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A bird leaps off a lamppost and falls into the sky as the voices in my cardboard living room turn into a neighbourhood seeking redemption. Paisley unfurls across the floor like flowers of fabric and viscose, while I stand with my head bowed towards a setting sun, shrouded in uncertainty. I am both the Tower of Babel and the infidel, illiterate in the language of piety. The prayers that fall from my lips are disjointed and clunky; ill-fitting building blocks glued into place with impatience and ignorance. My father bargains with God and I bargain with myself for bravery—my belief is as vacant as an empty attic. I am the great pretender, reading lines off a script, gazing into the fish-eye lens of God's camera as I confess that I cannot play this character. God understands, my father doesn't, the cardboard living room shakes, the tripod falls, the green screen topples, Babel sings, the devil laughs, the serpent of Eden raises its head  and scene. Zahra is a 26-year-old poet from Sri Lanka. She enjoys writing in metaphors, with most of her work revolving around the trials and tribulations of youth, change, and the complexity of emotion. Her writing journey began in 2020 during the pandemic, and she has since had her work published in issues from Coalition Works, Seaglass Literary and S unday Mornings by the River under the pseudonym Zara Conway, where the title of the anthology was taken from her poem, “A Love Letter to a Thousand Yesterdays.” Most recently, she was also featured under poesía internacional by Revista Kametsa and was one of the Top 3 Winners for poetry in Zimetra International ’s issue,“From Trauma to Triumph.”

Once I met someone in the woods.  He acted like I met him on purpose. I didn’t.  He smiled antler  to antler, a smile not reaching his two firefly eyes.  He asked me if I knew what he knew. I had no answer.  He told me, I know a place where the muscadine vine bleeds the sweetest wine. He told me half a story.  He said, Stay in these woods.  He did not tell me what hides behind the vines. I told him No, and he howled. I ran. If I looked back, would I turn into salt? I heard his hooves slice the ground.  I made it to the porch light before I turned to face what hunted me. All I saw—fireflies. Emma Galloway Stephens is a neurodivergent poet and professor from the Appalachian foothills of South Carolina. Her poems have appeared in The Windhover, Red Branch Review, Ekstasis Magazine, Door is a Jar Literary Magazine, and many other publications. You can read more at egstephenspoetry.com .

Kids don’t play outside anymore, but when my brothers and I were kids it’s all we did. We built fairy houses under the trees, looked for fairy stones and fairy rings. Mapped the neighborhood as a fey realm. Piles of stones were mountains—the roads, rivers and streams. One day our neighbor in the mustard-yellow house called to my youngest brother, “Come over here, there’s something I want you to see.” My brother was halfway across that river when my mother saw and called him back. There was always news in those days of children being snatched from gas stations, playgrounds, on the way home from school—never to be seen again. The field where my brothers played Little League was named after one of these victims, a little girl who opened the door to the wrong person. Our parents coached us never to go anywhere with anyone except them. Even if they tell you they have a gun or a knife. Even if you see it.  I think of my brother and wonder if he had crossed that river, would it have been Styx—if he hadn’t looked back—but that’s a different myth. From that day my parents feared that neighbor, and their fear infected my dreams. I had nightmares of him appearing in the hush of dusk, circling me. He always wore sunglasses around the neighborhood—I never saw his eyes—but in my dreams he took them off, revealing two mouths of sharp teeth. I didn’t tell my parents of my terror, afraid it would make the whole thing more real. But I was religious then, and I prayed every day that if he was a predator, like the ones we saw on the news, that he would die or move away. Only a few weeks later, the mustard-yellow house was empty. The nightmares stopped, morphed into a deeper unrest that has never left me. My prayer being answered was a kind of confirmation. We yearned to meet fairies. All fairy stories are about children being taken. I see my brother, how small his body, a buoy—I mean boy—bobbing along that stream—I mean street. His shirt striped like candy. Sophia Carroll (she/they) is an analytical chemist and writer. Her work appears in wildness, SmokeLong Quarterly, Rust & Moth, and elsewhere. She is also the co-founder of M E N A C E , a magazine for the literary weird. Find her on Substack at Torpor Chamber  and on Bluesky @torpor-chamber.bsky.social.

My apartment is a great lung, expanding, contracting. It is fit to collapse and suffocate its sole occupant. I am the wet nurse of the deformed creature Solitude, alimenting fears of pustulous bedbugs that lurk behind every corner and in every crevice, waiting to overcome me as I lay sleeping. I let the creature suckle at the bosom of dissatisfaction. There is no true living here: I force no sighs of love nor peals of laughter within my bronchial abode tuberculous. My alveolar accoutrements fall to disrepair: the desk lamp flickers, the pleura-wallpaper peels away revealing the abscesses of a battered chest wall. This apartment is a great lung, failing as I have failed to raise the monstrous child above its misery, to extend a hand out for succor. And so we side-by-side are doomed to suffocate. Raymond Turco's debut chapbook, Rays of Light and Darkness , was published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. A poet and playwright from New Jersey, he writes in both English and Italian. The author of nine stage plays, his poetry has appeared in The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Lothlorien Poetry Journal , and with Bordighera Press, among others. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Cliffside Park Arts Association as its Director of Literature and is passionate about European history, surrealism, magical realism, and absurdism—all central influences in his work.

