(no title)

Poetry by Ash Miranda

vampires aren’t the only ones who can’t see their reflection

each time i pass a mirror, all i see is a crooked shade, jilted, tilted, a jaw filled with a swollen sap laden tongue, eyes from a window, a widow, a different world, there used to be a light there, a face too, there used to be a face in that glass etching, a face, but the shade’s taken over. each time i pass a mirror, all i see is clouded, fogged, cracked. each time i pass a mirror, all i see is dew drops turn to tsunami, a ravaging bloodlust god, he’s struck us with rains. and the dead are on the shores now. each time i pass a mirror, i see what must have been a human, but i’m no more living than you. neither of us are vampires. you are dead, my beating heart, but here we are, looking in the mirror and seeing nothing.

i am a crow, assessing the danger

sorrow, says the naive mouth, sorrows
a crow remembers
trinkets and faces
a mouth remembers to mimic
a mouth remembers to drip wet
a mouth has never understood what nothing feels like

sorrow, says the mouth,
nothing says the heart,

a heart remembers to beat
a crow remembers
faces

a crow
remembers
to grieve

Ash Miranda is a Latinx poet from Chicago. Their work has been previously featured by the Cotton Xenomorph, Memoir Mixtapes, Witch Craft Mag, MAKE magazine and other publications. You can get a copy of their recent chapbook, dolores in spanish is pain, dolores in lolita is a girl, from Glass Poetry Press. Ash tweets far too much and would love to be your friend on Twitter (@dustwhispers).
Lady M by Yusuf Akman

By muttering “the world is a parasomniac stage,”
then sleepwalking through it with a dagger,
you became this ekphrastic freak,
what they call
the untranslation of Lady Macbeth.

It was one of these Walpurgisnachts
that you had to wear
washed-up peach colored socks
before giving a soliloquy behind
your rain dripping marble sill:

“It’s the witching hour,” you said,
though it was the hour of the witch
in which you single-handedly mimed
the singular handle of the faucet;
opened but forgot to close –
and the sibilant Tay
overdubbed the water flow.

You didn’t mind the laughs of
a murder of the swans
that mocked you
for having a damned spot,
man-sized.

because you knew goddamn well
(but haven’t internalized yet)
that forms were not to be earned
but to be made peace with –

and
swans can’t afford a war.

so spit the moondust
stuck in your throat
then
dream to soar:

three witches
with prosthetic jaws,
hanging in
the Adam’s apple of the sky –

go wash this world unsexed
with gasoline
before asking
your smear-mongering audience
a round of applause.

three matches
left in the box –

who are you threatening
exactly with burning
to the ground in a strike,
My Lady?

Yusuf Akman was born in Denizli, Turkey. They are a senior philosophy student at Boğaziçi University whose literary focus revolves around what having a queer identity in Turkey is like.
Poetry by Stephanie Athena Valente

IMMACULATA

what if we were the saints all along?
what if we were holy and sacred?

TEXTING IN POSITANO

we can take several honeymoons

my best friend is the goddess of water

my dreams did this me:
i woke up thinking i was a she-wolf,
to the enjoyment of an audience

he has his own late, late, late show with oranges
i am the lemon baroness, tart, sour, overripe

i think girls in stockings are involved… add it to the bottom

i don’t see why she wouldn’t keep us onboard,

i am this cathedral
i am saints and mourning

we are lost things,
kiss this stone

ghosts always come home. are you on your way?

TONGUE

use it to pray
to dead saints,
never living ones,
careful hands,
lemon,
oil,
marble,
spiked, tender
no lies,
rosemary,
petals,
milky lips,
use it,
orange,
dusk, with
cherry ices,
after
confession,
a rosary,
an ankle
turning,
thousand year
old, steps
don’t eat
the oranges,
cast a spell
with it,
pulpy, dry
and wet
all over
salivating, saints
don’t often
answer, they
act in
shadows.

