Poetry
Factory Reset
by RC deWinter in Issue Six, September 2022
The rain, sweet with the scent of summer,
soaks the earth in its persistent falling from a woolly sky
heavy with moisture imported from a place far away.
Those who know tell us it will rain for days
as the west burns in the unrelieved heat of the sun –
all of this beyond our control thanks to the willingness
of a handful to profit by whatever means possible.
Those with the money hold the reins while we,
the expendable fodder of greed, pay the price
for the wholesale destruction of our only home.
We Greet the Solstice
by Avra Margariti in Issue Five, July 2022
Inside extant skulls of extinct giants
We’ve made our homes for many a summer
Solstice. Wildflower wreaths, crowns, garlands
Ornament the colorlessness of bone,
Our way of giving thanks to the earth
For not having annihilated our kind just yet.
On solstice eve, ritual celebrations:
Small children playing in the dark
Under candles burning lambent along ribs
Immense, planted in soil like monstrously mutated orchids.
In their shade the children grow tall enough
To touch sternums of sun-bleached white,
The Artemis Accords*
by Lynne Sargent in Issue Five, July 2022
Like old kings come together
in agreement of a contest
so long as the princess-prize
goes home with one of them.
Now it is your turn
for nations to fight
over the pillaging of your body.
The only questions remaining are:
Who goes first?
Who gets the best goods?
Have women always been mines?
Filled with precious gems,
and it’s only a matter of time
before they too are stripped
—the only line of defence a cave in,
or praying to you,
way up there in... Continue →
Introspection
by Alexander Etheridge in Issue Five, July 2022
Hell-storm overtaking the hills,
the blistering winds come forever now.
Listen in the new black dawn
to the end of space and time.
Hellfire all around, a hurricane of dirt and splinters.
The seas dried up just before the sun was lost.
Look into the doom of red stars, darkening
stars, and thrashing cinders. Look into
the horror in the mirror becoming
the horror in the world.
© Alexander Etheridge
Continue →Blood, Roses, Song
by Vanessa Fogg in Issue Five, July 2022
Roses without thorns, blooming and wet with dew.
A garden of sweetness
A song without bitterness
A bird pouring out its heart at dawn
Song pure and weightless in the trembling air.
There were songs, there were birds, there was a forest.
A tower that climbed into the sky.
A girl trapped in the tower, leaning out, singing—
She is singing, her long golden hair streaming down—
Eyes closed. She is singing.
We dreamed of flight, of soaring above the trees
Of pouring forth our own songs
Though our... Continue →
Beneath the Flames
by Oyeleye Mahmoodah Temitope in Issue Five, July 2022
The rain basks in humid slumber, whilst grandma’s roses wilt—
Hearth of earth wallows in defeat
and I stay lost and bare—
My strength died beneath the scorching siege
and my fate wanders—
I pray the night for relief.
The day is forlorn
in the yellows, blues and reds of phantom magic—
I don’t know the colours of nature no more—
All I see is the brown shade of its death.
© Oyeleye Mahmoodah Temitope
Continue →Unearthen
by Carly Racklin in Issue Four, May 2022
First published in Bird’s Thumb, October 2016
I.
Last summer I buried a body under the apple tree
and every now and then I see the ghost plucking weeds
and picking seeds from his teeth.
He spits them at my window at night.
He says he’s tired of eating rotten fruit;
he wants to know what it is like to hold something
without it being bruised—slick
and black. The creatures that crawl
into his mouth at night
are dense, and I hear him
choke in his sleep,... Continue →
Tall Tales
by F. J. Bergmann in Issue Four, May 2022
Summer came. Each tree
On my street had its own
Scheherazade. My nights
Were a part of their wild
Storytelling.
Charles Simic, “The White Room”
The best place we ever lived
had a really big tree. More than five stories
shadowed the backyard.
At first they were short
and simple: moralistic fables or fairy tales
where the monster or witch queen
gets what’s coming to her.
As we... Continue →
Every Light a Threshold
by Melissa Ridley Elmes in Issue Four, May 2022
Through the blinds of my ground-level apartment
I see the flash of red taillights; someone’s car
backing into a parking space, sending forth a
sudden claret flare like aliens landing in the night.
Through the blinds, the blinding mid-morning sun
burns my eyes as I startle to waking, some dream
leaving me sweating and restless, wanting more
of whatever it was that I cannot now remember.
Through the blinds, in the yellow hour, late afternoon
light falling like honey in a layered cascade
painting dark and... Continue →
Behemoth
by Julie Allyn Johnson in Issue Four, May 2022
Watch as I tend
these ice-blue flames,
poking and prodding
every faltering gash.
Lean in as I expatriate the spark
and sizzle
of kindred combatants.
My hell-mouth
reeks
of animus.
Distillation by fire,
the hiss and whine
of the Great Machine,
its clunk and growl
of rotors and gears—
witness the mechanism
that grinds me down
deburrs every jagged seam
sucks out
every nib of defiance.
Bystander:
Observe... Continue →