A Wreckful Planting of Small Pockets of Thirst

by Nnadi Samuel in Issue Four, May 2022

First published in Uncanny Magazine, March 2022

I run out of ways to keep you urgent in my mouth,
stomach your shouting relic.
so, when grief comes for an unburial, unearthing you into the forgotten,
I stuff you under my tongue.

how I've learnt to carry you across borders,
across turnpikes & racial diss.
across the panting roadblocks,
where we exist loudly as exclamations below a cop's knee,
or viscous ransack that gets close but doesn't claim my throat.

the... Continue →

sestina for the summer solstice

by Claire McNerney in Issue Three, March 2022

dot the j and cross the seven.
upcoming in neon, in oppressive heat
we dream with night-opened windows.
too-small frogs can’t eat the mosquitos,
preparing the party, the cake is neat
but in this rotting mansion we’re still far from heaven.

the kid still thinks cream cake is heaven—
she wears a nightgown, only seven.
awake from a dream, sees the kitchen neat,
something rare in this dulling heat.
where’d the adults go? like mosquitos,
they disappeared out of open windows.

in our stupor, far away... Continue →

The Nymphs Are Migrating

by Madalena Daleziou in Issue Three, March 2022

In the small hours, under the wolf light
my best friend throws peanuts
at my window. It is the nymphs.
They are migrating.

The scorched mosaic
of dirt moans under my feet.
The woods are dressed in red
but not the red they should be.

too soon, too soon

In my part of the world, summer is
treacherous. They blackmailed it with
cigarette butts, with stolen oils from
its mother’s belly, they forced it to
stretch—longer, hotter, suffocating
its brothers with sweaty pillows.... Continue →

And it dries and dries

by Marisca Pichette in Issue Three, March 2022

In my mind a butterfly catches pneumonia:
Flap flap the world is changed.

There’s a second life but not a first,
there’s you and no there’s just me—
no we no us just just just
iron and
lilies and
coffin nails.

All I want to see is darkness today.

But the light keeps intruding
even after the candle, snuffed by heaving breaths,
snuffed enough to undo the whole legacy of definitions
I’ve been trying to land on, trying to find
in darkness and heat.

Did you know oil has... Continue →

Misconceptions Regarding the Moon

by Avra Margariti in Issue Two, January 2022

The moon is a ghost, a god.
She is a white rabbit of silver
Eyes and whiskers.
He is an ancient demon, a teething child.
There is a person in the moon
And they’re crying crater tears.

To climb to the moon you must build
A ladder of night-bleached bones.
To launch yourself into lunar orbit
You need only jump off the tallest cliff
And the moon will catch you in its net.
Shooting weapons at the moon in drunken revelry
Is how the terrain is formed, the Sea
Of Tranquility littered with shrapnel,
The dark... Continue →

Wolf Rune

by Thomas Zimmerman in Issue One, November 2021

The forest lands link earth with heaven,
spruce-tree tips like dendrites of elder earthen gods.

The long, dark, lonely winters swirl within
a song, the singer’s storm-tossed mind at odds
with frozen lakes, the fir trees’ needle-bed.

Moose-haunted evergreens stretch miles and miles,
and fallow fields will waken with the red
and purple flowers of the spring. The wiles

of ancient wolves weave through the singer’s song,
the howls primeval, blood-bonds mingling, strong.

Continue →

The Opposite of Time

by Brian Hugenbruch in Issue One, November 2021

The opposite of Time is Might-Have-Been.
We travel through the tempered void and thus
can change the stream of time to flatter us,
but currents pull us toward what we’ve seen
has come to pass. It lives within us still.
How many restless empires have we torn
down, broken, with their murderers unborn?
How long do we remember who they’ve killed?
How mangled have we made our histories,
those scarred and damning records of events
that never happened, but we can’t unsee?
Our souls are trapped within biographies,
and time is... Continue →

Ascenkin's Roots

by Ai Jiang in Issue One, November 2021

We are crowded sisters
with roots that tangle and quiver
in the wind. Our roots cling
onto brittle pieces of shattered,
dried soil. Only crumbles hold
our skeletal bodies upright.
The leaves have long fallen,
consumed by creatures
who abandoned the forests
and now barren grounds of Ascenkin.

Our roots continued growing.
Moss crawled up our scarred bodies,
invading our cracks and creases,
soaked up our sap. But we stand tall,
our branches swaying
not because of the wind.
We... Continue →