Poetry
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
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—... Continue →
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... 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... 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,... Continue →
And the Sea Brags of its Shells
by • R L • powell in Issue Eleven, October 2023
When I wake, it’s to hear the last siren,
receding to its distant causeway, banks of
salt, their bygone shackles of sand.
I hear, dig out what calls to you down
to an aragonite shore—stay gentle, as
you clean away the remains... Continue →
voyager
by Mark A. Fisher in Issue Ten, August 2023
are we not nomads in this midnight sea
lonely wanderers between the stars
floating through dreamscape nebulae
tempest tossed on gravity and tides
lonely wanderers between the stars
bottle messages thrown into waves
tempest tossed on gravity and... Continue →
scythe
by Sodïq Oyèkànmí in Issue Ten, August 2023
for Yemọja
my mother keeps track of time by how much rain falls
heavenwards. i know it is night because there’s a torrent
& the grim reaper blades through the whirl. it is night.
my mother stands at the threshold with a switchblade—
no match... Continue →
Post-traumatic stress sonnet of the Indigenous archeoastronomer
by Kevin Martens Wong in Issue Ten, August 2023
Star-rise. I wake in arms of amber light,
Awash in swiftly dreaming galaxies.
I turn, I yawn, a wayward, drowsy sprite
Untempered by dying vagaries.
Wrap me instead in lazy gleam of quasar,
In the shimmering dust of a thousand suns:
come alive,... Continue →
Paradox Lost
by S.T. Eleu in Issue Ten, August 2023
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn; he wonder’d…
bio Grandfather with a shotgun
caught me in the loft of the barn
two clicks removed from levitical codes
chaos of slurs and bullets