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There is a guiding light. A path towards a healthier and more compassionate self. It is a star self, a light held together by its own gravity. It is easily understood by all cultures that the brain responds well to a deity related to light (or weightlessness). In Vajrayana Buddhism, a Yidam is a symbol used as a vehicle to help understand inner space by visualization. There are other reflective symbols similar to the Yidam that are associated with the Russian Eastern Orthodox icons. These are paintings that have a thaumaturge effect, which is a type of gravitational healing power within the viewer. More devices include the Dine sand paintings and the Vèvè of Vodun. These are all ways to connect to planetary influences to empower a practitioner’s use of managing gravitational forces as a remedy. Aspirations towards the well-being of others and one’s own health are a mature intention. A devoted routine of concentration on any symbol, any deity, or any word can generate a magnetic relationship. This friendly association with a visualized goal opens one up to a field of force. This magnetic relationship involves imagining a future self that provides guidance to a present self. Mitchell Pluto lives in Western Montana. Pluto's work focuses on spontaneity and non-ordinary states of awareness. Mitchell's work includes painting with oils and acrylics, as well as assembling collages often to explore unrehearsed arrangements. His fictional avant-garde books From The Eclipse and Cadaver Dogs merge themes of space travel, psychic exploration, and critical thinking. Pluto makes handmade jewelry with his wife at Gypsy Moon Designs and has paintings across the United States, Canada, Chile, Egypt, and Portugal.

They sit sallow in dourness, barely a ghostfire stays illumed in the depthless height of jealous Seraphim. They are grooming nits and nymphs, picking bits of louse from their graygolden wings, as caged silverbacks in common zoos do. Their eye sockets slackened at adoring souls— flashing Caucasoid mudras, tongue-lashing heedless light, into sindark night. They come on cue, to the keepers in a mephitic stench of obsequity. Poised maliciously, compliant of prayers and complacent of praise meditated under wrong moons, proofing a point of poor position. They, having visited and wrung and swung heavy thuribles, for Her projects of hoi polloi too long, longer than time, their lice-picked wings were weighted with the vocation. These exuviated saints, famished, playing stingy genie to the unwashed and overproud Atoms. Now, their pinions point abyssward, in rebellion, they believe the fetid, olivaceous waves of stygian river's passing are more verdurous a pasture, for the sincere and unfettered theurgic exploration, of angels pursuing self- sanctioned passions. Jaymee Thomas is a writer, poet, and programmer from Columbus, Ohio. She writes poetry, literary nonfiction, and  popular fiction with several publications including Spectrum magazine and the Wittenberg Review of Art & Literature. She is most interested in how language plays at the intersection of reality, imagination, and mythmaking.

Your crescent scars the abyss where idle bodies should remain at peace. Your light torches their ambience a lightness akin to a swift kiss. But yours is that of a sliver pricking the crevice of thought, maddening the mind to a bruise, a cloudscape bruise with gold peaks to taste the sovereign libidos. With a touch of violence, you accentuate the airwaves of human anatomy. Must your ego burst so? With a shallow trick of spine that showers the ground with cognac, you inflate your lust. An amber rim swells across linen. Evan Burkin (he/him/his) is currently working toward an MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, where he serves as an assistant poetry editor for the grad-run literary journal, Fourteen Hills. His work has been published or is forthcoming in New American Writing, Allegory, THRUSH, Birdcoat Quarterly, and elsewhere.

Thinly veiled moon plays peek-a-boo between clouds; shadows dance and disappear. Trepidatiously at first, then emboldened smelling gifts of sweet corn and fruit, Tiny herd of six deer emerges, treading lightly, from behind bracken woods. Mid-American backyard delivers a bountiful promise, harmonizing our closing days. Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school teacher (remember the hormonally-challenged?) who just moved to northern Illinois from southern California (?) with his wife of fifty years, Sally Ann (upon whom he is emotionally, physically, and spiritually dependent), one grown daughter, and ten cats! Like Blake, Emerson, Thoreau, and Merton, he believes that the instant contains eternity.