Often in prayer, one looks up to their god. Why up? If up is where gods live, how can a christian and a pagan live under the same roof? We both look up   for answers, perhaps that’s why a question ends with a rising inflection. Roofs point up to direct rainfall to the ground. Rain doesn’t ask questions, hence why it comes down. Though, sometimes when rain rejoins its larger family, it is awakened to questions. Hitting the bottom, the rain reaches back upward. Some would call this Buddhism. Life in a droplet. Life / living is seeking answers? There must be a reason dreamers are heads in clouds—what is dreaming if not searching while the body rests, down? “Touch the sky” though it’s intangible—is the tangibility of the ground, of down, what guarantees an answer? The knowing? The intangibility of the sky suggests the gods are not, in fact, up, but they are / it is / somewhere, unless the moon and outer planets are the gods—an old one, but one that could make sense. The planets don’t have up or down. Does this sense of no direction prove the existence of godhood? Why? A page’s words know; they read from up. What, however, of a capital and lowercase? Are capital letters wondrous? Lowercase knowing? Foundations are as low as they can be to support looking up. Building (anything) without is advised against. How to know before asking questions? They are the last blanket before—what? Does it go like this: the higher up you go, the most a question can be?, and the lower you go, the most an answer can be? Plants   reach for the sun in photosynthesis, but do they have questions of their own, too? Graves are answers and balloons are not. Pepper is down and stays down. Is gravity hubris? Was Icarus seeking godliness or answers (are they / they are / not one and the same)? Sierra (they/them) is a genderfluid writer based in Oregon and loves to challenge the line between poetry and reality. Some of their work can be found in  Bending Genres, Main Squeeze , and  Southern Exposure . They featured in the 2024 season of the Oregon Fringe Festival with their chapbook  Garden Skull .

My Lady burns me with green leaves of poison ivy, tenderly sliming my crumbling cheeks that press against the mirror to watch her kiss my frozen reflection with embarrassed lips. She once called me “coward” for not following her out of Eden, but I was simply lazy, laying on soft red blankets made by weavers who infected  me with their insipid smoke, strangling my    virgin lungs. Now she has stolen Eve, too worldly to be seduced, and beckons me to chase them,   barefoot on screeching pavement. Perhaps they plot to kill me, high upon a rocky altar at the first sign of a vulture, but I am not afraid of seduction. Nathan DeBar is a poet and short fiction writer from Leakesville, Mississippi. His short story, "The Long Morning," was selected as Editor’s Top Choice by Syx Papers Lit Mag . His poem, "Manhattan Cafe," will be released in the Georgia Bards Poetry Anthology 2025 in June. He has been published in A Sufferer’s Digest, The Solitude Diaries, Flash Phantoms, Floating  Acorn Review , and many others. You can find him and all of his published works at his Instagram and Linktree: @nate.debar.

No gull-winged birdmen hang in this current and glide. Just two thrill-seekers strapped in a steel blue tow chair, suspended under a purple wing, banked against the bleached-out blues of a cloudless sky, highlighting this oversized kite soaring six hundred feet straight up, blown skyward straining on a braided cord, riding the vertical elevator of thermals, lifting against the tiny speedboat marking with concentric circles the spot of sea where we might land, when the winds die, or the engine stalls, or time expires, or the wing collapses, just as it did somewhere in the Aegean three millennia ago when manned flight was made possible by wax, feathers, and pride which came unglued due to sunstroke, gravity, and the flier’s discovery why no birds whirl, spin and flop like a broken kite falling into indigo sea, swelling to the twirling blues of a blur where sea, sky, and imagination freewheel without axis, without poise, no pride, strapped in a steel blue tow chair freefalling, while sea birds soar wheel, spin and dive. Tim Thornburgh graduated from Seattle University and then joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Micronesia where he served as a teacher of English and History. He also engaged in small-scale construction, building water-seal toilets to reduce the incidence of amoebiasis. Tim fell in love with the moist tropical climate and the wild island sense of humor (no one is laughing at you but instead are laughing with you) and he spent the next thirty years in the islands working in various capacities.

