Featuring Work By:
GARY BLOOM
CJ THE TALL POET
RACHEL COYNE
DONNA DALLAS
LORI D’ANGELO
SU-LING DICKINSON
BEKS TRYTH FREEMAN
AIMEE LOWENSTERN
SYDNEY MAGUIRE
DEVON NEAL
NOLL
EMILY PERKOVICH
POE
MARC ISAAC POTTER
MONIQUE QUINTANA
BRITTANY WALLACE
Editor’s Note
I don’t have any answers for any questions I ask. I have the same fear of abandonment as anyone who never got over that childhood phase of endless questioning and annoying everyone around you with your questions.
I feel less alone around people who also make monsters out of the emptiness left behind by those in their lives who may have left but never really leave.
If we’re all together, dressing up these creatures and even dressing as them, it’s a party. Right? If there’s still a haunting presence, that means at least there’s a presence. Thank God!
Thank you to everyone who responded to the question, “Is Leaving the Opposite of Haunting?” And thank you for reading, listening, watching, and enjoying. Welcome to the party. Pick up a sheet, cut some eyeholes, and get to haunting.
If you like Issue #3 and want to get updates about future issues and the special-edition black and white print zine of this issue, subscribe to the mailing list!
RACHEL COYNE
DONNA DALLAS
Witch Sisters
She had one eye like a globe
looked north steadily
the other sister cawed
as you walked by
eyes black as oil
some say their tongues
split like a lizard’s
at night they slithered along
the alley dirt in search of prey
Coiled around men
a dozen hands rubbed and tugged
nirvana under the moon
pockets emptied
skin scratched and clawed
some ran
some begged
others disintegrated
their ghosts flutter
in a cork sealed vial
for eternity
BRITTANY WALLACE
Leave A Message, or, a Peaceful Protest Gone Badly
I can’t right now
waiting for my nerves to die
shot in the dead by a lead slug
I can’t write now
cold numb tongue speaks
volumes break glass waves
I can’t write now
right now
maybe late or
soon
I can write
now that I’ve left
the closed-off world
for healing space:
they call it “void” because
its unconditional acceptance
frightens them
I write in stars
and Oxford comets
arrange the cosmos
with a North Star
towards healing
those who knew me
breathe my relief
when my queer joy
eclipses stars.
BEKS TRYTH FREEMAN
The Power Of Playing A Living Dream
some people lock their dreams aways in closets
between old letter jackets and the skeletons
that haunt them in the night,
wanting to leave and leave them be,
not star in the next horror movie
I have no skeletons but my own
I fold it gently, rib by jaw,
into its place each night
leave it to sleep
without my dysphoria to haunt it
I got to play myself onstage—
first time in twenty years.
My skeleton and I dance together
ringing laughter from the boards
to the open air: the audience stares
wondering how we manifest their dreams
into our costumes and our speaking parts,
they never knew they needed future’s being
to walk onstage and look them in the heart.
POE
did you know that a whale carcass can provide an entire ecosystem where it falls, and that a tree will wrap its roots around a dead body and leave nothing but bones? i am talking to the prettiest girl in the world on facebook and she does not know that i cried earlier. i have not left the house in months and i am pretty sure that everything has disappeared outside except for what i can see from the kitchen window. i have tried to make my insides beautiful and i have not succeeded and i cannot make my outsides beautiful either. i am afraid of everything but i think if i found out i was really sick, i would not be scared of that. there isn’t a mirror in this house that shows the whole of me and i know people would kill for my body, but i want to waste it. i think about house fires a lot because they destroy everything, and i think that maybe i am a house fire too, and i wonder if anybody could ever love the burn. my heart beats too quickly but does not love enough. there is blood on my hands but you can’t see it, i washed it off before you got here. if you have ever heard a peacock scream you know that it sounds like a child crying. there is a full moon tonight, but nobody has ever taken a good photograph of the moon, because there are some things we are not supposed to hold in our hands. i wonder if my younger self hates me. my dad smokes so much that i can feel the tar in my throat wrapping around a plea. i will see the sun rise tomorrow morning. i like the word “annihilation” far too much, rolling it around my tongue like the softest kiss. i want to see the sea as the sky turns purple. i want to be remembered so badly. i want to be loved. i want to be more than wasteland limbs and so much void where my lungs should be. i want to ride the london underground and love every five minute jolt of distance travelled. i want you to know that i have tried so hard, for so long, and that i am so tired. i bruise your skin like dropped fruit with all the words i shouldn’t say and i’m sorry -
one day i will write the most wonderful thing and i will fix the gaps with gold and you will look at me and guide my hand around the bones of your wrist and let me hold like the most breakable thing. and i will be so careful.
