The answer that always comes inspired this poem. I wanted to share what gives my life meaning and makes me the most happy with the hope it helps others not only cope, but flourish. But as you know, I’m playful—even with the most serious of topics. The joke of this poem, confining such profound philosophical ideas to a sonnet. You’ve been a regular contributor to ScribesMICRO, and your poetry covers a broad range of themes and tones, from the deeply introspective to the light and humorous—and some that are both. I especially enjoy when you turn a reader’s expectations on their head and take us in a new and thought-provoking direction. What do you find inspires both your poetry and your writing in general? Pure love of the English language. How I can express volumes in a few choice words. That poetry is the language of my soul. That if I’m lucky and get the words right, I can reach right into your heart, grab you and pull you into mine. For readers who enjoy this poem, where else can they find more of your work? In ScribesMICRO! Thank you! I was thrilled you nominated “Ouroboros Frayed” for a Pushcart Prize. More of my recent poems also appear in Wordgathering, Santa Fe Writer’s Project, New Mobility magazine, and Poetry for Ukraine. I’m on Medium as well, which was a great platform to get me writing again. Currently, I’m looking for a publisher of my first chapbook—an autobiography in poetry. I’m also writing a coming-of-age screenplay about a high school varsity diver who becomes a paraplegic. Hollywood needs stories of disabled people living lives like everyone else and not as stereotypes. Getting a movie deal is rare, but I continue to dream… |
The Alone Times by Matthew P.S. Salinas Thomas spent all of his time alone. In a short time, he became unbearably lonely. The desire for warm conversation and friendly countenance was unsatisfied. Thomas brought himself to travel to the local pub on a Friday evening with the notion of finding someone, anyone, to converse with.
It took fifteen minutes before Thomas found himself in the corner of the bar. There was nothing but an abject air which hung around him. He had grown accustomed to those alone times. A man sat down beside him. “Nice weather today isn’t it?” Thomas stood up and left without another word. * * * Matthew P.S. Salinas is an author from Illinois who writes short stories in all genres and poetry. He has two published works and is continuing to publish two more books by the end of the year. He lives with his wife Jordana and their two cats.
Please Hold by Wayne Scheer While her daughter napped peacefully in the upstairs bedroom, Kate sipped merlot in her recently remodeled kitchen, the Italian marble countertop glistening in the sunlight. Did she have a right to feel sad? She rang up her older sister, Karla.
“You’re not happy?” Karla always sounded annoyed. “I’ll trade my bills for yours. I’ll even throw in my husband.” She called her mother. “Mom, when did people stop calling me Kate?” “Hi, Kathleen. How’s my granddaughter?” Kate poured another glass of wine and dialed her husband’s office. “Kathleen, please hold,” he said. “I have someone important on the other line.” * * * Wayne Scheer has been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Nets. He's published numerous stories, poems and essays in print and online, including Revealing Moments, a collection of flash stories. His short story, “Zen and the Art of House Painting” has been made into a short film.
Peppermints by Robert Runté My wife’s new purse is real leather and large enough to hold her laptop. The old, small purse still jangled with the coins, pens, and other detritus left abandoned within it. I carefully vacuumed it out before putting it into the donation bin for Christian Thrift.
She mocked me for troubling to clean it. But my three homemade, counterfeit peppermints—their wrappers worn thin by constant rubbing against the coins—had broken into chunks, and I couldn't risk any lethal crumb remaining in the purse when donated. So that hadn't worked. I shall have to think of a new plan. * * * Robert Runté is Senior Editor with EssentialEdits.ca. A former professor, he has won three Aurora Awards for his literary criticism. His own fiction has been published in over forty venues, four of his short stories have been reprinted in “best of” collections, such as Canadian Shorts II.
Dog Days by Susmita Ramani The kicker is Buster, a mastiff-Lab mix. Last week, he was eating a Milk-Bone from my hand, wagging his tail, and gazing at me with those trusting, chocolate-brown eyes… Now he’s blowing a whistle and sharply repeating that I must relocate to a Human Pod. I shake my head. “Please don’t make me. I could be your assistant.” He raises a paw. “Franny, let me stop you right there. I’m fond of you, but now that we animals run the planet, we feel it’s to our benefit to make a clean break from humans.” I sigh. “You’re not wrong.” * * * Susmita Ramani’s fiction has appeared in The Wondrous Real Magazine, 365 Tomorrows, The Daily Drunk, and other publications. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two daughters, and twelve pets.
