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Thank you for your interest in ephemeras . We welcome all styles of art and are currently looking for flash fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art relating to our theme of anamnesis . ephemeras will NOT accept work generated from or with the assistance of AI. SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED (but here is what we look for in future submissions) ​ Submission Guidelines: Fiction : we are namely seeking literary fiction and its sub-genres. If it's weird, if it's nostalgic, if it's urgent—we want to read it. For flash: send up to 3 pieces no more than 1,000 words each. For short fiction and excerpts from longer works: up to 4,000 words in a singular submission. Nonfiction : we accept creative nonfiction and cultural commentary/criticism (up to 3,000 words) ​We will not accept submissions of interviews, book reviews, academic papers, or personal narratives that do not address a wider scope at this mome nt​​ Queries/pitches are encouraged but not necessary prior to submitting Poetry : up to 3 poems in a single submission. So the integrity of the original work is not lost, please refrain from sending experimental line breaks and spacing that will not translate during formatting. Visual art: film photography, paintings, sculptures, digital artwork (submit 3-5 photos as individual high-quality JPEG files) We encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on X/Twitter @ephemerasmag to stay up to date with us. Simultaneous submissions are encouraged, please let us know if work submitted to us will be published elsewhere. We cannot compensate writers at this time. We will not accept previously published work. ephemeras retains no rights to your work other than online publication.

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Dog After Christmas Kassidy Jordan Wake him up before his tail stops wagging and he lays still on the cold cement. Wrap your arms around his shivering body, around the black fur covering him, shield him from the snow as it falls. Rub his feet that have stood on ice. Untie the leash from the post. Look back after you drive away, turn around as he cocks his head to one side and sits on the hard cement in the cold January air, before he laid his head on the ground and waited. Do not call him from his house in the backyard. Do not lie to him, do not smile and clip the leash to his green collar you bought only months before. Walk back into the house where his dog bowl sits and his squeaky bone lays next to his bed, where he laid wrapped in a bow under the tree and lights and tinsel the morning your son first saw him. Do not yell when he makes a mistake. Do not push his nose into the pee-stained carpet. Stop yourself from smacking his head when he jumps and scratches your new sweater, he just missed you is all. Do not decide having a pet was a mistake. Do not berate your son for his lack of responsibility. Do not tell your wife this is for the best. Do not make him miss his warm bed, the little boy who always threw a stick for him to chase, the smells of turkey and chicken and beef and the gentle touches of when he was first unwrapped. Drive away from the store where you bought him. Pass over him as the cars do now. Ignore his pleading black eyes as you did when you drove away. Leave before you give and take away the family he loved. Kassidy Jordan is a recent graduate from Marshall University, graduating with her BA in Creative Writing with a minor in History. She is a proud Appalachian poet based in Point Pleasant, WV, home of the Mothman. Kassidy's creative interests include place and memory in poetry, lyric, narrative, prose poetry, and all things Appalachian. Her other, more personal interests include the A Song of Ice and Fire series, coffee, dogs, and Tudor England, especially the six wives of King Henry VIII. back to issue no.1

