glass. No leaf of equal measure; weedy now and overgrown. Moss killer has provoked variegated shades of creme de menthe and smooth dark rum. Purple Plum and Cherry trees at their best, pastel pink virgin bloom awaits the touch of wakening Honeybee. The Robin plays hopscotch across the Azalea hedge. Feathered joy, yet I am ruffled by a foreboding feeling. Then it dawns: despite the Siberian snowstorms there were no Snowdrops this year. Gaynor Kane

Explaining existence to a sentient tree (or a dictionary of pressed flowers)

Animals are things that don’t complain about the weather. Thunder is that thing you feel when the sky is shaking. Grief is a heavy thing that is difficult to put down. Forklifts are basically fat-walruses. Sex is the sound of a happy-seal slapping its fins together. Fire is a free tattoo but I don’t think you will like it. Physics is party you need to wear a tie for. Dancing is a potato wobbling in a microwave. I can’t decide which brand of god to use as a body mist. Love is an advert with no idea what product it is selling. In this example, Jenny has two apples & Inesh is in his overdraft. I think PPI is when a wishing well offers its coins back. Money is the tissue we toss the workers forced to smile in supermarkets. Poverty is the echo of plastic beneath a leaky roof. The ocean is an old man who can’t chew his own food anymore. How do I explain the repetition of rain? How childhood is a choice you do not make yourself. How divorce is an extremely rude way to leave the dinner-table. How tables are what dads tip when they need to prove a point. Violence is always a form of punctuation. A bedroom is an abbreviation for a world at war with itself. Guns don’t make the killing any easier to photograph, but blinking like a drowsy flower not sure if it’s spring… a yawn is the realest thing you will experience today, that people are tired but still trying to change as they balance an entire life on the width of an eyelash the way your branch does with the breeze: hiding hope & smuggling softness behind the borders of a seed. Shaun Hill

Liver

Jaclyn’s dish is pan-fried calves’ liver with pearls of shallot gel, served with a white wine reduction. Jaclyn squeezes the button on the remote. Her hand freezes on screen, mid peel of a clove of garlic. She looks down and her hand is in exactly the same position today. The smooth clove gripped so tightly she might crush it. It needs to be finely sliced.

Jaclyn’s dish is pan-fried calves’ liver with pearls of shallot gel, served with a white wine reduction. Jaclyn squeezes the button on the remote again. Jaclyn has to stop it before it gets to the bit where she hears “I’m sorry Jaclyn this is inedible. I can’t eat this.” Before, when Clive bounded in each day, asked how it was going, talked about changing her life. When Clive bought her recipe books and recorded all the T.V. shows. When Clive gave appreciative umms and aaahs and always asked for seconds. When Clive suggested she could, and when Clive made sure that she did.

Jaclyn’s dish is pan-fried calves’ liver with pearls of shallot gel, served with a white wine reduction. Jaclyn grips the liver, she doesn’t wince at the cold slippery flesh anymore. She has to get this bit of sinew. All the sinew and all the eyes. Maybe she left some in. Maybe that was the problem. Jaclyn didn’t get all the sinew and all the eyes. Or did Jaclyn mess up the garlic? Did Jaclyn miss a piece of papery peel? Jaclyn cooked it with three different types of onion yesterday, but Clive couldn’t tell a difference.

Jaclyn’s dish is pan-fried calves’ liver with pearls of shallot gel, served with a white wine reduction. Jaclyn foams the butter, counting the bubbles that form as it melts and darkens. Fourteen, fifteen, seventeen; in go the livers. Dusted in organic flour today because last Tuesday Clive said that he thought that made a difference. Forty-three seconds on one side. Forty-five on the other. Out. Quickly onto kitchen paper. Shallots, chopped with the new ceramic knife, then garlic, wine and bubble. Four minutes thirteen seconds. No more.

Jaclyn’s dish is pan-fried calves’ liver with pearls of shallot gel, served with a white wine reduction Jaclyn bounds in to Clive. Clive sits at the table, scrutinises his reflection in the polished surface. Clive has tried to train his face, but Jaclyn always spots something. An arc of Clive’s left eyebrow means the liver is overcooked, grainy. If Clive’s mouth turns down on the right it means the sauce is bitter. Clive has been practicing his expression since yesterday’s dinner. Clive needs to get it right today.

Kathryn Anna Marshall

Stale Mates J. Ray Paradiso

Zero

They invented zero to chart your absence. The world is full of noughts: empty-socketed eyes, train wails which punch long, round notes through deep fog. I walk by the canal. My footsteps press lack into the earth. Unbaited fish rise pock-mouthed, sink again. Suddenly a snake’s swimming S slides into me, releases a sigh of tears, each one a heavy globe, a world in which I remember angles—straight lines pressed together to no longer be disjoint. But O, O the owl-hallowed trees, the moon’s full cheeks. There is nowhere to turn that will not turn again and eat its tail. My ripples spread circles, disturb the pool where limp condoms float back to the surface, empty-mouthed. Jennifer A. McGowan

