It was as if every married woman in town
Decided simultaneously
That there was no room in their closets
And flung their wedding gowns out their windows,
Where they would billow one last time,
As if young, starved bodies still filled them,
Until landing in mounds between parked cars,
Ridges strewn across lawns,
Clumps gathered on curbs
And the sides of driveways,
 
Like so many lounging homeless
Relishing the thaw,
The feeling returning to their toes,
The promise of spring,
And the waterfalls made of those
Broiled by winter
Rushing down the sewers.

​
Author Bio:
Best of the Net nominee, Rich Glinnen, enjoys bowling, and eating his daughter’s cheeks at his home in Bayside, NY. His work can be read in various print and online journals, as well as on his Tumblr and Instagram pages. His wife calls him Ho-ho.

The swirling dirt settled into her hair, ruffling it,
making her feel dirty and scared, mixing with
moisture from the babbling brook beneath their feet and
the heavy scent of scrub grasses, making the hairs on her bare arms
stand at attention. He stood in front of her, Cheshire smirk on
his face, peacock dancing, daring, cajoling, as his partners in crime chanted
cheers, jeers, encouragement, threats.
Sweat trickled down her back, adrenaline shot along nerves. Shoving her to
the hard ground had been enough, but striking hard one young
sister’s face, lip now cracked and bloody, knocking the other into the
rough-hewn wooden pole edging the small babbling brook’s bridge,
that had been too much. Copying him, she danced. He swung his meaty hand
once, and she ducked, fear fueling her movements like a marionette
jerking to a higher power’s plan. She swung, her foot almost sliding on
slick wooden bridge. Why had she let him force her there? If they fell…
concussions? He parried, lunged, toying with her. Unprepared for possible
defeat, she blazed with both hands, pounding his face again and again--
his bloodied nose, his swollen chin. Finally, eyes blurred, vacillating between
crossed and straight, he retreated, slipping, righting himself, face contorted,
“Damned she devil.” Ten years old, she won the only fight of her life,
but all she felt was abject misery, an adrenaline hangover, and fear she and her
contender would meet again. But, he and his cronies abandoned the playground,
Never to return that summer.
 
Fifty years later, in a grocery store bullets slam, ten bodies spew life,
neighborhood crushed where once a babbling brook, hewn wooden bridge, and a simple
playground stood. Shaking, tears rolling down aging cheeks that a city
once again became a shrine to hopelessness that burst
from a tortured soul to splatter, shred victims alive and dead.
Yet, a niggling fear clawed its way up already overtaxed nerves.
Had the shooter once been forced to defend himself over a brook
like the one no longer babbling there?


Author Bio:
Paula Danes’s name has been mispronounced, misspelled, and misunderstood over the years, so now she goes for simple with a contraction of her real name, instead. After decades of crazy experiences, now that she’s settled in Indiana, she’s finally given herself permission to focus on her first love—writing. As she completes her MFA in creative writing, her hope is to share stories and slices of life with readers as she helps them see the world through the different eyes her writing presents.

For every mass shooting
​Thoughts and prayers.
 
For every home destroyed
by tornadoes and hurricanes:
Thoughts and prayers.
 
For those afflicted by wildfires
and contamination from
rediscovered, buried toxins:
Thoughts and prayers.
 
For the underfed or the starving:
Thoughts and prayers.
 
For those who die in squalor:
Thoughts and prayers.
 
For those who live in make-shift tents,
for those who live near garbage heaps,
for those who live against walls
near train tracks, near broken shells
of buildings destroyed by bombs:
Thoughts and prayers.
 
Your parents died, your brother died,
your child died for lack of clean water,
for lack of basic medical treatment,
for lack of supervision while playing
in those previously sown minefields:
Thoughts and prayers,
thoughts and prayers,
thoughts and prayers…
as if there were a caring god.


Author Bio:
Tony Marconi is a retired teacher living in Ohio. He has published a book of experimental fiction, The Complete Works of the Literate Dead, and two novels, Toscotti’s War and Upon the Hush of Night. Tony’s poetry has appeared in The Cornfield Review and Grand Little Things, and he has had numerous short stories and poetry as published in various chapbooks and journals.

The springtide wakes up not only in dreams.
The snowdrops blooming in the moony garths.
One listens the propitious paradise.
The dearest graylag geese coming in flocks.

I think of the Primula from afar.
The wild boar piglets were born in a grove.
I feel springwards the warmness of a soul.
Native dreameries are fulfilled galore.

Springtide be primeval home of Naiads!
I taste the verdure of some dreamed climes.
You are dreamy like fairylike bouts.
The friends of springy morn – are tender owls.

I can praise and bewitch Ovidianly.
Thus, I am able to enchant peaceably.

archaic: garth – garden
genus Primula – primrose
verdure – literary green
bout – dance
morn – morning
springy - vernal
Ovidianly – adverb from Ovidian

Naiad – definition through the haiku:

The tender Naiad
a merest-guardian from the
Greek dreamiest stories

​
Author Bio:
Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Siemiatycze in Poland. He is poet who lives in Bielsk Podlaski and writes tender poems, haiku as well as long poems. Paweł has published his poetries in many magazines. He writes in English and German.