Archives

He once said: I’ll be Juliet. The gorgeous party of fall was strained to the end. The lonesome star imbibed Blue Hawaiian moon,  fallen into the river’s delirious embrace.  to retaste tartness of insouciance, he'd never known, but -perhaps- upon Eden. In the pockets of his coat; helpless and sleepless pills, having a feverish fête.  "On one glorious night, finally, I shall depart,"  euphoric Juliet sighed. His dream; a seamless stream of midnight smokes,  a shower of transient pleasure;  forerunner of collapse’s sickening scent.  He rolled his own solitude and innocence  into the alienation paper, and dragged it, with a ravenous appetite. He hoped to gather and heal  the shards of his broken flesh and soul, to keep himself from scratching the old wound. Whoever heard his voiceless plea, strived to revive him  through time and space's impassable chasm. Though, reality's fragile twist never fell apart.  The sleepwalker headed straight toward his compelled, tragic finis.  Thereafter, the fallen star went supernova. And heaven sneezed his sniffed frozen tears  across the somber sense of the town. Left behind: blackout, oblivion, within a nuit blanche. Sarah Samarbaf, with a background in art and historical studies, writes to make sense of the world and to remain in touch with it.

The snake got me on the ankle. I was alone in the bush, so the implications were clear. It was a mamba. He struck more than once, but I only saw him slithering away. The two essentials when faced with a snake bite were car keys and a cell phone. That’s what my instructor always said, but cell phones are really just distractions, so I was one short. Half wasn’t bad. I grabbed my keys and trudged through the grass to the Land Cruiser. Another crucial element of the snakebite was to remain calm . Too much excess moving or panicking would mean faster spread of venom. The snake did me a favor by going at the ankle. It would take a while to hit my organs. I’d move urgently, but not recklessly, and if I drove fast, there was a good chance I’d be in town before anything severe happened. I opened the door, and things were already looking up. I almost smiled and took one last second before turning on the engine. Breeze rustled through the dry grass and acacia branches. I closed my eyes and listened to the cicadas sing from every direction; when my eyes opened, their hum glistened under the midday heat. The bush always fell quiet around noon. It was hot. Birds sang in the mornings, and there were the frogs or hyenas in the evening, but the midday was still. Whatever happened, that moment was good.  I put my key in the ignition and turned. The loud mechanical drone pumped a smell of petrol that made me feel dirty. I should’ve brought my phone. Rachel always told me I should carry my phone more often. I put the car in drive and went.  “Africa?” she asked.  I told her yes, Africa was my choice. Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically. We could see lions, giraffes, elephants, and even gorillas if we made it up to the Congo.  “For how long?”  Well, that’s a question you can never be too sure of. It could be a month, but it’s also possible it would be a year. Who knows what you’ll fall in love with?  She kept up her smile, but it wasn’t entirely happy. We were in New Zealand when I brought up the idea. Waikato, I think.  “Sometimes, I miss my family,” she said.  It’s easy to say someone else is all the family you need. I was always quick to say it, but she was really close with her parents. Maybe that makes it harder. I told her this was a good idea. Schools for safari guides were cheap, and it would be an incredible experience. Africa was the wildest place, the origin of all other places. How could we be satisfied if we didn’t spend some of our time in Africa?  She didn’t like that last bit. Rachel tended to take walks when she got upset, so I was left alone in the hotel room.  “I love your adventure,” she said, “it inspires me. But I don’t enjoy feeling like a passenger.”    I’m confident it was a dry bite. No pain had come on yet. I wasn’t sure how much time passed, but the sun was a little lower. Sweat covered my face, but that’s because of the heat. Not all bites contain venom; this one was an example. I hit an absolutely lucky break, but these things happen. I’ve heard that over half of all venomous snake bites are dry. Some people say that number is higher.  Rachel always liked snakes. I wonder what she would think if she saw me. She’d be worried, of course. We once saw a taipan while in the outback. Now that would've been a rough bite.  Wind rushed past my head. The Land Cruiser made light work of dirt roads, so it was easy traveling. I kept up the pace, just to be cautious. My eyes were drooping, but that’s because I kept thinking of Rachel. My mind wanted to slip into memories. Even without phones, there are distractions. The African sun lit up lands I’d never seen, but I kept thinking of all that was behind me.  A clock waited in the corner of the room where the seconds glided by. They did not tick. The second hand did not jerk as it broke from one moment to the next. It swept continuously in a circle, leaving no gaps between the present.  Rachel went for another walk and they were getting increasingly long. I got drunk because I didn’t know what else to do. We were in Vietnam.  The clock hung in the corner with the door. I could lie in bed and watch the seconds sail past.  “I want to go home for a while,” she said, “I’d like to spend some time with my brother’s son. He’s turning two this month, did you know that?”  It didn’t feel like a real question, so I told her once we go home it will be very hard to want to go elsewhere. She asked me why that’s such a bad thing, but I shrugged it off. That’s when she went out.  The problem with most watches or clocks is they give a false sense of control. A single glance at the wrist and now you know:  8 hours, 13 minutes, and 10 seconds into the p.m.  How convenient. Everything may be crumbling, but I certainly knew the time. However, looking at the clock in the corner, the one with the second hand that doesn’t tick, made me feel in motion. A second is not a calculable ticking moment. A second is an ongoing experience.  