Reason for the Fall

by Ken Poyner

A red dog goes by on a bicycle. I don’t mind a red dog commanding a bicycle, but he seems to be ignoring all the traffic signs that should apply to bicyclists. Not that he is being otherwise reckless, just unheedful. He sits upright, focused on the road, well within the speed limit, oblivious to all the guides that are supposed to inform him of what bicyclists must do. And he is a red dog. Were he a blue dog, the environment, the import, would be different. I wave, not unfriendly, but not inviting, and the hidden curb snatches him.

Theatre Trance

by Amber Steenberg

Pierre was a lanky college graduate, 6’1, and had the hair of a Greek god. What brought him to Robin was their shared interest in film.

He found himself sitting in the back of an empty theatre, the movie murmuring as if grey were a voice. The projection’s hue pooled a mountain of contour as he turned his head, and he watched as she smiled on the edge of her seat, bright eyes glistening, and as soft breaths of laughter spilled through her teeth, which lingered in the theatre air. From this moment he fell into a trance of adoration.

Alpha and Omega

by Leesa Voth

She wished her mother had told her that breasts reveal how it begins and ends. That they emerge from the flat plains of childhood into dual summits that men would climb. That they achingly swell with milk after children arrive from the body. That their aging deflation concedes to a distant shadow of femininity.

She stood at the scanning machine.

Breathe…

An off-color secretion on the glass.

Do I have…?

She fainted. Later, the nurse gave her juice. In the dressing room, she searched the summit but hesitated before praying. For God is Man, and she just wanted her Mother.