Shadow Work v. 2 Tarot by Grey Coven

Shadow Work

Vol. 2: Tarot

Grey Coven Publishing

Edited by Cat Speranzini & Claudia Jean

Grey Coven Publishing

Instagram: @greycovenpublishing greycovenpublishing@gmail.com

Cover by Cat Speranzini

Photographer: Pixie Moon

Model: Jason Tankerley

The characters and events portrayed on the following pages are fictional. Any similarity to people, living or dead, is coincidental and unintended.

This book may not be reproduced, retrieved, or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the respective authors.

ISBN # 979-8-3485-5365-4

Visual Art

Untitled – Jack Cariod Leon

Untitled – Pixie Moon

Swords II – Larena Nellies-Ortiz

Wands – Larena Nellies-Ortiz

Dark Angels

Dark angels haunt me, invade my dreams and taunt me. Caged, I am not free.

Gnarly Old Tree – D.C. Nobes

Côte d'Azur – La Napoule – France

In the dark I see your eyes shining back at me luminous and bright.

Talisman Mine Dark Shaft – D.C. Nobes Karangahake – New Zealand

Shining Eyes

Polaris – Claudia Tong

Ring Around the Rosy – Edward Michael Supranowicz

City to City – Rachel Turney

The Sudden Hush of Tenderness – Bill Wolak

Poetry

Sculpting Aphrodite – Meheru Alaspure

Mother sculpt me beautiful, let all gods I desired rot in hell

These words are bullets, self carved and self destructive

these words thunder from the darkest pits of the sky

No one ached and tore apart flesh for this Aphrodite

Mother, nobody hears this siren sing

She rips apart her larynx

A mephistophelian bargain for immortal beauty

Undying, Cloying and Murderous

The kind that pierces through time

Hear me, o ye gods of heaven. My body an open door to all blight to ever roam the treacherous night. I wish for only one.

Immortal beauty

Mother, the torrents won't deluge this psyche

The chasmic oceans have turned skin deep on my arrival

Even Poseidon latched his lychgate

Hear this Cytherea howl in the cradle of her Cyprus.

Mother I wish not to live

I crave the moongleam of his scythe

His gelid skull and hollow eyes

I beg,

scathe this rotting clay and mar these doe eyes

The Magician (Reversed) – Zack Albertini

Burnt out by twenty-two

Where’s that potential gotten you?

We all disappoint ourselves someday

You just got wasted wasting talent

Scared to say you feel unbalanced

You can’t seem to get out of your way

Untapped, unfocused, raw emotion

Can’t seem to grasp your own devotion

You let yourself down all over again

How can you create a masterpiece

When you’re running on three hours of sleep

Ink just doesn’t spill the same from your pen

You lie under the guise of perfection

While your passions hang in suspension

But your feet stay planted in the ground

So you sit there – lips sealed with cement

And you suffer your lifelong laments

Because your soul never quite makes a sound

In

seeking compassion/ Ace of cups, Reversed – Brittany Brewer

When I was younger, I briefly balleted my body remembers: my teacher, envisioning our hips as goblets, directing us, imagine, your hips, your pelvis, carry a bowl of water that you must contain ah ah ah don’t spill! Drop your tailbone down, balance it. Balance it. Don’t find a fake turnout, and don’t spill the water! It turns out, my left leg is a fraction of an inch shorter than my right; I learn this when I suffer an injury to my piriformis, several years after I set my slippers aside.

It prickles persistently still, diffusing down across the back of my hips, decorating the unstable bowl of my sacrum with cords woven from bruised purples and blush reds. I stand, the crack-pop of my body calls me back to this moment, needing movement to moisten its palette, to nurture the new growth rings resting heavy on my hips. I extend my own cup forward cradled strongly by my capable hands, my blessed body, and I think this cup is full enough, but it isn’t. There is a leak. I don’t know where, but I know it’s there, coiling its course through my body, waiting to make itself known.

My spirit wants/ The lovers – Brittany Brewer

I haven’t been able to crunch into an apple for months, slurp its juices from those endearing to-go pouches, make an impromptu decision to trek ten minutes and dig into a chunk of apple pie

I don’t eat them and I wait in a kind of stasis, a purgatory of misunderstanding as apple-picking season approaches -a must-do in Michigan. My body’s pain is more than apples. It’s a gnawing around the stem that persists whether suspended from a tree, sheltered by a hand, or bolstered by the sturdy base of a basket.

It is the fog that arrives at the orchard off-season, confounding climate scientists as it descends, impenetrable, when all the orchard thirsts for is for someone to take a closer look before the harvest.

Cursebreaker – Morgan Bridges

The small orange bottle feels foreign between my fingertips. An undeniable darkness seeps from deep within its molecular structure, dangerous as a loaded gun and just as capable of claiming life.

His. Hers. Mine. If I would just let it already.

The bottle is more than half empty, and I wonder how many it took for my father to realize their claws were ripping him apart from the inside out. I gripped the bottle carefully and twisted the lid off, eyeballing the precious jewels of my family. The bottle collided with the wall by an undeniable force. The sound reverberated throughout my skull and left a dull ringing in my ears.

The pills scattered

across the surface of the scratched hardwood floor, and my eyes searched for answers amongst their constellation. I refused to believe our fate was etched in the stars – that he was meant to live and die

tethered to this monster, some illusion of peace while his demons devoured the man he once was. My sister’s investigation of his vices played into the hand we were dealt, and somehow I felt like The Fool. I scream to any god that will listen, asking why on each quivering breath.

The silence screams back with equal ferociousness.

Are we some karma for the sins of our predecessors, cursed with an inability to cope because our ancestors refused? A needle prick against skin, a rush away from reality,

more enticing than a lower-class existence, where our friends and family drop like flies. Retribution fell upon the shoulders of babes, and the weight left us doubtful and broken. Shadows meander around the recesses of my mind, scouring for a point of weakness.

I have yet to give them one.

I scoop up the white round objects between my fingers and place them back within their cage, locked behind the damned orange plastic. The bottle sails freely into the abyss of the trashcan across the room.

I am not some result of ancestral mistakes. I am not my father’s daughter. I am the cursebreaker.

MOTHER PEACE MEDITATION (Seven of Cups) –

Lorraine Caputo

Mycenæan goddess, breasts full & bare

You stretch a net between your far-apart hands a net for sleeping, for capturing fish a net for gathering fruits for carrying a child upon your firm back

Mycenæan sister you stand on a clean beach the clear sea tranquil behind you Surrounded by six cups green living water arching flowing upwards into a seventh cup upon your head

Or, sister is it from that celestial-blue chalice upon Mediterranean hair those living green waters flow into those cups from which you will quench your thirst?

& upon that chalice rim the Spirit Dove perches

These waters bathe & soothe your dreams, my sister your dreams which are my dreams

Upon these waters we flow upward & back to earth gathering & resting capturing & carrying

MOTHER PEACE MEDITATIONS (xix The Sun) –

Lorraine Caputo

We dance young & old bathed by the glorious sun

Balloons Green & red a blue one floating up & away

We dance with Animal Spirit giraffe long graceful neck searching the horizon the landscape striped zebra to run across savannahs & merge into grassen shadows a butterfly flying free tasting the nectar of each flower of life

I want what suits me – Mariel Cariker

In the months before I really met you I read my tarot cards every day when I woke up like the weather like they'd tell me something I didn't already know.

On my worst days I see the similarities. The small ways our new love mimics a life that folded, that I worry was always as unstable as a house of cards from a flimsy deck.

On my best days

I see the magnificence that former fragile house held. The shiniest of diamonds, the sharpest of spades, but mostly red, ripe hearts plastered all over the walls.

When I finally read your tarot cards you were so moved by it you made me a playlist of songs I had never heard and grew to love.

This time I want a home that's a little more stable,

maybe in a new city that we both don't know. Our home will have parking and a porch and maybe, miraculously in-unit laundry. It will hold up easier to the wind. It won't be taken down by a sharp breath out of place.

Bad Luck – Kelly Lynn Curry

They say I have 7 years of bad luck

666 days so far, I’ve counted

And I still have mirror shards embedded in my hands

A black cat has been following my every move I have spilt too much salt to count And the ladder I keep walking under just reminds me of the ladybug I killed

So, I took to the ouija board and the hope I had fell far away when my ancestors told me I've never had the luck of the Irish and I will never find a penny heads up.

On Encountering the Patriarchy One More Time –Shymala Dason

My body is full of thunder.

Lightning. Storm. King Tide. Rage.

It is full of fragility, Tiniest seashell cast

On tinier salt sand.

Tiny dreaming in roaring surf, Hoped for rocking in ocean arms

Turned to shattering on rock:

Under booted foot, Mermaids cannot dance

Without bleeding.

The Wind Scratches at My Throat – Gerard Duncan Jr.

I have cracked my ribs open picked them clean before the crows could have a chance I wanted to make sure I was good enough (for you)

I scrape bark against my back I would like to lick my wounds in peace (if you please)

I howl in the wind like the dog (you say) I am

Seasons – Stephanie Gregory

Death conjures images of black

dark days when the wind howls and the rain beats against the windowpane cold

Gray clouds swirling amongst flashes of white light, flickering candles, long drawn gazes

A rumbling in the distance of what’s to come knowing what has gone

Death does not conjure images of warm summer mornings in June the leaves of the aspen gently rustling in the cool breeze as cicada’s sing from the pines

The sun on your face, the sweet smell of summer flowers blooming freshly watered, bees humming from one blossom to the next

Death, that old familiar; all too familiar, a regular guest it seems comes sneaking around in the cold of the Winter, in the thaw of the Spring

Now under the Strawberry moon

Bad Deity – Haley Guthrie

there were more deadly creatures than god knew what to do with so he stuffed them all inside my head (un)safe keeping for the rapture.

Under My Skin – Natalie Hammonds

The ghosts lay their hands on my bruised body, past attempts to beat the thoughts and feelings out of my head.

Sometimes, their hands seem to go right through me. And other times, I can taste the blood in my mouth again.

I don’t feel right in my own skin despite the decades I’ve spent in it, Home isn’t a place that I’m terribly familiar with.

There are layers to me, beneath the chalky makeup and fringe-lined clothes and heels that I can't quite walk in, I exist despite it all.

