Poetry
The Busker, Broke and Busted
By Shira Lipkin I am — I am — Oh, just ignore it, catches sometimes, just a gear in my throat. Just needs some polishing, maybe descaling, it only hurts when I’m inhaling, which mostly I don’t have to do. I was designed for precision work slim, interchangeable various parts, just not a heart I was state of the art slick golden shiny covet me, buy me sweetly admire me But I am — I am — slightly less shiny now — okay, I’m rusted, swear I’m not busted, just need some repairs. Can’t go on pointe no more Still I can twirl and plie — Fully powered, I’ll do it all day — for now, just an hour swear I can, swear I can just a few parts to replace Don’t...
Read MoreΨάπφοι Σελάννα
By Sonya Taaffe Sappho with violets in your smile, why lie awake counting the Pleiades? Why pace the grey shore with the sea hissing of lost lovers when my arms are warmer than the white of waves, the sweet and sharp of your skin like Pramnian wine? Come here to me and I will leave my husband dreaming, the stars to circle in the wandering sky. My hair darkens in the shadow of your hand, but yours blooms silver, shining like the foam of the morning you leap, not ageless, singing, from that bright cliff of days. Sonya Taaffe’s short stories and poems have appeared in such venues as Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction, The Moment of Change:...
Read MoreThe Crows and the Witches and the Window
by Rachel Swirsky I’m probably going to die at midnight. Don’t worry— I’ll set the timer on the coffee pot before I go. The crows will be up with me and the witches. I’ll watch them through the window and they’ll watch me back. I’ll crack the window so I can smell stew simmering in cauldrons. I’ll give some thought to how it might taste— boiled lizard eyes & toad brains & fingernails of newt. You’ll be asleep but that’s okay. The crows will bob their heads in time to your snoring. This morning, a witch came to our door. She didn’t seem gloating or gleeful or even wicked. Not much. She had a...
Read MoreThirteen
by Rachel Swirsky Jacob’s wife is always screaming: Cheat! Scoundrel! Layabout! Scrooge! Jacob takes solace in the mausoleum. Girls there are quiet. He finds a dead woman, worms in her mouth. They court, cavort. Three dead fetuses swell her dead womb, born blue and silent. Dead triplets nurse blood from Jacob’s nipples. Their mouths become ruby studded with dagger-sharp pearls. As they decay, Jacob fixes them with pieces of mama’s skeleton. Her finger bones provide baby-sized vertebrae. Her left scapula replaces a brain pan. Every part of mama is useful: stomach acid kills maggots, hair sutures flesh. Soon, Mama’s...
Read MoreCasanova Clay
by Liz Argall I Casanova Clay is the loneliest Golem in the world. Every day he takes a fresh baked heart from the kiln. Every day the heat has shattered it. Casanova kneads his hearts for hours, trying to push out every air bubble, every flaw. But the results are always the same. Casanova does not have tears, nor does he have a tongue. He picks up the broken heart, still hot from the kiln, and grinds it into powder. He adds water to make slip, nothing is wasted, and starts again. Casanova Clay is the loneliest Golem in the world. He could carve a heart out of foam or wood or stone, but he won’t. He will not abandon his...
Read MoreWounds
By Seanan McGuire What is involved in the transubstantiation of one thing (Sea foam and mist, scale and sinew, pearl-tinted hands) Into another, quite against its nature, quite against design? Roses into women, oh, that’s easy, easy as planting a seed; All flowers yearn for faces they can turn up towards the sun, And the rose-owl flies not because she seeks to flee, But because even now, after she has been a growing thing, After she has been a woman, she must rejoice in freedom. Wooden puppets into little boys is no real challenge either; They’re both creatures of fancy and fun, designed to play, Designed to run in the green meadows of the living world. These are no...
Read More