GARY BLOOM
Devon Neal
Bell at the Station
A fissure divides the pavement,
a black, knotted spine,
its slippery vertebrae elbowing jagged
under the soft black soles of cars
in the gas station’s sooted, speckled lot.
My small shoe bridges this forking bone,
my other foot stamping a tired hose
running between pumps sun-faded to pastel ginger.
With each stamp of the slender coil,
a bell rings inside the station, walled in glass.
Within, the air is a cake of smoke
and ashtrays collect crinkled, lipstick-stained butts.
I sit in my dad’s denim lap,
the naked smell of gasoline pollinating
from the short, jagged stems of his beard.
The bell rings bright when a bruising rubber wheel
pinches the hose quick against the concrete.
Dad’s legs incline and I slide like a cartoon fireman,
and in a flash he’s out the door, grappling at nozzles.
I remain, staring through the smoke-warped glass.
At home, he will recline his polluted bones,
digging gentle into worn couch cushions
as my mother flurries like birdwings to chores.
Each day I will watch the sofa’s deadened seep
lower dad’s knobby frame to the floor.
I will never see the fissures spidering across the floor,
bed frames separating, whole rooms seceding;
Dad’s black car will leave behind a patch of sandy-brown grass
like a darkened wall behind a sun-painted photo—
he heard the bell ring under a woman’s light feet.
Dad Size
When I pulled the tilapia filets out
sizzling from the heat of the broiler,
my daughter pointed at the biggest one,
shaped like a wide white scab,
and said it was mine because it was
“daddy-sized.” It’s hard now not to think
of things that way—the biggest shoes
sitting by the front door, the biggest jacket
hanging in the laundry room, the biggest
coffee cup sitting wide in the cabinet.
I’m not a large man, and yet to her,
my fingers like tree trunks brush through
her hair at bedtime, my muscles like
mountains pry and twist and open
difficult things, my lift cradles her
nearest the clouds. When she goes
to school, there re dad-sized basketball
goals towering in the gray recess sky,
dad-sized levers pivoting on the bus,
maintenance men with dad-sized tools
stained with grime. At night, after a story
bigger than the arms of Dad’s goodnight hug,
I hope she doesn’t peek from the dark blue
of her bedroom doorway as I sit on the couch,
along with the dad-sized hole in me.
Monique Quintana
The Wolf Trap
The Generales seized the letter from wolf’s mouth when tried she to run it across the railroad tracks. She had one paw across the tracks and they stopped her. The hospital on the other side was teeming with life. Its windows glinting under shaking birds and treescapes. Santa Muerte’s statue swung in the hospital’s garden, but wolf could only see the top of her head, robed in smoke. Pink and burning. The letter. The girl wrote the boy’s name in bright blue ink and it looked like her veins on the flap.
Like the veins in the hand. The altar boy ran his fingers over her blue green lines as they kissed under the stained-glass windows of the hospital chapel, Xquic blessed, like spit in her hand. Their love made gods. The chapel, a secret. And when the tiny boys saw her, they ran at her like water, pointing at the girl with their fingers, their mouths in Os, they ran her from the chapel, the gold of their gowns like the flapping of wings.
The letter, gone. Her paw, a wound. Wound enough to keep her from crossing. She found the cool of a tree, its roots thumbing her belly. The pain had gone from fire, to a light, to a flicker flame in her paw, her claws curved under like moons. If only it was there, a cool moon for her, but instead, she saw sunlight, a gown. A blue hospital gown, the sterile glove of the earth, shading her eyes, blood grey with dirt and she waited for cold steps on stone, for fur to come and grow back again.