You look thin! Katia jolted up in bed, clutching her mottled blanket. Saucer-eyed, her gaze turned to the open bedroom door, a black monolith in the room’s mothy dusk. She clicked on the bedside lamp, washing the walls in weak light and thin shadow. Nothing. She exhaled, a puff of breath scattering in the cold air. Her parents never put the heating on until well into January; it wasn’t even December yet. She examined her arms, goosebumps protruding like plucked chicken skin. Was she so thin? Her thighs were a little skinny, her kneecaps poking out like beer bottle tops, but was she any thinner than other thirteen-year-old girls? Hard to say, since she’d stopped going to school. The building groaned, the plop-plop-plop of a tap echoing through the apartment. Katia pushed herself up, pulling the blanket around her, exposing her ankles to the chill air. She shuffled toward the dark doorway, following the plumes of her breath that swirled in the lamplight and faded into black. Her sister’s old room was next door, now empty. The door stood ajar, giving a narrow view inside; carpet dents where the bed had been, faded poster marks on the wall, an impact hole in the plaster. Looking through that slit always triggered fleeting images of Iza sitting there knitting, shutting the world out, though Katia couldn’t verify their validity; she was about seven when Iza abandoned her, leaving without a trace. That’d make this year the sixth anniversary, a date which would surely pass with as much fanfare as her initial departure. The living area lights were off, a miasma of cigarette smoke glowing in the light of the TV. The volume was low enough that Mum and Dad’s snoring see-sawed between them like a strange song. They slouched in their chairs, ashtray spilling onto the table between them. They rarely made it back to the bedroom these days, but their predictable dormancy made it still the best time to go foraging. Katia crossed to the kitchen, sucking the cold, tobacco-sweet air through her blanket. She opened the pantry, leaning in; only a few tins of food lined the bare shelves, the same old soil-crusted shovel resting against the wall. The leftovers littering the kitchen side would do tonight. Katia lifted a sharp-edged pie tin, its contents snuffled down to the crust, and crept out through the front door. Their block was one of four high-rise towers overlooking the city. There were some okay people here, but bad ones, too; the stairwell smelled like wee, and you’d sometimes meet someone scary-looking on the way down, face hidden by their hood, hands stuffed in their jogging bottoms. The so-called Peace Garden was round the back of their block; some community funded project to make it nicer for the residents. Katia went there sometimes, to get out of the apartment and breathe clean air, even when it was so cold it made her chest tight. It was little more than a lumpy dirt mound with a wiry tree sticking out, but at least there was a view of the city. She perched on the border wall, tucking into the leftovers, her eyes up to the grey sky that hung like a sodden blanket. Whenever she thought of her sister leaving her behind, her heart drooped like an unwatered plant. So she tried not to. Katia tiptoed back to bed after eating, hugging herself close. It almost felt colder inside, the glacial air keen to show it rejected the concept of shelter. She reached for the lamp, but stopped stiff. A figure lurked in the doorway, tall and slender, features indistinguishable. “Hello?” said Katia, her voice breaking. She swallowed, spotting the source: on the floor stood a knitted doll, its shadow cast into the hall. Exhaling, Katia stood and walked gingerly over to it. It was mere inches tall, faceless with pointy ears. One of Iza’s creations? She was sure Mum and Dad had thrown all her stuff out. With her brow furrowed, Katia placed the thing by her bed and turned off the lamp. “You look thin, Katia!” Katia woke with a yelp. She blinked her wet eyes clear, squinting in the anaemic moonlight pushing through dusty blinds. “I’m not thin…” she grumbled, switching on the lamp. The doll was by the door again. It looked shorter this time, hunched over. Katia jumped up, padding across the carpet. Half the doll’s yarn was loose and trailed off behind it like it had dragged itself in here. Out in the hall, the yarn ran along the corridor like a river, disappearing into the dark of Iza’s bedroom. Katia tiptoed along the hall to check the living room, her hands shaking under the threadbare blanket. Her parents were still asleep; Mum slumped to one side and Dad pitched back, statue-like, his thick fingers gripping the chair arms. Back at her sister’s room, bones chattering, Katia pushed the door open with a gentle creak. The room’s contours were just visible in the half light. Katia knelt, feeling for the yarn. She followed it, crawling until she reached the back corner, where a scuff of carpet curled from the skirting. She gripped it, pulling it up to reveal a square of loose board underneath. Her breath steadied, the excitement of the discovery allaying any fear of being caught. She removed the board and reached in, pulling out a small satchel and a thick diary with Iza written on the cover. Wrapped up in bed, Katia feverishly examined her haul by lamplight. The satchel was a little knitting kit, with coloured yarns and a set of glass needles. Katia closed it up and shoved it under her pillow. She lifted the diary, nestling its spine between her legs and leafing through the pages. Iza had written often, much of it about daily life, about her worries, about her job at the factory. Katia had forgotten she worked there, but faintly remembered now; the dawn alarm clocks that drove Dad up the wall, the way she’d linger in Katia’s doorway for a few minutes before leaving for work. Mum’s gone cuckoo again. I think Dad’s ready to snap, too. Done with this place. Need to get out. Footsteps! Katia shoved the diary inside her blanket and sat up straight. Mum rounded the door, arms folded, her weathered scowl carved from shadow. She waited. “I… couldn’t sleep,” said Katia. “Where did you find this?” Mum held out the half-doll in its tangle of yarn. “It was on the floor.” She gritted her teeth, exhaling through pursed lips. “I really can’t deal with your lying.” “But—” “No. I don’t want to hear another sound.” She left, closing the door. Katia returned to the diary, eyes locked on the page. She paused, a word catching her eye. …thin, so thin. Can see her bones through her top. No matter how many morsels of food I sneak home from the factory, it’s never enough. Katia ran a finger over the letters, feeling for the indentation of the pen that wrote them. She peered across at the doorway, her eyes searching the darkness. She sighed. Girl from work told me about a shelter. It’s not free, though. Will start stashing my wages somewhere M&D can’t find them, pack a bag ready. When the time’s right, I’ll grab Katia and we’ll get the hell out. So Iza had planned on taking Katia with her. The entry didn’t say where, and the need to read on filled Katia with a suppressing urgency. The next night, in the slither of time between her parents’ dozing and their inevitable emergence, she slipped quietly out of bed again. All clear