Jesse, Randy Dong What do you do when the only reason your wife finally loves you again is Alzheimer’s, the equalizer grand, a gift from the Upstairs Big Man finally answering your prayers for forgiveness you know you don’t deserve, after the wife, the love of your life, went so many years mute and frozen, she would have been the same age as a house plant as your son before his departure – a plant which she metamorphosized into right there in the passenger seat of your beat-up Hyundai Accent on the drive home from Jesse’s funeral, a car which you have long since traded away because for the life of you, you could no more cast a gaze into its silver-grey without hurling out stomach contents of your day, which since her becoming of a catatonic Snake plant, has consisted mostly of just Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom and Sourdough bread, Jesse’s favorites for their nature modest and plain, fitting of a pious one who lived truly the Tao of Nazareth’s Jesus Christ - but even before then, before wife became a plant, when at Jesse’s funeral, people offered their condolences and shook your hand, wife stood far away from you and already then her words had gone dry, uttered were only sobs and hiccups, mourning condensed into drops into her hanky, and already she didn’t look at you no more, no way, as if you were some alien who murdered her son, a secret hush-hush because it was a damn shame in front of which, however, you stood guilty indeed, shocked still and you haven’t cried still because since the ambulance ride it was all a daze how it was possible your baby, while losing so much blood, an incredible amount of blood, still prayed for your absolution - God bless you Dad, Don’t blame yourself Dad, God bless you Dad - each breath drawn shorter and quieter, not the sirens growing louder, until Jesse’s squeeze went limp in the hand of his broken mother who in a matter of days became a plant for twenty-one years until now that she’s got Alzheimer’s and couldn’t remember what she was so mad at you for in the first place. What do you do when the man police with his little notepad dripping rainwater says What your son did was a heroic deed. The accident was freak. No one is to blame. Now he is in a better place. , but you know you are to blame because a moment ago, while your wife still a person in the back seat and beside you the leather of the Hyundai Accent still warm from Jesse’s heat and in front of you the world lost focus, colors bleeding into each other, a painter’s palette spilled into night, until the next windshield wiper beat and it became the cars chrome silver, the traffic lights yellow-red changing, orange in the peripheral the lights city night, and fuming, you just sat there watching Jesse walk out toward the loud and chaos ahead, black-suited back straight, faithful gait, because you dared him, you did, you said why don’t you part the red sea then, Moses? , gesturing at the traffic stuck jam, you said why don’t you lead us out the desert then, Moses? , when outside the Hyundai, more heads popped out their cars lost at how to get out of this mess and far ahead a woman trapped inside her injured red car, drop by drop, dissolved into a hazy crimson dot and still, you sat still, gripping the wheel til knuckles turned white because earlier during dinner Jesse announced to you and his mom he was going to attend Seminary after graduating and become a Catholic priest at Freddy’s Family Diner which he selected as his birthday eve destination for humble is the only way he nourished himself and Fuck! was what you responded because despite the bowl of cream mushroom soup boiling that stabbed your tongue numb and shards of sourdough crust that cut the inside of your mouth bloody, and the birthday dinner tasted only of iron, you just couldn’t understand how it all came to this, because as differently as you and Jesse saw this world, you never considered it would end as catastrophically as priesthood, Catholic no-less, because all you wanted ever was just an environment compassionate and peaceful with good education away from the bullies for the best boy easy-to-joy, easy-to-cry with a head-full of soft hazel hair and two eyes of long lashes black who was afraid of the night dark and people rude, so a Quaker school it was, so you decided, though Jesse’s mom, your wife, protested in favor of the value of the natural maturing and toughening of Jesse through the public education system especially given a private school tuition high enough to choke dead a dozen donkeys even with the financial aid from the Quakers generous and to reassure you, your wife said I trust Jesse more than you! to which you said I love Jesse more than you! while citing Quakerism’s fondness for pacifism, simplicity, and general liberal values – yet it turned out, Jesse was a bit too good at Bible classes and paid too much attention during those Meetings for Worship, and the next thing you know you