“Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don’t fit into boxes.”

Tori Amos

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Perspective” by Featured Artist Andrea Damic

To see ALL of Andrea’s delightfully disorientating & psychedelically precise works, as well as the rest of our Resident Artist’s works, visit our Mad Gallery!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week on Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum… we had to say on feline ways; we pressed a soul through a cup with holes; we checked our choice of a baritone voice; we found no frolic in a workaholic; we were happy fools in a winter pool; we recalled lost hope from a slip of soap; we shook our stead on “better off dead.” We must be awake to shake. ~ MH Clay

MERCY by Tony Robinson

Rank and acrid
The smell burned my nostrils
The flies circling and landing
In this grim theatre
Of chance and necessity

I reached down with a rubber glove
To grab the tail of the carcass
And the babies spilled out of her
Wriggling on the driveway

She must have died in childbirth
Her brood now struggling
To nurse or get back to the womb
One born still and curled
Another striking out on its own
Still pale, blind and mewling

What did the possum see the night before
When it looked at me with its small, black eyes,
Its rat-like tail and needle teeth?
“Nasty creatures, aren’t they?”
Said the neighbor, looking down over my shoulder.
“Better off dead.”

August 22, 2026

editors note: None for them? Then, why for us? (This poem is included in Tony’s latest collection, Emergent. Contact Tony here for information on how to get your copy.)- mh clay

The Soap by Kushal Poddar

A thin sliver of soap,
translucent, glycerine,
slashes my skin.
I hold it before my eyes.
It filters the toilet, washroom
into a slow sunset scene.
Blood and drawing structures-
where have I seen it before?
I drop to my knees as if
memories are a thick mist puddled
near the floor. My father died
slipping on his soap.
We bled a cloud so that the journey
to the cremation pier be comfortable
for us, the living. I washed the blood away
from my hands and threw away the shirt.

August 21, 2026

editors note: When a slipper is a trigger. – mh clay

Y SWIM by Marie Higgins

The sidewalk salt broke solid ice
Around an uncommon togetherness
With a respectable indoor pool
Where I escape from winter
In waters warm enough

A humungous airy room
With side-stacked rectangular windows
Bigger than train cars
It lets loads of light in

On this boisterously blustery morning
Clouds blew off their appointments
So the sun could shine for me
At just the right angle

Low and sideways through the glass
Knocking around and bumping into
All sorts of molecules and electrons
Fragmenting

Settling simultaneously atop the water
Floating like glittery lightning bolts
And a-bottom
Looking like italic multiplication tables

The pool floor a dancehall
For swimming rays
Strutting their jazzy lines
In light-striped funky animal suits

Buoying me up
Over the blues
Because I went swimming

August 20, 2026

editors note: Good for the soul anytime of year. – mh clay

fix me. by Guest Poet Alice Blackwell

i wish i could confidently describe my thought process
it isn’t succinct, direct or neatly contained
it’s everywhere all at once
inwardly, i’m your favorite local crackhead celebrating survival
outwardly, i’m the type a – workaholic – how did she know that – dabbles in everything – but master of control
my internal monologue has challenged me since 2016
the questioning dialogue and random thoughts never stop
i’ve tried silencing with antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, counseling, but it’s only made my predicament worse
attention deficit hyperactive disorder
bipolar i disorder
obsessive compulsive disorder
generalized anxiety disorder
major depressive disorder
xanax, prozac, fluoxetine, abilify, caplyta, wellbutrin, seroquel, latuda, effexor, zoloft, strattera, lithium
those medications are plastered across my emr
i know there are others
my internal monologue has persisted through medicinal triumphs and roadblocks
the more i think, the worse i feel
the quieter i am, the worse i feel
i am stigmatized, ostracized, and penalized for asking for help
i’ve been labeled unstable, bi-polar, depressed, anxious, but never incapable of success
the mechanisms of my mind do not function like a well-oiled machine
some are signaling to stop, while some are signaling go
i’m either three steps ahead or six behind
i’m predicting our conversation, but also plotting my escape
i know this information
i shared this information
but i’ll placate your ego
my outward appearance suggests stable, established, and put-together
our conversations are “told ya so and i was right.”
i wish i wasn’t like this – fix me.