Amid the constant sunsets and cowering in the dark there’s something to be said About the perseverance of light.

You only get one body. There is no such thing as a second chance. I try to explain this to whoever will listen,

but I always end up staring at my own reflection.

Magic – K. Hartsell

Magic doesn’t breathe in Hollywood

It suffocates in circus tent delusions

chokes on specters; sliced by wires

Mote it be on heathen root elements through elegance and eloquence

It’s in the whisper of a heart

The wisdom of the stars

The warble of the moon and the waft of a memory

It’s in the hint of cinnamon

The healing of the shadow

The harmony of intuition and the honesty of the sea

Magic is in the mundane

The musings of the mind

Not the mediocrity of machine or the mimicry in productions

As I will it, blessed be.

Rachael has a telephone wire to God - Sunny Hill

Rachael has a telephone wire to God, so we call. I am the operator, the one / trying to make the connection. I tap, tap, tap / and shuffle / until Spirit speaks. I interpret / the pauses, the vibrations, the colors. I flatten my palms / over the cards / I am pulling. I talk about the grey skies / of childhood and the many blues of adulthood. The stars / draping from her ceiling, bathing her / in Moon. Up at night, trying to make a home / despite her family’s swords. I wish I could tell her / how to become more successful, but all I can say is / she already is. Fortune is / a distant mother, who rejects you / and protects you, often / at the same time. The wheel is turning, but I am not sure how long / until she has all the books / organized so neatly / on the shelves, until there is a cat / on the hammock, / until there is a partner who loves her / as fully and beautifully as she deserves. There is so much curiosity, / and I can feel it in my forehead. The pulse, the purple breath, the spirits / who come to her at night. They all ask her to keep dreaming, and then / we say goodbye. I collect the cards / while Rachael tells me about her lucid dreams, and I smile / and think it is so beautiful how spiritually gifted / everybody is, and yet nobody knows / how to translate it.

I take my grief to lunch – Claudia Jean

she orders fish with the head and mine is swimming, still swimming when she licks her fork lovingly.

grief has no eyes, so i stare at my dish. she wraps her fingers around the trident housed within my ribs, plunges. bones puncturing fried skin, goosebumps rise in morbid curiosity.

is this what grief sees when she looks at me?

across the table, a house salad mocks me. iceberg with the head i am choking, still choking when grief undresses me lovingly.

unblessing – Claudia Jean

removed the selenite from your doorstep while you were sleeping uprooted the rose bushes I birthed in the yard hired a gnome to follow you around and laugh at your misfortune gambled with faeries and gave up my name danced in the open abdomen of a Sunday afternoon gifted the forest nymphs my left rib to make sure you never hike again

they say cursing is a troubled man’s game, karma lurks in every breath but they’ve never tasted the patient revenge of a good girl’s death

Fool, Empress, Ten of Cups – Mackenzie

“bryce canyon national park search and rescue” painted in green on the side of a van parked at a liquor store in kentucky.

the windows of the van reveal a deluge of cardboard boxes that then move into my head their contents rattling my thoughts all day.

whatever direction you were born, you will fight all your life. whatever color they paint your name, you will peel all your life.

i want to break into that van and find the keys in the ignition. i want to rub the faded keychain like a worry stone.

i want to drive it to the twice daily, climb out, and use the pay phone. i want to hear your voice crack and wrap around my own.

i want to trade - hand you these caves and you kiss canyons into my mouth.

Kae

“bryce

canyon national park” i want to squat in the parking lot.

“search and rescue” i want to take a picture shaking with cold.

Marathons for Charity Cases (The Star) - Robin Kathaas

Recently I’ve been running like I have something to live for and everything I say almost feels true enough to believe in. Sometimes you really do have to fake it ‘till you make it. It being something, anything softer than the calcified paws of whatever monster you held at night when the house suddenly became both too human and not human enough to hold you like you thought you’d be held by now. Nothing lost yet, though. Even if it seems like the floorboards will never stop creaking, eventually you will learn to build your own fireman pole and step-slide-spin down into something that won’t let you fall, a whole pool of possibilities, cold and only near-infinite, but deep enough to hold everything your bedroom was never built to feed. My hands still don’t have any keys in them, but it’s not about them: look closer, look at me, look at my feet.

Tarot – Ghada Khalil

The wands are burning, fingers dripping with wax, but creativity is a thief with no time for the flame.

Pentacles fall like silver rain, ticking against the windows of a house no longer home empty vaults phantom laughter of a ghost I once knew.

Swords dangle above the head, sharp kisses in the air, as I carve conflict into flesh, lines that blur between sacrifice and surrender.

Cups overflow with choices, brimming with steaming tides intuition is a tale that I refuse to hear, drowning in the quiet.

The cards are laid, and I am the spread disassembled, scattered across the table, a lie that won’t settle into a single truth.

In the end, it's just a deck of mirrors, shuffling through lives that never quite align.

And in the tarot’s gaze, I find myself a stranger, lost between the lines a riddle, a journey without end, until the end.

An Empath’s Light – Meghan

King

A beacon of hope, faith flickering candle light

Magick, mystery, belief in miracles

Held in the inner most sanctum of my heart

Transmuting outward forces of darkness

Taking pain, sorrow, finding a silver lining

A healer’s gift

Lavender calms an anxious mind

Sage and rosemary cleanse

Making way for tranquility

Banishing the need for validation

Heart rose quartz, a touch of amethyst

Following a path of self love

Trusting intuition, of knowing

Moonstone amplifies ability to read auras

Discernment for intentions

To set boundaries for what doesn’t align

The strongest magick is love illuminating darkness

One torch to light the masses

Echoes of the Past – Allie Linn

I’ve driven every man away

Listening to echoes of the past

They very loudly reveal my transgressions

Terrified by the possibility of deja vu

I hear the chorus of my negative core beliefs

Echoed back at me in stereo

Ask the others

You’ll get the same response

I’ll fall on my sword before subjecting another person to love me

Isn’t Every Man the King of Cups Reversed at Some Point?

–

Jennifer MacBain Stephens

For that organic farmer that one time (Inspired by the Dark Wood Tarot, written by Sasha Graham and illustrated by Abigail Larson.)

The height is there; he pulls off a cape. Upside down, he is a manipulator. Calls sirens up from the kitchen’s pot sludge to tempt you into falling in love again. But not with yourself. Maybe not with him. These sirens are crones in sunglasses and fake nails.

A thought, later: am I supposed to look like that?

I never will.

You could be like these spirits: swirly in tight jeans. misty, how should you reimagine yourself not good enough?

The dazzling options of what you could be for him. He pockets your spell book, plants seeds of doubt, waters them while combing his beard and taking a hit, hides flirting.

Every girl loves a mystic, we want our feet off the ground.

In the mirror he smokes up and dances, distracts you from projects. What did I say I was going to work on today? spins false stories around the fire, we see nymph bodies fall like rain into the tall grass, too weak to get back up. These are the fallen women, their paintings abandoned, their words on paper, dust.

An egomaniac, his scepter is force that pulls your nymph spirit out of your body, it wants to join the others on the ground, because it would be comfortable, to lie down, not care, fold the covers back, get into bed. Leave this sinister goblin, the crescent moon whispers, his fingers sprout plague, your pen and soul could be full again.

But he says

I’m already missing you

Rider Wait! There’s More! – Jess Marsh

I asked the cards about you, And I saw the devil, mischievous. Washed in the blue light Of a psilocybin high.

I've practiced temperance abandoned my empress, and transformed under the moon. How about you?

Have you filled up your cup? Through seeking shelter in the houses of worship that leave you out in the cold?

Emerged from the flames, A crumbling tower, Stain your hands with the earth, From the Hell which you crawled.

Sandcastles – Gwendolyn Meredith

With one sweep, A dream so sweet, Crashes down.

Life reminding me Wishes are not reality.

What I thought was land, Was only shifting sand.

Silent Torture – John Michael

To lay in silent torture

As the tourniquet tightens like two hands of a noose around my throat

Inching every, last breath from my lungs.

Fear running as deep as my self-doubt

Deep cuts from controlling words that slash through my every emotion like a knife

Lacerating me with each letter released by your pestilent whispers. Leaving me covered in succulent scars from your sadistic lack of selfconfidence.

I hear your cadence of sibilants like a marching band within my rattling ear drums.

Eye ducts all dried to release any more tears on your venomous soul. You're nothing but a poisonous plague and yet I have survived more than you.

Once I remembered who I was and what I was capable of, you were nothing but a rat carrying sickness. And I am stronger for surviving such plagues and works of evil. I come from the darkness, and I have been beaten down more by my own whispers than anything you could give yet handle.

You're nothing and I am everything, I release you and take back my soul. For I belong to fate, and you, well you will fall victim to your own karmic fault.

make a wish – Ophelia Monet

close your eyes, make a wish you only get one

the wish is an illusion, of course we both know by whom this world is run

they keep us guessing, keep us hopeful, just to take it all away one step out of line, you’re gone their favorite game to play

Much Too Lively – Ophelia Monet

languid thoughts to match my body’s movements kaleidoscopic gray skies infecting my blood clouding my vision

I see you’ve met my former self, did you like her? did you fall for her?

I hear she’s much too lively, a bit chaotic for my taste

I’ve made some changes to better serve you

Prisoners – Glenis Moore

Spread across the land, like scaffolding for the sky, the pylons hum and crack in the summer heat, their tops winking at the clouds that seem to almost nestle between the uprights. Yet from below they look like giants, linked in chains, marching across the fenland to some unknown destiny feet wrapped in dying grass. A long line to each horizon never ending and with no beginning. And in the winter you can hear them mutter, as the wind slaps their chains, cursing a life in this open wild that offers no respite. Just a howl from the north where the flat lands give way to the chill of the sea and their wind farm brothers rock on their own sand-locked prison islands.

