issue 7
You like me when I smell like the moon, glazedwith gunpowder & November dust. Look at the galaxies—a canopy of angels. Here’s a night sky: a dimmed mirror blue-fleshed into a shack of stars. The auditioning of the blue-eyed trinket peeling itself into wonders have begun. We’ll wait to carry it on our arms. […]
Moonwalk on A Night Sky, by Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan Keep Reading »
This past weekend (mid-October for you living readers—time flows differently in the underworld) I attended Austin’s ArmadilloCon, where I experienced something very rare for necromancers: a live audience. It was lovely to be among the quick for a change, and I was delighted with how many curious souls turned up to ask questions. I’d like
Ask a Necromancer: A Brief Anabasis, by Amanda Downum Keep Reading »
On a Tuesday afternoon, I was sifted into a terracotta urn hand-painted by my mother. I watched her from the center shelf above the sink, dipping her coarse brush into acrylics called sunshine and tangerine, and wondered if she’d ever known my favorite color was turquoise. I had never been a candle until right then,
I Had Never Been a Candle, by Freydís Moon Keep Reading »
A red brick box that smells like smoke,meat, and blood. The institution whereall your grandmothers’ grandmotherslearned their cuts on the town’s sharp edge. There are three lessons to making a lifehere. Everyone takes a factory job,some lucky ones make it out later. Your first teacher grinds her teacherwith a silver crank, out come wormsof flesh.
The Sausage Makers, by Amelia Gorman Keep Reading »
Some time ago, a Reuters/ShopSmart survey said the average woman (the average middle-class woman in a first-world country, I’m guessing) owns nineteen pairs of shoes and buys four new pairs per year. A few years back, a sports industry analyst calculated that Nike was selling twenty-five pairs of shoes per second. Fashion business network Common
Nearly New Rockports, by Anita Brienza Keep Reading »
There is a man on the porch. There is man standing on the porch in the dark, in the rain, with no umbrella. The man does not have an umbrella and he is standing on the porch in the rain but he is not wet. It has been raining for hours. Around his feet, on
In the Window, by Patrick Lofgren Keep Reading »
The dead man takes a drinkbut the glass cuts his lips.Drink slits his throat,seethes in his stomachlike a molten tide.Unable to feign interestin tracker mortgage rates,Celebrity Love Island,Netflix potboilersor far-flung genocide,the dead man leaves the pub. Drink steers his bodyto streets behind streets,dives requiring secret knocks – no one servingthe no one drinking –Bridewell holding
Dead Man’s Session, by John Paul Davies Keep Reading »
A 2021 Finalist for the WSFA Small Press Award From the Thirty Years’ War, sung as a lullaby to orphans: Maikäfer flieg!Der Vater ist im Krieg,Die Mutter ist im Pulverland,Pulverland ist abgebrannt.Maikäfer flieg… Fly, ladybug, fly!Your father went away,Your mother died in the pulver’ed lands,Those pulver’ed lands have burned to ash.Fly, ladybug, fly… Chiron in
From the Ashes Flew the Ladybug, by Alexandra Seidel Keep Reading »
i’d rather be a pauper on earth than king of the dead,you said, and you were right:life above is pauper-likecompared to the riches down here not iron and shadow, the realms below,but gold, soft and heavy with muffled voices. the Midas-touch is yours now.glory in the glittering settingfor the cracked diamond of your afterlife. but
The Plutocracy, by Maya Chhabra Keep Reading »