Amidst the humidity of a Cartagena night, I lay awake beneath the lethargic chug of an overworked air conditioner, excited to visit my family’s home city for the first time. I tried to imagine the families that had once lived in that colonial-style home in Centro Historico, now carefully preserved as an Airbnb; perhaps the… Continue reading What We’re Reading: A Witness to Violence in Marvel Moreno’s December Breeze
Tag: Editor’s Picks
Our Enemy, Ourselves: Anxiety Personified in Elizabeth Ingamells’ My Friend, the Hag
I admire my friend’s consistency and unwavering attention to my every unwanted feeling, nervous twitch, or anxiety riddled thought. While I’m huddled against my pillow, petrified of an open curtain, she is just outside my door, whispering. Featured in the Winter 2026 issue of Spellbinder Magazine, Elizabeth Ingamells’ My Friend, the Hag uses an evocative… Continue reading Our Enemy, Ourselves: Anxiety Personified in Elizabeth Ingamells’ My Friend, the Hag
Autumn 2025 – Drama
OTTO And we carry around your little bags. Always carrying around bags of things you don’t need. Bundles of yarn. Sweaters for kittens we don’t have. An old Bible you know nothing about. Bottles of paint and brushes. Crumpled receipts that are two years old. What do you need all that shit for? I once… Continue reading Autumn 2025 – Drama
Winter 2025 – Drama
HIM Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here? HER No. But unless you hurry things up, you’re going to be more of a murder victim than a suicide. HIM Are you threatening me? HER Yes. HIM You can’t make me jump. HER No, but I can make you fall. I doubt oblivion will quibble… Continue reading Winter 2025 – Drama
Winter 2024 – Art
‘To The Island’ – Christopher Woods ‘To The Island’ reveals a melancholy, black and white snapshot of passengers traveling to an island by watercraft. The first word that appeared in my mind’s eye, when I saw this photograph, was loneliness. Also, when we think of island, many connect the word to isolation. In this interpretation,… Continue reading Winter 2024 – Art
Winter 2024 – Nonfiction
In Crash Test Dummy, Rose Mason delivers the universal anxiety of driving and thrusts with a tone so frank and forthright that the emotional dreamscape of subconsciousness and the clinical morbidity of facts merge together, inviting the reader along the inner-most routes of the narrators mind only to confront them with critical questions about male-oriented road safety that leaves the female driver and passenger inherently in danger.
Winter 2024 – Poetry
The Aldgate Horses – LJ Ireton Now cool in the fountain – A memory of earth water; Squelching feet in fields With cleaner conscience, Louder heartbeats. The speaker conveys admiration for one of the bronze horse statues in London. A memory of earth water, under stone readings of oxygen. These are highlights of some of… Continue reading Winter 2024 – Poetry
Winter 2024 – Fiction
It’s rainy season in Jakarta with 78 percent humidity, according to the weather forecasts, but you always wake up dehydrated. Bunda says it’s because you eat too much MSG. Or, more precisely, you keep ordering food from restaurants that clearly use MSG and other artificial flavoring. She tries to teach you how to cook tempe… Continue reading Winter 2024 – Fiction
Summer 2022 – Fiction
The brevity of Jocelyne Lamarche’s Ghost belies its complexity. Coming in at just 210 words, the story manages to pack in vivid imagery, establish a strong sense of character and weave its way through feelings of sadness, longing and hope. It is a story to be read again and again, one of those which yields… Continue reading Summer 2022 – Fiction
Summer 2021 – Poetry
Heartsong Oh, you’ve done it now, you chancer;You’ve burrowed all the way downAnd set up shop in my warm and sticky centre. Your filthy crackling laughRattles my bones awake each morning,And your honey-thick hum soothes them to sleep each heavy evening. Sinéad Mooney We published many memorable poems in our last issue, so it was… Continue reading Summer 2021 – Poetry