Different Kinds of Darkness    

by Evan Guilford-Blake

The war that is the background for what is described in the “letter” that follows, the woman who describes it and the incidents to which she refers are, all, entirely fictional. The physical setting is willfully indefinite. War is not a thing of time, place, generation or specific circumstance. It is, and has always been.

And, regretful to say, will always be.

Dear Rikki –

Good news at long last. They’re sending me home! I tried to call you but I got the goddamn voicemail – we have got to get rid of that message. First thing we do after I walk in the door. After you kiss me, of course, for what will probably be the thousandth time since I get off the plane. That message sounds sooooo sweet. So instead of me – live from 5,000 miles away – you get this. E-mail isn’t the comforting sound of your voice, and I’ll try again later, but I’m so excited I couldn’t wait to tell you. And, besides, I need to practice my typing. Ignore the errors: This keyboard is really small and no way I’m gonna let anyone proofread it.

The other good news, I suppose, is that you won’t have to come. And I’m grateful for that. I mean, it would’ve been awful goddamn hard for you to get in here, let alone just get here, and we couldn’t’ve afforded for you to stay long enough to make the trip worth it.

And besides, I figure I still don’t look so good. I don’t know if I’m ready to have the world see me like this – however this looks. There’s still some pain – the doctor says there will be some pain at least a few more months, maybe now and then after that, because of the nerves. You remember.

            But, really, I’m a lot better. The bandages came off this morning! For good! When they said they were going to do it? I kept thinking: The nurse is gonna gasp like in that Twilight Zone show. I’ll never know if she did. I thought they’d let me be awake for the unveiling but, no, I was under. And groggy as hell when I woke up. But now I get to feel my face again. Rik – there are lots of scars. Lots. More than I guessed there was. I mean, I knew there’d be scars, it hurt so much, it was like my skin was getting tore up again and again, but God, I’m so afraid of what I look like. I’m afraid for you to see me. I know I’m ugly, and they can’t do anything reconstructive for years, maybe never, and I don’t want to look like this, I don’t want to look like someone little kids will scream at when they see, like someone you’ll have to hide what you’re feeling when you see. I know you didn’t want me for my looks in the first place, and 19 years is a long time, but, you’re so goddamn beautiful and hey, how people look, it’s always made a difference to me.

I guess it won’t any more, huh?

I guess it’s good I never had kids.

Anyway. I’m making progress in Braille. I still can’t read much, but I got through a whole page today. Took me an hour, I had to go over some of the words 3 or 4 times, but there’s what the therapist calls context: If you figure out the first letter is e and the last one is t you can figure the one between them is probably an a. If it’s a 3 letter word, anyway. I get confused on the longer ones. I forget what letters I read. It’s probably good I’m reading Stephen King. I think the longest word in Salem’s Lot is vampire. And feeling that word – it conjures up lots of images. All of them having to do with darkness. Different kinds of darkness.

I think a lot about darkness. Like being in a tunnel that’s too long to know there is a light at the end. Before I came here, before the explosion and the pain and the wanting to die, I loved it. Lying there with you, late at night, pitch black and all the sounds magnified. Every breath you took, every rustle of the sheets, the tiny tiny sound of my finger tracing the circle around your areola, the licking of your lips before you kissed me. It’s true, you are more aware of sounds when you can’t see. Here, I hear planes, footsteps in the hall, the other women crying, crying out. Sometimes I hear people die. I’m not going to die, Rikki, not for a long time. The doctor says I’m in surprisingly good shape. I oughta be. You can’t train other soldiers for 16 years if you’re not. But it’s gonna be hard to live, I know that. For both of us. When I get back? we should go right away, someplace where they’ll let us really tie the knot. You think? If you’re still willing. And I believe you when you say you are. That’s what’s been keeping me going the last 4 months, knowing there is a light at the end of this tunnel. I might not be able to see it, but I can feel it. It’s warm and it feels safe. I love you, Rik. Thanks for loving me – not because of, not in spite of. Just loving.

I’ll see you soon.

Yours, Yasmina

* * * * *

"Different Kinds of Darkness," © Guilford-Blake Corp., was podcast in 2016 by No Extra Words (under the title "Yasmina") and was chosen as the winner of the 2015 Green River Writers short-short fiction competition.

