THE WINGED MOON
PARASITES
Louise Mather
Fraying, threshold of a shroud, filaments rotten, core in
retrograde, barely fragile, is love, is a lie, dream crenated, show
you flesh is only nettles in inertia, hollow as primal imploded,
metallic stone palette & my grief is annihilation, dragging
trepidation cold half-way through the night when you were
free, if anyone can be, is ever, inside meaning, numbness that
cannot be explained or switched & I'll dig our shadows from
ourselves, swallow us deeper than the heaviest disgorged
siren-mist where thoughts are starless parasites, black holes,
shapeless words, sunshine an erasure that does not need to be
begged & if our wishes are nebulous fragments of unreality I'll
pull them loose and slowly fall into the place together we never
come back from.
THE BIRKS
Laura Cooney
A gasp;
panics way of thinking aloud;
tight air escaping
a nail struck tyre.
It’s a long way down.
You remember being nine.
A dingy billboard den,
stolen pastries.
Death’s metallic scent lasts a millennia,
residing inside pineapple cake.
Tunafish misjudges itself in tender moments of care.
A mother cat turns sphinx,
delivered of five mewling kittens.
At the edge now,
apple cobbler chunks of ancient ruin tumble seaward
the past crumbling to dust.
Ahead,
this biro-lined horizon a
watery expanse of possibility.
The sea fills with the cries of knights,
the soft caress of princes,
stone that will one day be a child’s castle.
On the shore,
foam sheets of guilt wash-up;
thick,
sticky,
cloying.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL REMNANTS
After Louise Glück’s ‘Archaic Fragment’
Ken LéMarchand
I was trying to unbury bones.
I brushed the clavicle to reveal splinters:
You cannot kiss wounds and expect love.
It was a tantalizing moment, though brief.
This was, for me, an organically obsessional
discovery.
—your scapula:
ruined, but still tethered.
I brushed the clavicle to gently breathe:
Sigh, deep, stash yourself, blend your pigments—
List of artifacts to excavate:
malar, mandible, femur, true ribs.
—find
nameless gothness. Then I
canonize the bones.
clatterclatterclatter speaks
the gilded splinters.
ART GROWING PAINS by DUNA TORRES MARTÍN
Duna Torres Martín (she/they/fae, pen name Duna Haller) is a poet, writer, collagist and musician from Madrid, Spain. She has two poetry books out, Limbo (Bottlecap Press) and Desierto (Reflector Libros), as well as several poems and short stories published in various anthologies and zines.
Louise Mather is a writer from Northern England and editor of Acropolis Journal. A finalist in the Streetcake Poetry Prize and Pushcart nominated, her work has been published in The North, Broken Sleep Books, Acumen, Lucy Writers Platform and Dust Poetry Magazine. Her debut pamphlet The Dredging of Rituals was published in 2021. Twitter/X @lm2020uk Instagram louise.mather.uk
Laura Cooney is a writer from Edinburgh with work published in print and online. She is seeking representation. Her second chapbook; No Trauma/No Drama is due August 24, courtesy of Backroom Poetry. When she's not writing, she'll be found with her daughters, as close to the sea as possible, seeking shells. There will be ice cream!
Ken LéMarchand, a Maine-based poet, explores themes in his self-published collection Stained Love Like Egyptian Cotton and published works in The Wee Sparrow, Gypsophila Zine, The Poetry Cove, and anthologies.