NOLL
SYDNEY MAGUIRE
The nights you spent fed
The nights you spent
In a full bed
That made you
Remember when it was empty
And holding on-
For dear life
To someone that kept you fed
And you think
Maybe there was no better feeling than
Falling asleep with a full stomach
In the arms of someone
(And yes, it was better when you loved them)
Both of you dancing in your dream
Among stars, or seashells
Smelling cherry pie on the sand
Or splitting the same popsicle
Shivering and eating sandwiches by the pool
And in this dream,
you’re both in the sixth grade
And you’ve met each other at a time
you never should have
But you’re sitting around a campfire
Sticking marshmallows in the flame
Do you like s’mores?
No, me either
But these are the best you’ve ever had,
And somehow they taste
Like your first kiss
And you inch closer
like it might kill you
And see centuries before and after you:
The same face over and over,
Holding hands in hospital rooms,
Carrying boxes on subway trains,
Painting rooms baby blue
And you wake up
To soft breaths,
Like plumes of cotton
Wondering
If they’re dreaming
The same dream
CJ THE TALL POET
Aimee Lowenstern
GOOGLE SEARCHES
originally published in Lunch Ticket
How to stop telling people I love them,
how to slow down the love, the bleeding,
the honey.
‌
How to remove a beehive. How to lock my tongue
between my teeth. How to melt down beeswax
and burn my heart like a candle. How to fit real blood and sinew
where the metaphors were. Help, what if the metaphors
shatter in my newfound bloodstream?
‌
How to be a guardian angel. How to stop the love from spreading
from my sternum to my shoulders and growing
wings. How to stop the wings from growing mouths
that say “I love you.” Do my wings have pink eye,
or are they supposed to look like that?
‌
Guardian angel applications. How to make sure people are safe
when I’m not there. How to let people know I love them
without reminding them I’m real. Am I real? Would it be better
if I was real? How many times can a real person say “I love you”
before someone gets annoyed and straight-up
murders them? Carnivore bees eat corpses?
Carnivore bees make honey? Ghosts say
“I love you”?
LORI D’ANGELO
The artifacts weren't exactly stolen but they weren't acquired legitimately either.
Josh liked to tell people that they had been found. But that wasn't really the truth. What happened was that someone had given them to him in desperation.
"Please," the man said, his body covered in sores, "you have to take this burden from me."
Josh didn't need to be asked twice. As an antiquities dealer, he knew what the artifacts were worth.
"Gladly," Josh said, quietly praising his good fortune.
Before leaving, the man turned back to warn him. "You understand that they are cursed."
"Yes," Josh said. "But I don't believe in curses."
"Curses," said the man bitterly as he wandered back into the darkness, "don't depend on your belief."
Less than two months later, that man was dead. Though the man was not famous, his death was covered by the press because its cause was so bizarre. He appeared to have been attacked by wild jackals.
"This almost seems like something out of a novel," the medical examiner was quoted as saying. "Jackals are not native to the UK. Not do we have any other evidence of their presence in this area. If they were the culprit, it is unclear where they went. In fact, they seem to have vanished."
The incident gave Josh pause for a moment but little more than that because, at first, everything was going fine for him. In fact, it was going better than fine.
Not only had these impressive jewels from the time of King Tut been gifted to him, but Josh had acquired some additional artifacts from the era of Queen Nefertiti. And he had found a buyer for these new treasures. A man who was willing to pay dearly.
"You understand that I can't guarantee their authenticity, but our experts say they appear to be genuine," Josh told the man.
"I'll have my own experts evaluate them," the man said over the phone. And then Josh heard a click. The man had hung up. How rude, Josh thought. But he knew that the very rich could say and do whatever they wanted. Their money gave them a luxury that others lacked. They didn't have to depend on people because those who didn't adequately do their bidding could easily be replaced.
Later that day, Josh received an email that seemed more like a summons about when and where the man's experts would meet him.