I sat in that Vietnamese bedroom, ignoring the foreign plants and birds just outside. I wanted to watch the clock. I wanted to lock the door so Rachel might never finish her walk. I’d watch the second hand float into the ever-extending future. I felt myself running in circles. Sometimes, I’d get dizzy, but that’s only when I forgot to keep moving. Around and around I’d go. I hit something. Maybe it was a rock or tree. My vision turned poor and I lost sight of the road. It wasn’t a dry bite. Breaths became tighter and I felt myself twitching. I put the car in reverse, stepped on the pedal, but it wouldn’t go anywhere. Tourniquets were useless against snake bites, but I thought about giving it a go. I tied my belt around my calf. Some people say that a tourniquet can do more damage for a snake bite, but I wasn't so sure. Maybe it will buy some time.  The car churned its engine but wouldn’t budge. I climbed out and fell to the dirt. Everything was hot. Saliva accumulated and thickened in my mouth; I couldn’t swallow so it started draining from my lips. I pressed myself on the door, but my legs were stiff. I couldn’t stand up. My face reflected off of the cruiser’s door and I looked pale, covered with sweat and spit. I thought I could see Rachel behind me. I turned around, but there was only the African plains. The horizon line quivered and I felt my body do the same. I turned back to the door, tried to stand up one last time, but collapsed back to the dirt. I could definitely see Rachel in the reflection of the door. She was crying.  The surface of the car door burned, but I didn’t care. I could feel Rachel’s hand. Hard tears fell from her face onto mine like diamonds. The saliva trapped in my mouth grew briars, and I couldn’t speak. Rachel’s reflection said something, but her muffled words faded through a dense atmosphere. Everything fell to a hush.  I looked up. Wispy clouds spiraled overhead. My stomach told me to pray, but I couldn’t speak past the thornbush in my mouth.  But you should pray, my mother always told me. I never did. She used to tell me about Jesus but I never believed God could be a man. I’ve been to enough countries and seen enough animals to know humans weren’t here first.  You should talk to your mother more, Rachel would tell me. But we didn’t have anything to discuss. She wasn’t interested in my travels and I wasn’t interested in her God. She always had her screens and her church. Phones, hymns, computers, sermons, whatever. That couldn’t be me.  I’m glad I attempted the drive. Even with the bite being so low on my leg, I never would’ve made it back, but I tried. At least now there wouldn’t be doubt. I can see myself dying by the river where the mamba got me. But that wouldn’t be peaceful. I see myself vomiting and seizing by the Mamba River , wondering if I made the right call.  Now, I had certainty. I would still die, but I knew nothing would’ve prevented that. Death can’t be peaceful if there are doubts.  But I doubted myself with Rachel and now that was over. Rachel was over and everything else would soon be over.  Rachel is looking at a body by the Mamba River. It’s a cold body. It’s a body that’s been dead for a long time. She has no warmth for this body.  “Emmet,” she says.  And that is all. She doesn’t cry, but merely acknowledges.  My Rachel wasn’t standing by the Mamba River. She was reflected in the door, crying diamonds atop me. My Rachel prayed through her thick Jupiter atmosphere, her words like tsunamis breaking on the Galilean moons. She prays for me because I got in the car and tried to do something. But I left my phone, so she offers me only prayers and nothing else.   I wanted to live in the woods. Survive off the land. I wanted to become some primal thing that existed for nothing more than existence’s sake. Rachel didn’t understand that. No one understood that, least of all myself. It wasn’t a dream, but an image. Not meant for understanding, only for observing.  I worked in Tanzania while Rachel still circled along her forever walk.  Mt. Kilimanjaro stood above the earth as a great tidal wave, pondering over its early morning vista. I sat small and delicate before the destruction.  “Why don’t you run?” asked Kilimanjaro.  Because there is nowhere to go.  The snake donned a contemplative stare. I wanted to cock my head to the side and express some confusion over his question, but my neck was stiff. My chest rose and I started convulsing, lost in a great flood, tumbling around the arbitrary knick-knacks of an arbitrary life. Cool air burst into my lungs when I broke the surface and Rachel stood there with clasped hands. Why won’t you come home with me?  She kept asking and asking, but it never changed. The second hand is in motion, Rachel. Do you see it? Look there, in the corner of the wall. Do you see how it doesn’t pause? It’s all endless. My Rachel still prayed, but no answer could come. She had forgotten that God was made from the sounds of her cries.  Do you see the snake eating his own tail? Does he ever stop? A sea of snakes traverse the plain, slithering between ankles, briars, and poisons. A mosaic of everything. My Rachel still cried. Somewhere behind her, my mother cried as well. They’re both praying, but Vishu was a mamba who struck me on the ankle. Everything was precious. He asked me: And just how was that?  But all I could think of was my family in tears.  He heard my answer and I was the water in a drought. I was a boy dancing naked in the rain and a little girl tending to fields of rice. I was Rachel, staring down the cold body by the river. I was the collapsing lungs of an old man.  Small became everything and everything thinned to a single line.  I felt myself plunge into the great sea of eternity and recognized it was always silly to think of a drop and an ocean as separate things. Garrett Alexander is a wilderness guide and writer currently living in North Carolina. He finds passion in traveling and has lived throughout the U.S., South Pacific, and Southeast Asia. His work is currently unpublished.

