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The Night Bus to Chicago

by DS Maolalai

 

​​a wife and a mortgage

on a two bedroom house.

you'd think I'd be uncomfortable. once

I was a pilgrim, but I don't think

that was better. I remember

rooms: London and Toronto.

beds and desks, lying down

on Saturdays. the walls

a teastain yellow. the bedsheets

stained. flies on the walls

like blood spatter. I could lie back

on my freedom. now a dog

needs to be regularly walked

and we owe money.

and we'll pay it. my mother

visits regularly.

once I didn't see her

for two years including Christmas.

over the roof teenagers

shoot off illegal fireworks

make up for the lack

of any stars in DCC.

I remember waking up

on the night bus to Chicago – the sky

like a log on fire – dark as ash

with sparks beneath it

lighting up and moving.

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DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated thirteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016), "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)

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A Woman and Her Reflection

by John Grey

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One stands

on a bridge’s railing,

launches herself like a dove.

 

The other flutters

in the water below,

grows larger by the moment.

 

Then eyes closed,

faces collide,

 

and one splashes.

one ripples,

 

as they pass through

one another.

 

Separate beings

but it’s all the same despair.

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​John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Hawaii Pacific Review, Amazing Stories and River and South.

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Three Dogs​

by Jonathan Fletcher

 

Like Cerberus split,

you approach as I head towards my Lexus,

key fob in hand, no treats in my pocket.

If I run, you will chase.

If I turn back, you will follow.

If I stop, you’ll lose interest.

I bend down and kneel. You come close and sit.

Collarless, eyes sunken,

rib cages visible, fur dark with stains.

Forget Dante’s Inferno. Forget the hound of hell.

You look like you’ve been there.

Though I reach out to pet each of your heads,

stroke each of your coats,

you back away, tuck your tails, show three sets of teeth.

As though to remind me

of what I’ve forgotten, you growl low as one:

Help first your fellow creatures.

Help first your fellow creatures.

Help first your fellow creatures.

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​Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts.  His work has been featured in numerous literary journals and magazines, and he has won or placed in various literary contests.  A Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, for which he will have his debut chapbook, This is My Body, published in 2025.  Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.

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The Heartland and the Desert

​by Leah Mueller

​

it’s not winning

or losing

just wedged

in the center

 

or the bottom

of nowhere at all

I am where

I’ve landed

 

body sprawled

in all directions

 

like a torn sack

spilling objects

that can’t ever

be retrieved

 

I fumble

with thumbs

brain arthritic

 

spine curled inward

for protection

 

roll into a marble

go far away

from this place

with its steeples

golf courses

and franchise stores

 

Tulsa you’re

too pious for me

a shroud covers

your features

like a funnel web

 

better to live

amongst scorpions

 

the desert cuts me

if I get too close

 

but you are

always too close

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​Leah Mueller is a Tulsa-based poet and prose writer. Her work is published in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Does It Have Pockets, Outlook Springs, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has received several nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. One of her short stories appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions.  Her fourteenth book, "Stealing Buddha" was published by Anxiety Press in 2024. Website: http://www.leahmueller.org.

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We Will Definitely Find Him

by Huina Zheng

 

As long as we don’t give up, we’ll see him again, Ma’s words echo with a defiance against the odds, in China where every year, over 200,000 children vanish, yet she clings to hope, believing we’re part of the fortunate 0.1% who reunite with their lost, and this unwavering belief anchors her to the breakfast stall she’s run for a decade, at the very place my brother disappeared, even after Ba’s tragic accident, while crisscrossing the nation on his motorcycle to search for their lost son, with blood from his crushed body under a truck mingling with the mud, his grip remains firm—like he was holding onto a kite string, steadfast in the belief that our “swallow kite,” though swept away by harsh winds, will return if we just keep holding on—this string, shimmering palely under the moon, stretches and twists, binding Ma and me in its relentless grip, digging into our skin, and our blood, trickling out, stains the string crimson, merging with Ba’s, until a water vortex forms, swirling with our hopes and fears, spinning relentlessly until, someday, it leads us back to my brother.

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Huina Zheng, a Distinction M.A. in English Studies holder, works as a college essay coach. Her stories have been published in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and others. Her work has received nominations three times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She resides in Guangzhou, China with her family.

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The Universal Postmortem

by William Doreski

​

The universal postmortem

recently performed by a team

of doctors with fake credentials

 

explains the voices in the trees

and the sighs that ripple oceans.

