Dear Reader

Firewalker faith must be required to hop this white-hot sand and now all zones are tinged with fear of sunburn or combustion. We stretch naked in the dunes until guards arrive on decency patrol, ice cream sellers melt away, persistent surfers finally desist. The sea’s an aquarium of coke cans anyway, and plastic in the throats of birds. Intrepid snorkellers beware: just man-made stuff to find down there. --- John Short lives in Liverpool again after a previous life in southern Europe. When not writing he still persists in trying to play Greek music. He’s appeared recently in Pennine Platform, Flights e-Journal, Foxglove Journal and the Bosphorus Review. His fourth poetry collection In Search of a Subject is due from Cerasus Press in 2023.

  One of several children, the author was born in the postwar boom to parents of the middle class. The family lived in suburban New York. The boy babbled early and learned to read spontaneously. Engrossed in a book, he forgot all else. Fairy tales were insipid. He liked ancient history and archaeology—tombs and ruined cities.      Public schools provided an education. He evinced a knack for languages and memorized yards of verse. At Alma Mater University, he studied classic and modern literature, and emerged in a daze. After a year to collect his wits, he attended graduate school in architecture, and got a job.      A lucky chance transported him from Manhattan to rural Virginia, where he worked for the gentleman architect Fletcher Banister. Houses, apartments, schools, and private offices were the firm’s stock in trade. Banister had a rich wife and connections. The grand old man made social rounds and brought in clients. His assistant drew in pencil and solved problems. Professional p

spilled peas if the next day i feel a burst beneath my pinky toe lift my foot in disgust to find a dime of green mush ground into the tile’s grout i will probably not cry despite my pulsing eyelids the way my head whirs and burns and the poison swirls in my lower gut i will not growl either i have no propensity for anger i think i will sink to the floor curl up in a pea and press my cheek into the caulking hard enough to leave an impression --- Washing Up What strikes me most is how implicit it is in writing to self-condemn before you’ve even begun. Words wrung from my folds like an old dish rag, starved over the faucet only until exposed to the stream then for the wringing. The echo of a landline brr-inging  through an empty home, hiss of a lit match and the whir. Smoke wisps and dissipates the thin line of motivation dwindling. Or is it fear? A lost voice when you need to scream for safety. An intermittent lapse in judgement  When you’ve assumed yourself sound.  Can I become the next