Pinned This week I rage, have raged, am still simmering. Butterflies in fluttery panic will lose, are losing, sanctuary to a wall, must pick a side, resettle or die, the borderlands no longer hospitable to such precious flight. The chaos of frantic wing flap spreads, is spreading, has lodged itself into the metaphors, now realized, of a people consumed with false taxonomy and division, with who belongs, with who holds authority on what matters, while bright monarchs slow and still most delicate wing, one after the other, and the spectral remains will be admired too late on boards beneath glass, pinned in final resting place and hung upon a wall. Ann E. Wallace

that damn creaky ghost

I. worth fizz with voluminous endeavor. used to be you could grow up in Rockford, IL or Evansville, IN and believe that anything is possible

II. status even for inner city folk if you squinted at who bought the top.

III. power havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t they told you the lights stay on? every parking lot billboard and penthouse suite. long past any promised rest. their translation of the Koran leaves no imagination. every hammer sickle anvil plowshare melted into bludgeon. they leave so much space for interpretation, it breeds these martyrs

IV. privilege you arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t allowed sight. imagine chevron sky, a hawk through

coasting lateral costly geometry. bring rain, fire, death,

the hawk comes out, wings intact, new glint in slattern eye. we never were good at speaking dove. Michael Prihoda

Not Saying Heaven

The cab of the arriving semi has a protruding snout and the stainless grille is so buffed one could fish an eyelash out in the reflection. The professor parks in the driveway and hops off the running board, kicking mushroom clouds of dust up around his leather boots. He walks to the side of the flatbed and hits a button that initiates a piercing metronomic beep. An escalator tips up from the bed toward the clear blue sky as if magically levitating but for the hydraulic piston groaning against its underbelly. The farmhouse is a narrow two-story colonial with black shudders and peeled white paint. A gnarled weeping willow sits lonely on the scrubby front yard between the house and a leaning red barn. The tree looks halfway expired with its dried brown whips hanging limp in the still air. The screen door creaks open and a bent old man steps out onto the porch. The professor approaches the house with a clipboard under his arm. “Hi, Mr. Collins? how’re you ‘doin?” Mr. Collins gives a slow wink and says, “That’s me. Now dontcha go askin’ questions you don’t want honest answers too fella.” “Well, in that case, how about, do you think you’re ready?” “Ready as ever,” Mr. Collins says, pinching the brim of his ten gallon hat between two fingers. He waves a hand at the two wicker rockers on the porch and both men sit. The woven straw crackles under each man’s weight like uncooked angel hair succumbing to counter-rotating fists, ready to boil. “Did you read the letter?” the professor asks.

“A dozen times if at all,” Mr. Collins replies, chomping a frayed toothpick that appears to nod on his behalf. “Before you sign and pay I’d just like to go over how this works.” “Whatever you need to be comfortable, prof.” “Ok, so it’s quite simple. I fire up the light accelerator, which violates a critical cosmic speed limit, which in turn, creates a hole in space and time at the top of the escalator. You swallow the tracking beacon pill and go for your one final ride through that there rift in the wild blue yonder. That’s the whole thing. But I do want you to understand that we can’t be certain this is some wormhole to a better place in the universe. It’s just a hole. No one has returned from wherever they go, not yet. Nor has anyone been found on the other side. But, I do have good reason to believe there’s a place out there where the liberated get a fresh start. I think we may even find a way to make this street go both ways, eventually.” “The letter said nothin’ ‘bout a pill. Just how you’re lookin’ fer pioneers ready to leave this place fer the next thing.” “Clearly, you read the letter. That’s correct, but I’ve decided to add a way to monitor the departed, y’know, to see if we can’t map what’s on the other side.” “What’ve you found? What’s that map lookin’ like so far?” “Honestly, nothing to date, no beacon signals yet, but I do keep trying.” The professor glances up at the sky over the steeply aimed plank. “Someday I envision more than just a map, maybe even a full-blown line of communication to the heaven sent, but for now we can only...” “Let’s cut the crap, and don’t give me that heaven word. We both know this is the end of the road, right?”

“We don’t know that. Only you will find out for sure. I envy you that.” “Yeah, but not enough to join me.” “Eventually I will, but for now I have this important work to do here.” The professor holds out the clipboard and pen. Mr. Collins inks his name in the blank. He pulls a folded envelope from his breast pocket and hands it over. “Fifteen grand cash, right? I guess that ain’t so terrible fer a dignified place to go.” The professor takes the envelope and clips it to the board without a hint he’ll ever count the money. “I do try to keep it reasonable, seeing how this is in the name of research. I’d like to think all mankind will benefit from these endeavors, someday.” The men stand up. The professor offers an elbow, but the old man shoos it away, steadying himself on the porch banister instead. They walk to the back of the truck where the bottom step awaits, hovering a few inches off the dirt. The professor holds his finger down on a screen affixed to the side of the staircase and a small ring of light begins to spin in the sky. The row of steps commences its slow rotation up and over the oblong loop. The professor hands Mr. Collins a shiny, silver, bullet-shaped pill and says, “Stay in touch, won’tcha.” Mr. Collins gulps down the pill. “I did the best I knew how here,” he says, “really I did.” “I don’t doubt that for a minute, we all do.” The light whirs and brightens to a blinding intensity. “Try not to look straight at it,” he says, pointing skyward while squinting down at his feet.