Metempirics: study of concepts and relationships conceived   as beyond and yet related to knowledge gained empirically.  A concept barely construed––  conjugation of roses  essence redolent as champac  the fragrance sacred to Vishnu  protector of the world  A being like you   awash in my consciousness so long  then flesh and bone of presence  enigmatic florescence of conflux  out of angle, stance, sound, and movement   We crush  to that essence  so many bruised petals  from an urgency sprung from strata  bedrock built for years  Like ooze of oil the novel flow  of self out of self into other  returning to self––  a conjugation related to  and yet beyond  our separate understandings  of self and other  Breathing into each other  we know intuitively to protect   our nighttime world   of roses    We murmur  our mysterious incantations  Jacquelyn Shah is an iconoclastic pacifist. Obsessive, she has written 563 centos (form dating back to Homer & Virgil) using lines from 4,494 different poets (20 have been published). Publications include: poetry chapbook, small fry ; full-length poetry book, What to Do with Red ; poems in journals; hybrid memoir Limited Engagement : A Way of Living (2023 contest winner). She was awarded Third Special Merit in the 2023 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest and was nominated by Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor for a Pushcart Prize in 2023. Her education: A.B. (Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude), Rutgers U; M.A. English, Drew U; M.F.A. & Ph.D. English literature/creative writing–poetry, U of Houston. One love-of-her-life is Zadie Quinn Atwood, a super beautiful, smart calico cat.

— For Evan   G. Where will I go in tender sleep? Do the grasses call me back through soil and root, to meet myself before I was called my given name? Does the doorway of my mouth, left ajar, spill my nest of secrets, each strange and hidden symbol released into mother's knowing arms — the gentle rhizomic labyrinth just below?  Do the red-clay aqueducts of my veins become the silver-salt of river silt, savoring each delectable footprint of friends and lovers at play? My laughter shakes motes of moon-dust from willow hair. My sighs string dew-lace from the larkspur and the lily. Will you see me when I burst from the foam in a draught of wild salmon? I am there, I am there, I am the armor and softness  of the endless world. I am watching from the starling's eye; my heart speaks now in thunderheads.    O, the gods do answer the soul-songs  of creatures becoming terraform.  I ask again, a prayer through chipping bark and skipping stones: please, what becomes of the body? The question births flowers from my hands. Silvatiicus Riddle (He/They) is a 4x Rhysling-nominated dark fantasy/speculative fiction writer & poet haunting the bones of an old amusement park on the edge of New York City. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in: S trange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Enchanted Living, Eternal Haunted Summer, Spectral Realms , and Creepy Podcast, among others. He combats despair and entropy with his newsletter, The Goblin's Reliquary . For all available works, please visit: http://linktr.ee/silvatiicusriddle

I wish I could see you tonight. The sky is cold and foggy like the bottom of my shower, and I miss you.  You were the prettiest girl I know. Eyes the color of soy milk and midnight hair braided with lucky charms. In a sea of red lips and curvy hips, you were a shooting star. Even your mom said so.  You were her treasure; if she could paint you in gold and display you in the town square she would have. She would pinch your cheeks for color and present you to all the hungry Prince Charmings. She was proud to have a daughter like you; thought her genes a work of god to produce something so fine. Nothing could be more intricate, delicate, luminous.  She was hungry too. For the validation of dark knights and people at insatiable heights. Like a vase painted with the cosmos, she flaunted you for the universe to see. My daughter is a goddess, and you all must kneel.  Your beauty broke them. After all, every mother is a god and every daughter a goddess in her eyes. The sky didn’t need another northern star. The real gods were invincible, and you were a girl masquerading in a porcelain face. The girls at school use beauty as a weapon. They paint their faces and shine their lips to seduce people into the illusion of perfection. To secure prom dates and new friends. You were a victim of the incessant battle. You would have cracked porcelain masks on the kitchen floor. You would have taken their lip gloss and painted a heart on your cheek to make them laugh. I have vowed to dig my own grave before I die. Your mom must have thought it a courtesy, to prepare yours for you. Inciting the wrath of gods. A shame; I would’ve loved to see you covered in dirt in the moonlight.  I wonder if she begged for your life. I would have. If your dad offered every penny to his name to spare you. I would have. I would have fought every angry god to make you mine. But in the end, it was a classic trolley problem. Sacrifice the village or the girl with midnight hair and a porcelain face. I might’ve killed the village.  Is it selfless, to choose the majority? Or is it selfish, to choose the path of least destruction?  