Spring issue 2023

J’Atelier9 - Mary Aherne - Natalie Blake - Charlene Brown - Kathy Bruce

- Nataliia Burmaka - Emmett Christolear - Rachel Coyne - Martins Deep -

Sara Dobbie - Maja Domagała - Johnathan Drake - Alexandra Fössinger

-

Taylor Franson-Thiel - Sara Gorske - Sarah Megan Jenkins - Chris

Kerr -

Carmina Masoliver - Joan Mazza - Antonella Nicolino - Michael

Noonan - Titilope Olowofela - Salem Paige - Elizabeth Porter - August

Reynolds - Alimot Temitope Salami - Shloka Shankar - Paula Turcotte -

Joan García Viltró - Piper L. White - Katie Willow

A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS

Welcome to the first issue of 2023! We are so excited to bring you this issue which is bursting with brilliance.

At Full House Literary, we want to provide a platform for emerging and diverse voices and visions, so we moved over to Submittable at the end of last year to see if we could reach a wider audience. And wow! Did we get what we asked for! We had nearly double the number submissions of any previous sub call, most of them poetry. So a big thank you to our talented and dedicated volunteer team who helped read many, many submissions to make this issue possible: Bianca (lead poetry editor), Christopher (lead prose editor), Christina (deputy prose editor), Lisa, Jack, Michael, Amarys, Natalie, George, Bethany, and Hamidah. We couldn’t have done it without you!

We were also delighted to see many more art submissions for this sub call. The beautiful image featured on the cover is one of these pieces, 'Bouquet' by Nataliia Burmaka, (you can see the full image within this issue). Do check out our website where we have audio descriptions of all the pieces with some of the artists talking about their inspirations and methods.

The Spring issue also marks a new year of exciting things for Full House Literary, as we begin adventures like Digital Chapbooks. We are also running our 5-week workshop in June with Leia and Kinneson and you can sign up through the website.

Finally, we want to thank all our contributors who made this issue possible, and all the fantastic people who submitted work to us this window. Whether your piece was rejected or accepted, you are a superstar for creating anything. Keep at it and do try us again!

We hope you enjoy reading!

Leia, JP, Kinneson Head Editors of FH

UPCOMING IN THIS ISSUE

So I Booked A Spaceship Tour to Gaze at You from Afar

By Sara Gorske

Bi-Weekly Horoscope for a Wrecking Ball

By

By

Q&A By Emmett Christolear

the html i am built from is filled with errors

By J’Atelier9

Pastina Shortage By Joan Mazza

Soaked Fields By August Reynolds

Grow & Glow By Titilope Olowofela

the scent By Joan García Viltró

Don't See By Antonella Nicolino

Mimicry By Piper L. White

Lines and Colours By Michael Noonan

These Obsessive-Compulsive Hungers By Maja Domagała

Untitled By Rachel Coyne

Orthorexia By Taylor Franson-Thiel

Bouquet By Nataliia Burmaka

We're caught, my love, in this masquerade

By Natalie Blake

Icarus in the Spring By Kathy Bruce

Post Party Blues By Mary Aherne

My Daughter's Tail By Katie Willow p.37

Green taste By Martins Deep p.39

In Memory of My Mother

By Charlene Brown

About the contributors Creator bios

So I Booked A Spaceship Tour to Gaze at You from Afar

Sara Gorske

so- phism: Icleavetoyou because Plutocannot helpbutorbit thesunalthough itscircle ismutated intoanellipse

so- metimes closerthan

siblingNeptune’s invitingMediterranean bluessongs settosultry beats moreoftendistant asacomet’stail fromitsicycore surging toescape immolation therearetoo manybodies inthis bar,neon-tinted haze andvodka cloudthesun wewither

so- lo thethirdeyetruth ofspinningdepthlessspace wecoastinthesame coaxinglactosearms

lightyearsapart onneighboring coffeehousestools

so- phisticated enlightened

abletotaste differentcitrusintheblends yetlemon-lime

so- da remainsmyfavorite genericflavor

youcallitpop asupernovaspill

ofsucrosetocoat thesourestlies

weditchthecafé forthemall closedshopfronts

so- ber

so- mnolent

asstars whoseBigBang light caressesEarth’s atmosphere toolate tostoke ourfurnacehearts

