Questions and Answers س و ج what do you know about home? – سi know of voices that swivel into purple song, – جtongues forced to sleep under the clouds of their mouthlike how قل — to say in Arabic, mutate to hold your tongue hostagewhen I say it in Hausa, عقل. what do …
Questions and Answers, by Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi Keep Reading »
JUNE 2023, SHORT STORY, 4300 WORDS Prefer to read this as an EPUB or PDF? Join our Patreon and instantly download issue 26: You die in the stupidest way possible, slipping off a ladder while scooping leaves out of the gutter, the wet, mulchy scent of them the last thing you ever smell. You land …
An Inconvenient Corpse Jamie asks about “how/where/when to die for maximum inconvenience.” A flippant question deserves a flippant response, but let me begin on a serious note: A human being is not an inconvenience. I am not making light of anyone’s mental or physical health, financial situation, access to care, or social safety net. The …
For Lunda, chi hollo li Someone once told me That the weight of the unfinished story of you is too/ much/ to carryI had never seen things this way because it has been my reality for twenty-two years to piece together your dark mythos butIn this poem I will attempt to put the weight down and imagine something other than how …
Last night, the iron lid on the unused backyard well got thrown off. The rusted, soldered latticed rods that had lain unmoved for ages had come off. Everyone said it was you venting your rage—untimely deaths made the spirits linger, wreaking havoc on those left behind. Was it you plotting, heavy-lifting, Appa? You died on …
lift her from the watercolor seaso easy to sink in the backwatersdon’t claw cracks in deep marinethose beasts once drowned weren’tgod after all her skin is leviathan tooth-pockedbloodfall waterdrip in your armscold glimmer-scales like stars inher cosmic body so let’s pray togod after all that breath of smoke on the waternow long dead deified in …
JUNE 2023, SHORT STORY, 5500 WORDS Prefer to read this as an EPUB or PDF? Join our Patreon and instantly download issue 26: The far stall in the ladies room in the Land of the Dead was backed up again. The day had already started terribly, with an email that hit my phone as I …
There’s a Door to the Land of the Dead in the Land of the Dead, by Sarah Pinsker Keep Reading »