I’ve never been to the beach. What does the ocean feel like, lapping salt between your toes? What was the wind like, scraping your cheeks raw? I imagine it tastes like fear. Jellyfish carry tiny jolts of lightning in their tentacles. Would the power of ten thousand be enough to electrocute you? A forest of them amassing out of the sea in an amalgamous blob intent on destroying you. Your hair would look beautiful, full of electric fire. If I had been walking by, I would have been the first to save you. To untangle the seaweed from around your ankles and throw fistfuls of salt at the monster. I would’ve blinded it, so it could never know the beauty of your terror.  If I had a pegasus, I would have swooped down and brushed your arm with its feather. You would have looked up, and it would’ve been me in the sky for once.  No one has ever called me brave. I lay in my bed at night and daydream about the stars. I would rather live with the people I find there than the ones on earth. For you, Andromeda, I would have been brave. If I were around when you were stuck on that rock, you’d be more than just a collection of stars in my imagination. My therapist thought it was a good idea for me to write this eulogy. Constellations aren’t real, she said. What she meant was: I wasn’t the one to save you. A real hero with a flying horse and a snake’s head to his name became your savior. He fell in love with you, the way a regular Prince Charming does.  When is it going to be my turn? When I abandon the stars and the magic that saved you, that put you into the sky above my bed? To me, you are as real as the cold tile under my feet. If loving you gets me through my nights, what is so wrong with that? Constellations are maps; a silver hand in the dark.   They want me to mourn you, Andromeda. Only I know that you are immortal, living among the stars the way you always deserved.  I think that if your Charming hadn’t shown up you would have saved yourself. Andromeda means leader. You burn too brightly to be contained. One day the stars will explode, and you will fall into the galaxy.  For me, that day is today. It’s time to say goodbye. It’s time to be brave for you, like I always promised I would.  You had a life well lived. People who loved you and looked up to you, for the guidance of a well-timed wink. That’s something not everyone can say. Thank you for never leaving me alone. I will tattoo your stars on my soul and love you, to the moon and back. Ashley Pennock is a young writer from New Jersey and current English Writing major at the University of Pittsburgh. She enjoys writing fantasy, experimental, and LGBTQ+ stories. Her work can be found in Alternative Milk Magazine, Maudlin House, AC|DC Journal and others. Follow her on Instagram at amp.writing for more!

Saturday, February 6, 2016 The day had barely begun, and exhaustion had already defeated me. I hadn’t slept more than two hours in a row in weeks. My brain felt disconnected from my body, as if I had to remind myself how to walk, to blink, to breathe. I shuffled into the nursery wearing a nightshirt crusted with dried breast milk and the new slippers Peter gave me for Christmas—open-toe slip-ons with great poufs of pink faux fur that make no damn sense in a Winnipeg winter.  The humidifier near the crib sprayed a fine mist into the air. Olivia was snorting softly, revving up to croak her distress. I scooped her from the crib. Her onesie was damp, and her wriggling body radiated heat against my chest. What was a good mother to do?  The answer was in the morning newspaper spread open on the kitchen table next to Peter’s coffee mug. The headline of the Winnipeg Herald screamed the alert. An unkindness of ravens was blackening the skies over The Health Sciences Centre, where Olivia was born fourteen weeks earlier—a clear sign from my grandfather, who was summoned to Valhalla last fall. He had promised that Odin’s spirit ravens, Huginn and Muninn, would swoop in to protect me and my baby when the time came.  Peter snuck down the hall into the home office, his iPhone pressed to his ear. He was up to something. Again. I leaned against the door frame, just out of sight. His words were muffled, as if he were hiding his mouth behind his hand. “She hasn’t showered or changed out of her pyjamas in days.”  He was complaining to his mother. She never liked me. She was probably the one who picked out those stupid slippers, hoping to turn me into a woman she could relate to. After a moment, Peter continued. “Last night I found her in the bathroom, staring in the mirror, muttering to herself.” Of course, I talked to myself. Nobody else was around to listen to me. Peter returned to work when Olivia was three days old, leaving me to manage a newborn, the house, and Jacob. At thirteen, Jacob was more interested in his friends than his new sister, and he’d been zero help to me.  “Of course, I’m worried,” said Peter. If he were worried, he’d have listened to me when I said I was too old to be pregnant and raise another child. I felt like Gríðr, the Norse giantess who tried to warn Loki about impending doom but who was ignored, just as Peter ignored me. The caregiving burden was going to crush me and my baby.  “We were down this road with Jacob. Only this time she’s worse,” said Peter.  What a liar. This wasn’t about me. It was about Peter. He wanted a perfect family, and I needed to do better. That’s what he told the marriage counsellor before I got pregnant (which wasn’t part of my plan. Let’s be clear about that.)  “I don’t think we have a choice.” Peter’s voice cracked. Another Oscar-worthy performance, but I was wary of his tricks. He’d been acting weird for days. This conversation was proof that he and his mother were scheming against me.  