Full House Tarot issue 2 by Full House Literary

FULL HOUSE TAROT ISSUE TWO

MAY 2022

A note from the editors Welcome to Issue Two of our Tarot deck. Wow, what a pleasure it was to put together this issue! We are so impressed with the fantastic work in this issue and are very thankful to have the opportunity to publish such brilliant creators. Thank you to our lovely writers and creators for trusting us with your work. For this issue we were lucky enough to work with the highly talented and insightful Ankur Jyoti Saikia. Ankur offered so much as our guest editor and we are delighted to also publish one of Ankur’s pieces. A big thank you to Ankur for your dedicated and passionate attitude, you have brought a real light to this issue. For the artwork in this issue, we wanted to explore a different way of approaching the tarot theme. Each card design is inspired by elements of the published pieces within the issue and we really enjoyed picking out the strong pops of vivid imagery within the published pieces and bringing them in the artwork. We really hope you enjoy reading this issue, and don’t forget to check out the audio version available on the website. Be sure to also check out the featured creator section of our website, where we feature the work of lots more brilliant creators. Lastly, to anyone reading this note, we thank you for being a part of this journey with us. You mean the world. - Leia and JP Head Editors of FH With big thanks to our talented and dedicated volunteer team who helped make this issue possible: Kinneson, Jack, Lisa, Carol, Kathryn, Bianca, Natalie, Teo, Amarys, Christina, Christopher, and Bethany!

guest editor feature Colour of light Ankur Jyoti Saikia Please don’t ask me/ the colour of our Sun/ already a few nations/ are fighting over it/ Unaware/ that luminous druid/ rises in the west/ to burn crops/ to slay critter/ How do I sustain/ that born of a woman/ with beaks of hunger/ with wings of avarice/ with claws of insecurity/ How do I recollect/ and teach him/ eons ago/ the Sun broke its shell/ and conjured/ a rainbow/ amidst aurorae/ What could be the/ color of it’s light?/ I simply simmer …

Ankur Jyoti Saikia (he/ him) is a forestry researcher based in India with works being published in the Minison Zine, Bluepepper, Sledgehammer Lit, Openwork mag, Holyflea, Pop the culture pill, Thanks hun Zine, The Daily Drunk, The Sparrow’s Trombone and Voidspace zine. Twitter: @amythfromassam

The cards to come Swarming Phase by Stuart McPherson

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My Khandan by Aneeta Sundararaj

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mọ̀ọ́mi by Taiwo Hassan

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Previously published by Mason Jar Press

In the Drag Queen Vegan Cafe by Lesley James

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Rate Your Pain on a Scale 1-10 by Leela Raj-Sankar

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Today’s Special by Heain Joung

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Mango season is over by M.J Edwards

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Hands Are For Hitting by T.L. Tomljanovic

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My / your words, my / your mouth by Rachel O’Sullivan

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Your Lies Will Burn You in Hell by Rashmi Agrawal

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Hourglass by Thad DeVassie

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bearing fruit by Mikey May

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When The Cardiologist Gave Me Your Heart by Iona Rule

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Fiesta by Denise Alden

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Dark Side by Natasha Bredle

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Discord and the Gradual Normalcy by Cade Stone

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The Elephants Only I Can See by Melissa Mulvihill

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Previously published: The Minison Project’s new magazine, TMP Magazine, in February 2022

Knight of Cups, Reversed by Liana Kapelke-Dale

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Treating Cor Confractus — A Quintessential Guide by Sherry Morris

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Grateful by Jason W. McGlone

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About the contributors

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Swarming Phase Stuart McPherson Cantantopidae / or the way a cloud / breathes out its blackness / murmurates / around a singular locust / who questions / the nature / of our relentless scouring / of fields too irreparably scarred / the clambering of bodies / the gnawing of leaves and fruit / the existential comedy / of arable land / knowing only too well / its own thirst / and conversing with swarms / a gregaria of shape and sound / this clicking of wings / the question of requirement / for biblical scale catastrophes / how dramatic! / this evolution / or maybe / we should call it what it is / mob rule / the rush to mimic / such extreme ends / or wallow in Gods wrath / the weight of knowing / that our ability to shapeshift / is nothing / but the split atoms / of stuttered apprehension / the false inevitability / of natural disasters

