The forest is alive
Branches snap in exclamation to a joke
Whispered by the trees
The wind whines in protest
To the crushing of flowers
Not by a foot but a sole
You are alone on this path
Through the underbrush
Through the pine thickets and burrs
Through the wildflower dotted fields
But you never feel alone
The Time Traveling Gigolo by Robert Nazar Arjoyan
The modern howl of the train never fails to break the spell. Unless of course it’s synchronal, in which case, choo-choo. Regardless, the sex is phenomenal.
My name is Paty, last name immaterial. That might not even be my first name, just so you know, but it is. Paty from LA. That’s LA like Los Angeles not Louisiana. I’ve hopped around town all my life – from Noho to Venice and all the way to Alhambra – but I was born in Glendale. Living back there now in an old Spanish style bungalow situated in the Tropico district, southwards, bordering Atwater and within a whisper of Los Feliz. I rent from an ancient fiend named Miller. I don’t know if that’s his first name or his last name and I don’t care. 3,500 a month gets sluiced out of my checking and goes into Miller’s moldy old coffers because I no longer have a home – it’s been wrecked. Did you catch on or should I elucidate? No, you’re smart. When I slid the cheap wedding band I’d worn for thirteen years off my finger, I felt OK. Know why? Because underneath the ring, I noticed that my skin there was lighter than the rest of me. I still had a teeny bit of myself left untainted by wasted time and misplaced love.
Worth All That by Sarah Otts
The most imperfect queer in the world stands in line outside a U-Haul depot, holding an empty mason jar. This is not a clichéd joke about queers and premature cohabitation enabled by rental moving van companies, nor even a study of the mason jar as an object in queer history, emblematic of Sandor Katz’s culinary contributions to the art of fermentation in the wake of his diagnosis with HIV. Rather, this is the story of our protagonist, and only of our protagonist — if they even consent to that title — who mostly wears navy blue button-down shirts and has never made a rash decision (or a sourdough starter) in their life.
Someone else’s anatomy by Emilia Mammino
When he bites my skin,
I dream of how your teeth used to sink in.
These bites do not have your imprint.
I wish his hands would fit the way yours did around my neck,
But they’re not your yellow stained nails,
oh, how I used to hold them dear to my chest.
Excavations by Regina Rae Weiss
I’d been here a few weeks in relative peace but now the park was being dug up all around me, and I was having trouble finding out why. At first I thought they were going to excavate and replant the flower beds and shrubberies. I panicked then about being displaced from my comfortable abode in the heart of the ancient rhododendron, which was larger than my last apartment and rent free. Would I have to go back to the west side tunnels? I couldn’t do that. Peggy was probably still marooned over there and she wanted, understandably, to kill me. But I couldn’t go to a shelter either. The city’s shelters bring out my claustrophobia worse than any tunnel ever could.
In Conversation with Medea by Lorna Fraser
I think I understand Medea a little more now.
Look at my hands.
When the hands that would rather scratch out your own eyes
do harm, what is there to do?
When you hurt them,
where is there to go but the gods?
The Other Side by Will Kemp
He was in heaven again, umpiring a school cricket match, when something interrupted his appreciation of an exquisite cover drive.
“Dunc,” Heather whispered, jostling his shoulder under the duvet.
He tried to return to the cricket, but it had gone.
“Duncan…”
Why was she lying behind him? Oh. Holiday. France. First night. The farmhouse only had double beds.
Unforgotten Memories by Catherine Jaishankar
Why do we forget? There is no proven scientific reason for why we forget.[efn_note]Boundless. [n.d.]. “The Process of Forgetting,” Lumenlearning.Com<https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/the-process-of-forgetting/> [accessed 19 April 2022][/efn_note] Our brain has the ability to store the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes [efn_note][N.d.]. Cnsnevada.Com <https://www.cnsnevada.com/what-is-the-memory-capacity-of-a-human-brain/> [accessed 19 April 2022][/efn_note] of digital memory whereas my M1 Mac has only 250 GB. Why is our brain designed to delete memories when it has so much space? The ability to recall a memory is often associated with how well it’s stored and it always differs from one person to another. My childhood memories are compartmentalized in two ways. First, is according to the two different schools I studied in, St. Joseph’s Convent till my fifth standard and Montfort School till my tenth standard. Second, is my house. Pre-renovation and post. Before narrating any of my leftover childhood memories, I have to do some mental calculations to figure out the exact age I was in by identifying how I looked (I had different physical phases in different schools) and the setting. If the parking space at my home was spacious and bright, if the staircase was part of the veranda, if the backyard still existed, then the memory is most likely to be pre-renovation. Once the memory is successfully identified, then my brain starts counting the age. I know I was five in my first standard. That being my focal point I work my age to the memory. This is the mental prep that I have to do before beginning to narrate a memory as ‘I was five/seven/eight.’
The Great Tadhia by Charles Prelle
I watch her reel against the crowd toward the edge of the bridge. She leans over the steel barrier, eyes hypnotised by the river below. No one seems to notice her, their faces fixed to illuminated screens. She raises a high heel onto the railing, then another.
*
Idle Ink 