Period Piece – Sheila

Murphy

People in their thirties listen to cork pop percussion and wavy synth blithery soft tones making voice apart from chapped melodic lips a ways away from consummating kisses the idea of touch blending with gray birch sketch lines

People in their thirties cry into the music they order up then let go into melodic seascapes that swell and relax the way of mother modeling melodic lithe and finding love in the striated pitch of grommet functioning like thought pulled through with precocity

Eight of Cups – Navila Nahid

a guilty scene where paths bluster a ruddy Sisyphus persists a haggle never was for always will be electric lust drawn under bloody moon; I forgave my spiral of yearn for a toothache disco; it pocketed my face released the lost white doves from my heart

The Universe – Navila Nahid

She swirls gripping atoms unspinning orbitals untethering molecules serpentine a helix-snake beholding the pinpricks of a lattice-heaven the eye of the universe itself uncoiling tangible primeval reliving as Her having birthed her will again be borne through Her

I cannot recall the last time I wasn’t scarred by my own hand – Catherine Puma

it isn’t cannibalism if it’s my own flesh just cells eating cells eating cells self within self within self

can’t look the mirror in the eye when I can’t stand the sight, so shut the lights for good measure but when I’m sitting in my own skin and can’t stand the feel of me, for there’s no escape from the oils in these pores

I scrape my fingers through my jungle of hair, gauging tracks in the understory every bump and imperfection needs to be excavated and leveled I’m compelled to squeeze and scar myself

if my face is a continent, every pimple a polluted river constrict the dam until the blood runs clear red if the terrain is not felled and smoothed it’s a blot on the landscape and will be attacked relentlessly, autonomously while watching reruns

I’m a bit more free when I peel these clothes from me ill-fitting worn out fast fashion too thin and short with holes where jeans button

I’m calmer when naked society’s straight jacket unlatched and dropped off the bed just me save the jewels you’ve given me the body of an artist’s sapphic masterwork lounging on the sheets and wanting you closer

The High Priestess – Britt Reign

Beauty is pain

And this life is so beautiful

She was never created to be controlled

She was simply created to exist

To just be

As brilliantly as she

Living so free

So passionately

Always so vibrantly

Wearing her pain was her alchemy

And that was the most beautiful thing about her

Three of Swords – Britt Reign

Yearning for a partner

After years of always being the foe

Sacrificing myself for love

While you painted me as a martyr

Was it ever really true love though?

Lake Effect – David Reuter

The blizzard of the blanched debris that strayed across his seasick face screams sharp as though an icy shear that juts above the covered path.

Like sweeping sleet across the level ground, in trudging, shuffling steps, he strains to keep his movement shambling on beyond his last attempt.

In blinding, smothered blasts, he strives to see the remnants of his queasy life, bewildered in his every shot to somehow falter through.

With every stride suppressed beneath the mess that strives to bury him below, he lumbers on and burrows forth to keep his fate at bay.

Fated

Role –

Danielle M. Schalk

I feel the tug of the cosmos a tension in its unseen strings these ties to me I can feel them growing taught vibrating as the tension grows filling me with the reverberations cacophonous like the moment an orchestra warms up disparate tones that somehow allude to the harmony that is possible and the great layered beauty that could be coaxed forth by one with the skill those attuned

This strikes fear into the heart of me fear and yearning for I don’t know what role I’m meant to play am I the conductor or the conducted or merely part of the cacophony about to transform into the feature production

Grief in High Places – Elizabeth Anne Schwartz

From this vantage point, you can finally see clearly: sudden dips in valleys and the way the sun reflects so sharply off the edge of the sea. You’re reminded of his fists as you study the rocks by the shore, rising like bruised knuckles from the sand. You recognize his shoulders in the hills, stubborn slopes. You smell his contempt like a fire in the pines. And in a new way, you feel sad for him: far removed as you are, lounging at this peak. The sun on your skin, and her hand on your arm, leading you back down to the thick of the brush, where the lily of the valley has her scent when you hold it close and breathe.

A Lady’s Maid Prepares Her Mistress’s Hair for the Wig –

AJ Sharpe

She sits with her throat at my knee; me, blade-handed. The gentle trusting of a hand-fed lamb. Sinaisaac. Her felid lean. My inner thighs pressed in a hot brush, a wet tickle.

A feeling like a breath.

I stroke her rum-soft hair. It parts like milk over glass.

Five of Swords / Two of Cups – S.C. Williams

In the fairy light strewn reading room, a clock chimes the midnight hour chasing shadows into unseen holes

A thousand mouths scream in spiderwebbed corners recalling to the restless that I am both Death and Its lover who is rendered by fate

The spell on my bloodless lips spills drunken curses like drops of wine wet with wistful longings

staining the pulsing wound in your chest once held with practiced patience And with fingers threaded through broken ribs

I stitch the universe back inside you

Have you tasted the poisoned apple? does my sweetness satisfy? asks the skull in the mirror above me sounding like my old self holding a rabbit between its teeth

I slip the Stars and Moon inside your skin and foolishly birth the Sun into your veins

In the fairy light strewn reading room, a clock chimes the midnight hour sinking our bodies in dark moonlit waters

I lift you back into this world with rotting fingers putting a curse on my rebirthed brow reciting your name to the wild beyond where Death’s love cannot reach

Unfinished Exit – Claudia Wysocky

I keep thinking about the time in high school when you drew me

a map of the city, I still have it somewhere. It was so easy to get lost in a place where all the trees look the same. And now every time I see a missing person's poster stapled to a pole, all I can think is that could have been me. Missing, disappeared. But there are no posters for people who just never came back from vacation, from college, from life. You haven't killed yourself because you'd have to commit to a single exit.

What you wouldn't give to be your cousin Catherine, who you watched twice in one weekend get strangled nude in a bathtub onstage by the actor who once filled your mouth with quarters at your mother's funeral. The curtains closed and opened again. We applauded until our hands were sore.

But you couldn't shake the image of her lifeless body, the way she hung there like a marionette with cut strings. And now every time you try to write a poem, it feels like a eulogy.

A desperate attempt to capture something that's already gone.

But maybe that's why we keep writing, keep searching for

the right words, because in this world where everything is temporary, poetry is our only chance at immortality. So even though you haven't found the perfect ending yet, you keep writing. For Catherine, for yourself, for all the lost souls who never got their own missing person's poster. Because as long as there are words on a page, there is still hope for an unfinished exit to find its proper ending.

Fiction

Shapeshifter – Terry Adcock

Death Valley. Sand-blasted canyons. Long ride. Endless highway. Zero gas stations. Zero cell service.

Stifling heat. Slightly delirious.

Cabin up ahead. Shade. Shelter. Much needed rest. Engine sputters. Fuel starved. Gives up the ghost. All quiet. Disturbingly so.

Outside, one hundred and ten brutal degrees. Inside, pleasantly cool. Impossible.

Center stage, table set for two. Starched linen. Gleaming silverware. Cold beer.

Wait! Cold beer? What the. . .?

Nervous. Watchful.

Curtains billow, no breeze. Tear down curtains. Windows locked. Behind him. Floorboards creak. Turns.

A vision. Most gorgeous creature ever.

Long blond tendrils frame a sensuous oval face.

Cut-off jeans. Shirttails tied tight, exposed hard belly. Buttons strain. Perfect breasts.

Unbridled desire. Impulsive. Go to her.

Responsive. Passionate. So willing. Stop! Confusion. Doubts. What’s her name? Where is she from? Why him?

The siren’s call. So alluring. Weakening. Submissive. They embrace. Again and again.

Gentle waves. Floating. Downward pull. Down. Into the abyss.

Total surrender. Sweet nothingness.

Long abandoned and stripped bare, the dusty, run-down cabin had just one thing left, a body lying in the middle of the floor.

“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Old Sheriff Rawlings removed his hat and wiped his brow with a limp handkerchief The tight hat band left a red mark across his forehead

His rookie partner, Willard Watson, said, “Poor guy. If you hadn’t spotted that motorcycle, we never would have known. It’s been years since anyone stopped here.”

“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Rawlings said again. He moved to get a better angle.

“Biker dude, huh?” Watson observed.

“Yeah, I guess the motorcycle, patches, and tattoos gave him away. You’ll make a first-rate detective one day.”

“I only meant –“

“I know what you meant. Relax, son. I’m just busting your chops.”

“I still don’t get it. It hasn’t rained in months, yet he’s soaking wet. Where did the water come from? There’s no water anywhere except on him.”

Good old Watson, stating the obvious – again.

Watson glanced around the one-room cabin. “What do you think happened?”

“Isn’t it obvious? He drowned.”

“In the desert?”

“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

What Alice Saw – Garrett Bliss

You always said my carelessness would hurt me. If you could speak now, Jonathan, you’d say “I told you so.”

If you could, you’d probably say I only come to talk to you when things are bad. Others are more attentive. They leave flowers, notes, clear leaves from the gravestones.

It was our first day of real cold today, the kind that doesn’t go away when morning’s done. And I was tired. I’m so damn tired all the time now, Jonathan.

And our Alice isn’t a little girl any more who gets, who needs, everything done for her. And those blankets are so heavy, and I looked at those stairs and thought Alice can go get ‘em this year.

It’s been so many years. I gave no thought to what was up there.

“Alice, it’s gonna be cold today. Go up in the attic and bring down the winter blankets, dear.”

“But you say I can’t go up there.”

“It’s about time you started helping around here more. I been doing the work of two for too long.”

Please don’t think that was mean of me, Jonathan. But this is the load you left me. But I know, you were as much a victim of that last winter as those who died on the island. In truth, you were only half-alive when we left the island.

As soon as Alice was up those stairs, I knew I’d made a mistake.

She was quiet – a nothing-good’s-gonna-come-of-it quiet. I called out to her, “They’re in the trunk right at the top of the stairs, dear. No need to go looking around up there.”

“I used to play up here, didn’t I?”

The minute she said this, I knew how it all would end.

Back then – those first years – we never gave it a second thought, all the time she spent up there playing by herself. We welcomed the peace and quiet after everything we’d been through on the island.

And it seemed safer than letting her play with other girls from the island, or from the town, frankly. Who knows what one of them would say?

She’s so young, we thought: What did she see? What did she understand? The way kids are, she’d forget it all soon enough.

That’s what we counted on.

“Just bring the blankets down, dear. If I’d known you’d go getting yourself all dirty poking around, I’d have gone up myself.” I was at the bottom of the stairs now. I should have seen her at the trunk.

“I’m not getting dirty, mother. Just looking around. I had a little corner up here where I’d play, didn’t I?”

Never one to let things go. Gets that from you.

That day I found her. And those drawings she’d made. Felt like the floor fell out from beneath me.

