Gloom Cupboard

David Tait
Soi Kuyang

I – morning

I check for mosquito bites. fingers as pincers inspecting skin -
the smell of tigerbalm, snake powder, liquid light on walls.
breakfast a rambutan yoghurt – a windowless cold water shower -
the sound of next doors rustling gate. the ground thud of coconut
and stray mongrel dog. a truck that barks out elections.

I leave the house to cycle to my school, stand still for the anthem
by the noodle stall, the policeman dressed in formal black -
lego-like, his white mask conducting traffic through the dust.
the river breeze tremors the temple bell as novices walk on alms -
the buddha reclines in the shade, cloaked in a blanket of cats.

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Kane X. Faucher
The difference of signatures

There are no differences without signatures,
Without the gentle curlicue of an stylosyncratic
Cursive script ring-fenced lines bordering space.
Without your personal, bio-habilitating imprimatur
Undulating or looping in a jeu d’esprit
Of penmanacleship.
Without the clumsy or intended collision of letters
Like a shipwrecked ligature lured by the briars
Of tangled orthographics.
A style guiding the stylus
In a mock transfer of essence
From person to page.
In presence the future is contracted,
A Chelonian document beneath which,
Bottom line
Is found the graffiti of your dissimilarity.

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Jess Kroll
And they shall rule with an iron hoof

The warnings had been there all along; on the walls on Lascaux, Chauvent-Pont-d’Arc, and others. We never knew what they meant. Until it was too late.

           What follows is my attempt at the story of humanity’s swift and brutal annihilation, pieced together through a combination of witness accounts and personal speculation, so that perhaps, when humans once again gain our rightful place as the alpha omnivore, we may learn from the mistakes of previous generations and never again allow them to pass.

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Catherine Zickgraf
Eye

I was headed down the hill,
horizon rising like a mountain,
when a rogue giant swung back his mighty fist and
bruised the pale dome’s lash line.
Veins opened with the punch.

On the sky, like beige paper,
I chalked pale violet, yellow,
drew my finger through the pastels,
and made tracks like clouds from the blended dust.

My Father is broken, in Intensive Care.
He’s stitched up like a river bed,
steri-strips holding his shoulder closed.
Tubes burst between his fractured ribs,
and his yellow limbs are fluid flooded.

Proprioception goes first.
He doesn’t live in his left shoulder right now or his right lung,
but in a small office in his mind operating on emergency power.
The conference rooms are dark, just a vacuumer in the hall.
Dad’s working steadily in there. Scanning all the monitors,
reading Archaeology Today.

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Edwin Rivera
CYANOSIS

I took an acetone and ether
bath in the dirty morning, dressed
in alloy that afternoon, drank
activated sludge during dinner.
Seismic session done, I hung mumbles
on meathooks, sang to Zoroaster,
clipped all spermatic cords and
watched the cutworm traverse the
gurry sound. Bedtime is static, a plane
scratches across the sky, and all the world
is a shave away from rhapsody.

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