Sunspot Literary Journal
Volume 4 Issue #2 © 2022 Sun Dogs Creations

Changing the World
Through Words and Art

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Volume 4, Issue 2

Table of Contents
Editor’s Prize: [la boda la muerte mi vida] / Adam Walsh / 1
Serenade / Serge Lecomte / 2
Butterfly-cock on Frogs / Serge Lecomte / 3
It’s a Small World / Serge Lecomte / 4
Valentine / Joanna Urban / 5
Sister Earth / Leah Dockrill / 8
The Age of Death / Tetman Callis / 9
On the Beach / Jacqueline Shortell-McSweeney / 16
Seasons of Anticipation / Matt Gulley / 17
Trances / L. Ward Abel / 18
Counting / Martha Clarkson / 20
Senescence / Evan Benedict / 21
Tranquil Forest Tiger (Summer) / Roopa Dudley / 23
Chess-Nut Forest (Autumn) / Roopa Dudley / 24
Frigid Forest Fox (Winter) / Roopa Dudley / 25
Chess-Nut Paradise (Spring) / Roopa Dudley / 26
Chess-Nut Swamp / Roopa Dudley / 27
Caught Between / Laura Eppinger / 28
Orpheus, Far from the Abyss / Meagan Daine / 30
Speculum Lacum / Robert Palmer / 36
The Bit That Cannot Be Explained / Jack Stewart / 37
Woman in the Dressing Glass / Mikal Wix / 38
Carolina / Phyllis Green / 39

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There Was the Spotted Pony / Murray Silverstein / 40
Whirligigs / Sally Ventura / 42
No. 965 from Series “Random Thoughts in the Waiting Room” /K.G. Ricci / 44
Lessons / Chris Fleming / 45
Geminga
Finalist: Suffers Patiently / jessica ross / 59
Finalist: Get All Your Ducks in a Row / Pamela Viggiani / 60
Finalist: Some Days I Can Taste / Atma Frans / 61
Finalist: Rest Stop, Mile Marker 173 / Jen Payne / 62
Finalist: Analogy / JJ Chen Henderson / 63
Finalist: Broken Heart / Paul Milligan / 64
Finalist: Candy Crush / Jacqueline Schaalje / 65
Finalist: Fall Tanka / Sarah Kersey / 66
Runner-Up: Her Wildest Dreams / Martha Nance / 67
Runner-Up: Kishimoto / Rain Hou / 68
Winner: Tax Season / Tifara Brown / 69
Contributors / 70
COVER: Cruising is Such a Drag / Tyler McCurrySunspot Literary Journal

Volume 4, Issue 2[la boda la muerte mi vida]
Adam Walsh
Editor’s Prizesometime after light bleached our faces to a photo
not the studio kind thick gloss opaque backgroundpolaroid even not enough context for the story
repeated to strangers at a passthrough bar near stateline
with a common unmemorable namebrought out any chance to say: esta foto es mi chicaella siempre está conmigo kept in wallet to stay
too long and me sitting on it if that’s not…
huh?

how did it happen?

when did it end?

in ‘81 cuando la vida dejo de servir los frutos del trabajo
fields fat to founder rojo verde rotten dulce
where’d you go then? ¡¿a dónde?!
con mi foto con mi cerverza with a short book of songs
yo estoy aquíwalking el campo negro
blackenedfeet kicking up the soft ash from my reckoning
then why…why are you here?
that i can’t tell you my friend not yet anyway
maybe after this pint or a different day altogether
when the pages of this book canciones y todo
no longer need to be sungonly quiet remains except for lluvia
sí lluvia i’ll certainly tell you the next time
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Serenade / Serge Lecomte2

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Butterfly-cock on Frogs / Serge Lecomte3

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It’s a Small World / Serge Lecomte4

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Valentine
Joanna Urban
On Valentine’s Day, the boyfriend makes her beef bourguignon andpresents her with a scarf from his trip to Prague. In Boyfriend’s studioapartment, they lie on his bed, which is next to the refrigerator andlacks a headboard. On top of mismatched sheets, they sprawl out andwatch the short program of pairs figure skating on the WinterOlympics. Her eyes are glued to the ice skaters, watching the sequins
shimmer on their leotards as they glide, leap, and pirouette across the
slick, white ice. She starts crying, which bewilders Boyfriend. Did I do
something wrong? he asks. Well, he has never traveled to Prague inthe time they’ve been together, she thinks but doesn’t say this. Of
course not, she says instead, wondering what he was thinking, who he
was thinking of when he purchased that scarf. Mostly, she’s crying at
the perfect synchronization of the skaters’ bodies, how they intuit eachother’s next moves; she knows she doesn’t have this with Boyfriend
and wonders if she’ll ever have it with anyone.
The next February fourteenth, her new boyfriend, a divorcé ten years
her senior, surprises her with a bouquet of flowers delivered to her
office. Her colleagues marvel at this display of romance. Never let thisone go, they say, their voices laced with wisdom and knowing. New
Boyfriend makes them a reservation at a buzzy, modish restaurantwith an elaborate menu requiring extensive predinner googling.
There, as their hyperlocal microgreens are being served, they run into
New Boyfriend’s boss who mistakes her for the ex-wife. You look somuch like—the boss cut himself off. Never mind, he says, wishingthem a happy Valentine’s Day. New Boyfriend tries to conceal his
discomfort, but the tautness of his smile, the heaviness in his eyes, giveaway how odd he feels.

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As the weeks pass New Boyfriend’s texts and calls grow less frequent.
A slow drifting. Then, his inevitably gutting words: He’s not ready fora serious relationship. He tells her he’s sorry, but he wants to see otherpeople. Don’t lie to me, she yells, you want to see one other person!
She shrieks at him like a crazy person, waving her arms in wild
gestures, and it’s a little bit satisfying. She has never allowed herself
to be so mad at a man before.
Religiously, torturously, she stalks him and the ex-wife on Instagram.
Half a year later, they’re back in each other’s pictures.
The year after that, she adopts a rescue puppy that first week ofFebruary. A three-month-old mutt with teeth as sharp as toothpicks
that gnaw on her hands for attention. The pink pads of his paws quiver
and flit while he dreams, and he squawks—a piercing birdlike chirp—
when he’s hungry. He tests her patience when he pees on the floor forthe twentieth time, chews up a computer charger, barks at a ladybug
crawling across the windowsill. On the puppy’s twenty-first accident
in the house at least he pees by the front door, which makes her heartsoar with hope; he’s making progress.
She walks him outside and he tugs at his leash, stops in the middle ofthe sidewalk, and sits down in protest. Neighbors pass by telling her
how cute and perfect the puppy is, and she accepts their compliments
like a proud mom, her frustration with him melting away.
The next winter she has a fiancé. In January, they moved into a five
hundred square foot apartment together, only marginally larger than
the tiny one-bedroom she’s lived in since tiring of roommates. Fiancé
makes her coffee and oatmeal for breakfast every morning, and he lets
the grown puppy sleep at the foot of their bed. Fiancé is not boastfulor showy about his love for her, but she can tell that he indeed6

