Exangel

by Marissa Bell Toffoli.

Gallops circles through time.
Tinny music forever the same.
Blow a kiss, send them off.
When they look back,
will they see me waving?
Bobbing on winged horses
frozen in flight. In sight,
out of sight, in, out.
Once more around. Down, up.
A beginning for every end—
we’re chasing our own shadows.

by Lanny DeVuono. I used to say I was done with relationships, just done. But after Tom, I don’t say that anymore. I just know I’m done. A swan song, I guess. Family narratives would have me unlucky in romance, but family narratives, like any history, serve those on top. It’s true, however, that when […]

by Barry Vitcov. Portraits of angels in the sky Portraits imagined on a day Disguised as clouds floating high   Painting pictures of times gone by Painting images in blues and grays Portraits of angels in the sky   Whimsical shapes morphing nigh Dancing in shadowy arrays Disguised as clouds floating high   Sketching ideas […]

by Guinotte Wise. When the dogs were little pups falling around I made them a pen, and the owls came to look so I crisscrossed fishing line over the top of the pen to keep them from swooping in. Now the dogs are grown, they barked and barked until I finally went out to break […]

by Bruce E. R. Thompson. I saw a Texas buzzard once—a squalid bird; wings dipped in entrails; its gaze alert for thievings; salvaging what it could of the desert’s leavings; picking through the discarded and the disinterred; wearing winter plumage out of season. Absurd to watch it stagger, legs to short and neck too long; […]

by Brian Griffith. In 1895, Bibi Khanoom Astarabadi, a tutor for the children of Iran’s shah, published the nation’s first ideologically feminist book, The Vices of Men. It was innovative partly because of how it dealt with gender bias. The bigger novelty was that a book launched a public debate spanning the nation. Astarabadi wrote […]

by Nick Engelfried. And when it was all too much, Marvin would go up into the hills that surround the town of Missoula like the walls of a great, sloping bowl. And for a while he felt like he could breathe again, because in the hills were no computer screens or flashing lights or things […]

by Mir-Yashar Sevebagheri. Leaves dance, flame and golden symphony in the chilling October skies, dancing with the grace of a ballerina, which she once was. She wanders the hills and curves alone, a lone lady in lavender, strolling rugged paths, streams drying up, meandering toward their dry death. Tree branches lean like skeletons, the rain […]

by Tamra Lucid. I watched a hummingbird die like a toy with a run down battery the bird slowed down until it perched all day on the feeder stoic and reflective just outside the kitchen window. The other hummingbirds all left him alone but who could know if they acted from pity, fear or respect? […]

by David D. Horowitz. Daphne Anne Caruana Galizia of Malta. Ahmed Hussein-Suale of Ghana. Rob Hiassen of the United States. Dimitry Popkov of Russia. Jamal Khashoggi of Saudi Arabia. Until recently, all five were investigative journalists—then they were murdered. Each helped expose corruption or criminality or opposed an armed conflict, and each died for the […]