masquerade ball
under the makeup
my wrinkles
—
Archana Kapoor Nagpal is an internationally published author of books including 14 Pearls of Inspiration, The Road to a Positive Life, The Fragrance of a Beautiful Life, A Pinch of Love, Peace and Humanity, New Love: Anthology of Short Stories and The 12 Facets of a Crystal. Please visit her author page to learn more.
—
Olivier Schopfer lives in Geneva, Switzerland, the city with the huge lake water fountain. He likes capturing the moment in haiku and photography. His work has appeared in The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2014 as well as in numerous online and print journals. He also writes articles in French about etymology and everyday expressions at Olivier Schopfer raconte les mots.
I have a memory of something that never happened.
And that isn’t even the best part.
“Hey mister!” a small, dark voice shouted,
because it was small and dark
and because anyone I would ever love
was clomping around upstairs.
—
Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Dark Specks in a Blue Sky from Another New Calligraphy.
a single cloud
grazes over another
in an azure sky
the nothing and everything
of my moods
—
Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer from India. She loves experimenting with all forms of the written word, and has found her niche in Japanese short-forms and found poetry. Her works have recently appeared in Silver Birch Press, Eunoia Review, Oddball Magazine, Poetry WTF?!, Of/with and so on. She is also the founding editor of the literary & arts journal, Sonic Boom.
The town still smells of horses
long after. The dim sky senses moisture
with piqued nostrils, gathering
across lipped leaves in whorls,
perspiring. Bricks do not sweat out
the flesh that warmed them;
animal musk remains long past
the animal: rainwater canters and
snorts its way from cloud to
earth and back — gone and gone
then gone again, hooves steady
in their distance, like a patch of
road where there is always
an engine churning its flanks,
dim sky lathered and
heaving with steam.
—
Ben Meyerson’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Epignosis Quarterly and The Inflectionist Review. He has a chapbook coming out in 2016 with The Alfred Gustav Press entitled In A Past Life.
moving sale
we make a bunch
of new friends
—
Sheila Sondik is a printmaker and poet in Bellingham, WA. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies and, in 2013, Egress Studio Press published her chapbook, Fishing a Familiar Pond: Found Poetry from the Yearling. Her website is sheilasondik.com
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Elby Rogers is a native of New Castle, Delaware. He was inspired to start creating art when he discovered the drawings and paintings of the outsider artist, Gus Fink. Elby was fascinated by Gus’ antique photograph paintings where Gus would paint directly onto the surface of a tintype or daguerreotype photograph. Elby loved the idea of subverting something so quaint. He soon started creating his own “subversive” paintings using digital photo manipulation.
I’m a Big Shot. Not really now. Not any more. But once and for a considerable amount of time I was. I liked being a Big Shot and I especially enjoyed knowing that people thought that I was a big shot but I never acted the part. The truth is that I’ve always been rather shy and the second truth is that I forget people’s names and faces. So, while they thought of me as a big shot they also thought of me as being snobby which I was anything but. I took to smiling and nodding at people and as it turned out most were people I’d never met so the women thought I was coming on to them and a lot of the men thought the same. So I got another label.
What I didn’t need was another label ’cause I couldn’t live up to the first one. I gave to a lot of charities and causes and allowed myself to be photographed holding a five foot long check along with someone from the organization smiling for the camera knowing that it would be in the local paper. I could just hear the readers saying “Look. Here’s Mr. Big Shot again.”
I didn’t lose everything in the bankruptcy, but I lost a lot and it was public and there were people that came up to me and said, “So, Mr. Big Shot how does it feel to be one of us?” I passed small groups or saw people glancing at me in local restaurants and I knew what they were thinking and gossiping about.
I worked hard and made a business comeback but I couldn’t give to every charity anymore so people who solicited me and were turned down spread the word that I was too much of a big shot to help their small causes. I finally came up with a plan. Since I was a big shot in a town of fifteen thousand I decided to move to a smaller town one of three thousand or less and I have enough left over to be thought of as a big shot again.
My wife didn’t think that this was a good plan. She didn’t want to leave her friends and comfortable surroundings. She said I was making too much of nothing but then again she was never thought of as a Big Shot so she couldn’t know and she slowly began to sabotage me and my plans.
She joined the garden club and had her picture in the Local planting flowers in the town park. There was another picture when she became president of the Garden Club. She took on a leading role in Meals on Wheels and then she became the first woman volunteer fire fighter and the publicity was enormous. Pictures and more pictures. She told me that people said that I was too snobby to have my picture in the Local anymore.
She led a group knitting hats for soldiers and spent half a day a week at Hospice. She volunteered at the school library and marched with other volunteers in the Fourth of July Parade. The Local had her on the cover page as one of the towns Citizens of the Year and did a full page story with nary a mention of me.
Now we can’t move because my wife’s a Big Shot and she says the town needs her. But let me tell you this; when I was a Big Shot I was a Bigger Shot than she’ll ever be but I’m not jealous, not at all-just invisible.
—
Paul Beckman collects memories and punchboards. His new flash story collection, Peek from Big Table Publishing came out in Feb. 2015 weighing in at 65 stories and 117 pages.
You might have stayed up
All night, clicking at every link
To your daydream, searching
For a soulmate in the cyberspace
You might have enjoyed an early dose
Of original sin between sleep and wake
Before packing up all your seasonal greetings
With your luggage to catch the first plane
Or sitting up in meditation
With every sensory cell
Widely open to receive
Blue dews from nirvana
But you did not. Rather, you have just
Had another long fit of insomnia and
Now in this antlike moment, you are
Imagining a lucky morning glow
That is darting along the horizon
—
Yuan Changming, 8-time Pushcart nominee and author of 5 chapbooks, grew up in rural China, became an ESL student at 19, and published monographs on translation before moving to Canada. With a PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver, and has poetry appearing in Best Canadian Poetry (2009,12,14), BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review and 1089 others across 37 countries.
