Are you afraid of the woods? In this Hansel & Gretel retelling, Jessie Ulmer guides us down a trail of breadcrumbs and pebbles through a literary exploration of trauma, family, and the subjectivity of truth and fiction.
Read MoreHello! Managing Editor Lis here to give you a peek behind the curtain at our submission process!
Read MoreTell me of your layers,
the way you grow.
I know some years might be
too fresh
too thirsty
too tender
the heartwood and not the bark.
Who says that we must always
be peeling back layers
that the smooth
is better than the rough?
that each year is only a year
when some are eternities
and others are paper thin
over in a blink
and it is not all to do with seasons, climate change?
Love,
know that when you put
that ring upon me
it will not be the first one
that you have bound me with.
you are already at my core
the rest is width, and deep roots, and remembering.
R. Ruvinsky, Issue 06 | Fiction
Mama first showed me The City when I was ten, waking me from a nightmare at dawn. As I sat up sweating and shaking, she said, “Come on, baby, I’m gonna show you something. I think you need it.”
Read MoreI have a deeper understanding of the work ethic, determination, and collaboration it takes to bring projects such as these from start to finish. To be a part of communities that remind me to celebrate the small wins, rest when necessary, and never be afraid to reach out for help has been such a luxurious privilege whose benefits I cannot begin to describe.
Read Moreby Caitlin Larson, Issue 06
Part of how I stay grounded throughout the year is following the work of people in the community, supporting what I can and seeing Pride in their growth and success. Here at the end of the month, I’ve made a list of some of my favorite people and works to recommend.
Read MoreThe first time I saw the sharp silhouettes
I couldn’t fumble fast enough to capture
a photograph: Indian flying foxes, bats remembered
from a Weird n’ Wild Creatures card collected
at ten, when I thought I wanted to be a biologist
before I realized I'd have to do science. Then I traded
that flying fox card for a Cerberus one, caring more
about the spiderweb of wonder between literary
and literal. These days I prefer nature in its un-
nerving wonders. Who needs Athena splitting Zeus' skull
when mind-controlling jewel wasps exist, spiking into
lesser insects and hijacking them as a host for their spawn
which eat the corpse inside out and emerge fully formed?
I still have a favorite fantastical creature: the phoenix, whose nature
is self-immolation. In reality, the mechanism is rarely so static as fire,
instead often a living instrument, nature curling in on itself
in an endless wheel. The shadow of death takes the shape of wings
or fangs or the leafy fronds of a fern, unfurling. The lesson is:
nature will kill you eventually, from the inside out
or as another of its incarnations. Still, I prefer its marvels
over myth—how certain seeds can only bloom after being
burned, flowers exhaling open after forest fires, ash
still hanging thick in the air while something
new pokes through: life wriggling out through the cracks.
Hiya there! Riley here, art director for Wizards in Space. One of my duties is selecting art submissions for the issues. Today I’d like to go over how I approach this, a mistake I see every issue, and work I’d like to see more of.
Read MoreIt's here. It's happening. Issue 07 submissions are OPEN, and we've already begun to dive in. Our theme has been posted, writing prompts have been given... but what are we really looking for?
Read MoreI was on the subway and a man was standing next to his wife, carrying a plant, and I couldn’t stop staring at it: something green growing underground, inside a metal train. Maybe the other passengers sensed it too, the intrusion of nature, this green invasion, but suddenly three couples started hardcore making out all around me, and it made me want to look, which made me want to look away, which made me want something very green.
Read MoreIt's been almost two months since the launch of our sixth issue (uhh, how?!?!), and we're beyond thrilled with the love that's been shown by our readers for this beautiful collection. We've seen so many of you read it cover-to-cover once, or twice, or even more. But what about those of us who are still working through it?
Read MoreA gorgeous and breathtaking mini-chapbook series centering diverse voices & stories in the landscape of speculative fiction, fantasy, fairy tales, and horror.
