Category: Webzine

Each Morning

Will Musgrove

            Each morning, I let my dog out.

She whines by the door. When I get off the couch, she spins in a circle. We go outside. I hook her collar to a leash that’s connected to a wire that’s connected between two trees. My lawn’s spacious with lots of things to sniff. She bolts off the stoop. She glances back at me. I’m static. She’s kinetic. When she realizes I’m not coming, she transforms into a rocket, back and forth, choking herself to catch a squirrel or a stick or a breeze.

            Each morning, I let my dog out.

I hear barking. Thinking of the neighbors, I peek through the blinds. She’s wrapped around a tree. I go back outside. She untangles herself and brings me her frisbee. I tug the disc from her maw and give it a hurl. When she skips back, instinctively shaking life from plastic, I’m again an eye between two blinds.

            Each morning, I let my dog out.

She’s quiet. I put my ear to the wall. Nothing but chewing termites. This time I raise the blinds. Her leash stretches around the house, so I can’t tell if she’s still attached. I rush outside and find an empty collar. Woof. My dog is standing on the stoop. I step toward her, and she retreats inside. I holler. I pace. I scratch at the door. But she won’t come save me.

            Each morning, my dog lets me out.

I pluck grass. I draw figures in the clouds. Curled in a ball, I nap under the sun. I shout obscenities at the neighbors whenever they hop into their cars to leave. I run back and forth, choking myself, knowing—no, hoping—one day I’ll go somewhere free of leashes, wires, and collars.

Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Versification, Unstamatic, (mac)ro(mic), Ghost Parachute, Serotonin, Rabid Oak, Flash Frontier, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter (@Will_Musgrove).

Two Poems

Jayant Kashyap

The Three of Us

Let’s go for a walk today, it’s been a while;

that shrine, it is still there –
evenings we spent there everyday, the three of us,
walking.

Do you remember? – oh, you must!
One’s been long dead now,

his grave dried, why then this new headstone?

Let’s go dust some altars again, just once! –
we haven’t touched those cold feet for long.

Loss’s Ghazal

Six years after home, in my distant longing, there is no sense of loss.
When for days you’d said nothing, there had to be no inference of loss.

I left everywhere you were meant to be, even in the memories we shared;
I left the country you loved when it echoed merely an assonance of loss.

In the bleak whiteness of an airport, they asked of me my identity, I held,
respectfully, my heart, said there isn’t and is only an essence of loss.

They let me go, those harbingers of peace; I knock at the doors of an un-
named asylum, they measure my words, my pain of its resonance of loss.

Now the door will open, they’ll let me in, and I’ll think of that long night,
the damp discomfort of the dark room; its stiff, quiet inhabitance of loss.

That long night, when in silence you could but you said nothing, I knew
then that your words, and Elise, my name, were my inheritance of loss.

Jayant Kashyap is a Pushcart Prize-nominee and was shortlisted for the 2021 New Poets Prize. He is the author of two pamphlets, Survival (Clare Songbirds, 2019) and Unaccomplished Cities (Ghost City Press, 2020), and co-founded Bold + Italic back in 2018.

Like the wind

Ruth Callaghan do Valle

“Race you home!” Makani shouts.

I start after her, fighting to catch up. She always does this, always takes me by surprise, and I end up running in her tail wind with just a view of her back, straight as a rod, arms and legs pumping like pistons, skirts flapping around her knees.

Makani’s not just fast, she’s quick. Quick with a reply, quick to get back up after a fall, quick to make a joke. My big sister will go places, I always said.

*

They say she would never have seen it coming, never have felt more than a moment of pain. I don’t know about the driver, but I remember Makani every time I feel the wind on my face. 

Ruth Callaghan do Valle lives in rural Brazil with her husband and three year old. Her poetry has been published in TunaFish Journal, streetcake magazine, The Minison Project, Lost Pen Magazine, Off Menu Press and Re-side Zine. You can find Ruth on Twitter (@rufusmctoofus) or on her blog. 

