My nerves dance like angels on the head of a pin. Your musical guests, punk, thrash: defiant heartbeats. I can’t help but notice those caramelized legs and where they’re leading. All night, all yours, on your clamshell couch, which converts, of course, into a salt lick seabed. No studio audience, unless you count the puckish moonlight, the goaty devil on my shoulder, and this bloodhound that won’t heel. This experience is brought to you with no commercial interr

She would normally have a knit cap covering her head - she knew the wind on the Oregon Coast - but today her hair was loose, almost mane-like. As the ocean breeze tousled Namirah's hair, Layth caught a glimpse of the Red Wings earrings she had on the ones he had handed to her, wrapped in a cocktail napkin, outside the sports bar in Detroit as they waited for a ride to the airport for her return flight to PDX. A short while later, with seagulls flying overhead, Namirah recogni

Watching him gag to withhold the puke. He sweats, clears the phlegm. He blows his nose. Deep breaths In out, in out. Sigh. Back to our conversation. He apologizes for being gross As we share another story from the joys of our childhood. Another five minutes of talk, Serious and fun, Tears and laughter. The gagging returns. I pause Waiting for him to clear the pain again. I finish my lunch. He gets a box to eat later Unable to ingest at this time. We decide on a fr

Stranger, you became a friend in a blink in a laugh in a mere moment I knew You, I loved You, and You, me You knew me and I, You for a moment, the veil was lied I saw the colors of Your radiant soul, a prismatic expanse of wings I could not, did not cage You And the wind you fashioned as You took flight caressed my face I breathed it in so deep, it penetrated my rusted heart, fluttered within that broken box, Your breeze polished the stains, oxygenated every cell Lo, I am unc

By Max Tachis “It’s just about midnight on this cloudy Friday night, folks, so I’ll be signing off after this next track and passing the wheels of steel to my friend and yours, DJ Kenny T, for your Midnight Mix… but I leave you, as always, with one last classic. Be well, my loyal night owls, and I’ll catch you on the other side of the weekend.” * * * It takes you about five seconds to recognize the song but, considering how well you know it, you’d have been able to do

Her mind is like a battlefield, Full of fear and full of lies. Living in a cycle she cannot escape. She shuts her door, hiding from the world. Longing to be seen. Longing to be heard. She quietly waits at the corner of her bed, For someone brave enough to open the door. Loneliness creeps in. Doubt creeps in. She starts losing hope. “Is this the end for me?” Just when she is about to let go, Someone knocks at her door. Heart beating faster. Hands start trembling. With desperat

The afterlife has left me stranded in my sister's house, at the edge of catastrophe She’s having cocktails amid a few ravages of grief here and there while she lays out littered pieces of a breakable life. No self-pity for her. She’s too busy watching the stars run away with the moon. I didn't know enough to be scared. But she did. By Barbara Shields

Snow covers property that lives outside as mold covers our food with soft, white hair and ice preserves our dead-town, traffic-wide as fungus that feeds on fields of highway air. Giant sheets of snow heaped over hills & parking lots as if each colossal animal our children made out of clouds molted its skin or were ripped through the ground, either way—our families freeze where something massive rots. By Joshua Wren

What brave life to see! these few, bunches of brown leaves dead & still clinging to the oak tree, covered in ice & snow standing apart from the rows of others whose every branch is stark bare as if this mistaken one patiently holds this truth to share— (that only we of similar roots will know) Oh—how in the blind face of Time and mindless seasons where so many follow so many reasons to “let go”— we (in this strange company) want to show how best to be in quiet conflict with s