They said an angel lived in the belfry. It was a strange tale to those who hadn’t grown up with it. A rumor that drew either the most faithful or the most desperate to the source of the claim. Still, it was hard to ignore when the bells rang. One's thoughts would drift among the echoes and chimes, wondering what might exist at their heart. It was a sound and thought familiar among the rolling Tuscan hills. From the farmers in their fields to the monks in their cloisters, all were reminded of the divine entity inhabiting San Philippi with every melodic peal, and those who believed sought it out. The tale had spread far and wide, passed along by lips both pious and sinful, its message outreaching the echo of the bell. This was how Piero had first heard it, shared by pilgrims on their way back home. Their eyes bright with fervor, their fingers repeatedly making the sign of the cross, and their lips frozen in ecstatic smiles. With every word spoken the young man was convinced that the abbey had to be the most blessed place in the world. In the end, he insisted on taking the cloth in order to see this miraculous sight, and to escape the monotony of the fields which he tended with his family. When Piero finally arrived at San Philippi, it became clear what a useful tale the story was, for the abbey had little else to offer pilgrims. No Saint's bones or reliquaries were held here, nor ancient texts or eloquent speakers. The monastery only carried a hint of divinity hidden away in the belfry and whispers of blessings that might be possible. Piero had mulled it all over many nights before when he couldn't sleep. This evening added one more to that list. The young monk stood in the small garden hidden away by high brick walls, a pail of water in his hands. Though he’d rather have left the drudgery of physical labor behind, neophytes were expected to do such work. Above him, the full moon glowed with a serene pale hue, the few thin clouds like strands of wool stretched across the black sky. Piero stared at something else. For between himself and the heavens stood the bell tower, dark and silhouetted, but in his mind commanding more authority than the lunar halo behind it. Only brother Ludovico, the abbey’s singular campanologist, was allowed up to ring the bell. With all the tales of the angel, it had been decided to make the position of ringing the bell a special one, or else hordes of postulating monks and pilgrims might race each other up the old stairs for the glory of standing in the presence of the divine. Yet the clear view of the belfry proposed a conundrum for some, both layman and priest. If an angel lived there, shouldn't people be able to see it? Was it a Seraphim, one of the archangels, or perhaps the mirror image of a Saint? If the people couldn't see it then did they lack piety? Were pilgrims and monks supposed to cast their eyes downwards in order to avoid possible disappointment? Or was it too divine for the mortal eye to comprehend? Many answers had been proposed. Few had been definitive. For now the subject remained in limbo. Who were they to question God's will on the nature of a visiting angel? Still,  Piero wondered. “What’s the angel’s name?” Piero asked Brother Bonadeus when he first took his vows. “We don’t know,” the brother had replied reluctantly. “It hasn’t told us. And we dare not name it incorrectly lest we raise its ire. Thus it remains nameless.” “What does it do?” “It watches over us, noting our conduct. What must it do? I ring the bell. You gather water. Simple tasks compared to the work of angels.” “I came here to escape simplicity. I came here to learn.” “Pray your search for knowledge never becomes a burden, lest it destroy you.” Brother Bonadeus died that autumn of an unknown wasting disease. As Piero stared at the belfry, his mind deep in rumination, a sudden surge ran through his body. He dropped the pail of water into the grass. It took a moment to understand the sensation, he was slow to believe it himself. Yet as the moon had passed behind the tower, he had seen something. Something had shifted. A sliver of light not there before. A breeze where none could be felt. At first Piero wasn't sure what to do. His legs had taken root in shock. Perhaps he had only imagined it. Or perhaps he had been blessed with a vision. The spilled water only showed the reflection of the tower. It was a sign. Was faith not a step on the path to understanding? He had to know what waited up there, halfway to Heaven. Piero scurried back into the abbey, careful to ease the old wooden doors open and closed. His footsteps were soft along the cold stone floors, hurried on by faith and silenced by the fear that his brothers would think him mad. Thankfully most were asleep, and those that were awake were too preoccupied with their own dull chores. Besides, it was easy to avoid his brothers in the labyrinthian hallways of San Philippi. The stonework of the abbey shifted the further he ventured. The foundations of the walls grew older the closer he came to the base of the bell tower. Piero prayed that the enlightenment he sought waited for him at the end of the twisting hallways. Where once he had questioned if an angel truly did live in the belfry, now he wondered how he was supposed to approach it. Every life of a Saint included the moment where they dropped to their knees in prayer and submitted themselves before the power of God. But one did not approach the divine truth shuffling forwards on their knees. Piero supposed he must at least hold his hands together in prayer, but in his excitement he couldn't calm them. Fingers threaded themselves around endlessly like the rats in the many little tunnels of the abbey. Once the thought of meeting the angel had been ensconced foremost in his mind, the monk wondered what would happen to him afterwards. The thought nipped at him, scratching at the back of his brain. Would he be canonized for such an event? The excitement began to grow, hurrying his feet on. Was it a sin to feel pride at such a possibility? At such an opportunity? No, it couldn't be. Why would it be a sin to follow his faith to the natural conclusion? Perhaps afterwards, when others asked him for his experience, for his blessing, he would have to play the stoic. Act the part of the Saint. But for now, down here in the bowels of San Philippi, pride was what guided him on; pride, excitement, and faith. Carefully he opened the door to the small room at the base of the bell tower. It was here that brother Ludovico slept. The chamber was dark except for a small candle burning low, the flame nearly drowning in liquid wax. On one side of the circular room, at the base of the stairs that twisted upwards, were a set of keys hanging from a nail. Piero silently neared them, hands outstretched, fingers trembling. It was like grasping at the keys of Saint Peter; Heaven and its gate just a few steps beyond. Surely this would be a sin if he had not been on a divine mission. “No more, please,” a thin voice croaked behind