August 19, 2026

editors note: Can’t fix what’s not broken, just different. (How different are you to them?) – mh clay

UNREACHABLE by L.E. Douglas

Your baritone voice
missed by
my ears
Heard too little
even when you
were around

Trying to bury
my thoughts
of your appearances

while wishing
Then remembering

You don’t
return my texts
Or anyone else’s
Why try to
befriend you

You seem lost
Out in space
Untethered
Unreachable

August 18, 2026

editors note: A slip of celebrity sifted down to its essence. – mh clay

Won’t be for Long by John Duarte

It was that stare
looking completely through
you
life skirting by too fast
losing any direction
the distance
where to go
none of it worth time to
be lost or worry
too many things at this point
already lost
suggestions
any
pass like liquid through a cup
with holes
no permanence
restlessness
that uncaring constant
left craving normalcy
it
doesn’t exist anymore
took a photo of it the other day

blurred

August 17, 2026

editors note: Normalcy called to ask for their camera back. – mh clay

Beyond Compliance, Beyond Resistance by D. R. James

When asked once who his greatest spiritual teacher
had been the Dalai Lama responded, “China.”

The cat’s reactions to my fingers’
scratching remind me I’m often
automatic: twitching skin of each
thank-you-very-much, arched back
of jockeying for a slender compliment,
submissive flop-and-grovel of every
please, please, please. But then

that prance of defiance across
the invisible piano wire spanning
table to out-of-bounds countertop
to stove controls, my dainty paws,
claws approximately withdrawn,
picking out the touch-pad tune of
bake, broil, clean, clock, and cancel.

Lately I’ve been working on my
up-and-walk-away, my saunter
and dusty-sandal forefoot flick,
my vertical tail-like-a-flag of
nonchalance— which I plan to plant
somewhere pacifistic, somewhere
beyond this rage against my own Beijing.

August 16, 2026

editors note: Adopt an air of feline resistance, cool and uncaring for all we care. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

If you’ve got a thirst for a read, “Rain Between Stations“ by our newest Contributing Writer Sayan Sarkar just might quench that need!

Here’s what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this weekend read:

We’re always between the sun, the shine, and the downfall. But we’re all under it all together. So hold on.

Here’s how this stormy story starts:

“Windows Up” by Tyler Malone

“Let’s go,” my wife, R, said.

I looked at my wristwatch. 3:40 PM.

“It’s pretty cloudy outside,” I remarked. “And the wind’s picking up speed.”

“You’re right,” she replied. “But if we don’t go now, we might miss the train.”

When we got out into the alley in front of her house, the rain was falling in a drizzle. The wind blew our hair and brushed our cheeks, caressing us with its cool touch.

Our city was in the midst of a heatwave. Up until half an hour ago, everything outside was shriveling in the scorching heat.

Birds were scampering towards their nests, dogs and cats were scurrying for some shade, and humans thought better than to step outside in such adversity.

But then, the rain came like an unannounced yet welcome guest.

The rumbling of the clouds brought relief to all living beings in the locality, and the first drop of rain felt like ambrosia…

Get the rest of this rainy day read right here!

•••

Step right up and get you one helluva read titled “Hanky Panky at the 1966 World’s Fair“ by Contributing Writer & Poet Jeff Grimshaw!

Here’s what Short Story Tyler Malone has to say about this weekday read:

Get by with what you walked in the room with, but walk away with more than you started.

Here’s how this show begins:

“Kid’s Stuff” by Tyler Malone

David was looking for his other sneaker. He still wore the left one but had taken the right one off to shake out a pebble that had been annoying him, and he had (perhaps distracted by something more interesting) not bothered to put it back on. Since he did not remember where he had removed the sneaker, he was retracing his afternoon. He was not confident. He had not been paying much attention. He was moving back through time with a weird clip-clop gait because of the missing sneaker. Being 10 years old, he understood that it was unlikely someone had stolen his right sneaker, but he also understood it could have been chucked into a garbage can by one of the surly teenagers in his neighborhood. Or carried off by a dog. There was nothing unlikely about those possibilities.

He caught sight of Muffy Bradshaw through the slats of her backyard fence. She was a full year his senior and at the moment playing her new copy of “Hanky Panky” by Tommy James & the Shondells on a battery-powered record player. David entered her yard through a space between the garage and the last post of the fence. “Hello, Muffy.”

Muffy narrowed her eyes. “Admission is ten cents, David Grimes.”

“Admission to what?”

“The World’s Fair,” she said. There was a coffee table with a wobbly leg that Mrs. Bradshaw had left out for the garbage men, which Muffy had reclaimed and dragged into her back yard. On it was a neatly lettered sign that indeed read “The 1966 World’s Fair.”…

Get admission to the rest of this read right here!

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin’ on… NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in our Mad Swirl world? Then come by whenever the mood strikes! We’ll be here…

…thinkin’ outside the box,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor