'I will give you horses' — poetry by Johannes Göransson

TWO POEMS FOR OTHELLO

1.

My son asks me if I have ever been black.
Asks me if I have ever been homeless. Asks me if I have ever
seen god’s face. Was it surrounded by butterflies?
Was it ugly? Were the teeth made of gold or silver?
My son asks me If I have ever been to Los Angeles.
Asks me if it was made of silver. If it was built by angels.
Asks me if angels have teeth. Asks me if they whisper to me
at night. If they smash mirrors at night. If they can
have babies at night. My son asks me if angels
are black. Asks me if I have ever dug a grave. If I dug it
with a silver spoon. Asks me if I have ever been poisoned.
If he has ever been poisoned. If he can have babies.
Asks me who drives by our house each night
in a loud car, its headlights flooding his room.
My son asks me if he can eat roses.
My son asks me if I would eat roses for him.
Asks me if I will ever leave him. Asks me about his
biological mother. Is she poisoned? Is she alive? Does she
live inside a car? Does she walk around with a revolver
in her suitcase. Is she lonely? Is she safe? Is she angry?
My son asks me about my heart. Does it ever break?
Does it ever drown in fury? Does it ever want to
destroy itself? Asks me if his biological mother is furious.
Does she watch TV? Does it burn her eyes? Does she live
on blood? Will she consume me with her fury?
Is she black? My son asks me if I have been to the desert.
Was it very warm? Will I ever go there? Will my biological
mother be there? Will she consume me?
Will she bring a revolver in her suitcase? Will you drive
her in car? My sons asks me if I have ever ridden
on a horse? Was I scared? Was the horse?
My son asks me if I have ever stolen money from kings.
Asks me if I have ever hit a television screen with
a hammer. Was it made of silver or gold?
Asks me why I have a silver ring on my finger.
Asks me what a spine is. Asks me about his dreams.
Who the person walking through the desert?
Why is she surrounded by birds? Do crows live
in the desert? My son asks me about horses. What is a
stampede, he asks. What kind of teeth do they have?
How do they sleep? Are their shadows made of gold?
Do their branches break if you step on them?
My son asks if the snow can cover up the night. Asks me
if horses can survive in snow. Asks me about his breastcage.
Asks me about his spine. Asks me about the hooves
of horses. Asks me about photographs of horses.
Biological horses. Asks me about stampedes. Asks me
about horses. Asks me about the slaughter of cattle.
Asks me if I will ever leave him.
Asks me about horses. Asks me when I will die.
When will you die? Will you die in a car? Will you die
in a hotel room? Will you be alone? Will I give him
my money? Will I give him my little black book of poems.

2.

You name is already in it. You already own it.
You are already biological in it. Your spine is in it.
Your mother is biological in it. If I die in the desert
you can put my spine in it. If I die in a car accident
I will give you horses. Hundreds of horses. Biological
horses. Horses that stampede through the desert
for you. Horses that are angels in the desert
for you. Horses that are biological on television
for you. Horses that are slaughtered with silver
hammers for you. Horses that are mirrors
in Los Angeles for you. Horses that are dripping
poison from their spines for you. Horses that are poisonous
for you. Horses that are cars for you. Horse that are angels
made of shattered mirrors for you. For you will travel
into the biology of angels. You will hear them
whisper about the car that floods your bedroom
with light every night. The loud car. The biological
car. When I die I will come back as a biological
horse for you. I will come back with my spine for you.
I will come back as a mother. I will come back
with arms made of gold and a spine made of silver.
I will steal from kings. I will memorize your names.
I will bury your horses in roses. I will bury you mother
in snow. I will wake up every night and flood
your room with light. With darkness. With crows.
With crows I will sing for you about silver.
I will sing for you about gold. I will rub out the light.
I will carry a pistol in my suitcase. I will walk
around town in the snow. I will bury the kings.
I will steal their horses for you. But we will never
find your biological mother. We will be biological
in the desert. We will be mothers in the streets.
But will your biological mother ever find us?
Will she carry a gun in her suitcase? Will she
be riding a silver horse? Will she be surrounded
by crows? Will she be enveloped in angels?
Will we see her on TV when our eyes burn?
Will we see her in ambulances that flood
your room with lights and noise? Will she steal
my little black book of poems? Will the poems
be biological? Will the book be made of horses?
Will we bury her in roses? Will she bury us
in snow? Will the poems be furious? Will your
mother be black? Will she be furious? Will you
be scared? Will she whisper my poems for you?