My Khandan Aneeta Sundararaj My Khandan was magnificent in its simplicity. This photograph of our family was captured by the foremost photographer in Alor Setar, Mr. Chia. His studio’s dark brown walls were a dramatic background which highlighted our multi-hued clothes: Papa’s light grey suit complimented Mama’s red sari; Asha wore an orange frock with yellow daisy applique patterns on its bodice; Ajay and I were dressed in identical light blue shirts, burgundy bowties and shiny, black shoes. All of us were smiling bright and happy. Mama had it laminated and mounted on a mahogany frame with ornate gold filigree paint-work, and hung in our living room. Every time she looked at it, she would place a hand on her chest, sigh and whisper, “My khandan.” The next attempt to capture an image of the entire family was in 1995 when Asha married her college-mate from medical school. Months earlier, Mama had booked Mr. Chia for his services. Weeks later, on a lightning visit home during a semester break from Penang Dental School, I entered the kitchen and saw a stack of open photo albums on the breakfast table. Thumbing through all the photos, I soon realised the glaring omission. There were no photos from the eve of Asha’s wedding. Mr. Chia’s two-year-old grandson had accidentally flipped open the camera’s casing and exposed the film to sunlight thereby destroying it. I vowed that we’d somehow get my mother another perfect family photograph. The best chance was when I married my childhood sweetheart, Anjali. However, caught up in the euphoria of wedding festivities, I completely forgot about the family photograph. Besides, I was sure there would be many more opportunities. One night, four months ago, I was fast asleep when Anjali shook my shoulders. “Wh-What?” I asked, pulling the blanket close. “It’s your mother,” she replied. I thrust the bed covers aside and sat up. When I put the receiver to my ears, I heard Mama’s unsteady voice say that Papa

had been diagnosed with stage four terminal stomach cancer. Each visit home over the next three months coincided with the tapping of fluid in Papa’s swollen belly and brought him closer to death. Two weeks ago, Dr. Suryakant Rao turned to his wife of fifty-three years and put his palms together. His last words were, “Thank you.” Two days later, carrying my three-year-old daughter, I stood in front of the My Khandan. When she asked, “Who they, Daddy?” I smiled. In that moment, I didn’t recognise the people in the photograph either. On the morning of our departure a week later, something was different. On the wall outside the kitchen, there was a photograph of Asha wearing braces and frowning at me as I tugged her ponytail. In another, Ajay was hung over after his bachelor party. In the living room, instead of My Khandan, there were now two smaller photographs. They were the worst ones of our family. In the first, there were tears running down my cheeks, Asha’s forefinger was just under her left nostril, and Ajay’s face was all pinched because Papa was pulling his ear as punishment for giving my arm a Chinese burn. Mama alone was smiling. The second one, an attempt to rectify the first, was worse. We had taken our places when we were startled by a loud sound. Curious, we turned to see a couple emerge from the dressing room. The woman, dressed in a bridal kebaya made of exquisite silk songket, carried a basket of coloured ceremonial eggs that were customary favours at Malay weddings. “How could you? She’s my best friend,” the bride all but shrieked. It happened in tandem. Mr. Chia released the shutter of his camera the exact moment the enraged bride flung an egg at her husband. He ducked. In our family photograph from 1981 there was bright pink egg-shell at Mama’s feet with spots of egg yolk on all our clothes. Mama had obviously spent hours finding places around the house for these awful images of our family. Nonetheless, it had taken decades and Papa’s death for her to finally accept that the My Khandan was never going to be the truest depiction of our family.

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mọ̀ọ́mi

for my grandma

Taiwo Hassan every time the smell of camphor makes me a temporary home, i still hear the softness in your cackles filling these empty spaces on my palms and your frail hands tracing salvation on each line, massaging my qualms into dust. anytime your face is a puzzle in my head, i morph into old brooms, sour cherries, the moans in between a mortar and a pestle, i remember your blobbing veins on my mother’s arms, how they’ve become feathers on my wings too, mọ̀ọ́mi, do you watch me fly now? i want to hear a cuckoo’ chirp and remember the songs you never completed, tread through a market and feel your hands firmly on mine, again. but what is grief if not broken pieces of a full mirror holding strange mixes of hope and regrets in their cracked reflections? i journey into several of your photographs and still find little prayers sitting, dusty. i call them flowering wounds, scanty scars, just blooms in disguise. i’m trying, i swear, i am, to lay these burdens down. but when the afternoon sun decides to bring you close and remind me what it means to wear your skin, i hold my breath and swim in your stories, dilute my blood in their richness & remember that place where it all began, that house that never went naked.

(Previously published by Mason Jar Press)

In the Drag Queen Vegan Cafe Lesley James Ways in which a cortado can prompt existentialism No 5 To unsheathe September’s lunaria seed from their waxy shields, you should first lick your fingertips. Take a single flat seed head between two fingers and a thumb, and make to snap your fingers. It falls apart. The crispy ovals flutter down. Catch the falling seeds. Some will jump away, and found the Honesty of two years’ time. Pearl lantern moons remain. On vanilla feet with toffee apple fur, the cat forgets we do this every year. He chases the papery housings like they are secrets I’ve been keeping from him, or his own free will. In darkness he practises sleeping round corners for when winter comes. But for now, everything is drag-queen vegan café, Banksy in Port Talbot, Frida Kahlo on blue brick. The buddleia points tourmaline fingers at pigeon-blood cosmos wearing bee earrings (clip-ons). The wing-beats of overhead sparrows purr like flicked open fans. Last night’s massive bedroom moth (critch-critch) has laid eggs from her orange furry bum, and left the building. Everything is voluminous, daubed-on, lipstick smeared, waiting to die. An apple drops. The astilbe is still.

