On a winter's night, in the blind massage parlor by Anqi Cao (she/her)

I  pushed through the iron gate, the creak echoing off the stairwell's worn walls like a familiar greeting. Ahead, silhouettes of a man and a woman were inching down the stairs, leaning on each other more than the shaky handrail. The hallway's dim light seemed to soak into the man’s weathered skin, giving him a twilight glow.

I recognized the man—Old Gao, and next to him, Fangfang, her arm hooked around his. Despite Fangfang looking three times as big as Old Gao, there was something almost childlike in her dependence on him.

They both waited in place, as I slipped past with a murmured "Excuse me," barely louder than the shuffle of my feet. ...click to READ MORE

No. 214 20240804

Father Cosmo, like many people in their early forties, had discovered one day that he could no longer read without the aid of eyeglasses. The priest preferred a large magnifying glass. He used it whenever he went through correspondence at his desk in the rectory alongside the church. A letter of great importance had arrived recently and he had left the heavy thick instrument on top of it while he prepared for morning mass. The shapes of the inked words became enlarged and distorted, like the dissected particles of an insect viewed on a slide under a microscope, because the convex surface of the glass rested so close to the handwritten page.

The woman in the chat room told me her bathroom floor resembled an abattoir after she’d inserted the tablets. With me, not much happened.

Just a few red streaks in my knickers the next morning, which is why I’m here.

‘Hello. I’m Richard.’

From my horizontal position on the gurney, I listen to Richard explaining the procedure. His voice and gaze tell me he makes an effort to see the person behind the patient. But is he Doctor Gower? I had an appointment with Dr Gower.

Someone behind my head wheels me to the operating theatre. Upon my arrival, a hush falls on the medical team’s banter; their eyes turn to me.

I tremble. This room is cold and all these males and females, clad in green gowns, face masks pulled over chins, will see my bush.

so the headlines crescendo on until the line
breaks into a frenzy. like the dead women

gutted by soft hands that held the
pink ink of passports

and won with faces pale as bellied cod,
i can wrap my mouth around

your words like any outliver,
but here's the truth:

you split my country open

Toomyville Academy of the Arts
was built on the site of a massacre.
Never talk about it
folks in the town don’t
especially the oldest because
they know silence is a lid.

On mornings when I crawl
To the front door of my apartment,
And see that I’ve left it unlocked.
I’m reminded of the breeze on my face
That only midnight can produce,
From an open front door,
While my father slept like a baby
On the couch of our living room.

I hate when you show up
in my small worlds! The ones I craft
out of alabaster and child’s math, oases
lacking long fingers and necks worth gnawing,
be careful, you had said, she will see the mark.

bottle-rocket pop-gun pressure-burst no one can wait
fireworks started before the sun set, before dusk was
even a whisper under the sky’s tongue, before anxiety
could even think to prepare for what was coming

there are three cathedrals
inside Brian Eno's heart

the first could house jonah
a coquettish cottage residing on
the tongue
of a big blue whale

The Swiss were in the news again.
This signifies the transference of autumn.

Money continually changes hands.
I have no words for you, Mr. Attorney General.

My words have shriveled up with disuse.
Or they have drowned themselves in the unholy reservoir.

In the bestiary illumination they seem one.
The curve of the weasel’s confidently cocked
back left claw snagged in the blue wings
flexes into a smooth weasel-back drop
down to where its teeth grace
the lissome writhing neck.

White wings sweep the moonlake's surface.
Yellow glints sway in motion
amidst the lake’s breathing pace,
steady and faint.
A shallow tinkling dip,
another dip,
dip, dip, dip, dip,
till you feel the waters’ trickling chant

I hereby leave
my twinges
my stiffness
and my nervous shoulder
to the mat

it’s called corpse pose
and I understand
down here
as close to the ground

If Lamberto Bava’s Demons was about people watching a movie about demons and then becoming demons, themselves, and if I watched Demons and watched people turn into demons after watching a movie about demons, and if I finished a box of a dozen doughnuts within 24 hours by slicing a jelly doughnut in half and using the knife to scoop the raspberry filling into the sink, wiping the red gunk (a glob the size of my thumb) against the metal ring surrounding the drain and turning on the faucet to wash it away into the disposal, and if my heels are growing bone spurs and my blood is pumping faster because I’m frustrated with your voice keeping me from thinking

My name is featherlight, my name
is cloud, jonquil, my name is good.
I never wanted to do wrong, I wanted
to do wrong. My name is white bark
of the birch on the path, and oak.

The best way to express yourself,
is through confident body language
and clear concise language.
Raise your hand high and say
I will volunteer to be lowered
into the abandoned well to rescue
that baby.

Facebook and Apple anchor the north and west ends of the commercial portions of Silicon Valley, Cisco and Netflix the south and east. In the middle of this great collection of tech giants sits the large campus of Coyote Enterprises, twenty thousand employees laboring away in buildings covered in a mishmash of stucco and aqua tinted glass. Inside the complex is every amenity known to corporate America. Employees can get their nails done, drop off their children at daycare, and eat free at Michelin starred restaurants. The luxuries don’t stop there. Coyote Enterprises employs another two hundred thousand in other parts of the world. The company is traded on the New York Stock Exchange and is a household name, yet no one knows what the company does, nor can anyone name a single product the company sells.

Five minutes into a federal tickle warrant has proved these jocular strap happy words to be self-evident, non-applicable, and subject to change at the whim and whimsy of the thin and flimsy. You know the type… voids in the synaptic cleft; subject to heavy metal poisoning… provided they have not been crushed by the overwhelming intentional vigor that fuels a Slayer mosh pit.

At the farmstand, a girl with strawberry-blonde hair held back by a crenated clip opens the flesh of an apple. She leans her shoulder on the frame of the doorway and sits on an upside-down bucket. The exaggerated curves of her torso mismatch her stringy body. Dimples come about on her ruddy cheeks when she looks at me and smiles. She probably stands as tall as my shoulders. Her breasts are like taut cones inside the veil of her t-shirt, and her bright pale face is like that in a teen magazine. A red haze enshrouds her like an aura.