THE SEX CARD. While in prison, I got me a tarot deck. The first fumblings, the familiarization
with the cards, took place all on my lonesome. Sanctum sanctorum. In the quiet sanctuary of the
cell. Only, one of the fellas got hip to my divinatory lucubration. Trav – O. He says, “My lady’s
into tarot, and reading palms, and stars, and shit like that.” I reply, “Is that so?” “Yeah, she’s
good, too.” Some introspection swirls through his eyes. He says, “You should do a reading for
me.” Having never read for anyone but myself, I say, “Do you have a question in mind?” Trav –
O’s left eye does a cosmic twitch. He says, “I want to know if my lady’s cheating on me.” I say,
“Shit, Trav – O. I seen your lady. I don’t need to consult the deck to know she’s getting the bone.”
His left eye explodes with nervous tic. He laughs & says, “Man, fuck you.” I say, “Let’s do it.
Now?” “Yeah. Up in my spot. Give me 5 minutes to set the mood.” Mood? Ain’t no sage to burn
here. He rips two stairs a stride up to the 3rd tier. I get the cards and mosey on up to the spot.
When I knock, Trav – O pops his face out. Sweaty, chalky, transmogrified. By ‘set the mood’ I’m
pretty sure he meant snort some meth. “Did anyone see you come up here?” I say, “Yeah.
Everyone.” He gets a mind blown look & says, “Fuck.” I enter. A pink paper slip over the desk
lamp makes for an amniotic ambience. I sit. He says, “What you need?” “Her name.”
“Cassandra.” “Perfect.” I shuffle. He cuts. I lay out a celtic cross spread. The first card drawn is
the ninth cup. The sex card. He sees the look I give the card. He shouts, “Fuck! She is. Isn’t she?”
I cringe & say, “Seems that way.” Choked up, Trav – O turns away, stares out the cell’s sliver of a
window. He mirrors the figure on the 3 of rods which crosses the sex card. The cliff side figure

looks over a harbor to the horizon. Suddenly, Trav – O bolts from the cell, flies down the stairs,
sprints to the telephones, & starts to dial madly. Tarot has power I’m only beginning to
comprehend. And. I didn’t have the heart to tell him. To me, the crosswise 3 of rods means she
ain’t just getting boned. She’s catching three dicks. Not just one.

Mike Barlow is a retired pharmacologist. A former student at Polytechnic Institute of Oxford, he graduated magna cum laude with an honorary degree in parapsychology. His personal interests include recreational betting and electronic surveillance. He is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel, Take This Dick And Die. Mr. Barlow lives in Houston. 

Mystery of evils

After El Gran Silencio “Lo que el viento a juarez” Y
Analog Pussy “Molecular”

I.
My instinct blooms CHLOROPHYLL SUMMER. The portal to my dreams (((RECOILS))).
Voices & flies infest the altar. Greasy dinner—Tachycardia––SUNDAY SCARIES––thru the
skeleton of the city, 100MPH Fibula Noth, past the rocky ligaments of the valley. My knee picks
up speed; realigns the vertebrae; til it breaks down in the alleys of the waistline.
My body hangs from a hydraulic elevator paralyzed by an army of mechanical men with
screwheads for fingers. They stretch their motorized arms to tear out my hair and my teethiiii!!!
Muammar Gaddafi’s 600 runs; stares. Richard Nixon gets out, sweating smoke. Total losses of
the past. Enemies of good taste.
I-5 vampires drive Shadow 86 convertibles. They suck the oil out my veins. Free the bottleneck
and leave a trail, roadrage red. I can hear the crunching juice of my fried body in every bite.
II.
High schools burn and I keep failing Algebra 2. means no diploma.me no pass my driving
test.me no write no more. Eric Clapton joins the rehearsal but I can’t remember the chords in this
flat acoustics gym. My bald friends got lost in the locker labyrinths. Their faces attempt a break-
in. They too, are fleeing. They flee the uniformed. I also fear humanity but I prefer to fear alone.
Body parts hail down on the belly of the moon. The ashes of the Popo bless la torre
latinoamericana. Mi santisíma hovers over the metal sky. Like a sphinx moth, the color of dry
grass between my legs. Memento mori––we rise into the void; into the warm yawn of a neutered
street dog as she cracks up in the other room

Damn junkie
DJ of my automatic
Torment.

