The Unexpected Hiatus

Dear Readers,

Disturb The Universe Magazine is on its way back from an unexpected hiatus starting at the end of this past January. The details are private, however, let's just say that life was lifeing in some challenging ways and unfortunately the magazine was one of the things set aside. Because of that, we missed the second anniversary.

All work accepted before the hiatus is still in the queue for publication.

I have, admittedly, not read any submissions since December. That will be tackled in the next few weeks.

What is changing:

• Submission guidelines page will be edited.
• 
  
• All accepted work from one writer will be published at the same time. If you have previously accepted, but not yet published work, and have submitted more, whatever has not yet been accepted will be published separate from anything currently in the queue.
• 
  
• Publication may become more sporadic, dependent on submissions. While I endeavor to adhere to a publishing schedule, it often remains out of my hands with the day to day.
• 
  
• Publishing will resume on Friday, 01 May 2025.

Thank you for being here and for considering Disturb The Universe Magazine for your writing. 

This Davis Mines Miles In My Head by Kushal Poddar

This Davis, an almost daily
dose, swirls silence, and I
remember the taste of peated malt
no longer in the menu of my nights.

This table lamp and those windows
you loved. I can turn on and off
to make you a butterfly or a moth.
This Davis, Miles, is a broken vinyl.

The calloused dinner is a cold gun.

--

The author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' and 'How To Burn Memories Using a Pocket Torch' has ten books to his credit. He is a journalist, father of a four-year-old, illustrator, and an editor. His works have been translated into twelve languages and published across the globe.

Serene by John Grey

On a beach,
lying in a hammock,
under a palm tree,
a few feet from the water,

I remember
what my professor said
about why even
the greatest of empires
ultimately fall.

He didn’t mention
beaches and hammocks
and palm trees and water
but I think that’s
what he meant.

--

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.

Rain This Morning Lowers the Pollen Count by Ace Boggess

I’m thinking of my years in prison:
the self-contained air stale with smoke.

I rarely had an allergy attack,
though there were times I felt I couldn’t breathe.

Other cons—call them patrons
of the Great Discontent—came & went,

their time on the rec yard spent
running laps, lifting weights,

shooting hoops with flattened balls.
I stalled, stayed in, listened to music

on my headphones, read books
in the absence of nature.

Those were the days—a small lie
I tell myself on the other side

of a sneezing fit, my skin itchy,
hair weighed down with grit.

Would I rather have prison
than Springtime? No,

I’ll take the rain, its mix
of force & tenderness, a cleansing.

--
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.

Beyond the Bombs by Michael Roque

Beyond bombs
ears tune out nightly news—
Tune into fists-pounded walls
shrieks out the mouth
seeping through from flat 22.

Between blowouts
chaos is a distant backdrop—
Shifting eyes, twitching energy
paint home city sidewalks
into lands of wandering lost.

Above smoke plumes
Heaven’s in sight—
floating sweatshop in the sky
tasking a million battered infant angels
to knit a turtleneck too tight—

And our world chokes in it.

--

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Michael Roque discovered his love for poetry and prose amid friends on the bleachers of Pasadena City College. Now he currently lives in the Middle East and is being inspired by the world around him. His poems have been published by literary magazines like Cholla Needles, The New Yorker, The Literary Hatchet and others. https://www.instagram.com/roquewrites2009/

Land of Opportunity by Nate Mancuso

The sickly sweet stench of menthol cigarette smoke hits me as soon as I walk into the dimly-lit casino. This smell, combined with the bass-thumping house music and flashing lights and bells of the video gambling machines, leaves me lightheaded and nauseous.

I walk past the people planted in cushioned stools facing the slot machines, hypnotized by the symbols spinning behind the screens in front of them.

A waitress approaches me with a tray of dirty cocktail glasses lined with melting mini ice cubes and lipstick-smeared cigarette butts. She wears a short tight black miniskirt that looks saran-wrapped around her rear with a sparkling gold halter top girdle laced tightly around her midriff to push up her breasts and spill her cleavage out over the top. Her face is lined and dried out, barely concealed by a thick layer of cheap makeup.

“Drink?” she asks while glancing over at a slot player feeding another $20 bill into his hungry machine.

“Alcohol this early?” I ask.

She smirks, revealing yellow teeth behind bright red glossed lips. “Of course. All day, every day – beer, wine and liquor.”

I look at my watch. It’s 8:17 a.m. On a Tuesday. A sharp pang of depression strikes me like an uppercut.

I politely decline the drink then continue my sojourn deeper into the abyss of the casino floor, walking past a line of denizens waiting desperately to use the ATM.

The back wall is lined with a dozen sports-betting kiosks that allow wagers on every type of sporting event imaginable – from NFL football to Arctic badminton.

I take the only unoccupied kiosk.

An intense guy wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and backwards visor cap stands next to me swearing at a live baseball game that plays out on his kiosk screen. “Fucking Yankees can’t hit for shit today! Torres you suck!”