Rate Your Pain on a Scale 1-10 Leela Raj-Sankar 1. some screw coming loose. knee clicking. good day bad day somewhere in between. i don’t understand the distinction, doc. nothing hurts if i don’t think about it. i’m fantastic, doc. hell, i think i could walk a mile right now if i tried. okay, maybe not a mile— 2. but a city block. definitely a block or two; look ma, no limp, no knee braces, no leaning on someone’s arm! just tell me how much pain is normal, doc. i know you know. how could you not, when you’ve written 3. six separate papers on the subject? yesterday my ankle was swollen, but not enough to be concerning so i won’t waste your time with it, doc. yes, i’ve had my eighty ounces of water today. yes, i’ve said my nonemergency emergency 4. affirmations into the mirror, pay attention space cadet, ground control to major tom. oh. what’s that? i’ve taken up half my time already? shame. we haven’t even gotten 5. to the best part yet. which is, of course, that i haven’t slept in two days. maybe that’s why i sound like this. i have some level of self-awareness, you know. not enough to stop making 6. those gallows-humor jokes everyone cringes at, but you’ve got to cut me some slack, doc. i’ve already fought half the battle, haven’t i? i’m up! i’m out of bed! cue the band, 7. i’ve done my physical therapy exercises! i’m kicking my connective tissue’s ass. oh. right. i’m not supposed to say that anymore. my body isn’t my enemy. i forgot, sorry doc, 8. it’s been such a long week. my dad always tells me to inflate these ratings a little, you know. every time we’re in a hospital waiting room he tells me that one story 9. about how when my grandfather had a stroke he told the doctors he didn’t have a headache after. remember when i said i was fantastic? fine, i’ll admit that i lied, doc. my mom asked me to take the stairs, so it’s been sharp pressure in hips knees ankles for the past seventy-two hours. wait, hang on. sharp pressure—is that how i’m supposed to describe it? none of these words make any sense to me. mostly, doc, 10. i just want to breathe. ten minutes without pain. a moment where i don’t feel like i’m on fire. a morning where i wake up and the sky isn’t falling on top of me.

Today’s Special Heain Joung I say ‘come and sit down,’ as I move a chair to the table for you. You don’t answer but that doesn’t matter. You enter with hesitation, as if unsure of your position. You notice that you are there on the wall, in a dark frame. You seem puzzled seeing yourself there wearing a tie, and a white shirt with your black jacket. You look young there, a little troubled perhaps, but not quite the man you became. Yes, you are right, there is something missing. You were holding a baby there on your lap. Someone cut me out of there, so you would be on your own, for your journey. You shouldn’t be upset with that. You know that wasn’t my time to go. You didn’t want to carry me to the next life, did you? You listen calmly, then quietly take your seat. I light incense for you in the corner of the kitchen. It smells of pine. I hope you don’t mind. I start to cut the cucumber, then the onion and cabbage. I put some noodles into boiling water, stirring to remove their hardness. I enjoy watching them change shape as they soften. I hope you are not too hungry. It won’t be long. I add some crushed garlic, some sesame seeds and some sesame oil. I haven’t forgotten that you like a lot of chilli sauce. You are sitting there on the chair in the kitchen, with me now. Your forehead is sweating, the chopsticks in your hand are shaking. Your body is swaying side to side like a little boat. I sit down next to you, eating the noodles. A mid-August lunch of spicy noodles was always your favourite meal.

Mango season is over M.J Edwards news hit the bed sheets like a falling lightbulb plummeting from the cracking ceiling, shattering in the soft linen, we spend the following days picking shards from pillows and skin and staring at piles of laundry which might never be clean, fragile is the head on my chest the moment before the lightbulb fell. I’m tired of phone calls.

Hands Are For Hitting T.L. Tomljanovic The rhythmic kicking of the kindergartener’s feet against Principal Prattle’s desk grated on his nerves. Tucker, a grade three, sat slumped in the other chair. Both boys studiously avoided eye contact with each other and their principal. “Who wants to go first?” Prattle waited, eyeing Tucker’s bloody nose and Gabriel’s defiant expression. Jesus Christ. Silence. The playground at recess was a battlefield: bark nuggets were bombs; swings were slammed into unsuspecting passersby; and sticks and jackets became weapons of petty destruction. Prattle avoided recess whenever possible. Today, it wasn’t possible. Gabriel was the biggest kid in kindergarten. He was bigger than all the grade ones and most of the grade twos. The reason he went after Tucker was unclear. The early morning recess monitors in their yellow neon vests broke it up. Imagine a grade three getting in a fight with a kindergartener? They clutched their coffee cups, clicked their teeth, and congratulated themselves on averting disaster. Of course, disaster came out swinging at lunch recess. Half the kids saw what happened. The half that didn’t see it, heard what happened. And everybody was talking about it. A monitor radioed the principal to report the incident and marched the boys into his office.

