by Dawn Richardson and Tiffany Ann Boyd

Assembled from works by J.M. Romig, Sheena Zilla, and Ryan P. Kinney

My first memory is of dying.
I felt like I’d lived a full life
And now I was gladly fading away.
My first last words were
“Tell Elizabeth I love her”
I don’t remember knowing Elizabeth.
I love her though, or at least I did in that moment.

“These aren’t sad tears I’m crying, I’m just cutting onions my dear.”
It makes me want to rip off my flesh and run down the street as bare muscle and bone screaming ****** ******.
It will get better once I leave this purgatory waiting room of stress and self-loathing, but until then my outlook is a bit glum.

I am terrified
Before me is a discolored, screaming, clawing, misshapen alien creature
My son takes his first breathes of real air
We are all exhausted
His mother looks at me with a look that practically screams,
“We did it.”
I plead, “But we’re not done doing it yet…
Are we?”
His gurgles turn into cries
And I know…

For some reason, couldn’t tell you why, I thought about Frankenstein’s Monster.

Some parts are really fuzzy,
I hold it close to me- the fuzzy parts against my skin.
It’s a quilt blanket, stitched together of pieces and parts of found cloth.
My father made it for me.
My very last birthday gift.
I cocoon myself in it like a womb.

I hated him for what he’d done, but I hated myself more for missing him.
I have to fight everyday to be a better person in spite of what I was exposed to.

Created at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

by Ryan P. Kinney and Aaron Shinkle
With additional content assembled from Eli Williams and Lennart Lundh

The fall of man

It was the end of monsters
The end of mothers
The end of haters
Of lovers
Of pain and suffering
Of bliss and ecstasy

Nothing to hide under the bed
No terror floating in your head
Just the buzzing and swarming of insects

There was just the animalistic need to survive
And Gaia had decided
It was best for her survival
If we did not

Truth be told
We did it to ourselves

Some future digger after truth,
alien or human, kneeling with
trowel and brush at this grave,
will note in clear, careful script
the wonder that a people would
be so deliberate with the smallest
of their gods' creatures,
and so careless of themselves.

One never sees the monster
Hiding in the open
No one ever suspects that we are hiding something
When they are staring it in the face

We walked upon the new Earth
Like we did on the Old
Tugging along our gravel hearts
On broken asphalt
Our eyes slowly
Moving towards the new sky
The clouds, like curtains, unfolded
Our feet freshly cleansed of old
Traditions and assumptions that we
would never make it to this moment
But no one knew what was past
That port of no return
The ship sailed away,
Faded out of view

Another layer chipped away like
Hardened clay
The people here aspire to be
Nothing more than alive
The lives of the New World
In the hands of strangers
Coexisting within each other
For fear of never existing again
This is their lifeline, their blood
They are all in this repopulation
Together

we see others as they are
we see ourselves at every age
and all at once
supplicants, praying for tomorrow.
Everything from nothing.
And to nothing we return.
To the whole of the way,
We hastened our downfall through an illusion of control.
Only through letting this run its course
And stepping to the center could we hope for survival

The lights one by one dim
The music softens
The actors bow,
We close the curtain on this world

by Ryan P. Kinney and J.M. Romig

The coy house thinks, “Should I let this man enter me?”
Although she pretends to resist at first
She soon relents,
The pressure giving way and her door granting passage

He pledges to give her hardwood floors
To put a swingset in her backyard
The finest dressings on her windows
Painting her face,
Decking her out
To show the world how much he loves her
Softly wooing, he promises her a family

She hopes this one will make good
As he begins his work,
She watches the swell in his young wife’s womb
And for a while, believes in life again

For the first time in years,
She breathes fresh air as they move in their boxes
The melding of their past and her future
An image so bright,
That she is almost blinded by the light
When one night,
The soon-to-be mother misses her first step

At the bottom of the stairs,
He finds his world in pieces
As the paramedics pack the body and cart it away
The door closes behind them
And the air grows stagnant

