A Magazine of Many Arts

Michelle Muenzler

It's not really a gun unless it's loaded, your father said
which doesn't make much sense the more you think about it
what with the silent zzzt of your rifle
whining in your ear, battery charger dangerously low
and your opponents
those octopodal bear-backed who-knows-whats
slinging shells from tubes that increase in speed the further they fly
as though inertia has no meaning
and maybe for them it doesn't
because where is the meaning when it's just you and them
and their closest galactic ally
some species you have yet to even identify
but mostly reminds you of a bathtub gone to rust
and trundling about on five legs, towing behind it
a half-ton rod
and if the rod intersects space and time, disconnects
and when it reconnects evaporates your companion beside you who was only
clinging as best he could to the laws he knew
to the weapons of familiarity
then yes, if said rod should break physics as well
and then reappear all handwavium aback that awkward creature once more
then is it not also a gun?
Did it not speed its target to an unlikely end
there and gone in a flash of powder as the dust of your mate collapses behind the bulkhead
Maybe it did and maybe it
didn't
it's hard to say in the chaos of combat
but if it did then maybe you can too
simply appear like a bullet, lodged in the soft appendages you think might be
your enemies' hearts or whatever is most important to them
your fist a precision rifle, death reloaded, 18 plasma charges a minute
melting your opponents and turning them into so much slick paste
running down your fingertips
And maybe you're all guns here on the battlefield
whether loaded or not
or maybe, like your father's words
none of this really matters because the battle is now
your aim is poised
and the intent to kill is etched against your finger
a bullet of its own

Lynne Sargent

Do you remember when we were witches
wielding wands of wheat,
making cedar talismans
to protect against the fear of being caught
in ding dong dash?

When every tree was a portal
and every villain could be defeated
with a quest, or a century
and neither seemed quite so long.

When love was in gemstones
found in rivers, presented to you
with your own hands, claimed
by your own eyes.

When our power was in powerlessness--
in the fable of pretending
it was the kind of thing that would be outgrown.

Mack Mani

they always told me,
You should have seen her back when she-
(before she had you)
the beautiful hairless nymphs
of Boucher and Titan
had nothing on her
cut marble eyes
Mariah Carey jeans
endless flowing midnight hair

Your mother was a looker kid,
you know that?

The men in her life,
cursing cruising Toms & Tims
good and bad and That damn boy‘s
between us allthefuckingtime
turned her into something
they didn’t want anymore,
a growling, howling mother bear
set to roam the loom and gloam

She told me once after they’d left,
I don’t feel like a woman
(or a bear)
have I really lived for 50 years?
I still feel like a girl
on the edge of the pool,
when the world was colored neonchrome
when gods still walked on four legs
when good and evil were
afraid
ashamed
before I was tricked,
Just this once, I said
but it’s been justthisonce for 50 years.

And so now
she holds me close,
pinned between her
fur and jaws
outlaws together
forever cast
about the wild sky.

Sarah Shirley

Camera flashes, crimson sashes on a catwalk in Shanghai,
the newest line of fashion on the newest line of models
fresh from the grow-vats. Tall ones, short ones, 
slim and plump ones, faces engineered to a 
blank smear onto which the audience can 
project their own features using the handy goggles 
from the gift bags: this is how you’ll really look 
in the season’s latest offerings! Bass notes pumped 
in are hypnotic and everything is energy and striding
strutting motion, the mannequins marching the
precise measurements of the walkway, no need for 
eyeballs - their feet have been told where to go. Concern
was raised a while ago, but quickly put to rest - 
no humans were harmed in the making, my friend! 
They come unstoppable, stalking the floorboards
draped in silks, wrapped in satin, strapped in leather,
and when a Float-Cam stutters and sparks nobody 
notices, not until the flames lick up the cheap material
of the sashes, turning them into ash and smoke. The
hall empties out, a thunderstorm of pounding footfalls 
and shrieks, but the models march on in the thickening
fog, driven the fifty meters from the curtain to the end
by instructions hardwired into nerve and muscle,
and the meaty beat of a porcine heart.

I have not been posting for a while due to moving. Er, while I obviously knew I hadn’t posted in some time, I was not aware that it was six months. I have a number of accepted poems, and sadly, some submitted poems I have not replied to yet. Now that I’m settled in my new home, I’m going to push through and get back to everyone.