Winter 2025 - Vol. 22, Issue 1

Dr. Ernst Sullivan, Chief Terraforming Officer of NASA’s mission to Bahazar, sat in his office on the newly terraformed planet. He looked at his wall and observed a Venn diagram. It had four overlapping circles: “available solvent,” “energy,” “appropriate environmental conditions,” and “environmental requirements.” In the middle, the perfectly balanced center, overlapping all four circles, “habitable.”

Ernst turned quickly to the Para-Terraform 7.0, as it ran its elemental equilibrium equation. “The oxygen levels on Bahazar must decrease,” Ernst anxiously repeated three times like a wizard casting a spell. He flipped a switch; the oxygen levels were supposed to decrease…they didn’t.

How do I run away from my problems

when the problem is caged within me?

Maybe I rip out my intestines

And drag myself

my bleeding corpse

away by my

trembling fingers.

A small table, a quiet café, two old friends, a rare treat.

“Life gets so busy,” you say. I nod in agreement.

We hold our coffees between our palms

self-soothing, self-medicating, self-deprecating

as we catch up on the latest news of spouses, children, pets.

The magpies said

Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle
but what was I about to say?

The doctor said

Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle

I tried harder to understand.

I wept the first time

I saw a chipmunk

In the garden in the spring.

Ten weeks confined within cement walls,

Hospital bed my home,

Peppered with needles, tubes, and hoses.

Hope is a skill

A discipline you create

Something you choose

Even as it’s easy to lose

Hope is a weapon

Hope is a shield

Not to have or to take

If not found,

then it’s time to make

I became the craziest

Person in the room,

Then I was asked to leave,

After which, I was just another soul

Wandering toward some past goal;

I don't know if I can ever survive without my family. Yes, I know and have read that family is everything, but I chose not to believe it for a long time. I always thought I could handle everything alone. I didn't need to answer questions, listen to stories, or remember to take my medication daily. I took my family for granted, forgetting their worth and value because I was so hard on myself. In the end, I realized that the essence of life and living is love, and love is here, in my family and among my friends. I can see it, I can feel it. Every day, people face different challenges—depression, abuse, bullying—and they can only overcome these if they have a solid family, a comforting shoulder to lean on.

Living with Sickle Cell Disease (SS) is a joy killer.

i keep my mouth closed-casket

in an old facemask

my frown is concealed

their scowls are not

"Something is not quite right" became impossible to ignore, a dripping faucet in the back of my consciousness, a bullhorn blaring while I worked or cooked or wrote or tried to fall asleep. It never let up, growing ever louder. So strange; I have had excellent health my whole life. But here I sat on an exam table. It was just the beginning.

Monitor beeps, voices, footsteps penetrated the fog and I realized the procedure was over. I inventoried my body, noting the IV still in my arm, relieved to feel no pain.

Aspish river, thin water marbled in three shades of brown, and a thin bridge that arches over it. That is where Emma and Danny sat every Friday evening, legs dangling over the edge, a paper parcel of hot chips and something unsaid between them. Danny was good at careful silences that made Emma feel off-kilter, sometimes stung but unsure why; Emma was good at careful silences that stopped him pressing his fingers around her arms in the way she doesn’t like, because she’s got sensitive skin, just sensitive skin. Steam coiled up, each chip a greasy cigarette. Slow death, that. Too slow. Danny liked his tobacco more, told her the girls in the office smoked Luckies to keep a slim figure, and it seemed to be working for them. Didn’t care for opium anymore, though, since it put him to sleep.

After the mongrels' growl in that dark hour,

I loiter in the quietness of Ibadan,

In that brown-roofed city rustled with histories—

This slumbering land where my birth

Sucked blood & life out of my mother's body;

Where a stroke rattled the bones of my mother's mother.

of course. pillar semantic.

inverted hunch, suspicion

that belief was never

inorganic. regular practices

include sacral rites, radiation

of the crescent moon, plate

tectonics across several

longitudes. moreover,

snipped axial cables. but,

there is a catch. flood

-plains often occur in

the city’s architecture.

This guy wants me
to admit, to cry, to repent that it’s all been
a hoax, this pain stuff, just something
roleplayed as worry and weakness; remember
playing “Sick-Day,” your mother tucking you in
with a cool cloth, saying hush, saying rest

Night falls banishing the outside noise.

Laughing children sleep

Motors cool

Conversations fade to dreams.

My inner sounds fill the void.

The fish barely fit in Dad’s twelve-pack cooler.

It looked alien mad.

The long, skinny mouth snapped a thousand razor-sharp teeth

at anything that moved.

“I don’t want to be the third wheel,” Kathryn says when Elizabeth tells her Adam is coming over. “Y’all have fun without me.”

The pair sit beside each other at the bar closest to Elizabeth’s condo, sharing a plate of nachos. Kathryn drinks a rum and coke while Elizabeth enjoys her usual strawberry margarita.

“You won’t be a third wheel,” Elizabeth protests. She grabs Kathryn’s arm and tugs playfully. “C’mon, stay! You’ll be more like…a third leg.”

A dust of snow covers your columbarium niche,
it’s a double-wide—
enough for two.

I splurged,
used up my savings,
then yours.

There was an upgrade for the lakeview.
I thought you'd like that.
Though, if I’m honest, it’s my preference—
when I visit you now
and later, when I join you.