By Janelle Standish There are nights my body mutinies, throws me back into rooms I swore I left. The air thickens, turns animal. Every shadow carries his shape. Every silence tastes like warning. My ribs still flinch at ghosts. My skin remembers things I never gave permission for: hands that claimed me, breath that cornered me, a hunger that ate the edges of who I was. I learned to disappear in plain sight, to fold myself into something quiet, something compliant, something t

By Katrina Lemaire our blood is long distance a prodigal paradigm shift lipstick mirror kisses & telling horror stories in our basements   using fridge magnets as planchettes letters papered on backwards scribbling out ghost names—   my sister screamed I screamed   mouths peeled open teeth feathering out final girls left at the altar one of us is crying in rosewater one of us is smiling in slaughter so we salt eachother in a circle of raven bones our names no longer a body fo

By Hope Savage I have never known this. Not-stable-steady-love, But-the-juddering-of-fear-love. So-uneasy-on-your-feet- screaming-like-nobody-can-hear-love. The-spitting-biting-hitting-butting- scarcity-of-real-love. The-hit-yourself-in-your-own-face- until-the-day-you-feel-love. The-cannot-move-a-minute- from-my-lap-in-case-I-leave-love. The-appearing-by-my-side- every-single-time-I-breathe-love. The-everyone-is-missing- so-you-worry-I-have-died-love. The-push-me-pull-me-bat

By Maggie Davison In spring, they praise you, as you gather cowslips and garlic. They say you’re a beauty, a child of nature, a gift from God. In summer, they queue at your cottage with sick children and animals, leave with potions of liquorice root, sap, witch hazel and elder. In autumn, they scoop up their children, pin a hare skin to your door, place rowan twigs, tied with red thread, to their garden gates. In winter, they drag you high on the hill, watch as flames burn yo

By Grace Henry An old tree Crumbling on the motte Besieged by the river, Caverns barricaded with moss. Lichens cling To cadaverous fingers, stretched out, Clawing at the moon in her celestial palace, With her dying star courtiers  Smouldering Their last anthem to the cold abyss.   Roots, six layers deep, Rotted and hollow as a collapsed foundation On bent knee, Crown falling to the floor. Core all but pith and mould, The blackening marches outwards, Starving for treasure; The

By Richelle Marie Simms I was not shaped by light. Light only reveals. It does not forge. The night is the one who made me. She took me into her ribs, into her ink-black hush, and taught me the language of becoming. Not with flames— with embers. Not with shouts— with breath. Not with violence— with precision. In her womb of dusk, I learned what power feels like when it isn’t performing. When it isn’t begging to be seen. When it simply exists because it must. People think the

By Claire Kelly Funny how you became silken lines of ashes, slipping through my fingers while your feet still found footing on earth-bound grounds in soils of gardens in lands you took to tow, your silhouette silencing my only shadow when you would stand tall lost in looks beyond me — I was a child then, no time for diving details. Years bent us sideways into long lines of nothing to say before November nights blew warning winds turning our time crisp — seems I could swallo

By Syn Cyres I was taught early that obedience is safer than truth. That silence earns survival. That the more invisible I became, the more I might be allowed to live. So I folded, and folded, until I was origami — a swan people could perch their fears on. I was not raised. I was trained. To answer before the question was asked, to swallow my tone, to keep my eyes from burning too loud, to fear what happens when I am seen. They said “respect,” but meant obedience. They said “

By Bart Verhoeven A wheel squeaks, the kind that sticks, then gives, then sticks again. Metal rails rattle, bright against the floor’s dull shine. A faint trail of disinfectant follows, sharp enough to blind the tongue. The sheet lifts at one corner as the bed turns; a loose gesture, barely a gesture at all. It brushes the ground with a soft, dragging sound like someone shuffling in a dream. The ceiling lights slide across the frame, one after another, each reflection trembli

By Wing Yau The    ghost of   my   deceased  workplace  still  haunts my  new   uniform   as  an unspeakable    sweat     stain.   It haunts my work shoes that squeak like my tightened windpipe    as I walk into the    pale      daylight. I mean, through     daylight into a relentless   odour    bounded by   empty   spaces   in my    life indenture.   At      night the ghost  always  returns  to    the clock    and     strikes the most  feminine   pose to beguile time.    She

