Poetry
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 mi...
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 t...
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 th...
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 do...
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 ...
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: morali...
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 ...
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—
witne...
A Wreckful Planting of Small Pockets of Thirst
by Nnadi Samuel in Issue Four, May 2022
First published in Uncanny Magazine, March 2022
I run out of ways to keep you urgent in my mouth,
stomach your shouting relic.
so, when grief comes for an unburial, unearthing you into the forgotten,
I stuff you under my tongue.
how I've learnt to carry you across borders,
across turnpikes & ra...
sestina for the summer solstice
by Claire McNerney in Issue Three, March 2022
dot the j and cross the seven.
upcoming in neon, in oppressive heat
we dream with night-opened windows.
too-small frogs can’t eat the mosquitos,
preparing the party, the cake is neat
but in this rotting mansion we’re still far from heaven.
the kid still thinks cream cake is heaven—
she wears...