Tag Archives: poetry

The Pumpkins Are A-Plumping

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Tentacles slither out of drain holes

The cauldrons are a-bubbling, and the trees have made themselves all pretty: let’s do this. Welcome to Issue 114!

Jennifer Ruth Jackson kicks things off with a poem that perfectly merges season and mood, “Inertia of the Noon Wraith.” I have no better hook for Seth Geltman’s “Might Have to Lose It” than his one-sentence cover letter: “It’s about a prickly flag salesman who gets attacked by a cat in a Subway restaurant.” Next up Gale Acuff’s speaker explains “There’s nothing I love better than Jesus” (with a few small qualifications), and Colin Kemp tells of a frugal liquor store patron’s memorable encounter with “The Garbanzo Gangster.” Joe Bishop delights with sound and unexpected imagery in “Medley for My Banshee,” and L. Breneman shows how a glitch in the matrix isn’t always a copy cat; sometimes it’s “The Songbird Thing.” Plus creepy cover art “Dark Monster” by D1/The One.

Isn’t October just the best? Frighten it online or scare up the .pdf.

Inertia of the Noon Wraith

Jennifer Ruth Jackson

She weeps, waters the cornfield while cackling
pilots swoop stalks for citrine pebbles. She will
not move as beaks graze her broom-stiff hair.
White dress crunches like footsteps on gravel,
flakes of age and blood pelt her legs. Feathers
festoon her shoulders, unnoticed. Her head
rests in slender hands held at chest level.
She awaits the workers in the mid-day sun.

 

JENNIFER RUTH JACKSON writes about reality’s weirdness and the plausibility of the fantastic. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Star*Line, Apex Magazine, and more. She runs a blog for disabled and neurodivergent creatives called The Handy, Uncapped Pen from an apartment she shares with her husband. Visit her on Twitter: @jenruthjackson.

There’s nothing I love better than Jesus

Gale Acuff

except my parents and my dog and my
favorite professional sports teams and
favorite wrestler, Ricky “the Dragon” 
Steamboat, and Batman comics and pizza
puffs and my dog—oh, I mentioned him—and
I guess my sister and dinosaurs and
the new bike I’ll get for Christmas and
clams with mashed potatoes and coleslaw and
when we have corn dogs in the school lunchroom
and that Phantom movie that nobody
else ever saw, Hell, it wasn’t that bad,
and monster truck rallies and skateboarders 
falling on their butts—that’s pretty funny
and they always rise again anyway.

 

GALE ACUFF has published hundreds of poems in over a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.