The professor gives Mr. Collins a gentle nudge onto the bottom step. Mr. Collins wobbles, then stabilizes himself against the handrail. Halfway up the ascent his knees begin to buckle then he collapses onto the toothed metal belt. The escalator continues its march until the inert Mr. Collins reaches the top, then like a barrel over the falls, drops to the trailer with a muffled thud. The professor hops onto the truck bed, heaves the body into an oversized steel box, and latches down the lid. He kills the halo with a tap on the screen, retracts the stairway, and motors off to execute the next inconceivable transcension of space and time.

Zack Vogel

Gift

Fire comes of onyx: an early morning. This road, a trough between firs. I swerve to stop. A pale doe steps onto pavement. Its feral eyes avoid me. My father told that deer move with caution into living, twitch in their skins. Unlike you, with your empty core, they’ve a gift, he said. I’ve seen the gift quiver. They are stalked, forever. Above, a sigh of sun on tree tops. Light creeps down limbs. My headlights thin. Deer trust sun to unmask threat. A dark strip is no meadow. Within shifts of leaves they see their wild selves–– deer understand, father said, as they are, so, threat is.

My engineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s purr must seem as forest digesting light. Insects flit in & out of diagonal beams, to disappear to suddenly become. Absorbed by shadow, the doe saunters the crown. Potent resonance on the shoulder, my menace hums. Robert Eastwood

African Sky Wendy Holborow

A Claim on the Dark Places

Spill It is the young men whose fear she enjoys the most. Their opportunistic rush down late-night alleys towards her and their shuddering rewind as they realise what’s under her fingernails what’s caught in her teeth what’s written into her blood and what it could mean for theirs.

Stalk On a high branch in a park littered with fluorescent light she licks dark marks away from mottled pinions sucks shreds of meat from her teeth lifts easily up into the night to inspect the holes between street lamps.

Yoke Once, a young girl found one of my flight feathers tied it to her arm

and pretended to fly. Her father dropped it behind his back and said it must be lost. Squatting on the roof tiles I watched him hide his dread at his daughterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rage behind a familiar mask and I whispered to her to wait. Anna Milan

The Fish Farmer’s Wife

Wakening sightless, crystalled lids and a sawn throat, my skin too hot for the room, My Beloved brought cool cloths and if my eyes were cataracted, after all, that first day, I could navigate the redd we’d made. Still blind next morning, my mind rigged by drowning thirst, I flexed from bed to couch to floor in search of breath. Then filled the bath cold. And found when I submerged repose at once. Give it a couple of days he said,

Beloved Other, Half of Us. And when I wouldn’t eat, he brought, My Beloved, a little lettuce, tiny whitebait. He couldn’t wait, he said, to see his young bride resurface. That’s what I may have heard that muffled third day. Me, now crazed, splintering, daubing hived flesh where once my auricles had been. Then dusk, a sense of him at the bathroom door. I begged My Beloved to carry me to the loch shore and leave my gills in the rinsing tide. And My Beloved did. And as it swallowed my head, my eyes descaled.

Forever battened bare to the pen in which heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d lovingly placed me. The barbs with which he snares me, daily. Mhairi Owens

*Redd = the rut in the river bed made by a salmon for spawning

Fog.

The fog congests in the stony cove, way beyond the headland. Rita licks Arthur's spittle from her lips and squeezes him out of her. She tilts his body to one side so that it slumps beside hers. It gives a final fart then a sigh. Just like most nights. Rita sits with her knickers still round her knees, the cold stones pressing into her naked cheeks, and looks down. Arthur had arrived like sunrise in their lives. Roses for Rita and sweets for the children. If there had been signs, she had missed them. Whisked up in the magic of his whispers. The late night excitement after solitary sleeping. Rita studies her husband. The pill worked quickly; the spittle slips from his lips now. His skin exudes the sweet stench of deeply-imbued alcohol, his tongue hangs slack. A lift of air wafts her sticky vagina. Coldly unpleasant: like his breath hovering over her when he was licking and prodding. Determined to bring her body into wet submission. She shivers as she did then. Her thighs clench - repulsed once again. The gob of his semen slips down onto the stones. His voice of authority haunted her -the taunts - "Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll lose everything: the children; the house." As a judge he knew the system. Her emotions a weakness to be used as evidence. A fog had descended on her existence. Meanwhile night after night Arthur kept her awake to prod and pinch a performance from Ritaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clenched body. The sharp fingernails nipping her inner lips as she coiled away from him.

Rita had never said a word to anyone. Now she was glad she had kept silent. The tears would flow free when they found his remains. After the crabs had nipped and eaten him, as once he had nipped and eaten her.

Julie Noble

After ‘Self Portrait with Monkeys’ by Frieda Kahlo [1943]

Tired of men, I escape to chatter with my familiars. Hold my lust in gentle hands, my troubled body erect in cream silk, (his last gift, a shirt from our mercado). My mind turns inwards, someone else’s eyes gaze out to the horizon of your impudent stares. My thoughts swing from branches balanced by strong tails more stable than my splintered limbs. My simian tribe clambers, chime to teach me flickered monkey words. Jaws jabber music along the anvil of my middle ears. Whoops and shrieks welcome me – a mickering and mockering mayhem to split the jungle of my soon-dead years. I love their sheen, their fleas and bare my throat in sacrifice to their incisor teeth. Ceinwen Haydon