Declining the invitation didn't seem like an option, so Josh agreed to the man's odd terms. Josh was to meet the man at midnight near the waterfall. He was to bring the artifacts. Once there, he would await further instructions.
The waterfall could only be accessed by a hiking trail, and, usually, it was a popular tourist attraction. But tonight it was devoid of vehicles, except Josh's and what Josh assumed was someone working for the man.
Josh thought about texting the man and suggesting that they give up this cloak and dagger nonsense and simply meet in the parking lot. But given that the man seemed to revel in pageantry, Josh merely got out his flashlight and began to follow the trail.
Once he reached his destination, it was quiet except for the sound of falling water. Then suddenly Josh felt someone behind him covering his head with a bag and felt hands on his body. They were dragging him somewhere.
"Do you have the artifacts?" One of the men's henchmen asked him. Josh nodded holding up the canvas bag.
The men brought him to some kind of fire circle in which they performed a kind of ritual. He could see little because his eyes were covered. But he could have sworn that they looked like or were dressed as Egyptian gods.
"These artifacts were taken from our land, from our people," one jackal-like man shouted. "They were never yours."
Josh understood then that he would not be paid. After the dance by the fire ended, they tied him to a tree and left him there. The night grew cold, and Josh was alone. Though several times, he thought he heard the doglike hiss of the King Cobra.
When they found him the next morning, Josh was ranting about the curse of Tutenkamen. Assuming he was not well, they took him to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.
His room felt like a cell. In it, he shivered and saw visions of a snake as well as glimpses of the now dead man who has given him the artifacts and claimed they were cursed.
Josh's girlfriend, Sadie, was vacationing in London at the time. Upon hearing the news that he was in a psychiatric hospital, she did not cut her vacation short. In fact, she extended it. While there, she met the man that she would later marry. He was a riverboat captain.
Two days later, his mother came and signed him out against the staff doctor 's advice. "He seems to be hallucinating," the doctor told her. "He keeps going on about a secret ritual and a snake."
"Nonsense," his mother said. "Once he's home with some hot tea and crisps, he'll be fine."
While he was recovering in his mother's flat, his storefront caught on fire, the cause of which was never determined, and all his artifacts were gone.
He wasn't sure if they were taken or burned. But he never saw them again. With the loss of everything, his reputation as an antiquities dealer was ruined.
Crestfallen, he thought about following in the footsteps of his father, the fireman. But now he was terrified of both water and fire, and when he closed his eyes, he saw a doglike man calmly, terrifyingly weighing his heart.
Marc Isaac Potter
Mommy. D176
May I please have another
Serving of death.
With more gravy, please.
One serving did not fill me up.
Marc Isaac Potter
Not Horros
This poem is about flowers mostly about the fragrance of flowers the perfume of flowers which covers up the smell of blood. Also, this is not a poem, and also this is not a story and also this is not something that is called creative nonfiction because I don't know I'm saying words I don't want to tell you about my own suicidal ideation because that means and nobody will publish it I want to tell you about my own suicide attempts because that means nobody will even read it
So I guess we're stuck talking about flowers especially the bird of paradise which my neighbor has some of those maybe I should go take a picture and take it would take that with take it with me meaning that I should send it to you the editor this is kind of weird that a guy would write
I am a person with a lot of disabilities I have a mental illness that includes disassociation clinical depression PTSD and a bunch of other stuff like bipolar and general anxiety disorder and I have a heart condition have two heart conditions one is a heart attack that took out one of the quadrants of my heart so that it only works at 25 to 35% and the other part is that I have congestive heart failure for which I have to be hospitalized now and then to Drain Liquid from my body because it chokes my heart I live in a group home with 4 people per room but as I said in another piece of writing somewhere a friend of mine lives in a place where there are eight people in one room. The food here is fairly decent even though I have to admit that the weekend cook is not the best the weekday cook is very good and is a chef I mean he's a chef so we get very good food even though the owner doesn't buy very nice food that Chef makes nice things out of it .. You don't know want to know the horrors of living in a group home like cockroaches in the bed bugs and people screaming in the middle of the night because all of … How odd