---

Moteado Manifesto

Seek a friend to share a joint with. Be the force of change only after you’ve inhaled.
Never write a poem while high after midnight or its verses will fade in the aleph.
Pay your respects at the Chicano Marin Center no matter the hole you came out of.
Remind poets that no matter how hard they stare at the moonlight it still won’t fix their writer’s
block.
If you teach, your little ones must memorize the poison act of 1913 and should know that their
brown cousin in Florida could get deported for ripping one at the park.
Red or blue don’t matter cause they don’t legalize it, the white house is afraid of canna-bliss
consciousness for the people. They say it’s the second biggest threat after communism.
Cottonmouth is a sign of devotion––drink promptly when the water has turned into wine.
When the music’s over place your hand over your heart and feel the groovin drum beat move
through your body.
Give a Mexican a gallo and they’ll hit the streets preaching puro amor y paz carnales. Mexicans
smoke gallos to heal colonizer wounds, gozar cumbia, bailar quebraditas, and prove that THC is
la molecula de dios but this pinchi government will always deny it.
Auto-combust those limbs on your nearest couch and close your eyes as you blow out the smoke
or cataracts will invade the round black dialated pools of your face and age your blushing earth
mounds of innocence. Inevitably so.
Always get high on your own supply, stay draggin and pass it down before dozing off.
Get your head out of the clouds and never forget: you are the constellation, not just the sun,
baby.
Poets that just want to write weed poems should choose a different path in life; there are too
many of them claiming they’re lost.

Iván Salinas is a Mexican writer & zinester based in the San Fernando Valley. He is the co-founder of Drifter Zine and Paloma Press. His writings and translations have appeared in Revista Generación, The Acentos Review, Mobile Data Mag, Broken Lens Journal, The Ana, and elsewhere. Iván is Programs Manager at Beyond Baroque, the oldest literary arts center in Los Angeles. 

Rapper, fugitive, spiritualist and prolific artist with over 100 albums under his belt—Jose “Conejo” Martin has just dropped his newest collaboration with N8NOFACE, entitled, “KILLZONE.”

The message, direct.

Execution, simple.

No punches held, demons out, angels checking ID’s.

The hardest are always the softest. Dichotomy is part of what makes an artist shine. Conejo is no exception. LA oozes from his veins. He is the purveyor of what’s hidden, and delivers it with the precision of a sharpened knife. 

I watched an interview where he spoke about being on the run, staying creative and participating in a sweat lodge. His humble fire burned and in those few moments, his lyrics for “KILLZONE,” came to mind:

“I SOLD MY SOUL 

BUT IT WASN’T ENOUGH 

BOUNTY ON MY HEAD 

AND ALL I WANTED WAS LOVE …” —Conejo

His collaboration with synthpunk/poet N8NOFACE is fluid, —a pair of desert flowers waiting for the rain. Their lyrics intertwine feeding from each other. Both bring gravity and matter creating their own galaxy. 

“THEY SELL ME A GOD 

AND I  DONT BUY IT 

THE ALL SEEING EYE

 IS WITH NO EYE LIDS…”—N8NOFACE

“KILLZONE,” is a song that holds a mirror to our madness and the madness of this fucking world in an authentic, vulnerable and fiery transmission.  

“RING THE ALARM 

THE NEIGHBORS SPOTTED MONSTERS 

FEEDING ON LIVES 

POLITICAL IMPOSTERS 

POWERS THAT BE 

PUT IN PLACE TO DECIEVE 

I CONNECT WITH THE GODS 

THROUGH THIS DMT 

HIGHER FREQUENCY 

NO ONE CLOSE TO ME …”—Conejo

“A History of Universal Mythologies”

