Poetry by Ashely Adams

Jupiter

There is a storm older than the world                         (at the center of everything),

            churning gods’ blood

(eating the flesh of their flesh).

Its daughters turned

into ice and rock under a jealous rain,            bending

                        all the softness into metal.

(Don’t look).

                        This gale sings in hydrogen tongues

                                                and swallows 

                                                             swallows

                                                                        swallows

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Ashely Adams is an MFA candidate in nonfiction at the University of South Florida. Her work has appeared in Flyway, Heavy Feather Review, Fourth River, Anthropoid, Permafrost, OCCULUM and others. Her favorite astronomical body is the Galilean moon, Europa.

Poetry by F. E. Clark

To Bring the Sky Down

A scared flame of violet – burnt from a found bone,

The indigo of your first lover’s jeans,

High sky blue of a day in spring when the larks sung,

Green fired algae from the dead pond’s ditch

Yellow of the belly of the one who cowers,

Orange from the fungi that grows under the dead fox,

The red of a berry that poisons.

Plait the rainbow - red over orange, yellow over green, blue over indigo,

Tie with violet at the deepest hour of black,

Make sure you bind the rainbow’s ends tight,

When required, cast from a clifftop on a dark moon night.

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F. E. Clark lives in the North East of Scotland. She writes and paints and walks the perimeter of her days looking for colour and texture to inspire her work. In 2016 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a Best of the Net, and had a Sma Buik published by Poems For All. Her writing can be found or is upcoming at: Molotov Cocktail Literary Magazine, Planet Paragraph, Twisted Sister Lit, Moonchild Magazine, and The Occulum. website - www.feclarkart.com | twitter - @feclarkart

Collaborative Poem by Alexis Bates & Logan February

pomegranate

with a neck bent / like prayer
I clung to the fruit as though I was
a part of it / a seed needing to be cut

away / I stared at food the way
murderers look / at their victims
the way God looks upon his creations

a single      pomegranate
holds hundreds of decisions inside
its  skin      & eating was always

the wrong one / but it was sacred
sliding pulped flesh past my lips
spitting out seeds / just like it is

holy / to claim the self:
sickness / success /

I am hundreds of little / red decisions
scattered on the kitchen floor
& so what / if they don’t all taste good

I stare in the mirror / take a knife
to these delicate       ideals
split them         open wider

& wider / avoid the body
grip the fruit      tight

it does not taste killer
I do not feel victimized
this is still        progress

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Alexis Bates is a poet and writer that uses words to become intimate with an audience. You can read her words in Luna Luna Magazine, Five:2:One, Vagabond City Lit, and elsewhere. Her micro-chap, When Cars Touch, is forthcoming from Ghost City Press.

Logan February is a happy-ish Nigerian owl who likes pizza & typewriters. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in (b)OINK, Wildness, Vagabond City, and more. His chapbooks, Painted Blue with Saltwater (Indolent Books) and How to Cook a Ghost (Glass Poetry Press) are forthcoming. Say hello on Instagram & Twitter @loganfebruary.

Poetry by Sarah Nichols

The Black Dahlia Dreams of Blade Runner

Last night, I dreamed of
Los Angeles.

Not as it was, when I
died. The promise and

sun of it.

I dreamed of its
now, a neon smear.

The city of
ghosts.

My voice in
its moving darkness,
saying

I’ve seen things you people
wouldn’t believe.


Sources: Ellroy, James. The Black Dahlia. New York: Mysterious Press, 1987; Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, Blade Runner screenplay, 1981.

Bloodline

My bloodline ends in
silence.

I circle back,
before my myth.

Slow now,

like conjuring a
storm.

Still in my descent,

a fury
beckoning.

I stir now,
watchful.

Someone’s out there.


Sources: Ellroy, James. The Black Dahlia. New York: Mysterious Press, 1987. Print, and James Ellroy, “My Mother and the Dahlia,” Virginia Quarterly Review, 82/3 (2006). N. pag. vqr online, Virginia Quarterly Review 19 June 2006. Web.

Dresses, Jewelry, Food

I wanted to be ready.

No one tells you what to
pack for the trip.

I met Cleopatra in
the underworld, and

she told me that
none of it

(dresses, jewelry, food)

matters down here.

Time cures everyone,
she says.

Whatever you thought
you wanted

dies or
goes away.

People worship you or
forget.

No one knows
that

until

they arrive.


Source: Ellroy, James. The Black Dahlia. New York: Mysterious Press, 1987. Print.

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Sarah Nichols lives and writes in Connecticut. She is the author of four chapbooks, including Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, forthcoming, 2018) and She May Be a Saint (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2016). Her poems and essays have also appeared in Thirteen Myna Birds, The Ekphrastic Review, Calamus, and The RS 500.