William’s poetry has appeared in nine countries in such literary journals as The Cannon’s Mouth, Ascent Aspirations, generations and Write On!!! A student at the University of Tennessee– Knoxville, he has studied poetry in workshop settings with such poets as Jesse Janeshek, Marilyn Kallet, Arthur Smith, and Marcel Brouwers.

In his work he juxtapose concrete images with abstract notions, often write in structures such as unrhyming couplets and triadic verse, stress economy, and utilize such literary conceits as the ekphrasis poem, parallel structure and the incorporation of mythology within his work.

Ron is a retired English teacher who with his wife Jeanne divides his time between Northeastern Pennsylvania and Winter Garden, Florida.

His poems have appeared in Strong Verse, The Bijou Review, The Edison Literary Review, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Centrifugal Eye, amphibi.us, The Write Room, Pulsar and Crash. He is also the author of the chapbook HOUSES: AN AMERICAN ZODIAC, which was published by The Poetry Library and a book of poems SOUTH OF SCRANTON.

Blake Earl Ray is an adjunct English professor at Chattahoochee Technical College. He is a graduate of the Kennesaw State University Masters of Arts in Professional Writing program. He has been writing poetry for the last 10 years. His work focuses on the postmodern urban landscape of modern American life with an emphasis on the Noir elements of life in the modern South.

Arthur Davis has written 11 novels and over 120 stories of mystery, suspense, horror, romance, science fiction and mainstream fiction, all of which appear on his site, Tales of Our Time, www.talesofourtime.com.

The Arts And Entertainment Magazine/The Eerie Digest, www.eeriedigest.com, published Fat Men And Flying Saucers in October 2011 and Friends For Life in December. They featured Ronnald, The Hounds of Zegna and The Day Before Tomorrow in their January 2012 issue.

Danse Macabre Magazine published Mr. Stinkysocks in March 2012.

In 2011 he  launched Operation Outreach, The Armed Forces Collection, where a free mini-collection of 5 stories of mystery, suspense, horror, fantasy or romance Tales of Our Time gifts to veterans and those currently serving in our military.

Frank Scozzari’s fiction has previously appeared in various literary magazines, including The Kenyon Review, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, Pacific Review, Reed Magazine, Eureka Literary Magazine, The MacGuffin, Foliate Oak Journal, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Chrysalis Reader, and many others. Writing awards include Winner of the National Writer’s Association Short Story Contest and two publisher nominations for the Pushcart Prize of Short Stories.

by Timothy Bearly

He is the grit in the otherwise well oiled machine. The monkey wrench—

in the wooden gears of the loom—endeavoring to splinter the cogs.

The in-vitro injection for the barren minds that cannot conceive.

Impervious to indoctrination, he is the unabashed child that scoffs at the naked—

less endowed—emperor, and gazes back in truculent defiance at the despotic preceptor

who promulgates “thou shalt” or “thou shalt not”.

Pouring salt upon the lionized oleaginous gastropods, he reveals that they are indeed organic,

carbon based—not divine! Thus they—the charlatans and impostors—

have him burned at the stake, drawn and quartered, and tar and feathered.

However, most recently, they prefer to simply ignore, censor, and excommunicate him.

But to no avail—his voice still resonates!

Persona non grata, a companionless eagle, he is ostracized by the flock of starlings,

who all fly together and sing in mellifluous harmony.

The flock, who all hold him in contempt because he flies a unique trajectory,

and sings his own ballad.

He lives in accordance with no dogma, and laughs with scorn at those—cult members—

who consume the figurative blood and flesh of the “messiah” in holy communion.

He breaths a sigh of contempt when he witnesses them—

the brainwashed disciples of an anthropocentric god—turning the other cheek.

Indeed he prefers to teach an inverse doctrine,

in which we smite the smiters that hath smitten us—regardless of their brood.

The antithesis of Boxer—the workhorse from Orwell’s Animal Farm—

he refuses to lick the boots of those who seek to fasten him to the yoke,

for this he is labeled lackadaisical.

A mutineer, he has no desire to be a hero (stalwart soldier), and surrender his identity,

or sacrifice himself for the good any collective cause,

for this he is labeled a turncoat.

But each and every ad hominem that is hurled at him

inadvertently serves to generate his self esteem.

Each time a spineless groupling attempts to assassinate his character,

he is reminded of the fact that he is an untamed lone wolf

and they are the domesticated spaniels.

He has traveled the desolate erg of academe, to find that it contains nothing.

No precipitation, just stifling, thought-inhibiting atmospheric conditions.

Conditions where only the ostriches can survive.

Suffice to say, he didn’t last very long in the dry, empty desert,

of alma mater.

O come, All Ye faithless, come and behold him,

he who slaughters shepherds so that the sheep may roam free.

Come and behold him, he who bows his head in reverence to no…

Icon.

by Blake Ray

1

The fire could have been burning for years

before anyone noticed the gas leaching

up into the homes of the miners and

their families, because anthracite burns

longer and hotter than regular coal.

The fire may have started one night

in May when embers thrown off by a fire

in one of the abandoned pit mines caught

a vein of coal that ran down under the

quiet streets (most of the mines had closed years

before taking with them jobs and people).