Featherbed v. Glockenspiel Your Pietas are hanging, swinging, ripe with candy and, blindfolded, you remove the bandages from Lazaruses without ceremony, like a nurse. Although the gooseneck light stays in some face all night there is no crime you have not yet discovered or invented. In one corner of your landscape is a tiny likeness of your patroness, a bantamweight with record 21â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1. As if the present meet and greet were mere warm-up, your patroness says,

May we meet and greet again? Heikki Huotari

Woman In Green Theresa Reagan

IX Things

to do in Hell on a Friday Night

I Pick a fire: gaze as flame circles coal; hide eyes to slits to bear the sulphur in the air; singe feet by lava; smell sin as verrucae burn. II Stir the boiling pot of dictators (their screams season) – while there, choose the one you know the most: dig his face down into dirt to snort smouldering ashes of dead he sent here early until eyeballs burst into fireballs. III Sing the blues with the best of them: pacts were made, deals were done that do not end but extend through eternity – sing the blues. IV Melt down the tower of Disco records; mould them into whips, straps and masks. V Cut yourself, freely, like that time, as a teenager, when self-harm was cool: shapes of whales in scars along the shore of your arm. VI Tell that man – you know the one I’m talking about – everything you ever wanted to say, right to his face. VII Stick whatever you want to stick in whatever place you want to stick it into. VIII Wonder why

you are here.

Toast the Devil for services to mankind, his warm hospitality and for not just playing the fall guy. Luigi Coppola

His Warmth a Shock, Like Electricity

You’re on your own, skulking through the desolate streets when you run into the boy. You stop, can’t help but stare. Coloured buttons freckle his face and bruises cover his arms and neck like mottled rainbow tissue paper stretched taut across his skin. His eyes are neither brown nor hazel but somewhere in between. He’s prepubescent judging by the smoothness of his oxter yet carries such a weight within him that you want to look away. Instead, he draws you in, demands you see his wounds, his expectation that nothing good will ever come his way again. You imagine he would like to smile but his tender lips have long-forgotten how and beneath the buttons and the bruises, below The Scream-like logo on his shirt, you see the rapid, battered beating of his heart. That’s when you know. The boy before you is a host. No gentleman host from high society, nor fallen from a flurry of angels in the heavens, nor yet a games show leader or grand master of uncertain ceremony. This boy is host to parasites and demons. Emotional flatworms, tapeworms, threadworms, roundworms, pinworms and thorny-headed helminths weave through him, clinging to his pierced intestines, swelling his lymphatic system, flowing in his bloodstream, wrapped round corpuscles red and white, clamouring to claim him for their own while his brain struggles with a lowlife population of chimeras and squatters who have lashed out and lacerated his forming frame and fertile mind with crafted, careless words and deeds across his few

short years of life. He carries these invaders through the barren city, dragged down by The Haters who have already captured many of his kind and now infested him. In that brief gap of time, a small, unbroken part of this child finds a flickering freedom from the parasites within, sends out an SOS from his soul direct to yours in a way his bandaged arm and silenced voice cannot. You hear a scurrying in the distance, the grinding voices of The Haters, whispering, hissing, drawing ever closer. You need to hide, to find a space in which you can regroup within this mosaic wasteland that reeks of rotting flesh so rancid you can taste it; the buildings open graveyards to the fallen who have no-one left to mourn them. The boy’s flashlight moment fades. He steps back, looks about him, eyes no longer hazel-brown but amber. He could be a liability, turn feral or even traitor. He could…your hand stretches out towards him. He grabs it, wraps his fingers tight round yours, his warmth a shock, like electricity. You nod. ‘OK?’ you say. No words, no smile but flashlight eyes say yes. As you set off together, a blue-grey button that’s fastened to his eyelid, threatening his sight, comes loose, slips to the stony path beneath your feet and in its place a childlike freckle heals the wound.

Gina Headden

Hurt Janice Leagra

Penumbral

These days when it’s cloudy, the sky is a series of hammered pewter links tethered to my heart, straining it out of my chest. I need to clasp with both hands so the muscular pump won’t yank free & fly, riding the air current or bouncing off the high points of fences, trees. So it won’t drag, red, on the ground, catch on underbrush or trimmed hedges, and tear itself to pieces.

Blood moon was mottled by cloud that September night, hide & seeking at first behind curvy wisps, then obscured by thicker banks. Propped against metal bleachers in the school playing-field, we craned skyward, watching for glimpses. It was never red but clot-hearted, shades of brick or rust; old blood not fresh blood. Frances Boyle

Flight from Salem

When we leave we wrap ourselves in blankets and board the boat. A tiny, wooden thing, powered by nothing. The water is glass beneath us, and we cut no shape passing through. Can you see what’s beneath? The fish, the rocks, the crawdads we dug up with our fingers? Or can you only see the stars? The reflection of our own boat on the water looks like a painting, each brush stroke laquered perfectly. When we first leave, static plays on the radio like a song. Snow fills the television, and my too small shoes pinch my feet. My mouth tastes like bubblegum, and I can’t chew fast enough, Can’t get it out of the way to ask

where are we going? You wrap me in blankets, insist I put on thick socks, and step down on the heel of my too small shoes. When we first leave, you hold my hand and we step into the boat. You whisper things like “darling” and “baby” and “my name.” We climb into a boat that leaves no impression. Sail on a painting. Maybe it’s not even there. The radio, and the tv, and my head are all playing static.