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considers himself lucky. When she leaves for a work trip, hereorganizes the kitchen cabinets over the weekend; he’s bored andrestless without her, and she can tell that she was missed. Fiancé isobsessed with puppy, always buying him new balls and rope toys, andorganic, grain-free treats. This is wonderful, because puppy is her
child, and love for puppy means love for their future with more fourlegged and maybe two-legged children one day.
For Valentine’s Day, he buys her gold-plated earrings from a local
shop and brings flowers home to her that she trims and prunes eachday. The bouquet lasts for almost a week—blooming, lingering,nourished with daily fresh water—until clumsy puppy knocks it overwhile jumping to steal a piece of steak.

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Sister Earth / Leah Dockrill

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The Age of Death
Tetman Callis
I gotcha, Dad. I gotcha.
I know it hurts, Dad. It’ll be over soon.
No, Dad. No. You can’t get up. I’m sorry, but you can’t. If you try to
get up you’ll fall down and we won’t be able to pick you up and get you
back in bed, there’s only me and Mom here and we’re not strong
enough.
No, Dad.
It’s all right, Dad. Everything is okay, it’s going to be okay.
It didn’t matter what book it was. Hard to concentrate.
The time was early and the car was mostly empty.
That girl, she was very pretty. Up by the other door. She sat
and focused on her phone.
Specter didn’t want her to catch him looking. He didn’t stare.
Looked around, eyes going here and there, taking things in, watchingout, the way you do in the city.
There was an angry guy in the car. Young man, maybe
twenties. He muttered and cursed. The girl ignored him. But you could
see she knew he was there. You could see her tense up, even from theother end of the car.
Specter kept an eye out. A wary eye, and an ear, too. Whatwould he do if the angry young man went off? Specter was pushingsixty. He’d push the intercom button and call for help.
The angry young man got off at the next stop. Specter
watched him giving forearm blows to a shelter at the stop as the train
pulled away.
The girl got off two stops later. Specter missed her as soon as
she was gone. He missed them all.
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Illinois was farms. Missouri wooded mountains. Downtown Dallas
steel and glass and bright reflections. The approach path into El Paso
over low brown desert mountains—he hiked those mountains when he
was young.
Cats at the motel. One in the parking lot, in the glare of headlights.
Then another, and another, and more. Cats in the bushes and hedges.
Furtive felines, their own society, together but apart.
Specter and his mom sit at the dining table in his mom’s house. Had
been his mom and dad’s, now hers alone. They had been together along time. A lifetime. He can see the loneliness.
Specter and his mom eat chicken noodle soup and share anorange. Talk of his dad’s things, of money.
No, Mom. Don’t give me any. I don’t want it and I won’t take it.
This was only half true. He did want it. But he wouldn’t takeit. Think of what people would say.
His parents reached the age of death. That long voyage through timethat only the truly fortunate are cursed to endure. Friends and family
dropping away, one by one, faster and faster.
His mom’s best friend, emphysemic, smoked long whitecigarettes, later was connected by a long clear tube to a wheeled tank,gone after three frantic days of telephoning family and wandering thestreets.
His dad’s best friend, long wheelchair-bound, body breaking
down piece by piece, system by system, gone one morning after ahemorrhagic flood from the nose, bursting from within his skull.
Then his father, worn out by the decades, kidneys shutting
down, liver shutting down, appetite gone, fitfully awake in pain andunquenchable thirst, sent home from the hospital to die in his own bed.
Hospitals are places for those who may live. Every death in a hospitalis an accidental death.
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The widow is crippled in one arm and has a speech impediment. She
comes to Specter’s mom’s house two days after Specter’s dad has died,
before Specter’s dad has been rendered into ash and fragments.
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
The widow brings an Arby’s and a Pepsi to give to Specter’smom, though Specter’s mom does not eat and drink Arby’s and Pepsi.
And lately she hadn’t been eating or drinking much at all. Her husband
had been dying, suffering, it takes one’s appetite away.
I came to see what you were going to do with your husband’sbed. It’s a good bed. Can I have it?
Specter pulls up in his rental in the space in front of his motel room.
Cats scatter. Two people, a couple, man and woman, are at the door to
his room, trying to get in. Specter gets out of his car.
Excuse me, but what are you doing?
They explain and it’s a misunderstanding, misdirection by thedesk clerk, the motel’s layout is confusing.
I’m sorry, I don’t know where your room is, but it is not righthere.
Specter walks the neighborhood from one end to the other, wending
up and down various streets. He hasn’t walked it like this since he wasa restless teenager, prowling on foot, looking for friendship and love.
He walks by houses he hasn’t walked by in over forty years. Much haschanged. The cars, of course. The yards, drought and rationing havebrought an end to green grass and now the yards are all stone andconcrete. The people, he knows they have all changed, moved away ordied. He doesn’t know anyone who still lives here besides his mom anddad, now just his mom.
He stops in front of Winter’s house. Stands on the sidewalk,
big and bold as brass on a sunny desert day. Someone comes out?
Comes out to say, What are you doing? Why are you staring at myhouse? But no one comes out. He almost didn’t recognize the house.
Its facade mostly brick, the color hasn’t changed, though it’s not the11