him. “Leave me be.” Piero nearly fumbled the keys, a soft jingle escaping into the darkness before they were muted between his palms. Peering over his shoulder he found Ludovico in his small bed, turning back and forth in his sleep. The monk made sure he had not woken the old man before starting up the wooden stairs, careful not to let a sound slip from his grasp. Looking down at the sleeper, Piero couldn't tell if he felt pity or envy for the old man. He was, perhaps, the holiest brother at San Philippi, having been chosen and trained by brother Bonadeus to properly ring the bell. Laying in his sheets, the monk was thin and wan, nearly nothing but bones and liver spots. Rumor had it that he was only forty. Continuing up the staircase, trying to pry his gaze from the small man below him, Piero remembered how disappointed he’d been at the revelation that a mortal man rang the bell of San Philippi. Rumors had sprouted from the pilgrim’s tales that the angel rang the bell with its own hands or inhabited the clapper in spirit. Some thought the peal emanated from the angel itself every Sunday. Others believed that the bell rang on its own, having been blessed by Saint Andrew in Constantinople and ferried from the besieged city by the angel that now remained at the abbey to watch over its charge. Maybe one of the tales was true, and Ludovico was simply around to keep up appearances. Piero had to know the truth. “Please,” the old man wheezed down below, “Please, for the love of God.” Piero finally reached the hatch that opened up to the belfry. Groping around in the gloom he placed the keys in the lock and turned, feeling each tumbler click one by one. His beating heart seemed to slow in order to match the momentary rhythm. With a soft squeal the hatch opened wide, the monk climbing out to stand in the belfry. The sky remained dark. The full moon hung high. Around him the Tuscan countryside stretched out in every direction. Rolling hills, plowed fields, and in the very distance lay a lonely village only visible to those who knew where to look. Yet Piero's attention remained purely on the bell. It was twice his size, formed of a smooth, undecorated copper. The monk wasn't sure exactly what he'd expected. Up here all was still. The moon remained fixed where it had been, the clouds hovered on the horizon. Only the slightest hint of dawn stirred in the east. The soft whisper of a breeze could be heard, but none was felt. Piero realized that he was holding his breath, which meant that something else breathed. A divine breath. “Hello?” he asked, nervously looking around. Wandering around the cramped belfry, Piero placed a hand on the bell. It was cold. Ice cold. The bell shuddered. Not a chime, but a soft metallic groan. A finger slithering across copper. “I do not know you,” a voice, monotone and distant, echoed from within the metal shell. Piero instinctively dropped to one knee. The other remained standing and so he found himself in an awkward crouch. Looking around he could see no change in the belfry. But he had heard the voice. It was real. He'd been correct. “Know me?” he stammered, “Lord, my name is Piero. I've been in your service for five years now.” “You are not the expected supplicant,” the voice replied. “But I saw you. You showed yourself to me.” A silence passed between them. A silence that gestated with every conceivable damnation of Piero's immortal soul. Had he said something wrong? “O Lord, I didn't mean to presume. I didn't mean to trespass. I didn't mean to understand your will. I only meant to know the truth. The truth of your nature, the truth of my faith, and the truth of myself.” Still the silence persisted. Piero dropped his other knee, prostrating himself until his forehead nearly touched the wooden floorboards. From the corner of his eye he thought he saw something coiled within the lip of the bell. “Lord?” he asked. “The expected supplicant must withstand,” the voice noted. “Even now he writhes day and night. You would only break.” “Lord, I only wish to understand. Break me if you must. If that's your will, then let it be so. I fear no torture nor death as long as I ascend. Please, enlighten me. I beg of you.” “Enlightenment?” “Indeed, O Lord. Teach me what you showed the prophets. Teach me the nature of mortality. Lift the veil from my eyes. I’ve come so far for this.” “Enlightenment is to break the bonds of mind and body. The revelations will not leave you unchanged.” Something long and thin descended from the bell, dangling just above the floor. Piero barely gave it a glance. He feared the angel might disappear if he stared at it. “Raise me, O Lord. Raise me above the busy work here. Fetching water. Tending the fields. Sweeping. I’m better than that. Aren’t I?” The words hung in the still air. Piero’s doubt escaping for just one brief moment. Long enough to prove himself false. “Very well,” the voice finally replied. “You are unprepared but you will suffice. You have come too far to refuse me.” “I would never think of it, O Lord. Not with your gifts. Not when I'm so close to the truth. Not when I’ve desired this for so long.” “Very well.” He could feel the long angelic fingers, slick and cold, run across his hands. They curled around his wrists, tightening along his arms, but Piero feared no pain. Still, even in the moment of ecstasy, the touch of an angel wasn't what he had expected. More and more fingers, boneless and prehensile wrapped around his ankles, slithering up along his robes, looping themselves in the folds of his cassock. He could feel himself being pulled, dragged across the floor at first before being lifted off the ground. He couldn't help but smile. Here it was. The divine touch of an angel. Enlightenment. Revelation. “Amen!” Piero gasped, his eyes welling with tears, “Amen!” Suddenly the fingers coiled around his throat, tightening like a noose. Their strength squeezed the air from his mouth, his eyes fluttered open to bulging. Forcing him to look upon the angel. There from within the bell spread countless long, grey tentacles that wound themselves around and around the monk. In an instant he couldn't move a single muscle in his body, only his head uselessly flopped from side to side. At the pitch black center of the bell's mouth glowed a collection of gibbous red eyes, emotionless and piercing. Scattered across the shadows like a constellation, they seemed to stare at, around, and beyond Piero as though they didn't exist in the same reality. As he was pulled closer, a viscous, drooling maw appeared among the eyes, a deep well of needle-sharp teeth, opening wider and wider until it matched the lip of the bell. “Have your truth,” it said. And there Piero stared upon the angel with a hundred names. Upon the saintly ascension that awaited him. Upon the understanding he had desired for so very long. “O Lord...” Marsden Lyonwahl studied creative writing at the University of Washington before returning to his native Los Angeles where he cooks in order to fund further creative endeavors.