The only boxes he ever unpacks,
Contain spirits
To numb him from the haunting emptiness inside
The past becomes nothing, but a foot stool
Slowly crushed and deformed under his weight
Her rooms,
Built to house new memories, home cooked meals, and laughter
Now nothing, but
Stale beer, chips, and wasted life


Created from prompts at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

Assembled from works by Ryan P. Kinney
By Elandra Fritzsche with original content

There is a game I play
It is one I play all by myself
With a million other players
It is called Adulting
The game is simple
All you need to do is follow the rules
All you need to do is listen
All you need to do is
Grow up

Grow up
It is something people tell you to do all your life
Grow up and act your age
Even when you are supposed to still be a child
Grow up

At 14 I started playing the game
Partially convinced that growing up meant
Getting the hell away from my parents
And being absolutely certain that if I did not
One of us would be dead

For years I played the game
Earned my keep
Took a wife
Bought a house
A mortgage
An expanding weight line

I followed the rules
I played the game
I fixed my house
I worked hard
I did the things that married men should routinely do with their wives
I had grown up

But I wanted to be lost
The game was not as fun as I thought it would be
I wanted to remember what it was like to be found
But found within myself

They say that all rules are meant to be broken
And so breaking them is just what I did
Slowly
Quietly
Secretly
On weekends I smashed TV's
Torched Barbie dolls
I kept my toys in my closet
My comic books in heaps
I swept the remains of broken rules away
As to keep them hidden
For awhile

Then suddenly
I was gone
To find myself
Among the ashes
Of the rules I had broken
And burned to keep hidden
To find that the world covered in ashes
Was the world full of color that I knew before the game was played

I looked for a way out of the game
And so back to school I went
The toys came out of the closet
My comic books worn like bandanas
Hanging from my back pocket

But once again after the time had passed
They wanted me to play the game
To grow up
I had tried
It didn't work out very well

Give me my childhood
The freedom I had had before the game was played
Give me all the things that come with it
But please don't make me play

I do not follow the rules
I do not like them much
This is not a game I want to play
I lost the first round already
Do I have to play again?

by Kevin F. Smith, Casey Kizior, JM Romig, Danielle Romig, Rick O’Donnell

How did we let this happen?
A new era begins
For the worse
I will not be silent

We thought for sure the end was near-
I held you close, our hearts racing in sync
the alarms screamed in our ears
that we were on extinction’s brink
and then our phones all bleeped and screeched

All of a sudden, the ground is on fire
It started so harmless, so small, so contained
Now flames eat everything, from the center out
The fire crumples leaves into smoke, cracks twigs, dissolves whole trees into ash
Spreading, expanding, destroying
When will it stop?
When it is all consumed.
Is this a dream?
Please let it be a dream.

The deck falls out from under my feet at an angle of 15 degrees by the bow
My shipmate asleep in berthing remain undisturbed
The light from the stairway casts my shadow
My stomach knows the hydraulics to the planes of the submarine have failed.
The planesman has 3 seconds to switch to manual
Before the sub will slip to the bottom
My heart counts the second for me
The deck rises to a zero bubble
An even plane
I climb the stairs
It’s my watch to drive the boat

False Alarm- we unclench our teeth
And took a breath – and weep
For we knew not what else to do

Created at the Jigsaw Workshop at Cleveland Concoction 3/2/2019

Assembled by Casey Kizior
From works by Cee Williams, Lennart Lundh, Chuck Joy

I never really cared
for surprises

I would not have chosen need
or desire, or slamming doors
or clamoring up when all the world is silent

in the morning I spit blood
into the sink and rinse
and walk the dog and try to forget
about the things dreams bring

What the hell color were your eyes?

they love what is there
because it is there
to love

among the strengths
less well-developed strengths
among the consequences
more unfortunate consequences

Created at the Jigsaw Workshop at Cleveland Concoction 3/2/2019

Assembled by JM Romig
From works by unknown, Ryan P. Kinney, Vicki Acquah

transparent creatures
“God ******* ******.”
I need to know
I want to read your soul
in and out

your forgotten memories
sun-warmed nostalgia
Wasteland and doomsday

Created at the Jigsaw Workshop at Cleveland Concoction 3/2/2019