---

Johannes Göransson is the author of ten books of poetry and criticism – including The New Quarantine (2023) and Summer (2022) – and is the translator of several books of poetry, including works by Aase Berg, Eva Kristina Olsson, Ann Jäderlund, Helena Boberg and Kim Yideum. His poems, translations and critical writings have appeared in a wide array of journals in the US and broad, including Fence, Lana Turner, Poetry Magazine, Spoon River Review, Modern Poetry in Translation (UK), Kritiker (Denmark) and Lyrikvännen (Sweden). His is a professor in the English Department at the University of Notre Dame and – together with Joyelle McSweeney, Paul Cunningham and Katherine Hedeen – edits Action Books.

'Darling, clean up your heart' — poetry by Lavinia Liang

Days at Sea

Sometimes folks will ask me, How did you get here? and whatever they mean, career or location or otherwise, and however I answer, I always think: I must have closed my eyes. I don’t remember yellow trees or sky-colored waves passing by. Did I take a plane, train, car, road? I don’t know, I do things just for the feeling. Go ahead and close my heart. The only true answer to How did I get here? is: by myself.

---

Darling, Clean Up Your Heart

Ma called me back and told me to pull my heart back—to retract it—better yet, compress it, forward and back, to rein in my heart—but my limited grasp of the language heard, Darling, clean up your heart. She was right, she always is, I’m only alright at handling my needs like light on flowing water—I give up when I shouldn’t, I keep going when I should stop. I knew I had to shou my xin because I’ve seen better hearts before. Once I saw slight beauty and great truth at the dinner table, how my cousin and his wife spoke to the whole party while speaking only to each other. The conversation turned to me at some point that night and I knew even then I had to shou my xin, knew I wasn’t the star of the show, but a repository for mutually unsaid things, no-man’s land on which to safely tread, needed whenever lovers love nearby. But still, I basked in it, happy to take it for granted, leaping at the possibility to have my own orbit, my unyielding my only my unclean heart.

---

Lavinia Liang is a writer and attorney. Her writing has been published in The Guardian, The Atlantic, TIME, the Los Angeles Review of Books, AGNI, and elsewhere. She can be found on Instagram @lavinianshores.

'am I the lonely wicked one' — poetry by Lindsay Lusby

Self-Portrait as Skirtful of Hell

Never. Never. Not my real wife.
She’s my real witch, my fork, my mare,
my mother of tears, my skirtful of hell…
—Anne Sexton, “The Interrogation of the Man of Many Hearts”

am I the lonely wicked one / my mouthful of cicadas / jewel-green wings thrumming / constant

though sometimes / the song still rises & falls like / heatwaves like dreamwaves / my pocketful of

acorns & milk teeth / my handful of antler velvet & moss / not some flightless nymph / I am a

plague of wingbeats / always flickering in rooms with no / wind no windows / my eyeful of kudzu

vine & pokeberry / my earful of don’t go & stay / & more & more & more / I am a fever of never / good

enough heart humming / dripping & sticky with bees / my lapful of lanternflies / speckled skirt

trembling / ash- gray & flash of / red underwing smoldering / catching like live embers / then we

all go up

---

Daughter as Omen, as Nightjar

When my father asks me to call
more often, I rattle & rasp

like a rapid knocking against pine bark,
against the dark glass of windows

I mistake for the moth-feathered sky.
I don’t have a pretty song to sing.

I am a gaping mouth tucked
in the undergrowth—

a bird-shaped fragment of night,
a night-shaped hunger that sleeps

all day beneath the mayapples—
fern-owl, dew-hawk, briar-thrush.

When my father asks me to visit
more often, I come gliding above

the moonlit nettles, follow the ghost
of his voice floating low to the ground,

half-here half-gone like mist. I move
silently through the deep-green air

until morning creeps in at the edges.
When my father says he’s ready

to die, I know he’s already turning out
the lights, one by one—those night-

blooming bellflowers blinking closed.
But, little deathwish, I keep showing up,

churring from the tangled hedge out front
& he opens the door & he lets me in.

---

Lindsay Lusby’s debut poetry collection Catechesis: a postpastoral (2019) won the 2018 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize from The University of Utah Press. The author of two previous chapbooks, her poems have appeared most recently in Booth, Coffin Bell, Epiphany, Copper Nickel, and Puerto del Sol. She is a Senior Poetry Reader for Cherry Tree and she edits poems at Tell Tell Poetry. With Amber Taliancich, she co-founded and runs Perilune Editing. 

