walter

by nick nelson

walter went back to the womb king tut went back to the tomb box went back to the boom robin hood rented a room the sheriff was on the trail of a man who told a tale his name was prester john he was the child of the dawn there’s a house by the side of the road you can enter with a secret code in the basement a treasure is hid that belonged to billy the kid when the roll is called up yonder wise men will be left to ponder civilizations’s detritus what was all the fuss? who was walter? you ask he never wore a mask or a blue suit with a yellow tie in the sweet bye and bye but he took his lumps down in the dumps where the mermaids wear plastic and trip the light fantastic

chair

by dog e relaford

i woke up this morning with a feeling of despair it was time to get up and sit in my chair and look out the window all day long and scratch my knees and sing my song i was once a pirate bold an arctic explorer braving the cold an adventurer with a hundred names and a master of all tricks and games an angel with a flaming sword a barbarian who was never bored a conqueror with a heart of steel a condemned man eating a last meal a dog waiting outside a door an elephant wandering on the shore of an ocean with a billion waves washing over a trillion graves of my enemies in the cool breeze in the endless deep i go back to sleep to wake in the morning with a feeling of despair with my clothes piled neatly on my chair and my shoes under my bed in my head

a strange dream

by anonymous

last night i had the strangest dream. i dreamed that the imperial department of civil effectiveness had issued a directive that all men were to be eliminated. a date was set. but when the day came, not a single man was eliminated. every man in the empire had switched his identity to transwoman. a few weeks later, the department dropped the prefix “trans” from the term "transwoman". now everybody in the empire was a woman. and lived happily ever after.