It’s good to be
on the giving side of no.
When you think you’ve
had enough abuse,
it’s almost fun
to have something
somebody really needs
and to just say
no.
Tag: Pensive
The Facts of the Matter by Maya Renaud-Levine
To conclude, all my organs are square.
………In the pantry, pasta elbows and crackers form
Right angles. I write lists of things already done, so that I may
………Pen in the little boxes. I sharpen edges like swords to
Measuring Time by Craig Lamont
11.30 pm.
Tonight, I won’t sleep. Dead relatives stand still in my dreams these past few nights.
I put the lamp on, breathe out. I think of the lights going off in other houses as I decide if I’m up for reading. Across the shadow line of this hemisphere a wall of dreams is taking shape, like clouds on the edge of the weather report, dispersing as the day wheels round.
It is in these moments that you often notice your breathing and you realise you’ve been taking it for granted. Sleeping and breathing, breathing in spite of it all. Even before you were born, the collective breathing dating back. That great grandmother who immigrated, poor and disowned, armed only with the wrong religion and a strong will. These twists of fate in the roots of your family tree somehow led to your being. Somewhere it began, in spite of the hard wind and the rain. You arrived.
Chalkboard of Consciousness by Yash Seyedbagheri
They know only that you smoke pot. Terms like “addict,” “troubled,” and “stoner” are bandied about. Counselors are recommended. But you’re eighteen. Counselors are for fucked up, abandoned thirteen-year olds. Middle-aged lechers.
They cannot know what it means to smoke pot. They claimed they dabbled back in the day but had to grow up. Put childish things behind.
When you smoke, labels are wiped away by a feeling you call a chalkboard of consciousness. It’s like the idea of John Locke’s tabula rasa, but with a chalkboard hovering in your consciousness, wiped clear of waste and labels. It’s ready to be filled with something else, something of your own choosing.
A Different Kind of Roadkill by Elizabeth Heckmann
As the weather warms and the snow of a long, difficult winter melts, the gleaming white symmetries of skeletons on the side of the road become visible against the fledgling green grass. The unfortunate elk and deer that attempted to run across the two- lane-canyon highway were killed by speeding cars and trucks, only their bodies tossed to the side of the road serve as a reminder of their lives.
When I glimpse them as I drive by, the familiarity of a mammalian skeleton, its serpent-like spinal column and sacrum still intact. The remaining bones are smashed and strewn about signifying the violence of impact, the carnage ignites thoughts and anxieties. Was that a cow with a calf? Did the calf watch a truck demolish its mother? Was that a calf? A young buck? An old elk? I calm myself. Of course it died painlessly! Broken neck. Massive bleeding. Painless. Instant death. These skeletons are landmarks on my way to and from work. But one day, I came across a different kind of roadkill, its contents spread all over the road and, no one swerving to miss it: books.
Child by Morgana Moore
In my mother’s house, she asks me when I’m going to have a child, her eyes veiled with a sadness she’ll never fully admit to.
She asks all the time, but now it’s different. The question seems to carry a different weight and it rests heavy on my shoulders.
From the sofa, I sip my tea. It’s gone cold.
REVIEW: Tethered
Review by J.L. Corbett
Writer: Ross Jeffery
Publisher: self-published
Release date: 1st June 2020
Price: £2.99 (ebook), £8.99 (paperback)
The novella-in-flash format is more popular now than it’s ever been.
Solstice by N.R. Baker
You moved like a glacier through the best years of my life. Shaped me hugely, imperceptibly, until I’d forgotten what I was before and had become something that made no sense after you were gone, something carved and scalloped by a million unnoticed excisions. After the divorce I looked for myself in what you’d left of me, but saw nothing I recognised in the bleak, hollowed place where I thought I used to be.
Drip…… Drip.
Tower of Strength by Mark Anthony Smith
I look up to the seventeenth floor. She is small and so high up. It would be easier to see her as a dot or a full stop. But she is subjective and coughing from the smoke. She has no choice. I cannot imagine what she is feeling. Maybe she isn’t thinking at all.