The doctor who admitted me didn't believe in ghosts. He believed in delusions, in misfiring synapses, in the chemical architecture of madness. Not in the pale women who walk through bedroom walls at 3 a.m., trailing grave-moss and whispers. "Auditory and visual hallucinations," he wrote in my file. "Paranoid ideation." He didn't ask about the bees. My father kept hives behind our house, white boxes stacked like miniature mausoleums. After he hanged himself from the apple tree, the colonies collapsed one by one. But the bees didn't die—they migrated, seeking a new home. They chose me. First in dreams: my mouth filling with honey, my lungs with wings. Then while waking: a constant buzzing beneath my skin, as if my bones had become hollow and resonant. Finally, with purpose: they built their hive inside my chest cavity, just behind my sternum. I could feel their precise engineering, the perfect hexagons of comb stretching from clavicle to diaphragm. The hospital walls are the color of institutional despair—a shade between moth-wing and abandoned hope. At night, they breathe. I've timed the intervals: inhale (seven seconds), hold (three seconds), exhale (ten seconds). The rhythm of something ancient learning to pass for human. "You're experiencing anthropomorphism," Dr. Keller explains during our Tuesday session. "Projecting life onto inanimate objects." But I've seen his eyes flicker to the walls when they exhale. I don't tell him about the queen who whispers to me while the Thorazine dissolves under my tongue. I pretend to swallow, but hide the medication in the secret space between cheek and gum. Later, I'll press the half-dissolved tablets into the mortar between bathroom tiles, building my own honeycomb of chemical secrets. The queen has my father's voice but a woman's knowing. "The living are the real ghosts," she says, her words vibrating through my ribcage. "Walking around believing they're solid when they're mostly space—atoms pretending to touch but never truly connecting." In group therapy, we discuss coping mechanisms. Ruth cuts herself to "let the darkness out." Michael hasn't slept in six days because "they come for you through dreams." Hannah sees her dead twin in every reflective surface. I don't mention the bees, or how I'm certain we're all experiencing the same thing from different angles—the world's thin veneer peeling back to reveal what writhes beneath. At night, the pale women visit one by one. They perch on the edge of my bed, corpse-cold and curious. They've been watching humanity since before we crawled from the oceans. They find us interesting but ultimately disappointing—so much potential, so little vision. One trails her fingers through my hair, leaving frost patterns on my scalp. Another presses her mouth to my ear, sharing secrets in a language that tastes like copper and electricity. "You're special," they whisper, their voices synchronized to the buzzing in my chest. "You've been chosen." I know this is textbook psychosis. I've read the DSM-V sections on schizophrenia, on dissociative disorders, on the mind fracturing under pressures it can't bear. I understand the neurochemical basis for hallucination, for paranoia, for the sensation of insects beneath the skin. I know my father's suicide triggered this breakdown. What I don't know is why the bees are building something inside me. Why they vibrate in warning whenever Dr. Keller approaches with his paper cups of oblivion. Why the pale women have started bringing me gifts—small bones, perfect spirals of hair, teeth so ancient the enamel has turned translucent. "You're making progress," Dr. Keller tells me in our Friday session. "The new medication seems to be helping." I nod, docile as a domesticated animal. The queen stirs behind my sternum, annoyed. The walls hold their breath, waiting. That night, I dream my father climbs down from his apple tree, neck still bent at its impossible angle. He opens his mouth and bees pour out, carrying scraps of his final thoughts on their wings. "It's time," he says, voice thick with honey and decay. I wake to find the pale women gathered around my bed, more than ever before. They've brought a final gift: a crown woven from bee wings and cobwebs, hospital bracelet plastic and dried flowers. One places it on my head, her touch gentle as winter light through stained glass. "The hive is complete," they whisper in unison. I feel it then—the fullness in my chest, the weight of something finished, perfected. The bees have built their new home, cell by meticulous cell. Not honey this time, but something darker, sweeter, more potent. A new kind of colony. In the morning, the nurse finds my bed empty except for a perfect honeycomb in the shape of a human heart. The walls exhale one last time. The hospital records will call it an escape, then a suicide when they don't find my body. They won't think to look for me in my father's abandoned hives, now pulsing with renewed life. They won't recognize me in the pale figure who walks the grounds at night, trailing moss and whispers. They won't understand that I've become the new queen, my subjects buzzing between worlds, building bridges between what is and what waits just beyond perception. After all, Dr. Keller doesn't believe in ghosts. He believes in delusions, in misfiring synapses, in the chemical architecture of madness. He still doesn't ask about the bees. Dana Wall traded balance sheets for prose sheets after years of keeping Hollywood's agents and lawyers in perfect order. Armed with a Psychology degree that finally proved useful when creating complex characters and an MBA/CPA that helps her track plot points with spreadsheet precision, she ventured into the haunted halls of Goddard College's MFA program. Her work, which has appeared or will appear in Intrepidus Ink, 96th of October, Fabula Argentea, Summerset, 34 Orchard, Eunoia Review, The Shore Poetry, Dreams and Nightmares Bright Flash Literary Review, and Sykroniciti, confirms that words are more reliable than numbers, though occasionally harder to balance.

