My lover killed meAs lovers are wont to doAnd buried me beneath the lilies I paid for, beside other regretsI’ve become close to a few of them We spent years coating our rotten bodies with our lover’s memoryBut—and I mean this disrespectfullyNo longer. Beatrice Winifred Iker is a Rhysling Award-nominated poet and author whose work […]
Disrespectfully, by Beatrice Winifred Iker Keep Reading »
The owls in the vault of your mouth confess their grieving silence to the chapel of the dead when a tarantula uplifts a ruined man& washes him clean of every ectopic morpheme refusing to ripen into a wet independent clause outside the night’s womb. Rudely tucked into your voice box, the owls brawl for harmonious hoots with the choir of the living. The loneliness of
Tower of Owls, by Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan Keep Reading »
They are gathered at the curbside altar on a clear November night. In this cold world, it is unseasonably warm for this time of year. Side by side, at the shoulder, they are holding the weight of insurmountable grief. The twenty-plus glass-encased white wax altar candles are arranged with precision on the concrete garden container
Moving Memorials: Adornments and Altars as Sites of Remembrance, by Julia Mallory Keep Reading »
Sorting the Bones Cory asks, “How are morticians utilized in natural disaster death tolls?” In 2001, I was nearing the end of my undergrad degree. That fall semester, I was taking Physical Anthropology. The instructor, Dr. Harrell Gill-King, was one of my favorite professors, and the class came with a bonus bone lab. On Tuesday,
Ask a Necromancer, by Amanda Downum Keep Reading »
It is the Day of the Dead, and I smile knowing my ancestors and my guides have never been more alive.Papi and Wela Virginiahave never left my side, but today—Today we rejoicein companionable silenceWe speak through our eyesKompa, Rasin, y La Sonora Ponceña boomJodia, I celebrate Fet Gedé communing with my spiritual ancestros, mis guías,
Fet Gedé, by Lysz Flo Keep Reading »
MARCH 2023, SHORT STORY, 4300 WORDS Terra – 2198 AD Baba lay slumped on his desk, his pen dangling from his parchment hands. His grey hair lay in knotted clumps over the notebook, his tongue sticking slightly outwards, almost licking the page he was writing on. His last scribble was his own name, Parikshit Mehta,
Notes From a Pyre, by Amal Singh Keep Reading »