A selkie long trapped by a man escapes her imprisonment and reclaims the sea.
Magazine
Sam the Squid by Rimika Solloway
A squid who is also a woman deals with depression and abuse.
Displacement Activity by Emma Lee
A pebble dropped will displace its own volume of water. Observers, concerned only with measuring volume, don’t care about the separated water or the guilt of the pebble.
Talking about the weather by Myrna Al-Tajuri
…eyes on my skin, small hellos and howeyas in smoking areas and bathroom queues / imagined passengers in passing cars feel like scalpel incisions – the flaying of a beast. I crumple into nothing under floodlights of sight.
Pomegranate for Beginners & Kouridashi by Bluey Little
start with a bruised body and the wrong knife, take a hound’s eye: follow the pierce and spatter, little globules seething as red thumbs dig to outrun the decay.
Solve for Why by Adilyah Taller
After all, who wouldn’t rather fractions over fractures?
Two Paths Diverge in a Cemetery by Lily Bland
A chronically ill person ventures out for a walk in a cemetery, ruminates on life, death and illness.
Hiatus by Shikha Sawhney Lamba
Written after the death of Mahsa Amini Some days, some part of me refuses to put pain down on paper. These are the days I pull away, stretch myself to a place where I know we are not all grieving. On some days, I have to diversify my language, revise my tongue, which drips with sadness and speaks...
Lightener of Stars by Dylan Willoughby
Sharp the placenames of reliquary Bitter the taste of the buried I stand hunched by the Lake of Saints Disinter my brutal brutalized heartVouchsafe passage to the newly birthedTo the freshly dead and to the undying Lightener of stars, ghost of the hollybushBeware nomenclature of fallow...
Midnight Call by Safiya Cherfi
Unable to sleep, a young boy overhears his father on a call that shifts his priorities.