April 2024 | poetry
after Joy Harjo
Clear a space for yourself. This includes time.
No thinking, no ideas, no answers, no logic, no reasons.
Stand against productivity.
Don’t be afraid to put the needs of others out of your mind.
The light, predawn or evening, works its private magic. This counts.
Collect materials. Watch sidewalks for doll parts or rusted washers.
Go to flea markets. Buy dusty, moldy, chipped, beaten, time-worn pieces.
All junk has potential.
Don’t forget the odd family scraps; you don’t even know how you ended up with them. (A banknote from Venezuela for Dos Mil Bolivares or a moldy photograph with “Turku, Finland” penned on the back?) Let their hidden stories prance on without you.
Indulge in setting up. Admire your tools: Scissors. Paper. Water. Glue.
You can love simple things here.
Do not tamp down your excitement.
Your paint brushes are a group, a chorus. All different heights and haircuts, they applaud you.
Here there is no shame. You do not have to know anything.
Your hands and eyes know everything.
Begin.
When you don’t have a plan, the options are infinite and equal.
Glinda’s sparkling wand or Lana Turner’s head? Make your choice.
Glue it down. Bam!
You have created a point in the universe.
As you peruse your materials looking for that pterodactyl, you will often find something else. The perfect blue circle. Let it in.
There are no mistakes. Things just turn out different.
You are free to crack yourself up.
Respect the messiness: the gluey edges, the crooked cut.
Become lost. Nothing matches.
Kim Farrar is a writer and collagist. Her poetry collection, The Impossible Physics of the Hummingbird, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2025. Her chapbooks, The Familiar and The Brief Clear are available from Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, and other literary journals. Her essays and creative non-fiction have been published in Midwest Review, Illness & Grace, Voices of Autism, and Reflections. She was a semi-finalist in the Grayson Books Poetry Contest in 2022 and 2021. Her chapbook of poems and collages was a semi-finalist in the 2022 New Women’s Voices contest. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
Kim Farrar
April 2024 | poetry
Humming like a subterranean network sized computer is a fear
that if I ever meet my creator, They will not resemble me –
only appear as an abstract painting, less resolution than myself
and I will look at Them, and They, unthinkingly will stare through me
and, I will find myself to be the one more alive. Our virtual creations
won’t make me question if their bytes are analogous to my experiences.
Those perfect, idealized pixels will remain dead. Then,
I will have to keep living, having extravagant celebrations,
quadruple tiered wedding cakes, bouquets of tulips,
chocolate rabbits. Which is all to say, great tragedies can be a moment.
Elias Diakolios holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University where he served as Poetry Editor for Columbia Journal 59. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in New Notes Poetry, Pidgeonholes, Epiphany Magazine, Bookends Review, Juked, and others. Currently, he teaches in the Writing Department at Montclair State University and works on linocuts in his spare time.
Elias Diakolios
April 2024 | fiction
You’ll never guess what I just found. Ann steps over the pile of boxes blocking the doorway, a small black object in her hand. Haven’t seen one of these in years.
She hands it over. An old floppy disc.
Bloody hell, me neither. Where was it?
Found it unpacking a box of your old college stuff. Any idea what’s on it?
Not sure. He turns it over. There’s a crack in one corner, and an illegible red scribble on the label. Chloe Hide’s handwriting. Oh.
The class was paired into teams. He and Chloe were put together. For the whole afternoon she sat beside him, shoulders bare in the muggy heat, red ponytail down her back. When she stretched her arms over her head, he craned forwards to peek at her breasts, turning away as she relaxed, afraid she’d catch him staring. They talked and he made her laugh. At the end of the lesson, they saved their work on a disc and he promised to look after it. Outside, the wind tossed her hair over her shoulder, the clear sky glinted in her eyes. Ask if she wants to go get a cup of tea, or something to eat maybe. Just ask her.
OK, great. See you tomorrow. Her smile showed her braces.
He watched her turn the corner, then ran the other way for the bus. Chloe walked home alone. The police recovered her two weeks later.
He strokes his thumb across the red ink. It doesn’t smudge. It dried decades ago.
It’s nothing. Just some old college junk.