Maybe, as the methane bubbled up through

the dirt for the first time, the people still

in town caught a whiff of coal smoke mixing

with the sick-sweet smell of burning garbage.

2

They thought the fire was out.

The night it caught

they dowsed it with water

and they thought the fire was out.

3

The gears that drive the world

get older and more choked with rust

every year. As they slip and catch,

its easy for a person, or a whole town, to be

forgotten—for the memory of a place

to drift away like ashes flicked into the breeze

by a smoker’s nervous fingers, and there

isn’t anyone to notice or care that anything has

been lost. The only witnesses are

the distant stars that hang meaninglessly

in the night sky, dead before

their light haunts the empty

forgotten places that lay below.

4

The mines are alive

with pagan fire.

Deliberately it

moves toward the graveyard

boiling ground water—

filling the mines with

steam and poison gas.

5

When the government came to install the

monitors that detect the gas,

they said everyone would be

safe. That was twenty years

before the ground crumbled away

under the feet of a twelve year old boy

and nearly dropped him into the fire.

6

A woman sits quietly

on a worn floral couch

in a room with faded wallpaper

and listens to a canary sing.

The windows are open,

despite the cold autumn wind,

and the steady electric eye

of a carbon gas monitor

gazes unblinkingly past her

from the far wall. Her children

are asleep and she wonders

if they can hear the canary’s song

cutting into their dreams.

They know that if he stops

the air is bad and they must leave

the house. She has told them

over and over what to do,

but still she worries. The night air

cuts through her thoughts as—

for one tense moment—the bird pauses

and then begins its song again.

7

They dug a trench

just past the cemetery

to pour slurry on the fire.

If they had worked faster,

and worked through the

holiday, it might have worked.

8

It was Valentines Day when Todd fell.

Smoke was rising from his grandmother’s

lawn in slow lazy tendrils that were

perfectly suited to encourage

the natural curiosity

that exists in all boys of that age.

Todd was just twelve years old when he fell.

The rock beneath his grandmother’s lawn

had been burned away by the slowly

spreading fire that lived in the mines,

which twisted and turned like big snake holes

under the streets and houses in town.

Todd grabbed a thick tree root as he fell.

His cousin saw him fall from inside

and was able to pull Todd back from

what would have been his cremation

if he had fallen just a few more feet.

9

The government bought out the few people

who still had homes or businesses in town.

That was their answer to the signs hanging

in windows and posted on cars that read

“Save Our Town” in red, hand-painted letters.

They put a detour on the highway so

that cars could make it around the sections

of Route 61 where the asphalt had

buckled and erupted from the pressure

of all the steam from boiling groundwater.

They put up a sign on the edge of the

brown field—where the carbon monoxide

coming up from the mines have killed everything—

with a warning about unstable ground.

Most of the buildings in town have succumbed

to government bulldozers. The few that

survived stand rotting along empty streets.

by Blake Ray

Walking alongside the old railroad tracks

(ties bleached the color of blond coffee

by fifty summers of relentless August sun)

I feel the rhythm of this town in my veins again.

It’s a feeling that I haven’t had since I left.

It mingles with the summer smell of vegetation

and the ambient sounds

of wasps buzzing in the distance.

And yet, at the edge of it all, I can feel

October closing in.

I went to a bar I used to frequent

where the drinks were cheap and strong

and the bartender was surly,

but as I wound my way down into

the charnel darkness that used to

hold a dive worthy of our youthful delusions

of rebellion and danger,

I was greeted by the soft glow of tea lights

lining the new bar that had replaced the

pitted wood we had drank at years before.

I wanted to feel cheated by time,

to feel my teenaged three-chord angst

running up my spine, to feel outrage and loss.

But I didn’t.

Instead, as I turned to leave,

I felt immeasurably young—

surrounded by buildings, and trees, and ideas

that would be there long after I was just a shade.

by Blake Ray

In the parking lot of the convenience store,

a loose stone

rolls away from my boot

across the asphalt,

shattering the brittle peace

of a Sunday afternoon.

Dead leaves and cigarette butts

dance in whirling eddies

stirred up by an apathetic

breeze, that brings with it the

smell of wood smoke

and a veiled threat of

the approaching winter cold.

Small towns have always made me nervous.

I am aware of myself and my voice comes slowly,

and without grace. I feel like a spectator at a funeral

or like a priest with no faith taking confession.

Inside the store, a woman

sits behind a finger-smudged

shield of thick plastic watching

my interloping face

with voyeuristic fascination.

She sells me 

cigarettes and a coffee

without speaking,

and I am sure

I felt her stare following me,

shadowing me

to my car,

onto the highway,

out of town,

and all the way to the county line.

by Bruce McRae

Even Mr. Death takes a holiday.

A languid picnic in a minefield, a day trip

into Dachau, a little tour of the killing fields.

The grim nature of his work aside,

he’s much like us in many ways,

putting his trousers on one leg at a time,

fidgeting impatiently in long queues,

idly enquiring into the state of the weather.

Poor Mr. D., who’s been working the night shift

for longer than anyone cares to remember.

His wife, departed under mysterious circumstances.

His children, who never write, who never call.

No wonder he throws himself into his job.

Small wonder he loses himself to the moment.