A Sea-Nymph by Edward Coley Burne Jones (1881) via The Minneapolis Institute of Art Hello sweet specters! We have a bit of an announcement for you. We have welcomed our dear friend Margaryta Golovchenko to the TERSE. team! Margaryta, who has never broken a bone and is therefore indestructible, will be
Lost in the unending night of his gaze, I believed him when he whispered in my ear. I let his chaos close around me like a fist. Ensconced in this void, I breathed little—lived on dreams as white flowers bloomed in my belly, thinking of lips, painted by vanilla vodka,
There is a version of Purgatory where the only music you will ever hear is that of scrape and pluck. Groaning woodgrain; the stuff of sinking ships and drowning sailors. Strings manipulated beyond a heart’s connection; stressed just up to the point of failure. There are bones that pack Purgatory
Memory Formed The sun shines bright and blue, stretching beyond. She stands before you, her hair diffusing the light,an aura of gold formed of magic,mists and whispered incantations. Like a mirage, her features waver in the shadowsand you lose all sense of who she was. This memory. Carrie was born
Phantompains by Therese EstacionPoetryBook*hug Press, 2021 For my feet, for my fingers, for my UterusAll I can offer is a memorythey were fullthey were ecstatic& in flux(“Eunuched Female V”) So ends Phantompains, the debut poetry collection by Therese Estacion. There is a sense of finality to these lines, an act
Demands & Beauty Mourning Bounty / spread & the corruption of the data of my myth. Only / breakfast. A point of view. You are the window. // I stare out of the window at the meaning / of words. A flicker of possession. That shadow of the blinds. A
Is full of ghosts and 3 headed dogs, who germinate aconite bites blooming from barren anthracite, casting bones of ammonite in a fusion of green, the underworld queen traces you & I in our queerness, growing asymmetrical like moss, in imperfect profusions. She laughs, and spits seeds into the pitted
The keepers of the written words sat in the brisk spring air, the fire crackling in the center of their circle, sending sparks up high into the navy night. “This one is for the gods of grief,” the newest one said. She tossed her packet on the flames. “Grief is
Marie Vibbert’s poetry has appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, and in places where you’d never expect to find poetry, like street corners in Pittsburgh. By day she is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio. Her debut novel, Galactic Hellcats, came out this year and is about a female biker gang in
👋 We’re back. If you have any reviews of the way the sky looks at 2am, interviews with previous mental health states, poems about organizing the bugs under your basement foundation, or essays about the politics of teeth–send them our way, friends. We’ve began accepting only 7 pieces per month.