'flowers of hell, bonded in glitter' — poetry by Katie Doherty

Slice

A slice of you, in two
I cannot bear the fractured play of the undying pasture of your youth.

Dependence and diplomacy are falling, ranges of tangible feelings.
Corpse bright,
corpse light – a tinge of the edge of madness.

In the flight of the moon,
the green tides grow, and I fade into
the night.

---

Copper Flavoured

Copper flavoured beetroot,
ground born and tattered in the wind,
fly-by fresh natives coagulate in June.

Fortuitous flatlands carry their seeds,
the wine tastes like butter – forgone and foreseen.

Flagellation feeds into the corners of the mind,
hung dry and fostered into congenital species.

The fires burn in times where mob rules,
seize the flowers of hell, bonded in glitter
and soaked in blood.

---

Katie Doherty is an editor, curator and writer based in London. She founded the Black Flowers Arts Journal in 2020 and has worked in underground publishing since 2006. Her work has been published by Black Flowers Press, A Cafe in Space: The Anais Nin Literary Journal, East London Press, Tangerine Press, Paper and Ink, Resurrection Magazine, Analog Submission Press and Between Shadows Press.

Website: www.blackflowers.online

Instagram: @kissofthevelvetwhip

'it is the scent of death and it is a wolfish girl' — poetry by Lena Kinder

pray ; wish

---

wolfish

---

Lena Kinder has an MA in creative writing from the University of Southern Mississippi and is pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Hollins University. Her works can be found in or forthcoming from Wigleaf, Salt Hill, Pinch, Flash Frog, and more. She is the editor-in-chief of Folklore Review. You can find more on about Lena at https://lenakinder.squarespace.com/

'plotting like a diabolical orchid' — poetry by Laura Cronk

USING UP THE BOYS

the boys weren’t promising
weren’t courtly didn’t clean up well

their lithe nonchalance at halftime
was unsustainable in any official capacity

when they were with us
they were too embarrassed to get the door

too uncertain to pay a compliment
or smooth our hair with elegant calloused hands

we lived in the country where mixed messages
bottlenecked between front cortex and bright nerves

I filled out forms and got the summer job
spending hours at the register studying them

plotting like a diabolical orchid
to drink their sadness

lap it from cheek hollows
sip from clavicles

drink like a cut flower
waist deep in freshwater

---

THERE HE IS, LOUNGING IN MY CHEST

thirsty though rainwet
forever no age
gorgeous
in menswear designed
for the end of the world
pale blue sequined shirt
navy high waisted
sequined pants-
as GQ said, how else are
we supposed to live?
how could I have been
so tranquilized?
when the devil himself
was there all along
pushing his hair back
to make real eye contact

---

Laura Cronk, is a poet and essayist and is the author of two books from Persea Books: Ghost Hour (2020) and Having Been an Accomplice (2012), winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize.  Her poems, essays and interviews have appeared in anthologies and publications including the Best American Poetry series, the Academy of American Poets, Big Other, The Bennington Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Court Green, The Curator, Iterant, Lit Hub, The Literary Review,  Public Seminar, and WSQ. She was the founding poetry editor for The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food and is currently an associate editor with Tupelo Quarterly. For many years she curated the Monday Night Poetry Series at KGB Bar. She has presented panels on reframing the writers' workshop and the ethics of writing nonfiction. In her teaching practice, she is especially interested in collaborative pedagogical methods. Her work supporting writers at The New School has included programming The Summer Writers Colony, the Writing & Democracy Honors Program, and the BA in Creative Writing. She is a member of the feminist writing collective The Matrix.

---

'even in wilds, it sins' — poetry by Ann DeVilbiss

Dreams Inside the Glass Case

As I heal, leisure falls around me like a dawn-gray glove.

My nails grow long and indolent, clicking along the nightstand

when I reach for water, any water. I drift out on pills

forget-me-not blue, temper their chalk with candied jellies

feeling how I imagine the rich do: cared for without apology.

The bed is a tomb where I pray for the lazarus day to

come quickly, flat on my back under cotton shrouds, pain

the little dog nipping at my heels. A certain kind of woman

is allowed to rest so I don her mask. When I slip under

a technicolor parade of gems moving through the dark.

---

Palm Oasis

Because I fear the mountain

I climb it, braced and trembling.

