The pieces in our eighty-fourth issue are beautiful and brimming with power. Pull up a cushion and prepare to read your future in this misfit tarot deck of wonders: KC Mead-Brewer’s Ravenous Hyena, Caleb Echterling’s Singing Peacock, Lisha Ruan’s Enchanted Meat, Rachael Sterling’s Vial of Forgetfulness, and Jane-Rebecca Cannarella’s Chicken of Mystery. There’s also a wild card in the form of a Mystic Spiral, courtesy of cover artist Coyle Parker.
Shuffle it online or draw the .pdf.
Lisha Ruan
The apples drip like paper
onto a bony stomach
The throats whirl like seas
or locks or red hooks
Elephant-spun webs
fall like rain onto the grass
The diamonds whir like tanks
in a blurred kitchen
We spill wine
over a list in neat letters
The stars glint like oaths
inside insects and cold meat
LISHA RUAN is a Computer Science major and writer at Princeton University. When she’s not writing poetry, she likes to learn languages, and she’s also curious about philosophy, the future, and artificial intelligence. Her work is forthcoming in Sweet Tree Review. She grew up in Rockville, Maryland.
Zackary Sholem Berger
City, this Baltimore.
Nearer the campus
bird houses ride
three to a tree.
Dogs raise eyebrows
at stroller’s cargo:
baby, toes dangling.
Off to a coffee.
Shot on a block
not far from here:
Our black neighbors.
I doctor some later.
City is shuddering
Blood on its buses,
its work and play shirts.
Crying in sleep.
Poe did not mean
The tale of these hearts.
Infarcted bodies
Flame in the sun.
Belief is concrete.
Something yet
To build, pay for.
To make, love for.
A mild mannered physician by day, ZACKARY SHOLEM BERGER writes in Yiddish and English and has been known to translate himself for kicks.