“Alice, don’t go into the attic anymore.” That was the end of it as far as you were concerned.

That, and the whitewash. One damn coat. And you only covered the worst of the drawings.

I was the one watching her and keeping her busy, so she’d make no more drawings. Or sneak up those stairs. Couldn’t take my eyes off her those first weeks. And then she seemed to move on, to forget.

“Alice, I just sent you up for the blankets. Come on down.” I started up the stairs.

I knew where I’d find her.

She was holding a lantern in one hand, waving dust away with the other. The air was stale and hot and smelled of the past all cooped up and left alone.

She had this tender smile. Musta been remembering afternoons playing up here. Can’t blame her.

The light of her lamp fell on those drawings – the happy ones you didn’t cover up.

She retraced lines drawn years ago. Her eyes lit up and she shook her head in amusement.

“I played up here all the time, didn’t I?”

“You outgrew that. Such a dirty, dusty place.”

“I didn’t ‘outgrow’ it. You and father forbid me to play up there.”

“Not a healthy place for a growing girl.”

I was hoping she wouldn’t notice where you’d painted with the whitewash. Cover em up. That’s all you was thinking.

She raised her lantern to where drawings had begun to bleed through your one damn coat of whitewash.

“Alice!” I composed myself. “Come along. It’s not healthy up here.

“That’s what you told me. Of course, I didn’t question that.”

I had that feeling like when you’re falling, and you know you’re gonna fall and everything slows down, but you still can’t stop yourself from falling.

The light from the lantern shivered on the ceiling.

She smoothed her hand over the whitewash. Dust came off on her hand.

They were nothing more than stick figures. But she didn’t miss a thing, our girl. Didn’t miss a thing that last, long, winter on the island.

Captured it all in the simplicity of a little girl’s drawings. Innocence and horror.

A pot of soup boiling over an open fire. A line of people, the hungry ones fallen to the ground. A man with a rifle before a table of food.

“Alice, come downstairs. Nothing good is gonna come from being up here.”

“No.”

I felt sick.

“Alice, please. Downstairs.”

“You never talk about the island. You’ve tried to make me forget, and I guess I have, but…”

“You have no idea what it was like.”

If you could have seen the look in her eyes – like I’d become some sort of stranger.

“Alice, people just wanted to survive. To get through that winter.”

“And then spring came, and everyone left. And it was like you all agreed. If we never talk about it, it didn’t happen.”

“Why would we want to talk about it?”

She wet a corner of her kerchief and rubbed away the whitewash. The drawing beneath emerged as clear as the day I first saw it: The image of a man turning on spit.

The First Curse – Shelby Cohen

In an age before white haired men gathered in a grey stone room in the heart of Rome and decided they knew best what was right and what was wrong for the people of this world, before they set about enforcing their decision with blood and with fire, trees grew thick as fortress walls and women walked an ancient path that began at their birth and ended when they went home to The Mother. Their footsteps were sure, and even when the winds blew cold and fierce from the south, a certain omen of undoing, they communed with the earth, and cradled their children, and loved their menfolk.

Before enough time had passed for them to heed the warning on the wind, boots thundered on roads that had only ever known native feet. In villages and settlements, a new faith was decreed, almost always after one or two were put to the sword to underscore the point, usually a man, sometimes a child. The soldiers had been told, or maybe they knew instinctively, that a child’s blood was more convincing. The bearded men in Rome advised them that it was the women who kept the old ways. They did not say that crows would gather in trees, blotting out their very leaves, nor that the women’s eyes would burn red with unformed hexes as the troops made their way among them.

There was no word in the women’s tongue for how they felt about the soldiers, the message they carried, their iron, or their stink. They began to hiss when they saw any Roman, a noise the soldiers heard as a curse, for it was a sound born of fear and fury made loud with love, torn and jagged.

There was power in the women’s hands and how they used the flora all around them, but it was not the sort of power meant for war making. What they had cultivated over generations and centuries gave them dominion over roots and herbs, to heal and to sooth, to coax nourishment from the soil and summon rain to quench the earth. There

had never been a need for these gifts to be used for harm. But as the rule of Rome spread its stain across the hills and valleys, their formless hisses became a chorus. One voice joined another, building until hiss began to sound like hex.

As the Romans enforced their almighty Father and crucified Son, they defiled the earth the women cherished like a child. They took and took, demanding the sacred but practicing the profane. Their camps were raucous, and young women were sacrificed to their most unholy violations. The balance of flora and fauna was threatened as animals were slaughtered for their feasts and trees felled for their quarters. The women’s chorus of hexes rose in its fury. It flowed down streams and was carried up hills on the white and chestnut wings of hawks and the glimmering scales of minnows.

The women had never before borne such malice; nor their mothers or their mother’s mothers. They knew not the consequence of their grief and rage, how it would manifest when magnified by the shared supremacy of their power. Its awesome pitch startled rabbits from their warrens and woke babes from their slumbers. That wrath and malevolence, the combined outcry of women hither and yon, began to take shape. The words bubbled unbidden, compulsory, from lips used to speaking softly in praise and benevolence. The pain and the rage became a chant:

Men may fall to men

Earth may yield to iron

We are the mothers of land and beast We stand, tall and eternal

We call the wind to drive thou back

Thine word and armies, both Our bodies, our spirits, though broken, endure We stand. We fight. We rage.

A pestilence crept into the Christian camp. Weeping sores raised on gooseflesh overnight. Soldiers were listless, melancholy. They formed their hands into claws to tear at their skin. It snaked its way into the priests’ throats and the generals’ chests. The trees of the forest loomed threateningly over their heads and they were struck dumb by their dizzying density and creaking height. They shivered through the warmest nights and perspired through the chilliest days, with no relief for what ailed them.

A cold northern wind whipped up and men began to desert. The priests had no one to protect them. Efforts to speak the word of their god faltered and the relentless squall pushed them south as surely as a hand at their backs. As their numbers dwindled, the wood breathed once more. Great white owls hooted from the trees and dappled fawns gamboled among the ferns.

The Christians returned home breathless, saying they were cursed. They pulled words for evil from their sacred texts and ascribed them to the women. They neglected to mention that they had been first to invade a flourishing society, to pillage its citizen’s resources and force an order of religion upon it, neither requested nor required. The women’s world, breath by breath, day by day, returned to what it once was. The symphony of birdsong no longer interrupted by the clang of swords, as squirrels and chipmunks emerged on a forest floor no longer shook by the clamor of marching boots. Children were brought along to forage for fiddleheads and mushrooms. The menfolk chopped wood in the evenings and fished the streams in the mornings. Peace and harmony crept over a land imbued with violence and fear for too long.

Mothers taught their daughters thereafter that evil comes, not from mystical fallen deities nor worlds beyond their grasp, but men alone. They taught them of the power of words and to speak softly unless one wishes to cast a curse. A dire warning, passed down with love, to heed the

wind and beware gods from above. For when a woman’s voice is raised in wrath, it may well alter the whole world.

Belladonna – Charlotte Cooper

My hellborn hound of midnight with lamen starfire eyes, circles knowingly at my feet. His eyes adore mine as he retracts his razor tipped spines, allowing me to fondle his dense black fur. He howls with impatience; the scent of fresh blood driving him mad. He awaits to feast upon the many useless parts of my kill.

I chant on the wisps of a moonsong breeze, summoning my coven to goety. My sister’s impatience of this foretold night is intense as my hounds hunger. Their claws, fangs and potent powers have been divinely sharpened, preparing to conjure our hex this night.

Neath the solstice moon’s glow I am encircled by a swirling storm of nightfare creatures. Black Witch moths sparkle in their purple hue, a cloud of Death’s Heads flutter beside the glow of Ermine’s wings. Owls hoot their hymns accompanied by foxes' screams. Bats wings slap at my flesh, under the watchful red glare of the Jackalope’s eyes.

Lichen rich leaves and rowan berries drop from the trees, caught in the eddy of my sister's arrival. Rats, crows and hellfire cats burst through the elder shrubs, entering my scared clearing. Their familiars have arrived, my coven has come.

We retreat to my den concealed in the depths of the forest’s heart to commence Esbat. I cast off my skin and light a single black flame, throwing a dull glow on my grimoire. Spiders scuttle across the walls of my hollow, bejewelled in their crystalline cobwebs.

Shadows recede as the fire in the hearth begins to grow and the brew in my cauldron broils and bubbles. Bitter black berries swell and burst under the nightshade of this strawberry moon. My coven gathered, my hunt accomplished, I have earned my prize and majesty. I present to the altar and my sisters, the harvested heart of man.

I grin at the rotting remains dumped in a heap, worth nothing more than carrion for my hound. He’s ravenous this night, there’ll be little

left for the beetles and flies. The bones will be cleaned, boiled and gifted as trophies to my coven. Next time we gather at their hollows, I expect to see them intricately carved into boline handles.

I regale the tale of my fortuitous kill to my entranced sisters. Revelling in the resplendence of my hunt, I paint their minds in the eerie power of the forest’s midnight glow.

My victim was afraid, but not of me, of the wolves that crossed my path afore me. He froze in their glare; a slight tremor rocked his body as his eyes flitted left to right seeking escape. With a guttural growl and click of my claws, the pack moved on, leaving us alone.

Seizing my moment I shifted into a damsel in distress, his ego swelling as he took on the role of hero. Presented afore him a voluptuous woman with wanton eyes, he smirked hungrily, thinking only of what he wanted to do with my body. I smiled sweetly, thinking only of what part of this pathetic creature my athame would slice first.

Our limbs intertwined without the need for words. We pawed, groped and scored writhing flesh until moans, screams, shattered the spellful silence of the forest.

Pleasure retreated; pain appeared as he viewed my true form with virgin eyes.

I cackled, growled, he pleaded and begged like the disgusting lump of flesh he was. I conducted harmonies in haunted, harrowing rhyme with the creatures of the night, as he labelled me a freak of nature with his last undeserving breath.

Now my coven chant in hushed rhythm the foretold number of insidious incantations, gleeful the time is nigh. With my boline and potent brew I melt his black heart till it drips into the chalice, like sticky black ink. We invoke our foremothers as we cast a hex upon all his kind.

No more shall mindless mortal men control our sister's fate. No more shall the imbalance of power be present.

No more shall our sisters be enslaved.