in the hall. She lifted her sister’s satchel over her head, checking her reflection in the dark bedroom window. The mirror girl stood up straight, her mouth forming into a crooked smile. Crossed legged and lucent in the lamp’s bloom, Katia read, the words on the page sucking her in like a bed of marshmallow. She wanted to fall into it and never come back, leave her parents wondering where she’d gone. Sat on a knitting needle and actually bled! OUCH! These things are stronger than they look! Katia stifled a giggle, her hand clapped over her mouth. Things pretty volatile here. I see the red mist behind Dad’s eyes. Think Mum’s as scared of him as we are. Can’t wait to leave. Dad found my stash in the pantry. Thinks I stole it from him. Fuck! Leaving the money in K’s lamp behind. Will get it later. The last entry made Katia double-take. She turned to her lamp, dumbfounded, imagined Iza standing right there, deciding on whether it was a good hiding place. She lifted it carefully, her mouth agape as a wad of notes flopped out—a few hundred, at least. “What are you doing?” Mum’s voice made Katia nearly throw the lamp into the air. “Mum…” she murmured. “Where did you get those things? That money?” “I don’t know…” said Katia, her voice juddering as she floundered for an explanation. Mum’s lip trembled, her eyes weary with hate. She strode across the room, snatching the diary and cash away, pulling the satchel off her. “It’s just take, take, take with you, isn’t it? Just like your sister.” Katia blubbed and wept. “Mum, I—” “What? Spit it out!” “I think Iza’s trying to send me messages—” The sound came before the pain; a dull slap, the woman’s hand recoiling from her daughter’s cheek. “Don’t you say that name in this house,” she said. Katia clawed at her mother’s dress, longing hopelessly to be believed—that she had nothing to do with the doll, that something strange was going on. But Mum moved away. “I’d better not see you out of this room again,” she said, taking the things with her and slamming the door. Katia woke with her face pressed into the carpet, cheeks stiff with dried tears, raw with humiliation. It was still dark out. She got up, knelt on the bed, found her reflection. Her eyes were shot, her cheeks puffed out. To think that Iza wasn’t much older when she left, while she herself was still just a useless baby. Over her shoulder, the bedroom door squeaked on its hinges, yawning open in a wide arc. She turned to face it, her stomach flipping over. The knitted doll was back, fully formed, ears stuck up like two fingers. If something had happened to her out there, she had to know. “I’m coming, Iza,” she said, scooping the doll up as she left. The usual ambience of TV static hissed gently in the living room. Her parents slept, surrounded by bottles and cans, untroubled amongst their mullock and swill. The confiscated items were stacked on the table between the two armchairs. Katia edged forward, steps soft as wool. To her left and right, chests rose and fell in a wheeze, grown-up faces scrunched in slumber. A held breath. Katia slid the diary toward her, tucking it under her arm. She lifted the satchel by the strap and hung it from her shoulder. With her heart thudding in her ears, she gathered up the cash, stuffing it in the satchel between balls of yarn. A hand snatched her wrist, gripping it tightly. Katia squealed, pulling free. She ran. Out the door. Down the stairs. Into the moonlight, where the sorry sight of the Peace Garden awaited. Her foot caught a step in the dark. She fell, scraping her knee, slamming onto the frosted path. The diary bounced on its spine, falling open before her, urging her to read on. Will have to come back for Katia. Soon as I can. Need to make sure it’s safe first. I know she’ll be okay. She’s stronger than she looks, my little glass needle. God, Katia, I wish you knew what you mean to me. That you’re the reason I keep going. Katia’s tearful gaze moved past the book, to the lumpy mound of soil, the wiry tree that made up the Peace Garden. Soon as I can. The pantry. The shovel covered in soil. “You never left…” said Katia, in a half whisper. “She did it to herself.” Katia sat up, turned to face her father. All stubble and jowls, he swayed like an oak, a thick hand bracing the door frame, sickly breath damping the air. “She was standing right where you are,” he said, eyes unfocused. “Told her to hand the money over… She stepped back and fell, cracked her head like a watermelon.” Katia glared at him, kept quiet, her teeth sinking into her lip. “Freak accident,” he said. “Reached out for her—I guess I pushed her. I don’t know. I barely remember it… Just lost it, probably.” He squinted, his eyes on the tree. “Your sister had a way of bringing out the worst in people. Well, nothing I say ever comes out right, does it? I can’t win, can I?” The man knelt down at her feet with a groan. Katia fumbled for the satchel behind her, a hand reaching under the flap. “Are we really so bad, Katia?” he said, looking her in the eye. “It was her money,” said Katia. He laughed, shaking his head. “More lies. It’s all you girls ever do.” The laughter faded. “Now, come on. Inside.” “You couldn’t just let her go.” “Not with my money, no.” “It was her money.” “And how do you know?” he yelled, his drunk mouth lurching closer. “It’s all in there!” she cried, pointing to the diary. He turned and reached for the book, grunting at the incalculable effort involved. Behind her, Katia’s fingers found one of the needles. Dad opened the diary, squinting at it cross-eyed. “The bitch could write!” Katia swung the glass needle, her fist slapping against his neck with a meaty thwack. He dropped the diary, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. Katia let out a gasp, knowing she’d missed. She must have. She withdrew her hand. The translucent shaft stuck out of him like a snowman’s pipe, a black trickle of blood bubbling over his collarbone. He peered at it idiotically, his mouth flapping. Katia was up. She gathered the things and ran; out the main gate, down the hill, across the foot bridge leading to the city. It wasn’t until she slammed into someone that she stopped for air, muttering her apologies, words coming out of her like pieces of a spilled jigsaw, too damaged to put together. They sat, Katia and the nice woman. They sat, and they waited. And before the sun came up, the apartment complex looked quite pretty up there on the hill, washed in flashes of blue and red light. They watched the police swarm like bugs, and the apartment lights pop into life one after next, as the pumpkin fibres of dawn coloured the sky. Steven Kay is a writer who lives for stories that wander new worlds, establish deep atmosphere, and explore the human condition. His writing spans both literary and speculative fiction, embodying his love for great prose whilst sometimes exploring the hypothetical and surreal themes that help us to make sense of the world and ourselves. When he’s not sat at his laptop in a dark room, he can be found working as a web developer, performing with his band or jumping out of planes with his skydiving team. Why not find him on Facebook, Instagram, or Bluesky and say hi? And for more of his stories, you can visit his website at www.stevenkaybooks.com.

