Stefanie KirbyPoetry Contributor
Stefanie Kirby is a bilingual poet residing just outside of Denver, Colorado. She has studied poetry at Lighthouse Writers Workshop and currently homeschools her daughters. In addition to writing, Stefanie gardens, cooks, and crochets.
Kimberly WolkensFiction, Poetry and Photography Contributor
Kimberly Wolkens is a Marketing Coordinator by day and an author of dark short stories and poems by night. She enjoys being a part of the review team for Ginger Nuts of Horror. Kimberly devotes her spare time to reading and reviewing horror stories, writing, or rustic camping. She is also a huge fan of 90’s grunge and alternative music. She lives with her husband in rural Michigan. Her works have been published by Nightingale & Sparrow, and she has short stories published in Blood from a Tombstone (1 & 2) and Don’t Open the Door anthologies.
Emily Ford
The wind is set to D minor
the sky drops its opera
first on the heads and shoulders of the land
then in our front gardens
the lyrics go like this
done we are done, bury it all
I want to take my clothes off
and lie in the snow
I want osmosis
I want to fall upon the world
the laughter is too piercing
dull it
we shiver not from cold
not always
sometimes we shiver
because we recognise
the voice that makes the pines bristle
the grass is too green, blanket
all in white, toss the air opaque
cupping mugs of brief comfort
draping multicoloured lights
across dead things and facades
block out the sun
holding each other
under duvets under blankets
block the roads, separate them
nesting in couch corners
lighting spiced candles
shuffling carbs from cupboards
to ovens to plates
darken their mornings
when the worst happens,
there is comfort in this
blustering melancholy
they will see nothing beyond their feet
Amanda Crum
At 13, he was too young to reminisce;
he did it anyway, at the behest of the citrine sky.
It was always the same when winter came.
Snow covered those summer fields and
dusk took them into its cloak of shadows, a cycle of endings
that somehow always came as a surprise. The barn lights called him home
earlier and earlier, into deepening purple and cold toes.
He slid one hand along the slushy horse fence,
a lifeline between the trees,
and remembered his mama in her bed,
how quickly her ending had come around.
How quickly they always do.
Jasmine KuznerCreative Nonfiction Contributor
Jasmine Kuzner is a writer, wife, and mother to two quick-witted kids. Her work explores how humans relate to and remember things like place, people, and the interior patterns of doubt. She lives in Silver Spring, MD, a suburb of Washington, D.C. She holds an MFA from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Matthew Miller
I wake to find it already falling.
Morning traffic
pulling the corners,
the weakest clouds
break, cannot cushion
hasty whispers.
Sighing, mouth wide to sky’s
silence, I crawl through
tangled arms, scaping
what has piled
to provide a way out.
Children despair over
what’s been buried.
All the knots and tucks,
labyrinthine beauty, a crystal
that could not be held.
I know they cannot imagine
the unique myriads building
in their own hands.
KarsonPoetry Contributor
Karson is a 26-year-old from Derry, Ireland. He currently lives in Leeds, UK, where he is working towards an undergraduate degree in English with Creative Writing at Leeds Beckett University. His poems explore ideas of identity and the self within shifting and conflicting environments. His poetry has previously been published in The Honest Ulsterman, Lighthouse and Maelstrom. Twitter: @karsy__ Instagram: karsy_. Photo: Lisa Boardman.
in a dream i kiss my father’s dead mouth
Penny Pennell
Once she woke in the middle of the night to the sound of a picture frame sliding down drywall. Discombobulated in shadows that once loomed familiar, she slipped out from his side, where he continued to sleep soundly, and made her way down the hall. Seeing the fractured frame and shards of glass, she contemplated ghosts and gravity. Barefoot, she fetched the broom and dust pan.
Eyelids heavy, she felt stuck in a dream, listening to the scrape and clatter of glass on tile, waiting to hear footsteps behind her. When a piece of glass slid through her skin, it took moments and a deep yawn before she felt it. Before she saw the droplet of blood fall.
She sucked the blood from her thumb. At the sink, she let cold water run over it and then wrapped it tightly in a paper towel.
Outside she could hear the rattle and scrape of a snow plow. Yellow lights pulsed from the other side of the curtains. She peered out from the side to see a blanket of white and whirl of snow still falling. From the hall closet, she grabbed her husband’s overcoat, slipped on her boots, and coiled a scarf around her neck.
The cold air made her gasp, made her think of pop songs and snow days, cocoa and burning the tip of her tongue. A shudder and then the memory of making crafts with her mother, watching her use the iron to melt shards of crayon between waxed pages. A kaleidoscope of color and the pungency of wax and no memory of what she was thinking about at six.
She heard the snow pack under the first step off the porch; inhaled a long breath and felt the first flakes surrender to the heat of her skin. Soon her breath found the rhythm of the wind circling her. Her spine was rigid, the cold air encircling her bare legs under the long coat, coaxing her back inside. But she walked on.
She walked the length of the driveway to where she thought the sidewalk should be. She thought about where she should be. Who she should be. Why she longed to be lost in the hush of snowfall.
The wind lulled, gathering its might, and for a moment she could hear the hum of streetlamps. When she wrapped the coat that smelled of him, of sandalwood, tightly around her frame, she felt a clump of snow slide down her spine. She kept walking.
The houses were quiet. No lights. No traffic. No moon to lure her away. Snow too deep to run through. The fire of cold numbing her toes, her skin. Yet, she kept breathing with the wind. In and out. In and out.
On the wind she thought she heard her name. She glanced behind to see him standing on the porch, incredulous at the thought of needing to call her in from outside. She threw her arms up and twirled under the snowfall. He laughed. She smiled at him and started back.
She wondered what she would remember from the last night sleeping at his side; whether it would be the sound of breaking glass splintering into corners and crevices, or the wind.
Photography, Visual Art, Nonfiction and Poetry Contributor
Jeffrey Yamaguchi is a writer, poet, and photographer exploring and experimenting in the field of book publishing.
from The Enduring Chill of a Long Ago Blizzard
Ascending Cliffs in the Distance
Harsh Drenching of an Early Spring Rain
A Found Poem from a Never Returned Book