No more shall they forget it’s not only men you should fear in the woods.

So must it be.

The Orphan – Sam Crain

I killed the vampire this morning, dawn my second cloak of protection. Now afternoon makes shadows in the schoolyard slant the other direction. I gaze out at the kid I’ve made an orphan and guilt is abstract greyness in my soul, like fog. I should feel bad, and I recognize that.

So what?

The kid’s jacket is too big, out at the elbows, and I’ve already made up in my head that it’s dear old dad’s donned against a nonexistent cold. He hunches so the coat looms even larger as he kicks up dust under his swing.

No one is coming to collect him. Does he know that yet? More importantly, should I tell him I did it?

“No, please, I have a son,” the vampire had said, his eyes laughing at me as I’d borne down. The same eyes sunsetting now.

September is a long month. I remember. Even with Labor Day weekend taking its bite out of the beginning, the month unfurls slow like a stained-glass sunset, refusing to go properly dark. Like the vampire’s eyes. I’d lingered to watch them extinguish in their leisurely fashion.

That son looked like he was used to being an afterthought, expecting to be forgotten. Other kids were boisterous next to him, seeing who could swing highest, calling bets and challenges, their words tumbling like pebbles, and he stole looks at the other kids occasionally, but not with envy. Instead, I read there his sense that nothing they did had anything to do with him. His separateness.

I may be projecting. Probably I am, as I flick cigarette ash out my car window. I can taste the fight in the bark of my throat, acrid and dry. Rum or bourbon will cut it later.

Fuck. A memory dislodges from much further back. I keep my eyes on the kid and breathe as if that’ll actually help me brace. New Age bullshit is sometimes all we’ve got.

My family was one of those oddities. Mom hit Dad and scared living hell out of us kids. Dad provoked her so she wouldn’t go after us he was more satisfying prey.

Twelve years old before I realized those weren’t shaving nicks on his neck. She was eating him, slowly but surely, and he was letting himself be drained to spare us lines cutting their way into his face and the backs of his hands in the process.

Stay together for the children, they used to say.

And he loved her in some deep, unreasoning part of himself that I couldn’t see.

She’s a vampire. Of course, I’d felt crazy, who wouldn’t? I dreamed of freeing him us and going away where no one knew us, starting over: widowed father, son, twin tiny girls. I’d get a job to help out. It could work, if I lied about my age.

I sharpened a broom handle and drove it through Mother’s heart one fine, blood-red sunrise. Used every ounce of Little League strength I possessed.

The blood she’d drunk out of Dad soaked their marriage-bed in the bedroom with the blackout curtains I’d never questioned, not in three years. I’d been conceived in that bed and my sisters too.

Fuck.

I’d done it and then came the twist. Dad hated me for it. I’d freed him against his will, and he could not forgive me. I left him cradling what was left of Mother as I packed some clothes and my mitt into a bag and slammed the back door.

My sisters were still in there. Maybe Dad would snap out of it enough to raise them properly (that word again). They were nearly four. I could not have taken them with me, so I left them.

My mother had smelled of lilac perfume and lemongrass shampoo as I killed her. This morning’s vamp had smelled of boxed red and gambling sweat. He’d had a good last night, is my point.

His son is still out there, alone now, waiting without any expectation. I still have to disappoint him. But maybe I undo the door, find the gap in the fence. “Hey kid.” What an opener. I look like a cliché of a pervert.

He meets my eyes square, scuffs to a halt on his swing. “Hey.” “I thought you had a right to know your dad he’s dead.”

The kid blinks. “Did you make sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” he said. “So what now?”

There he has me. “I dunno, kid.”

“Jasper.”

“Jasper, huh?” As a name for a vampire hunter, he could do worse.

“That’s right.”

I nod. “You hungry, Jasper?”

“Yeah, starved.” He gets up off the swing and slings his school backpack from one shoulder.

That was simple.

Last Day of School – Barlow Crassmont

Their little ghoulish eyes are wide and curious, staring as if through me. The unabashed attention emitted my way is making my knees shake, palms sweat, and my throat dry.

So I hide.

Momentarily.

It ’ s almost too much to bear. Although I’ve done this countless times, I can’t shake off the nerves. What is it about judgment day that agitates me so?

I struggle to breathe. I can’t pass out, though. I’d never live it down. Good thing they can’t see my anguish behind the magnetic white board in front of the teacher’s desk.

Deep breaths now, one after another.

Mrs. Elsher comes in, smiling. Clearly faking her happiness under a facade of bureaucratic responsibility and the inevitability of today ’ s conclusion. Some of them cheer at her sight, but most are unimpressed. She greets them with a Good Morning! They reciprocate loudly, and a little too cheerfully.

How dull.

She asks them about the day and the date. Few of them raise their hands. Mrs. Elsher rewards the clever student with a star sticker. Her blandness is starting to make me feel better. My normal breathing returns, perspiration ceases, and my hands gradually cease trembling.

“Class, today we have a special guest!” She extends her hand in my direction, inviting me to come from behind the board.

“This is Mr. Beam, all the way from Canis Major Dwarf. It’s very far away. ”

I step in front of them, waving my hand to the tiny freaks. Their reaction is neither positive nor negative, and yet, their eyes pierce me like

twenty-two pointy darts. Why must they stare so? Didn’t their parents tell them it’ s rude? On Crassus 16, it ’ s a federal offense.

“Would anyone like to ask Mr. Beam a question? ”

They are silent. Hesitant. Nervous. Perhaps afraid.

At length, a brown haired ghoul raises his filthy paw.

“How far is your home?” His is a high, inquisitive voice.

“Twenty five thousand.”

“Miles?”

“Light years.” The boy is left with a perplexed look on his face. A long haired demon of the female gender raises her hand from the back row.

“Is that how long it took you to get here?”

“That’s right,” I say. “Light is the fastest thing there is, and I have all the time in the world.”

Oohs and ahhs are murmured among the gargoyle pupils. A different orc lifts his disgusting limb. I am growing tired of the mundane questions, but what the hell.

“How long will you stay on our planet?”

“Not long. You might say I’ll be gone… in a flash.”

A monstrosity of epic proportions, from the front center row, raises his appalling arm. I nearly flinch backwards from the offense he unabashedly gives. He’s to be the last one, for this farce has gone on too long.

“What are you?” he shouts at me. Mrs. Elsher is none too pleased.

“Brian, apologize to Mr. Beam at once!”

The miniature demon stares at me, suspicious, skeptical, contemptuous. I hold his gaze, proud after he looks away first. I take no offense at his inquiry whatsoever.

“I’m the one who ’ s seen all there is. Several times. I know how it ends. And when. ”

My expression is stern, but on the inside, my smile stretches from ear to ear.

“So why are you here?” the same angry devil asks, without permission. Mrs. Elsher scolds him, but I wave her off. “My dad says you ’ ve no business among us. That you’re dangerous. Is that true?”

Well.

I stare at him, unsure, perplexed, as if our roles are reversed. He folds his arms victoriously, and I resent him all the more.

“I always come on the last day of school, ” I say. That ’ll show the little punk.

“It’s not the last day,” one of the gargoyles utters. The others look at each other in some bewilderment.

Mrs. Elsher leans towards me, irritated. “Mr. Beam, we agreed we’d break it to them easy!”

“That’s what I’m doing,” I tell her, before turning to the students for the last time.

“Remember: your real journey begins after school. What’s coming is imminent. No one can stop it, not even I.” Their faces consist of bulging eyes, furrowed brows, and more than a few frowns. “Don ’t lose hope, no matter how dire it may appear. Who knows, we may see each other again someday, and sooner than you think. ”

Mrs. Elsher sighs, then says, “That ’ s it for today. Say Thank You to Mr. Beam, children.”

They do as instructed. The sight resembles a choir of gremlins howling in agony.

How cute.

I grab my hat, nod to the classroom, and with the abnormality in the front row eyeballing me with a thousand scorns, I manage to avoid the disdain in his hateful countenance. As I close the door behind me, the hellions’ shouting soon becomes muffled and distant.

When I reach the outdoors, the asteroid bombardment is already underway. Several skyscrapers are partially damaged and on fire. The ground rumbles under my feet just before I leap onto a fresh wave of cosmic radiation. I am already out of their solar system by the time their planet is shattered.

Yet the end -of- day bell continues to ring endlessly between my eardrums, its clangor haunting my every waking moment, regardless of the distance between us.

and pans to celebrate medical workers at 7 pm every night, they could have gotten vaccinated, stayed inside, and worn their masks. Maybe you must face that your disappointment with humanity is so complete you may not feel there is any reason to live.

The three of hearts is wearing you down. You are starting to contend with what you would rather ignore: that your heart may not recover from these wounds, this time may not pass, and you may not be able to mend things within yourself or with the world. This confrontation the three of swords has forced is so agonizing sometimes when you let yourself think about the pain, your breath catches, and your heart feels like it has stopped. Then you breathe, just like you do in your morning meditation, and move through the pain.

America Today – E.P. Lande

When Richard, our auto mechanic of more than 40 years, was brutally murdered savagely beaten, then strangled, by a drug-addicted former lover with a criminal record including 533 law enforcement contacts, 19 felony charges resulting in 11 felony convictions, 101 misdemeanor charges leading to 67 convictions, 17 assaultive crime arrests with 12 convictions, 24 failures to appear for court hearings, 25 violations of court order arrests generating 13 convictions, and now one second degree murder charge I was deeply troubled, but I needed to find a mechanic as the RV I use daily to go back and forth from my horse pastures to my stable wouldn’t start, despite my attempt to recharge its battery.

I introduced myself to the mechanic located next to the feed store where I purchase all the grain and hay for my horses.

“Sure, we can help you,” Joe, the foreman of the shop, told me. “I been at this for more than 20 years, first when George, who owns the fuel company at the corner, hired me. He been in and out of them hospitals with nervous disorders caused by the turnover of them people he been hiring, so he hired me. I told him okay, but I was not ‘bout to follow him to them hospitals with no nervous disorders.

“This guy Chad I was to work with put a bus on the fork lift as it was leakin’ oil. An hour later, Chad lowered the fork lift and the bus slammed down, hitting the ground and busting an axle. That jerk forgot to use the hydraulic lever so’es the damn fork lift was free to hit the ground. I fired the guy.

