Scott MosesFiction Contributor
Scott Moses is an optician by day and a writer by night. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Coffin Bell, Boston Accent, Nightingale & Sparrow and Beautiful Losers. He currently resides in Baltimore, simultaneously loving and loathing humanity. Twitter/Instagram: @scottj_moses.
Linda M. Crate
i wish i could say
your lust
didn’t destroy me
like i wish i could say
my father’s absence in my
life didn’t matter
or my stepfather didn’t shatter
an already broken heart
with all his pain and rage,
but none of these things is true;
yet like the phoenix
i rose from the ashes of the person
that once i was to rise again
with brilliant new flames—
it was hard to fly for the longest time,
but now i remember flight;
and putting the past behind me
isn’t so hard a task some days but others i fly into
memories of you and i thick and curling
as the most stubborn ivy—
yet i know i will not always be tethered to the
song of your bitter death
one day my dreams will split you down the middle
where the nightmares will cease to grow,
and no longer shall your monsters mate;
then you will see the consequence
of love and light magic
working against the dark of your malignant dystopia.
Jeffrey Yamaguchi
An endless beach, truly. Miles upon miles of sand, sea, and cliffs. Not another person in sight. I was alone with my body and my thoughts, one foot in front of the other, feet sinking into the ocean soaked sands.
The alone part, wonderful. The thoughts, not so good. The clichés ricocheted inside my head, each effort to break out of this line of thinking just reinforcing and cycling back into itself the inherent problem
Is this a dream?
This is like a dream.
This is a dream come true.
I feel as if I am one with nature.
The ocean and the sky are as close to forever as I’ll ever know.
Like a dream.
Someone else says these things, you roll your eyes. You say them to yourself and you want to pull your eyes out of your own head. But I kept reaching for the clichés, because the other places my mind would trip itself into were very specific — too specific, in fact, about the nonessential but nonetheless highly stressful elements of the ongoing nonspecific nature of the work that I (we) do and from which I had made a vehement point of taking a break from:
The nonsensical clarification of a confusing explanation from an ongoing conversation at a regularly scheduled and always running-long meeting.
The repeated generalized ask for more creative for the more creative aspects of our most creative work.
The conference call invite details for a discussion about a better process for our debriefs after important conference calls.
It’s as if I was actually still at my desk staring at a screensaver of the beach that I was walking upon right at that very moment.
That is when I saw the birds.
In a dynamic formation the birds trailed up the edges of the glistening sea and danced with the continual roll and crash of waves, sheer elegance in the way they lifted their wings ever so slightly above the frothy waters in flux. They flew over me in a drift, and as soon as they passed, the speed of their traverse seemed to rapidly accelerate. I stopped and watched their flight to further. In the distance they shifted their trajectory and ascended the steep walls of the cliffs, whipping themselves out of view, beyond the vantage of my sight. They were gone, and my mind was set to glide as I imagined the birds continuing on with their flight.
I wanted this, to reach the cliffs and to see what is on the other side, and then to carry on, out of sight and aloft, heading ever higher and further into the unknown spaces of beyond.
There is no one to report what happened next. This is the true beauty of taking a walk alone that is long and far enough away — to get to the point where the things you (don’t) think and the places you (don’t) delve into and the (non)decisions you decide (not) to make are truly and wholeheartedly yours and yours alone.
I did not see the birds again. But I kept on moving, and I did reach the cliffs. And once I reached the cliffs, I continued on with the journey.
I am still there, sometimes, not always. I never find myself if I have to look.
Watch them disappear
keep moving and get closer
to not being there
Arian Farhat
with a sheath of golden
feathers guarding its underbelly
and a feared reputation
the golden eagle soared over
the dusty dry lands
perhaps my family looked
up once in a while and
saw it circling overhead,
a blessing, a curse, or a spell in reverse
but they must not have seen it
my father would have had his head
swirling with stress over the paperwork
for his family to journey to the New World
my mother was in another neighborhood
studying, working at a smaller office
my aunts were
too tired and dehydrated
from the long walk from school to home
passed bazaars with the aroma of turmeric and kabob
scarves dangling around their shoulders
as they fought for the chance to learn
my grandfather
had much anxiety
over whether or not he
could travel to the office for work
if he was caught…
my grandmother was
worried, raising her kids in such a world
knowing she wasn’t able to get up to help
her youngest as they stood on a stepstool to
make dinner when they should have been out
playing
no, my family was chained to the
ground, souls bound to the duties
they had to themselves, to their family
their only hope of flying was when they
occasionally passed the kite flyers
for in all that sorrow,
one thing
let them soar above their worries:
the Afghan art of kite flying
my father was a champion.
when he wasn’t studying,
he was kite flying, kite rising
he took his place among the golden eagles,
soared to infinity and forevermore
it would be many years after
my family would fly
to the New World, leaving behind their home
in hopes of a better one
a new beginning
and then I was born.
and for them,
for my father who worked
from the morning sun to the evening moon,
for my mother who came to this
harsh New World with a pocket full
of English words,
for my aunts and uncles,
who defied everything in order to study
and catch their dreams,
for my grandfather
who sacrificed everything,
and for my beloved grandmother,
who dared to do the
difficult, the dangerous, the impossible
in the name of love,
I fly for them.
Jennifer PorterFiction Contributor
W. Rebecca Wood
My soul has flown into the deep spaces apart from my clay abode.
Set free from the daily limits and bindings defining my existence.
What remains here, stuck in time, awaiting the inevitable decay,
is not the essence of my being, my reality, but instead a golem,
inanimate, save for the heart beat and breaths, keeping it alive.
I am separate, cut off, incommunicado, apart from the rest of the world.
My thoughts, clear to me, are confused, garbled and untranslatable to those
who sit by my side, holding my hand and whispering to me, words of comfort,
and queries of what do I recall, do I know where I am, who they are?
All unanswerable, because I have moved on, to another place, another life, another eternity.
They think my essence gone – and they are correct.
For what they see is not me, but rather, the simulacrum of daughter, teen, wife, mother, friend.
So many things to so many others – but what of me?
Melle, Maybelle, Mimi, all my names, left in the wake of my existence now.
Labels without definition – for I am separate and apart, a new creation.
I float through the abyss of the universe, touching the stars, hearing their song,
waiting to join with those I love and remember in my own way.
Dancing through the eternal, hearing the beat and rhythm of life.
Asking questions oft posed, but not answered in the here and now.
Recognizing the ultimate truths that all of us know and feel.
It will come soon now, and I will be free.
My effigy will burn, the flesh seared from the spirit,
which already having begun its journey, will rocket to the edges of the universe.
A supernova consuming the mundane reality of what was,
in exchange for the expectations of what will be.
I mourn for those who remain – theirs is the harder path,
bound to the stolid, unmoving certitude that what is seen, is.
For in my isolation, lost in my own reality, I see the intangible,
the unchartered, the obscure that remains forever at the fingertips,
The promise of possibilities yet to come.