By Alice Hatcher We weep at memories of misted fiddleheads, the milkweed seats of chrysalid kingdoms, sacred scrolls of silver birch roseate at dawn, glacial till of pungent loam and marbled stone, gardens seeding themselves in endless resurrection, all the nectar of mottled fruit we found wanting.   We walk accursed in wilderness, across barren plains, through scabrous lands and bedeviling dust. Gloaming is too soft a word for sudden nightfall, the world’s hard turn into unc

By Sezin Devi One day you wake and you’re not yourself. I feel like I’m peeling out of my skin and I get flashes of heat, skin on fire, boiling this lobster in a pot that’s my full body ache. I’m 17 again, acne that’s not, it’s actually cysts and I can’t pop them because now at 46 my skin scars and I have itchy tits and wake in the middle of a thought at 3am, heart pounding and can’t sleep, it isn’t trauma, it’s this change in me I knew was coming I was bitten a women, it’s t

By Nadia Beckett The door was locked, but it wasn’t enough He broke in like a demolition crew Leaving only dust where foundation used to be. My skin still recognises a wrong touch. An imprint Cellular panic Screaming a silent name. I search for the woman who lived here She’s gone Hiding behind my eyes Whispering; You didn't fight hard enough. Violation isn't a scar, but a shadow glued to my heels It taught me the feeling of unclean How ownership can be revoked in a single wre

By Lewis Brown Speaking as a lover of cat piss, pantyhose and older women, I can say confidently that this perfume is for everyone. It opens with bold top notes of patchouli and incense followed by the unmistakable scent of pastrami sandwiches the kind your high school bully used to eat and vegetables slowly spoiling in a hot rubber bowl. Next come the middle notes or as I like to call them, the Incident: an accord of caribou musk and poison, undergirded by a whiff of sour co

By Jim Gill The hue of the skin, the scent, the heaviness hefted in the hand will indicate whether it is ripe and ready to   consume. The innards, the fleshy parts within, are not so easily revealed, it takes a dedicated thumb, or knife, to part the skin and   flesh. Some take an anatomical approach, dissect segments symmetrically, while others choose to rip and tear with no attention to   the art. Some suck juice vampire-like, pick the pith from between their teeth, though s

By J. Sawyer Clack - Ta-Tack,   A great scythe sweeping claw, Bone reforged in metal -   Perfection,   Scalpel-like, it cleaves, cuts, no -                   Slices ,   Flesh is separated from skin, Blood replaced with ichorous oil, Arteries of vanity -   Man? No, nor Machine -   Something greater,   Clack-tack,   A faceplate, bearing God’s mark, Smile down, Machine Lord -   For our work is done,                   Precision outweighs will,   Thunderous applause,              

By Bellatrix I saw it in an aged photo Not the digital kind The one with oxidized fading Light and orb flashes gently nestled where they felt invited No edits, real and raw Faded by time and its propensity to speed the unwanted years Tattered, yellowed and frayed, stained from cigarette smoke and cocktails de jour In a different time, from decades long passed by There she was with her velvet coat The gentle folds of the black midnight fabric Looking so soft What were the stor

By Andrew Otto Psenicka Black briars slithering out of her back and the middle of her chest. Thorny and bare scraggles, grasping wildly at the air and anything near. A substance—resentment— that only the worst of tragedies could pen about this nightmare queen. The hood pulled over her head, and sparse roses on the death vines, still I know who she really is— Liquid that you can’t drink, bitter. Still, she tells me, “I’ll put the kettle on” pretending, for her own sake, I don’

By The Neo-Revsolutionist Desecrate the dead heart. Dig with nails. Scar with breath. You are in control. My hands are wrapped around brass rails. Assault me with whispered words. Attack with pelvic thrust. I cannot escape. My wrists are marked with suicidal failure. And you would be the death of me If I were not already deceased. Money: My sheltered mind, you are asleep Faith: A passionate soul is purged Love: My country heart, you are despaired Lust: A body of

By Rosie Bogumil depression hides. in your unwashed sheets / unwashed hair / unbrushed teeth exhaustion so deep your bones ache with effort but still you can’t sleep – because falling asleep means you must submit to waking up and waking up means another day spent with your same cruel thoughts.   they will suggest the usual things to combat your sudden and inexplicable exacerbation of depression. you will remind them this cannot be a relapse since that implies reprieve. yes, t