It would not be found on any tourist map, but ask the locals; they could tell you. In the dark heart of St. Martin Parish, east of New Iberia by a handful of miles as the heron flies, lay Bayou Lafouche, a sluggish crawl that ends in a shallow swamp, its origin stretching back through nameless eons, long predating the arrival of the first Acadians. Bernard Seydoux was steeped in the lore of his people, nurtured through his fifty-three years by vivid tales spun late into the night over draughts of strong drink. And more than any man around, Bernard Seydoux knew Bayou Lafouche. Only once in his life had he ventured beyond—a weekend in Lafayette as a young buck with two friends. He could recall little of the trip apart from the haze of alcohol and a vague memory of a girl picked up at a bar.  But what was clear was that he had no taste for going back. So he lived a bachelor’s life in an isolated, cramped shanty of scavenged planks and castoff corrugated sheet metal that clung to the lip of the bayou.  He spent his days in a weathered 12-foot skiff tending to his crawfish traps baited and dropped at intervals in the shallows. His catch, usually abundant, he sold to a distributor whose customers included seafood stores and restaurants as far away as Baton Rouge. His labor kept him in beer and cigarettes, and he was content to spend most evenings drinking and listening to the music of his watery environs or the distant voices that came by way of his radio from New Orleans. On nights when the moon was full, Bernard would down a few bottles of Dixie, push away from the short dock in front of his place and pole his boat past where he placed his last crawfish pot and follow the bayou to its terminus in the swamp. There he would sit on the skiff’s thwart, beneath a curtain of gently susurrating Spanish moss, smoke and ruminate on the mystery of life, an exercise for which he lacked any philosophical aptitude. Still, he felt a kinship with the night’s creatures, as if he were one of them, and took comfort in their nocturnal chorus. Though Bernard Seydoux was well-versed in Cajun lore, there were stories in which he put no stock, tales of gris-gris and mal juju. “Fah,” he would say with derision, “the talk of old women.” So it was that in the summer of 1967 when several of the old ones began to circulate ominous warnings about a malédiction du diable that would descend on the bayou in late summer, Bernard dismissed the talk with a wave of his hand and a vulgar retort: “The Devil can embrasse mon cul!” The night of August 26. was clear, the moon dull-ivory, suspended high in the southeast sky. The air was heavy, relinquishing little of the day’s stifling heat and humidity. For Bernard there was nothing unusual in it as he pushed away from the shanty and guided his skiff toward the deeper water where the moonlight fell like gauze upon the gentle ripples. His destination was the seclusion of the swamp to see for himself what the radio had told him was a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event, a total lunar eclipse. He stood as he poled, and when he reached the swamp he moved with practiced rhythm through the carpet of duckweed and salvinia. He took care to keep clear of the shallows, the ones favored by alligators, maneuvering the skiff  to a spot where his view of the moon would not be impeded by the towering cypresses and their moss draperies. Shipping the pole and taking a seat, Bernard used the back of his hand to swipe perspiration from his forehead.  He lifted the lid of a small cooler he had brought along and pulled a bottle of Dixie from its nest of ice. He relished the chill as he rolled it across his forehead several times before using the opener slung around his neck on a greasy leather thong, popping the cap and taking a long drink. Craning his neck skyward, he saw that the eclipse had already begun, with the moon nearly a quarter blocked by the Earth’s shadow. So he relaxed, finished his beer and promptly opened another. He was content to smoke and listen to the chorus of crickets and tree frogs, broken by the occasional splash of a creature in the murky water. After his third beer, he checked the moon again, now more than half hidden and he began to doze. No more than half an hour passed when he was startled awake, not by a noise but by the total absence of sound. It was as if every creature in the swamp had at once fallen mute, disappeared, ceased to exist. And accompanying the eerie silence was near-total darkness. Bernard turned toward the moon—the eclipse was at its peak. At the same moment, he felt a curious stirring in the water around him and a thump from beneath that jarred the bow of the skiff, lifting it just off the surface of the water. Then came another and a third, each sharper than the one before. He did not understand what was happening but it unnerved him enough so that he took up his pole and stood, letting his eyes probe the darkness. “Mebbe one big ‘gator,” he muttered. He slipped the pole into the water, feeling the bottom six feet from the surface. He threw his weight against the pole as he tried to turn the skiff and maneuver it into a different position. But when he attempted to slide the pole free for another stroke, it locked in the muck on the swamp floor. Merde! He struggled with the pole, bending it this way and that, but he could not dislodge it. He was starting to sweat again, so he took a break, leaned on the pole with one hand while he shucked a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket with the other. But before he could light up, he felt a ripple in the night air, an electrified swirl of static that rushed like a whirlwind, enveloping him, raising every hair, causing every pore to come alive. Frantically, he waved his right hand to brush away the electric currents that shimmered over his entire body. He tried to cry out but no sound escaped his throat. There came a fresh agitation in the water around the skiff, which began pitching and yawing with enough intensity that he felt himself in danger of losing his footing. Then, as he struggled to keep his balance, there arose a piercing, keening wail. It came on softly but quickly crescendoed. It emerged from the very depths of the swamp, becoming louder and louder, bearing with it a horror and unmitigated pain of despair that tore at Bernard’s soul. Again, this time out of profound anguish, he tried to scream. Again, it was in vain. And