I wonder why he’s watching the game on a small kiosk screen rather than one of the big screen TVs perched over the blackjack tables just 20 feet away. I can’t help but ask him.

The guy replies without shifting his laser-focused gaze from his kiosk screen. “I’m in-game prop betting each inning’s run total so I have to stay here for the whole game.”

“Oh cool,” I reply, and wish him good luck.

I don’t think he hears me while his attention remains fixed on the kiosk screen. “C’mon Judge, hit one out and make me some scratch, baby!”

Not seeing any sporting events I care to risk a wager on, I turn and stroll over to the double rows of blackjack tables, with solid dark brown wood frames and green felt-covered tabletops. Players sit in chairs around each table facing a dealer who stands before them like a demagogue in the enclave of the semi-circle shaped table. No one smiles, even after winning a hand. All eyes are glued to the table, expressionless but anxious at the same time.

I stand about five feet away from a blackjack table, watching the same routine repeat itself over and over again with the speed and efficiency of a factory assembly line; cards shuffled, bets placed, cards dealt, wins and losses tallied, chips given or taken away, table cleared, rinse and repeat.

A morbidly obese woman slowly stands up from her seat, with the help of her cane, at a neighboring blackjack table. She shakes her head and mutters something inaudible to herself while she places her player’s card into her purse. After a short rest to catch her breath, she hobbles toward the ATM line which appears to have doubled in length. I hurry over to take the woman’s seat before another bystander can beat me to it.

The dealer – a middle-aged Asian woman with hooded eyes and a blank face so devoid of emotion it looks carved from stone – stares at me expectantly after I sit down. None of the four other players sitting at the table acknowledge me. I reach into my wallet and remove a folded $100 bill, then place it onto the table in front of me.

The dealer nods at me then quickly takes my bill while replacing it with two even piles of five-dollar betting chips in what seems like a single motion she’s obviously practiced thousands of times. She blurts something unintelligible to the pit boss standing behind her while she slides my bill into a slit on the table.

“Good luck,” she says to me in a flat robotic voice.

The dealer repeats her routine over several rounds with a speed and dexterity that mesmerizes the entire table. She’s flawless, a perfectly calibrated cash-sucking machine. She reminds me of The Terminator – sizing up mortals in her path with deadly precision then striking before they even know what hit them. A professional killer, a stone-cold assassin.

I feel hollowed out by this place, unable to even harvest let alone process any cognizable emotion. I’m not happy, not sad, not nervous, not anxious, not frightened. Just empty.

I scoop up the three five-dollar chips that remain from the twenty that I began with about seven minutes ago and stand up to leave the table. No other player notices while all eyes remain fixated on the cards being dealt. The dealer continues her routine without pause or hesitation – not even a quick nod or glance at me. Like I was never even there.

I want to leave but I’m disoriented from the dizzying sounds and dazzling lights that surround and engulf me. I look around but I can’t see the doors where I’d walked in from the parking lot.

I find a security guard standing sentry in front of a baccarat table and ask him where I can find the exit.

“It’s tough to explain but walk that way and you’ll find it eventually,” he replies, pointing toward an endless labyrinth of gaming tables and slot machines spread across the casino floor.

I thank him.

“Good luck, bro.” He smiles at me.

About an hour later in my car, I receive a cell phone call from my business partner.

“You go this morning?” he asks.

“Yep,” I reply.

“So how was it?” he asks.

“The most depressing fucking place I've ever been to, like a halfway house to the suicide ward,” I tell him candidly.

“Doesn't sound too good,” he replies after a brief pause.

“Actually it's perfect. Let's make an offer today.”

--

Nate Mancuso is a practicing attorney, history buff and fiction lover who lives in South Florida with his wife and cat (and daughter when home from college). Nate holds a B.A. from Fordham University and a J.D. from St. John’s University School of Law. Nate is currently working on his first collection of short stories, two historical fiction projects and other works in progress.

New Underneath By Eric Chiles

My parents grew up
in The Depression,
so I learned frugality
as a prime value.

Clothing handed down.
Leftovers eaten.
Nothing thrown away.
Jeans patched, socks darned,
rips and tears mended.
Home remedies healed cuts,
scratches, and colds.

So, I've always worn
yellowed T-shirts with torn
underarms and toe holes
in my socks seen only
when changing at the Y.

A gift card from another
stepchild of need
changed all that,
and today I'm smiling like
a gleaming white, pre-shrunk
T-shirt right out of the pack,
new socks with toes and heels,
feeling baptized,
redeemed from that
threadbare past.

--

Eric Chiles is author of "What Was and Will Be" (Resource Publications, 2024, and available on Amazon) and the chapbook "Caught in Between" (Desert Willow Press, 2019). Besides Disturb the Universe, his poetry has appeared in Allegro, Big Windows Review, Canary, Rattle, San Pedro River Review, and elsewhere. Grandfather to a dozen grandsons, he wishes he had a granddaughter.