Size / / /

You use

an instrument of tusk,

of yellow tooth,

imperfections filed

into ghost.

They are invisible, to most.

Your fingers know.

I know your fingers.

I know them in the salt-sea.

I know them, charcoal-smudged,

smelling of smoke.

I know them pulped by fruit,

still wet with sea,

the sweet and the sour.

With this object,

your spider-fingers take

from wires hidden

in a box.

You transform

a swell of notes.

The stars, a silence, a sudden

dive and then a thunderstorm

- and now I have forgotten

how to take my skin off

like a lady's dovegray glove

and put it back on

as purple as the stomach of a flea.

To run like a deer.

To hide like a hay stalk in a hay stack.

All I can do

is root,

and snarl, and feel my thoughts

tangle and cross, grow green leaves,

   edged like teeth

and dense with veins.

All I can do is snarl, tangled

heavily across this chair,

and cling to the wall.

At least I have thorns,

although I open wide, whiter than silk

and redder than thread.

Despite my head,

I blossom like fire from a match.

I forget

how to shed

this shape:

When you close the lid,

and take your fingers from the monster's teeth,

and come to pluck me,

scatter my petals

so that I will never grow again—

I hope you bleed.




Jessica P. Wick is a writer and freelance editor living in Rhode Island. She enjoys rambling through graveyards and writing by candlelight. Her poetry may be found scattered across the internet. Her novella “An Unkindness” is out June 2020 in A Sinister Quartet from Mythic Delirium. Other dark fiction may be found in Rigor Morbid: Lest Ye Become from Bronzeville Books.
Current Issue
28 Oct 2024

By: Anna Martino
Translated by: Anna Martino
The truth is that I don’t know how much of my life was a dream and how much was reality. Does it matter in the end?
(...) A verdade é que não sei o quanto de minha vida foi sonho e quanto foi realidade. Faz diferença, no fim das contas?
By: Bindu Tiji
Translated by: Lakshmy Nair
Now, my passion is only for deserts.
എനിക്കിനി  ആസക്തി മരുഭൂമികളോടാണ്
By: Nanpai Sanshu
Translated by: Xueting C. Ni
PX9345 is a solar system situated on the outer edge of the Milky Way. It has one star, seventeen planets, three of which are located in a habitable zone, where water is not only present, but present in large amounts.
px9345是一个处于银河系边缘的星系,它有一颗恒星,十七颗行星,其中有三颗都处在宜居带上,不仅有水,而且是大量的水。
Issue 28 Oct 2024
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By: KT Bryski
Podcast read by: Devin Martin
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By: Christopher Blake
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 30 Sep 2024
Issue 23 Sep 2024
By: LeeAnn Perry
Art by: nino
Issue 16 Sep 2024
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Issue 26 Aug 2024
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