Prattle swiveled into action, the hydraulics on the stained chair groaning in protest. He gave his rote, “hands are not for hitting” lecture before telling them to stay put until their parents could pick them up. Then he made the calls.Tucker spent less than ten minutes in purgatory before Prattle heard the roar of a car. Outside his office window, Tucker’s mom was pulling up to the side of the school in a gleaming white BMW. “Okay, Tucker, I see your mom. You can go now.” Tucker swung his Fortnite backpack over his shoulder and sprinted out the door. Gabriel’s dinosaur backpack was covered in duct tape and dirt. Prattle and Gabriel watched Tucker and his mom. ‘Be Here. Be You. Be Kind.’ was painted on the opposite side of the glass, a seemingly random collection of letters unintelligible from the inside. Tucker’s mom hugged her son between the letters ‘B’ and ‘K’. They got into the car and sped off. Prattle gave Gabriel a colouring sheet while he went through his emails. When he was done, he tried calling Gabriel’s parents again. No answer. He left another voicemail. The school bell rang and a hundred kids in bright-coloured jackets and a rainbow of backpacks filed out of the school. He called a third time. “The voice mailbox you are trying to reach is full. Please try again.” He sighed and called the emergency contact on the five-year-old’s reunification form. “The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected. Goodbye.”

“Are you hungry?” Prattle looked down at Gabriel. Gabriel nodded but didn’t look up from his colouring. Prattle raided the teacher’s breakroom fridge and found a mandarin orange, a yogurt cup, and a bottle of water. He had a granola bar left over from his own lunch. Together the snacks made a passable meal. The kid wolfed everything down. At 5:30 p.m., Prattle picked up the phone again. “Yeah, it’s been hours. Since lunch recess.” He looked at Gabriel. The boy was no longer colouring, just staring at him. “I can’t reach any of them. No, It’s not the first time.” He paused. “I don’t know. Yeah, okay.” Social services showed up an hour later. The kid didn’t even look surprised. “It’s going to be okay, Gabriel.” Prattle put his hand on his shoulder as he walked the child out. Gabriel didn’t respond. After he left — after everyone left — Prattle turned off his office light, unlocked his bottom right desk drawer, and poured three fingers of whisky in his #1 Principal coffee mug. He wrapped his hands around the mug obfuscating the letters.

My / your words, my / your mouth Rachel O’Sullivan

Your Lies Will Burn You in Hell Rashmi Agrawal Telling lies isn’t any good, Mum always said. You’ll be burned in hell. Yamadootas, the deadly pawns of the God of death, will roast you in gigantic furnaces, threading you through skewers with no ends. Or they’ll toss you into a mammoth vessel bubbling with smoky oil and fry you until your skin chars and eyes melt. In front of the simmering oil in my mid-summer kitchen, heat’s melting my eyes as a merciless flame burns an upbeat moth. Seven kids are waiting outside for me to serve them piping hot chicken lollypops and fish fritters. It’s my daughter’s birthday. I think about the sins these mute creatures had committed to be burned in an aluminum pan. Did they lie to their hen mothers? Or their mamma fish? Does anyone even keep an account of all the lies of every living being? For, after surviving thirty-seven summers, one thing I’m sure about is people lie all the time. That’s how humans are created. You bluff when you’re in school and university. When asked about your strengths, experience, hobbies, and other rubbish during a job interview. On the first day of your new job, about your previous achievements and how much you’re going to love the company and the team. Before your first kiss and after. Much later, too. When single and when you’re married. You also lie as a parent. Mum had lied about the hell and lies, a typical parenting jibber-jabber of the 80s and 90s. A sizzling drop flies out and lands on my skin at the wrist. First a tingling, then a burning, a blister ten minutes later. Of course, it’s not my punishment for the lies I blabber. Honey, did you see my laptop’s charger? my husband hollers from the study. His den where he is couped up for over twelve hours a day and lies to his team, juniors, boss, boss’s boss, and the clients abroad. I hear his hurried scuffling from outside the study. I snigger. His laptop should have finally drained off. Right on time. We can cut the cake now. He calls me again; his voice mellowed this time. I shrug. My eyes skitter around in pretense and land on the locked cabinet in a corner where the charger was silently stashed away

earlier during lunch. Guess it’s time; we should cut her birthday cake now, I say. He jumps out of his rolling chair. His work energy now focused on the party. Surely, no slaves of the God of death can dip me in a flour batter or egg-wash me, and drop me in a skillet for my tiny little lies. Lies such as this can make my daughter’s birthday better with her hero’s presence when she cuts the cake. Tiny little harmless lies often fix things. Don’t they? Then why care what happens beyond this birth? I don’t like nuts. Does the cake have almonds? a kid asks me, pulling my saree. I shrug and doctor another truth because my daughter loves pistachios and cashews. And the kid has only asked about almonds.

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Hourglass Thad DeVassie Flip it, invert it, the hole is the same. The grains are the grains are the grains. None bigger, faster, more nimble. Yet there is this phantom feeling that the fall, as the big pile gets small, accelerates. Sixty minutes in either direction unevenly parceled. It is why nobody sweats the early sand

bearing fruit Mikey May once, we stretched a blanket over blossom-painted pavement and caught our weight in pits and purple skin. they weren’t big enough for plums, we all decided, so we gave them our own name, puerile and plosive. that summer my sister lived on a bicycle, fought with the boys by the blackberry bushes, wouldn’t come home. mum and dad would send me out to chase her back for dinner. i was a bad brother then, i could never pedal quite as fast as her.