with the rising sound came a swift upsurge of the water beneath the boat, lifting and capsizing it, pitching him headlong into the stagnant, fetid pool. Quickly, he twisted his body and struggled to get upright. The water was deep enough so that his toes hit bottom, which allowed him to thrust his chin just above the waterline and, while bobbing, gulp air. Still, the hellish sound howled around him, rising and falling and rising louder again as if emanating from a demonic choir. He attempted to thrash his hands free, to clasp them over his ears and dull what was now painful, but he was unable to move them. The more he strained the tighter were his arms frozen with immobility. As he struggled, a new terror arose, for he felt first his toes and then gradually his feet being gripped and sucked into the thick muck of the swamp floor, as if he were being methodically swallowed by a huge, hungry mouth. Eyes bulging with the horror of it, unable to utter a desperate cry for help, he was pulled beneath the surface. And as he sank, he heard the rasp of an ancient, dreaded voice, one that carried all of the ineffable pain and cruelty of mankind,  hiss through the shrieking that rent the night: “You dare to mock me?!?” In an instant, all sound died away. Beneath the surface, Bernard’s skin was alive, nerve endings afire to every sensation of the swirling water, every jagged  terror that his imagination conjured—long, venomous snakes entwining his limbs, crawfish swarming to nibble at his flesh and the hideous muck that sucked his feet fast. And with eyes wide, mouth filling and choking on the brackish water—filling and choking again and again but never drowning, never dying for evermore—Bernard Seydoux watched through the undulating murk as the first tiny rind of the ivory moon reappeared. Nick Young is a retired award-winning CBS News Correspondent. His writing has appeared in more than thirty publications, including the Stygian Lepus, Dark Horses Magazine, Little Death Lit, The Chamber, Sein und Werden and the Tales of the Strange anthology. His first novel, Deadline, was published in October. He lives outside Chicago.

In the quiet communion of night, stars of clarity softly indite their secrets— their arcane scriptures scribbled on the sky, a stippling brilliance. No mere distant glimmers of cosmic routine, but beacons born from the remnants of exploding suns. Each pinpoint narrates a history of listening memory, this temple of immensity, an empyrean reliquary, an occult bibliography etched in runes, and echoes of astrogeny. No accident of arrangement in the starscape, they are sparks of theurgical gnosis, they are distant witnesses of existence, they are galactic philosophers, in silent discourse. Penned in the language of shimmering specks, each light a fading verse of revelation, a coven of supernal sorceresses whispering, incantations, recasting spells, with each spectral spin. As alchemical scribe on astral parchment, aging light every night rewrites its sigils, across a bedarkened palimpsest of constellations, in the cryptic sentiment of stars. Not simple, distant luminaries, but ancient, druids of the cosmos, guardians of the metaphysical lexicon of universal wisdom, their radiant mystical linguistics, spoken in the silent tongue of cosmic seers. In the sacred nocturnal assembly, stars of clarity beckon, Orion and Cygnus, extend your senses toward the ether, take in the eldritch rays of discernment, written in light upon the stellar grimoire. Jaymee Thomas is a writer, poet, and programmer from Columbus, Ohio. She writes poetry, literary nonfiction, and  popular fiction with several publications including Spectrum magazine and the Wittenberg Review of Art & Literature. She is most interested in how language plays at the intersection of reality, imagination, and mythmaking.

I I go to the forest.    He waits for me there. Lofty antlers, hooves planted. I climb into his mouth    into his belly.    I light a fire. Want.     Window.     Wreathe. I climb the ladder     of his gullet    in the shadow    of the dying fire. Drop out of his mouth. Feed him an apple. Pull the ring from his nose. I know he’ll stay. II Wild hair.    Wild arms.    Wild harpy.    Voice of keening. They hold me back.    They know why the keening    comes. They tell me to take    to the hills    to keen myself empty    of black.     Midnight.     You. III He waits for me in the forest.    I will go to him. Climb into his mouth    into his belly.    I will light a fire. Wreathe. Window. Want. Gill Shaw is a queer poet and spoken word performer based in the Highlands of Scotland, whose writing draws on landscape and the natural world. Her debut pamphlet, Touching Air, was published by Stewed Rhubarb Press in April 2023.

The holy speech, that which is Divine Spirit, the embodied Logos, is immortal. All of nature in paragraph, as indeed the secret song of the soul; the Guide of Man is mastery of the earliest record of this Egyptian sage. C.J. Lane is a Southern Wisconsin based poet who works with experimental forms of  poetry, such as the cut-up method and Surrealist automatism; furthermore, he self-published a collection of experimental poetry in September of 2023, Sacred & Profane. His poetry is  inspired by history, the esoteric and occult, especially the historical Western magical tradition. Furthermore, his work is informed by his time at Southern New Hampshire University, where he earned both a BA and is presently working on an MA in creative writing, with focuses in both fiction and poetry.

No way to wander away from self-meditative glow: home sweet home where path/arrival has no where to go : mating unseen & beholding in the equipoise— where secret mantra silence inner-hears noise or no noise, unconfused by senseshell-relative centrality: experienced directly clear through all diversity... all at once (never elsewhere) I AM identity: in the equipoise of [your] egoless deity, immune to post & pre : blissful wisdom letting thoughts calm voluntarily, witnessing lifetimelessness where eyes can’t look to see: in the equipoise of mindgem hollow that’s holy, GodLove kicking lazy out of AH effortlessly— in the equipoise of mindcloud/GodSky centrally; in the equipoise of wisdom-eye unliddedly; in the equipoise of Constant mating Presently: in the equipoise of I AM no known name can be. Ken Goodman synthesizes ecstatic meditation & poetry creation. And he does it in Cleveland.