intobelieving wemight notwantto be alone

Bi-Weekly Horoscope for a Wrecking Ball

Paula Turcotte

It begins with something backward: a reckoning, syrup of your own disaster, crafted from the wreckage under a hot-orange sunset. If you find a needle in the ashes, stop and look around. Whose porcelain toes have you stepped on now? You should avoid sour candies (canker sores), acrylic sweaters (itchy), men (a scourge), and the crushing weight of your own expectations. Use caution with the milkteeth of lust: once bitten, twice crucified. Listen to smooth jazz on CD and embrace effervescence in beverage and self.

Beware: objects in mirror are less terrestrial than they appear.

friendliness (n.)

Shloka Shankar

Dry Proceedings

Elizabeth Porter

While no one is looking, I plunge my hands into his ash. The weight and grit surprises me. In the Pacific, brittle stars writhe curiously across the ocean floor; sand lifts and suspends. In the kitchen, a glass dish shatters and indistinct voices laugh to dispel tension. Are my fingers pressing through jawbone or pelvis? Rain would have been a comfort for such dry proceedings. Imagine rain. My nail beds fill with sand - is this the collarbone my lips once lingered or the broken rib that made me? My fingers retract from this intimate dust and our contact is severed. From the kitchen I hear the gentle clink of forks on dessert plates, of glass swept.

FRITH

Alimot Temitope Salami

Exit Wounds

Sara Dobbie

Sabrina cuts herself in the kitchen, not on purpose or anything, only by accident. It’s a thin slice on the side of her index finger, caused by reaching into the sink to grab a knife from under the foamy suds. She did this all the time and often thought that one day she’d miss the handle and find the blade, and now it’s happened. She doesn’t mention it to Jeff because he’s already annoyed with her for being careless; ten minutes earlier she dropped an egg on the floor, a total waste. Jeff says she’s always thinking about other things, far away things or long-ago things. Pointless things that get in the way of their life together, and in this case, his dinner.

The finger is bleeding, so she covers it in a bandage and continues preparing food. They eat in front of the television, her on one side of the couch and him on the other. She’s sure he sees the bandage, but he doesn’t comment or ask her if she’s all right. It’s for the best, she thinks. She doesn’t need a lecture on knife safety. She doesn’t like people telling her what to do, that’s always been her problem, or so she’s been told. Like when she was small and her father would tell her to go her room, or to be quiet, or to stop asking questions, or to stop talking at all.

In the morning, her whole hand is covered in dry blood, and on her way to the bathroom to wash it off she bumps her thigh on the footboard of the bed. This occurs often, and there is a perpetual bruise blooming there, violet deepening to indigo. Jeff doesn’t ask what happened, even though she let out a yelp of pain, because he’s got no patience for her theatrics.

It’s true that he’s not the first person to lose sympathy for her clumsiness, or for her stupidity. In high school when that bad stuff happened with the captain of the basketball team, everyone said it was Sabrina’s fault for going over to his house. or believing him when he said he loved her, for trusting he wouldn’t tell lies about her. So she knows intuitively what Jeff will say, something like, if she would look

where she was going, she wouldn’t get hurt. If she would do what she was told, she’d be fine.

She’s supposed to get to the office early this morning, to cover for a co-worker who needs time off. This is another one of Sabrina’s weaknesses, according to Jeff, she lets people take advantage of her. Lets them boss her around and walk all over her. He’s always telling her that she needs to stand up for herself, maybe then he’d have more respect for her.

She’s running her hand under water and the blood from the cut is rinsing away. She lifts her nightgown to inspect the bruise on her leg, but when she bends forward, she hits her head on the edge of the sink. A small goose egg forms on her forehead, and she stares and stares at it in the mirror. She wonders why her luck is so bad, why she continually falls and trips and slips and bumps herself. When she returns to her room Jeff is getting dressed for work. He looks at her and shakes his head. “What did you do to yourself now?” he asks. Says she needs to be more careful. Says she never learns. Says she needs to put her head on straight and sort herself out.