When The Cardiologist Gave Me Your Heart Iona Rule She said “Only you can fix it”, over her steepled fingers as it sat between us. “I can’t. I’m not a surgeon or a medic. You have to ask someone else.” “It can only be you. You know him best.” She gave me the night to do what I could. If your heart was absent for any longer the damage would be irreparable. I placed your ailing heart in my bag and took it home. I sat it on the kitchen table, trying to remember when we last shared a meal there without staring at our phone screens, engrossed in mindless clickbait and other people’s 140 character lives. I lifted your heart, looking at the mechanisms. Taking an old toothbrush, I began to clean the cogs, scrubbing away clots of arguments, rust of silences and applied WD40 like a salve. A long tangled cord was cut, freeing the main spring. It was a name, repeated again and again. A secret I thought was my own. I wrapped it in a tissue and flushed it down the toilet. Even without the grime, it wasn’t fixed. Plugs of paper rose from its depths: appointment cards-doctors, scans, hospitals, counselling. Endless lists followed, scrawled on the back of receipts, bills and statements: to-do lists, should’ve-could’ve–if-only-we-had-done lists. I tried to remember what we had when we were young and love wasn’t this hard. I remembered the night by the bonfire, inhaling the smoke with the stars. The taste of your cider kisses. I charred some wood, moving the smoke across your valves like incense, and poured a shot of cider into its depths. I remembered our date at the funfair, candyfloss and popcorn churning in my stomach, the way we felt the bassline in our viscera. I took popcorn kernels and listened to the raindrop patter of them as they fell inside. I remembered the rain that washed our grass-stained knees that afternoon we spent at the weir, hiding our passion flushed flesh from fishermen and dog walkers. The damp spaniel that gave us away.

I excavated our old emails and texts, clarting paper-mâché ribbons of “I Love You” on the ventricles trying to make it true. Because at that moment I remembered. I remembered us. But still, there was a gap. A festering scar that wouldn’t heal. I tried to stitch the edges closed but it gaped open. Desperate, I opened my chest and extracted my own heart. When I last showed it to you it was swollen like a red balloon, buoyant and full. Now it was deflated, the wrinkles caving in on themselves. Old scars were still visible on the surface, alongside a patch you had once placed there, healing a wound I had once considered terminal. I raised it to my ear and listened. From deep within it I heard your voice uttering a promise you had repeated so often it had become a litany. I knew then what to do. Taking the vegetable knife I cut a slice from my heart, gasping with the pain. The small patch fluttered in my palm like a trapped moth and I sewed it onto your heart, closing the gap. I returned my heart to my chest and knew my wound would heal. I took the night bus to the hospital, sitting with your heart on my knee in a tomato-stained takeaway tub. With each wheel turn, I whispered your name and hoped I wasn’t too late. When I found her I offered the cardiologist my efforts. It was sticky, still wet with glue, with grains of sand and dog hair stuck to its surface. My hands still bore its residue, the glue drying into a second skin. She gave me a look but said nothing. I followed her to your room where she opened your chest, placing the heart in the nest that was there. Holding your hand I watched as the ECG trace went wild, before settling into a familiar chant. Lub dub. Love you.

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Fiesta Denise Alden Seven months ago I was kidnapped, cut into, irradiated, poisoned and shaved bald everywhere. Today my talented, knowledgeable overlords released me (provisionally) and immediately demanded to know how I would celebrate my freedom. One suggested an ice cream cone as if it were the height of Saturnalia, as if it weren’t the middle of January. Having just stumbled out of not-going-to–die-today, I long to tell them how much I am going to wallow, to keen, to pout, but I can see that that wouldn’t do. Instead, I dream of a day that begins in bed surrounded by handsome mariachis as they play Volver, Volver. Papel picado flutter above us. The most handsome mariachi leans in close, hands me a glass of indecently foamy pulque and murmurs, “Bienvenidos a la vida futura, mi amor.”

Dark Side Natasha Bredle honeyed sliver of your lips breathe mayhem on my tongue make sense of this monster inside of me make my years of knees knocking feet curling lost feelings worth the stamina I swapped for certainty perhaps I gave too much of myself but perhaps the giving made my shallow tides deeper still what if it was all a mistake? what have I become? not the drowning but my own ocean what happens when my waves turn crimson will I recognize who I have harmed? my apology falls on cold ears but look I have emptied all my reservoirs so wash me away until I am as dark as the night and sprinkle me with eclipses sided with the stars hunger is the only true creation of humanity so give mine back I want to be like the graffiti screaming on city walls or that poor moon yearning to glow all by itself

