— Claude Cahun
Issue 11 is also available as a PDF download.
Death Rattle
The pretend parishioners, slowly swallowed by their prey, walk past white steeples. Boa constrictors disguised as old women’s fashion statements steal their last breath. Crocodile cowboy boots, suddenly alive, feast…
Go to Post >>The Game
Mommy said I had to wear
the red turtleneck, Aunt Laura’s gift,
tarantula legs wrapping round my throat.
It was Davy’s second birthday,
and I was four. This is the game
I have to play. Fuzzy scarlet fingers
pressing into my pulse point…
Child’s Play
The cabinet doors slide open: a stage — / red and blue ceramic mushrooms (they / don’t dance) / poodle-head perfume bottle (might dance) / glass deer chained to her babies (she can’t / stop to dance)…
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An Amanda Doppelganger
how loud should i holler
when you knock me back down
if i concur i belong
here on the cellar floor…
Foul Play with Non-binary Antics
A spherical object—mid-air, is reason enough to come for your head: / another way to harm your gayest memories. / an opponent launches an attack…
Go to Post >>The Hairdresser
Everything in life has culminated to this moment. Sitting in a leather chair with long worn padding, grasping long thin fingers against the denim of your pocket, counting change, making…
Go to Post >>Take It From Me
As someone
who’s had both
COVID fatigue and
Long COVID fatigue…
Imitators
I was admiring the aristocratic Grande Dame portrait on a Tuesday afternoon; a day when the Abruzzo Museum of Art History is hauntingly inactive and I’m free from the perturbed…
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Pirate’s Breath
The graphic squawk of tattoos
ringing a bicep,
blue ink scrambling over ancient scars
Time for more pirate’s breath prose,
a hot sauce thick with
chunks of the unsayable and unacceptable…
Past Tense Jewelry
My engagement ring dozes
in a square blue satin box
worn a year then removed….
Tanka for Finger Foods at Funerals
television set
of the body dark but still
warm to the touch, was
switched off between commercials
boxed he collects like dust…
New Holland 1788
Sinner get ready / God will save my upper back & the / brick upon my knee / to soon ricochet, no hope no fear. / Sinner get ready— / there’s sanctum in a fragile void…
Go to Post >>in praise of my happy trail
my body is a hungry maw, bearskin
wired along the mound streaming to coarse
red and thick as my blood. overeager
swim upstream, dark—nearly black—on stark
pale, it is a beast within the flesh machine…
The Gate
You’re halfway over Quincentennial Bridge when the music stops. Your perfect fantasy comes to a gunshot halt, and you look at your phone as the battery dies and the screen…
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