Poetry
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 o...
Continue →Soot
by Abdulkareem Abdulkareem in Issue Fourteen, March 2024
"About six million residents of Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, risk lung cancer as a result of the impact of black soot." —Dr Furo Green
"Over 25, 000 estimated death counts in Rivers State from black soot related health conditions in 2019" —River State Ministry of Health
Smoke eats into t...
Continue →To market, to market
by Anna Quercia-Thomas in Issue Thirteen, January 2024
do not forget to drag your feet, my darling,
for the road is long and the trees cannot protect you here
and though their hands may urge you forward
look behind,
into the whites of their eyes and the grit in their beards
remember, seasons like winter were made to be suffered
and it is hard to r...
The Frida Train (a golden shovel)
by Russell Nichols in Issue Thirteen, January 2024
“Pies, para qué los quiero si tengo alas para volar?”*
― Frida Kahlo (1907–1954)
The blueprint was hidden under Frida Kahlo's bed, where she rested her feet,
after the accident. Engineers puzzled over the design, knowing not what
it was for, but built her hand-drawn estaciones to learn what they cou...
Tell Me the Story of Something Ending
by Matthew Roy in Issue Thirteen, January 2024
Tell me the story of something ending, she said at the campfire,
The story of something that tastes like vinegar
And crunches like beetle shells between my teeth.
He drew in a breath and thought of trivia nights and dead-eyed Zoom call stares
And certifications and diplomas that meant nothing—
Just ...
Star Stitcher
by A.J. Van Belle in Issue Thirteen, January 2024
I sew behind time
and feel too much
in the dusty yard of the seamstresses’ house.
Space fighters scream across the dark dome of sky overhead.
The army needs tunics, so
I wield my tiny sword.
Blue and green lights flicker overhead, bright enough for me to see my work.
I sense every thread.
Ol...
hu li jing 狐狸精
by Wen Yu Yang in Issue Twelve, December 2023
they’d tell me
how much a fox’s honour is worth
without weighing it so why not
steal a boy’s honour
braid it in as
another triumph
bask in this
demonic glory
my mother
muzzle crimsoned in rooster
her grin always saying
you never know
this might be The One
who’ll make a scarf out of you ...
What You Find at the Center
by Elizabeth R McClellan in Issue Twelve, December 2023
after @notaleptic
six feet down and you sat
in the garden filling your notebooks
with scrawled labyrinths; circus tents
overlapping the paths and midways.
ten feet down and you cried
over some girl who liked math and uppers
better than cartography or tracing
the lines she drew between you o...
The Princess and the Frog
by Archita Mittra in Issue Twelve, December 2023
is this how all things end?
with a croak, a hiss, broken glass—
some spilled wine, a sliver of blood
and slime, trailing ever after.
tell me something else, then.
where the frog never becomes a prince.
that way she never marries a man
whose kisses are a mossy damp,
in whose breath she can...
The Dome
by Elis Montgomery in Issue Twelve, December 2023
Molten air stifles, sea-thick
and as sickening. Pocked stones
become bowls I water with
weighted limbs. Drained pith, dry bones
in this park. All beyond thirst.
You could drink first but your eyes
are unseeing like they’re dried
open. One more fried sunrise
(what rainforest?) then drowning...
Continue →