Pop them tabs (or bust out them bottle-opener keyrings, if you only drink craft brews named after local landscape features), throw something on the grill, and kick back with our ninety-first issue. It’s got tricksy wordplay and trusty appliances. It has short-form sci-fi poetry. It also has a tentacular Christmas story, because we don’t adhere to society’s rigid and confining seasonal norms. And remember: in space, no one can hear you float.
Slap it online or tickle the .pdf.
P. S. You’ve got until Friday’s end to send us your Victorian mash-ups in prose or verse!
Andrew Collard
The ancient spacemen rode vibrations.
They were born with beards,
suckling desperately in the fore-
shadow of sports, and sudden death.
Crossing T’s on mis-marked constellations
they knocked our heads,
the grace of their tango staining
our faulty parachutes.
They maimed us one by one
as we knelt in the TV light for cover.
But the kettle sleeps, sometimes.
My hands relearn the softness of cats
and my mouth, the dry
shock of molars on gravel.
Each conception, though, when the sun
reclothes their sexmaps,
I feel the echoed thump
of spacefeet on butter.
ANDREW COLLARD lives in Madison Heights, MI, and attends Oakland University. Recent work can be found online at Word Riot and Ex Fic.
Our August special issue has it all: a monster named Tamara, a feathered octopus, the Tricks Man, a mermaid, a dragon, a pterodactyl, gargoyles, a Myakka skunk ape, a knight, a gorgon, a modern Green Man, Greek mythology, an Alien, a sasquatch, a velocipede bird attack, and more.
So it’s basically a family reunion.
Read it online or download the pdf.