Evan Guilford-Blake writes prose, poetry and plays. His work has appeared in more than 100 journals and anthologies. His prose has won 27 awards and garnered four Pushcart Prize nominations. His scripts have won 46 competitions. Thirty-three are published.

Evan’s published long-form prose includes the novels Animation, The Bluebird Prince, and the award-winning story collection American Blues. He and his wife (and inspiration) Roxanna, a talented jewelry designer and business writer, live in the southeastern US with their beloved rescue mutts, Baldrick and Pip.

Speak 2

by Catherine Arra

    for Linda

                                                                                                           

She reminds me who I was, finds me

in the tumult of divorce from the man

I thought I knew, not as well as I know her, the girl

who once sidled up to me¾high school teenagers

at a library table and said,

            “What are you reading?”

            “Existentialism.”

            “Tell me everything you know about that.”

Brash girl, stranger

sat down uninvited, challenged what I knew,

asked me to say it.

How dare she pull me out, expect me to, but I did,

and now he’s leaving after 20 years.

Legalese served as tepid as last night’s meal,

not saying, telling, why, how, or who.

Singed by his iciness I never thought for me,

his indifference to grief clamoring up and down stairs

to tether an unbridled will to leave.

Raw, unrivaled, the paralyzing sting

of abandonment avalanches, until she calls

from 1,500 miles away and says,

            “Tell me everything you know about that.”

* * * * *

"Speak 2" is from Catherine Arra's poetry collection (Women in Parentheses) (Kelsay Books, 2019)

Catherine Arra is the author of (Women in Parentheses) (Kelsay Books, 2019), Writing in the Ether (Dos Madres Press, 2018), and three chapbooks. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous journals online and in print, and in several anthologies. Forthcoming in 2020 from Finishing Line Press is a new chapbook, Her Landscape, Poems Based on the Life of Mileva Marić Einstein. Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups. Find her at www.catherinearra.com

Espionage

by Catherine Arra

Nineteen—watching an espionage flick

main spy says to rival spy,

When you know a lie is a lie, you begin to learn the truth.

Twenty-nine—the good wife until

hubby-hunk is cheating. She asks, Is it so?

He says, No, no, no.

Thirty-three—divorced, edging recovery

collides with the letter Mother signed, love

to Father’s best friend. She asks, Is it so?

Mother says, Yes and no. She’ll quit,

do the right thing. A month later Father puddles at her feet.

It wasn’t a fling.

Thirty-five—feeling orphaned and feral

likes sap in trees, honey in her tease

is temptress to a virgin-hood of older men.

Brings one home, unbuttons his hard-on

in her big brassy bed. He asks, Do you love me?

She says, Yes, yes, yes.

Thirty-nine—a spy in her house of tricks

cataloging fictions, footnoting crimes

indexing brevity of truth on overwritten pages.

When you know a lie is a lie, you begin to learn the truth.

* * * * *

"Espionage" is from Catherine Arra's poetry collection (Women in Parentheses) (Kelsay Books, 2019)

Catherine Arra is the author of (Women in Parentheses) (Kelsay Books, 2019), Writing in the Ether (Dos Madres Press, 2018), and three chapbooks. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous journals online and in print, and in several anthologies. Forthcoming in 2020 from Finishing Line Press is a new chapbook, Her Landscape, Poems Based on the Life of Mileva Marić Einstein. Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups. Find her at www.catherinearra.com

FOOD SHOPPING IN THE TIME OF CORONA

by Mary K O'Melveny

It turns out that canned sliced

pears are not popular.

They sit, almost alone,

on our grocery shelves.

Police tape blocks the aisles

where paper goods and cleaning

products were once aligned.

Rice in every form

now as valuable as

bank notes. More so perhaps.

Remaining cereals

evidence an uptick

in healthy choices

where a few random boxes

of sugared, rainbow hued

circles sit, lonely as

parted lovers outside

a balcony. Liver

has survived a run on

plastic wrapped proteins.

Tilapia remains

displayed on ice, its gloss

turning toward slime. No

more salmon or codfish.

We are all angling for

new schools of thought about

survival, wishing we

had root cellars and cans

of last summer’s beans, corn.

All the flour has vanished.

Will we have time enough

to sort through our affairs

before this outbreak ends?