These words echo in Sabrina’s mind, swirling across her thoughts to erase all excuses. Jeff is right, she needs to be more careful. Careful of her body, careful of her thoughts. Of her choices, and of her actions. She needs to learn from her mistakes instead of repeating them like a lab rat in a maze getting electrocuted over and over. She packs her suitcase then makes a reservation at a hotel three hours away. Before Jeff comes home from work she is gone, driving down the highway with the wind in her hair. Later she will book a flight to the other side of the country, but for now her head is sore, her finger is throbbing. Her thigh is numb, but her heart is singing, and she hopes that when Jeff reads the note stuck to the fridge with a magnet, he’ll be satisfied that she’s finally taking his advice.

The Night Gallery / Jet Lag

Johnathan Drake

This bench is colder / harder now than it was before. Just a few more hours / minutes and he will be walking / running to me and we’ll be on our way. The most important / trivial thing is that I must / want to see the Eiffel Tower in the dark / day.

Two men stop to ask if I am okay / alive and wake me up from a nap / deep sleep where I was dreaming that we were together / apart, but you let me walk / crawl back to the hotel without a map, wifi, service, data, help / me and myself got me back safe / sound. I passed the lit up tower while you were gazing / glaring at art in a museum, but you / I ruined our time I suppose. I / you / we are far / from over.

Moonrise, 2023

Sarah Megan Jenkins

Father

Alexandra Fössinger

It is not true that the dead do not age. I see my father often, on the street, the way he would look now, older, with slower movements; he has lost some weight, his face has sunk in, it has a darker expression; his once thick hair has thinned out and turned completely white. He will pause sometimes, slightly bewildered, unsure of where he is. Perhaps that comes to those who never quite left a place, never quite reached another. Only a few minutes ago I looked down on him from the window of my studio. He stopped at the parking place for a few seconds and closed his coat against the cold, before moving on. Strangely enough, he did not raise his head. He would not have greeted me, the dead never acknowledge the living, but I thought he would look up anyway. He might have forgotten.

Blue

Carmina Masoliver

blue like the jumper I have left strewn on the chair like the matching jogging bottoms in the laundry bag the cropped shirt I haven’t worn since the interview when I wanted to look smart but also artistic

blue like the comfy jeans my flat mate got me into like the skinny ones I still wear drying on the clothes rack the wash of my day when I’ve cried a little too much blue like the bag of tissues

blue like the box of Matzos crackers to have with hummus when my head hurts from hunger blue da ba dee da ba di

blue like bubblegum blue like my water bottle blue like the sea blue like the sky

blue like music playing to the sound of my heart when I don’t know how to be happy

H Mart

Chris Kerr

Q&A (After Michelle Penaloza)

Emmett Christolear

What are you?

A thousand mistakes clumped together –smooshed shredded cheese and hair strands swept into a dust pan, molted into a squishy belly, a prickly buzz cut, and grown-out leg hair.

Oh, OK. But, are you a boy or a girl?

I am a tribute to Elise and Mary –I am the dip in an old mattress, a flat hotel pillow, the broken door of the main library. I was prayed for by preachers and their flock to be healthy baby, to survive the NICU, to grow into pack pain and the smell of spring gardens, tomato, rosemary, and compost, heat squiggling from the hood of a car, to make my hold art with my hands, to make poetry and hit snooze buttons every morning. My mom had names picked out for me – an almost James, a maybe-Conrad – she can’t remember the ones unused.

Have you had the surgery?

I have scars from cat scratches, mosquito bites, and trips and falls, and some across my chest where the weight of bridges was lifted. My chest is a troposphere of hairs and nipple-mesas, pore-spotted mountain ranges of thick scar tissue, hills of belly and osprey nests.

the html i am built from is filled with errors

Salem Paige

<!doctype mybody>

<html>

<img src =”myface”> my eyes multiply four from two and

my chin rests fifteen inches from the left gutter rotated at fifteen degrees. </img>

i find my fingers scattered

<h2> across heading two. </h2> my <body> is buried in the </body> text, split between paragraphs,

<a href = "https://www.helpmefindmycorp.se"> i lost it in </a>

glitch in my genetic code from when i

<p>ut the syntax in wrong and i ho</p>e

i can rewrite the script i work from

<footer> though i don’t really think that it’s salvageable.

