A Magazine of Many Arts

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.

Sarah Shirley

Moonburn happens on very clear nights
to the pale swimmers venturing out, their
skin bare to the air and the water. 

They call to each other in trills and gargling
fluting sounds as they crawl over 
the rubble that is left when cities fall.

Their milky skin sings at the touch of
reflected radiance, tapping into an ancestral 
memory of a time when we strode out

into the brightest days, when we stood beneath
the orange sun and bathed in heat and light.
Long ago there was a sandy beach here,

but now our children, skin bleached
by the years spent trembling in the 
shadows of the fallout shelters, creep out

into the moonlight-silvered city, and lay
their pale bodies down to rest in the dark
at the water’s lapping edge.

Harris Coverley

I talk to the Machine
And how she whispers back
In her cogs
And gives Word through her dials
 
Chrome cool
Soothing a dead thumb
 
Oh how I love her
And how I hate
How she goes away
Sometimes
 
Even now
I can still hear her wisdom:
 
This is what you want to hear
This is what you want to hear
 
“Turn switch off and then switch on again”
 
This is what you want to hear