Poetry
Cryptid Sister
by H.V. Patterson in Issue Twenty, July 2025
The summer Mom died,
I summoned you
From vulture feathers,
From discarded cicada husks,
From car-wrecked armadillos,
Legs surrendered to the eternal, burning sky.
I summoned you from the hole in my gut
Where my longing leaked out,
Where heat and... Continue →
Anchor Spindrift
by Elizabeth R McClellan in Issue Twenty, July 2025
for Seanan & Mira
When they carved the desk, a necessary place
to keep paper from molding and aging,
they cried as they stripped curves
from the world. Flat surfaces repelled
their sodden flesh like oil vomiting out
What Does Your Revolution Look Like?
by Ewen Ma in Issue Nineteen, March 2025
(or, A Dragon Crawls Across the Moon: A Movie in Two Acts)
1.
My cousin invites me over for dinner the evening before my flight. While he and his wife set the table, their daughter lifts a lizard out of its vivarium,... Continue →
Hermit of the Crossroads
by Marie Brennan in Issue Nineteen, March 2025
The hermit kneels inside his cell and prays.
Here two roads meet: and at their crossing stands
a sacred guard for all the kingdom’s ways.
This cell, four paces square, is all his lands;
four windows glimpse the freedom of the sky;
four prisoning doors, he... Continue →
Dawn Witching with Crows
by Devin Miller in Issue Nineteen, March 2025
Softly lift the tools of your secret witching.
Make no noise your mothers will hear, no telltale
scrape of knife on stone; keep your setup silent.
Answer no questions.
Birds will sing these songs with you–meet them, trill for
cry. Then, under daybreak blue... Continue →
Bandits of Dream City
by Sharang Biswas in Issue Nineteen, March 2025
In my dreams, we’re burglars
Our fingers ooze through castle walls of toffee and cloud
like a warmed spoon through the toffee-walnut ice-cream I churned on your birthday
Our breath steals between the gaps in a snake-streusel door
like the entire rhubarb-streusel pie... Continue →
Yes, Chef
by Jake Price in Issue Eighteen, November 2024
My life fits inside a sentence.
There aren’t any hours in any days
that can’t be represented with a noun and non-fantastic
verb, and maybe an adjective thrown in. Maybe icy
or starving or blue or dilated.
My nights are orange.
This cheese grater in my... Continue →
Ars Poetica
by Jenna Hanchey in Issue Eighteen, November 2024
You’ve written your last words; you will not speak them
His spell would not let you, anyway
Not now; after years of wielding tiny pins—
too small for dancing angels—
he ruptures your vocal cords, tearing (through)
Only a croak escaping
You offer this... Continue →
After doing assignments for an hour with my son on WhatsApp
by Clara Burghelea in Issue Eighteen, November 2024
Here is a bed of downy clouds on demand, yet free to us all,
next, a mouthful of sunlight to measure this blossom of late
November, cornflowers, a pretty pop of blue at the corner
of this end of Roundrock Road, the way to elicit care is color,
lavish from every lawn on... Continue →
After You, the Stars Went Blind
by Adesiyan Oluwapelumi in Issue Eighteen, November 2024
chasm: i fall knee-deep into the shallows.
after you, the stars shut their eyes—
the dark earth like algae flourished inside me.
my body:... Continue →