Another recipe from the alien cookbook
Dave Sims
Dave Sims makes art and music in the old mountains of central Pennsylvania. His paintings, comix, stories, and poems appear in dozens of tactile and virtual publications and exhibits. See more at www.tincansims.com.
I will miss school, not because of the parties, but because it’s a Thursday morning in this freezing lecture hall with a big bag of balls, in a hundred different colors, and we’re grabbing a bunch of them, and putting them back, which is all fine and dandy but what’s the chance—think about it—that you draw exactly a hundred balls, and they’re exactly a hundred different colors, which is to say that everything—just everything—about the balls are different, and it’s definitely not required for class, but after frantic scribbling, he says, the probability is nine-point-three-times-ten—and then he runs out of space, so he squiggles, alludes in the last bit off to the side—to-the-power-of–minus-forty-three, which is—which is!—hands flailing for meaning now, scrambling up right beside me—the chance that—and here he’s out in a sprint to the wall—the chance that if I continue running—and we all want him to—I’ll come out on the other side. And that’s all, he says nonchalantly, not required for class, but I’m already on the other side of the wall and damn if it isn’t magical, those colors.
Jonah Sheen Tan
Jonah Sheen Tan is a recent Columbia University graduate from Singapore who lives in Hong Kong. His writing has appeared in X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine and Pithead Chapel, where it was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Both of us were small, though she,
compliant, soft as white bread,
spent two years in Beginner Swim
for fear of ducking under water.
I’d bike downhill past her house,
where she nestled among four sisters
and brothers, my hands raised
from the handlebars, showing off.
That summer, I sheared Sharon’s
dishwater blond hair at her house,
though outside, away from May,
her harried mother who’d hustle
in seconds from basement to back
yard clothesline, from kitchen to
car port. My plan: to make Sharon’s
bowl cut chic, sleek.
Feeling professional, mature,
I used a spray bottle for styling,
finished with children’s scissors.
I still see Sharon seated on a chair
in her driveway, me standing
above her, both hidden behind
her father’s black Ford truck,
beige tufts sprouting from her head
like clumps of damp hamster fur.
I cried, though we both knew Sharon
would be fine. I was confined to
our house and yard, punished behind
an invisible fence, watched May fly
by in her station wagon, her kids waving
popsicle-sticky hands out the windows,
returning from the community pool.
It was not just my aloneness, my shame.
I felt my plans for summer, plans for
a brave, expansive life, each day
cut shorter.
VA Smith
VA Smith’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in dozens of literary journals and anthologies, among them: Southern Review, Calyx, Crab Creek Review, West Trade Review, and Quartet. Kelsay Books published her first and second poetry collections, Biking Through the Stone Age, 2022, and American Daughters 2023. Her manuscript, Adaptations, is slated for publication in 2025. Her poetry has been nominated several times for Pushcart Prizes. A former Liberal Arts Excellence in Teaching Faculty member at Penn State University, she is currently a staff member at River Heron Review, writing, practicing yoga, and home chefing. Learn more about Virginia’s work at vasmithpoetry.com, or on Instagram and YouTube @vasmithpoetry.
Irish fishing boat in dry dock
Michael C. Roberts
Michael C. Roberts is a licensed clinical psychologist who has published professional and scientific articles, chapters, and books. Seeking to fulfill his creative side, he values things and scenes that are overlooked or backdrops to everyday life. His photographs have appeared on journal covers and in literary publications. He often uses cheap plastic cameras, such as the Diana, Holga, and La Sardinia for making photographs on film, but also resorts to digital at times. A photographic book on Amazon is Imaging the World with Plastic Cameras: Diana and Holga.
Cycles in black
Black and white
mnemonixART
Velibor Baco, also known as mnemonixART, is an artist from Austria who works in various mediums.