The Relationship: 7:30 a.m. Thursday by Victoria Hochman The little girl is looking out the window. The front door flings open and she runs out. Her father is a step or two behind. She looks at him and he nods. She races down the walk to the street. The dog rewards her with a wag of his stumpy tail. She takes this as a sign and leans down to pet him.
I wince, knowing he is not always friendly. But the pure joy in her eyes stops me from pulling back. My leap of faith is rewarded. The dog wriggles his plump little body, eliciting peals of laughter from the little girl. Her father smiles, and she runs back to him. He waves goodbye and they get into the car. * * * Victoria Hochman is a Public Relations Manager at Thompson & Bender in Westchester. A former reporter and editor with Newsday, she received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for Newsday’s coverage of the TWA 800 crash in July 1996. She enjoys playing guitar and writing songs and rescues homeless animals.
|
The Last Flay by Jason P. Burnham “You sure you wanna wipe your remaining six memories?” the technician asked.
Heath considered what he remembered. Spreading his wife's ashes at the lake in the hills, the smell of mom’s chocolate chip cookies, Roofus’s neck scruff soft between his fingers. He sighed wistfully. Then came the others. The awkward thing he'd said to that girl in high school, watching a war start, climate-related flooding. He shuddered. “Not taking any chances of a bad one being the last one left. Flay ’em.” The technician initiated the CerebroLaser and burned away Heath’s last memories. After a short eulogy, organ harvesting began. * * * Jason P. Burnham is an infectious diseases physician and clinical researcher. He loves many things, among them sci-fi, his wife, sons, and dog, metal music, Rancho Gordo beans, and equality (not necessarily in that order).
The Stranger by Austin Alexis The football field across the street from my high school speaks to me. I sit on a hard plastic chair gracing the school’s second floor and gaze at the field. It wears a chain-linked fence and a wig or toupee of green grass-hair. Alluring. Teasing.
I should be listening to my teacher as he angrily lectures, putting down contemporary writers, but my ears embrace the whispers issuing from the field, the moist glistening ground that is like a neighbor I’ve had a crush on for a year, though I’ve never even spoken to the person. * * * Austin Alexis is the author of Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, Detroit, Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award) and two chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada: Lover and Drag Queens and For Lincoln & Other Poems. His flash fiction and reviews have appeared in Flash Boulevard, Home Planet News and elsewhere.
Exodus by rani Jayakumar The words didn't really want to leave the book. When they decided to go, it was because the punctuation had left. No one wanted to read words without them, period. They didn't question it. Parenthetically, the words were a bit lonely with all that space.
Why did the punctuation leave? They were never sure, but rumors spread that punctuation marks were drafted for art works, street signs, or (they shuddered to think) cartoon expletives. The truth was more prosaic: they were tired of being bracketed by letters and decided to escape, an endless exodus of ink, punctuated only by silence. * * * rani Jayakumar lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been in Honeyguide Magazine, Ab Terra, Secret Attic, Vine Leaves Press, and others. Her upcoming novella will be published by Running Wild Press. More work can be found at okachiko.wordpress.com.
Popcorn by Shoshauna Shy Liselle wished her husband had left her for somebody striking, demure—anybody twenty years younger, blonder. Or even for another man. That would be preferable to arriving at Jared’s new apartment to drop off his mail, and finding him in his bathrobe at two in the afternoon researching pandas on the internet, whistling and self-satisfied. Beside the recliner, a bowl of half-eaten popcorn.
“Like a cup of coffee?” he offered. He knew she didn’t drink coffee. And now she knew his impetus for leaving was not to craft a different life. Jared simply wanted the same life. Without his wife. * * * Author of five collections of poetry, Shoshauna Shy's flash fiction has recently appeared in the public arena courtesy of Friday Flash Fiction, Rathalla Review and Nixes Mate Review. One of her flash was included in Best Microfiction 2021. She was also one of the seven finalists for the 2021 Fish Flash Fiction Prize, and will be included in the Bath Flash Fiction Award anthology in 2022.
Logic by Joyce Rachelle One of the things her mother always told Jane was to always finish her food because other kids had nothing to eat and had to feed off the trash. Her young mind searched for the logic in this, and concluded that it would surely help those kids more if she simply put all of the roast chicken dinner in the trash for them to find—salad, sides, and all.