Each display case poses

questions we do not wish

to answer. As we pass,

shoppers move their carts

away. Some wear masks, gloves.

I push on to the fruit

section. There are mangoes!

* * * * *

Mary K O’Melveny, a retired labor rights lawyer, lives with her wife in Washington DC and Woodstock, NY. Mary, a Pushcart Prize nominee, is author of A Woman of a Certain Age and MERGING STAR HYPOTHESES (Finishing Line Press 2018, 2020) and co-author of the anthology An Apple In Her Hand (Codhill Press 2019). 

THE FUTURE

by Joanna M. Weston

a motel room
beige and yellow

a girl sits
on the double bed

she sees the outline
of her car outside

hears rain drumming
on its roof

her heart-beat
out of sync

the road unwinds
in her mind

there is no one
at beginning or end

no past no training
no job no money

she unclasps her hands
opens the last bottle

darkness shuts
over the future

* * * * *

Joanna M. Weston. Canada. Has multiple spiders, a herd of deer, and two derelict hen-houses. Her middle-reader, Frame and The McGuire, published by Tradewind Books 2015; and poetry, A Bedroom of Searchlights, published by Inanna Publications, 2016. Other books listed at her blog: http://www.1960willowtree.wordpress.com/

Overdose

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

No, he did not look natural in his coffin.

He is not in a better place.

Don’t compare your pain to mine. Your dog

getting hit by a truck is not the same.

You really don’t know how I feel.

Don’t say you’re devastated.

Does it always have to be about you?

Don’t ask me about Fentanyl.

Don’t tell me not to dwell.

Don’t minimize my loss.

My boy is not better off dead.

For once, let’s say it like it is:

He did not pass away.

He died.

There is no plan.

Don’t say he is at peace.

Silence is good. A hug.

Tell me you have no words.

Or tell me stories of that summer

he rode the bulls in Ogden,

all that life tightly in his grip.

for K.S-B.

* * * * *

"Overdose" was first published in THE DEAD KID POEMS (KYSO Flash press, 2019)

L.A poet Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Poetry East, 

Hobart, VerseDaily, American Journal of Poetry, Duende, Plume, Diode, Wide Awake: 

Poets of Los Angeles, and elsewhere. She’s the author of five published poetry collections, most 

recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash 

Press, 2019). EROTIC: New & Selected, publishes in 2020 from New York Quarterly. Her 

photographs are published worldwide, including River Styx, and the covers of Pithead Chapel,

Heyday, and Witness. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry 

editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com

CAGED

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

“Birds born in cages think that flying is an illness.” Alejandro Jodorowsky

He loves me because I look like his mother at 30.

I discover her photo in a secret drawer,

the same rounded hips,

and dark, wavy hair,

her pale, off-the-shoulder blouse an exact

duplicate of one he’s given me.

She has bigger breasts, deeper cleavage.

You eat like a bird! her son chastises,

passing me the cheesecake.

Suddenly it all makes sense.

Like when he cries Mama! in his dreams.

Awakens empty-armed. Abandoned.

He does not cry for me.

Shoved under our door, a flyer:

“If you find a dead bird, call 1-877-WNV-BIRD.”

Lost between the bed and the mirror, I look and look.

He hides his obsession in a stack of magazines

in the bathroom. A blur of a girl, naked,

disappearing in a doorway. It could be his mother.

He locks the door.

Plump bird. Feathered nest.

Force-fed. Fois gras.

Fattened up for slaughter.

Someone’s dinner. Someone’s daughter.

When he hits me because I look like his mother,

he pulls back his fist, takes aim at her caged facsimile.

I hold perfectly still.

We both know he could never hit his mother.

* * * * *

"Caged" was first published in Diaphanous (July, 2018)

L.A poet Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Poetry East, 

Hobart, VerseDaily, American Journal of Poetry, Duende, Plume, Diode, Wide Awake: 

Poets of Los Angeles, and elsewhere. She’s the author of five published poetry collections, most 

recently, Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash 

Press, 2019). EROTIC: New & Selected, publishes in 2020 from New York Quarterly. Her 

photographs are published worldwide, including River Styx, and the covers of Pithead Chapel,

Heyday, and Witness. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry 

editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com