In every direction the rock pushing

slant from earth, spiked land laden

with cholla, creosote, joshua trees

keeping watch for fire and rain alike.

My steps press the dust, among

the millions of visitors, of years.

Life retreats behind dead growth when

season is harsh. No shade, no succor

ranges grazing the sun like hard knuckles

until day’s leave when the dusklight slips

into the oasis how an unzipped dress

falls from the shoulders of a beauty,

quiet pierced by revved engines because

this is America; even in wilds, it sins.

What sweetness in its sour belly,

these lands kept separate, for now.

Shriveled pomegranates rattle in wind

bells of the underworld.

How did I luck into so much

here at the end of everything.

---

Ann DeVilbiss (she/her) has work published or forthcoming in Appalachian Review, Columbia Journal, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Her little book of spell poems, The Red Chorus, is available from White Stag Publishing. A founding member of the Sublimity City Poetry Collective, she lives and works in Louisville.

'I birth my own being' — poetry by Nichole Turnbloom

Pheromone

It is (you, I want) a mystery you maintain

distraction or eccentricities (to suffer) an assay

to distinguish between substance and absence,

a figure of imagination (in myself I am) your figure of speech.

A lion waiting (aware of this): all must come to the watering hole,

patience is not a virtue, it is a necessary pawn,

when one surrenders, the throat grows soft--

the wind carries the scent of Circe.

Note: Italics in parentheticals are Sappho fragment 26 as translated by Anne Carson

---

Eros shook my mind

Apricot blooms burst
into a perfume piquant
with the possibility
of our
convergence. 

Hungry (for battle)
I hear the conch shell’s
ballads of life
in love
with itself.

Dying to live,
falling to awaken 
your breath
moves
mountains.

I birth my own being.

Note: The title is Sappho fragment 47 as translated by Anne Carson.

---

Nichole Turnbloom has MFA in poetry and completed additional training through the institute for Poetic Medicine.You can read her work in Acumen, Journal of Westbrae Literary Group, The Branches, Spillwords, and is forthcoming in IWWG’s 2025 Anthology Write Forward among various other venues.  

'vespiaries brooding combs of quietness' — poetry by Susan Irvine

White Roses

You cisterns sequestering white-shadowed air

As still and pure as aquifer under rock,

You vespiaries brooding combs of quietness

Within the shelter of your papery cups,

So crystalline, so pure your essence is

Of things immortal, unobtainable,

It has the power to re-configure us,

To instigate a deeper thirstiness.

Roses, white roses growing by the wall,

Let me stay by you and build a hermitage

Though the sky blackens and your petals fall,

Prick my sullen heart and let me drink

From your white grails a shadow of the unslakeable.

---

size of my life

As the great befurred chamberlains

Thronging with peerless hums

Descend on state visits

To the palace of roses, a dit -

A miniscule virgule - darts

Among them, a speck

Against these walls so sheer,

Battlements of the horns of plenty,

Where it also partakes, enters.

---

Susan Irvine teaches a course on using smell as material at the Royal College of Art, London. She has published a novel, Muse, and a short story collection, Corpus, both with UK imprint, Quercus.

'What comes after happiness?' — poetry by Robert McDonald

Together with the Thrashing Wings

There is no such thing as a still winter night.

On the highway of cold winds, little voices seemed to rise.

A single crow called from the edge of the road.

The winds were so strong I could not push against them.

Winter birds were crystals who flew over our heads.

Above the darkness stood another darkness, together with thrashing wings.

Perhaps we are orphans, hiding between ferns and the moss.

I removed a rock from the first stone wall, as old as the mountain itself.

I wanted a house that could not be seen.

I made a bone needle, I sewed myself an outfit from the dead deer’s fur.

I had the feeling that I was in an old story somewhere.

Even ice moves, an inching white river.

If what you long for is a roof above your head, slip quietly into the hemlock forest.

Note: This is a found poem. All the lines are taken from ‘My Side of The Mountain’ by Jean Craighead George.

---

Sirens

Define each realm by what is lost.

The swifts in their flight, how they arrow into bluing.

Perhaps this is Sunday evening and the end of all rest.

“Of all that is seen and unseen,” he loved that phrase from church.

How to describe the end of things: the bluing is the sky.

Think of a ship filled with all the heroes.

And the petals of the daylilies are closing one by one.

Raise your whiskey glass, that promise of darkness.

