​

         Paul Simpson CC



Shopping for Crayons

Have you ever rubbed crayons together
to see the colors streak and clot
pulpy like brain matter?
Never mind. I was just thinking
how it’s best to knock open
the clamped-down, door-shut world
so that new colors shine and sing.
What would you do
with peak caffeination?
I like to write poems in my head
while shopping with my kids.
I like to imagine strangers kissing
in stingy aisles.
I like to tease acid thoughts
till they’re fluffed like clouds.
Try to understand,
language is bait to a better life.
Ever wonder how we’ve built so much,
spent ourselves every which way?
Never mind. Pierce the eye of the cliché.
Strange we’re friends
kicking in different dreams.
I love you too and forever.

​

Scott Neuffer—author of RANGE OF LIGHT (forthcoming) and SCARS OF THE NEW ORDER—is a writer, journalist, poet, and musician who lives in Nevada with his family. His work has appeared in Nevada Magazine, Foreword Reviews, Underground Voices, Construction Literary Magazine, Shelf Awareness, Entropy Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. He’s also the founder and editor of the literary journal Trampset. His indie rock music is available on Apple Music and Spotify. Follow him on Twitter @scottneuffer @sneuffermusic @trampset
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​The Burning Bush

They want to know what I think as I stare out the window

I’m thinking a rare filet mignon

a cheeseburger

I’m thinking…….when was the last time I dropped anything

off at the dry cleaners…….

I thought the garbage went out yesterday - I thought wrong            I thought

I pulled a soulmate out from that endless sea

of men

I thought your jeans looked a little tight

a few months ago          most recently I thought you

slimmed down almost back to perfection - almost back to that buff body we began

with

and I think to myself

why

why so perfect

now                 years and years later

why am I more unkempt and you

are chiseled and razor            and yes we know           we always know

as I think along

I realize you created an inner circle of angst      that deadly ring of fire

in which our burdens from so

many yesterdays

burned through        small cinders

and sparks in the ash of here and now                             and then I think…….see what

we do when bitches are burned -- it’s the ugly

it’s the raising of the center

of Dis        and there goes a cattle truck

I wonder if they know they are going to

die                    the cows………………I try to think how do they kill them         the cows

I can’t imagine what happens       and I notice the long road to our

home I don’t even know the street names

anymore I just know the landscape     if I couldn’t read I would know by the

Flame bushes and the Ghost Maples

the Weeping Willow and

I think I know exactly where I am…….a young blonde woman jogs by perhaps a

new neighbor I’ve never seen her before she’s quite extraordinary and

I can’t take my eyes off her                it’s just a diversion

I think

just a way to stop

thinking                        but thoughts are like air my

love………….breathe them in and in and never                       enough

can’t stop                               can’t function without…….

the thought

of you is

what kills me over and

over


​

​After a Long Winter
 
The carpenter ants aren’t clever
enough.  Sawdust across threshold
gives away their terraced apartments.
Haul it away, and live another season.
 
A red door, slightly water rotted,
gave them easy purchase, and
to the colony, wasn’t this a tree
unnaturally thin and straight,
 
its casing more secure? Their first job
in the universe is excavation.
Whatever aids destruction,
prevents the forest flaming.
 
Would you be winged or sterile
wingless workers?  Do you live
amongst the colony of females
trudging, cutting, carrying? Their
 
life is factory.  Winged males
emerge on warm days in spring
like us with our mowers and rakes.
Winged males emerge on warm days
 
in early summer, and the long winter
long behind, mating!  They have left
the dark and cleaned out door. They
have left the sawdust betrayal.  Mating
 
occurs during brief flight, air, so
much air and wind after the still home
where everything was path and circle
space like a water trail meandered.
 
And even at night, more light—moon--
than the dark they were born to.
Imagine how strange even sound
might be, and then flight, so freeing.
 