had your first debate with your son, where you said A child born out of rape often means the destroyal of two lives trapped in the deep mire of life long back-breaking financial difficulties and suffocating social prejudice while Jesse retorted A decision matrix that measures the righteousness of the existence of a life against the quality of said life and their mother’s is morally questionable to say the least, akin to Eugenics, no offense, if to not mince words to which you could only through your teeth a deflated shit… ​ What do you do when the bull black and crazed locks with your eyes its pupils orange, burning, bloodshot in the street lights fogged, its smoker-teeth-yellow horn pierced through Jesse’s torso, your son’s entrails dangling out his back, long like a pink snake made of condom, and with the bull’s each flutter, Jesse’s body jolts, his limbs jerk, like a bad wig on the head of the bull, and Jesse’s mom, your wife, the love of your life, is already out the back seat door running, falling toward your baby son and screaming back at you What the fuck are you doing?! but your ass is stuck to the seat, your hands paralyzed on the wheel, your diaphragm choked up in your throat, and drop by drop, in front of you blurs into Guernica, blurs into an impressionist painting kitsch and camp, until the next windshield wiper beat and then there’s an elephant wearing a bellboy’s hat roaming, two zebras dragging a cannon dark as the bull sitting on top a chariot, and the bull charges the injured red car again and Jesse’s body flails against its doorframe dented, until the next wiper beat doesn’t erase the light spots fuzzy on the windshield no more, and the next one doesn’t either no way now that the moisture is not just on the glass but behind your eyelids, and finally the radio intercepts Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird’s And this bird you cannot change with an emergency broadcast about circus animals of Circo de los Muertos escaping their transport trucks causing multiple traffic accidents and that civilians should watch out for exotic animals on the street potentially dangerous, most definitely pissed-off, and in hell, this is your personal hell, all you can try to not remember is the last conversation with your son being an argument, you throwing allegations Look at the wars and famine! Look at the suffering of the North Koreans! God’s either idle and blind, blind but sadistic, or God’ simply indifferent for which he might as well not exist. , but Jesse once again left you tongue-tied with He is not our nanny , with God hides himself between the lines. , with I will study for priesthood, to bring people to Jesus and Jesus to the people , and what do you do, when in hell drawn by Picasso and Kinkade, but confess one must imagine Sisyphus , at this traffic light jammed, curse: fuck this shit . ​ What do you do when your boy small, scared, loves-his-blankie, hides-under-your-arm grows into almost a man faithful and righteous whose new daddy is Upstairs Big Man Almighty and says that Man is your daddy too, and you can’t father Jesse no more, even though Upstairs Daddy never took out a loan for Jesse’s private school, never went to Jesse’s cross country meets, never checked under Jesse’s bed for monsters, but still Upstairs Daddy wins, doesn’t he, now your sons is kebab’ed by a black bull, isn’t he, the Man with the Plan sends your son to heaven and you to hell with a night of Old Testament profundity and twenty-one years of silence, until now your wife finally loves you again because Alzheimer’s and you say thank you Big Man for your forgiveness at last , except now your wife, the love of your life, forgetful and almost blind, calls you Jesse and brings you Jesse’s blankie and goes looking for Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom and Sourdough bread in the pantry, she calls you Mama’s heart, Mama’s flesh, and now what do you do but run out the house and drive to Jesse’s headstone heavy. ​ In the Far East, people burn by the grave of their missed-ones money to send to the beyond. I’m burning this when I finish writing. Tell me what to do. You are much smarter than I because after I’ve read the book black leather bound until the pages fell from the glue, I still never found the answer on how to walk with my back straight and resolute, like you. Tell me what to do, Jesse, and Mom loves you and misses you. And I love you and miss you. I hope God is with you. ​ Yours Regrettably, Dad Randy is the founder of New York Story Night - an open stage for writers of all levels to share their short stories in front of an audience. He worked closely with Chuck Palahniuk at the founding of the Story Night event, running parallel with his Hindsight Story Night in Portland. New York Story Night celebrated our one-year anniversary this year and has all the intentions and support to continue spotlighting literature and the short story form. back to issue no.1

