I AM BECOME DEATH, DESTROYER OF WORLDS, by Raphael Ordonez     Upheld by glee over an abyss of dread, the audacious, black-and-white-painted sacred clown raced up the big slope where blue grama and sagebrush waved beneath a turquoise sky. This night he would win the acclaim of his brother-clowns for generations. He would prank […]

RAKEFIRE, by Jason Carney   This was after several secret meetings in smoky roothouses, where whispered secrets were swapped for more secrets couched in cryptolects and allegories. With them I had been shadowing Qwayas for several years, my erstwhile lover and son’s father, who I had questions for and possibly slow death, depending on his […]

COLDER THAN MARS, by Andrew Crabtree   Mars is a god who loves the taste of it The bright red racing mortal taste of it So in his ring of iron he makes a war. In fields beyond the seven marble hills His men take arms to force strange kings to kneel. His sacred camp […]

THE PIRATE QUEEN CHING SHIH CONFRONTS HER DOPPELGANGER, by Kendall Evans   The sound of bells; swells of brackish water The harbor stench a dead-fish atmosphere— A bearded would-be pirate slight of build Standing on the dock in dreary overcast Applied one dawn to join the Red Flag Fleet   And take training on The […]

THE DOLMEN, by Michael Tilbury   Countless times were we berated and warned not to go near that hill where stands the great dolmen yet we, so young, stole away on a fine summer’s day and came upon that tomb but what we saw, unbeknown was only our doom shambling forth from that vast stone […]