discord and the gradual normalcy Cade Stone Well it began with the sirens. And, of course, the sunset with no clouds at all and the gradient sky hanging, dying over the rooftop and up there the wailing didn’t seem so bad. Someone was playing jazz next door, on a stoop— really playing, several of them sitting out there, well-bundled, their brass fogging with cold and breath. I mulled over whether “next door” in a rowhouse was considered another house, or home, altogether, and who these people were to me. My neighbors were loud and the city far off. Downwind, on their way to the bay, the tallest buildings spruced up high and glassy and the rest of the rowhouse ordinaries hurried to meet them, an airport out of sight somewhere behind it all, teased only by the flecks of arrivals and departures slipping the skyline, shushing into sunlight, seeking something. The helicopters were much nearer. They circled overhead, burned through tax dollars, looked fascist and sort of insectile and moved on. The sirens, meanwhile, yammered through the streets below, terribly discordant with my neighbors’ jazz, raising an indeterminate racket from somewhere in this darkening, overpoliced grid, a place unquieted and unmastered. But she was in my arms. And the purples and the reds and the darkening rest of it were distractions behind her hair. And she was warmer than the bassline, warmer than the night spreading over the babbling block as the birds puffed up in the chill and the choppers wheeled back around and the lights of the city crinkled. She was tangled into my jacket, tangled into my gradual normalcy. She was warmer than cruelty or clamor. She was everything a siren was not.

The Elephants Only I Can See Melissa Mulvihill I pay attention to the darkness in my breathing by focusing on the elephants only I can see. When I say “pay,” I mean full cash payment up front, like the time my husband just wanted to cut up an avocado for lunch, and instead drilled a serrated knife into the base of his index finger. He left his payment on the kitchen floor and the countertop. He even sacrificed some nerves. When I say “attention,” I mean the scrape of the catheter that was threaded up my groin on a mission to burn misbehaving cardiac cells. I mean the tone of my unsedated voice ricocheting around the electrophysiology lab, bouncing off the computer screens, it burns. What I really meant was you’re burning me, so, when I say “attention,” you know, I mean, the wave of fentanyl that came way too late. When I say “darkness,” I mean the ledge outside of Ansel’s Cave, where at night I hear packs of coyotes dispatching their prey by ripping into it on the Sharon conglomerate. Their echoing howls run slick, right down through the rocks, right down through the mossy pebbles, right down to the roots of the ginormous tree that everyone just knew was going to fall, that everyone felt could not withstand one more Lake Erie blow. That thing’s gonna have to come down, everyone said, or it’ll be in the way of everything when it falls. They said falls but I know they meant fails. That’s what everyone means when they talk about things in imminent danger of falling. When I say “breathing,” I mean the release of desperate puffs of regret, in that tone of voice someone uses when they’re about to break me apart and they know it, but they do it anyway. I mean the mocking scream of adrenaline oozing towards my extremities digging deep into my limbic system, prying me out of the bed, begging me to do something, fight or flee, but don’t just lie there and sweat and gasp. When I say “focus,” I mean that day I was walking up Pioneer Bridle Trail and I saw an old woman on the trail with her blind dog and she said to her little dog, don’t call me an old woman. As I passed by, she said, I can walk to the

moon and back because I still have great legs. I nodded, while she hunkered over the little blind dog, leading him by his heart, in teeny looping circles all around the trail. When I say “elephants,” I mean that through my greyish astigmatism, through my old farsightedness, through the back glow of the villages of Burton and Middlefield to the northeast, our trees break in such interesting ways, looking like a failed sympathetic nervous system or elephants. That matriarch right there, stands guard over me, her vast back flank leading the way, the rest of her herd following along behind her, around the perimeter of the distant easement. When I say, “only,” I mean that the matriarch will pin all of my poachers, with the precision of a gladiator, one tremendous knee crushing their backs, one tusk, one jab, one last, deep thrust for grievances past. When I say “see,” I mean the resentment in the chambers of my heart, where I shove blood artlessly between grief and tornados, like the one that uprooted the biggest, strongest tree in our woods, when it was just minding its own damn business.

(Previously published by The Minison Project’s new magazine, TMP Magazine, in February 2022)

FILLER PAGE

Knight of Cups, Reversed Liana Kapelke-Dale

Treating Cor Confractus — A Quintessential Guide Sherry Morris Overview More commonly known as heartbreak or heartache, this condition has plagued humankind for centuries — though advice columns suggest women are more predisposed. Previously thought curable only with time, a revolutionary treatment now exists for both chronic and first-time sufferers. Using similar principles to angioplasty, amoreplasty opens blocked arteries and restores hardened hearts, allowing love flow more typically found in Hollywood romcoms. Procedure First, an amoreologist checks the extent of blockage via consultation. The number of tissues crumpled during the session is a strong indicator of the level of damage sustained. Cases range from mild: dumped by text, unreturned phone calls, occasional forgotten anniversaries or birthdays, receiving gas station flowers; to severe: philandering, gaslighting, mansplaining, and enduring long periods of time alone with small children. A particularly virulent strand doesn’t link to specific incidents but stems from exposure to toxic environments: pussy-grabbing frat-boys, misogynistic workplaces, the inability to make decisions about one’s own body. During the procedure, local anaesthetic numbs the pain. This cannot be used as a long-term solution. Please don’t ask. While in a relaxed state, the patient lies face-up on the operating table. A monitor displays the heart, providing proof of its existence despite the gaping void the patient may feel. Via a small incision in the arm, a thin tube covered by a sausage-shaped balloon is threaded through the body to the blockage. The balloon is inflated repeatedly, squashing damaging experiences into arterial walls where they dissolve like ice cubes in a G&T. Aftercare To reduce risk of reoccurrence, recommended steps include regularly scheduled visits from a team of certified heart-throbs and/or ‘ripped’ sports figures to bestow compliments, complete housework, provide proper flowers and non-fattening-yet-still-delicious chocolates, and entertain the children. Statistics show interactions with ‘Rear of the Year’ winners provide best

