A Magazine of Many Arts

Hicham El Qendouci

Where do I start?
From any wound among thousands of them,
From the beginning of the tough infection
Three months ago…
I suffer from pain and disease, sick with a virus
Lurking like fire beneath my skin, a hidden danger waiting in ambush.
I suffer within my wounds.
And even my weapon betrays me!
I’m still looking for safety, but is it safe to stay here
Sick, homeless, hunted, and besieged?
Even our brothers drink our blood and eat our bones.

Darkness goes on in my eyes And speech shall die in my mouth
Until I stop asking for silence. Even if morning comes I can do nothing
About leaving, except to cry: Where do I start?
All our streets are closed,
And our tongues have become spoons
And our borders gallows.
My yellow face hates to invade the mirror.
Only nights of lamentations come,
And the same old funerals and wailing.

My heart shakes as a dead body or a massacre echoes,
Full of flashes, colors, and sorrows,
Waiting until a favorable star enters
The orbit of death or the homeland of losers.
I head to the river, a beautiful river
Reflecting in its flowing the mixture above me
Of planets, stars, and enormous galaxies filling the universe.
I walk slowly, through tears, seeing clouds and stars,
While my ears hear explosions and my hands touch flowers of light.
I long to go to a distant planet where there is no disease Because I want to live in peace away from Earth.

I feel my body trembling;
Each organ vibrates with limitless longing.
Sometimes I think I see my love, a red flower above the beautiful river,
And whisper gently, Sarah, my love, I love you!
I write my love lovely poetry
To open wondrous horizons.
Oh, what limitless love!!
Our days might be wine,
But our lives are silent graveyards
Into which our eyes stare.

Where do I start?
Is it useful to start
In the time of the end?
How can I enter
Where there is no longer a door for me
Except the death door?
Oh, Homeland,
You no longer give me even a shroud,
And I keep screaming in madness.
Earth does not hear or care about me,
Nor does death.

From tent to tent
And from place to place
My heart is full of pain and sorrow.
I stay awake all day and night and treat my burning heart alone.
I do not see the face of anyone who cares about my voice or suffering.
I have a sticky sickness in my gut,
So I can’t eat, only take water, but, thank God, whose mercy is revealed,
That I still live, breathe, feel…and love.

I know my life seems limited,
A small light hanging in space.
I feel like a dead planet—
Just like the Moon, Mars, and Jupiter.
I should stop circling the Sun under which I was born,
And take the first spaceship
To another planet in a distant galaxy,
Away from this place of virus and disease,
Where life may continue,
And love flourish forever.

Robert Borski

Because we choose to be the way we are,
as opposed to acceding to biological dictate

or mythic onus, we have been called all sorts
of things — turncoat, vyrmin, gusano, paladinite —

as if to self-identify as alt-dragon disregards
tradition or refutes our natural place in the world.

But qui nocet, as our lawyers like to ask, if
certain members of our kind choose not to eat meat

or abandon the skies; if we deign to wear clothes
or learn the human tongue? Nor do we see the docking

of our wings and tail as crippling or mutilation,
but cautionary (inbred as we are, caudal cancer

still kills too many of us) and thus no more barbaric
than circumcision or other body modification,

from tattoos to piercing. As for why we do
what we do, often-cited answers include

evolutionary fatigue, hormonal drift, toxic
parenting, or morbid attraction to the forbidden,

but the truth is far more simple: we are part of
and subject to the same continuum of desire

as everything else that lives. Yes, my incredulous
friends: even creatures with scales, chilled blood,

and antediluvian genes are capable of ardor.
And though daily we struggle for acceptance,

our long-range hope is this: that someday we
and our Arthurian paramours will be allowed

to walk down the streets unharassed, without
being spat upon or called names, and the world,

despite our long history of enmity, will recognize
and sanctify the union of our two disparate species —

we, the fire-breathing Capulets; they, the lance-
bearing and resplendently-armored Montagues —

for it is not apostasy that flickers in our hearts,
but love. And believe me, it is anything but courtly.

—

klkl

Mary Soon Lee

God's a gambler, a gamer,
rolling her quantum dice,

drawn to drama, the odds,
dueling with the devil.

Bet the dinosaurs. Lost.
Promised herself she'd quit.

Whereupon her plans progressed
with perfect predictability.

Millennia upon millennia
of interminable tedium

until she fell to temptation
down in hell's red halls.

Wagered mermaids, mammoths,
Camelot, Atlantis, Babylon.

And she's down there still,
offering chips to chance,

Lincoln and Gandhi long gone,
in need of higher stakes,

weighing what to risk:
war? plague? apocalypse?