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ephemeras January 28. 2024 issue no. 1 transient art, perpetual artists The Real Me | Life Is Not Easy Rich Boucher The Wooden Sword Zafira Demitri Jesse, Randy Dong A slightly perverted accountant Robert Feder erratum Hayley Gibbons Dog After Christmas Kassidy Jordan If life is as short as our ancestors say it is... BEE LB The Assimilation | There Will Be Warnings James Lilliefors Praying | Unrequited Stephen Mead What Needs To Be Said Taylor Memoli how is the future down there? Deborah Y. Moon The Kitchen Counter on a Tuesday Night | Inheritance Devon Neal Last Train Matias Travieso-Diaz Paramaecium Terry Trowbridge

If life is as short as our ancestors insist it is, I've already wasted most of mine after Hanif Abdurraqib BEE LB worried my way through each day like it’s something to endure. I worry these words between my teeth like grit. Suck the truth like marrow. Gnaw on the past like a bone ready to splinter. My grandmother’s voice warbles through memory, I’ve forgotten more than I ever knew. My father’s voice like sandpaper against the grain, I brought you into this world and I can take you back out. My mother’s off-tune cooing before bed, Hush now baby baby don’t you cry, Mama's gonna sing you a lullaby. My mother’s idea of a lullaby was Pink Floyd. It’s no wonder we turned out the way we did. My brother was named for Led Zeppelin's drummer but gifted none of the talent. Left in prison quarantine to ride out the withdrawals, leaving the drinking to me. So my answer to the question, What good Dad Rock is there? fits into this poem somewhere. I just haven’t found where. I meant to say it was good on my mother’s tongue, much as she twisted it— and rattling the speakers of my father’s Mustang, thumping through the walls of his crack house. I couldn’t define it but I’d know it when I hear it. I’d know it from the grease stains, the cut-up t-shirt I have from Baltimore, from sparks seen behind the welding mask. I meant to say it’s part of me— it shows up on my Spotify no matter how far I stray. And here I’ve found my stride in the lifeblood of music just before my time is up. When I haven’t heard a song outside of end credits in a month. I haven’t felt the rhythm in my hips since before the new year. When I haven’t drunk myself sick chasing a song through the dark. It’s been three days since my father’s birthday and six years since we’ve spoken and I still haven’t forgiven him for naming me after my mother or missing my birth for being behind bars. It’s been two days since my brother’s last visit and nearly twenty four hours since I knew which facility housed him and I still haven’t forgiven him for making me save him or naming me his sister, as much the woman to him as our mother is. BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; a writer creating delicate connections. they have called any number of places home; currently a single yellow wall in Michigan. they have been published in FOLIO, Figure 1, The Offing, and Harpur Palate, among others. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co back to issue no.1

"erratum" Hayley Gibbons there are the words you shouldn't use: ​ stars wonder life heart breath forever light realize even feeling heard death ​ and sometimes was, and often that, definitely never soul, unless it's tuesday or the rent is due ​ and we regret and all's not lost ​ and next time - when you're really you! ​ doobie-doobie-doo Hayley Gibbons is a wife, mom and English teacher from East London, South Africa. Her poetry has appeared in various online poetry journals. She likes listening to Sting with a cup of hot coffee, and writing poetry whenever she gets the chance. back to issue no.1

founding editor-in-chief Cristina Lez cano , an English/Creative Writing student at William Paterson University, took a long break from academia in search of herself. She went the self-publishing route, took to several lined journals, and came to the conclusion that writing is not without a village. ephemeras was a fleeting thought years ago, made corporeal through support found along the pilgrimage. founding editor, fiction & poetry Anaiza Medina , a Monmouth University Alumni, has a love for helping other writers find their voice. Her work goes beyond editing, failing to limit her interests in poetry, short stories, literary analysis, and bookbinding. Through ephemeras , she hopes to enrich budding, hidden writers with confidence and experience as they reach their potential.

