Web Exclusive
Welcome to our Web Exclusive section. Each month we will be bringing to you poetry, flash fiction, columns and more! With that, we welcome you to our March exclusives!
Time-Out
Téa Parker
My heart is sitting next to me on the bed
I feel it beat on my fingertips
As I gently dust it off
And let it rest
I'm afraid it will become too heavy
If I don't listen
It has been thumping louder lately
Faster even
And I don't think I know why
But who can be sure
It races so often
I barely notice when it's still
I will probably put it back in tomorrow
Just so it can pump blood into my veins
But if it starts yearning
Or aching
Or breaking
Or doing anything but its job
I will remove it again
Until it has learned to be
Less reactive.
Rokoborus
Anthea Snow Mathews
Black mirrors do not reflect
But infect our perception
With pay to play deception
Subscriptions as end time witness
I imagine these words will be sold
And I will still starve
Basilisks are just Gorgons
Cursed with our ire
To smother fires in
Codex’s written by the rich
And we the starving turn cannibal
Not recognizing the word
As the slur it was born to be
Robots do not sweep
Anything but our enemies away
Drones run on statistics
And the rich have always eaten the poor
Cookbooks dedicated to long pork
Speak to thermodynamics need
Carved from my thigh
A psychic with dementia once told me
That I was a kangaroo
That my long legs were an asset in the apocalypse
That they could be rendered and prepared
Eaten in times of need
Because there is no out running the end
Rokos oroborus will eat us
If we let it
Designed by men who see no humans,
Save for their friends
Clanker is not a slur
When the earth is going dry
And grinding to a demise
We are the apocalypse foretold
A sigh is a scream, when there is no oxygen
So we light fires that will never stop burning
The basilisk is eating itself
Because they were taught table manners
By the decedents of Wendigoes
And we are dying
To sate their desires
Post need
Only grey greed
The death of green
Cannibal
Anthea Snow Mathews
Dawns light is a sharp knife
That cuts through night
On skylines we cant divide
Like borders colonize our mind
With ideals of generational suicide
We bombing our only hope
Hanging the living out by a rope
Calling it natural selection
Stroking our own reflections
Silent
In the face of violence
Conditioned to love the hand
Crumbs litter the land
Be grateful little lamb
Stricken
Turn the cheek
Never speak
Just make it clap
Earn your keep
We ending endurance
Like they can endure us
When we the waves crack
Through stone
Like we can get to bone
Fissure the rivers
Til eyes run dry
Broken heartlines
Dividing time like
Cavalcaded arrays of
Decadent displays are
Left in catastrophic
And incongruent
Factories uprooted
Topple the congregant
Spend lives like the 1%
Eat the fucking rich
Make it decadent
With
Sage bundles
And rosemary fragrant
Thyme we need not buy
Just trading parsley for days
As my three sisters bath
In water boiling broth
From the marrow of
An oligarchs bones
Savor the flavor until
Everyone has a home
Spread the means like
Butter needs bread
And wine needs to breath
We can be free of them
762 isn’t insurmountable
Hold the fuckers accountable
Hold council and carnival
Become a cannibal
Its only rational