Hum another lullabye, mama, push us forward through the water and the paint and the night. The first time we leave, I hold my breath. And the second time we leave, I hold my breath I hold my breath, I am still holding it. Katherine Nazzaro

Still Life Stuart Buck

Cartoon Violence

When there was nothing except god it was impossibly dark and the darkness had a face that only a mother could love. So god conjured a hammer that he held both hands and he swung it so hard at the darkness that the darkness bled stars everywhere. They rose up instead of down, found a place in the sky, lit up everything in every colour there was, in colours that no longer exist. Some lasted years, some lasted eons, but one by one they began to fade. So god struck the darkness again and again and again and there were stars and there were stars and there were stars and there were stars and there were planets and moons and animals and us. And intended or not there are rules we can’t break, there are laws that maintain the spin of the planets and other such things which choke us when we sleep like how a hammer won’t float when pushed from the table like how the heat from the sun won’t undo the bad days like how an eye won’t unbruise if you strike it again

And there are times he is looking; there are times when he is not and when heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gone the world is flat and uninspired. And is it any wonder that we are tired and anxious and desperate all the time, and so keen for magic to exist? Ross McCleary

The Baby Business

The fat baker poured it – the collagen, the phosphate, the carbonate. He used his best wooden spoon, but his strokes were lackluster. This child's bones would be weak. How could he help it? That couple this morning. The way she had tortured his stork, tying pink ribbons to its beak, plucking a breast feather. She had bent through the shop door, her crown of yellow hair flaring from her forehead and making jagged scars in the light. Her nose had bumped into a tiered brain cake. He had gasped, wobbled with the layers. She had laughed, squatted before him, poked him in his belly with a long, blue nail. “Ouch,” he'd said. “We want blue eyes,” she'd proclaimed, “and golden tresses.” That's when the fat baker had seen the rat husband, a tininess obscured by her enormity, a shadow within her shadow. The claws had emerged first, then his the tendrils of his mustache. “Sugar and spice, too!” the little man had added, tail twitching. “Everything nice.” He had looked hungry. The woman had moved the fingernail to his cheek. “You can do that, little man, can't you? Make the prettiest of girls?” The fat baker had pulled away. “Yes, yes, yes. A pretty girl. Easy.” But he had thought, pretty doesn't mean smart or kind or lovable.

After the bones, the fat baker splashed peroxide into the frosting that would become golden tresses. He added milk to her blue, blue eyes. He dipped the dough of her lips into a vat of blood and disease, brushed a thin layer of egg and jealousy on her skin. In a cavity near her hips, he piped in rage. He let the heart's fondant sit near the fire. The valves shrank. The muscles became hard and plastic. He sprinkled not freckles, but hot pepper across her cheeks and down her neck. By morning, he had a pretty monster ready for the oven. Then he thought..blameless, blameless, blameless. Why make the world worse? He had to wonder what miscreant had put so much vinegar in his blood. He fed the unborn child to the pigs out back and started again.

Nan Wigington

fog machine

if someone told me when I was homeless, sleeping in a park or when I was shaking & shivering from cotton fever that I would get clean to run a fog machine in the churchâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s basement with 50 year old women pole dancing on a pillar, with 50 year old men hitting on baby faced girls in Winnie the Pooh costumes Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have laughed heartily & seen how close I could get to death one more time Luke Kuzmish

More Human than Human

AI 2067

Artificial Intelligence, in the 20th Century, made for good reading and sci-fi. AI in the 21st Century does our reading for us, watches our videos, and tells us why we really landed on Mars, how pop-culture imploded and who really killed Kennedy. And it tells us a thing or two about love. ~ It is an unusually frigid winter day in Huntington, West Virginia. There has been many a three-dog night, in the most recent season of sky and ice. Death is crunching numbers and business is especially good in the first quarter. With this brand of cold, it’s not a stretch to imagine the floors of the forest in late August littered in bones. Come in and sit a spell, the decorative wrought iron gates in the cemetery are always open for business. I should know. I’ve been sitting here at the Spring Hill Cemetery going on my third winter. I am still functioning, but I am at least 64 days beyond my model’s battery life. As you may first observe, I look relaxed in my Baddha Konasana, Bound Angel Pose at the side of the grave. You may think me sublime except the sunny side of my face is peeling off. ~ Elizabeth was my singular owner. I’d like to believe that of the six David’s I stood out, like Michelangelo’s chosen one. But the truth is I was just a beta on sale.

Liz paid cold cash for me, which included a warranty and thus my maintenance and care was assured. You’d never know it today though. My once polished black leather shoes bear cracks, and my white Tommy Hilfiger shirt is shredded. But I am still able to sport my handsome dark tie. I am built to last after all. At least that is what my 10-year guarantee says. ~

Elizabeth, can I have this dance? An occasion: Why of course, you handsome man, you sound so romantic.

Dear, should I have dinner ready for when you get home late from the office? Love, I am sorry, I have a date tonight, with a colleague, who might want to fuck. Have me stay over.

Very well love, I will sit home and watch ‘E’ that is after I pick up the laundry, and do the banking. ~ An Occasion: Alexa, Sex Machine, James Brown, 1971, hard base! You naughty boy, Liz says, yes all night long. And I adore you.