for every letter of the alphabet especially for the fuchsia fairy Sing to reading and rereading every single page Sing to staying out as long as possible each summer solstice trying to spot just one Sing to knowing  they were all hiding just beyond sight Sing to fairy houses constructed in schoolyards and parks Sing to increasingly complex camouflage trying to hide sand and twig and leaf dwellings Still the other kids destroyed them each day Destruction always follows Creation follows Destruction we built another for each fairy cottage kicked apart Sing to forgiveness of youth Sing to belief Sing to clinging Sing to insisting  swearing  knowing  magic  could  should  does  exist Sing to putting fairyologist on my resume still my specialty even now Sing to I believe in fairies Sing to believing so hard it becomes true Sing to growing older but never wiser Sing to flower fairies Natalie C. Smith works outside as a mail carrier in Colorado. She leans into the meditative aspect of walking her route to consider turns of phrase and finds inspiration while being surrounded by nature during her day job. Natalie is a poet, spoken word and studio artist. She is a creator in many mediums and loves to dabble. When not creating, she enjoys rock climbing and hiking.  Natalie draws poetic inspiration from the works of Walt Whitman, Mary Oliver, Hala Alyan and Amy Kay (@amykaypoetry). Natalie participates in National Poetry Writing Month or NaPoWriMo every April and has been heavily inspired by Amy Kay’s daily prompts and the poetry community that has rallied around her account.  Natalie’s poems have been published in several publications including Beyond Worship: Meditations on Queer Worship, Liturgy, & Theology, Michigan's Best Emerging Poets, The Poetry Lighthouse, and The Aquinas Sampler .  Find her on Instagram @Natalie.C.Wordsmith

Before the first strike of the chisel, she was stone. Ten sweat-grimed men worked quickly cutting into the ribs of a mountain that held more graves than most. Their rusted winch snapped dragging her out of the quarry, killing two and injuring a third. Eventually the foreman, a bow-legged man forever gnashing at his cigar, coaxed new workers into hauling her the final few feet. Then, heaved onto a truck, she was driven to a warehouse in the city she used to overlook. “What d’ya think of her?” Cigar slapped her flank. A young man in a misbuttoned waistcoat stepped forward, his lips parted. “Beautiful.” Droplets of humidity from his breathless panting settled onto her rough surface. “Good. Now pay me for lugging her ass outta there. Killed two of my best men.” The young man reached deep into his trousers pocket and extracted a billfold. His pale, thin hand proffered a selection of notes. “If they were your best, why are they dead?” She remained there, absorbing talk and exuding moisture, for two days before the thin, disheveled young man collected her. Chills coursed through her at his tentative first touch. “I’m Arthur,” he murmured, his cheek laid gently against her. “I’m a sculptor.” He traced a line down her side; the fingernail scraping at her. A tiny shard came away. He flicked it to the floor. “I’m going to make you magnificent.” Arthur’s studio, once she arrived, felt cool, though the men straining to move her sweated in the afternoon sun. Finally ensconced in the middle of the empty room, the men laughed and slapped her with damp handkerchiefs. She groaned, shifting her weight imperceptibly. Then, they left. For days. Time fragmented here. Not one seamless transition from morning to afternoon to evening and beyond, time was punctured, and punctuated, by the sharp clops of horse hooves and the whining grind of car engines. She felt the sun weakly, through grimy windows set high in the walls. Metal roofing repelled the elements. When Arthur returned, alone, he carried hammers and chisels. He accepted delivery of a table; the accompanying stool arrived a week later. Pencils and paper moved about endlessly as he sketched, capturing her in both her current form and the one he dreamt for her. “Would you like to see what I am going to make of you?” Arthur held up a sheet roughly lined with a woman’s form. She shrank from the sense of what he was showing her. The lines were brash and arrogant, thick tumbling scratches vying for dominance. He tacked the drawing on the wall and began to sweep. Then he sharpened his tools. Finally, he seemed bored of preparations. He struck. She perceived no pain. Instead, she sat amazed as chunks of her former self piled around them. Listening to the hammer strike the butt of the chisel, she became aware of angles and curves, lines and planes. “Your brow will be high,” Arthur murmured, “And your chin strong. You are to be defiant. But you will be beautiful, my darling.” He stroked her with the back of his hand. “I will make you extraordinary.” As he chipped and chiseled away, casting more and more of her to the floor to be swept away into the refuse pile behind the warehouse, she felt herself slipping away. The one she had been, in the mountain, under the water, was gone. She would be new. The spirits she carried ran in fright from this unfamiliar thing. And to frighten the ancient ghosts, she must be terrible indeed. The sun left and when it returned, Arthur stumbled in retching on his own doorstep. He sank to the floor, his back against the door, his jacket soaking in bile. “I hate that man,” he muttered. “My little piece. That’s what he called you, my love. My little piece.” Arthur rolled into the room, smearing vomit across his shirt. He landed flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling. “He asked me, ‘Son, what is your little piece to be called?’ Do you want to know how I answered?” He paused. “Of course you do. You are waiting with baited breath,” Arthur snickered. “I said, ‘Father, dear Father, my little piece will be called Medea.’” Arthur craned his neck to look at her. His bleary-eyed stare clung to her like algae. He rose, stumbled, careened to the cabinet. He yanked the doors open and, having pulled too hard, followed the momentum and fell to his knees, giggling. Every move reverberated through her. Digging around, discarding rags and papers, Arthur produced a bottle of sherry that he held aloft. “Huzzah! A lesser quality than Father’s but so be it.” He tugged the cork out and drank deeply, spilling some down the front of his stained shirt. He gulped, coughed. “That’s you, my love. Medea. Do you know the story? Angry with her husband for running around with another woman and killed their children. That’s it. An old story.” Arthur swung the bottle around him by the neck then placed it to his lips and guzzled the rest. She shrank from him. He dropped the bottle with a clank and a crack. His arms swung out wide; he dropped his chin to his chest. She, now Medea, thought he’d fallen asleep, crucified by drink. But then he began to laugh, a deep rasping erupting from his chest. He lifted his head. Tears snaked down his face. Then, a small jig in his hips, a movement that she nearly mistook for a step toward her. He inhaled, sucking through his mouth, and he leapt. Landing on his toes, he leapt again. And again. He whirled, winding a trap of stale breath and stink until she was surrounded. She felt him, rage bleeding from his mouth, grief welling like a river behind a dam. He laughed harder, the sound hardening, becoming a brittle cackle. The cackle became a scream. Arthur collapsed to the floor. Medea wished she could do the same. Another trip of the sun and a young woman burst through the feeble door. She clicked in on heels like knives. Arthur lay curled around his vomit-soaked jacket on the floor. A broken bottle lay at Medea’s feet. The young woman, a parasol gripped in her fist, tapped his forehead with the toe of her shoe. “Get up,” she commanded. Arthur snored. She rapped his temple with her foot. Once, “Will.” Twice, “You.” Thrice, “Get.” She delivered a hard kick to his shoulder. “Up!” Arthur snorted. Rolling onto his back, he reached for her. “Ugh, Arthur!” She pranced backwards, avoiding the grubby hands. “This is ridiculous.” She slapped the sides of her dress with her gloved hands. Medea watched her eyes dart in disgust landing, finally, on Medea herself. “This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen from you, Arthur.” She sneered. Medea groaned. Arthur sighed, forced himself slowly to his knees, then his haunches. He crouched there, his blood-shot eyes staring balefully at his creation’s feet. “Margaret, she’s not finished yet.” His voice scraped out of his throat. Margaret sniffed, yanking her gloves tighter. “It’s heavy, coarse. The stone is mottled, not a good quality. There is no finesse, no artistry. And worse, I feel nothing when I look at her. No rage, no passion, nothing.” The words spewing from Margaret’s mouth washed over Medea. “She’s not finished yet, Margaret.” Arthur’s teeth snapped as he bit off her name. Margaret shook her head, the feathers of her elaborate hat swishing side to side. “It doesn’t matter, Arthur. You are far enough along. There should be something there.” Arthur grunted. “Shut up, woman.” Margaret clicked her tongue. “You’re an imbecile. Or mad.” She caressed a ribbon tied to her dress, flattening it against her skirt. “In any event, I won’t marry you.” Arthur lifted his face. Heat rose through Medea’s feet, through the folds of the garment carved into her legs. She wanted to twist away. But she had nowhere to go; nothing to relieve the pressure she felt. Arthur rose, his eyes fixed on those of his fiancée. Margaret slipped a ring off her finger and held it out. It sparkled in the dusty beams of light filtering through the room. Medea pulled herself in, away. Arthur snorted, turning his back. Margaret dropped the ring to the floor, a shard of sunlight flashing off the metal as it fell. She strode through the door, slamming it shut behind her. Arthur picked up a hammer. When he was finished, Medea had a face. The cleaves and hews were sharp, cutting against the humid air surrounding her. She felt stung, her stone weeping. The harsh sandpaper he took to her next forced more of her to crumble. He gave up when the dust began to irritate his lungs. Throwing his tools at her feet, he barged away, not bothering to lock the door. Medea exhaled. But she could not settle. Striations of rock vibrated. Minerals throbbed as they forced their way to the surface. No longer her old self, she couldn’t control her own rock. Those pieces, mixed in, vied for their own shred of sunlight, should it ever come again. The next morning, Arthur sanded more gently. “You see my love; you see how they treat me?” Sober, refreshed, he had come dressed in clean clothes and smelling of lavender. She remained rigid. The air in the studio hung rank and stale, though the front door stood wide open. She swelled in the humidity. Yesterday’s emotion hung in the air, its own cloudscape. Medea absorbed it all. “I am but a pawn to them.” He wiped dust from her eyes. “They think I’m stupid, a fool, laughable.” Arthur took a short rasp to her chin. “They think I’ll get this out of my system. Finish my little piece, work for Father. Or take up the law, God forbid.” Arthur gently stroked her cheek. Medea felt a prickliness