I kissed Olivia’s sweaty crown. Her hair smelled like damp feathers. I stepped away from the door just as our son pounded down the hallway. Roaring into puberty, Jacob’s jaw protruded in a persistent state of insolence. “Why do I have to go to Grandma’s? It’s so boring. Why can’t I go out with my friends?”  I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t recall any plans to visit Peter’s mother, but I had trouble remembering to eat. Peter emerged from his office. “Ready to go, little man?”  Jacob groaned with an exaggerated neck roll. “Dad! Stop calling me that. I’m almost as tall as you.” He trudged into the front hall and yanked on his coat and boots. Was Jacob in on the plan, too? He rarely gave in so easily. Peter frowned at me. “Olivia’s still in her onesie. Why isn’t she dressed and in her snowsuit? You know my mother is expecting us.”  Olivia fussed softly as I tightened my hold around her. I tried to sound reasonable. Peter would have no cause to call me crazy. “She’s staying with me. Can’t you see she’s sick? She needs her rest.”  Peter looked irritated, but his tone remained calm. He stepped forward, his tall frame looming over me. “She’s fine, Annika. It’s just a runny nose. It’s you who needs some rest. Now, let me take her.” He extended his arms, ready to snatch Olivia away.  “No, you’re not taking her.” My shriek startled Olivia. She whimpered, and her tiny legs kicked my soft belly in protest.  When I turned to run for the nursery, Peter grabbed my elbow. “What’s gotten into you?”  I jerked my arm from his grip and punched my fist into his chest. “Get away from us.” I stumbled weak-kneed down the hall, steadying myself against the wall to keep from falling. Once inside Olivia’s room, I leaned, short of breath, against the door, and patted the baby’s bottom. “Mommy’s got you. We’re safe now.” The front door slammed shut, and I watched from the nursery window as Peter backed our Lexus onto the snowy street. Things made sense now. He’d planned to take Jacob and Olivia to his mother’s. Then he was going to call Dr. Pasloski and have me committed, like after Jacob was born, when I was diagnosed with postpartum depression. But that’s not what’s happening this time. He’s been planning to leave me since before I got pregnant. He would file for custody, and I’d never see my babies again. I’d foiled his grand plan, but I needed to get some sleep so I could plan next steps. Fear, or maybe it was anger, propelled the old oak rocker back and forth as I cradled Olivia in my arms until my heart stopped hammering against my ribs. I kissed Olivia’s forehead and whispered, “Sleep tight, min lilla böna, ” as I lay her in the crib, tucked the white baby blanket under her chin, and left the nursery door ajar.  After that, my memories are jumbled; some vivid, most murky. I remember an exploding pain in my left temple that felt as though my eyeball was going to extrude from its socket. A rainbow of relief in the medicine cabinet beckoned me. A couple more headache pills. Then some cold medicine—the kind people take at night to help them sleep. I needed to sleep. If one was good, and two were better, then three would do the trick. I slurped cold water from my cupped hands and gulped down the pills. Too tired to count, I shook a few Ativan into my palm. I’m not sure how many I took. If anyone deserved relief from all the chaos Peter created, it was me. I probably turned off the ringer on my iPhone before falling into bed and pulling the duvet over my shoulders. But I can’t be certain.  The late afternoon sun prowled the edges of the window, threatening to gouge my eyes out of my head. The damn drugs parched my mouth, but it wasn’t the usual medication hangover either. Bloody scratches etched my chest and upper arms, like I’d been in a fight with a hawk.  Other things didn’t make sense. This wasn’t my bed; the sheets were itchy. Where was I? The answer clanged nearby as a rolling metal cart interrupted the institutional hum. The stomach-churning odour of overcooked hospital food wafted past my nose. I opened one eye. A pimply-faced kid wearing a hairnet slid a tray onto my bedside table. “Annika Wallin? Your supper is here.” Hot bubbles of anger prickled my skin. My limbs were leaden as I pushed myself into a sitting position. “What’s going on? Where’s Olivia?”  The kid’s face was vacant. “I just bring the meals, ma’am. You’ll have to ask your nurse.”  “Are you kidding me?” I whipped back the bedsheets. “Get the hell out if you can’t answer a simple question.” I shoved the over-bed table with such force that it tipped over, the plastic wheels spinning. The supper tray lifted into the air, and splattered a gross fusion of hot tea, peas, gravy, and mashed potatoes across the floor.  The kid backed away, eyes wide, alarm in his voice. “Nurse! Code White.” “Oh, shit.” When I was in hospital after Jacob was born, I’d witnessed a Code White. I knew the routine, and so, apparently, did my terrified roommate, who scurried from the room in fear of the firestorm about to erupt. I tried to look harmless by holding myself upright and motionless, on the edge of the bed, so they’d ask me why I was upset, and I could tell them about Peter’s deception. Maybe they’d see I hadn’t intended to overreact.  When three stern-faced brutes burst through the open door, ready to pounce and restrain, I knew that wasn’t gonna happen. The first nurse through the door slipped on the supper slurry, her arms flailing before a second nurse caught her elbow, preventing her fall. The tension in the room escalated. The third nurse issued commands, and the three surrounded my bed.  