</footer>

</html>

RED CLIMATE J’Atelier9

Pastina Shortage

Joan Mazza

Ronzoni must have lost its corporate mind to announce the end of production of beloved pastina, comfort food, baby food, perfect after oral surgery or the loss of teeth. Tiny stars mixed with butter and ricotta, or a with a little spinach and grated cheese, a snack for old or young Italians, down the generations. Before the alarm, I bought six boxes on Amazon, enough for about six years at my usual usage. Petitions, complaints, appeals haven’t changed the decision yet.

On eBay, a single twelve-ounce box sells for twenty dollars, free shipping. You can buy twenty-one boxes for three hundred dollars (or best offer). Websites recommend other shapes: acini di pepe, orzo, even broken up angel hair pasta. But nothing can substitute for the star of pasta a galaxy beloved, a cosmos available any time. All you need is boiling water.

Soaked Fields

August Reynolds

we lie next to each other with a hand-me-down blanket and $10 shoes at the foot wondering at once when we last watered the plants by the door not questioning the roots at our legs or rot at our heads or rivers on your hands as it drips down my neck and shoulders and back and.

Grow & Glow

Titilope Olowofela

the scent

Joan García Viltró

as the tan on your neck used to hover off the rim of my nostrils so that scent used to flutter by the fringe of our deviant our shared oblique world

it also chirped with much gusto where you’d just left near me or it used to precede you before my eyes got engrossed in your frolicsome voice

so much that smell grew on me that i constantly used to hear it this deeply ingrained in among the buds of my tongue

but now now that i lie whining deep into this night because i’d never dared you to name that fragrance now that i indulge in my bereavement half awake, half trusting my sense

now i’ve been left smell-deprived that scent forever unidentified all my chances for sure spent

Don't See Antonella Nicolino

Mimicry

Piper L. White

I seem to have eaten my mother. Mimicry was something prey used to hide from their predators and blend into the environment. I mimicked my mother. Her moves, her bone structure and the same birthmark that rested on the back of my ribs. It was like a sheer stain on my skin, only a tone darker but prominent. It is said birthmarks are spots from past lives where one died. Were my mother and I the same person at some point? Is that why I could no longer tell if it were my eyes or hers that looked back in the mirror?

One night, I got so sick from lack of consumption that I ate the floorboards. For dessert I had the wallpaper with magenta vines and green leaves wrapping around my esophagus and nearly choking me to death. I gripped the toilet on either side, the bathroom fan blowing down my back as I released it all back into the ether. I thought that if I consumed the house I’d remember more about myself. From a time before I became my mother and wanted to drink a coffee at seven p.m. only to be in bed by eight. My body burned through its caffeine. Maybe that’s why I could never stop running in my dreams.

When I was a little girl I liked for her to sit with me if I felt nauseated. I was scared I’d throw up pieces of myself until I wasted away. Death kept a wiggling finger in front of my face to taunt me. My greatest fear, so cold and soulless, turned to a vessel of warm, comforting flesh as I grew up. My cheekbones poked out to be noticed and my lips were stretched thin.

I never got my mother’s hair until I decided to try brunette but it oxidized too quickly and turned black.

“You look like me,” my mother said when I showed her.

I bought a bottle of bleach the next day and fried my hair crispy until the pigment faded. I chewed up the bottle of dye until I bleached my insides, cleaned them and started fresh. I was weighless and slithered through the house. I became the walls, the popcorn ceiling and the corner where all the icky things hid. Through a night terror my mother held my arms and shook me but I couldn’t wake up.

Spiders crawled up my arms and up hers too until they made her eyes go hollow. I don’t remember how I woke up, only that I did.

Nightmares can be genetically passed in the womb and that was the first piece of my mother I absorbed. I was her before I even took my first breath in this world. My mother appeared in my nightmares as something fragile I lost every time. She went through a door and a banshee screamed in my face, skin gray, mouth a black, gaping hole. I searched for my mother in that dream but couldn’t find the door.

