Spectral Bodies

On my way back I wake up a sleeping pond.

A brash palm tree reclining on winds of dusk tears into its calm surface.

A slip road from the rail tracks leads to an abandoned shed.

Black and yellow station names stare at the grilled brightness inside windows of passing trains.

A nude sky dips into a dark night, a lost river meanders on its own bed.

A huddle of houses speak of all that we fear like crop circles do of oceans.

Far away a halogen light cries in spectral deep.

The moon-reaper with its scythe of sober light casts invisible shadows on our bodies.

Some nightmares still hang with the gossiping trees.

Amit Shankar Saha is the author of three highlyacclaimed collections of poems titled Balconies of Time, Fugitive Words, and Illicit Poems. He lives in Kolkata, India, edits EKL Review and works as an Assistant Professor in the English Department of Seacom Skills University. His most recent publication is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Essayist.

My father, when too depressed & to make up for it, would take me to the amusement park. There I would scream good screams. The screams belted out arms-raised on a loop-de-loop. When I got off a ride, always there he’d be, always waiting but also crying or dry heaving or punching the trunk of a plastic tree. I’d ask if he wanted to ride the Thunderbolt Flyer. He’d offer to get me food instead. Those delicious corndogs were confusing: soft on the inside yet crispy on the outside, squiggles of red & yellow crisscrossing to the top.

Pablo Piñero Stillmann’s work has appeared in Blackbird, Mississippi Review, Notre Dame Review, Washington Square Review, and other journals. He has published a novella, Temblador (Tierra Adentro, 2014), & a collection of short stories, Our Brains and the Brains of Miniature Sharks (Moon City Press, 2020). Last summer he attended the Sewanee Writers' Conference as a Tennessee Williams Scholar. Pablo lives in Mexico City.

We can feel beauty of silence, when tears upset us. We can see the essence of silence when we say goodbye. Sometimes I feel like Elvis never existed.

David Dephy is an award-winning poet and novelist. The founder of Poetry Orchestra and an author of poetry collections Eastern Star (Adelaide Books, 2020) and A Double Meaning with co-author Joshua Corwin (Adelaide Books, 2022). He has won awards from Bowery Poetry, Voices of Poetry, Statorec, Headline Poetry & Press and Cultural Daily. He lives and works in New York City.

Expressed as tinnitus most professionals profess is a ringing in the ears induced by stress and a number of other environmental tendencies. It’s said, that rambunctious mechanisms and music too loud can destroy the drums in the ear canal, ingesting caffeine is a culprit as well, its special buzz instigates the ears to incessantly trill a variance of frequencies very high to low, white noise or static is the common explanation. The more sophisticated prefer to refer to the affliction as auditory acuity , much above the norm, an ability to detect signals and radio transmissions of interplanetary discussions, meant for only few to hear, with discourse duly noted, received day and night, lengthy conversations, concerning universal plight, divulging invaluable insight when the messages are decoded.

Michael Keshigian is the author of 14 poetry collections, his latest, What To Do With Intangibles, published by Cyberwit.net . Most recent poems have appeared in Muddy River Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Blue Pepper, San Pedro River Review, Comstock Review. Published in numerous national and international journals, he has 7 Pushcart Prize and 3 Best Of The Net nominations. . He lives in New Hampshire.

About getting old, there’s less laundry to do. Imagine growing up in a town that only made gloves or shirt collars. Sometimes it’s okay not to speak in sentences. Were there non sequiturs before the Romans? Just when you think you know, Poof! Or imagine you saw a god on the roof across the alley nailing down new shingle all day. I’m not sure what to think about the magnetic poles and the fact they’re moving, but what if rats wrote their own history? The leftovers may have my name on them, but I’m not really sure why anymore.

Kurt Olsson has published two poetry collections. His second, Burning Down Disneyland (Gunpowder Press), won the Barry Spacks Prize. Of the book, contest judge Thomas Lux wrote, “I love the title of this book . . . and I love the innovative mischief of its poems. Let it be known: a true poetic intelligence and imagination live between its covers.” Olsson’s first collection, What Kills What Kills Us (Silverfish Review Press), won the Gerald Cable Book and was subsequently awarded the Towson University Prize for Literature, given to the best book published the previous year by a Maryland writer. Olsson’s poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, The New Republic, Southern Review, and The Threepenny Review.

When I fantasize about being single again I imagine Manhattan will welcome me back now that I’m an adult who knows the ropes

The M22 still stops across the street from the apartment I grew up in which is gone now, like the Fillmore East, and Azuma on 8th Street

The Met will beckon me on glorious summer evenings

I’ll survey my new life from a rooftop bar

Tomorrow, there’s a compelling talk at the 92nd Street Y where bearded men listen to Ezra Klein intently and a slim man with green eyes catches my eye

Maybe he’s ten years out of his marriage–enough time to have healed, gotten himself together enough time to know sampling from dating sites like dim sum, isn’t his taste

Still, all of that would require me to surrender–adjust to the sound of sirens at night tune out the clickity-clack of stilettos in the apartment above me at 3am like Morse code

Phillipa Scott is a writer, painter and native New Yorker. She has worked many corporate jobs to pay the rent. Her poetry has appeared in SLANT, Ragazine, Paterson Literary Review and is forthcoming in Exit 13 Magazine and Soul-Lit. Phillipa is the recipient of an Allen Ginsberg Award in Poetry. Her paintings are displayed in galleries in New York and New Jersey.