Donna Dallas, “American Marriage

American Marriage

Donna Dallas

It’s a cancer that mutates and spreads after rings are placed on fingers sacred prayers bless us for eternity it wove into the lace of my dress the knot of your bow tie needled into our skin blackened the grip between us we sprout flagrant rants (can we really be this pathetic?) how quickly we rotted out (your mother must have put a curse on us) as just yesterday we held our infant son under the lazy sky and laughed giddy like angels in flower beds today you sit gray as death and plot my demise

By the wayside

Sean Chapman

Out amongst the desert of highway where only cars and trucks exist there is a stopping point, absent from any ancillary buildings or amenities. There isn’t even an exit or an off-road just our own abrupt decisions to pull us against the current and into the dirt of nowhere. All under one flat topped roof bearing the sign Church, white dust beaten slats of wood and a few utilitarian chairs stand watch over the careening sands between the headlights and the years. Inside there is a space and a silence carved into the chaos, a chamber for us all to still ourselves amongst the ever-flowing stream of consciousness and shadows.

eve

Nikoletta Nousiopoulos

At that time, the garden was frozen and unfrozen. I started to feel bewitched, like a full moon, when an angel invaded the sky.

It stared down at me with its fat eyeballs, surveying and scanning snakes from insects, as if they resembled some smaller angels.

And I would have looked right up at the angel, but I couldn’t stop blink ing from the light, or twisting my head between portals of death and life.

Garden was it, or graveyard? I started to doubt the essence myself. I was packed with worms and wet dirt. My head was full of flowers when it burst.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 eyeless socket

Nikoletta Nousiopoulos

I long to mope like vines wedged in a forest of deep crevices. I long to bloom on the edges of killed light. I look into the mirror and the mirror looks back. A detached glimmer lifts my face off. Each morning, the small riots crystallize distorted rain. My heart speaks before my throat. My spell closes before the elements disconnect from clouds. The clouds disconnect from heaven’s trapdoor and give me all the gray. Unlike twigs, I bend into earth’s cracked face. In dirt, incomprehensible sounds worm in and out of exile. The body is honored with sunshine and raised with the cosmic cup.