One day I decided to eat her mattress to see if I could understand her better. I found a photo album under it and ate it too. She stood in her prom dress that was crunchy like its blue sequins and held a dog I never met. For a moment I felt its stringy fur and the way her feet hurt after she danced. I felt all the guilt on every corner of her body. All the doubts of her parenting and her wonder if I actually loved her. I wanted to tell her she did nothing wrong. But I’d consumed too much and she was no longer there.

Lines and Colours

Michael Noonan

These Obsessive-Compulsive Hungers

Maja Domagała

You call it the week where you didn’t eat.

When, after years of pushing, pushing, pushing, your body didn’t want to anymore. The word high functioning was familiar on your lips; but like that, you found the remnants of its teeth and tongue in the palm of your hand. You wanted to put it together, quick, before anyone saw. Quick, like you used to, time and time again. But cleaning blood is not the same as wiping spit, and your teeth became ugly and crooked in your mouth. It showed in your smile; you became bad at pretending, which alone devastated you.

Then, you thought you swallowed one of the teeth. By accident, of course. That’s when the nausea started. And the wailing, so much wailing. You couldn’t keep it down, so you coughed it back up. Blood, spittle, blood, spittle. That tooth cut something up inside. Even if you wanted to look, your hands trembled too much for you to check nice and steady like you wanted to. What if you swallowed more than one tooth? What if there were a dozen teeth in there now, gnawing, tearing, devouring? Hungry is the wanting mouth that can’t move. That broken jaw no longer soothed.

You became convinced there were teeth inside of you. It didn’t matter whether it was true or not. After all, you were convinced. So, you lied for days, hungry, hungry. An all-consuming cycle. What if, what if, what if

You ruminated yourself rotten; you self-analyzed but couldn’t selfsoothe. You missed the days your teeth stayed in your mouth. Rooted. Grounded. Certain.

But even teeth must disintegrate at some point. It was difficult impossible, even for you to imagine this. They seemed so ready to

take you apart. When you paid them less mind though, their assault became lighter. When you thought, sure, have at it, they reduced to nothing more than a nibble, confused by your indifference. They only take when you give, it seems. This wasn’t giving up or giving in. As contradictory as it was, this was surviving.

The nausea subsided, bit by bit, as did the heaving. Breathing became easier, which made you want to cry again but for another reason.

You were alive. Those incessant teeth didn’t kill you. Your system is stronger than that.

There was only a dull ache left in your stomach, waiting to be filled. And although that mouth of yours wouldn’t be the same again for some time, with your twisted tongue and those strange, strange teeth, still, you ate. You ate because you could, because you must, because you deserved to.

It’s the only way through, you found. It’s the only way through.

Untitled Rachel Coyne

Orthorexia

Taylor Franson-Thiel

Another day of waking up not-perfect. Sliding the brass knuckles on So I can beat myself up for Wanting to be stronger. It is not blood

Flowing through my veins. It is a weakness. So I go to the gym

The only kind of self harm

People congratulate you for.

Train hard and lift heavy and run fast, Until legs shake like ocean tides. My head gets faint like I’m falling in a dream. And I hate that I am not tougher, That I dare to have limits, Having the audacity to fail To rise beyond my shorelines. There is no weight heavy enough

To crush fickleness from me, Sadness from me, Anger like pompeii from me. But I have to try, Put my hands on the cold steel, Put the barbell on my back And push disappointment up and away. But like rain and hail condensing above the sea, It comes back down, It always comes back down. Up and down, up and down.

Bouquet

Nataliia Burmaka

We're caught, my love, in this masquerade

Natalie Blake

We’re the same, you and me.

We’re the same, except you’re up there and I’m down here. You’re probably feeling pretty sorry for yourself right about now, stepping up onto that altar. I bet you’re regretting opening your mouth at all, because if you hadn’t, we could have gone on just as before.

The cushion placed before you is traditional, hand stitched, and patterned with a faded yellow cross. The indents for your knees are well-established by the vestal girls that came before you; it takes time to gather the layers of your dress.

You’re shaking, quaking, overcome all queer; it’s just your bare arms, you’ll say if they ask. A shiver of excitement. But your gaze travels, and you find me in the crowd.

“Can I get an Amen?” The pastor hollers.