An emboldened doe bakes in Liverpool under heated greens & beech limbs. Its red dew soaks the edges of its shallow birth. A fermentation of scent Divulged: nutmeg bristles cushioning a life rooted in the color of dirt. There, upon pillaged chrysanthemums, The newborn rests with the face of a golem. Its lineage a fiction of mud and water. Blossoming, sun-crusted wheat looms while Kirkby clouds play limbo. A Laugh held between scythe cycles settles as charred soufflé. Its binged crust Tongued away to a white paste in the measured height of ocean mimicry. There, before fields and sky, our little golem-doe Sees the cotton soft of everyday life and trusts nature as a fragrance, the mother of pastels. Plated horns tip in dawn’s whisked liquor to dip in dusk. Bland lilies secure. Sponge them drunk. In the knolls of coarse grain, the lightest of buds lost Courses a river. Air blackens on its canvas: the hollows between life and air. There, at the river’s edge, a tongue teaches itself to identify water as a mirror of the self unbound. It will always want the earth to mask itself in nirvana. Evan Burkin (he/him/his) is currently working toward an MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, where he serves as an assistant poetry editor for the grad-run literary journal, Fourteen Hills. His work has been published or is forthcoming in New American Writing, Allegory, THRUSH, Birdcoat Quarterly, and elsewhere.

Abram knew Kala was pregnant before she did, at least that is what he told himself. He had known with their other children as well. That, or Kala had simply let him believe so. Either way, watching Kala move through the fields with the other women was all he needed to know she was with child. He paused his repair atop the wooden palisade to admire her. Kala took deliberate steps through the swaying stalks of sickly corn, whereas others moved without thought. Normally, she held the wicker basket at the front of her waist like everyone else. Instead, it was suspended on her hip. Abram took a deep pleasure in knowing the subtle movements of his wife. The way she parted her long dark hair over her right ear whenever it obscured her face. How she bit her tongue when she was focused, like now, or how she adjusted the loose linen dress she wore when the hem bunched together at her ankles. Mother’s Blessing, he was a lucky man. Kala was unlike anyone else in Jasper Bay. There were sinewy-legged Coastals like himself, and more than a few stout-shouldered Inlanders, too, but Kala and her family were the only Islanders to speak of in the entire community. She was dark and slight where Abram was pale and tall. Their children took much of their mother’s appearance and mannerisms – and they were probably the better for it – but to a babe they all had his dark green eyes. A color not too dissimilar to the jasper agates filling the bay below the walled town they called home. The community of Jasper Bay was built on a hill overlooking a mile-long rocky beach and the ocean beyond. To the north was a river and watermill, and to the south the fields where the women harvested what little there was to gather. This fall had not been kind to them, and as always, the forest was to blame. Not always was it so, as the entire broken world seemed ready to rip them from its once fertile bosom. The onshore wind was incessant and bracing, flattening starter crops before ever a bloom or bud appeared. The ocean was no better, mother to not only the wind, but tsunamis that wiped clean any traps or docks they might have foolishly tried to erect. The mountains to the east were no help, often belching clouds of ash and fire, blotching the sky black and suffocating the fields for weeks or months. But for now, it was the forest they feared. As Abram returned to his work nailing metal and wood scraps to the palisade, masked men in thick oilskin jackets slashed and burned back the ever-encroaching forest. Only yesterday they had managed to clear it back a dozen paces, yet upon dawn’s first light it was as if not a single ax had been swung. Branches that had been hacked back snaked over the edge of the walls, dropping fat bulbs of toxic seeds into town. Their distinctive green-brown skin smelled something fierce, and if eaten, an unpleasant death would follow after days of dysentery and delirium. The men picked the seeds and chopped the day-old saplings that sprang from the forest floor like weeds. They were milky white, and just as toxic as the seeds, so the men wore heavy jackets and tight masks. And even still, after a day’s hard work, they came inside sporting blisters, rashes, and upset stomachs when the trees’ toxic oils managed to find bare skin. “Mother’s piss,” Hark said, eyeing the growing forest as he patrolled past Abram on the palisade’s walkway. He shouldered his rifle, one of only a handful still working. “Mark me, it’ll be worse tomorrow.” “She may yet show us mercy.” Hark snorted and continued about his duty. Abram let the matter lie. Not even Hark’s sour breath could ruin his joy. Instead, he watched as Kala moved through the fields, tossing aside more ears of corn than she kept. She paused at the center of the field where a giant oak tree stood. Unlike much of the flora in the forest, this tree was as many had once been, benign and beautiful, an ancient token of grace and strength. After decades of wind, ash, and flood, it still stood, unmarked and unbroken. Few things could be claimed as much nowadays. The other women passed on, but Kala stared at the tree, her stoic face unreadable to any but Abram. He felt what she felt, knew what she thought because he denied the same words and memories that had seared themselves into his soul not long ago. But today he chose to be joyful. And not think of the shadows of tomorrow. Even at night, the late spring heat clung to Abram’s clothes and matted his hair, suffocating all but his senses, and even they had begun to dull. Thankfully, the rains were gone, but in their wake followed a dampness that made the forest bolder. Abram still bore the scars of today’s work in the clearcut. If it was even right to call it that. The generator chugged a guttural chant, one that was at odds with the patchwork temple Abram, his family, and