Tadeusz Styka
According to the ancient myth, the pale phantom king of the underworld had a frozen heart—unmoved even by Orpheus’ twinkling music. The poet would have to rely on charming the king's wife, kindly Persephone in her flower crown, instead. With lyre and honey-colored falsetto, he applied himself to his art.
Charm her, the poet did.
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Aliza Razell
From my bedroom window, I watch the ferries. Like counting sheep, see them float across my window, light up against the darkness, and reflect in the water. I can't sleep, and the languid pace lulls me.
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Adriaen van Utrecht
I know what it sounds like, but it’s true: you broke the spine of my life. You used to hand me scraps of kindness, and I would gnaw on them for days.
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Steven Belledin
Can he see? Can he see this helpless thing that I have become? I lay my arm on the table between us. I know what he wants. Not amputation but extraction. The table is cold. My arm burns hot where it swells under the light. Silently he leans forward, feeling, prodding. I scream with pain. "Oh God!" I have forgotten. The blade flashes in the light as it plunges deep into my skin. Shocked white, the walls raise up from inside my flesh. Droplets mark the paths of capillaries where they flow into the well he has created. He is searching for it. His grey bristle eyebrows cast a shadow over the pits of his eyes and I see through to his skull, to the bones we all share. I feel him tugging. Then just like a knife slicing through soft butter, it slides out. He holds it glinting in the light. A razor blade, the tiny letters etched upon its side read "drink me". He casts it back into a jar, and when I raise my eyes I see a thousand more lining the wall, filled to overflowing with extracted pasts. I meet his stare, and for once he smiles.
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'Through Foxglove Nebula' - acrylic on board, 2016, by F. E. Clark
The second time she drifted in magenta her blood flowed dark and the purple-blue mist rose before her eyes. It was then, there on the ground beneath him, grit grinding into her shoulder blades, that she remembered that the magenta have visited her once before.
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Evelyn Garcia
Marianna, Yevda, and Nadya are shivering up there in the sky, (like three jewels jittering inside their flying crowns, or coffins, depending on their fate). Marianna is known as the Sapphire because she is blue eyed; Yevda is the Emerald, green eyed, and Nadya is the Ruby (with brown eyes and red hair). Their fairy tale is one of war and of witches, of poverty and prettiness, of lightness and speed, of secret terror and secret victory. Their enemies call them the Nachthexen: night-witches.
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Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, afraid that I am dying all over again. When a white truck drives by, I collapse within myself, afraid to move. I am 3 years old and I am in Mexico. There's images of doctors and a table. Everything is slightly tinted green. Other times, I'm in the recovery room. I'm trying to scream, but nothing comes out. That's when I remember that my mouth is sealed shut. My mother comes to me, and she drips water from a cotton ball onto my cracked lips. How did she know that's what I wanted?
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Gabriel Isak
For the first time in my life I crave cigarettes, I feel the pull of drugs and, though I’ve been vegetarian for ten years, the concept of greasy chicken is tantalizing. I want what isn’t good for me. I want what will kill me first, but I need enjoyment in the process. While I have the capacity to feel, I want to feel it all. I want the aches and the pains and the laughter. I want to consume large amounts of alcohol to make everything funny or interesting, to talk like I have something to say, and to listen likes it matters. I want the morning to be black, the day to be empty--just lying still, concentrating on being alive. The same as every other day, only my body responds and my mind doesn’t matter.
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