My eyes shifted from one nurse to the next, pleading for a moment to speak. I held up my palms. “Wait. Listen. Please. I just want to know what’s going on. How I got here.” The nurses were in no mood to put up with any negative outbursts, no matter how justified I was. One nurse grabbed my hands. “Annika, this is the second time today. Get a handle on yourself.”  What was she talking about? The second time? I swatted away her hand. “Stop. What are you doing?” When another nurse grabbed my ankles, I yelled, “Don’t touch me!” My shoulders were pushed flat against the mattress. A chorus of voices shouted, “Lie still. Stop kicking. Don’t spit.” My left shoulder and wrist were pinned to the mattress, and fingers pinched my upper arm. Then came a cold swipe and a sharp jab. A whiff of astringent lingered in the air. The nurse’s voice was shrill. “Try to relax.” I smirked. The needle-wielding nurse needed to take some of her own advice.  There was no sense in fighting. My muscles slackened under the heavy pressure of their stiff-armed clench on my shoulders and ankles. With my head tilted toward the window, I saw the barren tips of tree branches shiver in the winter wind.  A minute passed. Then two. Then five. My head sank deeper into the pillow. Random thoughts swirled. Was this Muninn, my spirit raven, releasing memory bubbles as he flew over my hospital bed? A diaphanous image rippled into a clear vision.  I was at home, asleep in my bed. For how long, I didn’t know. Twenty minutes? Thirty, maybe. Olivia’s cries pierced the silence. I staggered toward the nursery; my arms outstretched to grasp for each door frame to maintain my balance. The hallway seemed so long. Olivia lay red-faced and kicking in her crib. Her mouth was a howling O, like I’d abandoned her. She needed comfort, but I needed sleep. I couldn’t take her to my bed because the doctor said a mother could smother her baby if she fell asleep and rolled over on her. My brain cells were wads of cotton batting. I didn’t know what to do.  Muninn spoke in a deep gurgle. “Take the child to the family room, Annika. Lie on the sofa. You will be safe there.” Olivia’s body was a hot coal burning through my nightshirt as I elbowed my way down the hall. One careful step at a time, through the kitchen, past the breakfast dishes, and into the family room, I collapsed on the sofa and cradled Olivia, chest to chest, with her face tucked into the crook of my neck. I rocked side to side, both arms wrapped across her sweaty body, and hummed my grandfather’s favourite Swedish lullaby, Fly little raven into the sky .  Her wails invaded every cell. The more vigorously I rocked, the more she howled. My body vibrated with each high-pitched cry. Nothing soothed her.  Huginn and Muninn hovered above me, their wings unfurled, casting a dark shadow over my body. Muninn, with the gift of memory, pecked above my left eye. “Your grandfather knows you have struggled. He sent us and hundreds of others to watch over you and your daughter. We recognize Olivia by her white skin, her golden hair, and the serpent birthmark on her hip.” I stroked my daughter’s leg. “You are a brave giantess, and you must save Olivia, just as Gríðr saved Thor. Help her escape to Valhalla, where your grandfather will protect her.”  Muninn projected an image behind my eyes: My grandfather in the middle of a vast wheat field near his farm, just as the ravens lifted him into the afterlife. Why was Muninn taunting me with this memory? They had stolen my grandfather before I was ready to say goodbye. “Death isn’t always a gift, Muninn.”  The raven pecked my eyebrow again. “This is a treacherous world. Peter is planning to steal Olivia away from your protection. You must do what is right.”  I tightened my embrace. Olivia’s pudgy fingers yanked at my nightshirt. I wondered if something was wrong, but Huginn, with the gift of thought, heard my question and assured me Olivia’s arms were beating like wings preparing to fly to Valhalla. “Tighter, Annika. Hold her tighter,” he urged. Peace settled over my body as I wedged Olivia’s feet between my thighs and held her snotty nose more firmly into the fleshiness of my neck. Olivia’s bird-like shriek prepared to sing in unison with the ravens. She sucked on my skin and gasped for breath, filling her lungs in preparation for her long flight to the afterlife. “Fly, min lilla böna .” Louder and tighter, I sang and rocked as the last vestiges of fear emptied from my fingertips. Another shadow appeared. Sharp talons pierced my skin and gouged deep scratches in my shoulders and arms as two hands jerked Olivia from my arms. A baritone voice shouted at me. “What the fuck are you doing, Annika?”  The boundaries between the soft family room sofa of my memory and the cold hospital bed of my present merged as I sped backwards into a dark tunnel. All I could see before me was what I was leaving behind. Ever faster, the view shrank. A mismatch of sounds followed me into the crevasse. Peter shouting. A nurse soothing. A baby crying.  Muscles surrendered. Fists relaxed. My brain cells absorbed into a pillow. The edges of my body merged into the mattress.  I was in free fall.  Down. And down. And gone. Diana L Gustafson is an academic and creative writer. She was born on a farm in the Canadian Midwest and has lived and worked in communities across the country. During her twenty years as a health researcher, she published dozens of articles (and three books), many about mothering and women’s health. She has published flash fiction, speculative fiction, memoir, and cultural criticism.