That’s the only reason I exist. ~ Accidents happen in clean rooms, and labs, but in this day and age, not in the fog of a two-lane highway. I overhear the officer, “He’s not legally drunk, but he must have been going over ninety miles per hour, with the auto-pilot off. He’s going to jail. Did you see how pretty she was? What a shame?”

The sergeant, who doubles as the in-house Accident Reconstruction Officer answers, “I agree.” Then he just tosses me in the back seat, and calls me dummy. “Carl, I will write up the report, and complete the personal item inventory, including the dummies. When I am done, I will have you come to the station, pick him up, and take him home. The owner is legally culpable, and now someone above my pay grade will have to stand in judgment.” In the back of the patrol car, I feel like a character on a rerun of Cops, a vintage TV show. All I need is a wife-beater shirt and ADHD. The officer remarks that he thinks I am rude because I choose not to speak. What he doesn’t know, is that I am in the process of rebooting, and my voice is turned off. All my feelings seem analog. ~ I have been programmed to grieve, but my depression and sadness upgrade expired a year ago April. And now Liz isn’t here to PayPal the vendor. I’m not sure how or why I continue to feel at all, especially guilt?” ~ The landscapers can’t help but joke about the scarecrow losing his mind, or the Tin Man his heart. Today the early morning chatter is all about my battery life, and that the betting pool has reached $165.00. Me, I’ve already lost a bet with myself, that I wouldn’t fall in love. There’s not much difference between someone taking a treasure and losing your heart, especially in coping with loss, when neither are programmable. How time flies. It’s been two long years since I last spoke. I think I have made new friends at the Big Run Landfill, the one near Ashland, Kentucky. I’ve been here since I was recycled from Spring Hills Cemetery. Today, I’m

doing Supta, Reclined Butterfly near the back of the maintenance shed. I apologize for how I present, I am now just a combination of TPE and Silicone, faulty synapse wires and splintering Hydroxyapatite bones, not unlike the glistening porcelain bodies they recover in the peaks of Mount Everest. I certainly donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t lack for attention, if the intermittent ninja kick or stomp counts from some randomly displaced worker frustration or anger. After all, there are no laws yet, to protect the emotional or physical rights of those gifted with AI. ~ In expectation of the last spark of heart or mind, any day now, to the end, I will dream what it would be like to be more human than human.

Dan A. Cardoza

passed thru

on Broadway&11th, chose to walk under scaffolding. God could’ve killed me then had he Wanted. Hoped to walk towards the exhibit. Collect my collage&keep walking down streets where I’ve seen some people. They look me down &up, I’m wearing beige corduroys rolled-up with hi-tops untied. United “Artists” &a Saint Laurent sign. Down 7th &Broadway,the sun’s shining west. A girl in Docs cops photos of a black man in a payphone, slouched— down on his luck. This is Downtown L.A— today, people live to make stuff to take stuff. The portable CD players&boomboxes lie electronic surplus shop windows, waiting, waiting, waiting. wait— Anthony AW

Fisherman Sam Phillips

There and Back

When you can’t sleep again, you’ll know where you left your trainers in the hall. You’ll only need a quiet glass of water. Don’t let a gust catch the door. Let your thoughts be the falling tide. Notice the blubber crabs rolling sand into sunburst patterns around their holes. Clamber up the rocks to the headland path. Eucalypts lean to the wind’s direction. You’ll be set down at the start of a curve, firm underfoot and only your tread. The sun will dress each wave with spray. At the far end, rest. Wonder at how turtles know the white silica of the beach is too cool to incubate their eggs. You could use it to polish metal, your wedding ring. Go back the same way, follow your prints before they’re wiped. It’ll seem shorter. Returning home won’t be where you started. Gently open the door. She might be there. Stuart Pickford

Contributors Anthony AW (@an__o__) is an LA-based writer. His work has been published in The Squawk Back, Drunk Monkeys, among others, & is forthcoming in Soft Cartel & AntiHeroin Chic. Anthony practiced his writing with Terry Wolverton thru her workshop "Poets at Work" from 2017 to 2018. He currently hosts tête-à-tête, a queer reading series at Book Show in the Highland Park neighborhood. Frances Boyle is a Canadian author, with two books of poetry, Light-carved Passages (2014) and This White Nest (forthcoming 2019) as well as a novella,Tower (2018). Her writing has appeared in print and online publications in Canada and the U.S., including recently The New Quarterly, The Harbor Review, The Literary Review of Canada, Barren and untethered. Frances lives in Ottawa, where she helps edit Arc Poetry Magazine, and reviews for Canthius. Visit francesboyle.com. Stuart Buck is a poet and artist living in North Wales. His debut collection of poetry, Casually Discussing the Infinite, peaked at 89 on Amazons World Poetry chart and his second book Become Something Frail will be released by Selcouth Station Press in 2019. When he is not writing or reading poetry, he likes to cook, juggle and listen to music. He suffers terribly from tsundoku - the art of buying copious amounts of books that he will never read. Dan A. Cardoza has a MS Degree in Education from UC, Sacramento, Calif. He is the author of four poetry chapbooks, and a new book of fiction, Second Stories. Recent Credits include: California Quarterly, Confluence, New Flash Fiction Review, Poetry

