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On Friday

6/19/2018

Friday night, February twenty-third. Myself in orange tights and gold, gold on my body, gold in
my ears. Friday night. Someone lying next to me and myself. Myself in fragments. Myself and
peach whiskey. Myself in gossamer wings.

This has not happened yet. I am planning for Friday. February. Fridaynightfebruarytwentythird.

Love is better than lovers is better than friends. This is why he and I were friends then lovers then not friends then friends. I thought maybe. I should not have thought. What did Camiell say? Oh yes. Happy agony. Happy agony, oh yes. Women as a lesser cut of meat. Oh yes.

A glass piece. This weekend I ordered a glass piece. I ordered it off the web because I am
starved. This weekend I ordered a long thick piece of heavy curved glass off the web.

I probably love him. Infatuation. Myself as a child. There is nothing special about him. There is
nothing special about him at all. I love him because I am a child and when I looked at him he
said your eyes are very blue in the sun. We watched a movie. We drove to Asheville and
watched a movie about ice. Friday. This is why I am driving to Athens. I am driving to Athens
because I probably love him and he is a child and I am a child. Because I am a child and I need
to go away.

Friday night. Costumes. Costumes and some playlist with songs and orange. Too much orange
and gold. This is why I think I am a phoenix. I think I am a phoenix with someone else.
Gossamer wings. With someone else warm next to me. On Friday night I am a phoenix with
someone else right next to me.

Author

Madeleine De Pree is a 19-year-old undergraduate student at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. She has published three pieces in her campus literary magazine, and has three other works featured in The Austin Chronicle, The Thing Itself, and Best Emerging Poets of South Carolina: An Anthology.

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Two Poems by Paul David Adkins

6/15/2018

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Attica Prison Rebellion, September 13th, 1971: Emanuel Johnson, Murdered Inmate, Sings His Favorite Christmas Carol, Coupled with a Side Observation

O come, O come, Emanuel,

and ransom the captives.

Well, it wasn’t up to me. Nothing
was up to me. I dropped my knife
and ran down that catwalk, and wouldn’t have stopped
from hell to heaven’s backyard,

except a blast of buckshot twisted

my football helmet backwards,

muffled my screams like the inside of The Tombs,
two yards of earth now between me and grass,
may as well be three million trillion billion.

O come, O come,

get your carcass off that cross, O Lord, and come.

Attica Prison Rebellion, September 13th, 1971: Samuel Joseph Melville, Murdered Inmate, Examines the Dynamics of Power in Attica State Prison and Anywhere Else, For That Matter

This is what surrender brings.
It was no mistake
my raised arms formed a crosshair. “We did the best
we could.”

Couldn’t those be
anybody’s last words?

Pigs said they spied a bomb,
a jar of gasoline, a wick crammed down
its wide throat. Any excuse to shoot. We did

our best, then raised our hands.
They held the guns.
Not another word. We cried.

We did.

Author

Paul David Adkins lives in NY. In 2017, Lit Riot Press published his collection Flying Over Baghdad with Sylvia Plath. Journal publications include Pleiades, River Styx, Rattle, Diode, Baltimore Review, Crab Creek, and Whiskey Island. He has received five Pushcart nominations and two finalist nominations from the Central NY Book Awards.

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Some UpdateS

6/12/2018

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Hi everyone! Kendra here.

Thanks for your patience. I recently moved to a new apartment and got a puppy. Puppies are like toddlers! I've been extremely busy taking care of her and getting settled in the new place. Once again, your submissions have not been forgotten, it will just take a while for me to get to them.

And remember the updated submission guidelines. We no longer accept previously published work, so if you've recently submitted previously published work, it will not be read. We also do not accept stories over 3,000 words, nor do we accept more than 5 poems per submission. Please take the time to read guidelines before submitting!

Also, heads up! In August, I will be taking the month off from reading submissions. August is going to be a busy month for me, and I will probably have even less time than I do this month. So, nothing will be published between August 1 and August 31. If you send anything during that time, don't expect it to be read until at least the beginning of September. I'll post reminder updates periodically to warn you.

Thanks for supporting Little Rose Magazine!

-Kendra Nuttall, editor-in-chief

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Abel's Autumn

6/3/2018

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Abel just turned thirty-five
and was called middle-aged
for the first time in his life.
It was like the first chill of autumn
that he felt in September
while the neighborhood kids were still playing
Marco Polo at the community pool.
If he was in the prime of his life,
he doubted the definition of prime.
His job as a welder was hot and tedious,
and his boss was a prepossessing prick.
Abel had had only two relationships,
both fizzling before six weeks,
though he’d had many prostitutes.

He’d watched his dad, also a welder
and a hell of a guy,
wither from
non-small-cell lung cancer
surrounded by family.
Without children to take care of him,
and without a wife,
who would look after Abel
when his strength failed,
when his organs failed,
when his mind failed,
when his spirit failed?

As Abel listened to the rushing of
water through the pipes at night,
he faced the fluttering of future calendars
and age spots and alienation
and dementia and disease
and hid under the comforter
in terror.

Author

Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copy editor in Urbandale, Iowa. Adrian's work has appeared in The Bohemyth, Queen Mob's Tea House, Pangolin Review, Picaroon Poetry, Runcible Spoon, and others.

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Driving by an Oklahoma Wedding

6/2/2018

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We clashed through the campestral quilt of Slaughterville,
              contention heating our kernels
             as we passed a wedding
powered by Mary Laura and Merlot,
outland sunflowers
flooding its hobnailed bones.

            The hand-beaded bride
wore spangled white smoke boots,
an orchid-laced chignon,
           all mint peach and demure damask,
           her trembling father
           clutching his sobriety.

A perpetual stampede of pansy-purple bridesmaids
            sported burlap bouquets and cocky sways,
           accompanied by a funereal procession of army buddies,
obsolete frat boys preening like fluorescent flamingoes.

The groom stood at studied attention, pacing his palsied poise,
             every kicking pulse of the South Canadian River
             kindling in his coal-burned wandering eye.

Author

Megan Denese Mealor has been featured in numerous journals, most recently The Furious Gazelle, Chantwood Magazine, and Rumble Fish. She has two full-length poetry collections forthcoming this year: Bipolar Lexicon (Unsolicited Press) and Blatherskite (Clare Songbirds House Publishing). Megan lives in Jacksonville, Florida with her partner, son, and two mollycoddled cats.

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On Friday

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Two Poems by Paul David Adkins

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Some UpdateS

Abel's Autumn

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Driving by an Oklahoma Wedding

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