“Next day, George brought in Lefty. What George forgot to tell me was that Lefty could only use his left hand; his right arm hung like a sausage. Nuthin’ wrong with that right arm, he jus’ never learned to use it. Tell me, how can anyone work on them cars with one hand? I sent Lefty back to George.

“Gus walked in; said he had experience. I left him to change the brake pads on a car. Two hours later he told me: No problem, all fixed ... and drove the car out of the garage. Only thing was, the car wouldn’t stop. The fucker steered that car out onto the street and hit a pedestrian. I checked the pads, after the po-lice hauled Gus to the po-lice station and booked him for reckless driving. The idiot had installed them pads backwards.

“I won’t tell you ‘bout this bum Stan. Walked in drunk, said he was a mechanic. I checked; his license had been revoked two years before for sex-u-al harassment. Seems he got caught checking out George’s wife. Les looked the part: grease-stained overalls; hands the color of midnight in the dead of a Vermont winter; hair what was left looked to me like my ole lady’s patchwork quilt; and smelled like a skunk. Told him to touch up the limo, the one I use for parties and such. Came back later. He’d painted the fucker bright pink with orange highlights. Said he’d seen sumthin’ like it in one of them magazines.

“As I told you, I ain’t goin’ the way of George and end up in one of them hospitals, my nerves detached like the wires of one of them vehicles I work on, so I told George: Git rid of all them helpers; I’ll work alone.

“Thanks fur coming in, mister. I’ll come by yur way tomorrow to check that RV you was talking ‘bout.”

I left Joe satisfied that we had someone who could replace Richard, but the thought that preoccupied me throughout my conversation with Joe and still persisted was: how many other convicted felons of multiple crimes including aggravated assault, are free, roaming the streets of our town?

Katja – HK Novielli

Icy tendrils of fog washed over town, spilling down deserted roads, stealing between houses in the early hours. Katja moved through the neighborhood, familiar homes making the boundary separating late night and early morning less sinister.

A car sputtered to life nearby, not loud enough to filter through Katja’s thoughts, not jarring enough to disturb the birds huddled along power lines above the street. With a steady pace, Katja made a wide arc into her street, her tidy bungalow materializing out of the murkiness with each step.

Katja skidded across the gritty pavement, clipped by the silent car. No porch lights flashed on, no dogwalkers appeared. The car disappeared into the dark morning. A jagged gasp briefly pierced the tranquil quiet, echoing off the curb. The crows held court, unmoving, over the strangled sunrise.

The Traveler – Michele H. Porter

My dogs, my two hot-breath familiars, restless after a day of snowfall, they snort into fresh drifts as we walk, shake snow from their black fur, my boots squeak, my down coat swooshes as we wander the darkness of my neighborhood, the sky is measly with constellations, no moon to hide them, this is the new moon, the strongest magic to work now for growth, for abundance

We walk up and down the street, past my elderly neighbors, past the Baptist church and its sigil of empty parking spaces, the row of streetlamps, my house at the dead end, abutting my backyard is a nature preserve, the border no wider than a ditch full of switchgrass and garter snakes

I stomp my boot soles, the dogs take one last piss on a drift, we all sniff the air, we have a lot in common, loving peanut butter and pillows, hating houseflies and collars around our necks

I wasn’t aware of the hold you had on me until my collar was gone, until you were gone

Back then, you and I fought, made love, broke the coffee table, knocked over the floor lamp, you packed the broken lamp and a suitcase in your car, you had a job waiting at your uncle’s law firm, you said you loved me too much to stay with me, I didn’t know where the moon was back then, or what phase

I had no spell to undo us then

I found out later you’d married, I knew you’d find someone, you were always such a temptation, I fled to my grandpa’s cabin in the holler, his hearth stewing with magic my mother refused to accept, I inherited the gifts, I worked old hill magic, charms, curses, reversals

You spent six years with your new wife while I adopted two dogs, the almanac predicted brutal winters, I stocked my pantry with soup and

apples and flour, ginseng and witch hazel and yarrow, I wafted cedar smoke over your side of the bed, waxing moon in Scorpio, best time for spells for the nether regions, for passion, to summon you to me

You left her, you came back to me, your skin warm and golden and slightly salty like a pie crust, at my kitchen window you observed the overgrowth at the edge of the nature preserve, you said there’s no fighting Mother Nature

Under my breath I wished for us to stop fighting over stupid things, you set your water glass by the sink and returned to the bedroom where I waited for you, sweaty, dizzy, drunk, I was always waiting for you

In the morning you laughed at my learned magic, your scorn a knife, I made you leave, with the waning moon in Leo I cut a string to separate us, the light a silver glint on my scissors like your eyes

In October I opened your email, colon cancer, I worked rituals to heal you, moon in Virgo for the bowels, I tried everything I could from this distance

Now, in the snow with my pack, my familiars, the wind cuts into my ears and nostrils, I inhale wood smoke and rain and copper like a fresh wound, I recognize your scent, it lingered on the denim jacket you left in my hall closet, I smell you again now on this empty street

The streetlight casts a blue-white circle on concrete, in the darkness beyond stands a stag, an albino deer, white fur, pink eyes, the stubby antlers of a young buck, it steps slowly into the streetlamp’s arc and vanishes in the light

I dismiss it as my imagination, you always said I was imagining things, but I hear its hooves, slow delicate clicks like a door’s lock turning

As the stag moves back into the dark, its shape returns, barely more solid than moonlight, we are silent, a dance of two frozen partners, its hazy breath like the blue fog that clings to the cedars in the hills and

hollers, my grandpa talked of a stag like this, a traveler between this world and the other, a harbinger, a bad omen

My spells were faulty, misdirected, my desire had broken the veil, opened to the otherworld, I had cast a spell going against the nature of things, there’s no fighting Mother Nature, you’d said once

The dogs’ necks rise with a primal rumble, my heart thuds in my throat, in black fur and Gore-Tex we chase the stag, my cheeks hot and stinging, arms sweating and stuck inside my coat, our breath white vapor like ghosts

I want to grab the deer by the antlers and wrestle its slender head to the ground and whisper into its twitching velvet ear, I love you, you are not the only one who needs to heal

If I caught it, I don’t know where it would take me

The stag bolts through my yard, it leaps silently into a grove of dogwoods in the preserve, it is gone

With the moon high I build a ring of stones around the pool of light, I throw salt into the circle, I reverse whatever spells I can, I email you to find out if you have seen a white deer, you do not reply, I wait and wait

Your nephew calls me, I am first on the list of people to notify of your passing, I think but do not say to your nephew the deer beat you to it

I do not know if the stag ever found you, if it made you choose this world or the other, I know what my choice is

The dogs curl around me in bed, their black fur oily on my legs, I sleep with the moon full through my window, a moon in Taurus, comfort, hearth, earth, home.

Born of Word – Erica Settino

I called you into existence. Needle sharp, my voice scratched and graveled from my fervent cries, weaving the tapestry of your flesh. Saddle stitches of sinew and bones bound together in time to the beating of my heart. Echoed in the flutter of your newly inflated lungs, as quick as the flick of a hummingbird’s wings. Muscles soft and dense as clumps of clay, moulded as though by my bare hands, glued together with the blood of each finger prick.

Each word a wish. Each wish a thread pulled taut, knotted, pulled again.

I called you into existence. The ferocity of my desire for you a too-sweet elixir I force fed the monsters in my head. Rotting their teeth and burning their tongues, muffling any doubts and fears before they had a chance to take root.

I called you into existence. Whispered when my too-raw voice no longer carried across the vast expanse of space and time. I birthed you in my mind long before I carried you in my body. Watch your thoughts, they say. And I watched as through a potent brew of desire, hope and love, you emerged. From a chrysalis of thought through the fire of transformation born of word, you were called forth. An alchemical process of intention and action. The word was now a soul.

I called you into existence with wands made of words and swords of thoughts that cut through the last viscous remains of a cocoon long outgrown. Sliced from the tether of what might be, only to fall upon the fertile ground of what is. And what we will become. Together, through thoughts, words and deeds.

Each word a wish. Each wish a thread pulled taut, knotted, pulled again, and again, and again.

Yuletide Fable #1

– Dmitriy Galkovskiy (Translated by Alexander Sharov)

An overcurious Attic rat once lurked around the winery, collapsed into an urn and precipitately choked to death on wine. On the ensuing day the urn was shipped to Caesarea Maritime and loaded onto a vessel. A bolt of lightning arced into the vessel during the tempest, fire broke out and the ark sank midway en route from Jaffa to Piraeus. In 3694 the amphora with mummified crystallized mass was elevated and the fossilized rat was whittled out of it. The architectonics of the gnawer’s volatile memory was recreated through calculative scanning, and with the aid of the 16dimensional emulator of lower mammals’ sensory perception, relevant output was visualized. It transpired that the rat which so (in) felicitously floundered into the amphora, six hours heretofore had witnessed the interrogation of Christ by Pontius Pilate.

In 5118 a retro-computing mission fortuitously unearthed clandestine findings on that matter. Regretfully, the then retrieved data chip of the acclaimed web NN-4 was almost utterly damaged and, in the final takeaway, a chunk of the index, fragments of the colloquy and two flashback snapshots (from amongst the total of 2 millions) were displayable. The former, least scathed, snapshot featured a sessile gentleman having the insignia of the Roman viceroy on. The optics is extraordinarily viewer-unfriendly: the nether fringe view. An elephantine sandaled foot is conspicuous; a disproportionately dwarfish head with a comparatively hypertrophied jaw, a ringed hand on the lap. Opposite stands Christ – a swarthy Levantine of forty or so, in a princely gown, aquiline nose, wispy beard, bloated cheeks. The snapshot is focused on the ring (tinted splotch), ostentatiously flamboyant one, supposedly, the artifact riveting the rodent’s alertness this particular second. The latter snapshot is severely blurred. Pilate is scarcely discernible. Something is spoken by Christ as He gestures with his hand straight at the rat. A

hexapod (hypothetically, Blatta orientalis) is zigzagging across the foreground. The snapshot is semantically eccentric. Ostensibly, the instant of retraction of awareness from the insect to the background is videoed. Apparently, the rat yearned to devour the cockroach but was deterred by an outcry.

