Annabelle Guetatra, Kate MacAlister, Kait Quinn, Sarah Cahalan

|FEN| ECLIPSE
Kate MacAlister
the swamp lies still tonight. I feel her eyes from above the gloaming the inside of a crater
where I once dug for shelter (from the ghosts I kept in jam jars and released under your breath).
away, from the lost nightlights I wade slower than death, cottonweed tangled at my ankles. They
said not to come here after dark here I lie still upon the heather, heathenbed. the song
comes from inside my chest, a prayer, a prayer on the skin
(remains, o deliver me - I want to say it’s serene- not that it’s... knocking. crawling. endearing)
tonight, she listens. she descends and touches my hair with silver fingertips and I hear her growl
and chant to my bloods. I turn I turn she is full. gorged.
the light of a million eyes. I take her into my breath, my mouth, my arms. a blush on her
withered skin I cradle her all along the boardwalk the shadows blossom, and the sphagnum
weeds stir in abeyance (like a vow I was holy once you held me) we have forgotten
to shape her names - she whispers every myth of the old ways to me all the way home into the
bathwater —--I try to make some waves for her or build a nest from my bones she is restless
and pushes, pulls; I almost swallowed her hatching a new darkness. beginning to bleed, we lie still
tonight and begin again tomorrow.
SONG OF THE COSMIC FOREST
Kait Quinn
at night we gather like all the birds of the wood : we, oil slick : dusk blue electricity effervescent in our
throats : we snow dream : exhale moon shards in your coffee : we capture our auras in Polaroids :
aurora borealis in pale orange & pink & azure : were we ever here, or are we lucid dreams? : we are the
longest night of the year : acrobatic & melodrama : back to abnormal : back to bitter breath blows
transitioning into dawn with butterfly wing delicacy : may we slice open the throat of monotony : we
nurture this newness with two hands : we dream with both eyes open : spread the filth of our souls
further : may we always be unreturnable : adrift : there is a cure for everything : except : we, black
feathered : too river damp to catch fire
NATURE PRINTING
Sarah Cahalan
On maps it is a bog, but it started as a kettle pond
Golden eyes of frogs, sunlit at the surface
Gulped down by muck, as a deer approaches
To think the sun on old days shone upon
A glacier (then retreating to its aerie
Shedding rock and rivers, shedding self
Decreasing to an embryonic shelf
Leaving holes ideal for growing berries)
Full up with red, the kettle is a chalice
Later, it will be so dark and starless
Like a void before creation, etched
On metal, inked black, impressed
on rags. With practice, one can navigate by tree.
Black silhouettes on black; distinctive creaks
Annabelle Guetatra After several years of studies and experiences, drawing has become Annabelle’s main obsession. Drawing in different formats – free paper, sheets assembled in a book, sound book, paper mache, ceramics, engraving, editing, self-publishing, animation – Annabelle’s scenes of love are caught in flagrante delicto, where the characters are dressed with accessories, masks, strange vegetation, furniture or animals not really identifiable. This masquerade inspired by childhood stories, travels (sometimes dreamed), tells us about life, its desires, its anxieties, its magic and its strange cruelty. Annabelle is represented by Galerie DYS, and lives and works in Beersel, Belgium.
Kate MacAlister is a poet, medic and feminist activist. Kate is the founder of the multilingual community arts and literature project Stimmen der Rebellion/Dengê Berxwedane/Voices of Rebellion. She has studied Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School under the tutelage of Carol Ann Duffy and is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Nottingham working on a collection focusing on the female body as antipatriarchal resistance. She has been published with two full-length collections of feminist poetry, available at Querencia Press and Sunday Mornings at the River Press.
Kait Quinn (she/her) enjoys repetition, coffee shops, tattoos, and vegan breakfast. She is the author of five poetry collections, and her work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Exposition Review, Reed Magazine, Watershed Review, The Winged Moon, and elsewhere. Kait is an Editorial Associate at Yellow Arrow Publishing and a poetry reader for Black Fox Literary Magazine. She lives in Minneapolis with her partner and their very polite Aussie mix.
Sarah B. Cahalan (she/her) writes about natural history, hope/grief/faith, the layers of places and how those correspond with our layers as people moving through time and place. She has poems, current or forthcoming, in Dark Mountain, Stirring, Trampoline, and others. Sarah is from Massachusetts and is currently based in Dayton, Ohio (USA).