Issue Six – Autumnal

The smell of Autumn
burnt leaves, dead flowers, chestnuts
just like cinnamon

By David Edwards

Autumn’s furtive kiss
Damp lips, hint of death on breath
Succumb to her arms
Buried in mouldering leaves
Surrendering to Year’s end

By DJ Tyrer

Night’s army of Darkness
making its annual
methodic autumnal
ultimately futile
advance upon the Light.

By David Edwards

gogyohka
By David Edwards

Autumn
each fallen leaf
a memory of
a moment of
Summer

 

Autumn Music
By Aeronwy Dafies

Strange notes carry
On chill breeze of Autumn
The fairies’ lament
For lost days of Summer
A salutation to Winter

Aliens in autumn
By Mark Hudson

As the weather starts to change,
things get a little strange.
I’m hiding in my basement next to wood panels,
i’m surfing the net for alien channels.
I know the fall is the perfect time
for the space aliens to be sublime
Green heads under glass helmets appear
proving that autumn is really near
I was out raking some leaves
I saw what I didn’t believe
A giant U.F.O in the sky
I thought I was gong to die
But then a giant ladder extended
and a martian came out and befriended
He said, “Peace is our only wish,
have a slice of our alien deep dish.”
So the alien pizza was intergalactic
to fight him, I needed no tactic
We had a pizza, and he ate all the leaves,
my job was done, I was relieved!
Then he headed on back to Mars,
and said, “Next time, I’ll bring some cigars!”

 

Autumn’s third full moon
its Earth-bound text written in
bare branch alphabet.

By David Edwards

 

Aliens in Atlantis in Autumn
By Mark Hudson

Are there aliens here in Atlantis
This one looks like a praying mantis.
This one looks like it’s from Lovecraft,
this one looks torn in half.

Autumn is here underneath,
the aliens are in the coral reef.
The weather is a little bit colder,
the aliens are a little bit bolder.

A serpent from Neptune swam,
the fall leaves are starting to scram!
the lake is so cold it’s not nice,
pretty soon it ill be all ice.

The storms keep coming more and more,
the rain keeps on summoning Thor.
Atlantis is the coolest place to be,
where autumn remains a mystery.

Issue Five – Fungal

The fungosity of fungoid fungiforms
is something fungused fungivorous fungologists
find fascinating.

By David Edwards

Fairy ring lit by moon
Tiny maiden on mushroom
Blows sweet-tasting kiss
Asks for a tune
Invites to dance
An alluring doom

By Aeronwy Dafies

Butterfly alights
upon a rotting corpse… both
of many colors

By David Edwards

Fungal maiden’s kiss
Spores enter skull, bloom, burst forth
Transform to toadstool

By DJ Tyrer

sprouting underneath
Hiroshima’s fungoid cloud
something other than death

By David Edwards

AGARIC HANDS ACCOST THE LITMUS: A CONCERTINA
With respect to Tiffany Morris and Theresa Krach
By Joseph Bouthiette, Jr.

I. OVERTURE

A cello held fast by mycoid filaments.

Bitters and blues, the amphitheater pitches to and fro, leaning starboard, casting loose mist and torch and feathered spore; rusted swords unsheathed.

The cerulean light is listing and the infection is swelling and the orchestra is escalating and, perhaps, if there was once blood, there is none now.

II. PULSE //

“Be the man I planted, my warrior in the sea.”

Skinless and wet weeping, armored plates traced with dark corrosion driven into flesh. Knotted slabs where hands once were impaled with what once resembled weapons. A face like bleeding knuckles.

And, in the distance, what could be bowstrings, or the wet rattle of lungs overrun.

III. THE LITMUS

A gilded galleon lingers along the island shelf. The aftward sunrays are strangled in cloying clouds, a fungal storm reaching with brackish tendrils to split this flawless hull.

There is no entreating with the wasted mainland, its asperous surface desolate, pockmarked with jagged dunes. There is no egress from the oozing cirrus, its foaming teeth.

IV. ARCHERS AND RUMORS OF ARCHERS

Slopping footsteps on bare stone, the warrior retreats from the husks in the hollow wake. All that remains of the skirmish are skulls fruiting bulbous shards; horse hair, agleam.

At the summit, the warrior chews the carrion landscape. Here, women could birth sagas, and sagas could birth storms.

A lilt in the air beckons, swelling.

V. // THRONE

A throne sloughs away as slag, dragged in the currents of molten vomit traced with magma hurtling toward the coast.

The skin blisters of a woman cradling an infant, she in tribal wear, he naked and exposed. The sand here still yields despite the churning eruption surrounding.

“Open your eyes, child, your sea is changing.”

Issue Four – (Un)Natural

Deep One of Toad Hall
By Cardinal Cox

Pull the oars, pull; feather the blade
Beside river find a sweet glade

They say on fine summer mornings
Lord Pan walks where the river bends
Fields are worked by burley farmers
Beyond where the green forest ends
There’s a courthouse where law is done
Along the winding country road
In the Hall dwell a family
Who’ve much of the look of a toad

Pull the oars, pull; feather the blade
Make sure the game is fairly played

Dragonflies over the tall reeds
Kingfisher on shimmering wing
At dusk the silent owls all hunt
At dawn the smallest birds all sing
Rabbits on the misty heathland
Foxes hidden in the dark woods
Mighty Lord Toad would rule them all
With firm webbed hand, if only he could

Pull the oars, pull; feather the blade
Naughty young stoats have all been slayed

Butterfly Cinquain
By David Edwards

Nature
takes many roles…
Judge, Baker, Actor, Clown…
yet unnatural ones give it
renown.
hard, translucent; soft, misshapen;
the grotesque; the bizarre;
things better left
unfound.

 

seed hidden in earth
shell snaps open reveals life
nothing known on earth

By DJ Tyrer

 

vines reaching
twitching
alive with animal spirit
strange fruits
burst messily
amniotic fluid
life finds a way
refuses constraints
of natural world

By Aeronwy Dafies

earth worms underfoot
after each night’s downpouring
a living sidewalk

By David Edwards

 

Wintercourse/ Through The Moon Pool
By Andrew Darlington

first
hollowed from grey shale
by horse’s hooves of centuries

shallow pool of shadows
glimpsed at winter intervals
south of shifting spires

then
shaped by bleak seasons
and the strange wintercourse
of north wind and snow when
ice makes lanterns flicker
and lacerates its surface
into cross-hatch wounds

a night pool spindle-limbed
with mirrored moonfrost
beneath the leafless
meteor-flash night

 

horse haunts night waters
no skin and half a rider
northern isles horror

By Aeronwy Dafies