aug-2026
Drum Tab Minus Guitar Solo
Nicholas De Marino
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We will, we will … provide a socially acceptable outlet for violence that’s effec-
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tively a proxy war and fosters intense hatred and bitter rivalries, just like George
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Orwell’s said in “The Sporting Spirit,” though it sure as shit beats actual war.
Nicholas De Marino is a neurodivergent rhyparographer. More at foofaraw and nicholasdemarino.blogspot.com.
A Quiet Claim
Steven Van Der Heyden
He had withdrawn from the world after making a choice he never defended, telling himself it was temporary, then letting years pass unchecked. He drifted in a void without beginning or end, unsure when retreat had become habit. Yet a gnawing sense persisted: his story would not be denied.
Time pressed closer, subtle and unrelenting, and he felt the quiet claim of age settling into his bones, behind his eyes. What he had postponed now demanded recognition.
In that suspended moment he understood: neglecting one’s story is no escape. The world waits for no one, and what he called silence had always been a decision.
Steven Van Der Heyden
Depressed
Michael T. Smith
A very brief canticle on depression by the unconscious mind, possibly speaking to itself in romantic strains
Stay with me, love;
don’t listen to them.
You never looked more beautiful
than in my REM.
Michael T. Smith is an Associate Professor of English who teaches both writing and film courses. He has published roughly 300 pieces (poetry and prose) in over 100 different journals.
Steal My Sunshine
Floyd Largent
When Lem Trapper reached his second set, he found a monster waiting. “Damn you! You humans ruined everything!” it howled.
Lem turned and ran. It chased after, screaming imprecations… right up until it fell into the pit. Then it started kvetching, like they all did.
Arvid Trader ran his fingers through the pelt. “Never seen the like. Some kinda bear?”
“Bigfoot. Talkers. Blame us for the moon fallin’ on the world back when.” Lem grinned. “This’un kept cryin’ 'bout missing ‘the warm.’ Claimed it used to be sunny here year-round.”
Arvid glanced at the thigh-deep Miami perma-snow and scoffed, “Hogwash.”
Floyd Largent
All Tied Up
Stuart Docherty
We’d been looking for Freddie for hours when we found him. He was still in the yoga studio, still on his mat. Something had gone wrong; he was all tied up in himself and couldn’t get free. His elbows had merged with his ankles, and his right foot had conjoined to his shoulder. His head was tucked under the crook of his knee, and he went wide eyed when we burst into the room.
“Freddie,” we said, “what’s happened to you?”
“Nothing,” Freddie said back. “The usual. You know.”
He wasn’t suffering. He was there, all mixed up, and smiling. When I stepped around the other side of him, there he was, still smiling.
“Quit looking at me like that, Fred,” someone on the other side of him said. “You’re freaking me out.”
When we tried to help him out of it, he started to weep then shout at us.
“I’m no different than you all,” he said. “Just leave me be.”
And so, we did.
Stuart is a British writer and poet based in Tokyo, where he writes, eats too much, and pretends to speak Japanese.