Mating after which the male dies. 
What, Species, were you thinking? 
Males unnecessary past this point.
Do not enter.  Go no further.  Dead.
Their religion would call it
ascension or rapture.  Or would
they have heaven in soft moist
earth and wood?  Is every tunnel
 
homage to the ones gone home?
Every female is a winged queen
sailing the air for mating, up to now
when she who has flown, fairy
 
to nature’s moonlit dream, removes
her wings, mermaid trading tail,
angel coming down to earth. 
Supernatural called back to ordinary.
 
Wingless, she searches for
a nesting site.  Let the larvae
replace the males who died.
the new home is soft, moist,
 
decaying wood of a hollow tree,
stump, or log, our porch pillars, door
or window casing.  We can’t understand--
Ralph Waldo Emerson, be damned--
 
I swear what drives us is more beautiful.
And would the carpenter ants, swear same?
Their whitish, soft-bodied, legless larvae
later become the sterile female workers.
 
 
With thanks to the writing of  Steve Jacobs,
Sr. Extension Associate

Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences



Laura Lee Washburn is a University Professor, the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize).  Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Cavalier Literary Couture, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review.  Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri.  She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky and is one of the founders and the Co-President of the Board of SEK Women Helping Women. https://www.facebook.com/sekwhw

Ants in January


Flicked
Out glove
This winter,
Rolling
Rudiments
Of icey
Phalanx against
Raddled
Glaze
As Mr Flash
(Smugly
Summered
Cat)
Curls to a
semicolon
Before
His bowl
And across
Travertine
Ants.
Like erroneous
Full stops
Stop me mid
Sentence. Winds
Snuffling
For cold
Had scattered
Them as you
Lift skins
And I
Gut,
Discussing
Nothing,
Nothing
At our feet -
They had become
Cold
Once more and far
Too soon.

​

GJ Hart currently lives and works in London and has had stories published in Isacoustic, The Molotov Cocktail, The Jersey Devil Press, the Harpoon Review and others. He can be found arguing with himself over @gj_hart. 

​
Starved of Moonbeams

​Starved of moonbeams
at the pinnacle
of a modern depression,
I don’t care
how many broken plates
it takes to achieve
the perfect exhaustion.
 
Darkness coughs up
the toxic allure
of old velvet curtains,
and I’m fortunate enough
to know that fortune lies
in a lack thereof,
a hole in your pocket
the size of eternity
leading out onto streets
flooded with carmine light,
where the music of starved cats
and smoke-like wisdom
abide by the echoes and footsteps
of a few dawn-kites
still kicked about
by the stubborn breath of Time.

​

Gregory Ross is No One in its most collective sense, a merry mondsucher from the banks of the Ramapo River who's had the good fortune to see a few poems in print but the better fortune to never stop writing once he began. In fact, the bulk of his work has been published anonymously, on cardboard boxes, to be read, or not, by a few random souls on their way to the recycling plant. Currently working on a novel that's begun to grow indistinguishable from reality.

​My Mother’s Fish


My mother stored secret pain
in her eyes it thrashed
a hooked fish
and each sleepless night
she was reeling it in
so her sons
would never have to stand 
in that desolate place
and cast a line.