Stephanie Athena Valente lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her published works include Hotel Ghost, waiting for the end of the world, and Little Fang (Bottlecap Press, 2015-2019). She has work included in Witch Craft Magazine, Maudlin House, and Cosmonauts Avenue. She is the associate editor at Yes, Poetry. Sometimes, she feels human. stephanievalente.com
Between Earth and Sky by Lisa De Castro

Wrapped in a form-fitting gown of flesh

I stand

A collection of parts

A mosaic

Bone framed

My ancestors left relics

In the chambers of my heart

I’ve yet to see them

But I know they are there

I’m wired with blue strings

They stretch as I curve around them

My form

A mahogany guitar

Whose sound

Caresses the open space

Sends a breeze through billowing white silk

Across the universe

Airbound

My spirit meets you

In some desecrated, sacred space

While grains of the earth sift through me

A temporal hourglass

You and I toss clouds into the ether

In unleashed moments

An untouchable epoch

Time clicks

My spirit returns

To this flesh

Awaiting resurrection

From this earthly saudade

Lisa De Castro has been a teacher for twenty two years. She teaches high school English, joyfully sharing her love for an eclectic range of literature, and music. She has published two books, Margot (fiction), and The Beauty of Decay (poetry), and is currently working on her third. She lives in Canada with her husband and two teenage daughters.
Capriccio Espagnol by Nicholas Trandahl

At the symphony, the orchestra
performs Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s
love letter to Spain in five movements.

My heart blooms like an Andalusian sunrise,
or the Madrid trees in autumn, or hot blood
spilled in the dust of a Pamplona bullring,
or the prayers of a pilgrim reaching the sea
at Santiago de Compostela.

In the balcony section, my hand
slides up her thigh.

Nicholas Trandahl is an Army veteran, poet, journalist, outdoorsman, and seeker. He finds inspiration in new adventures, nature, books, good food, and the understated beauty of everyday life. Trandahl lives in rural Wyoming with his wife and daughters.
His poetry collections are Pulling Words (Winter Goose Publishing, 2017), Think of Me (Winter Goose Publishing, 2018), and Bravery (Winter Goose Publishing, 2019). His novel Good Brave People was published by Winter Goose Publishing in 2020.
Poetry and Photography by Nadia Gerassimenko

dolores reads I

“silence pauses
difficult experiences.

i better
step away.”

Source:Setoodeh, R. (2020). Kate Winslet on Woody Allen, ‘Wonder Wheel’ and the 20th Anniversary of ‘Titanic’. Retrieved from Variety.

dolores reads II

“you want a witch-hunt
where every guy

is to defend himself.
you hope this could be

transformed into
your movie

and turn out to be
true.”

Source: Barraclough, L. (2017, October 16). Woody Allen Clarifies Weinstein Comments: ‘He Is a Sad, Sick Man’ (EXCLUSIVE). Retrieved from Variety.

dolores knows

money speaks power,
creating fog in facts.

of him she said, speak out;
of him, you step away.

of him, be furious;
of him, it’s dangerous.

of him, it’s overdue;
of him, it’s difficult.

money buys silence,
the silenced

fogged in
power/lessness.

Source: Op-Ed: Dylan Farrow: Why has the #MeToo revolution spared Woody Allen? (2020). Retrieved from Los Angeles Times.

dolores witnessed/s

little flowers
spoiled / stolen by a
voracious piranha / pariah
in rumpled khakis.

Source: Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images. (2018, September 17). After Decades of Silence, Soon-Yi Previn Speaks. Retrieved from Vulture.

Nadia Gerassimenko is the founding editor of Moonchild Magazine and proofreader at Red Raven Book Design. She is a freelancer in editorial services by trade, a poet and writer by choice, a moonchild and nightdreamer by spirit. Twitter: @moonmoonmother
Poetry by Samantha Merz