But it doesn’t account for the deep

 

groans of bedrock or the tilt

of everyone’s favorite skyscrapers.

It didn’t uncover the organs

 

people swap every night in sleep

or the mycelium that links us

to each other and to the fungus

 

to which everything human aspires.

Those fake doctors reported that bones

have fossilized in stainless steel,

 

that brains have toughed into fists.

They claim that for centuries

we’ve misperceived stars and planets,

 

which are merely embers cast aloft

from bonfires of our favorite books.

This autopsy doesn’t convince,

 

and the coroner’s jury refuses

to endorse its results. We stand

shivering in the cold Sunday glare

 

and agree that nothing has died

that can’t be replaced by a species

wiser and riper than ours.​​

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William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Cloud Mountain (2024). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.

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Old Homestead

​by Diane Webster​

 

Like the lid of a sarcophagus

eroded into daylight

the old homestead collapses

into planks lying on grass –

never seen from a distance.

 

In the foreground orange

poppies bloom again

as when a sparrow first

dropped a seed

invisible in grass till grown

beside blank-eyed window

still admiring the view.

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​Diane Webster's work has appeared in Old Red Kimono, North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023 and 2024. One of Diane's poems was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022. Another poem was nominated for a 2025 Pushcart. Diane retired in 2022 after 40 years in the newspaper industry. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com

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Which Came First, Jesus or the Dinosaurs

by Beth Sherman

 

Which Came First, Jesus or the Dinosaurs

my son asks as we watch flames lick the books, pages curling, turning to ash, The Bluest Eye, Two Boys Kissing, Lolita, 1984, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Hunger Games, all those science tomes on evolution, Captain Underpants – my son shrieks when he notices it, for a second I think he might cry – and I regret bringing him to the parking lot behind the abandoned K-Mart, my foolish insistence that he see intolerance stamped on the faces of our friends and neighbors, a normal night soured by the blaze, fueled by people who brought their own kindling, who want the best for us, really, they claim, and the monster must be fed, I think, but why should we bear witness to the crackling as each book blackens and withers away, the moon a pale frowning eye, the pines quivering on the other side of the heat smeared breeze, the books an offering to something unnamed and terrible, and I remember when they burned women once, out of anger and hubris, the same primordial fear, and my son is tugging my sleeve, repeating which came first, like facts will save us, because he’s learning about Jesus in school and his teacher said there’s no such thing as a T-Rex, never was, and I had to tell him teachers make mistakes, too, so now as I gaze up at the bluish-white stars above our quiet town that used to be safe, I whisper the dinosaurs, they lived 200 million years ago, they walked on their tiptoes, they ruled the earth, they’d never be able to survive here today. 

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​Beth Sherman’s writing has been published in more than 100 literary magazines, including Flash Frog, Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024 and she’s the winner of the Smokelong Quarterly 2024 Workshop prize. A multiple Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net nominee, she can be reached on X, Bluesky or Instagram @bsherm36.

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A Blessing

by Colette Tennant

​

May words come like boisterous friends –

you, surprised, trying to figure out all of their quirky smiles.

 

May lines come like mountain streams you enter barefoot,

shocked at first but then slowly comfortable with all the movement and shine.

 

May poems come like late summer butterflies,

their colors bold, their wings sturdy in the almost autumn wind.

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​Colette Tennant has three books of poetry: Commotion of Wings, Eden and After, and Sweet Gothic. Her book, Religion in The Handmaid’s Tale: a Brief Guide, was published in 2019 to coincide with Atwood’s publication of The Testaments. Her poems have won various awards and have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes along with being published in various journals, including Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, and Poetry Ireland Review. Colette is an English and Humanities Professor who has also taught art in Great Britain, Germany, and Italy.

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Deadly

by Gale Acuff

 

Before you know it I'll be dead and I

might live to be 100, I'm 10 now,

but what's ninety years to God or fate or

doom compared to Eternity and you

can't even measure that, it's no number

at all and maybe not even a time

period so now I've got to figure

out what to do for nine more decades, I

sometimes wish I could just fall asleep, then

wake up at my time to die or maybe

 

even after would be better but then

I might wake up dead and realize that

I don't know how I got there, exactly,

which might really make the Afterlife end

-less and after Sunday School today I

told my teacher all about it, I mean

how dying's never really far away

- when she asked Well, Gale, if you know so much

perhaps you can tell me when my time will

come, I said I think I'm hearing voices.

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​Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in fourteen countries and has authored three books of poetry. Gale has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.

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