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Volume 4, Issue 2color he remembers. But he remembers the porch. He remembers thefront door, the direction it faced. He remembers where on the block
the house was at, what part of the block, which side of the street.
There’s only one house in this part of the block with a front door thatfaces that direction, so this must be the one. He remembers one night,
he and Winter stood on this porch, and the things they did and said.
He was sixteen and she was fourteen. They had forever.
He can’t stand there forever. He turns around to look acrossthe street. He knows Evie lived in one of those houses. He’s pretty surehe knows which one. He lived there too, for a while, when he was downon his luck and Evie talked her mom into taking him in. He stayed
until he wore out his welcome, and then he left.
He walks on. Block after block. There is no one out.
He reaches the block where he grew up. He walks up it. He has
made this walk several times already in the years since he left, since
his parents moved a few blocks away to the house his mom lives innow and his dad died in. Here, this block, when he was growing up
here, no one died. He doesn’t need to rifle through his memories as hewalks up this block to the cross street. There are too many of them,and he has been over them over and over.
He turns left and continues. A half-block on he passes thecorner where he and Tina first kissed. He stops and contemplates. He
didn’t remember that telephone pole.
He walks on. He is going to Tina’s house. He knows shedoesn’t live there anymore. She left years ago, and as far as that goes,it goes all the way to the end. He knows she died a dozen years ago.
He goes to her house anyway, to see it again, closer than he’s been
since their days together in school.
He doesn’t remember the address, but he remembers thehouse. He stands and looks. The driveway where Tina and he madeout one spring afternoon after school, hidden from view behind herfather’s car, unbuttoning and unfastening. The driveway now shadedby an awning, aluminum siding held up on thin poles. Beyond thedrive, the window on the wall of the converted garage that was Tina’s
bedroom. The things they did there. Beside the driveway, between it
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he and Tina and their friends gathered to drink soft drinks and smoke
cigarettes and incessantly shoot the breeze on any clement evening.
It’s now paved. Pure flat concrete, gray in the weak sunlight.
He walks on. Down the block and to the right and past thejunior high school. They don’t call them junior high schools anymore.
Middle schools now. It’s being torn down. Its parking lot and part ofits athletic field dotted with a formation of portable classrooms, theold structure is being razed so that something new and modern can beerected in its place. No more nostalgic visits to its halls from old
graduates.
He turns and heads back to his mom’s house. It’s a long walk.
The neighborhood was new when he grew up here. Now everything
looks tattered and worn. His cell phone buzzes in his pocket but hedoesn’t answer.
The only time he watches television anymore is in motels. He
doesn’t travel often. Television is so strange. The constant hectoringand manipulation. Buy this. Do that. Go here. Be concerned.
Constantly there’s something to concern you in all that doesn’t
concern you. Make it yours. Worry. Fret. Be outraged. Be afraid oflacking everything you lack.
The ceremony is this morning and he finishes getting dressed.
Doesn’t often have chance or call to wear a suit. Checks his look. Tie
is straight.
The white limousine pulled up in front of the house. Specter and his
mom walked down the driveway. Slowly, she’s old.
The honor guard in the cemetery snapped to attention as the limo
slowly passed.
There were friends there. Friends of his dad’s and his mom’s. Not
many. His parents were quiet people, kept to themselves, their home,their flowers and trees and bushes and small patch of real lawn out
back where the city couldn’t see how often they watered.
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A cloudy and chilly day. The seasonal winds already beginning. The
man from the funeral home had a blanket to spread over Specter’s
mom’s lap where she sat on the bench. The urn containing the ashesof her husband was placed on the bier. In a moment, the minister andthe man from the funeral home moved it one level lower so it wouldn’t
be knocked over by the wind.
The honor guard folded the flag. Precisely, in careful time andwith serious intent. One of the guard brought the folded flag toSpecter’s mom, knelt in front of her, murmured some words, presented
to her the flag.
The honor guard fired the volley, the shots loud in the cold latemorning. The bugler played “Taps,” the notes clear and long.
There were things to go through back at the house, papers to sort.
A boxing match on television at the motel. Nothing Specter would
ordinarily watch, but when you travel . . . the match went ten rounds
and Specter watched them all. Thought about his dad.
Specter’s dad taught him to throw a forearm blow and not tothrow a punch. Taught him to do whatever it took.
Don’t be afraid to pick up an equalizer.
An equalizer, Dad?
Yeah, like a two-by-four.
Specter’s dad had been a sergeant, had fought in wars.
The match was a split decision. The former champ won on
points. It could’ve gone either way.
Cats in the motel parking lot at dawn. Furtive and feline, leave us
alone, this life is hard.

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Breakfast at sunrise. Specter sat in a booth at the diner, ate his baconand eggs and drank his coffee, watched while the sun illuminated themountains, rugged and treeless peaks dusted with snow.
At the airport there were Border Patrol agents in combat fatigues,
carrying automatic rifles. What invasion at the airport were theywaiting for? Specter was glad he was of the race that most readily
passed.
He had an aisle seat on the flight back. The seat beside him was empty,
a rarity on flights. A young woman sat in the window seat, drew theshade, leaned her head to sleep. Specter stared at the pages of his book.
The baby in the row ahead was quiet. There was another baby farther
back in the cabin, cried a bit. Specter thought as to how we were allbabies once. Every one of us, carried and coddled and cared for, every
need attended to.
Hush, little baby. Don’t you cry. You’ll be a grown-up, by and by.
Hush, little baby. It’s going to be all right. You’re okay.
Mommy’s right here. She’s okay. Daddy’s waiting at home and he’sokay, too.
Hush, little baby.

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On the Beach / Jacqueline Shortell-McSweeney

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Seasons of Anticipation
Matt Gulley
Three moon’d thing
not seasons of weather,but seasons of anticipation
are always ahead.
For an awaited tv showor love to arrive, for love to develop
or to end.
How many do you have left?
Is it how you keep time alive?
Each day a color’s fraction
within a turning prism.
It’s not long now
till it’s ages before that many limb’d hand,
Desirecan palm that hot stove,that burning handle crossed in red
and recoil ugly at the pain
and look to the next season.
Fixed point in the distance,
a welcome sign with fangs.

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TrancesL. Ward Abel
We play music behind the lines
of fearful crossings-over,those snipers comb
for people like us
whose herd is culled
through broken ties, wars
an entire generation of charcoal
with names, hard-living
gone now likemaster and beef.
Our songs now trigger
ten thousand days ago
when we sang atop our lungs
we testified the old ones
together tethered andflowers bloomed
singing without
self-awareness never considered
except as full-voiced trancesand none of what passes forthinking deep.
All those ruins are prelude toa past come-again
a burned-out blocka silhouette
but acrossfrom several gardens

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and this ideology in extremis
not good enough to continue
is just enough to be scraps
or midden from washed up
worders, visionaries
still in hopefulremission.

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Volume 4, Issue 2Counting / Martha Clarkson

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Senescence
Evan Benedict
Excerpt from The Ragnarök Cycle
II.

