Drip Castles Teardrops of North Carolina sand bite into Pure pink skin, The color of raw sunsets—of a conch’s innards—of a teething child’s gums.   A sunburnt fist Plunges into a wan Bucket full Of sludgy sand.   The Atlantic water on top of the Sunken soil sloshes like Stomach acid.   Fistfuls of sopping slush Form spires of mire, tilt(yards) of silt, ditches of grit—graves of gravel.   Alas, pure pink castles of Muddied fancies Disappear   In a wave Of briny ocean breakers Dissolving into a stump of once-pink youth.   Snow Questions Spring Yellowed school books say Spring makes all fair beings grow, do ashen teachers see sun’s rays—sickles, shred Snow? Sharp grass blades impale, sting? No frail child, browning slush, murky backwash from tires muddied your thoughts. Infant soft moss Spring…

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I RIDE ELEVATORS. To reach my office in downtown San Francisco I take the escalator from the ground floor to the mezzanine. From the mezzanine I ride an elevator from elevator bank A to the 21st floor. From the 21st floor I switch to elevator bank B and ride to the 33rd floor on which my office is located. If I arrive in the building between 8:30 and 9:00AM, multiple stops at various floors extend my ride by six to ten minutes. I rely on gearless traction electrical thrust to deliver me to work. In order to arrive on time I must also add elevator travel time to my bus commute. Eighteen minutes plus twelve minutes equal thirty minutes. Of course, I still add an additional six to ten minute wait for the bus which,…

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Fusion A light Sinks into lethargy, Dying for A fusion with darkness.   Sunlight The sunlight Bathing in a river; Bubbles of frolic Dancing on the shifting surface.   Commotion The strings of commotion Stretched Beyond time and space Binding the universe In a bundle Of knotted ciphers.   Thoughts Thoughts Scamper across The mind, Colliding, Falling over each other — Stampede.   A Bumblebee Drunk on nectar, A bumblebee Whirrs around, Soaking in The sunshine, Zigzagging Along the hedge, Amazed at the beauty Of the morn. ***   Akshat Shukla is a research scholar at CSJM University, Kanpur, India. He is working on Ecocriticism for his research thesis. Apart from research writing, he writes poetry and fiction, in which he became interested  when he was introduced to romantic poetry. His poems and stories have…

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Editor’s Note: This story is a bit longer than our usual fare, but we’re publishing it nonetheless because it’s an unusually entertaining work: a western and a mystery and even a bit of a supernatural thriller, set in the early days of America. Enjoy! “You Bobby-Jo?” “I’m Jo Bobby.” A gunshot blast rang through the wraparound porch of a colonial-style blue and white house that morning in Wormwood, Tennessee. August 9th, 1830, the hottest day Wormwood had ever seen. A gunshot blast so loud that the nearby sheriff, prune-skinned with a handlebar white mustache, woke up in his bed. The gun holster, cupping his gleaming silver pride and joy, was hanging lazily off his bedpost, adjacent to a snoring whale of a woman who wasn’t his wife. The sheriff gripped both sides of his coarse…

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