David Olsen – Petri Dish
Petri Dish Nutrients abound in a Petri dish. A few introduced microbes multiply by dividing. Thriving in ideal ambience, numbers rise by powers of two, spread across available space. Growth reaches the edge, but still organisms pile up, each stratum striving to survive, all individuals competing for dwindling resources. Meanwhile, excreted waste accumulates where there’s […]
John Reinhart – The Butterflies of Traxl IV
The Butterflies of Traxl IV Traxl IV – known primarily for its chlorinated sea breezes & an outcropping shaped naturally into the exquisitely perfect contours of the legendary Terran Butterfly, as near anyway to the common illustrations still found in children’s storybooks – once suffered a twist of economical fate no invisible hand could muster […]
Adele Gardner – Cold Sleep
Cold Sleep (Inspired by the photograph “Cold Storage” by Richard C. Isner, included in the collections of The Mariners’ Museum.) After hours, this gallery is silent as the snow In Isner’s photograph of winter boats – As your blue lips, your mustache stiff with frost. You would have been my husband, But you’re trapped, frozen […]
Andrew Darlington – Three Enigmatic Epitaphs
Three Enigmatic Epitaphs (1) The Unbearable Lightness of Non-Being The doctrinal schism within the European caliphate was firming along a north-south divide, with the more hard-line Mediterranean mosques denouncing in particular the celestial elevator project, ferrying dearly-departed souls through the newly-opened stratosphere portal, across the Elysian Fields into the paradise of denominational choice. I was […]
John C. Mannone – Wormwood
Wormwood He goes to the only church he ever knew. The observatory entrance is littered with gum wrappers and cigarette butts. His mother’s King James, tucked in the folds, leathers his spring jacket. She insisted he take it—a worn edition bookmarked to Revelation 8. He shifts his gaze to the naked sky, it sparkles innocence, […]