Senescence

Odin spunfrom the limbs
of the world-tree,
cast his eyes low, saw the runes
learned their names,
the magic in themto pass our knowledge,
speak over great distance,over time.
“Rune” meant “secret,”sacred knowledge because
words carried starfire and shadow—
light and blight—
breathed magic,
but also wickedness.
And knowledge,
which is both.
“Thus I carve the runes,” said he,to see the future they spelled out.

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The word was Ragnarök.
His rune. His ruin.
“Ruin.” Latinate and foreign,
but the sound so close,
brushing the back of the neck of rune,
bare syllabic breath, the schwa of “ruin,”
creeping North through the land of Gauls
and quaint Germanic tribes
Great Bear that prowled the sky
to guide the way
so long before the Norsemen came.
“Ruin” predates “rune.” How else could it be?
The fall is written in our destiny.
“Fall” is older than “secret.”
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Tranquil Forest Tiger (Summer) / Roopa Dudley23

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Chess-Nut Forest (Autumn) / Roopa Dudley24Sunspot Literary Journal

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Frigid Forest Fox (Winter) / Roopa Dudley25

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Chess-Nut Paradise (Spring) / Roopa Dudley26

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Chess-Nut Swamp / Roopa Dudley27

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Caught Between
Laura Eppinger
YOU’RE INVITED: Small Birthday Party for Our Small Child
WHEN: Next Saturday, 1-3 p.m. should be the warmest hours of theday.
WHERE: Our backyard! The other side of this invitation includes amap of the neighborhood. Just one block to steer clear of—hard to
explain if you’ve never been here before.
We realize February is still chilly out, so we’ll see how long
we last! Some of you post so many selfies on airplanes or in DisneyWorld, it’s hard to believe you aren’t exhaling COVID right now.
Then again, we just bought a house one block away from a lethal
whirlpool monster. Spouse tells me we are in no place to judge, since
we just caved to the pressure of a rabid housing market.
WHAT TO BRING: Just yourselves, all bundled up! We don’t needgifts for the little one, really. She’s never had a party beyond Spouseand me singing to her for her first and second birthdays, so she doesn’t
expect a spectacle. We bought far too much stuff online during
lockdown. Spare us!
RE: the map on the other side of this glossy invite I alsoordered online. Please plan your route ahead of time. On your Maps
app, this chunk of real estate will appear as a little pond with a fountain
spritzing to the sky every summer. Trust me when I say this is not an
accurate description.
It is a hungry beast, sentient though it is just a water spout.
No face, no eyes, no voice. The whirlpool seems to wield gravity; itwill suck in your SUV and all inside, so do not even try to approachon foot. (It goes without saying, but DO NOT gift Small Child a bike!)
Is it careless to invite others to our home, knowing theirminivan could be slurped off the pavement and into the gullet of anangry beast? Sure. Feel free to decline this invitation. We have almost
certainly declined one of yours recently.
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You can probably tell that I MISS PEOPLE. My wise friends
are too cautious to hang out. My reckless friends—do you not know
about my father-in-law? —talk about being so over face coverings. But
before all this, we were close. You absolutely know that one of youropen-mouthed coughs inside my living room could lay waste to
Spouse’s parents. Still. I miss your selfishness and stubbornness andrude gaping yawns.
Do I think Small Child is traumatized? Oh probably, by thestress of her parents alone. Not by pandemic restrictions, per se. Not
by the wearing of masks. I know some of you hold these loopy opinions
and you don’t know this but I’ve muted you on Facebook. But notdeleted. I can’t because, as I said above, I miss you. Maybe one day
you’ll leave those deranged parenting groups? I dare to dream.
It’s like being caught between ... like being trapped between ... I’m sofried from the strain I can’t think of a metaphor.
RSVP: Just show up, or don’t. The longing for grownup conversationis unbearable though the fear of losing you to Charybdis looms large.
Come to my party and risk being devoured. Stay home and letloneliness nibble away at your heart by another bite. Either way I’ll beserving an excellent spiked hot chocolate I learned from a TikTok!

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Orpheus, Far from the Abyss
Meagan Daine
Orpheus, I have something to tell you.
Do you remember when we used to climb the dusty hill andpush through tangled thorns to reach the eucalyptus grove? The spicy
smell of trees. The strips of bark, long as we were tall but fragile, lightto hold and crack for the scent to anoint our hands. Slender leaves
falling onto thick green grass, the cool grass rising in stalks, mounds,
hillocks wild with bell-shaped yellow flowers. Wood sorrel. You
taught me to pluck the stems and suck their sour juices. Remember?
Orpheus. Last night I dreamed we were walking up that hill
again, and I was happy because I felt you’d forgiven me.
Years have passed since I last heard you sing, Orpheus. But I’ve only
recently begun to mourn you. To let my silences be filled with ourunsaid words.
Do you hear them?
Do you remember the place where we met – that house on ahill, where a cool marine breeze streamed through our windows in themornings and brought with it the peal of distant bells?
We were tenants then, you in one room, I in another. A
miracle of possibility. My window faced a garden where a Ficus tree
shook its leaves like coins onto a limestone path. Yours opened onto a
courtyard where sunlight sank deep gold in the afternoon. Mornings
heavy shadows lay there, and so did you, curled under a yellow blanket
and dreaming, I imagine, of melodies you’d hummed the night before.
Each morning I stood and let the sheets fall from my body,
looked out my window toward the bells and planned the day—things
to do, schedules to keep—taking in light and sounds and scentswithout thought. Mistakes to fix, tasks to achieve: If I thought of you,it was only in that context.
Then one day I turned from the window and saw an ivory
folder on my desk, its surface dotted with petals from a bouquet of30