Give me the moon, I said. Wisp and drip it down between the clouds. Slide it across my back like a mantle of lilied oil. I have never bathed in moonlight. Never eaten fruit made pale by starlight, popped between my teeth by long-fingered lovers, repentant and returned from prodigal lands. Mind those tender sunned-peach hands. For the shadows beneath my breasts are sharp, as dark as the secret crescent of the waxing moon. Drink to me. Feast at the table of my planted feet. Set your face to the ground and taste the snaking roots as you whisper my name into the earth. I have been hungry for so long. Angry, and tired, and sick from sun. Give me the moon. And I will take from you slowly—gently, coldly—your traitor’s votive longing for the clean break of day. Marisa Celeste Montany was born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaii, splitting time between Ka‘u and Kona. After spending her twenties as a professional ballet dancer, she attended Middle Tennessee State University where she graduated summa cum laude with a double major in history and English. She currently resides in Maryland with her husband where she takes walks, studies herbs, reads books, and writes speculative fiction and poetry. You can find her most recent publications at The Orange & Bee and Crow and Cross Keys . Visit her at marisamontany.com . She loves horizons.

Between the hours of blue heron and red winged blackbird, wade in through duckweed: mosquito larva,  dragonfly larva, tadpoles claiming space near ankles and face the sky.   Savor sacred energy:  light, strength,  source of all food. Migration reminds: go forward with warmth, turn as flowers  following the sun, stop  believing excess holds answers: create space for foundation,  growth: eat that outright,  give song like a bird shade like a bush bathe in flowing rivers,  feet sunk in sand. Trust and remember between hours of dove and owl; learn to  humble. Loralee Clark’s first chapbook, Solemnity Rites , (Prolific Pulse Press, 2025) is an account of reimagined myths and truths of who we are as humans and how we live our histories. She has two chapbooks forthcoming: A Harmony in the Key of Trees: A Healing Myth (Dancing Girl Press, 2025) and Neolithic Imaginings: Mythical Explorations of the Unknown (Kelsay Press, 2026).  Clark resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark . Her Substack, which focuses on the process of creativity, is nosuchthingasfailure.substack.com .

Upon the knowing horse he rode, paused, and picked a fair but gloomy rose, The color of glass without and of the liquid locked within. The horse of instinct walked in fear. In a dark cave-home he conjured fire And sat upon Eastern rugs and contemplated a vanished world. "Someday the cave will grow into one-thousand chambers!" he mused,  Surrounded by unseen and unknown marvels. A purple glow fluoresced upon his face that turned to meet the source. Waste comes from what was once the most precious fodder And now passes glibly through the system of the vanishing-man, Smooth & soft & gray & cool. He becomes more precise, concise, and universally smooth & soft & gray, & cool—only then allowed to pass. Fragments are scattered along the roads, Bleeding heads and matted fur with unapparent connection But connected by a concrete network. Pandel Collaros has taught at Bethany College (WV), Ohio State, and the University of Kansas. Published short fiction and poetry have appeared in OSU's  Lantern and Mosaic Magazine , and Bethany College's Harbinger . Recent credits include an October 2025 poetry publication in  Yellow Mama  and a September 2025 short story publication in Chewers by Masticadores .

i laid down offerings  to a God  who does not speak only watches a witness  to my every  unanswered prayer;  a gaze i once mistook as mercy i learned to worship  the absence of sound,  and sought an offering  worthy of such silence hands cupped, not for blessings, but to gather the drip  of my tears this prayer at last had weight and in my palms i learned its language:  the slow dissolve  of salt on stone the tears weren’t mine anymore they were its holy water   so i wept  not from sorrow,  but to nourish only my God and starve anything else Anne Vera writes about different human emotions and how they can show up in our lives. She feels the answers we seek about why we react to situations and how we define what hurts us, is our own perspective. Emotions cloud our judgment, blocking us from seeing the obvious answer. Anne uses poetic language to help people detach and see their lives from a different point of view.