Your eyes rise to meet the praise in his voice but your smile can’t quite manage the climb.

They’ve powdered up your cheeks real good so that when you cry, the tears don't stain but slip right off as though they were never there. It’ll be your job to look perfect now, every morning and every evening wearing pearls so tight they don’t ever let your tears fall; they’ll choke the emotion right out of you.

“Amen!” The congregation sings. Your new beau slips the ring from its ribbon and lightly grips your wrist. Your fingers are splayed playing at obedience, but the seconds stretch out.

The ring don’t fit.

If this was anyone else I’d laugh, but it’s you so I could never. Your trussed-up chest rises and falls ever faster and I can see you’re panicking; so am I. What are you gonna do? There’s no blaming me for it this time.

See, that night was the same like any other; we’d played our favorite boybands, danced on your bed, then made-up our faces all grown-up and sexy like we knew what that meant. You’d cupped my chin and drawn on the lipstick thick and ripe; my lips left a perfect

outline on your mirror. Yours did too. In fact, you down right made out with that mirror, slobbering your tongue all over it cuz it was all we could imagine; our sides ached from laughing.

Your new beau is older than us by five or six years, and I can’t say if he’s handsome or not because that’s not my thing, and neither is it yours. But Lord does his face scrunch up ugly when he's frustrated, just look at him. Jamming that gold band against your knuckle like your refusal to accept it is purposeful, or your rejection of Him personal.

The faithful wait, breath bated, the anticipation of your salvation binding them up real tight. A baby wails from a row behind me, unable to keep quiet.

You’re apologizing now, wittering something pitiful because we’ve been programmed to appease them: your daddy, your husband-to-be, mine that’ll surely come.

I can’t watch you like this.

Your momma rushes forward wielding a tiny bottle of sanitizer from her purse and squirts a sticky blob on her fingers to smear it around yours. You tell her to stop fussing, you can do it; they’ve convinced your collusion and it turns my stomach. I wish I could find and tear out every passage they used against you.

The pastor apologizes for the hold up, and the crowd chuckle at the joke he makes. But my knuckles have turned white I’ve curled my fists so tight; it’s the only way I can sit still and keep pretty, smiling along with their assumptions.

See, I know your daddy likes to yell real loud and that it scares you, that his voice makes you buckle just like it does your momma. That’s why I don’t blame you. But when he’d walked in and caught us practicing with each other and not just the mirror no more your arm whipped out faster than a gunslinger. You pointed the barrel of your finger right at me, and I took it. I’d have done anything for you.

Neither of us expected you’d be the one paying the price.

You strain to maintain your expression when the ring finally crunches across your knuckle. I unfurl my fists to find tiny bloody curves in my skin, both palms smeared red like the Savior himself.

You’d think after all that pomp and ceremony around them purity

rings they’d imposed on us years ago, someone might’ve thought to slip yours off, measure the dang thing, and save you this humiliation on top of the one you’re already shouldering.

You kissed a girl and you liked it.

But your daddy had been so hasty to replace that ring with this wedding one, that details like whether the band would actually fit, or whether this was actually what you wanted, fell by the wayside. Funny how all the courtship rules fly out the window when your soul is at risk.

You say the words, and your new husband kisses you. I push past everyone in the row and stumble out into the aisle but it’s too late. Your behavior has been tamed, but our hearts will not.

When you both turn to the crowd, you see me anew. Your scaffolded-on smile convinces them; I guess that’s good. It’s not the only skill you’ll need to consummate.

But I know what your real smile looks like, and that scaffolding is beginning to falter.

It’s okay, I say, only mouthing the words, but I know you hear them. I love you.

You nod. I love you too.

I rub the corner of my lips with my thumb and you copy, scouring the stain of his kiss from your skin.

Icarus in the Spring

Kathy Bruce

Post Party Blues

Mary Aherne

Afterwards, laid out on my bed, my mind a clutter of regrets trawls through the horrors of the evening. Bombay mix, unidentifiable fried objects, warm beer, cheap wine, a thousand shots and endless chatter about another party –that cheeseboard, bins overflowing with cans, a child’s wrecked climbing frame –that wasn’t really a party after at all. Or was it?