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baby blue-eyes. I picked up the folder, brushed away the petals, andopened it.
Inside were several sheets of linen paper. The first said colors
within and bore your signature. The second was strewn with points,
curves, and lines: A composition. A song that you had written for me.
I’m married now, Orpheus. Did you know?
To a man I met when I was in love with you.
I am still in love with you.
After the song, I started watching you. Silent. Hopeful. I thought fromnow on all your music would be for me, but to my consternation, youwent on living as before. You took your fill of life, in fact. Two glassesof wine at a concert. A conversation with professors, waving yourFrench cigarette. An affair with a cellist who performed your work theway it sounded in your heart, despite the fact that she’d never been
there.
I didn’t understand what all this meant. How you could singto me once and then stop. So I took on a parallel life, working andstudying, filling my days with things to do, tasks to achieve. I met aman who threw great parties, some of which you attended. You and I
would stand on opposite sides of a room, hearing music pound like aheart, talking and laughing with the crowd while moving slowly,
indiscernibly closer to each other, until we stood back-to-back.
I remember hearing the rhythm of your words like acounterpoint to my mindless chatter. I had a throbbing desire to turnand taste your sweat.
Did you feel it, Orpheus?
You must have. Because when the cellist arrived and stood in
the doorway, waiting, I glanced back at you, and our eyes met, and you
caught your breath before you went to join her.
We live in an apartment now, Orpheus. My husband and I.
It’s carpeted. Quiet. With all-new fixtures.
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There are two bedrooms, in one of which we sleep. The second
is an office lined with books. Hundreds, maybe thousands of old,
misused books with cracked spines and flaking pages. I sit beneaththem at a heavy desk to write.
One night soon after we moved in, I dreamed that water
started pouring from those books. It filled the office, and I swam until
I drowned.
I died in the dream, Orpheus.
I found myself floating in an orb of darkness, which was
pricked intermittently by pinpoints of light. They came in pulses,
slowly, then faster and brighter. I felt like something magnificent wasarriving.
Then, little by little, they dimmed, and finally ceased.
I woke thinking of a poem.
A day came when the cellist had practice, and the man who gave
parties was out of town, so for the first time in months, you and I werealone.
We decided to walk into the city. Up windy streets, past stonybuildings we’d seen countless times. It was only exercise at first, butthen it started to rain. A cold, whipping rain that shocked us alive.
We looked at each other with a startled laugh. You saw a bus
stop ahead and ran for it, shouting back at me, hurry, hurry. Sheets ofrain and leaves fell all around us. People rushed past, dashing into
doorways, ducking into idling cars. You reached the stop and leapt
onto the bus. It was packed with bodies. You edged among them andreached back for me. I took your hand. You pulled, I held on, but I
couldn’t fit on the bus. There was only room for a single foot. For amoment I stood dangling, suspended by an arm, as rain poured overme and the engine rumbled. Our hands were wet. Hard as you held me,they slipped, and I fell back onto the sidewalk.
The doors shut.
The bus motored away.
I stared after it in dumb confusion.
Now what? Should I run after it? Take cover and wait?
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I didn’t know what you’d do. If you’d come back for me. I
didn’t know where I was. I felt the rain turning to ice as it slid down
my neck. My throat tightened with irrational fear that I’d done
something irreparably stupid.
Then a hand grasped my arm.
I looked up and saw you, somehow, standing next to me,
droplets clinging to the lashes of your laughing eyes.
Relief surged into my chest. I felt …
Whole.
You slipped out of your gray wool coat and held it over us.
Time passes without consent.
I’m not ready to grow old.
I still wantThat night you came into my room.
I’d left the door unlocked, thinking maybe …
And you did, and I sat in breathless anticipation as you stoodadjusting to the darkness. I watched you until you could see, Orpheus.
And I sensed there was something wrong. Your black hair was wildaround your head. Your eyes, always warm and brown, were feverishlybright.
After a moment you came to my bed and knelt to see if I wasawake. I smiled. So did you, but your smile was fragile, desperate. In ahollow whisper, you said she knows.
I wasn’t sure what you meant. I knew she was the cellist. I felt
a surge of joy that I was in your heart. But there was more, there had
to be more, some reason her knowing had brought you to the brink ofa precipice.
I waited. Breathing in your scent of musk and cigarettes andsweat. Feeling your heat on the mattress, your hand near my thigh.
My chest rose and fell. Rose and fell. Too many times before arealization finally dawned: You were expecting my response.
I didn’t know what to say.

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I was a disciple of things to do and tasks to achieve. I thought
all answers had to be correct. But when I searched for correctness inthis moment, I found none. Panic rose in my throat, desire mixed withthe fear of failing to give you what you wanted. I scrabbled to holdonto something that was wisping away. I had no answers. Only thepaltriest of questions, which at last was what I offered you: What are
you going to do?
You drew back. Smiled again, this time as though you wanted
to cry. You took my hand, raised it to your lips, and kissed it. Thenyou stood up and walked away.
Barberry. Helianthella. Bitter dogbane.
These are the flowers that bloom where I live now.
Sometimes I gather a few in a vase and place them on my desk,
where I leave them until the petals crumble into dust.
My husband does not understand why I do this.
He wonders idly at my ability to remember each flower’s
name. I don’t answer because I can’t explain what I’m writing to tellyou, Orpheus – what I now know, after years of sitting in the shadowsof these books, recalling that night when you came to me, anguishedin the dark – years of seeking the litany of syllables I should’ve said,
what would’ve made you stay – that a word, like a note, is a unit of life.
You knew that.
You gave me your life in a song, and when you waited for minein return, I wavered. I feared I would give you the wrong life, one thatwas flawed or unfinished or worst of all unworthy, so in the end, I gave
you nothing.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
This is what I have to say.
I will never speak these words, Orpheus.
You’re too far from me now to hear them.

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But I write because their power—unread, unspoken, unknown
even by the man who took your place in my life—I am, at last,
beginning to perceive.

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Speculum Lacum / Robert Palmer

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The Bit That Cannot Be ExplainedJack Stewart
In art there is only one thing thatcounts: the bit that cannot be explained.
—Georges Braque
The hedges surrounding the museum
Have grown Cyrillic,Darkening the last few months.
A man and woman
Stand on the sidewalk
Like seeds for a crowd.
In winter, the stone lions turn Talmudic,
Kippahs of snow on their heads.
Which is holy,
The first touch of brush to canvas
Or the moment it lifts away?
Find the moment between light
And shade and you have
The heartbeat of color,
The voice of God.
You don’t need much.
A hedge that is satisfied
With its roots,
A wind that hangs
From branches like fruit and ripens,
Then lets go.