With orange blossom scented soap

Lorelei Bacht

and boiling water, I have scrubbed
your face off. I have scoured your
photograph from devices: his, mine
and everyone else’s – the clouds
are clean. I am prepared to storm
my sketchbooks, to pull out, tear,
to flame up a barrel, watch you
depart, a moonstone, a monsoon,
a monster gone for good. I do not
owe you an explanation. I do not
owe you a handshake. The five
syllables of your name recalled:
as a plainsong, a plague, a bunion,
a bad bout of food poisoning. And
that is it.

Lorelei Bacht (she/they) is a person, a poet, queer, multi-, living in Asia. Her work has appeared / is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Visitant, The Wondrous Real, Abridged, Odd Magazine, Postscript, PROEM, SWWIM, Strukturriss, The Inflectionist Review, Hecate, and others. She is also on Instagram (@lorelei.bacht.writer) and Twitter (@bachtlorelei).

Two Haiku

Tenarevyč

autumn night i survey constellations of windows

vaccinated i open the door with my elbow lingering fear

Tenarevyč is a Ukrainian author currently dabbling in literary language experiments. Find him on Twitter (@tenarevych).

Submission Call for Issue 7: Climate Action

2 Comments

With COP26 taking place in Glasgow from 31 October until 12 November, we would like to dedicate a special feature in Issue 7 to the climate emergency.

Submit up to three:

  • Stories (up to 600 words)
  • Poems (up to 16 lines)
  • Photos

We are looking for work that says something meaningful about the natural world (or human destruction of it) in a bold, brief way.

Please note: For this special submission call, the usual rules about waiting an issue after being accepted do not apply.

Regular submissions will also remain open for Issue 7. See the full guidelines here.

Two Poems

J.V. Sumpter

So Close, So Close

I’m almost asleep –
my head, pillowed on your knees –
please do not get up.

I’ll Love That Teddy Even If Cerberus Bites Him

If I have to go
to the underworld tonight,
can I bring my bear?

J.V. Sumpter (BFA from University of Evansville) is an assistant editor for Kelsay Books, Thera Books, and freelance clients. She has work in (or forthcoming in) New Welsh Review, Leading Edge Magazine, The Amethyst Review, Not Deer Magazine, Wretched Creations, Flyover Country Magazine, Southchild Lit, Selcouth Station, and The Augment Review. Visit her Twitter (@JVSReads).

Stencils

Rachel Bruce

Ancient stencils in pink and silver
dust the walls, faded from the sun.
The old shed smells of sawdust.

An image floods the empty space –
stamping these walls with my mother.
Her face, now lost, springs from mine.
At once a fairy castle and a tired hut,
I am a grown child in the presence of the memory.
My feet had almost forgotten the way.

I survey it all one last time.
Tomorrow the shed will be taken and burned.
Ashes to ashes,
dust to pink and silver stencils.

Rachel Bruce is a poet from Hitchin (UK). Her work has appeared in The Telegraph, Second Chance Lit, Eye Flash Poetry, Eponym Magazine, The Daily Drunk Mag and The Hysteria Collective.

Summer Night City

JP Seabright

Night, a sky pinpricked with stars,
like embers, burning still in the electric
orange of the city lights.

The warm joy of jasmine
embraces the garden.
Petals are curled, ready for sleep.

All is still, but for the distant hum of the cars,
the clock on the stairs
and the coughing fox.

JP Seabright is a queer writer living in London. Their work can be found in Babel Tower Notice Board, Fugitives & Futurists, Full House, Untitled Voices and elsewhere. Occasionally they can be found hanging out on Twitter (@errormessage) and blogging about music.

Island Fog

Rachel Newcombe

Rachel Newcombe is a psychoanalyst, teacher and supervisor on Orcas Island, WA. Her writing has appeared in Contemprary Psychoanalysis, The Psychoanalytic Reviewed, The Rumpus, Ellipse Zine, 7x7LA and elsewhere.