Poetry
Queercoded Villanelle
by anaum sajanlal in Issue Twenty-One, January 2026
Build an altar to memory. Do not forget.
Dot ancestors all over, then kneel down and pray
to all the joys you do not think possible, yet.
And once you have swallowed the moon of your grief, get
up and run. Leave your eye-silver flowing. Though they
burn altars to memory, we do not forget.
Even when ...
Continue →A Party, A Party!
by Faith Allington in Issue Twenty-One, January 2026
You don’t choose vampires
and ghouls any more than they
choose you, but you find consolation
in each other, all the unloved
and objectified strata of myth.
Everybody wants to fear you
or fight you, they never approach
a werewolf to ask what you thought
of that action movie or that romance book.
Your...
Continue →she brings me waves, she brings me wind
by Angel Leal in Issue Twenty, July 2025
i know her because her hair drags with homesick stars
& her hands are rough like a sailor's.
i know her loneliness looks like a fish struggling
in a man's net & her freedom
looks like a stormy night, two girls holding shells
to their ears, hearing wonders
echoes of drowned lovers. they kiss & i ...
Continue →Cryptid Sister
by H.V. Patterson in Issue Twenty, July 2025
The summer Mom died,
I summoned you
From vulture feathers,
From discarded cicada husks,
From car-wrecked armadillos,
Legs surrendered to the eternal, burning sky.
I summoned you from the hole in my gut
Where my longing leaked out,
Where heat and humidity seeped in.
And you came,
You with legs of the...
Anchor Spindrift
by Elizabeth R McClellan in Issue Twenty, July 2025
for Seanan & Mira
When they carved the desk, a necessary place
to keep paper from molding and aging,
they cried as they stripped curves
from the world. Flat surfaces repelled
their sodden flesh like oil vomiting out
water. A necessary compromise with
land and light. To touch it was pain,
so one with...
What Does Your Revolution Look Like?
by Ewen Ma in Issue Nineteen, March 2025
(or, A Dragon Crawls Across the Moon: A Movie in Two Acts)
1.
My cousin invites me over for dinner the evening before my flight. While he and his wife set the table, their daughter lifts a lizard out of its vivarium, cradles it in her small hands, places the creature gently upon my outstretched ar...
Continue →Hermit of the Crossroads
by Marie Brennan in Issue Nineteen, March 2025
The hermit kneels inside his cell and prays.
Here two roads meet: and at their crossing stands
a sacred guard for all the kingdom’s ways.
This cell, four paces square, is all his lands;
four windows glimpse the freedom of the sky;
four prisoning doors, he closed with his own hands.
For water and for...
Continue →Dawn Witching with Crows
by Devin Miller in Issue Nineteen, March 2025
Softly lift the tools of your secret witching.
Make no noise your mothers will hear, no telltale
scrape of knife on stone; keep your setup silent.
Answer no questions.
Birds will sing these songs with you–meet them, trill for
cry. Then, under daybreak blue morning quiet,
hand your tools to birds....
Bandits of Dream City
by Sharang Biswas in Issue Nineteen, March 2025
In my dreams, we’re burglars
Our fingers ooze through castle walls of toffee and cloud
like a warmed spoon through the toffee-walnut ice-cream I churned on your birthday
Our breath steals between the gaps in a snake-streusel door
like the entire rhubarb-streusel pie you snuck into that terrifying Fr...
Yes, Chef
by Jake Price in Issue Eighteen, November 2024
My life fits inside a sentence.
There aren’t any hours in any days
that can’t be represented with a noun and non-fantastic
verb, and maybe an adjective thrown in. Maybe icy
or starving or blue or dilated.
My nights are orange.
This cheese grater in my hand has created enough orange
zest to deserve...