Poetry
You must wear your rue with a difference
by Marisca Pichette in Issue Sixteen, July 2024
she makes a pond
in petals pluck’d (forget-me-)
planted in the upturn’d dirt
of graves.
her arms all dark,
disinterred bone dust (dancing girls)
her lungs weigh’d down
with growing things.
she donates her breath to butterflies
& in her throat she bears (swaddled)
chrysalises fit to burst
in colors she’ll never see.
on the surface of her flower pond
no ducks, swans, egrets white
as the bones she left uncovered—
only gasping blossoms
&... Continue →
Ever Noir
by Mari Ness in Issue Sixteen, July 2024
They slink in, hats drawn
low against their faces.
I hear
you find things out. I hear
Biophos
by Eva Papasoulioti in Issue Sixteen, July 2024
We mooned our heart in orbit,
illuminated our paths with orchids
blooming in the dark, fertilized
with the fate of our star. If the sun
were the source of all life, our moon is
its soul, a new world curled around the old,
words of protection, a silver shine
of direction.
We tided our breath on our satellite,
crescented our faces to the bright
moonshine and took a step towards
the shelter of our small lunar
sentinel. Dag our legs in the sand,
took our friends by the hand, and
Apiary
by H.B. Asari in Issue Sixteen, July 2024
We start first with the honeycombs
as babies, slipping whole past
our gummy mouths and tiny throats.
The sepsis is our insides preparing us
for the life ahead.
When our tiny bodies spasm & still,
we are weaned on ichor & ambrosia.
Six drops on our swollen tongues,
so we teeter always on the edge
of deathless & dying, so the engine of our bodies
might remember the taste,
hold the ghost of it until we are culled
to produce.
I remember my first bee,
thrumming past my lips like a... Continue →
the rage of the old river
by Sofia Ezdina in Issue Fifteen, May 2024
She uncovered her voice from her bed,
loaded the verbs,
stirred up the interjections’ beehive;
she gathered the air in her lungs
she called —
with the cold howl of the subways,
with the hum of hunchbacked streets.
and it came. From the seaside.
Demolished walls and towers,
temples and mall and all.
The waves are swift, deadly, bitter and foam
breaking free from the stone heart
They Named Me Diana
by Emmie Christie in Issue Fifteen, May 2024
They named me Diana,
they vilify me on their news reports,
they say that I’m insane, a category five
of wind and spinning rain, and they’re right
to run away from my madness if that’s
truly what it is, yeah, I’m a crazy bitch,
if bitch means a slow accumulation,
a fossilization of frustration,
a dendrochronology of all the things
built up over the years, the gathered tears
and tree rings of the ostracized—
I have receipts of all the times
they ignored my warning signs,
when my currents should have scared... Continue →
The Saint of Nothing at All
by Jess Gofton in Issue Fifteen, May 2024
I am a vertebra crowning
Sevilla’s ghoulish horde.
Ribs on a chandelier
in Prague. Ten fingers
twitching in ten churches.
Yet I once received
feverish promises,
into ears the fish later ate,
from a carpenter’s apprentice
who showed me how
skilfully he could mould
a bead when his hand
slipped under my shift.
Long before pleas
from pockmarked prayer-mongers,
sweating into their wine.
Stop it. I never
shattered a wheel
with my bare hands. Never
Brushstrokes
by Elizabeth Shack in Issue Fifteen, May 2024
The swirling colors of space and time
float by the windows of the generation ship,
a whole city—planet—galaxy unto itself
soaring past aeons of stars
Colors?
Space is vast, black, and featureless,
the ship a gray pinprick, pockmarked with cosmic dust,
scarred with once-a-decade repairs,
the black paint of its name scratched and faded
Time is an abstract ticking of lightyears,
a cycle of light and dark devoid of sun,
of so-called years marked by clocks and arbitrary holidays
to break up the... Continue →
no one can kiss you wrong if you're dead
by Temidayo Okun in Issue Fourteen, March 2024
i drew a smiley face on a blank page & gave it legs / there is no wind strong enough to destroy something that only exists on paper / there is no hurt powerful enough to tear
apart this cage I call a body / i have made this shell for you with my hands / & maybe death only comes when our souls outgrow our bodies / like hermit crabs — we drop
this shell & move over to what lies after the face at the window comes for us / they say we are all tender & bloody inside / but i ask why i still fall apart when touched the wrong
way / there is not enough air to carry me through... Continue →
After they blasted your home planet to shrapnel
by P. H. Low in Issue Fourteen, March 2024
you could still pretend for a while. Perhaps it wasn’t even pretend—your body still remembered home as a pause between your third and fourth ribs; remembered an absence of walking across a bridge, in this city you’ve chosen as refuge, and keening the surface tension of water. But recently an opera of yours premiered, about a singer whose throat is wasting away, and it got its sprinkle of cloudfeed write-ups but few who seemed to resonate. Not compared to what you wrote before: heroes of old republics, girl-warriors with flaming swords, fighter pilots whose spinships crashed empires to their... Continue →