The Real Me Rich Boucher I was standing there, in my kitchen, just in some black boxer briefs and a sock and trying to remember how coffee is made because I just got up and because I woke up with a huge headache but my mind was on finding some Proud Boys somewhere in the United States and killing them. I woke up from whatever I was dreaming about thinking of murdering American terrorists, the stinking, chubby bodies of Meal Team Six at my feet in their stupid black-and-yellow play clothes. I didn’t have a gun, never owned a gun and could only guess at how one gets a gun. It was quarter to six in the morning, a quarter to the first slivers of sunlight over the top of the mountain and it was a quarter to epiphany in the morning when the phone rang. It was me , calling me. Even without the first cup of coffee in the morning I knew this was ridiculous and stupid and impossible. Who is this, really? My voice sounded a little scared. It sounded like I was a person who was afraid of something even though it wasn’t dark out anymore. The Keurig pot burbled and farted liquidly in the background as if trying to remind me that real life was also a thing I should take an interest in. There was no way it was actually me calling myself, because I was right there and I’d have known if I made a phone call or not. I know I’d have known. The voice on the other end of the line got louder suddenly, sounding irritated more than anything else. I am YOU, you idiot, and what makes you think you could get away with killing someone? In fact, what makes you think you could kill a person in the first place? You know you don’t even have that in you - you’re way too much of a coward. I really don’t care for being spoken to like that by anyone, so I hung up on myself. The rest of it you already know. Life Is Not Easy Rich Boucher Such a pretty bus ride at first. We rode together, all of us paying patrons, through a wealthy and extravagant and rich old person’s sprawling green estate, with our fancy silver tour bus trundling slowly up and down every hill and meekly, cautiously around each curve that was winding, and also wealthily in the pricey, pleasant sunshine, and also peacefully along for an hour surrounded by gorgeous, many-splendored, multihued foliage and geraniums and violets and petunia begonias and inheritance marble statues and flowerbeds and tall, gesticulating ferns and pretty sunlight that poured hot gold over us like we were all beautiful. Some kind of flutist or harp player sweetly harped (or flute-played) the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fawn in the background of our tour; we could hear that genteel and sugary classical song out the windows of the bus and that’s when right then a huge chunk of all pungent hell broke loose: the old man in the back of the bus, the one who had been wearing that stupid fedora and bowtie, he’d had some kind of medical attack and fell over, he had some kind of bio attack and keeled over off of his seat, this old man had some kind of elderly man attack and tumbled off his bus seat and crumpled over, strangling and making bicycle motions with his legs and trying to get a scream out and that’s when he shat himself. The world ended forever for a little while when we all realized what he’d done. Now, I paid sixty dollars for this tour and since this guy ruined my afternoon and the afternoon of the others and the afternoon of history and the afternoon of love and the afternoon of good taste and manners and since the tour company said they wouldn’t give refunds and since all sales were final I had to get revenge and satisfaction and so I did it. I’m the one who did it; it was me. I leveled my lovely Uzi towards the old man’s head and emptied my clip into him because once a person shits themselves on a bus where other people have no way to escape from it, that person must be euthanized. The other people on the bus acted all shocked and all afraid like they’d never seen a mercy killing before, even though every single one of them has at least one time in their life witnessed the slow, unmerciful murder of life in the eyes of the cashier who is being exsanguinated by retail life itself. I am reminded (and you are also) of a time when I was sitting on one of those benches at the mall many years ago. A Europeanly attractive mother (think Ava Gardner; think Tina Louise; think Hedy Lamarr) in a majestically tight pink sweater was sitting across from me on a nearby bench, and she had this little baby with her. While the mother was looking at her phone and while I was looking at the mother, this little creature of hers looked straight at me and told me with a snarl that life was not easy. I didn’t know that until the baby told me. Life is not easy. Sometimes you have to euthanize someone who makes the bus smell worse than it normally does. Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rich's poems have appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Eighteen Seventy, Menacing Hedge, Drunk Monkeys, Pink Disco, and Cultural Weekly, among others. Rich serves as Associate Editor for the online literary magazine BOMBFIRE. He is the author of All Of This Candy Belongs To Me, a collection of poems published by Jules' Poetry Playhouse Publications. Peep richboucher.bandcamp.com for morel. He loves his life with his love Leann and their sweet cat Callie. back to issue no.1

ephemeras is a literary magazine that publishes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and visual art. We welcome diverse voices, writers seeking a space to create outside of academia and people seeking a home for art that does not fit elsewhere. ephemeras is a space for transient art and perpetual artists. ephemeras publishes online quarterly, and we hope to print in our future.

how is the future down there? Deborah Y. Moon i see the future. rising up, all around its circumference, a thick cloud of fog. it is coughing, sweltering, thickening—a cloying scent. full of musk and sweat, monotonous days of work and more work. an alarming dearness, constant fear, on lest the fear disturbed. but yet again, it is the future. we never hear how hollow it is down there. i hear the future. a soundless whisper from cracked lips, a naked noise. it is popping, deafening, screaming—an echoing din. never-ending, an everlasting pinch on my strings, tweaked and hollow. unlikely to confess, within gaping darkness. but yet again, it is the future. we never feel how cold it is down there. i feel the future. firing in my brain full of holes. everlasting wisdom (granted!) it is sharp, jagged, burning—a severed crack in a burnt kiln like mingled glass crunched on bare feet it spikes and bleeds... a bargain unjust, as we are only fine dust. but yet again, it is the future. we never see how ugly it is down there. Deborah is a Korean-American high school student residing in Los Angeles, California. Her writing interests lie in producing works that explore themes of history, culture, and society. She hopes to pursue professional writing in the realms of poetry and fiction prose, taking inspiration from authors such as Yi Sang, R.F. Kuang, and Rick Riordan. During her leisure hours, you’ll most likely find her reading comfortably in a library or sipping a large mug of brimming black coffee at a local cafe. back to issue no.1