returns to health. Procurement of a working dishwasher and washing machine is vital. Avoidance of women’s magazines essential. It is not uncommon for some patients to spend years in recovery. Research suggests the condition strikes both young and mature hearts and there is no built-in immunity. Feedback indicates that, even in cases of severe damage, the procedure offers improved quality of life despite possible side effects. These include an increased appetite for marriage, though this rarely leads to rates accrued by Elizabeth Taylor and Larry King (8 each), or Zsa Zsa Gabor (9). For multiple trips down the aisle, we offer access to a wedding attire ‘swap shop’ and an experienced pool of compassionate divorce lawyers (this is not a typo). Following treatment, many patients find lasting love again, remaining enamoured with their partner until death parts them — though this usually requires selective hearing and the use of horse blinkers. Current wait times run from six months to a year. This will feel like an eternity. See below for interim assistance. Further links • Top tips to heal a love-torn heart that don’t involve alcohol • Lose weight by eating your rage • How best to serve revenge cold

Grateful Jason W. McGlone for sneaking onto List’s farm to keep us in trouble for the rock you threw at the beehive we’d been watching grow all summer its papery bulb like a weeping boil on the side of that silver maple for the hollow thwip I can hear with my eyes closed for the bee-belching hole and the ballet of their aerial march for each magnificent angry sting for standing in the bathroom arms above our heads bodies swelling for aloe epinephrine for your laughter when mom asked what the hell were you thinking for the warmth of my reading lamp the family encyclopedia and the promise of tomorrow

contributors Stuart McPherson Stuart McPherson is a poet living near Leicester, UK. Recent poems have appeared in Butcher’s Dog, The6Press, Osmosis Press and Acropolis Journal. His debut pamphlet Pale Mnemonic was published by Legitimate Snack in April 2021. The pamphlet Waterbearer was published in December 2021 by Broken Sleep Books. A debut full length collection Obligate Carnivore will be published by Broken Sleep Books in August 2022. Aneeta Sundararaj Once upon a time, Aneeta Sundararaj created a website and called it ‘How to Tell a Great Story’. She has contributed feature articles to a national newspaper and also various journals, magazines and ezines. Aneeta’s bestselling novel, The Age of Smiling Secrets was shortlisted for the Book Award 2020 organised by the National Library of Malaysia. Throughout, Aneeta continued to pursue her academic interests and, in 2021, successfully completed a doctoral thesis entitled ‘Management of Prosperity Among Artistes in Malaysia’. Taiwo Hassan Taiwo Hassan is a writer of Yorùbá descent, a poet and a vocalist. A Best Of The Net Nominee, his poems have appeared in trampset, Kissing Dynamite, Lucent Dreaming, The Shore, Brittle Paper, Dust Poetry Magazine, Ice Floe Press, Wizards In Space and several other places. He emerged the first runner-up for the MANI 10 year anniversary Poetry Competition. He’s also an undergraduate student of Demography and Social Statistics at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Osun State, Nigeria. His first chapbook, Birds Don’t Fly For Pleasure is forthcoming for publication by River Glass Books. Lesley James Lesley’s Jungle 1971 was shortlisted for LoveReadingUK’s short story award 2022. She has flash fiction in The Broken Spine (twice featured flash of the month) and The Best of Café Lit 2022 anthology. She’s a featured creator in Full House Lit Mag. Poetry can be found in TBS Artists Collective

05 and Roi Fainéant; writing for children on Brian Moses’ Blogspot, in The Parakeet and The Dirigible Balloon. Leela Raj-Sankar Leela Raj-Sankar is an Indian-American teenager from Arizona. Their work has appeared in Second Chance Lit, Perhappened, and among others. In his spare time, he can usually be found watching bad television or taking long naps. Say hi to her on Twitter @sickgirlisms. Heain Joung Originally from South Korea, Heain Joung holds an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from Sussex University. She now lives in the UK. Her short fiction has appeared in the Quick Fiction app (Myriad Editions, Brighton), Virtual Zine, Fudoki Magazine, and elsewhere. She can be found on twitter at heainhaven. M.J Edwards Meg is a London-based writer and editor currently working in the arts and cultural sector. She studied at the University of Edinburgh, and lived in Washington DC prior to the pandemic. Meg writes poetry, plays and short fiction that explores themes including grief, recovery, nature and medicine with strong ties to gender and sexuality. T.L. Tomljanovic T.L. Tomljanovic is a freelance writer based in British Columbia, Canada. Her work has been published in Carousel, Blank Spaces, and Flash Fiction Magazine. She lives with her partner, two young children, and their 180lb English Mastiff dog. Rachel O’Sullivan Rachel O’Sullivan is a 20 year old writer, photographer and artist based in Dublin. Rachel is currently studying English with Creative Writing at UCD. Rachel’s work embodies the liminal, the uncanny and the uncomfortable - as well as divulging into all that is golden and glimmers. In that way, Rachel’s art is about the dichotomy, tension and undeniable harmony between these two states.