The crazy lady on the park bench says “Sirens, the sirens.”

What comes after happiness?

By the time that evening finally arrives, a tree will grow up from the living room floor.

There’s no real forgiveness, that’s one thing our minister said.

So the birds turned into people and they all flew away.

---

Robert McDonald’s first book of poems, "A Streetlight That's Been Told It Used to Be the Moon," is coming from Roadside Press in 2026. His work has appeared in 2 Rivers View, Action/Spectacle, I-70 Review, The San Pedro River Review, The Madrid Review, and West Trade Review, among others. He lives with his husband in Chicago.

‘the pale seam of spillage’ — poetry by Amanda Gaines

GIRL SPELL FOR TRANSMUTATION

---

Amanda Gaines is an Appalachian writer with a Ph.D. in creative writing from Oklahoma State University. Her work has been published in Passages North, Cleaver, Potomac Review, Barrelhouse, Fugue, december, Witness, Southern Humanities Review, Willow Springs, Yemassee, Redivider, New Orleans Review, Southeast Review, The Southern Review, Juked, Rattle, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, Ninth Letter, and Superstition Review. She's currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee. 

'an assailing miasma' — poetry by Sadee Bee

“I am an appetite. Nothing more.”

- Count Orlock, Nosferatu

I am a feast–sublimely–decadent torture.

The kind–once tongue touched–sends prickles down a throat.
An addictive–amuse-bouche. Never enough to satiate–only
enough–to

linger

linger

linger

Many have brought–their appetite–to my feet.
Dined–and supped–until I begged–for reprieve. With
them–followed such darkness–an assailing miasma.

take

take

take

of me–until I can be–consumed no longer.
I am not–a feast–I am pestilence.
Bringing death–dispersing ruin–to men that dare–imbibe.

---

Portal

It is of much consequence–
that I– hand out keys–to my heart.
Only later–to find–their teeth–lodged in my back.
Fingers turn them–all at once–unlatching my skin
revealing a gateway–to a Hellmouth.
Ribs–part like weathered gates–in protest.
Unveiling wrath–between blood and bone.
Perpetual use–dulls the spirit–within here.
Never being the choice–a want–a need.
a damnation–to loneliness–desolation.
To be a whim–a dream–a passing fancy.
Easy to forget–could drive any mind mad.

---

Sadee Bee (They/Them) is a queer artist and writer inspired by magic, strange dreams, and creepy vibes. Sadee is the author of Elgin Award-Nominated Magic Lives In Girls (kith books), & Celestial Bodies / Earthbound Wounds (White Stag Publishing). Bee can be found on Twitter @SadeeBee, on Instagram @sadee__bee, and the web at www.sadeebee.com

' ghost of cinnamon, wet dog & bog blood' — poetry by Trista Edwards

Milk Shadow Has a Pregnancy Dream & Meets Mama Mud-Nest

clay-heavy barrel she rolls eyes sleep sticky as snail milk
shadow descends to hum swaying cool under ceiling fan
& dreams sweet like tapped maple tiny hand claws tic
nighttime tics milk shadow cows to cockcrow stay sticky
more time briny tide licks the hum tongue mud body heart
twig gathered hair candy shell damp ink halo tight dream
deeper mama mud-nest is here baby house critter-maker
droop belly & breasts yawn empty milk no worries mama
mud-nest is here sleep little shadow sleep milk sleep belly
sleep critter & wade ink deep milk shadow mama is here

---

Earth Hatchling

Scent of clung earth, his first perfume—
muck of silt, rust-bloom, ghost of cinnamon, 
wet dog & bog blood. Mama Mud-Nest pulses 
a riverine flood. Twigs a shudder & pelt matted, 
damp with the history of skin. Shell-shards break 
to a crown of pearly blue—he blinks, 
a swamp jewel, slick & new, daubed in preening oil. 
Splayed like star anise inside hollow bone. 
The grand creature unfurls atop the bower 
of his exit. Mama Mud-Nest contracts 
his old cradle from her mossy cup, ink gloss
& feral musk—the breath of earth’s core, still hot
with the body’s deep work. Nest & hatchling
smolder in the primordial spoor of their becoming.

These poems are from DEATH ROLL, a new book out with White Stag Publishing.

---

Trista Edwards is a poet, editor, and scholar whose work dwells in the intersections of folklore, myth, and the macabre. She is the author of the poetry collections Death Roll (White Stag Publishing, 2026) and Spectral Evidence (April Gloaming Press, 2020). Her creative projects often draw from Southern Gothic themes and speculative literature, interests that also inform her personal life as an avid horror fan.