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Woman in the Dressing Glass
Mikal Wix
She comes to feelThat not everything can be glorious,
That no man has mastery over design,That few moments rise above beginnings
or finales, that everyone tries
In their own way, even if to open their eyes,
That all the grains of sand or paradise will never,
ever be enough to arrest the way of ennui,That on her, some mouths will closeand some hands open,
That in all the contradictions and behind every
cold irony, lies one thingThat she’ll never reason: why always the pain comes
When all else sleeps, why loss is no borderland
to race across in search of choice,
And why sometimes the value of a glass to be in
Isn’t always open-and-shut, but instead simply
A face to see, a name to call, or a splendor to give,as if the stories of all things might one day fallback into place, back into a point of origin,
within her body,
Where even the burning hearts of beasts expelled,
both infinite and bound, natural or studied,
Can never know the span of time to break the past,or the spell to castthat opens the very thing neededat the instant it’s given.

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There Was the Spotted Pony
Murray Silverstein

There was the spotted pony, bells on its harness, the old man
led to our door.
Lifting me onto the saddle, he put a black sombrero on myhead, a kerchiefround my neck, and snapped a picture he sold to my mother,whose motherwas crushed by a horse-drawn wagon on the family farm.
Who can say what it is to be alive on this earth? Not me.
There was Riley, near-blind and living alone across the court,
fish tankby his door, the tank so full of plants and slime, I couldn’t see
the fish.
They’re there, claimed Riley, keep looking, and gave me a bookon fishing,
the word angler fresh to my eyes: to read, to watch, to wait.
You’d think, giving us eyes, it’s begging to be seen, this world,
to be known.
And there was my father, washing our car on the street,saying, Go in & get me a beer.
Filled with meaning I hop on my trike, and bumping along on
its crooked wheels
shake the can of Schlitz, and it explodes all over the car.
Father, whose father fled
the burning shtetl, throwing down his chamois cloth, cursing
me, my trike and the beer.
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I am the author of time, says the earth, and you belong to me.
But wait, my sister’s nightstand, in the room we shared, her
ice skates beneath itin a leather zippered Polar Palace bag, where, when she left it
open, you could see
the flashing blades!
Everything seen is ruled by the sun, whose law you learn byheart:
Who tries to look straight at me will go blind.
No. Shout it, there WAS . . . across Third Street, a field,
unfenced, Gilmore’s,
where Ringling Brothers pitched its tents, saw the bearded
lady, Lottie Letz,
while a dozen horse-head oil rigs churned the deep, turning afractured is
into the idyll was—can hear them still in my sleep.
You were given a life, consciousness, dreams, a mother-tongue
with which to praise—all of what is, was, and isbeyond your power to say.

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Whirligigs
Sally Ventura
I once believed my father
practiced the ancient arts,
working with wind, stars, and water.
Instead, he gutted engines,
dug and scraped the ground.
He pulled down the brim of his hat,lost interest in the dew-sprinkledwebs between rows of corn,and his hands turned to stone.
So, it was a surprise to findamong clamps, drills, and oil cans,the wooden whirligigs he had madebefore he was buried.
Just a small touch sent their
appendages whirring. The mermaids,
pegged soundly on wooden pedestals,
their bladed arms churning
nothing into nothingness,
and keystone cops, more mustachethan lip, chins parallel with their boots,slapped with paddle-hands
at the dust they chased:
those silly motions reminding methat while some part of us stands still,
another part moves the wind ahead,
and I have arrived at the slope of an age
to have stopped fighting
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despite the frantic turning, the angel
will never reach the candle
she holds before her, and the blackbird’s
steady flight is toward forgiveness.

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No. 965 from Series Random Thoughts in the Waiting Room /K.G. Ricci

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Lessons
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Suffers Patiently
jessica rossGeminga Finalist
Her parents follow her home from the wake.
“There is a desert in my head,” she says. “There is nothing.”
Her mother reaches across the table to her. Her mother looks
understanding and adoring and, surprisingly, determined.
“There is life in deserts, too,” her mother says, stubborn. A
child of the playa, hardy and enduring–she makes it sound so simple.
“Even there, it endures.”
Endures like the unwelcome silence. Endures like theemptiness of her bed. Like the heartache. The quiet.
And she endures like her husband’s voice in her memory,
reminding her there is life in deserts, too.

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Get All Your Ducks in a Row / Pamela Viggiani
Geminga Finalist

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Some Days I Can Taste
Atma Frans
Geminga Finalist
the sweet cotton candyof the one white cloud
floating all on its own
not minding
the lightning poppingand crackling
the storm
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Rest Stop, Mile Marker 173
Jen Payne
Geminga Finalist
The Garden State Parkway rest stop was halfway to my
grandmother’s. We’d pull off the exit and shuffle into the rose-coloredstalls of the Ladies Room.
Inside, near the pink-vinyl couch, a pull-knob vending
machine sold hairnets, bobby pins, and rainhats neatly folded into
pastel plastic boxes.
The rest stop burned down in ’91, years after we’d stop
traveling as a family. But in my mind, it’s all still there—the soft
golden light and tiled floors, the vending machine, my sister sleeping,
Dad singing “I Got You Babe” to Mom in the front seat, his hand on
her knee.

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Analogy
JJ Chen Henderson
Geminga Finalist
In this world, lovehas no analogy.
Then why,as I breaka rhizomeof lotus root,
its lake-mudsmeared hollows
remind meof the blanks
in my aging mother’s
eyes?

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Broken Heart / Paul Milligan
Geminga Finalist

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Candy Crush
Jacqueline Schaalje
Geminga Finalist
There was that bf who killed his avatarwith a tear in his pc cooling water.
He drank tea with my parents
and daubed my tongue in candy crush.

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Fall Tanka
Sarah Kersey
Geminga Finalist
In between frosts, leaves
sweat, dampen the dying grass.
I almost forget.
Nothing lasts and everythingaches: like a wet metronome.

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Her Wildest Dreams / Martha Nance
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KishimotoRain Hou
Geminga Runner-Up
Kishimoto belongs to the bay, in a knitted dress, willow blue color
showing through her palms—hair rolled up as ebb tides. I played her
Suite Bergamasque : it sounded like Europe, rhetorically, in my mind,
which corresponded with her hands, whispering. The flowering season
broke its promise in one night. Only emptiness is stable, with herviolin bow changing like a full moon. I named her beloved boy
sunflower and connived his name to sprout like a seed. Why theweather cleared up each time I saw him—with sunshine flooding at
the back? Flood as a deluge, as an overtone.

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Tax Season
Tifara Brown
Geminga Winner
6 million bodies on the ocean floor. Fulani. Colored and cursed. Akan.
Counting the cost of our reparations. Wolof.
Compounding daily.

