By David C. Weinczok Salt-fresh their sea-plucked prows breach ivory sands piercing the frail shallows of island peace wake and quake tonight the moon will glint blood in the machair Storm-willed their white horses trod the sea roads to plough red rigs in the earth no corn shall grow this season on the strand hewn by black hulls from other-lands Sword-won their keels heavy as summer creels leave cold silence in their wake our dead we lay in watchful mounds to keep

By Lu Sargeant Night descends And through this web of streets Your pumpkins glow and sputter Announcing to every passing stranger All the things that make you scream. Number three has carved an arachnid Eight long, elegant legs wrapped round pumpkin skin. And opposite, Luke has rendered the monster under his bed, So detailed I can almost pet Its soft, hairy pelt with my fingers. Next door, a classic vampire bat Sits next to Dracula in all his October glory Seductive, transf

By Evelyn Thakur Midnight, darkness abound — here comes the Bride of Cavendish! Gaze upon her sallow, shuddering form, as she floats from her marbl'd fortress to reach for your hand; catch the dim glow of candlelight burning through her diaphanous skin, clear as glass and crystalline as the oceans once reflected in her eyes. Pray, keep your distance! The Bride is beautiful, porcelain doll kept pristine despite the weathered hand of time enshrouding us

By Liz Verlander They tell me it is like flying. I must, to protect their backs. (Their precious backs that turn me, then turn away from me leaving me to cook in this airless room). In the patterns of the ceiling I see us the day Lisa was born, remember you telling Tom the stork had brought her, recall him incredulous ,you so happy you almost believed the lie. “A stork is a large wading bird with red legs and beak.” Tom later read from his children’s encyclopaedia, “It eats

By Hélène Iolanta I awoke, all eyes to my sister’s knowing hands covering my mouth to the mix of yesterday’s blue nail polish and strawberry hair spray she whispered like lemonade, we have to go my yellow dinosaur backpack and shoes sat ready the monsters are coming Quietly now , she said as she guided my little arms into my green puffer coat I looked to her rainbow sneakers, and the moon watching over so carefully she zipped, up to my chin, then squeezed my shoulders l

By Laurie Paternoster I died once. Let me explain. When cancer strikes twice you don’t wait scheduling time on a table for repairs to an earthly body struggling to survive despite the creeping odds in 18 hours doctors ebbed and flowed exhausted searching for answers fresh eyes boosting blood bags scalpels slicing into virgin territory mining for life-saving veins supposed to be there but elusive all of it shoving minutes into hours no solutions fading

By Jan Moran Neil I remember taking less and a little less stuffing the gap in my gut with the gap in the words that were not being served at the table where I measured the spoons for the paying guests in the room that was shrouded by conifer trees and my eyes never cried but were onions dried and then fried with my bones as brittle as cracked egg shell, my breath someone said was over boiled yolk, my throat sounded like artichoke so I took a little less because it was all so

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