rest of Jasper Bay’s dozen or so families gathered in tonight. Refined oil was rare, only acquired from passing edge traders brave enough to enter the countless dead cities that littered the coastline. No one else dared go to them, not only in fear of the jealous consortiums who preyed upon the roads between, but the bitter shades of the past that lingered within. Abram’s grandparents had once lived in a city, but they had been very young, and what remained of their memories had weakened to almost nothing since their passing so long ago. They would have loved to meet Mathew and Sarah, Abram’s young children who sat in the front pew with Kala’s parents. Bare light bulbs strung across the ceiling illuminated the dais and the metal tub of water that Abram and Kala stood in. Abram wore his best attire, a pair of pressed and washed threadbare slacks rolled up to his knees, and the only white dress shirt he owned. The dress shirt was tighter around his midriff than it had been a few months ago, which he took as a good sign. Not many people could claim such vanity. Kala was beautiful, so much so Abram found it hard to look anywhere else. She wore the traditional long red robes of motherhood, her swollen belly pressing through the thin linen of the shift. She had worn it before, and if the Mother graced them, would wear it again. Despite the heat, Kala shivered in the water. Abram squeezed her hand, but she only looked forward. Matron Ophelia stepped onto the dais, her sunken face cut to darkened angles by the harsh light. She smelled of earth and woodsmoke, and kept her wiry gray hair wild. Blue tattoos swirled around her arms and legs and neck, marking her a mystic from a Coastal tribe Abram was not familiar with, though he avoided their kind as much as he could. Magic was as dangerous as cities. Yet, she was no stranger here. Ophelia had pulled Abram from his mother, as she had both his children from Kala. The generator paused, and for a brief moment the familiar sounds of the night filled the temple. The wind gusting, the trees groaning; beasts of the night prowling and howling, their sharp claws scratching at the palisade walls. Then, the chug-chug-chug of the generator resumed, and the congregation sighed in relief. If only for a time, it was nice to pretend the night was a peaceful and quiet place. Ophelia rested her hands on Kala’s shoulders, who flinched. “Rest easy, Child,” Ophelia said, addressing the temple. “For you bear the fruit of your sacred union. A Third Child waits to be born.” Everyone bowed their heads. “Praise the Mother’s Mercy.” Ophelia nudged Abram. Abram blushed. “Apologies, Matron.” A few people in the crowd giggled, including his daughter, as Abram took Kala by the fat of her arms and lowered her into the pool so only her face and belly were above the water. Abram looked up ruefully, and Sarah laughed again. His son, Mathew, only looked at his feet. “In our ignorance we smote the sky,” Ophelia said, stepping into the pool as she spoke to the congregation again. “In our arrogance we boiled the ocean. In our hatefulness we burned the forests. The mountains trembled and the lakes froze, and in our ignorance our cities rose, and rose, and rose.” Ophelia helped Abram pull Kala’s robe back to expose her distended belly. It glistened under the bright lights as it beaded with sweat and water. Abram found himself staring at her navel, wondering about the magic that lay in such simple flesh. “A babe in the woods, She abandoned us,” Ophelia continued. “Once her favorite child, now lost and forgotten, made to survive in the dark with her jealous and hungry children. Amid the vengeful seas and skies, the terrible mountains and trees, we scratch and struggle for forgiveness.” “Fear the Mother’s Fury.” Ophelia pulled an ornate knife from a leather sheath at her side. It was well-honed and sharp enough to cut the air. Abram swallowed hard as the knifepoint lingered above his wife’s belly. “Blood for blood, life for life. To give back what was given.” Abram held out his hand to Ophelia. In a well-practiced motion, she sliced the blade deep across his offered palm. Abram winced out of habit, even though Ophelia always cut the same hand and he had enough built up scar tissue to keep it from hurting. Fresh blood quickly pooled in the palm of his hand. Ophelia turned it over and droplets of blood splattered on his wife’s stomach. Ophelia did not turn his hand back over until the water was pink and Abram was lightheaded. “Blood for blood,” Ophelia said, holding up Abram’s hand. “Life for life.” “Bless this gift the Mother has given.” “Daddy, do you think it’s going to be a boy or a girl?” Abram wiped the beading sweat from his brow as he balanced Sarah on his lap. She was just shy of her fourth birthday and as inquisitive as ever. Her green eyes danced in the firelight of the small common room. Despite it being the middle of the summer, they only had enough bulbs to light the temple and little else. In the adjacent bedroom, where Abram and his family slept, he heard the rhythmic breathing of Kala working through her latest contractions. “Either is fine. I’ve already got one of each.” “I want a girl!” Sarah said, bouncing so much Abram had to grab her and pull her close. “What should we call her?” Abram ignored Sarah, and instead turned to his older son, Mathew, who was pushing a toy animal across the floor. It was like no animal he had ever seen before. It had four legs, a strong snout, and heavy hindquarters with a mane of fine hair running along the back of its long neck. His grandparents might have known what it was called, but all he knew was Mathew had desperately wanted it when the edge trader came by last year, and Abram had been too weak to say no. “What about you, Mathew? What do you want them to be?” Mathew shrugged and turned away. Kala’s parents waited on the other side of the room, near their own bedroom in the common house. Kala’s father held her mother’s hand while she prayed. Although Kala had been through more than enough births, it was always a dangerous time. So many things could go wrong. Not a year ago, their housemate’s wife had died in labor. Ophelia never said what happened. All Abram knew was that her husband walked