Read Morethey called you a witch, once,
hung you in the town square
for having an opinion.
they claimed you sank ships,
spread famine,
conspired to kill kings.
they crushed your fingers,
cut your hair, deprived you of sleep
searched your body for blemishes
until you told them
what they wanted to hear
to get them to stop touching you.
you, who have learned to heal their sick
and deliver their babies,
to care for their animals, and cook their food,
were left to sink
at the bottom of the river,
dresses full of stones.
and in the rush of the current
sometimes we can hear you whisper:
a warning, a curse, a wish, a prayer
three hundred years later,
they are still hunting
and we are still running.
still surviving, still resisting,
persisting in spite of those
who call us witches.
Here amidst the Pacific
I have forgotten dryness.
The Saharan memory chants
no longer work—
yellow an abstract color, what some
once called my skin but
my webbed hands
breaking and rebreaking the skin of water
are not any color but
water. Dry perhaps is
the sensation of tickling, a bug burrowed
within, that deep in the throat
I knew but has left me.
Shriveled needles, concentrating sun
power into singular points, how
does a cactus live with being
unwanted
among the ferns, how
we float
just to live now, the water
is not life but illusion
thereof. They say you will
see things but I
never have, only sky
and sky
and sky
the largest hole
I can’t fall into.
The one constant still
mutable, blue to black
to bleeding dawn, not like
the sea a faceless mirror. Look down:
there is only yourself,
broken,
phantom arcs that don’t define you
stories you don’t believe
splayed against your palm.
It will take lifetimes to read
moving parts
to memories
to through,
but all you
have is
time.
I drove through the sunrise this morning.
It’s funny, how we don’t notice things like that.
You’re breathing. Your fingers are aching cold.
Then you look up, and the whole sky is
shot through with strands of light.
The world is in color again.
It always was.
Keep driving. Your fingers are freezing
but your chest is tight under two jackets
and a scarf your best friend crocheted for you.
The sunrise will come. Grip
the steering wheel. Watch
for merging traffic. Breathe.
On dark nights, carry a flashlight
and learn to tell green leaves from brown ones by touch.
I promise,
the world is in color.
M. Raoulee, Issue 03 | Fiction
Theo only heard about the treaty on the elevator’s news feed at work. Nobody was talking about it, not in the islands, where their warring mainland neighbors hadn’t done more than drive up the price of instant pasta bowls.
Read MoreJoshua Storrs, Issue 05 | Fiction
You: grease stained, on the way back to Queens from your apprenticeship with a mechanic who looks at you for too long sometimes, sitting across from me: paint stained, my backpack full of spray cans. If anyone else asked me what I was painting, I’d tell them it was a mural commission in Soho. But if the question came from you, I’d tell you the truth.
Read More
From Lucia Ceta on this piece:
The call out for contributions to the upcoming issue asked us to reflect about space, and it got me thinking about how much I appreciate my personal space. I consider my personal space the space in which I feel safe and protected enough to create. That space has physical and immaterial manifestations: the mental place that I have to be in in order to create and the physical space in which I am creating. As artists both these spaces are so important, and often one is useless without the other. My illustration is meant to portray a familiar space (physically and mentally) of safety and comfort where essential needs are met and conditions are just right for creating.
oil pools iridescent on the pavement
while a woman on the street is fighting
with the meter maid;
the grey mist counts as rain here,
and everyone’s mood is sour.
I run across the street to the
café-slash-bike shop to grab a coffee;
instead, I leave with an oat milk dirty chai
and a vegan sausage sandwich.
hell, it’s york blvd after all,
and I’m already part of the problem
maybe I’m tired of fighting the problem
from my keyboard when I’m off the clock,
tired of nodding from behind the counter
at the short-banged white women
telling me that they are getting
priced out of the neighborhood
while I ring them up
for a two-hundred dollar blouse
tired of gritting my teeth
when they muse that they’ll
just buy property
in huntington park and watts
because “I just need a place to live”
but everyone needs a place to live
especially the people already living
in huntington park and watts.
maybe I just want to lean into it for a day.
maybe I just want to feel what it’s like
to buy a café breakfast that costs
an hour’s worth of my wage.
it feels like I’m barely scraping by.
I grab the packages left at jesse’s
while we were closed,
run back to the store
open the grates
and start the day.
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