Luminosity by Anita Goveas
a possibly true story At 6 o’clock, Henrietta watches Mr Pickering, Cecilia Payne, Williamina Fleming and the other computers go home. She promised to lock up, she usually does what she is told. The sun is dropping below the horizon, tinting the sky and the red-brick building next to the observatory.…
Sylke by K.B. Carle
Tyn wakes to fireflies playing in the soft areas between the bones making up his spine. To his wife, Abigail, tracing swollen pathways of whippings that echo an anger he keeps holed up in the dark parts of his mind. The part can’t nobody reach but him. Instead, Tyn sets…
On the Proper Use of Mosquitoes by Roppotucha Greenberg
They won’t let me sleep. My father, a halo of insects around his head, is singing of Robbie Burns’ heart that’s apparently ‘in the highlands a-following a deer’, in Russian first, then in English. Drink always made him jolly, and it earned him our neighbours’ respect (before they met him…
Better Days by William Gilmer
I only drink one beer with dinner while encouraging her to have a second. I’m ready to make the sudden U-Turn onto McKalester towards St. Catherine’s hospital before Grace’s phone even rings. When Grace becomes lost in the maze of sanitized hallways, I play along even though I could navigate…
Souls to sell, bots for hire by Russell Hemmell
Hidden behind the curtains, they’re waiting for me.Expectantly and fearful at the same time.For a reason. Bots have been exploited for sex for warfor anything they could think ofsince the beginning of the cyborg era. We have passed under different phases, before our Keepers could decide if we had a soul or we were just…
Creative Study: Elisabeth Horan
Artist Statement: I find myself so thankful for the feminist writers who have taught me to write poetry… When I first read Emily Dickinson, I thought this is the real thing… the power of scarcity, the complete control of the tone and voice. She is the master of doing so…
Rosabelle, believe by Kate Garrett
for Harry & Bess Houdini On a day of no importance: dark of winter, far from seances and anniversaries, at last he gave her message through a man who wouldn’t take a reward: answer, tell, pray-answer, look, tell, answer-answer, tell // a code tapped out in syllables, lettersacross the stage for his encore performed between there…
Legacies by Darcy Lin Wood
Tarquinii, Etruria: Circa 300 BCE The body of Lord Pulenus was barely cold when Vel, the ashen-haired tomb painter, arrived at the family home to discuss funeral arrangements. The widow had summoned him the instant her husband expired. A servant answered the door, and Vel was gobsmacked as the male…
A Lounge Full of Dead Queens by Haley Jenkins
one by one they enter the front room, remove their shoes and take up in sofas and armchairs, they shake off the shale, clinker and mudstone in their teeth. Rowen. Sexburga. Boudica busy exploding out of her territory by farting over the biscuits, her hare snoring loudly in the folds…
The Ancient House by Ashley Bullen-Cutting
i was called in at nights (close during the day? don’t be silly)threading alleys with undesirableflag-bearers of jack and jameson gargling threshold sleepers for the betterment of commerce i was called in to renovatepostmodern patchupstemporally blurringthe bygone with the near-flungtaking a hammer to heritage for the betterment of commerce make me whole creaked…
Matters of Time by Kiyomi Appleton Gaines
They say that when the dead leave us, they aren’t really gone, they just go on to the next place. They say that time is like a river, a loop, and when you leave it at one point, you can jump back in again at another place. They say that…
Pantomime by Robert Grant
A monster, from the humans and the gods, Born into a line of royal blood, Its features are grotesque and wild and odd Its origins are vile. Its cold childhood Is locked within a maze of giant stones. Taught to kill for food and sport, and hence It rages through…
Two Paths to the Cemetery on the Hill by Amy Alexander
Two paths to the cemetery on the hill,one chewed to stones by rain and age,one steep and smooth as raven’s bill. I had to choose, so it goes, still,flowers and undergrowth, a trail haunted by sage,two paths to the cemetery on the hill. Old dog by my side rushes to…
Cleaning House by Salvatore Difalco
It had rained steadily for more than ten days straight. Don’t know if it was a record. Probably not. All kinds of records had been shattered during the last decade. All the shit had hit the fan at once. “Honey, I’m stepping out for a few hours.” My partner, Candace,…
Double History by Amy Charlotte Kean
At school, we’d be jubilant when the TV was wheeled in. Hungry for a Night of the LongKnives, feather-brained Braunor learning how to salute with two fingers. If the teacher was two minutes late, we knew.Heard the metal scrape and screech along the concrete floor, Hearts imploding like a neglected buzz bomb. …
No Time for Obsession by Andy McClung
The apartment is remarkable in its orderliness but depressing in its utilitarianism, exactly as Katherine Doyle had imagined it. Well, at least those few times over the last fifteen years that she had bothered to think about where her father lived. The suit, her father’s only one, is easy enough…
Hercules Takes a Walk by Merril D. Smith
Hercules was a bit of a dandy. See him there, dressed carefully for his walk in a blue coat with velvet collar, stepping on the cobblestones with his gold stick and fancy shoes, purchased with money earned by selling the kitchen slops. Through Philadelphia streets, he walks, well-known–the President’s cook–he…
‘Flower For Your Sweetheart’ by Chloe Smith
London, 1898. ‘Flower for your sweetheart?’ Della heard the voice of a young man, hoarse from a morning of work, call out to the couples who carried themselves like they were on a stroll in a garden and not a bustling, smoggy street. The men nearly always bought one, laughing…
Vagabond Seed by Craig Rodgers
The minotaur told the mermaid he loved her, but their liaison lasted only so long, and when some years later the gods took note of the fruits of that tryst they did not fume or row but only wept for the wretched pink creature who would know no home on…
Father Time by Christine A. Brooks
tick tock The grandfather clock, keeps time, twelve gongs. She has made it to another day. Silence, outside the dining room window where she lay dying. Darkness shrouds the small house that holds her body, while her soul prepares for flight. Tick tock. The grand clock just won’t stop TICKING…
Loki in Utero by Blake Johnson
The grass here is greener than you’d think, despite crunching underfoot, despite being dry as bleached bones. But I don’t mind. This place, this terminus between void and light, is double-sided, constantly shifting between lies that might be fulfilled and truths never realized. I feel right at home. I hear…
His Face When It Will Flicker by Kristin Garth
is cracked glass Picasso striated grove —skin branches, singed romances, flame buried in bone chip snow, glycerine. Globe revealing glistening cemetery. His youth, a sunken mausoleum mystery; angles become mangled. Face is wasting, cubed. Happens in a wink.You think you are confused — staircase mistake of candlelight? Dim castle direas host, Adonis, promise, flickering to ghost. Last crackle,…
Take Us On A Journey To Somewhen