Extant gleanings from the talk are swappable in plain text-only file format. There is no knowing who accosts whom. The duologue was pursued in Latin bureaucratese of the 1st century AD and respective sayings were loosely rendered into eidetic English. Altogether, 19 utterances were unscrambled:

1. We shall now solve the issue of funding.

2. Let us collude thus.

3. It is opined that thy folks ought to be disposed of.

4. Where is your acolyteship?

5. Thou wilt become shorter by the head.

6. Where is the baksheesh?

7. We shall now fix the issue of miscasting.

8. We shall smite on the hands (*).

9. To vilipend and denigrate.

10. To tweak the agenda.

11. Agility and sustainability of prosecution.

12. To the steering committee? The Sun is surer to prostrate on the Earth!

13. Under the heterodox spotlight.

14. We shall inspect this proposal in due season.

15. Under the orthodox aura, sight for sore eyes.

16. The chancery rat.

17. Wring the neck off the edacious bourgeois rat.

18. The sycophant must be hung on a rope’s end moistened in asinine urine.

The last, nineteenth statement was disambiguated as Christly:

19. I am not to be awed any more. Altogether, I am clueless as to what Your August Lordship is speaking about. I shall be risen and linger in perpetuity. My father, Lord, my God willed it so!

*) Herein is obscure whether literally or allusively.

(A revised version of a piece originally published by “Anomaly”)

Haunted

House – Kate Youdell

This is the season of ghosts. I am calling to my beloved dead any way I can. I light beeswax candles and burn rosemary. I put up photographs and decorate them with marigolds. I dream of ancestors and watch them float out to sea in handmade canoes. Sometimes we dance in my dreams, and sometimes we weep.

A haunted house is just a house with rooms waiting to be filled, and ghosts are the memories we use to fill them. A body can be a haunted house just the same. It only depends what ghosts you let in. A body can be a haunted house as it waits, empty, for its spectral occupants. I am throwing open the doors and welcoming them in one by one, until there is no emptiness left and the house is once again full of candlelight and the windowpanes are rattling with creaky, long-dead laughter.

It is August – Kate Youdell

August is when you finally exhale. The days are thick and muggy, but there is a change in the wind. You notice how these warm summer evenings are creeping away. Soon, night will stretch back across the sky until one day you will wake up and it is Autumn.

But for now, it is still August. Golden light and soft grass. The trees are in bloom, green leaves casting shadows perfect for picnics at the beach and drinks on patios.

You will remember this moment, during a dark and gray November afternoon, the feeling of bare feet pressing into warm earth. Remember the blue sky, blue like a promise, and that the birds are still singing. The year has almost passed. The harsh heat will fade, a welcome change, but for now, you are drinking in the air like sips of iced tea. This is the time to pause. Be silent, be still. Close your eyes. Feel the wind on your face. You have forgotten to notice what it feels like.

You are eleven years old again, and fireflies are aglow in your backyard like stars you can catch. Your sunburnt shoulders and skinned knees are badges of honor, marks of a season well lived. You have spent the day floating in a lake, pretending you are a fish, pretending to swim downstream, where warmer waters linger. Your mother calls you to come in for dinner, but you are too busy growing fins.

You are sixteen years old again, and your best friends, silhouetted against a bonfire, are laughing. The moon is full and orange, you tilt your heads and howl at each other, remembering your body is also an animal. You are young and restless and wolfish, glowing eyes gleaming in firelight. The

summer stretches behind you, freedom rushing past with a short-stop end. It will come faster every year.

You are all grown up, and the days melt together. Winter feels far off, but approaches. You have so much to do before it comes, prepare your burrow, gather firewood, harvest grain. But right now, all you have to do is lay in the grass and watch the clouds. You can hear your mother singing. You can hear your friends laughing. The earth is warm and smells like rain. The sunlight kisses you. You have been holding your breath all year, there are too many things that have begged your attention. Lay them down beside you and feed them fat, juicy raspberries picked from the bush in your yard. Tonight, the moon will rise like a glowing coin in the sky. It is August. Unclench your bones. Soften your belly. Breathe, palms open against soft grass, eyes closed.

Contributors

Visual Art

Jack Cariod Leon (he/him) is a transgender writer and visual artist based in Brisbane, Australia. A fan of the avant-garde, he collects dolls and art books of certain genres. He also has a deep interest in the history and lore of flowers.You can find him on Instagram @jackofallartforms

Pixie Moon (she/they) is an artist with a dynamic background, having been featured in renowned magazines such as Rebel Ink, Skinz, and Bizarre, reaching audiences across the U.S. during the 2010s. Originally celebrated for her photography with alternative fashion models and designers throughout New England, Pixie has since transitioned into the worlds of painting and fashion, where she continues to bring her unique vision and style to life. You can find her on Instagram @pixiemooncave

Larena Nellies-Ortiz (she/her) is a California-based photographer and visual artist exploring themes of belonging, identity, and the beauty of everyday life. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Sun Magazine, Sunlight Press, Stonecoast Review, The Ilanot Review and the Indianapolis Review. You can find her on Instagram at @lalifish

D. C. Nobes (he/him) is a physicist, poet, and photographer who spent his first 39 years in or near Toronto, Canada, then 23 years based in Christchurch, New Zealand, 4 years in China, and has now retired to Bali. His poetry and art photography have been published widely.

Claudia Tong (she/her) is an artist and quantitative researcher based in London, creating at the intersection of physical and digital art. Her practice spans from painting, illustrations and mixed media to visual computing and music. With a background in computer science and psychology, she has lived, studied, worked and exhibited internationally. https://linktr.ee/claudiaxt

Rachel Turney (she/her) is an educator and teacher trainer. Her photography appears (or is in press) in By the Beach, San Antonio Review, The Salt, Noom, San Antonio Review, Umbrella Factory Magazine, and Ink in Thirds Magazine. Blog: turneytalks.wordpress.com Instagram: @turneytalks

Edward Michael Supranowicz (he/him) is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up in Appalachia. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.

Bill Wolak (he/him) has published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages have appeared as cover art for magazines such as Phoebe, Harbinger Asylum, Baldhip Magazine, and Barfly Poetry Magazine.

Poetry

Meheru Alaspure (she/her) is a sophomore studying at Ryan International, Pune. She loves tangerine sunsets, turkish lattes, Blair Waldorf, organic chemistry and Sylvia Plath. She is an editor for Asterope, Alexandrian Review, Kairos Review (Head poetry editor) and Ode to Death magazine and a writer at Med Her Society and Paradise on Parchment. She is also a researcher at Astrastem journal. She has a passion for exploring the darker aspects of human experience through poetry, often weaving in elements of mythology and the macabre.

Zack Albertini (he/him) is a writer of fiction and poetry from South Jersey. His writing focuses on topics of mental health, love, and introspection. He’s currently working on his debut novel. When he’s not writing, he enjoys playing with his two children, sipping wine with his wife, cooking, and traveling. Zack was recently published in Grey Coven Publishing’s Fall Anthology, Shadow Work Volume I.

Brittany Brewer (she/her) is a queer, chronically ill poet, [theatre] artist, and educator. Her poetry has appeared in Rougarou, Months to Years, and Hole in the Head Review. www.brittanybrewer.com

Morgan Bridges (she/her) received her Bachelor's in English from Georgia Southern University. Her poetry has been published in Nymeria Publishing's and Grey Coven Publishing's anthologies, and her CNF has been published in Perceptions Literary Magazine. Her writing focuses on growth from past traumas and the continued inner struggle.

Lorraine Caputo (she/her) works appear in internationally in over 500 journals and 24 collections of poetry – including In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023). She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. She journeys through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth.

Mariel Cariker (she/her) is a writer. She works professionally in audience growth for podcasts, so she's always listening. Her writing themes include nostalgia, relationship reflections, and a desire to connect with others. She currently lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. You can find more of her work at marielcariker.com

Kelly Lynn Curry (she/her) is a disabled poet who spends most of her time writing in a cabin in the woods and lives in the forests of Tahoe, CA. She has been writing all her life, but it was not until she faced the Cardiac Ward that she decided to finally publish any of her work. If anything is true, it’s that words mean everything to her. Kelly has 3 self-published collections and you can find her on her social media at @WritesTheUnsaid

Shymala Dason (she/her) is a first-generation immigrant, and a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award. Her writing has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Literary Review, The Margins, and elsewhere.

Gerard Duncan Jr. (he/him) is from Walla Walla, WA and has lived in Prague and throughout the US. He earned a PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi and an MFA from Eastern

Washington University. Gerard’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Deal Jam, Hot Pot, Mania Magazine, Periwinkle Pelican, The Rome Review, and elsewhere.

Stephanie Gregory (she/her) graduated 2023 with a Bachelor of Art in American Studies from Oregon State University and is currently receiving an MFA in Writing from Oregon State University. A Northwest native, she currently lives on a small farm in rural Oregon and works for a local brewery. While she has written privately for years, she is new to publishing.

Haley Rose Guthrie (she/her) is a poet living in Kansas City, Missouri. She has recently been published in Heroica, Stone of Madness Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, Dark Poets Club, among others. Her poems delve into living with crushing mental illness. Individual poems come from her full length collection, PYRRHIC.

Natalie Hammonds (she/her) is an MFA graduate student currently working on her Master’s in Creative Writing from Concordia St. Paul University. She lives in Houston, Texas, and teaches theater arts to middle school students. She also holds her BFA in theater from Texas State University. Natalie hopes to fulfill her childhood dream of becoming a published author in any way possible.

K. Hartsell (she/her) is published in Unseal Your Self-Love, compiled by Lauren Brill. She’s a feral woman, a forest gremlin, enchanted with magic in the mundane. She hopes that her writing gives voice to those who haven’t found theirs and affirms those who have.

Sunny Hill (they/she/he/xe) is a queer disabled poet from New Jersey. Sunny uses poetry as a vehicle to examine the connections between the body, identity, and relationships and strives for every reader to feel less alone. They read tarot cards and post poetry on Instagram @fromsunnyhill

Mackenzie Kae (she/her) is a poet living in Owensboro, Kentucky. She enjoys caring for rambunctious beings and floating through fantasies. Her work has appeared in Last Leaves Magazine and Molecule.

