Poetry

By Isaac Payne

Train of darkened bones
passes bear’s winter hole.
Sleepless forest breathes smoke.

Isaac Payne is an English and writing graduate. He is also a graduate of the Alpha Young Writer’s Workshop, and his short story “The Pursuit of Luck” received an Honorable Mention in the 2017 Writers of the Future contest. His short fiction has appeared in The Corvid Review, and he was a panelist discussing Eastern and Western speculative fiction at the 2018 Northeastern Modern Language Association Conference. Deviation

By Aaron Suranofsky

Boldly striding into the snow,
swallowed up to her ears
protruding like two curly radar dishes,
snow exploding in clouds
as like a plush black bear,
she bounds above the surface,
two eyes locked on something they cannot see
softly swaddled in the sheet set just for her.
Sharp snorts of snow echo something softly squeaking
like with her stuffed duck
she’s already training,
plowing her little muscles through the weightless snow
to catch her little toy
who squeals a sound so satisfying
as its twisting grey body is flung to the light,
only to disappear
into a crimson imprint
and reappear again
in a rave of crystal confetti
over
and over again,
until the sweet squeaking
suddenly cuts off,
as she lays in the bed she beat for herself
with a mole crushed and dead
hanging from her jaws.
 

asdf

Also by Aaron Suranofsky: Ripples, Simply Kitty

By Taylor Tarahteeff

At the San Francisco Exploratorium,
we fifth-graders crowd around the displays:
an indoor tornado, raging
within a massive crystal tube,
searching for Kansas;
a musical tesla coil, extending tendrils of light
out into the arched ribs of the sprawling complex;
a massive model steamship, puffing and squealing
like the smooth ceramic teakettle
Mother burned herself on this morning.
 
Reid follows me.
We look like a mirror exhibit
with our identical face, gait,
and bewildered expression of amazement.
When he sees the cow-eye dissection—
a gristly ball of muscle and foul liquid—
he stands behind me (the second time that day)
as if my presence alone sterilizes slimy gore.
 
He follows me close as we pass down
an eerily empty hallway.
There's a simple door. The sign reads Optical Illusions.
I shoulder through and into the antechamber,
mirrors, checkerboards, fading lights in a dim gallery,
hallways bent and warped. We push onward,
to a room with concrete piers stretching out,
an endless forest. Hopelessly lost,
I spy an exit door to the outside.
 
“Don't,” Reid says as I reach for the handle,
and in his wide eyes I can barely see the reflections of
the endless fog-soaked streets of San Francisco
where a set of twins stumble alone.

Taylor Tarahteeff was the editor of the 2020 issue of Baily’s Beads. He graduated last year with an interdisciplinary arts degree. Why San Franciscans Like the Fog

By Bonnie McMillen

Angel
Baby
Coos and gurgles

Damp diapers
Exhaustion
Fantasy of motherhood
Gone
 
Hide the tedium
I feel great
Just look at my
Kindness
Love oozes from every pore
 
Motherhood
Never appreciated
 
Opening
Pandora’s box of
Quaint myths
Rest, a fond memory
 
Sing the lullaby again
Tiptoe to the
Umbrella on the                                             
Veranda                                     
Where wine waits
X-ing out the loss of
Youth and yes
Zest.

Bonnie McMillen is a native of Bradford and spent her younger years playing around the Harri Emery airport on Dorothy Lane. While working as Director of Student Health at Pitt-Bradford, she became interested in writing poetry and short stories. This interest has continued into a busy retirement. Dear Harri Emery Airport, McKean County 1955, Tales from the Female Crypt