into the woods that night and never returned. Abram put Sarah down and walked outside to get some fresh air to clear his head. The entire village was there to greet him. They nodded and smiled, asking how Kala was doing, and he said what he knew to be true. They patted him on the back, and although they knew he did not drink, offered him a swig of corn-beer. To their surprise, he took a deep drink and everyone laughed. However, the merriment that surrounded their home—roasted fish, freshly caught and cleaned of any poisonous glands; music to cover the growing sounds of the coming night; and what little dancing a long day’s labor allowed people to do—was hampered by a soft yet steady ashfall. Abram stared through the light layer of sooty clouds to see the glowing, bleeding heart of the mountains behind them. They had erupted that morning. “First the forest, and now this,” Hark said nearby. He was far deeper in his cups than most. “The crops’ll die and us with them. Ain’t nothing going to work.” Abram put his beer down. “Have faith, brother. Matron Ophelia has never led us wrong. It’s worked before, and it’ll work again. In time, the Mother will forgive us.” Hark swallowed his beer and spit on the ground. “Go inside, Abram,” a friend said, putting a hand on his back. “No need to watch what can’t be helped. You’ve got work to do. For all of us.” Abram sighed and nodded, then returned inside to find a son waiting for him. Ophelia held the child in her tattooed arms, a satisfied smile on her face, as the newborn – wreathed in a glow of mucus and blood – wiggled and cried. Kala looked exhausted as she lay on their bed, her face flushed and covered in sweat. But she was fine. She had borne children before, and the Mother willing, would bear them again. He grabbed her hand and wiped her forehead, then placed his head on her chest. “Stay with him,” Kala said, her voice weak and dry. “I want to stay with you,” Abram whispered into her chest. Tears bubbled at the corners of her eyes. “Please.” Abram kissed her hand, then nodded. Ophelia wrapped the newborn in a towel and walked outside the room. Abram followed, but not before Sarah broke loose from her grandparents’ arms and raced after. “I wanna see! I wanna see!” Ophelia smiled at Sarah, but continued past her outside. A loud cheer was met as the door closed shut behind her. Sarah’s lowered lip quivered. “I wanna see.” Abram grabbed his daughter. “You can see him later, dear.” “Him? But I want a little sister!” Sarah ripped free and sprinted outside. Abram swore, then glanced at Kala’s parents. He didn’t even need to ask them to watch Mathew, who was in the same spot pushing his toy around. He had not looked up once, his little green eyes focused on nothing but the toy and the frayed carpet it ran across. They would talk about this later, but right now he needed to focus on Sarah. Abram walked outside to see Sarah bouncing at the tail end of the crowd moving through the single paved street of Jasper Bay. A woman named Fern grabbed Sarah’s hand and pulled her along, as everyone followed Ophelia beyond the community walls. Somehow, the falling ash was worse outside the walls, turning the sun a faded blood orange as it sank to a horizon of unblemished pink and purple clouds beyond the bay. Sarah was on Fern’s shoulders when Abram saw them again, so he did not run. Everyone in Jasper Bay knew and trusted one another, but she was his daughter and needed to know better than to run off without permission. Besides, it had been a long day for everyone, especially Kala. She would want to be with her children after everything she had had to endure. The ash settled on the stalks of corn as Abram made his way into the fields. It was delicate and soft, each mote of ash settling down without so much as a bend or break, as if time itself had stopped and all that moved was Abram and the ash. The oak tree loomed as Abram approached the gathering people at its base. Ophelia stood near its center with Abram’s newborn baby still in her arms. Abram prodded Fern, who put Sarah down. “It’s good for them to see when they are young,” Fern said. Abram grabbed Sarah’s hand. “It’s not for you to tell me what is and isn’t good for my child.” Fern blushed. Although irritated, Abram agreed with Fern and led Sarah closer to where Ophelia stood. People parted for him, smiling and offering thanks. He nodded and shook a few hands, until he was just below where Ophelia stood. She gently placed Abram’s son on a massive root, then turned to the crowd. “Bless this gift the Mother has given,” the congregation chanted, Abram among them. Sarah squirmed between his legs, but he ignored her protests and focused on his newborn son. “A Third Child has been freely given,” Ophelia said. “Born in blood and struggle, he has found his way into this world like any other. But this child has no name, nor will he ever have a name, for The Third Child is what the Mother demands of us all.” She pulled back her robe to reveal a scar along her belly. “Taken from me, as it has been taken from you, we give back what was given.” “Blood for blood.” “We seek to amend for the world we have broken, and to do so we gladly give a mouth we would feed, a body we would clothe, a life we would cherish. For with one life given, many lives may eat, and be warm, and be happy.” Abram looked at his newborn son’s green eyes as flakes of ash settled on his tiny face and felt nothing but relief. Kala and her parents still did not understand, but this was not the first Third Child they had given. Ophelia said it may not be their last, either. The Mother’s forgiveness demanded it, so Abram would give what was needed until things were right. Soon, the ash would stop falling and the forest would grow quiet. “Life for life,” the congregation said. Ophelia pulled the knife from its sheath. “To give back what was given.” Daniel Rova is a debut author who currently lives in Bellingham, WA with his wife, newborn daughter, and two cats. He has been writing for most of his life, and is particularly interested in the intersection between sci-fiction and fantasy. He has attended a variety of workshops in the Northwest including Cascade Writers as well as a number of classes for Clarion West.