Robin Kathaas (they/them) is a poet who was born and raised in Belgium, but now lives, laughs, and loves in Brighton. Their cat is more interesting than they are. They can be found on Instagram at @robin.kathaas

Ghada Khalil (she/her) Ever since she was a little daydreamer, Ghada had this wild dream of becoming a writer. But, as we know, life gets in the way, and Ghada ended up in the corporate world feeling like a fish out of water. Then, one day, a spark of inspiration hit her and she ended up plunging headfirst into the wonderful world of writing and has never looked back since!

Meghan King (she/her) is a New Jersey writer. Her most recent work is in Bad Girls & Influencers Issue 6 – Alice Says Go Fuck Yourself online literary magazine. She has several poems published in Not Ghosts, But Spirits Vol I and Vol III, Winter Anthology 2023 and Summer Anthology 2023 by Querencia Press. Meghan was first published in NJ Bards Poetry Review 2022 by Local Gems Press. She writes on the resilience of the human spirit. Her love of life, wit, and humor are as vibrant as her Jersey accent. Fueled by strong coffee and ambition, Meghan holds to the belief in being able to change the tide.

Allie Linn (she/her) is a freelance dancer and choreographer in NYC. She was recently published in two anthologies and a digital lit mag. Allie is passionate about combining text and movement in performance pieces. Instagram handle: @dancing_poetry_

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens (she/her) went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and now lives in Iowa where she is landlocked. Her fifth, full length poetry collection, “Pool Parties” is now available from Unsolicited Press. She is the author of fifteen poetry chapbooks. Some of her work appears in The Pinch, South Broadway Ghost Society, Cleaver, Zone 3, Slant, Yalobusha Review, and Grist. Find her online at http://jennifermacbainstephens.com/

Jess Marsh (she/they) is a writer, poet, and self-described "swamp goth". Writing at the intersection of sci-fi, fantasy, and memoir, she aims to write pieces that haunt and inspire. Their first poetry collection, Paracosmic Meltdown Vol. 1 will release in 2025. You can find more of her work at www.jessmarsh.substack.com

John Michael (he/him) is a published poet and survivor of the harsh realities of life. His fate to survive at a young age in the face of mental health and on-off addiction has led him through the darkest parts of his mind while choosing love and beauty at the cost of brokenness. His writing transmutes his journey of reflection through expression of raw emotion. He only wishes to share his profound outlook and advocacy of mental health in hopes of helping others. His Published work includes The Dance, Create Magazine issue 4, and Silent Tortue

Ophelia Monet (she/her) is an educator, mother, and storm chaser, living in the suburbs of Cincinnati with her husband and their son. She is the editor-in-chief of wildscape. literary journal. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Hobart, Ink and Marrow Lit, Free Verse Revolution, Maudlin House, Loud Coffee Press, Heimat Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Inflectionist Review, and more.

Glenis Moore (she/her) is a relatively new writer working in the flat lands of the Fens near Cambridge, UK. When she is not writing she makes beaded jewelry, knits, reads and runs 10K races slowly. She has been previously published by Dust Poetry, The Galway Review, Infinity Wanderers and Cosmic Daffodil.

Sheila E. Murphy. Poems have appeared in Poetry, Hanging Loose, Fortnightly Review, and numerous others. Most recent book: Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). Received the Gertrude Stein Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003); Murphy's book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where (2018) won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland).

Navila Nahid (she/her) is a writer and published poet, currently residing in Brooklyn, NY. Her published works can be found in samfiftyfour, Querencia Press, No Dear Magazine and The Dream Gods anthology. She maintains a Substack (navilanahidpoetry.substack.com) and Instagram as @navilanahidpoetry

Catherine Puma (she/they) is a queer poet who would rather commune with their rescue dogs and become one with the garden moss than suffer the cruelties of their own species. A member of the Arlington Writers Group and the Poetry Society of Virginia, they have work published or

upcoming in ionosphere, The Blotter, and Lit Shark Magazine. Their author website is www.catherinepumawrites.com

David Reuter (he/him) has been published in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Apricity Magazine, The Cape Rock, Courtship of Winds, El Portal, Existere Journal, Journal of New Jersey Poe, The Literatus, Near Window Magazine, Neologism Poetry Journal, Pennsylvania English, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Perceptions Magazine, Sandpiper, Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine, SLAB, South Shore Review, Visitant, and Vox Poetica. He attended William Paterson University’s Writer’s Conference in 2018 and Rutgers Writers’ Conferences in 2017, 2018 and 2019. He has a bachelor’s degree from Caldwell College and works as a paralegal. In his free time, he enjoys practicing martial arts, playing guitar, and cooking.

Danielle M. Schalk (she/her) is a queer writer from Ontario, Canada. Danielle embraced poetry as an outlet at an early age, but only recently began sharing her poetry with others. Her work has been featured in Poetic Reveries magazine and is shared through her social media accounts

@ThePoetDanielle and @JaguarMessenger.

Elizabeth Anne Schwartz (she/her) writes sapphic fiction and poetry, and loves all things dark, lyrical, and confessional. She earned her BA in Creative Writing at Purchase College. Her chapbook, Nine Stages of Coming Out, was released by tiny wren lit. Visit her website at elizabethanneschwartz.carrd.co/

AJ Sharpe (they/them) is a heavy metal fan with a weirdly mobile job. Now in continent number six, they’re still getting a kick out of meeting new cats.

S. C. Williams (she/her) lives in Indiana with her spouse and works in the circulation department of her local library. She is currently pursuing her master's in Library and Information Science. Her work has previously appeared in The Crow's Quill and Divinations Magazine.

Claudia Wysocky (she/her) is a Polish writer and poet based in New York, is known for her diverse literary creations, including fiction and poetry. Claudia also shares her personal journey and love for writing on her own blog, and she expresses her literary talent as an immigrant raised in post-communism Poland.

Fiction

Terry Adcock (he/him) penned Swept Away By Murder, a stage play that pays homage to the classic whodunits from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. He also wrote They Call Me Ms. featuring P.I. Vic Carella, a confident, no-nonsense investigator who overcomes stereotypical norms that would easily defeat characters of lesser resolve.

Garrett Bliss (he/him) has been published in Gramarye, Tahoma Literary Review, Salt + Mirrors + Cats, The Blue Lake Review, Typishly, Blue Villa, and more. His essay, “Accumulations,” was listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2020.

Shelby Cohen (she/her) has had her fiction published in All Worlds Wayfarer Literary Magazine, Suburban Witchcraft, and accepted by Grey Coven Publishing for its upcoming winter anthology, her poetry featured in Witches Magazine, and she was a freelance writer for Fourpoints Magazine. She's the former food writer and restaurant critic for the Watertown Daily Times and her Upstate New York food Blog, Big Hungry Shelby, had a strong following of fellow mom and pop restaurant enthusiasts for 10 years. She's a 25-year public relations veteran of the aerospace and energy industries and lives in Upstate New York.You can find her on X @BaronessShelby or on Instagram @TheBaronessShelby.

Charlotte Cooper (she/her) is 45 and lives in the UK with her children and Labrador. Since 2023 she has been publishing poetry and prose on Instagram under the handle @poisonedpoetryuk. She has work published in Tin Can Poetry Magazine, Poetic Reveries Magazine and Cerasus Poetry Anthology. Inspiration comes from the death of her daughter Heidi in 2018 and processing MH problems, toxic relationships and trauma.

Sam Crain (she/her) lives in Fremont, CA. Finished with her PhD in English, she can return to writing stories whenever she can steal her pens back from her cats. Her most recent publications are "Cadre" in the Neurodiversiverse anothology and "Frank the Dragon," forthcoming in Sheilana-Gig.

Barlow Crassmont (he/him) has lived in USA, Eastern Europe, Middle East and China. When not teaching or writing, he dabbles in juggling, solving the Rubik’s Cube, and learning other languages. He has been published by British Science Fiction Association, The Chamber Magazine, and Wilderness House Literary Review.

Meredith Frazier (she/her) has been published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Little Bird Stories, The First Line, and the anthology Baby, It’s Cold Outside and has earned honorable mentions from Glimmer Train and Texas Observer. She also frequently writes reviews for the independent, edited website reviewingtheevidence.com. Meredith lives in Texas but escapes to the mountains of southern New Mexico as often as she can.

Dmitriy Galkovskiy (he/him) is a Russian philosopher and man of letters. He graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in Classical Philosophy. Galkovskiy was awarded the laureateship of 1997 Anti-Booker Prize and Live Journal Prize in “2006 Superior Commenter of the Year” nomination. He was shortlisted as finalist for 2002 Yuri Kazakov Award.

Jianna Heuer (she/her) is a Psychotherapist in New York City. She writes Nonfiction and Fiction. Her work has appeared in The Hooghly Review, Months To Years, The Inquisitive Eater and other literary journals. Her flash non-fiction has appeared in two books, Fast Funny Women and Fast Fierce Women. Check out more of her work here: https://www.jiannaheuerwrites.com/

E.P. Lande (he/him) was born in Montreal, has lived in France and now, lives with his partner, in Vermont. Previously, he taught at l’Université d’Ottawa as a Vice-Dean and owned country inns and restaurants. Since submitting two years ago, his stories have found a home in publications in countries on five continents. This year, his story “Expecting” has been nominated for Best of the Net.

HK Novielli (she/her) is a Midwesterner living in Texas. Her short fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Discretionary Love, Jelly Squid Magazine, and miniMAG. She is currently at work on a mystery novel. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her with her nose in a book, probably with a game on in the background. You can find her at hknovielli.com.

Michele H. Porter (she/her) lives in southern Illinois and works full-time as a nonprofit proposal writer. She has stories forthcoming in Bloodletter and Kaleidotrope. She can be found at michelehporter.com

Erica Settino (she/her) is an activist, yoga teacher, artist, writer & witch. Her work has been published in Tiny Buddha, Sex and Murder Magazine, & The Witch Collective Zine, amongst others. She is the creator of the oracle deck, WILD UNION. erica-settino.com/IG @erica_settino

Alexander Sharov (he/him) matriculated from Dnipro National University in Ukraine with degrees in English and Psychology. He translates contemporary fiction from Russian and Ukrainian into English.

Kate Youdell (she/her) is a writer with a passion for focusing on the natural world and how each season has something to say to our hearts, minds, and bodies. In her free time, she works on her novel, walks by the lake, and focuses on building community.