Size / / /

always the half-hour before a thunderstorm, televisions
tuned to static, a low tone humming through the rooms.
altars everywhere: pyrite, half-melted candles, music boxes
missing teeth. air woven through with smells: juniper,
paint, a pine needle split under the nose and suddenly
the sharp acetone of nail polish remover. a constant
breeze makes every door a lazy mimic of the list
and yaw of the last ship at sea. girl-ghosts do not sleep
and like sharks do not stop moving, swim from room
to dimming room to the sound of faraway birds, the furnace,
the stomp of a slight girl in heavy shoes. a world muted
under moss. the sky a near-boiling pot, the first raindrop waiting.




Cassandra de Alba is a graduate student in Boston. Her work has appeared in Red Lightbulbs, Amethyst Arsenic, and Neon, among other publications. Her most recent chapbook is called Bloodlust (No Spaceships Allowed).
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
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