by Cheryl Snell
I go to bed like a child vowing revenge. I throw my shadow against the wall and the clock tosses up its hands in alarm. The shadow gets up and chases me. When it falls against my piano, sour notes squiggle the air. To force the shadow to fight, I attack like a lion tamer who, with whip and stool, gets you where I want you ─ the shadow I scrape off the wall. The wall disappears and the shadow withdraws as you crack open the door, but both hands of the clock reach out to take my side.
6S
Cheryl Snell writes poems and fiction of all sizes.
20250729
20250724
Is It Any Wonder I Loved You?
by Brad Rose
Your eyes, tiny Dixie Cups, your knuckles, like wooden spools of thread. Just thinking of you made my heart skip, as if I had been tied-up, and thrown down stairs. At the lineup, more than one witness picked you out. In fact, it was unanimous: you were the one, Miss Popular. The police report stated that you were less than partially clothed when they arrived at the scene and found, next to the bleeding body, the gun you’d used — brand new, except for the 40 spent rounds — but who’s counting? Not me.
6S
Brad Rose's latest book is I Wouldn’t Say That, Exactly.
Your eyes, tiny Dixie Cups, your knuckles, like wooden spools of thread. Just thinking of you made my heart skip, as if I had been tied-up, and thrown down stairs. At the lineup, more than one witness picked you out. In fact, it was unanimous: you were the one, Miss Popular. The police report stated that you were less than partially clothed when they arrived at the scene and found, next to the bleeding body, the gun you’d used — brand new, except for the 40 spent rounds — but who’s counting? Not me.
6S
Brad Rose's latest book is I Wouldn’t Say That, Exactly.
Posted by
Robert McEvily
20250723
A Visitor's Guide to Free Coffee
by Nick Allison
If you ever spend an entire month in a hospital—as a visitor, not a patient—you’ll start to learn a few things. Like how the coffee costs more at the first-floor café than it does on the second, but it’s free in the fourth-floor ICU, where there’s even an espresso machine. And if you befriend the nurses—on any floor—they might let you slip into the lounge, where the snacks and caffeine cost nothing. You’ll learn other things too, as you sit in the cafeteria one afternoon, drafting a poem you might title A Visitor’s Guide to Free Coffee, and watch a young mother and her son—his head bald from chemo—walk in. You’ll see his face light up over a bowl of cereal and feel a little foolish for thinking about coffee prices in a place dedicated to saving the most vulnerable. He’ll beam at his mom, thrilled by the simple gift of Cocoa Puffs, and she’ll smile back bravely as she leans in to kiss his pale skin, while her world threatens to crumble behind tired eyes.
6S
Nick Allison is a combat veteran, college dropout, and writer based in Austin, Texas. His poems and essays have appeared in The Shore, Eunoia Review, HuffPost, The Chaos Section, New Verse News, CounterPunch, and elsewhere. He recently curated and edited the poetry anthology Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age. More of his work can be found here and here.
If you ever spend an entire month in a hospital—as a visitor, not a patient—you’ll start to learn a few things. Like how the coffee costs more at the first-floor café than it does on the second, but it’s free in the fourth-floor ICU, where there’s even an espresso machine. And if you befriend the nurses—on any floor—they might let you slip into the lounge, where the snacks and caffeine cost nothing. You’ll learn other things too, as you sit in the cafeteria one afternoon, drafting a poem you might title A Visitor’s Guide to Free Coffee, and watch a young mother and her son—his head bald from chemo—walk in. You’ll see his face light up over a bowl of cereal and feel a little foolish for thinking about coffee prices in a place dedicated to saving the most vulnerable. He’ll beam at his mom, thrilled by the simple gift of Cocoa Puffs, and she’ll smile back bravely as she leans in to kiss his pale skin, while her world threatens to crumble behind tired eyes.
6S
Nick Allison is a combat veteran, college dropout, and writer based in Austin, Texas. His poems and essays have appeared in The Shore, Eunoia Review, HuffPost, The Chaos Section, New Verse News, CounterPunch, and elsewhere. He recently curated and edited the poetry anthology Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age. More of his work can be found here and here.
Posted by
Robert McEvily
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