Poetry
Ourasphaira giraldae Awakens
by H.V. Patterson in Issue Twelve, December 2023
Gods writ microscopic,
we are the children of extremes
chitin-clothed, long-dead spores enduring still,
ghosts of ghosts
a billion years dead
For millennia,
we collected your buried tribute
flesh, blood, bones
plastics, garbage, toxic sludge
every sacrifice you unknowingly gave
Now, we emerge from melting permafrost
from chthonic darkness
from fossilized decay
We are the plural gods of Tartarus,
heralds of humanity’s end,
and our hungry spores will root
... Continue →
Made of Glass
by Anna Madden in Issue Twelve, December 2023
the air smells of brine and night spirits
of bare feet sinking into the orchard’s dark earth
where pink ladies dream standing upright
their old branches like my withered arms
and the sea of green I can’t see in the failing light
dark waves of bluegrass and mason jars filled with fireflies
this is the scented memory of a sealed off childhood
a soda-lime bottle poured out to the last teardrop
white petals brush against time-gnarled scars
the apple trees sigh and creak and shiver
their wood hearts dreaming of... Continue →
Interstellar Catalog: Romantic Interlude
by Shana Ross in Issue Twelve, December 2023
On this world all the colors are named anew
with each child. I have a word for yellow &
a word for blue, but it will not help me talk
to another soul in this city. We point to
the sun & the sky and the piped icing
& buttercream roses on these small
cakes we picked out from the bakery.
On this world we agree on the sweet
chew of the crumbs, the strange
way bones are hidden in a hand as it holds
another’s, how fingers can be warm &
yielding and impenetrably solid all at... Continue →
For the attention of my future self
by Brian Hugenbruch in Issue Twelve, December 2023
While you are me, and I am almost you,
I cannot help but think you spin me lies.
I do not think that what we say is true.
Your letter's from our future—and we rise
to conquer bloody challenges ahead—
though you are me, and I am almost you.
I find it less than clear, sir, that we prize
a similar result, from all you've said:
I do not think that what we say is true.
No—one's more apt to argue you despise
the shadow of a past you thought was dead—
because you're me, and I am almost you.
Elegy for the Wood Nymphs
by Goran Lowie in Issue Twelve, December 2023
it starts with screams in summer.
there have been signs beforehand—
the trees have started to refuse the rain.
the sky did not submit and coated the trees,
unceasing, in layers of water.
water sits on the ground with open mouth,
waiting to be taken by the tongues of animals,
but even they refuse. the rain has stopped,
and the bellies of the clouds remain filled.
in the echoes of twilight,
the nymphs of palm and Brazil nut trees
relinquish their duties and go on strike.
their hairs are nests of burning twigs.... Continue →
A Kelpie Sees Mari Lwyd from Afar
by Maria Schrater in Issue Twelve, December 2023
‘Twas the night before Christmas and I froze in my pond
When I heard a wassailing from the town close anon
A dozen stout peasants with drink all aglow
Were knocking on doors in the gentle-fall snow
I spied you in their midst like an ancestor’s ghost
Bedecked with bright garlands, the object of toasts
With clapping of shoulders and patting of backs
They stumbled on further, you leading the pack
My cousin Unseelie, white spirit of winter
Flanks shifting like snowdrifts and mane all a-kilter
Gleaming dark... Continue →
The Field
by Sandra Pope in Issue Eleven, October 2023
Beyond the boundaries of my yard,
water flows through furrows in a field,
harvested and fallow now, where corn waved
and last year's winter wheat greened the ground
through all the cold brown barren time.
Beneath that soil, I believe, an olden lake—
not a molten core—comes and goes.
I've seen that lake, parceled in puddles
by earth, each raindrop remembering
higher seas, inundation—rising
in pools one wound at a time—
flooding the land
in ancient bottomless grief.
Sestainability
by Rebecca A. Demarest in Issue Eleven, October 2023
The plasticsmith waits for the children to return
with buckets full of scraps, bags, bottles, and toys
meticulously scrapped and washed and clean.
The buckets are weighed, then into the crucible they go,
rendered down to grayish brown ingots, made ready
for shipment from the Patch to the factories in the City.
The children spend their gleaning time dreaming of the City,
and the parents and brothers and sisters who might return
after adventuring away for fortune and glory, getting ready
to bring their families to them,... Continue →
Queen of the Underworld
by Connie La-Huynh in Issue Eleven, October 2023
When I float along the deep abyss, every rotting worm writhes
to be near me, every putrid parasite begs
for me to eat him whole. The School of Worship
comes out from hiding, longing for salvation
in my generous arms, and in the Midnight Mass,
the angler’s lure is dimmed by my dazzling spring.
They say I was stolen from my home, coveted and preyed
upon by my own, but blithely I traverse the land of monsters
and mayhem, having long forgotten the Ionian Sea.
First appeared the Unseen One, then arrived the gods from above,... Continue →
Pillow Talk in the Tempest
by Gretchen Tessmer in Issue Eleven, October 2023
oh yes, I've seen the way you look at me
through sea-glass dark as pits of mud-torn mire
your heat-struck, jagged ditches lay desire
too plainly, how you want to hear me scream
white flash and glitter sprays across the sky
below the glow of hungry, raging flame—
if these are gifts to sway my heart to cries
of awe and dumbstruck wonder at your name…
there's blight in nitrous splits that must be forced
I cannot tell you why your violence stings
as we’re too old to know these blasted things
except in... Continue →