WHAT I REALLY MEANT
by DS Levy
art by AnnMarie Roselli-Kissack, “Reclining Green Nude/Charcoal”

Greetings from the deep, dark waters of Lake Annabel! Wishing you were here!
If I squint, the lake is a woman reclining underneath a turquoise sky, not worrying about anything but herself. Or maybe I’m just trying to see a woman because the lake is named after one. This one is mother, child, sister, aunt, grandma and friend to fish and turtles, seagulls and eagles, water snakes and black cormorants. The latter float near her waistline, sublimely, like submarines, here one moment–then gone. Resurface elsewhere. Her rocky bottom is strewn with seaweed and holds sands from the Ice Age that wash up on shore and slip through fingers without a care. Actually, I don’t miss you. And I don’t wish you were here.

BLACK COFFEE
by Caleb Coy
art by Jordan Sowers

My coffee tilting to my lips
opening brown eye
a moon filling
waxing full
drink
be warmed
have your fill
lips to the surface
empty the moon in one sitting

–

DS Levy’s work has been published in Little Fiction, the Alaska Quarterly Review, Columbia, South Dakota Review, Brevity, The Pinch, and others. Her collection of flash fiction, A Binary Heart, was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press.

Caleb Coy lives in Christiansburg, VA with his wife and two sons. His poems have appeared in Contemporary American Voices, Streetlight, and Paragon. He keeps a blog on language and spirituality at calebcoy.blog.