After 90 seconds of cheer, she realized that Christina was still not responding to the medical examiner. She became worried, practically throwing herself onto the floor next to her opponent. (If she were completely honest, she not only wanted to bite into her gold hardware and taste victory, she also wanted to knock out her childhood bully. But she never intended to permanently debilitate her.)

Occam’s father shares a rite of passage with his son, who’s now of age to shave with a straight razor. As Occam learns the intimate art of holding the blade at an acute angle while performing short strokes against the grain to match the sharp curves of his face, he opens up about life choices….

No sooner than he closes his eyes, he feels a sharp pain in the frontal cortex of his brain. His training has begun. The pain remains in the frontal lobe for over three hours with fluctuating degrees of intensity. Mentally, physically, and emotionally, he’s depleted of energy and patience to the point of insanity. He feels conflicted, wanting to proceed with his transhumanist project in order to be perfect and live forever, but his suffering is unbearable.

This short story plays off Kierkegaard’s parable of “The Happy Conflagration” with assistance from Douglas Groothuis’s book Philosophy in Seven Sentences, primarily his focus on the Dane’s extrapolation of sin in its two forms.

The silence—a ceaseless chiseling. There’s a child screaming. I run to the window to look outside only to find the relentless tinkling of rain ricocheting off the top of metal cars.  I come back inside. I hear it again. This time I run out the front door not caring that my favorite shoes are getting…

Strokes on canvas come to life. Entangled particles of love explore. Earth orbits a dying sun— mere reflection and mortal strife. A villa with a view not easily ignored.   “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” Soil of Vine rich with trust. Proverb and parable collide— good deeds like talents buried turn…

“All the world’s a stage” where we play different roles and parts, “men and women merely players” (Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene VII, Lines 1-2). The stages of life (infancy, childhood, lover, soldier, judge, old age, and return to childhood “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,” line 28) are indeed…

It is well known that the Sandinistas were funded and trained in Cuba under Che Guevara and Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution as well as being indirectly funded by the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. This training commenced in the ’60s and the war officially ended on July 19, 1979, when Somoza’s army surrendered. The Sandinistas—led…

This poem was inspired by a poem written by my dear friend, Jerome Gastaldi, whom you may know as Bob Abbott. The last stanza starts . . . Some do not want to know. For the pain of knowing  Is the death Of their illusion. —Jerome Gastaldi Riding the train. A pane of glass is…

The first masked man provokes the captive: “Any last words before I separate your skull from your body?”