Are you able to answer the following questions honestly:
Are you able to smile when running into an acquaintance on the street?
Can you see their love for you in the way they speak to you?
It makes it enough — momentarily —
to remember that the desert doesn’t need yet another ghost
that La Llorona was never ever speaking to you
or for you
that the great comet that passed over you that night was not a sign
or an omen
just another chunk of rock floating out in space
like a ring going down the drain
And if you answered those questions honestly?
tell me how you are able to sleep at night
knowing people relish living inside colossal untruths
and universal mythologies that make the everyday mundanities
easier not better
Does it help to add more butter to the bread?
More wine to the glass?
and when you’ve finished raise your limp hand to the waiter and announce

check please

---

Alexandra Martinez is a writer, radio host, and tumbleweed living in Joshua Tree, CA. She is the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Martinez is the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Desert (Inlandia Books, 2023) and HEARTBREAKER (Wax Nine, 2022).

I think sometimes of the first night,

Of whiskey-laced breaths,

And how we found each other

In the belly of that reggae

Nightclub: a room made lust, elegant

Throats and reaching hands, thrusting

Thighs and quivering

Buttocks. Loose silver strung around

Your waist, a choker drinking

My neck, the highpoint of your face

Shining blue-black with errant light. They were

Playing Koffee and

Your hips were a winding road. I should have gathered

The sacrament of your black body in my hands,

Steadying, steadying, steading,

Unafraid that the rest of that room would see

In us, something ungodly:

A woman, finding in another, something

That resembles god.

---

Chisom Eze is a writer, poet and artist living in Port Harcourt. Finifugal, he has a taste for endings that resemble beginnings, and his writing explores themes such as boyhood, love, identity, cultural appropriation and resistance. Chisom’s writing has been featured in the Martello Magazine, Healthline Zine, Akwódee Magazine and is forthcoming in other places.

Eulogy #1

Now don’t you go hunting

Sweet boy. There’s a goddess

Cruel with love for you,

Willing to gather your blood

Into flowers for her grief

Should you become prey

To the boar you seek.

---

Eulogy #2

Now was there ever a 

Love so sweet. Bend close

To the water and croon

Into the reflection of

You. From beneath she

Watches, jealous of your

Blossoming love.

---

Eulogy #3

Pretty as the moon. Poems

Can’t do you justice, but those

ballads have risen up high on

whispering winds where a 

god crackles dangerously

with an insatiable need 

for you.

Venus Fultz (he/him) is a nonbinary writer who enjoys prodding and pushing the boundaries of speculative fiction. He received MFA in Fiction at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and is a fiction reader for Barren Magazine. He has reviews published and forthcoming in Permafrost Literary Magazine and Antipodes Journal. His creative work can be found at Marrow Magazine, Wrongdoing Magazine, and BUBBLE Magazine.

The doctor who examined you compared the heart to a house with four doors. In your case,
one of the doors is stuck, and there are dead plants on the windowsill. My first thought when
you told me wasn’t for you but myself. I thought of how lost I would be if something were to
happen to you, how incapable of coping. Then the thought broke apart, and the sky turned
stormy, and we were like the rebels and criminals the ancient Romans nailed to large wooden crosses and smugly left to hang.

---

Howie Good’s newest poetry collection, Heart-Shaped Hole, which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.

A Sunrise in the Winter

Who rises to watch a sunrise in the winter?

As the cold air nips and yawn-induced tears sting,

Who bites back?

I don’t speak of the farmer who must wake before dawn,

Or a weary traveler on her way home from a redeye flight.

I’m calling to those who break convention,

Who, rather than sit on the beach in pleasant weather to watch a day begin,

Force their eyes open so they can see a snowy world set ablaze.

They are not people of conformity, but as well do not bask in their individuality for praise.

They live for the sake of living, to see a sunrise in the winter because no one else will.

And they wonder…

Is the winter sun lonely?

Does it miss the days when it was the world’s best friend?

But it’s been turned the cold shoulder,

To suffer alone until love once again becomes preferable.

So these people wake up to watch the sun rise in sharp, bitter air.

Their vigil unacknowledged by the waking world.

And they do not care.

They rise to watch a sunrise in the winter.
Because no one else will.

---

Lightswitch

The others play with their lightswitches constantly,

At least that’s what they tell me;

I shield my eyes and look away.

Won’t that make you catch on fire?

I think.

Who taught you safety…

            Who taught you how?