Emily Perkovich
Labor & Delivery
I once had a daughter. We were the same age. Well, we weren’t the same age, but we were close enough in age that she wasn’t my daughter. I once had a daughter, and she was my sister. And after she went away, I kept giving birth to her. Birth is a painful subject when you are not connected by blood. I once had a daughter, but we never shared blood. She shared blood easily. I have always stored my blood outside to make more room for sisters. I once had a daughter who was my sister, and we didn’t share blood because she wasn’t my daughter. We were both crying, and she kissed my teeth, and I licked tears from her cheeks, and my tongue pressed too hard, so I swallowed her. My daughter and I were the same size, and she passed through my throat like a knot, but I have always loved my daughter, so I stretched and gulped and smiled through the pain. So, just past the cave in my mouth, was a stretching tunnel. The tunnel was raw and happy and spit my daughter into my belly, because that is the safest place inside of a woman. The problem with a woman is that she will always want to be a safe house. A safe house is a painful subject when you are not connected by blood. A daughter is a painful subject when you are not connected by blood. I once had a daughter, and while she was crying I hid her behind my rib cage, because that’s what sisters do. My rib cage was a safe house, but the problem with a woman is that she’s still a cage. The problem with a woman is that her safest place is inside. The problem with a daughter is that the only way out of a cage is through birth. So, in my abdomen I made up a guest bed for my sister, and as she made her way into hiding, my daughter saw that she was safe behind my sternum. Safe is a painful subject when you are not connected by blood. I liked to whisper the word “safe” down my throat, and let it drift across my daughter, but a rib cage is still a cage, so she usually heard the word “stay”. The problem with staying is that no one wants to stay. Staying is a painful subject when you are not connected by blood. I once had a daughter, and she was my sister, and sisters can stay, but sisters can also be jealous. A mother can keep a daughter safe, but a daughter can only stay for a mother. So, I once had a daughter, but we were the same age, so she wasn’t sure how to stay. I was jealous because she was my sister, but because she was my daughter, I could keep her safe, and she was in a cage, so she could only want to leave, but I have always loved my daughter, so I let her scratch and grow, and my body stretched and stretched. So, my daughter was in a stretching guest room, and I was a safe house, and my sister was lonely and confused, because I had stopped whispering. The problem with being a mother is that you don’t always know whether your daughter wants you to whisper. So, I stopped whispering, and my daughter was growing, and my stomach was stretching, and my sister was feeling abandoned. My sister only saw the growing. My sister couldn’t hear the whispers. The problem with a sister who is a daughter is that the mother is confused. A daughter is a confusing subject when you are not connected by blood. Confusion is always a confusing subject. Confusion is a painful subject. Confusion is the thing that cries. So, I was confused that I was jealous and wasn’t sure if I should continue whispering and I was crying, and my daughter was confused that she was growing and she was crying, and my sister was confused that she was jealous and lonely and she was crying. And the problem with a woman is she is always crying with nowhere to go. So my belly was full of my daughter, and I was crying and my daughter was crying and my sister was crying, and my belly was full of us crying. The swelling was pushing at my rib cage, and my rib cage wasn’t sure where to go, so it pushed back trying to keep everyone safe. The thorax is the thing that’s sharp. The thorax burst our bubble. So, my daughter couldn’t swim, and everything was filling with tears, and the safe house was crumbling. I could probably swim, but I couldn’t whisper, so I wasn’t sure what to tell her. My sister was jealous, and she was no help, so my daughter drowned her. I once had a daughter, and she was my sister, but my sister was unreasonable, so we drowned her. My daughter kicked and screamed and thrashed her way out of my bursting cavities. I once had a daughter, and I birthed her in my blood, but she was also sometimes my sister, and blood is too much responsibility for a sister. Blood is the thing for a daughter. And my daughter had too much blood of her own. I once had a daughter, and I keep giving birth to her. The problem with the birthing is that we all bleed out. The bleeding is the thing that cries. The daughter is the thing that cries.