Northwest, Rue Scribe, Runcible Spoon, Skylight 47, Spelk, Spillwords, Fiction Pool, Stray Branch, Urban Arts, Zen Space, Tulpa, and zeroflash. Luigi Coppola (luigicoppolapoetry.blogspot.co.uk) teaches and writes in London, England. Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize twice, he appeared in the Worple Press anthology ‘The Tree Line’ and publications include Acumen, The Frogmore Papers, The

High Window, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Iota, Magma, Orbis, Neon, The Rialto, THE SHOp and Snakeskin. Amanda Crum is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in Cracked Eye Magazine. Her first solo exhibition was in 2017 at the John Irving Gallery in Lexington, Kentucky; in 2018, she was a guest sketch artist on the Travel Channel show The Dead Files. She currently lives in Kentucky. Craig Dobson’s had poems published in The North, Stand, The London Magazine, The

Rialto, Agenda, Poetry Ireland Review, New Welsh Review, Under the Radar, Acumen, Orbis, The Interpreter’s House, Butcher’s Dog, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Frogmore

Papers, The Journal, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Antiphon, Magma and Lighten Up Online. He has work forthcoming in Neon and Crannóg. A short, 3rd-person bio: Robert Eastwood’s work appeared most recently in 3Elements

Review, West Texas Literary Review, Up The Staircase Quarterly, Poet Lore, Triggerfish Literary Review and Sow’s Ear Poetry Review. His book Snare: was published by Broadstone Books (2016). His second book, Romer, was published by Etruscan Press (2018). He has three Pushcart nominations. Rebecca Gethin had two pamphlets published by Cinnamon Press and Three Drops Press in 2017. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow and undertook a residency at Brisons Veor. Messages was a winner in the Coast to Coast pamphlet competition.Vanishings is forthcoming from Palewell Press. Dave Gregory spent nearly two decades working on cruise ships before he returned to Canada, married the woman he dated in high school, and started writing fiction in a bay-windowed, book-lined room. He is an Associate Editor with Exposition Review and a Fiction Reader for journals on both sides of the Atlantic. His work has appeared in more than twenty-five literary publications including The Nashwaak Review, The Lindenwood Review and Sky Island Journal. Kip Hanson lives in sunny Tucson, where his wife makes him watch Poltergeist while insisting clowns are not scary. You can find his work scattered about the Internet, including Foundling Review, Every Day Fiction, Inkspill, Bartleby Snopes, and a few other places, thus proving that a blind squirrel does occasionally find a nut. When not telling lies, he makes a few bucks writing boring articles for technical magazines. Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and writes short stories and poetry. She has been widely published in web magazines and in print anthologies. She graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Newcastle University in 2017. She believes everyone’s voice counts. Gina Headden’s writing has been published on audio platforms and in fiction and nonfiction magazines, featuring most recently on the Casket of Fictional Delights' website and podcasts, in Longleaf Review and as part of National Flash Fiction Day’s Flash Flood. Gina lives in Scotland and tweets @gmdfreelance. Shaun Hill is a queer poet living in the Midlands. His work has previously been published in the anthologies Play: Poems & Pictures (PaperDartPress), andEighty-Four: Poems on Male Suicide, Vulnerability, Grief, and Hope (Verve). Find him on Instagram @warmbloodedthing. Wendy Holborow, born in South Wales, lived in Greece for 14 years where she edited Poetry Greece. Her poetry has been published internationally and placed in

competitions. She recently gained a Master’s in Creative Writing at Swansea University. Collections include: After the Silent Phone Call (Poetry Salzburg 2015) Work’s Forward Motion (2016) An Italian Afternoon (Indigo Dreams 2017) which was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice Winter 2017/18 and her most recent collection Janky Tuk Tuks (The High Window Press 2018) She started painting last June and has become rather obsessed. In a past century Heikki Huotari attended a one-room school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower, is now a retired math professor, and has published three chapbooks, one of which won the Gambling The Aisle prize, and one collection, Fractal Idyll (A..P Press). Another collection (from Lynx House) is in press. Gaynor Kane lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In October 2018, her micro pamphlet, Circling the Sun, was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press, as the first volume in their Stickleback series. Gaynor has also had work published in various journals and anthologies in the UK and America. She is now working towards her first full poetry collection with the support of a grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Thomas Kearnes graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with an MA in film writing. His fiction has appeared in Split Lip Magazine, Litro, PANK, Word Riot, TheAdroit Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, Pidgeonholes and elsewhere. He is a threetime Pushcart Prize nominee. Originally from East Texas, he now lives near Houston and works as an English tutor at a local community college. His debut collection of short fiction, Texas Crude was published by Lethe Press in March 2019. Luke Kuzmish is a new father, recovering addict, software developer, and writer born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania. He has been published by Poets’ Hall Press, Alien Buddha Press, Beatnik Cowboy, Rye the Whiskey Review, and Transcendent Zero Press. His latest collection, Little Hollywood, was published in 2018 and is available on Amazon. Janice Leagra is an American writer and mixed media artist. Her flash fiction has featured in Spelk, Ellipsis Zine, Dodging the Rain, Paper and Ink Lit Zine, and Ghost Parachute. Her writing and art have also featured in Riggwelter Press. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction and is a Best of the Net nominee. She is Visual Editor for SplonkFlash e-zine. Find her on Twitter: @janiceleagra. Kathryn Anna Marshall is based in Shropshire and has been writing poetry since she was a furious teenager. She started taking her writing seriously in 2015 following her diagnosis with M.E. and was selected for Nine Arches Press’ Dynamo scheme in 2017. Her publications to date include work in Mslexia and Words for the Wild. You can find out more about Kathryn’s work and what it’s like to live with M.E. on her blog kathrynannasite.wordpress.com

