Poetry
Interstellar Catalog: Romantic Interlude
by Shana Ross in Issue Twelve, December 2023
On this world all the colors are named anew
with each child. I have a word for yellow &
a word for blue, but it will not help me talk
to another soul in this city. We point to
the sun & the sky and the piped icing
& buttercream roses on these small
cakes we picked out from the bakery.
On this...
For the attention of my future self
by Brian Hugenbruch in Issue Twelve, December 2023
While you are me, and I am almost you,
I cannot help but think you spin me lies.
I do not think that what we say is true.
Your letter's from our future—and we rise
to conquer bloody challenges ahead—
though you are me, and I am almost you.
I find it less than clear, sir, that we prize
a simil...
Elegy for the Wood Nymphs
by Goran Lowie in Issue Twelve, December 2023
it starts with screams in summer.
there have been signs beforehand—
the trees have started to refuse the rain.
the sky did not submit and coated the trees,
unceasing, in layers of water.
water sits on the ground with open mouth,
waiting to be taken by the tongues of animals,
but even they ref...
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
Bedecked with bright garlands, the object of ...
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—
not a molten core—comes and goes.
I've seen...
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 shipment from the Patch to the factor...
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 lure is dimmed by my dazzling spring.
...
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, raging flame—
if these are gifts to sway my h...
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 of so many
broken plates; the profound struggles
of timid fossils....
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 tides
eternal drifters through inky skies
bottl...
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