Pusillanimous

I won’t apologize

Risking it all

Probably sixty mistakes I’ve made so far

Asking for vintage photographs since they’re keepsakes

Fear of pushing the elevator button for the fourth floor

Enchanted with Mexican Fire Opals

Magenta moss rose, yellow sun rose, orange rock rose

Pale ten o’clock shadow

Bright ice plant petals in the ice box

Vervain on the brain, they must think I’m vain

Line up your sidewalk with vibrant Orange Emperor Tulips

Send them to my office as an inside joke

Not a psychotic break

Avoiding societal expectations of having to experience Boanthropy

Hoping it’s just spiritual

An unmistakable smirk but I think I tried to be stoic

Lighthouses in daylight are still necessary

Beside the water in the springtime

Escape from epidemic ennui, just you and me

Maybe I’ll still have existential dread but at least I’ll have company

I’ve heard that it’s hard to break up

Songs and reality shows playing in my head

Calla lilies in the cavern

Razzle Dazzle Giddiness

Mentoplasty would get rid of my cleft chin

Wendy Williams could taunt me on TV

That is the second time I have knocked over a kimono

Feel the rush from my coral blush

Another day, I might have a fuchsia flush

Mauve madness or marvel

Dinosaur sours as part of the last supper

So anachronistic

Experiencing Borborygmi after my nap

Must be Peristalsis

Going through allostatic overload from cabin fever

Stir craziness

Wishing for razzle dazzle giddiness

Pictures from my August trip to Portugal keep things in perspective

Samantha’s Pinwheels poem was published in Reality Break Press’ Volume I Poetry Issue. Other poems by Samantha have been published by Polar Expressions Publishing, Grey Thoughts, Fevers of the Mind Poetry Digest, Nymphs, Malarkey Books and Poetry Festival. In 2019, Samantha self-published a collection of poetry called Kazoo through Blurb.
Idyll by Blake L. Bell

In my dream, a woman stands tall in a leveled field. The plants trampled, the wildlife dead in heaps. I trace the curve of a familiar arch in prints pressing the dirt. There she stands, a proud destroyer, marveling.

Her arms fan wide in the stillness. The wind whips up strands of my hair one by one until I stand, a medusa on loose earth pulsating, suspended above shaking ground. Out of her fingers spring new life, green and yellow peek out of decay. Unfamiliar birds sing strange notes in the distance. Reformation, rebirth. I long to reach out, to pull her close, demand her trample me, line my body with her prints, stand over me, marvel.

When I wake, I walk my fingers up and down my unbroken skin and howl for sleep to bring her back. To take me, break me, make me.

Blake L. Bell is an MFA creative writing student at Mississippi University for Women and writes short fiction, poetry, and whatever else comes out. Bell teaches writing at a magnet high school in South Louisiana, and these days, she can mostly be found outside on her back patio reading, writing, and working in her garden.
Starving in your 20’s by Iggy Oddity

Born in August,

Teething on starfulness

Like any fire doomed

To be put out.

Now, hunger;

Starvation circles me as

An army.

My only wish:

To look into the sun without blindly

Suffering the consequences.

To cost myself for a moment

Of radiance.

How funny,

That I am considered in my prime.

Desirability left up to variables

Not even I am aware of.

My hunger: sexy not war-waged.

The gravity of me,
The pull

And inevitability

Will begin to eat more than itself.

Iggy Oddity is a musician, digital artist and poet based in Illinois. They are the founder of the blog Cinema in Paradise which celebrates the legacy of cinema throughout history and the world. Their debut album Desired Particle is currently available on all streaming platforms.
Three Years in Saint Paul by Mckenzie Lee

Love through a tacked up green blanket in December.

Love through the smoldering edges of yellowed apartment wallpaper, where we lit the match and left

fire there, glittering with god for someone else to find, left there for someone else to clean up the

ashes and the melted shag carpeting and all those broken mirrors.

Those moonless mothers smoking in the dumpster mazes out back, caravans of creases, circuses of crows feet and sagging underarms, they’d never approve.

Your moonless mothers bird collection, watching us in red painted garden chairs through brass, through plastic and glass from where they sat next to thrift store candles and a taxidermy jackalope.

Staying there in the room you put the blue light in.

Staying up all night while you desperately searched for some kind of history for yourself on Ancestry.com.

Cigarettes in mountain dew cans roasting in the stained-glass window.

Cigarettes when the fountain spoke, while we were laying in a bed of public park hydrangeas, we didn’t listen to it when it said that something bad was on its way.

That first hospital visits in my dad’s Volvo he sold us, that you trashed, and how it barely got us there.

That amateur exorcism, incense, resins bubbling on spitting charcoal. Dragons’ Blood, Frankincense, Copal, fistfuls of Sage and an unwashed goose feather.

Thinking, as I turned up the volume on the ‘banish negative energy’ YouTube mix, sprinkling the halls with rosemary and sea salt.

Thinking “let this be enough, please let this be enough.”

Seven different sermons from seven different churches couldn’t keep that glass table from breaking

Leaving after that, and then never coming back.

Mckenzie Lee lives in Minnesota where she explores writing, sleep paralysis, and the anatomy of dream shapes.