I am not scared of the dark;

I do not let my fingers even drift towards the switch —

Even a dimmer has no place in my grip.

I slap others’ wandering hands from its glossy, untouched skin;

No fingerprints.

I light a candle for us instead,

And wonder what electricity is like,

If, when the time comes,

My body can become a switch,

Flipped with a single touch,

If I will know how to use it,

If I am even flammable.

---

Caroline Morris is a Philadelphia-based writer and editor who received her B.A. in English literature with a concentration in writing at the Catholic University of America in 2022. Her work wrestles with the nature of femininity, internal and interpersonal relationships, and what it means to have a body. Morris has previously been published by Green Ink Poetry, Hearth & Coffin, The Hyacinth Review, Beaver Magazine,and The Penwood Review, with two honorable mentions for the O’Hagan Poetry Prize. Twitter: @Lean_writer

 
One wine soaked twilight scented 
by woodsmoke and lighter fluid, 
an ember floated up from the fire 
and kissed my bare thigh.
Ten things that came to mind: 

1. The short spark of pain felt like a sigh 
2. I was always afraid of this happening as a child 
3. What do you call something that causes pain but does not inflict a serious injury? A nuisance?
4. Why did ancient man see fire as survival rather than destruction? 
5. What would it feel like if I was immune to pain and stuck my hand into flames? Would fire feel like
   wind? Water? Nothing? Something? 
6. Do burn victims remember the feeling of fire, or just the pain that came with it?
7. Where does fire go once it is put out? 
8. What is the average lifespan of an ember? 
9. How often do embers cause wildfires? 
10. Is pain considered an injury? 
    The ember died against my skin, 
    It’s light blinking out like a final breath,
    And I thought of you. 
    I pondered the pain of leaving,
    And it’s coalescence with the ache of staying
    Still.  I thought about how we were desperate  
    to ensure that the other felt no pain. 
    I would rather die by fire, 
    An explosion of trees or an ashtray blaze, 
    Than by water,  
    A shipwreck or a torpedoed submarine, 
    Gagging on salty water 
    And pulled to a place where things 
    Could still be recovered. 
    If pain is considered an injury, 
    I could press charges against you. 
    I could hire one of those lawyers
    From the highway billboards,
    With eyebrows arched in stern promise
    And their phone numbers a convenient repetition,
    Seven seven seven, seven seven seven seven. 
    I could call off work and still get paid 
    To recover and rest and tuck away 
    All of the photos of us into a box
    That my roommate lent me out of pity. 

“I need a place to put him” I said,
And she returned with a little wooden book, 
The top perforated into a pattern– 
Little breathing holes for something dead. 
An ember floated from the fire, 
And I thought of us, escaping from roar of the world 
Just to snuff out 
After only making it so far.

---

Ava O’Malley (she/her) is an MFA in Writing and Publishing student at DePaul University. Her writing typically focuses on queerness, spirituality, memory, and nostalgia. She spends her free time looking at astrocartography charts, cooking, and taking meandering nature walks. You can find her poetry in Moonflake Press, Belt Magazine, The Orange Couch, and Crook & Folly. She currently resides in Chicago, but was born and raised in Cleveland, OH. You can reach her at @AvaOWrites on Twitter, and @ava.omalley on instagram.

In dreams

in dreams you hugged the dirt,
you passed through and you passed on.
In dreams you wore the blue coat and
in dreams we said goodbye.

---

Altars

Harvest the earth to bring to one’s altar,
with its peeling stars, wax tears and
traces of the old devil etched into oak.
The mundane fades as the liminal space widens and it is here
you have to choose your side.

---

In shadows

A gathering of moss, stone and fauna,
blessed are my hands as they carve your name in wax.
We dive into the earth
We pull out of the earth
and we leave grief in the shadow of the sun.

---

Katie Doherty is a UK based writer. Her work has been published by Sky Blue Press (A Cafe in Space: The Anais Nin Literary Journal) and she has had three poetry anthologies published: Your Black Opium by Paper and Ink Literary Zine, Interiors by Analog Submission Press and Suspended in Time by Between Shadows Press. She has also been featured in anthologies from East London Press and Tangerine Press.