Floor Manager

The factory produces a new hum of thunder. We disagree with this update. We try to quit but the floor manager will not allow us to quit. He will not let us leave. If we keep up such disruptions, he threatens to move us to the lumber yard. Our ears bleeding, our ears singing, we say, Yes, yes, anything but the thunder, anything but this. You have to be kidding me, he says, looking at our empty hands, so soft from all the soap needed to breathe thunder into life, then looking at his own hands, so covered in lumber, so absorbed in forest. If you say so, he says. We can hardly hear him. He can hardly hold his kids.

A fortress built of pill bottles. A hostel full of trolls. My press presents me with a switchblade engraved with someone else’s name. I do not explain my misfortunes. I do not address the dead. My company hires me to trace the sewage smell. When I tell them it’s them, they foam. Alone in the passenger seat, the self-driving car parts the calm river. The newspaper warns us of warming salts. We talk backwards when discussing the moon. Humankind finds an alien buried in the sky. Heaven is such a tired cloud. Hell is only a hole.

Freesky

Dearest applicant, thank you for submitting to our poetry contest. We regret to inform you the form you sent us was just a giant bag of sand. It tore open on Jordan’s desk. We hired cleaners but I’m still finding it in my shoes, in my socks. My god, it’s everywhere.

Open Reading Period

Benjamin Niespodziany is a writer whose work has appeared in Indiana Review, Fence, Booth, Conduit, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. His writing has been featured in the Wigleaf Top 50 and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, and Best of the Net. The host of a bi-monthly reading series in Chicago (Neon Night Mic), he also recently launched his own indie press known as Piżama Press.

Published July 15 2025