​

        Mayastar CC



Coming to Terms


    I wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming about him. I am overcome with a sense of panic every time I see a guy with red hair. No one will ever understand what I went through. This gives me a sense of isolation, but it also makes me who I am today. He has given me both a curse and a gift. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the beginning.
   Jake Smith. I met him in archery during the summer after my freshman year and automatically fell for him. We didn’t talk much once school started, and he eventually stopped going to archery, but I never stopped yearning for him.
   When Jake came back to archery at the beginning of junior year, I was overjoyed. I ended up getting his phone number under the pretense of needing help with math homework. I made excuses to text him, and eventually he started coming over to my house. Over time,  I got to know him in a way that his other friends never did. I learned that he lived with his mother and two siblings because his parents were divorced and that he had moved around a lot as a child. I learned that he was abused by his mother’s ex-boyfriends and didn’t have a close relationship with his father, who failed to be involved in his life after the divorce. Every memory he shared with me made me like him even more. And when he told me that he thought love and dating were pointless, my heart melted. I made it my mission to change his mind about love, and change it I did.
    A few weeks later, Jake texted me to make sure I was going to archery on Friday. I thought it was sweet that he wanted to hang out with me, so I made sure to go. However, he wasn’t himself when I got there. He was quieter than usual, but it was more than that. He just seemed off, and it made me worried. I knew something was wrong, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. Two days later, he told me he was ready to talk, so I told him to come over. I didn’t know what to expect when he came over, but what he told me was much, much worse than anything I could have ever imagined.
    The first thing he did was ask me out, which was great because I had been hoping he liked me back. Then, he started talking really fast. He said that he had anxiety and depression and that he was homicidal and suicidal. He said that he had had a plan to lock the doors that Friday at archery and start by taking out his brother before killing everyone else in the room. And then he grabbed my hands and told me that he didn’t go through with his plan because he didn’t want to hurt me.
    The days following Jake’s confession blurred together as I struggled to comprehend what he had told me. The realization that he was going to kill all those people finally hit me the following week when he did a Homecoming Proposal for me. His brother tagged along to take pictures of the proposal, and I felt sick. I couldn’t stop seeing him dead by Jake’s hand. I faked a smile and went to class, but as soon as they were gone, I ran to the bathroom to throw up. I had finally opened my eyes to the horror of what he had planned to do, but I didn’t know what to do. If I broke up with him, what would he do? I couldn’t bear to think of him hurting anyone, so I talked to my parents.
    We decided to go to the police the next day because we couldn’t offer the kind of help Jake clearly needed. The details of that day have faded from my memory, but I remember calling my friend Misael and breaking down on the phone. Once I started crying, I couldn’t stop. It was as if a dam had broke and all of my emotions were finally spilling out. They say that crying is supposed to help you feel better, but it didn’t. I felt weak. I was disgusted by the fact that I still wanted to be with him. I blamed myself for his arrest and I let that guilt fester into anger, which I then took out on my friends.
    I lost one of my closest friends because she wouldn’t give me space to sort through my emotions. I asked nicely to give me time to bounce back because I knew I wouldn’t be myself for a while, but she wouldn’t stop pushing me to act normal. She wanted me to crack a joke and pretend that I was fine, but I just couldn’t. Every time I tried to express to her how traumatized I was by the whole situation, she would get mad and tell me that she was “only trying to help”. I tried to be understanding and patient because I knew she couldn’t possibly understand what I went through, but I eventually gave up on trying to be friends with her.
    Somewhere down the line, my guilt twisted into something else entirely and I decided that I loved him.  I sugarcoated the memories of his plan and the trauma it inflicted. I told myself I would be lucky if he took me back, and so I was overjoyed when he told me he still wanted to date me. We became the perfect couple and spent every waking moment together. That is, until Jake went to court and was banned from contacting me, “the victim”.
    I was devastated at first, but I eventually adjusted to life without him. I no longer felt like I loved or needed him. A few months later, we were allowed to talk again, so he called me. It should have been a relief to hear his voice, but in that moment, terror and nausea washed over me once again. The memories came rushing back to me: the crazed look in his eyes when he told me about his plan, the visions of everyone dead, the day we went to the police. I knew I could never look at him in the same way; I had to break up with him.
    He took the breakup well, but he never stopped trying to talk to me. Every time he texted me, I panicked. I hated that he had that power over me and eventually blocked his number. After blocking him, I felt a sense of profound freedom, and I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.
    What happened with Jake was incredibly traumatic, but I have grown as a person because of it. I doubt I will ever fully recover from that trauma, but I’ve come to accept it as a part of me. I am stronger despite what happened to me, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Jake’s story is only a chapter of mine, and I will continue to tell it for years to come.

​

Ashlyn Easley is an 18-year-old aspiring writer and poet who currently resides in Arizona. In her free time, she enjoys procrastinating on homework by rereading her favorite books. In the fall, she will be studying a variety of things at Northern Arizona University. Direct any fan mail or critiques to her Instagram (@booknerd778).