Currently, Trista serves as an Acquisitions Specialist and Developmental Editor at Atmosphere Press, an independent hybrid publisher based in Austin, Texas. Her editorial portfolio includes editing the anthologies #BLOODLORE (White Stag Press, 2025) and Till the Tide (Sundress Publications, 2015). Her own writing has been featured in a variety of literary journals, including The Adroit Journal, 32 Poems, and Southeast Review.

Trista earned her Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of North Texas after completing her M.A. and B.A. at the University of West Georgia. She lives in Hiram, Georgia, with her husband and two children, where she is currently at work on her debut novel.

You can find more of her work at www.tristaedwards.com.

'Make of me a piecemeal mound' — poetry by Matthew Gustafson

BRUTALIST SONNET

A gray June and a broken porch, the sun lost and the neighbor biking. / With the grandeur of two corpses thrown in a grave our spines fold into one. / Inside we feel vaguely moved, but after we are quiet, and we don’t address the dying bird caged within our chests. / I visit the graveyard to keep voices alive, and in this decaying summer I find not solace, not comfort, but grim reality. / My parents are buried like brickwork, one casket atop another, fused together by the dirt, the graveyard a foundation of wood and wax I bury my memories and bootsoles in. / When I die, I will do so in small, squarely framed boxes, like the quiet doll of a child that I am. / My tired kintsugi lungs will collapse into themselves like inflatable slides, and the great bruise of the milky way will settle on my stiff skin like dust on an old photo. / A hard year I’ve had of it. / I’ve been gardening, see, my skin caked in sweat and the rose petals all dry, so let me lie, and lend me now your soft, uncracked hands. / Exsanguinate me. / Let me of my blood, drain my tucked away veins of their last warmth, pull them from the house of my body like worn-out heating ducts. / Make of me a piecemeal mound, make of my heaping remains and heap of veins a new kind of art, gather my scattered parts and make of this mess something whole. / Sweep my scraps into russet collage. / Leap into me with such force that even the sky must relent its grasp and for just a moment I’ll hold you entirely so all that exists is you and I in something like a cloud of leaves.

---

Dirge at Dusk

For the dim day. For the long night. For the night pooled in flower pots. For the night that glows under watchful starts, under the half-built moon. For the night on your fingernails, in your downturned pupils. Your hair is the glittering filigree, our hands the moonlit arabesque. For the stars that draw down. For this panopticon we guard, and call the night sky. For the shy god’s handrail that we call a galaxy. For this second story balcony. For the galaxy of breath, loose from my lips. For the galaxy from yours. For how we watch our breath dance away together like proud silver horses. For how beautiful they gallop. For how quickly they fade.

---

Matthew Gustafson has many ghosts stuck in his throat. At first, the poems were meant to be like hot tea, washing the ghosts away and soothing his windpipe, but now he realizes all he's done is give the ghosts a microphone. When not tending to the catacombs of his throat, Matt has found time to graduate from Lafayette College and Stony Brook University, be the Poetry Editor at Folklore Review, and publish poems in The Shore, Eunoia Review, Beaver Magazine, and elsewhere.

'the fever always holds' — poetry by Abbie Allison

my doctor’s folly

darling, darling – cerberus wheezes, and inside it is the smell of his pure smokes, snuffed and hanging heavy in the air.

in this acetylene paradise, i am the meek virgin, the hothouse orchid, the lecher’s baby – i am a lantern’s delicate glowing radiation, flickering off, on, off, on. the night trundles along outside, but in here – in this garden of indelible metal, my feverish cries bead and dissolve like paper on my tongue.

he thinks of himself as god, as a light eating the days from the rounded heat of my body, but god hurts the world in elements, not in love. his kiss is my head gated under water. his flush is an anchored body choking. three deaths in an hour. there is no devil, not in here – hiroshima’s ash coating was a man’s sin. darling, darling.

in this paradise, the fever always holds.

(Note: Diction taken from Fever 103° by Sylvia Plath)

---

Abbie Allison is an emerging writer and poet from Hanceville, Alabama, infatuated with themes that work through grief, girlhood, religion, and southern culture. She is a current undergraduate student at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where she studies criminology and writes opinion articles for The Crimson White. Her fiction work can be found in The Reprise.