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Contributors
L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals like Rattle, Versal,
The Reader, and Worcester Review, and includes a Pushcart Prize nomination.
He is the author of three full poetry collections and ten chapbooks, including
The Width of Here (Silver Bow, 2021). He is a reformed lawyer who writes,
plays music, and teaches literature. Abel resides in rural Georgia.
Evan Benedict is a high school English teacher at Norfolk Collegiate in
Norfolk, VA. He writes poetry in his spare time, which he has because heneglects other things. His poetry has been featured in Silver Rose Magazine,
Flying South, and Wild Roof Journal.
Tifara Brown was born and raised in the Deep South, and has been writing
original poetry since 2013. She has shared her poetry on the TEDx stage andcompeted across the country in the art of spoken word. Her work appears invarious magazines, and she published a book of poems entitled Honeysuckle:
Poems and Stories from a Black Southerner in memory of her ancestor, a victim
of racial violence. She is passionate about storytelling and uses her words asa vehicle for youth advocacy and the reduction of violence.
Tetman Callis was born in the Northeast and raised in the Southwest; hisfather a soldier and his mother a homemaker. His short fiction has appearedin NOON, New York Tyrant, Best Microfiction 2019, Atticus Review, and Writing
Disorder. He is the author of the memoir High Street: Lawyers, Guns & Moneyin a Stoner’s New Mexico (2012, Outpost 19), and the children’s chapter book
Franny & Toby (2015, Silky Oak Press). He lives in Chicago with his wife andtheir two cats, and makes his living as a paralegal.
Martha Clarkson’s writing and photography can be found in F-Stop, Seattle
Review, Portland Review, Black Box Gallery, Tulane Review, Seattle Times,
Hawaii Pacific Review, Feminine Rising, Nimrod, Tipton Poetry Journal, Rattle,
and many more. Her Voices, Her Room won the short story prize from Open
City/Anderbo. She has two notable short stories in Best American Short Stories.
https://www.marthaclarkson.com
Meagan Daine is a multimedia storyteller specializing in alternative comingof-age tales about diverse characters in extraordinary circumstances. Born
and raised in East Texas, she moved away to attend the all-female Mills
College in Oakland, CA. She worked as a waitress, an ESL teacher, a “jolly”
in a Roman dance club, a theatre manager, a magician’s assistant, and a
private investigator while establishing her writing career. Her stage plays
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have been performed at various venues. Her first feature film, contemporary
Western thriller West of Redemption (Kairos Productions, starring Billy Zane),
won multiple festival awards. She is a staff writer on the one-hour television
drama Games People Play.
Leah Dockrill is a Toronto-based visual artist. Her practice includes
painting and collage, both of which have been exhibited in Canada and the
US. In recent years, her work has been published in over three dozen art andliterature journals, including Sunspot (Spring 2019). She was the featured
artist in Mud Season, Beyond Words, Fauxmoir, and Gulf Stream. Dockrill is anelected member of the Society of Canadian Artists, and the Colour and Form
Society (Canada). Her work is represented by two Ontario galleries: Tag Art
Gallery and NOWORDS.
Roopa Dudley loves to paint art that portrays chess in some fashion. She
became a full-time painter after she got laid off unexpectedly from a job as a
linguist, which she enjoyed and earned her a pretty penny. That gave Dudleyan opportunity to start a new career based on what she really wanted to do
but had never found the courage to pursue. She loves going to museums andreading about 20th century artists. She is married and lives with her two
daughters in Severn, MD.
Laura Eppinger has had work nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of
the Net. Her work has appeared at The Rumpus, The Toast, and elsewhere.
Visit her here: https://lauraeppinger.blog/workspub/ She tweets at@lola_epp.
Chris Fleming is a writer and translator from Sydney, Australia, whose
fiction and nonfiction has appeared in scholarly and popular media, including
Westerly, Guardian, Sydney Review of Books, Saturday Paper, LA Review, andChronicle Review. He’s the author or editor of ten books, most recently of On
Drugs (Giramondo, 2019). He’s currently Associate Professor in Humanities
and a Member of the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western
Sydney University, Australia.
In her writing, Atma Frans searches for the voice beneath her personas:
woman, mother, trauma survivor, immigrant, architect, queer, poet. Herstories and poems have been longlisted for contests and are published in New
Quarterly, Arc Poetry, CV2, Chiron, Obsessed with Pipework, Lighthouse,
Dalhousie, and elsewhere. She lives in Gibsons, BC, Canada.
Phyllis Green is an author, playwright, and artist. Her art has appeared in
ArLiJo 123, Gulf Stream, Novus, New Plains, CERASUS, FERAL, Superpresent
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and others, and is forthcoming in CALYX Aji, Rip Rap, Inscape, Foreshadow, I
70 Reviand, Wild Roof, and Cinematic Codes.
Matt Gulley attended Wayne State University in Detroit and the MFA
program at Long Island University in Brooklyn. He currently resides in
Brooklyn with his girlfriend, Jenna, and tries to write a little bit every day.
JJ Chen Henderson is a writer, poet, and artist. She has published a novel,
short stories and poetry in venues such as Fourteen Hills, Poetry East,
Clackamas, and SLANT.
Rain Hou is a junior high-school student who majors in music but is also
passionate about writing.
Sarah Kersey is a poet and graduate student in the MFA Creative Writing
program at Eastern Washington. Her work has been published by Write About
Now, Awakenings Foundation, and publications by Gonzaga University.
Kersey lives in Spokane, Washington and work as the managing editor of
Willow Springs Books.
Serge Lecomte was born in Belgium and emigrated to Brooklyn in 1960.
After graduating high school, he became a medic in the Air Force. He earneda Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Russian Literature, worked as a Green
Beret language instructor, and received a BA in Spanish Literature from the
University of Alaska where he taught from 1978 to 1997. He built houses,
worked as a pipefitter, orderly, landscaper, driller, and bartender. He is a
published poet, novelist, playwright and artist.
Tyler McCurry is a thirty-one-year-old author from Olathe, Kansas with apassion for food, family, and fun. His work has appeared in Davega Bicycle,
Aphelion Webzine, the JCCC literary magazine Mind’s Eye, the University of
Kansas literary magazine Coal City Review, Grand Little Thing, Fleas on the
Dog and Clinch: A Martial Arts Literary Magazine.
Paul Milligan is a research pharmacist who writes academic papers as his
vocation, and poems and flash fiction as his avocation. He also dabbles in
sculpture when the message requires. He is developing a daily writing habit
but finding that difficult to meld with his daily Scotch habit.
Martha Nance is a physician in Minnesota whose bored iPhone sometimes
puts on its macro lens and takes pictures, which she then tries to translate
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in Tiny Seed, Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, Raw Art
Review, and Northwest Review, among others.
Robert Palmer graduated Sum Cum Laude from ASU with a degree in Fine
Art, Painting in 2003. Roberts’ choice of medium is typically oil paint andwatercolor. Some work has been contributed to organizations for charity. His
work has been presented in several shows in Utah and Arizona.
A published poet, writer, and artist, Jen Payne is the author of several books
including LOOK UP! Musings on the Nature of Mindfulness, Evidence of Flossing:
What We Leave Behind, Waiting Out the Storm, and Water Under the Bridge: A
Sort-of Love Story. She is the creator/editor of MANIFEST (zine), and writes
regularly on her blog: www.randomactsofwriting.net.
K.G. Ricci is a self-taught NYC artist who has been creating collages for the
past seven years. In that time, his work has evolved from the larger 24x48
panels to the current 7x10 books. His work has been in gallery exhibitions
throughout the country, and he has appeared in numerous online exhibitions.
Many of Ken’s recent “visual stories” have been featured in literary
magazines.
jessica ross is an editor, writer, and podcaster; they write and edit fortabletop roleplaying games like Scarred Lands, Starfinder, and Dungeons &Dragons, and they play TRPGs with the d20 Dames, a family-friendly actual
play podcast. You can find all of their writing and other projects on theirwebsite: writejess.com.
Jacqueline Schaalje has published short fiction and poetry in Massachusetts
Review, Talking Writing, Frontier Poetry, Grist, Six Sentences, and others. She
has received scholarships at the Southampton Writers Conference andInternational Women’s Writing Guild. She is a member of the Israel
Association for Writers in English and the current editor of arc. She earned
her MA in English from the University of Amsterdam.
Jacqueline Shortell-McSweeney writes only when inspired, or when her
muse Noreen stands over her with a metaphorical rolling pin. At other times,
she has worked as a producer for Women Make Movies, a video artist atHenry St., Settlement, first union woman grip, and then as a lawyer, in thehopes that she could sue for some of her Me-too moments. Now retired to her
writing desk, Shortell-McSweeney has been published in eight anthologies,
the latest being Beat Generation. Dr. Altman and the Concubines is available inbookstores. Most important, she spends precious time with her loving family.
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Murray Silverstein has been published in RATTLE, Brief Wilderness,
Brooklyn Review, Cape Rock Poetry, Euphony, Spillway, Poetry East, West Marin
Review, RUNES, Nimrod, Connecticut Review, Hollins Critic, ZYZZYVA,
California Quarterly, El Portal, Elysian Fields, Fourteen Hills, Front Range,
Louisiana Literature, The MacGuffin, The Meadow, and Pembroke Magazine,
among others. His two books of poetry are Master of Leaves (2014) and Any
Old Wolf (2007). Silverstein is the senior editor of America, We Call Your Name
(2018). A retired architect, Silverstein holds a master’s in architecture.
Jack Stewart was educated at the University of Alabama and Emory
University. From 1992 to 1995 he was a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia
Institute of Technology. His first book, No Reason, was published by the
Poeima Poetry Series in 2020, and his work has appeared in numerous
journals and anthologies, including Poetry, American Literary Review, Nimrod,
and Image.
Joanna Urban’s writing has appeared in Belle Ombre, District Lit, Yoga Digest,and other publications.
Sally Ventura lives and teaches in Olean, New York. She has publishedpoems and essays in Blue Collar Review, A Plate of Pandemic, English Journal,
English Record, Sisyphus, Teachers and Writers Collaborative, College English
Association Critic, Earth’s Daughters, and Midwest Quarterly.
Pamela Viggiani is a mixed-media artist and art educator living in
Canandaigua, NY. A native of the Finger Lakes region, she began teachingart in 1986. Her work has been featured in Small Works, Light Space & Time,
Another Chicago Magazine, Press Pause Press, From Whispers to Roars, Sunspot,
and Beyond Words. In a converted fruit cellar, Pamela produces abstract visualinterpretations of particular concepts to explore the relationship between
word and meaning. Her small works are often manifestations of ambiguity,
allowing for varied reactions. Some works, however, reflect the world back to
the viewer with more clarity, revealing hidden realities and challenging
entrenched ways of thinking.
Adam Walsh’s poetry has appeared in the Journal, Hawaii Review, Crab Creek,
Istanbul Review, Barrow Street, and BLAZEVox, among others. His chapbook
metabody was a finalist at the Atlas Review. He lives in Micronesia and works
as an instructor in the Languages and Humanities Department at Northern
Marianas College.

