I keep my head down, hand around the glass of orange juice, 
watching the condensation sink into my fingers.
I hear your mother moving, the sounds quick and hesitant at once, 
frying pan in the sink half scrubbed as she says, water in her voice,
hurry now, we can’t be late, a pleading that makes me look up, 
the red around her throat in the shape of your father’s fingers flaming out.
hand wet, I pass my palm once, twice, over my jeans and you’re gone, backpack hitched,
door slamming and it is me and your mother.
I can’t remember ever being alone with her.
it’s okay, she says, the lie big and wide. nothing you need to tell.
she waits. I wait. my chin nods, hers follows as the distance between us slips.
after school, when I go home to parents who kiss each other’s foreheads, 
embarrassingly hold hands and never make secrets, 
I’ll nod my chin yes when they ask, is everything okay? 
and someday, maybe before, maybe after I become your mother’s age, 
I will feel the wear of guilt sink into my fingers.
it tastes like oranges.


Author Bio:
Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art. She resides in Graham, NC with her cats, Charlie Chaplin and Janis Joplin.

Not there but there so mighty,
We gaze into nothing but yet everything,
The invisible that becomes the incarnate,
The powerless but yet the powerful,
The obscure but yet the obvious,
The calm but yet the riled,
The passive but yet the aggressive,
The feeble but yet the mighty air,
As you rise through the ranks,
From the lowest to the highest authority.

You run through the pipes
And turn yourself into sweet music.
You let in the fragrance of a rose
And emit it into the stillness of the moment.
You launch the planes into the skies
And bring the travelers to their destination.
You bring life to the lifeless
And determine the destiny of man.
You have the powers of a God. 

But yet you lie still with the glassy lakes,
And your stillness breathes deception.
Your heart pumps fire through your veins
As you call to the wilds for the wind.
You sneer at the sagging of the leaves,
As you fill your cheeks with ammunition.
You laugh with the bending of the trees
And the ravaging of the forests.
You show off your muscles
As you become the mighty air,
Born into obscurity
And becoming the mad tempest.
You are the giver of life and
The taker away of it.
Yet without you,
There would be nothing.



Author Bio:
Robert Martin's writings have been published in Mature Years, Alive Now, Terror House Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Journal, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and Literary Juice. Robert has won two Faith & Hope awards, and published two chapbooks. His main writing influence is Kahlil Gibran. 

This is a challenge
You see
For me
There’s a smile
Without a grin
A slight possibility
I can
Win
I look ahead
There’s a bottom
You see
I am going
Ahead
Slower then faster
Every day
Before
I explode
There’s a mountain
Ahead
For me
Climbing harder
And harder
To reach
The top
A winning streak
For me


Author Bio:
Jean Ann Owens has had poetry accepted and published in Triveni Journal, Phree Write Magazine, The Squawk Back, The Hans India Newspaper, and Boston University Press. Learn more at: queenjeanann.com

​In my tour of the vast and endless city of exquisite white marble and verdant green grass, I came upon a corner which led to a dead end. With my heart still working as hard as it could, I dared myself to venture further inside the alleyway. It was not bravery though, just curiosity to see this popular exhibition that I’d heard so much about. But soon I felt myself in a claustrophobic tunnel of horror and impending doom. Dared I look inside those displaced iron cradles of eternity and discover what I most feared? Would whatever was inside them grab at me and take me with it beyond what I could comprehend? I peeked out of the corner of my eye and was finally overwhelmed. I saw nothing but what I imagined and that was enough to turn back…if I were you. 

But this is what I came here to see: the freak shows without the freaks, the street accident without the bodies, the long evaporated results of a final solution always handed down from above, no matter what anyone thinks. This is a sentence delegated to each one of us by birthright. 

In between the clouds and a sunlit sky sat several souls on stone benches sitting outside of their marble mansions. I passed by them on my right. They sat very still and dully regarded me as if I were a bit strange. “I am” I responded without speaking and moved past them. 

It was as if I needed to move from beyond the finery and cruel beauty of a land of nowhere into a crueler yet more beautiful domain which is within myself.

Hell’s bells – I hear them ringing; but they don’t sound so bad.

DGS (1959 - )


Author Bio:
Dominique Williams is a blogger and Interior Designer based in New York City. She enjoys writing and though her blog is primarily about Design and architecture, she tends to direct her focus towards the psychological. Dominique loves to travel and enjoys experiencing different cultures.

When you pin
my shoulders down,
I see kiwi-green-lily pads
pressing—thrusting--
against the pond’s
reflective ripples
and piglet-pink-water lilies
wilting—shedding--
weakened leaves
beneath its surface
to decay.
 
And when you press
your pounds against me,
I see pepper-red-rose petals
fraying outward--
their edges blackening
from frosty summer breezes--
and I see youthful weeds
interlacing aged gardens--
smothering—strangling
exhausted stems.
 
But when you finally
relinquish my
exhausted body--
and I disconnect
my top and bottom
eyelids—I see you.
 

Just eat a tomato like an apple,
or just eat a tomato.
Make a tomato pie.
Drink water.
Just fill a glass with water and bring it to your mouth.
Fill your mouth with water and try to swallow.
See what happens.
Sleep every day
or every night.
Sleep both day and night! 
A dream is not fake
just a lil’ different.
And finally
go swimming 
Bring your body to the water.
and put your body in the water.
Try not to sink. 
See what happens. 


Author Bio:
Alex Swartzentruber is a poet from Indiana. 

There is an elephant in the room.
It’s in my kitchen eating peanut butter behind the cupboard.
I smell its venomous perspiration.
I see its whipping tale.
If I touch it, it might bite me.
What kind of pig is it?
It keeps bouncing back and forth, tasting this and then that.
There it goes up the wall, heard its scratching little nails.
Hearing those little claws makes me see red.
If Doctor John Doolittle wasn’t so busy in London, 
I’d call him over to exterminate it this minute.
There is an elephant outside.
How will I pay for this home?
Thuggin’ it, has made me thus far.
Because my parents didn’t make it,
means I probably won't either.
He was just being facetious.
The beautiful glass house of tolerance,
has allowed this polite vermin to sleep in her bed long enough.
It's time to lift the house up with one arm. 
Wonder woman can only take so much.
Its lifespan has ended.
Persuasive Beast.
I had to come to the end, to get to the beginning.
Maldito Raton.
How can you ask me for forgiveness?
There’s not room in this house for the both of us, 
I won’t tiptoe around you.


Author Bio:
Virginia Melendez is a native of California. In her spare time she enjoys creative writing and poetry.

We make love to nameless boys/ like butterflies
Beautiful beautiful for a just moment and then they disappear
So soon our fragile bodies will die
Drunk on nectar/ get me out of here
Sweet sweet flowers/ can’t stand withdrawal
Searching for temporary relief/ aren’t we all

Our watercolor wings touch under the candy moon
So high high we must be flying
On long days I still feel stuck in my cocoon
Fall asleep alone at 6 am crying
Sweet sweet flowers/ can’t stand withdrawal
Searching for temporary relief/ aren’t we all


Author Bio:
​Isabella Ronchetti is an artist and writer originally from San Francisco, California. She spent a few years studying in Florence Italy, and currently is living in Virginia. She enjoys spending her free time reading psychology books, running, and people-watching. Her writing and artwork have won awards and appeared in magazines such as FishFood Magazine, Glass Kite Anthology, The Sigh Press, and Canvas Literary Journal.

“We haven't seen numbers like this since the Great Depression*,”
Georgia said about the Midnight Mission where she served
Thanksgiving brunch to near and homeless occupants of  LA’s Skid Row.
 
After Outreach Nurse Laura LaCroix was done checking patients living under a bridge,
she met with another of her many patients without homes in a downtown Allentown
Pennsylvania Dunkin’ Donuts when he mentioned that a buddy was lying in agony
in the nearby woods.  “You should check on him,” said Pappy,  “But don’t worry,
I put him on a tarp, so if he dies, you can just roll him into a hole.**”
 
Twenty years ago, I volunteered to sweep out Queer Urban Ministry
Food Pantry/ Clothes Closet after they were hit hard by torrential rains. 
One morning a person who couldn’t breath was carried in by fellow workers
doing a day job chopping down then burning weeds which turned out to be poison oak. 
Realizing their colleague must have been allergic to the smoke particles, I rushed to my car,
got a black bag containing an epinephrine syringe and injected the man to save his life.
That was the end of my anonymous layman’s role, and the beginning of establishing a clinic.
It was in a not-small field where the most socially competent gathered for coffee plus muffins
and the less mentally healthy hung back behind trees in the periphery
where I would visit and offer medical care if they or their friends gave me the signal
it was okay to proceed -- the most disabled never showed at all.
 
None of above were willing to go through a spiffy new homeless center’s security gate
and screening requiring ID to sit in a small waiting room before eventually being ushered
into a brightly lit tinier exam room -- some MDs were upset by my primitive street medicine
but for a decade I persevered, rationalizing no need to make the perfect the enemy of the good.


Author Bio:
Gerard Sarnat has been nominated for Pushcarts and won prizes and is widely published including by Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Johns Hopkins and in Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, MiPOesias, Brooklyn Review, and LAReview. KADDISH FOR COUNTRY was selected for pamphlet distribution on Inauguration Day nationwide. “Amber Of Memory” was the single poem chosen for his 50th Harvard reunion Dylan symposium. Collections: Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry’s a physician who’s built/staffed homeless clinics, a Stanford professor/healthcare CEO who’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus four grandkids and more on the way. www.gerardsarnat.com.