She planned her move that night. While everyone slept, Jane snuck into the fridge and emptied all of its contents into the trash out of the pure kindness of her heart. * * * Joyce Rachelle grew up in the Philippines, where she published All the Lines, an anthology of traditional poems, and Sewing Figs, a story in verse. She later wrote her first novel, The Language of Angels. She lives in Surrey in England and divides her time between hospital work and writing.
|
The Ultimate Investment by Mary Keating If you think Time is something you can buy
or can recapture once it becomes past you’ve been bewitched by an accepted lie and destined to lose all, to finish last If you think money’s the sole currency that measures what your life is all about then you’ve lost your sense of Time’s urgency and your life may amount to no account Your life is meant to flow in Love’s river undammed by any thought of its return It’s then you’ll have more than you deliver and draw beyond what you could ever earn I hope you recognize the purpose of your life here — it’s to reinvest in Love * * * Mary Keating is a writer and lawyer with a solo practice in Darien, CT. Her writing appears in New Mobility magazine, Wordgathering, and Medium.com. Mary lives with her husband Dan in Connecticut.
|
Nine Lives Marriage by David Henson We hover near the ceiling.
The doctor pounds the chest of our marriage, shouts Clear! Two paddles jolt the body. Again. Green lights flicker, dim. The surgeon says she’s going in. We drift down for a closer look, wince at the intersection of scalpel and skin, look away at the saw and spread of breastbone. The doctor takes the heart in her hand. Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. Release. Call it. She turns and strides away, shaking her head, snapping off her gloves. Behind her, the marriage opens its eyes and gives us a big wink. * * * David Henson and his wife have lived in Belgium and Hong Kong over the years and now reside in Illinois, USA. His work has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions and has appeared or is upcoming in various journals, including Fairfield Scribes, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, Moonpark Review, Gone Lawn, Fiction on the Web, and Brilliant Flash Fiction.
|
Adult Education by Karen Southall Watts College choral performance
Every third soprano was hung over Including me. No one went to morning bio lab Until exam day, When a line of bedraggled faces Waited to guess genus and species. Years later, my own students Have different excuses. A second job, or a child Vomiting all night, And they promise This is the last time They’ll ask for an extension. We always know it’s not. Twenty-four months of a modern plague We’ve all learned about Zoom fatigue, And the real definition of essential worker. Learning is a luxury. It’s all about grades and credentials. Assignments just more jagged stones On the road to survival. * * * Karen Southall Watts is teaching, writing and reinventing her life. Her flash fiction and poetry have been featured at Fairfield Scribes, Free Flash Fiction, The Drabble, Sledgehammer Lit, 101Words, Soren Lit and The Chamber Magazine. She is also the author of several business books and articles. Karen is a 2021 Pushcart nominee. Reach her at @askkaren on Twitter.
|
East and West─ by Wayne Scheer I've been trying Tai Chi
for the past few weeks. The slow, focused movements should aid my aging joints, especially after working out at the gym straining and stretching and weight lifting. I think of it as my attempt to blend East and West. As a Westerner, I find it hard to accept "lotus flower emerging from muddy water" offers a workout equal to pull-ups and leg lifts and bicep curls. I continue my experiment with Eastern calisthenics as well as my Western no pain, no gain workouts. One calms, the other exhausts: like Whitman, I contain multitudes * * * Wayne Scheer has been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Nets. He's published numerous stories, poems and essays in print and online, including Revealing Moments, a collection of flash stories. His short story, “Zen and the Art of House Painting” has been made into a short film.
A Boy by Jaden Pierce Brian lives at home with his mom
He’ll talk to you for days even as you try to get away Going on from subject to subject You’ll lose track of what you’re even talking about Voted class clown but not for being funny Trying to invite himself to other people’s plans and all that One time I heard this kid got so angry he hit him on the head with a frying pan And the worst part is He lives in a big fancy mansion People always trying to use his house Take advantage of the man I pity the poor soul I actually kind of liked him * * * Jaden Pierce is a young, emerging Asian American poet and writer from the DC area. His poems “Comparison,” “Rhythm” & “Scare” will appear in Dreich Magazine.
|
The Poets' Salon
If you're looking for more poetry, including a place to read your work, receive critiques, and explore poetic forms, check out The Poets' Salon. Two editors of ScribesMICRO, Edward Ahern and Alison McBain, run this free poetry workshop. Meetings take place on the second Saturday of every month from 10 a.m. to noon EST via Zoom. More info, including how to sign up for the poetry workshop, can be found on The Poets' Salon website or via Meetup. |