at her surface. He continued, “Mother cries that her boy is obstinate. She raised me better.” Arthur peered into the eyes he’d shaped. Medea stared back. Moonlight crept through the windows that night. The shadows thrown onto the floor chased each other, melded together. “Marble is quite soft, my darling,” Arthur had told her once, his hand draped over her shoulder, “that’s why it’s so easy to shape.” But he’d carved severity. Medea stood upright; poised to step. One arm hung by her side; the hand gripped a knife. The other reached, fingers outstretched, palm open. Her shoulders were squared, her chin set firm. He’d cut lines around her eyes, forcing her expression into one of anger, menace. “Shall I paint you?” Arthur caressed her cheek. “Perhaps jewels?” He laughed. “Something that sparkles.” He told her the story of Medea again as he polished her with a cloth. Told her how she’d tried to fool Jason into thinking he was forgiven; that she’d wanted to kill him too. When he got to her face, rubbing gently over her nose and cheeks, she allowed her eyes to follow his hands. It amused her that he felt it, jumping, startled. That night, she marveled at the power surging through her arms and shoulders, the energy in her legs. She examined the strength of her back, found herself tall, proud. She noted the defiance in her jawline. She felt the intelligence behind her eyes. The next morning, something in Medea’s breast fluttered when she heard Arthur’s key jerk into the lock. He yanked the door open. “There you are, my dear. Sleep well? I did. I did, yes, thank you. How do I look?” He twirled in front of her. His new coat flaring out just above his knees, the thread glistening. Medea admired him, her sculptor. The flutter quickened and a pulsing throb spread from the center of her chest outward into every line and curve carved into her. As she gazed at him, the bright patent of his new leather shoes sending shards of light in every direction, she thought, for now she could think, of dashing herself to the floor, setting free the thrashing being trapped within cold rock. “I have a meeting now, my love, a very important meeting.” Arthur giggled. He ran a fingertip down her arm. “Your new master is buying me lunch.” The creases around Medea’s eyes deepened. She watched as he gazed into her face, seeing nothing. In the center of that pulsing throb, a hole opened.  “Yes, my love, you are to have a new home. What do you think of that?” He placed his cheek into her outstretched hand. His delicate skin warmed her. The flutter seized, spasmed. Her gaze moved with him as he stepped back. Ice from the harshest winter wound down her back. Her throat, a piece of anatomy that until a moment ago merely lacked air to cry out of its own accord, squeezed shut. “Ah, my love. I’ll visit.” His gaze, pride knocking against her, fed the rage already etched into her face. He lifted his hand to her cheek, pressing his warm palm against her. His face loomed closer as he brought his lips, chapped and smothering, to her own. She felt the kiss, meat against stone, and a shudder surged through her. “I am ridiculous.” Arthur breathed into her face, a moist breeze settling over her. “Well, my love,” Arthur pushed away from her, “I am off. When I get back, I’ll have your new owner ripe and ready. Do make an effort.” He smacked her hip and scurried out, banging the door behind him. Medea remained in the center of the room. Arthur’s excitement buzzed through her, every crystal vibrating. She fought the emptiness opening wider, deeper. She moaned, minerals grinding. A great wrenching feeling overwhelmed her and Medea found muscle and sinew. She twisted. The arm shackled to her side tore free. Arthur spun back into the room. “So sorry, my love, forgot my umbrella.” He waved. Her arm rose. The knife lifted; its point sharp. He raced back, heading for the door, brandishing his umbrella like a sword. Medea groaned forward. Her body stiff, cumbersome. Fingers tightening around the knife she could not put down. Arthur stopped, eyes growing, jaw working. His umbrella fell to the floor. Medea ground toward him, grasping, rock springing free. A voice, older than the fury scored across the planes of her face, asked her to stop. She could not. She would not. Resistance at the end of the knife. Man’s skin a thin barrier to his stomach. His blood warmed her hand. Janel Konzer is a fiction writer living in Michigan. She drinks far too much coffee and knows far too few crows. Her hearing is terrible, a good thing considering her house is very loud.

wisps of my mother’s Latin  haunt my head while  my fingers caress the water’s surface and I cross myself  In the name of the Father, the Son   et Spiritus Sancti in the sanctuary, old women  peppered across cedar pews rosaries wound round their knuckles  chant to our Lady  making grace bloom in my dusty heart though I never belonged here as a child, I prayed to the moon and now leave witches’ ladders  to unravel back into the earth in the ivy patch behind my shed yet the quiet feeds me musty incense cool granite pillars  still whisper a little like  the divine in the tiny girl  corners of my mind God is not the building and is enough to get me through with some kind of peace  until evening Jeanette Barszewski received an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in Literary Mama, Cooper Street, O-Dark-Thirty and  Elixir Verse .  Jeanette is a queer writer currently residing in Hamilton, NJ with her family. She enjoys old-lady hobbies like gardening and making art out of pressed wildflowers. You can find out more about her at www.jeanettebarszewskiauthor.com