The Humming of Bees

by Cath Barton

I ain’t never been in a gambling place before, honest. I’ve walked past that place down the High Street so many times and never even thought about it, I don’t even know its name, but then today I’m hanging out with my friend Shirl and she ups and says we should go there. 

“Okay”, I says, “you go but I ain’t going, ‘cos what’s the point of wasting your money like that”, and she says I’m chicken, and I’m not having none of that from her, so I goes in after her.

And she walks up to this one-armed bandit and starts pushing in the money and heaving on the handle and I just stands there with my mouth open and I was never going to do it, honest, but all of a sudden the money just starts flooding out of the thing and I’m like “What!” and I know I have to do it too.

Untitled Poem

by Thomas Gumbel

1: A Great Upheaval

Three

Small

Words.

It ends tonight.

Repeated over and over,

In fight

Or flight.

When the top of the world

Falls on them…

What will I do?

A brief moment

Of sympathy.

Why cry

When grampa deserves to die?

Stakes in our hearts keeping us asleep,

Following black suit after black suit

To lay him down!

As a sad statue looks on

And I wonder, in the end,

Does a still angel cry on all of us,

Or only those despised enough to be remembered?

Angel. Don’t turn your back on me.

I won’t be ignored.

Bury me…

Carry me… to the end?
…Famous last words.

WhydoIpartakeinprayerbecauseI DON’T…

Want to go to Hell.

But upon further consideration

Of this monster we call “sanctuary”…

I hate everything about it.

In our time of dying, must we give over

To a man in a giant hat

And his sexless patients…?

Or is he the one the Authority should blame?