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Mikal Wix grew up in the American South, which seeded insights into many
outlooks, including visions of a revenant from the closet. He has work in orforthcoming in Corvus, Jupiter Review, Berkeley Poetry, Tahoma Literary,
Hyacinth, Roi Fainéant Press, Fiery Scribe, and others. He works as a science
editor.

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Writing a New World
Sunspot Literary Journal believes in the power of the written word. Fiction,
nonfiction, poetry and art can speak truth to power with the power inherent
in all human beings. Our mission is to amplify every voice. Four digitalquarterly editions are produced per year, along with one print volume.

Support Sunspot Lit
Today more than ever, literary journals are forces of change in the world.
Sunspot Lit is funded entirely through private means. Every donation, evenones as small as a dollar, makes a difference. Please take a moment to drop a
few bucks into the Sunspot magnetic field flux.
A PayPal link on the website makes it easy to send a tip, donate
enough to publish the next digital edition, or go supernova and fund the next
print edition. Please visit https://sunspotlit.com/support for details.

Advertise in Sunspot
Classified ads are available in quarterly digital editions and special editions.
Spread the word about your writing and arts contests, residency programs,
awards, workshops, and more. All classified ads are also posted on thewebsite’s classified page. Ad rate: $150 for up to 25 words; $5 for each
additional word.
Print ads are available for the annual edition. All ads are black andwhite. A full page is $850, a half page is $450, and a quarter page is $295. Buy
two ads of the same size for the same issue or for two sequential issues toreceive a 10% discount. Set up three or more ads and receive a 15% discount.
Sunspot’s groovy graphic designer can set up your ad to yourspecifications. Flat rate of $325, and the design is yours to use multiple times
in Sunspot or any other magazine.

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