I.  I am lathered in dirt, but I am not blind.  Like an octopus that sees with its skin,  I see the answers to everything—   There are scriptures written in the soles of people’s feet,  and I’ve seen billions of footsteps;   ones with long, languid leavings  ones with short, skittish scampers,  ones with uncaring cadences,  clearly content to ignore that they carry with them all they seek.  People mistake the eyes as the only organ with the power of sight,  and when the feet of those people peruse the earth,  their skin blinks shut—  a final flutter of eyelids before death.  II.  Feet blindness means the wonders and misfortunes of the world travel through the eyes and jam into the brain  overpacking for a trip that will never make its way through the rest of the body. That’s when people start begging God  to show them how to free themselves from their fullness.  or, at least, how to stop the fullness from leaking down their brainstem,   intoxicating the stomach, spleen, and shoulder blades  where the conditions are not ripe for refrigerating thoughts.  III.  People have stopped walking in the grass.  They wear shoes because they are afraid of the truth.  Or maybe they think they know the truth,  like the truth comes from the eyes alone.  Haven’t people learned that the mind alone is untrustworthy?  People stay with abusers, wear high heels walking in New York City,  and sit in front of a TV screen playing games,  telling themselves they are not trying to escape their reality,  just trying another one on for a bit—  but they promise their mothers, friends, partners  it won’t affect their relationships.  Or their moods. Or the amount of time they spend basking in sunlight,   remembering that before electricity there was fire  and before there were matches and newspaper  people used rocks to create the same spark  that people feel when they remember that their brains were made to process things, and not to shove their thoughts into a 70 liter backpack  that they hike with from their beds, to their jobs, to the couch.  IV.   It hurts—knowing people choose to ignore that their souls come in two parts. The mind fills up like a balloon and floats away  without something to tie it down to the ground,  but I can’t hold anyone hostage  or force them to face themselves,  unprepared to have dirt fill in their lines of scripture  covered with socks and shoes since birth.  When they do face themselves, they’ll be able to read their feet, too,  and realize they’ve wasted time trying to figure out why their heads were heavy when they could have taken one step toward freedom right on their lawns. They’ll resent the very feet that have shown me the soul is not abstract.  It is the combination of the head and the skin,  for the skin breathes everywhere, but it is most concentrated in the feet,  to the point that words develop in the creases, cracks, and calluses,  and they never get too full.  There is space for every thought, desire, dream, goal, fear, sadness, and doubt. And that is when people start thanking God for giving humans skin  that repairs itself when it is splintered, sliced, and scratched,  and feet that can open their eyes, when they’re ready.  V.  No—no two feet are ever the same.  Neither are the scriptures.  But there’s one major constant,  thrumming like electricity behind a socket,  and it’s that each scripture is a person's story of creation;  Not the one from birth. The one that made a person  fall in love with art, or baseball, or cinnamon, or another being.  For each person is purposefully created to fall into themselves,  carrying and gaining weight to be distributed and  handed out to the body like the last supper’s bread. Gina Martucci (she/her) is a New Jersey-based writer and English teacher for students with learning disabilities. As a queer woman, Gina writes about stigma, religion, family, friendship and relationship dynamics, gender roles, and how they all impact one’s self acceptance. Her mission as a writer is to normalize experiences of otherness and give voice to the parts of people not widely accepted by society.

I am a slow, shaking old man, my skin isn’t hanging yet, but it looks like a crepe paper map of someplace like Oklahoma or Idaho. When younger and making acquaintances of learned people, I would ask them what they thought God was - only occasionally was this well received and never reversed. Everyone believes in God, you can count self-proclaimed atheists on one hand. I certainly didn’t want to be thought of as, not afraid to burn in hell, though I wasn’t Of course there’s Einstein, Nietzsche, Freud, Bertrand Russell and Woody Allen, but you know them for other things, not their discussions or thoughts about God. I put together a schtick, God is part  of everything, he’s everywhere,  like a dummy,  letting the Lord ventriloquize through me,  the mysteries of the universe. As the years passed - the trees got taller, fortune came and went, sons moved away, the ritual aged, lost its verve, and I went fewer places where empathy was a cornerstone.  I no longer ask the question, rarely meet anyone  who would be interested in the conversation,  or my act. I am, however, progressively, everyday looking more and more like Charlie McCarthy. Craig is retired and living in Jacksonville because that’s where his grandchildren are. He loves the aesthetics of writing, has a book of poetry,  Roomful of Navels,  and has been nominated three times for Pushcart. He was recently published in D ecadent Review, Chiron Review, The Main Street Rag, Hamilton Stone Review, Glacial Hill Review, 7 th  Circle Pyrite, Fairfield Scribe, Fixator, Flora Fiction, Sybil, The Argyle, The Lake, Timada’s Diary, Wise Owl, Poetry Breakfast, Writers Resist, Writers Journal, Rushing thru the Dark, Lothlorien, Sparks of Calliope, Stereo Stories, Dark Winter, Gargoyle Magazine, Vine Leaf Press, Coffee and Conversation, Black Petal, Beatnik Cowboy, About Place, Atrium, Constellations, Confetti, Short Beasts, Literary Journal, Atrium, One Art, Mobius , and work forthcoming at The Main Street Rag, Abstract, Chiron Review , and several dozen others. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems on a laptop. These words tend to keep him straight.