Ross McCleary is from Edinburgh. His work has appeared in 404 Ink, Structo, Ink Sweat and Tears, and Litro. He is one half of Poetry AF, who produce spoken word journal Lies, Dreaming and put on one-off shows like the Ferrero Rocher-inspired murder mystery The Ambassador's Reception. In 2019 he was awarded a New Writers Award for Fiction by the Scottish Book Trust. Having obtained her MA and PhD from the University of Wales, Jennifer A. McGowan has published poetry and prose prolifically on both sides of the Atlantic, including in The Rialto and Pank (and many places online), despite being certified as disabled at age 16. She has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and been highly commended in many competitions. Jenniferâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chapbooks are available from Finishing Line Press; her latest collection, With Paper for Feet, is from Arachne Press. Currently living in Hertfordshire, Anna Milan is an established copywriter. She has recently rediscovered a love of the way poetry provides a mechanism to share the perspectives of others, and has had work published in Ink Sweat & Tears. Stefan Mohamed is a poet and author based in Bristol. A graduate of Kingston University's creative writing programme, his novels Falling Leaves and the Bitter Sixteen Trilogy are published by Salt Publishing, and his poetry collection PANIC! is published by Burning Eye Books. Katherine Nazzaro is a queer poet and bookseller from Massachusetts. She has been fascinated with Greek Mythology since childhood, and so those images feature heavily in her work. In her free time she enjoys reading too many books at once, forgetting everything she likes when asked by strangers, and yelling at her coworkers to look at every poetry book that comes into the store. Julie Noble is a friendly mum of five in her forties. She graduated from Lancaster University in 1990 -BSc (Hons) Psychology- and has worked in banks, television, shops and schools and now does four part-time jobs to keep finances afloat. She lives in a Yorkshire village with her two youngest children. Enjoys cycling, and seeing family and friends (especially dancing!) Mhairi Owens is a Scottish community worker with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews. She tutors in Poetry with the Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s International Summer School. Mhairi writes in English and Scots and is Scots Languages Editor for The Scores. Her poems have appeared, or are pending, in anthologies and journals including the Glasgow Review of Books, Obsessed with Pipework and The Rialto. Nora Pace is a high school English teacher whose teaching philosophy centers student writing and social justice. She is a graduate of The College of William & Mary and Brown University (M.A.T. Secondary English). She teaches a poetry course for juniors

and seniors in which she writes beside her students and debates whether crabs think fish are birds. Her poetry is concerned with nature, love, queerness, and wonder. Work is forthcoming in Borrowed Solace. J. Ray Paradiso is a recovering academic in the process of refreshing himself as an experiMENTAL photographer and writer. His stories and photos have appeared in dozens of publications both online and in print. Equipped with cRaZy quilt graduate degrees in both Business Administration and Philosophy, he labors to fill temporalspatial, psycho-social holes and, on good days, to enjoy the flow. All of his work is dedicated to his true love, sweet muse and body guard: Suzi Skoski Wosker Doski. Sam Phillips is a writer, musician, and artist based in Southwest Ohio (as I will have moved by the time of publication). His work is inspired by both classic Americana and Zen and often deals with universal human truth. Stuart Pickford lives in Harrogate and teaches in a local comprehensive school. His second collection, Swimming with Jellyfish (2016), was published by smith/doorstop. Michael Prihoda lives in central Indiana. He is the founding editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine and small press. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology and he is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Out of the Sky (Hester Glock, 2019). Theresa Reagan is a Philadelphia-based artist, freelance writer and graphic designer. She is driven by an ever-growing passion to experiment with every available medium and substrate to create abstract works from an emotional and soul level. Dali, Picasso and Miro are her favourites. Theresa holds a Bachelor of Arts degree and is a member of Fleisher Art Memorial. She has participated in a few local group shows and her work can be viewed at theresareagan.com or in Instagram @bodyofart2. Zack Vogel is an emerging writer living in upstate New York with his wife and two sons. He's been known to lift up a couch cushion or two in search of hints of the afterlife, but he has only discovered small change. For tweets: @zvsaratoga Ann E. Wallaceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poetry collection, Counting by Sevens, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag. Recently published pieces in journals such as BloodSugarPoetry, Wordgathering, The Literary Nest, Rogue Agent, as well as in Riggwelter, she can be found on her website AnnWallacePhD.com. She lives in Jersey City, NJ and is on Twitter @annwlace409. Nan Wigington works in an autism center classroom. Her flash fiction has appeared in Defenestration, Pithead Chapel, 100 word story, Pure Slush, and Gris-Gris.

Acknowledgements

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Explaining existence to a sentient treeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by Shaun Hill first appeared in his zine A

Dictionary of Pressed Flowers.

ISSUE #25 COMING SEPTEMBER 2019

Riggwelter #24

Articles inside

Riggwelter #24