This week’s artwork is by Julian Cloran

Ennui
by Sue Powers

Listless, languid, eyelids heavy in empathy, food called out to her, insistent, nagging, moving her to pull out lemon bars, Häagen Dazs, mozzarella cheese, sourdough bread, a leftover vegetable curry and rice entrée now five days old and her secret stash of brownies, and wash it down with a diet cola and her bottle of save-for-an-occasion Riesling. Wiping the last crumb from her chin, she laid her head onto the table, belly painfully extended, bile rising to her throat, and still, had there been any thing left, her emptiness would have devoured it.

If Turkeys Could Talk
by C. F. Carter

When you approach her house and I try to warn you, you hear only warbles and honks.
You ignore me when I bend my wing towards the barn, where cars rust in the darkness.
When I try to lead you to the well where badges soak in its cold depths, you push me aside with a shiny jackboot.
Like a strutting tom, you ring the bell, and a heartbeat later she shoos you off the porch.
She scatters cracked corn in the yard, while you beat your wings and kick up dust, erasing what I’d scratched in the ground: witch.

Drunk Mothers
by Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri

She asked her son to take her to the liquor store. Again. She hated the look in his eyes, eager to please. As if this could patch everything together. She always lost her temper, passed out. Her career as a pianist had fallen flat. She felt a mélange of anxiety and rage, the sense of something valuable taken. “I’ll take you,” he said. She felt gratitude. Anger. She wanted him to resist and oblige. She wanted him to take her, she wanted him to hide the keys. She wanted him to leave. Run fast. “Let’s go,” was all she said.

Tomatoes
by Daryl Scroggins

Don’t go, she thought, her face pressed to the door she had closed against him. She imagined him walking down toward the road, his new car by the mailbox. She saw herself opening the door—saw him turning to her, unable to go on, starting back.
But she didn’t open the door. She went to the kitchen and got ice for her eye. Poured herself a glass of water. She saw, then, the brown bag of tomatoes she had selected for him from her garden. But when she glanced through the peephole again, everything just looked round, like a road.

What is Death Like?
by Xavier Barzey

A German cockroach lay stiff on its back as its mesothoracic legs flickered in slow motion on the front porch. “What is death like?” she asks intently with an innocent gleam in her little eye. I looked at her, uncertain of what to say. I reflected for a moment, “uh… well, I suppose it may hurt at first, but then you begin to transcend beyond the present and soon you’ll feel nothing.” Perplexed, she cupped her hands around the roach and stroked it softly on its back. It lay rigid. “There,” she says. “He’s okay now.”