I’ll throw it out then if you want. Can’t use it for anything. Ann holds out her hand.
No. It’s fine.
Ann shrugs and goes back upstairs. He sits down, and slides the disc into his pocket.
Sam comes from East Yorkshire but now resides in Lancashire. He recently completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Lancaster University, and has had two books published, one in 2020 by Alban Lake, and the other in 2018 after it won 1st Prize in the National Association of Writers’ Group’s 2017 novella competition. When not writing, he likes cooking, hiking, and spending time with his fiancé and his cat.
Sam Graham
April 2024 | Best of Net nominee, nonfiction
The barrio adjacent to the state’s only Catholic university held Grandma’s ChaCha yellow house became a hub for elaborate yard sales. With the sun shining year-round, children would take barefoot to the rows of front yards down the block. The parents wrangled their kids to visit our yard sale in hopes of finding a new sweater for the coming school year or a pair of smudged Converse knock-offs.
I was too little to be of any real help to my mom, grandma, and Aunt Sugar who meticulously planned every aspect of each yard sale. “The cord needs to wrap around the tree tighter to hang the clothes.” “Put the toys in this box.” “Stack the books over on this table.”
While they set everything up, the radio blasted KOOL 60s Oldies. I loved to twirl under the shirts hanging from the clothesline and pretend that my dad’s old button-up was my dance partner. My cousin interrupted my fantasy and squirted me with a super soaker. We chased each other in between Spanish-speaking customers. I could hear Aunt Sugar and my mom yelling at us to stop. We didn’t stop. We ran carefree, not understanding that one day this memory would cause a longing to be that barrio child again.
Sarah Chavera Edwards is a Mexican American writer based in Phoenix. She is both a professional freelance writer and creative writer. Her work has appeared in The Dewdrop, The Nasiona, The Roadrunner Review, and Terse Journal. Her creative nonfiction piece, “Mujeres Divinas/Divine Women,” was the winner of the 2021 Nonfiction Prize through The Roadrunner Review. The piece was then published in an anthology about life and death in 2023. Her subject matter deals with Latino issues, mental illness, and memoir.
Sarah Chavera Edwards
April 2024 | fiction
The concert hall took a direct hit during the first week the city was shelled. Sandbags piled alongside the walls protected the stained glass windows of the former church, but the roof was punctured and the interior set ablaze. With rockets landing in the quarter and water mains shattered, the fire burned unabated. When the fighting ended days later, crews began to sift through debris. Combing through the ashes, broken plaster, and fallen brickwork, the orchestra conductor located the thick bound volumes of old concert programs. He dusted them off, smiling to himself. Their history had been saved. The roof and rows of charred seats could be replaced. Fortunately, most of the musicians had taken their valuable instruments home with them. Digging deeper, he found stacks of music stands, ash-covered but intact. Beneath them, though singed and water-stained, sheets of music for the Friday concert were still legible.
Looking at the soiled pages, a thought came to him. Three violinists lived within walking distance. If they were home, if they had their instruments, and if he could contact them, they might be able to play. The orchestra had not canceled a performance in forty-eight years. As conductor, he had never missed a concert. It would be a haphazard orchestra for a haphazard audience. A few violins would barely be heard over the distant explosions, sirens, and the barking of stray dogs. But they could perform, their history maintained.
That late afternoon, with snow falling, two men and a woman in overcoats, played the Brahms violin concerto on the steps of the shattered concert hall. A half-dozen shivering rescue workers clustered around a small fire listened, some closing their eyes. A pair of reporters recorded the orchestra with their cell phones, broadcasting the performance to the refugees, the fighters, the relief workers, the traumatized, and the bedridden of Kiev.
Mark Connelly’s fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, Milwaukee Magazine, Cream City Review, The Ledge, Smoky Blue Arts and Literary Magazine, Change Seven, Light and Dark, 34th Parallel, The Chamber Magazine, Mobius Blvd., and Digital Papercut. In 2005 Texas Review Press published his novella Fifteen Minutes, which received the Clay Reynolds Prize. His most recent short story “That Forgotten Monday” appeared in The Chamber Magazine in October 2023 and was published in Möbius Blvd in December.
Mark Connelly