Rashmi Agrawal Rashmi Agrawal lives in India and sits by a big window to write, enjoying the diverse seasons. She has recently won the Strands Publisher Flash Fiction contest for December month. Her words are available or forthcoming in Dollar Store Magazine, Inked in Gray, GutSlut Press, Active Muse, The Hive, and Women’s Web. Her short stories have found space in various anthologies. She tweets @thrivingwordss. Thad DeVassie Thad DeVassie is a multi-genre writer and painter who creates from the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of SPLENDID IRRATIONALITIES, which was awarded the James Tate International Poetry Prize in 2020 (SurVision Books). He chatted about the writing/artist life with Leia on the Full House podcast in 2021. Find his words and paintings by visiting www. thaddevassie.com Mikey May Mikey May (he/fae/xe) is a queer trans man poet, linguist, and trainee teacher based in Birmingham, UK. A former Stonewall Young Writers and Unislam winner, his work has been featured by the Poetry Translation Centre and in the anthology At Home In Our City. Faer self-published poetry zines about sex, gender, and Taylor Swift can be found at mikeymay.itch.io. Follow xyr queer shenanigans @lavenderblueboy on Twitter and @mikeymayblues on Instagram. Iona Rule Iona Rule wishes WD40 was the solution to more problems in life, other than just DIY and bikes. She has been BIFFY nominated, and shortlisted in TSS Publishing Cambridge Flash Prize and other competitions. Her writing can be found in Epoch Press, The Phare and other places. She rambles on twitter @theropachwriter. Denise Alden Denise Alden lives and writes on unceded Dakota land, now known as the Twin Cities. Some of her work can be found at Scalawag Magazine; The Sunshine Review; and The Ocotillo Review.

Natasha Bredle Natasha Bredle is an emerging writer based in Ohio. She writes about what she thinks about, which is really too much for her poor brain. You can find her work in Aster Lit, Trouvaille Review, and Full House Lit, to name a few. Cade Stone Cade Stone is a developing writer from Austin, Texas, where he earned a pair of liberal arts degrees at the University of Texas before fleeing to D.C. to avoid moving back in with his parents. He now works in communications and writes to avoid thinking about it. His content has been published in Neuro Typical and The Daily Drunk and is forthcoming in Blood Pudding. More of him can be found at cadestone.me or on Instagram at @cade_stone_ Melissa Mulvihill Melissa writes about the edges of things like chronic diagnoses and her relationship with herself and her most important people through these diagnoses. In 2021 she had essays with Pangyrus Literary Magazine, Tangled Locks Journal, HerStry, and Months to Years Literary Magazine. She has essays and poetry forthcoming with Wishbone Words and Anti-Heroin Chic Magazine. Long ago she graduated with a BA in psychology from Kenyon College and with an MA in counseling from John Carroll University. She is retired from homeschooling and counseling, and lives in northeast Ohio with her husband. You can find her work at melissamulvihill.com. Twitter; @UnreliableHeart Liana Kapelke-Dale Liana Kapelke-Dale holds a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin Law School. She is the author of Seeking the Pink (Kelsay Books), a full-length book of poetry nominated for the 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Award; Little words seeking/Mute human for mutual/ Gain and maybe more (Irrelevant Press), a chapbook of personal ads written in haiku form; and Specimens, her first (self-published) chapbook. Her poetry has been featured in such journals as Big Easy Review, Fleas on the Dog, Grand Little Things, and Impossible Task, among others. Liana currently lives in Milwaukee, WI, with her lovely pointer-hound mix, Poet.

Sherry Morris Originally from Missouri, Sherry (@Uksherka) writes prize-winning flash fiction and short stories from a farm in the Scottish Highlands where she pets cows, watches clouds and dabbles in photography. She participated in the BBC Scottish Voices development programme and is supposed to be finishing her script. Her first published story was about her Peace Corps experience in Ukraine. She reads for the wonderfully wacky Taco Bell Quarterly. More of her work can be found on www.uksherka.com Jason W. McGlone Jason W. McGlone’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Autofocus, Sledgehammer Lit, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Briefly Zine, and Glint Literary Journal, among others. He makes music under the name Mourning Oars and runs the process-centered journal Zero Readers. Most days you can find him wandering around Cincinnati, where he lives with his family. You can find him on twitter @maoglone.

Thank you for reading

Featuring the work of: Stuart McPherson Aneeta Sundararaj Taiwo Hassan Lesley James Leela Raj-Sankar Heain Joung M.J Edwards T.L. Tomljanovic Rachel O’Sullivan Rashmi Agrawal Thad DeVassie Mikey May Iona Rule Denise Alden Natasha Bredle Cade Stone Melissa Mulvihill Liana Kapelke-Dale Sherry Morris Jason W. McGlone