And shame of shames, my karaoke rendering of ‘American Pie’ – everyone’s life nine minutes shorter because I drunkenly chose to sing it. Exhausted, and I could kill Don McClean for just one hour of sleep, my addled brain still chunters on recalling all of my humiliations and defeats. Relentless the brain’s forensic and merciless dissection of my life.

I long for revision, a clever edit, ideally, the option to delete, or, with a carefree wave of the hand, permission to say, ‘So what?’ or even, borrowing from my children’s lexicon, ‘Whatever’.

Retreating into the cocoon of the night I slip into a crazed and fitful sleep and dream of good old boys and oh, look at that, James Dean (hmmm) and then whiskey and rye (euch) thinking, thinking, thinking, this will be the night that I die, oh yes, this will be the night that I die.

My Daughter's Tail

Katie Willow

Let me tell you about my daughter’s tail. It’s wonderful, so long and impressive, and she loves it. She is so proud of it. It hangs down to her ankles; thick, white, gently waved hair. When she sits in a chair with a separate backrest it hangs down to caress the ground behind her. When she sits in a solid backed chair, she puts her left hand behind her and scoops it up across her lap so it hugs her body. When she walks with it loose, it swings like an upside-down metronome with every step.

I offer to plait it for her. My own hair: greying, fraying, fading, thinning. There is no need to know how to dress my hair. I look up dressage styles on the internet. I order ribbons of every colour. She sits in front of her favourite show and I brush, weave, knot, tame and embellish to my heart’s content. I take a photo every time and save each one in a folder I keep on my laptop. Happy weeks go by and I am becoming very skilled at dressing her tail. I suggest we could start a web page to show off her tail and my styles. After all, I’m trying new things, pushing boundaries. It deserves to be shared.

‘Mum, I think you take more photos of my tail than my face,’ she says. ‘Oh, no, I’m sure I don’t!’ I reply. But my mental tally suggests the figure is closer than I’d like for certainty. From that day on, every time I take a photo of her tail, I take two of her face. I suppress the desire to tell her that everyone has a face but her tail is so very special.

My daughter shuffles impatiently when I plait her tail. She says she doesn’t need the ribbons anymore. She doesn’t want the plaits, ties and knots. She will wear her tail plain and loose.

She doesn’t need to have a tail. She slips it off into the bin.

She tosses her tresses.

She walks away. The bin!

I run my fingers through my greying, fraying, fading, thinning hair and whip my daughter’s tail from the bin when her back is turned. I take it to my wardrobe and secure it to the hanging rail. I smooth out the tangles and kiss it once, a comfort for the ill treatment. I brush my tail every morning and night. I love it. I am so proud of it.

Green taste

Martins Deep

In Memory of My Mother

Charlene Brown

youfloodintomymemory

arushoffireoverchoppedwood

anaugustdustingofsnow

dirtcakedinbetweenfingers

wildmountainonionsfriedinbutter

anapinaswayinghammock

bookpagesflutterinwind

knotstiedinexpectation

hoursspentwaitingforfishtobite

rocksflyhorizontallyoverstilllakewater

ripplethroughtime

morninghotcoffeetoosoonchilled unexpectedrain

nearslipsdownrockyboulders

coldnightairseepsthroughbones

meltedshoesolesheldtooclosetoglowingembers

starsstretchlongpastimagination

laughterechoesinthefirelight unexpectedicecreamcones

agoldeneaglesoarsincirclesabove silencebutforthewindinthebranches

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

J’Atelier9

Artisan Crafted Creator, J’Atelier9 TM (IG:@jatelier9) emerged after its Los Angeles based visionary founder, Janine Tang, began her movement towards a circular environment discipline by sourcing reclaimed salvaged elements into her sustainable fine arts. J’Atelier9 reshapes the transcendent beauty of innovative repurposing.. allowing her art to become the unconventional vessel. She juxtaposes the dichotomy of consumerism against responsible adaptive reuses of materials. With her environmental contribution commingled into her narrative, many of the selectively curated eco-conscious elements utilized into her works have an inherent patina, imperfection, or rawness

Mary Aherne

Mary Aherne’s work has been published in Hull, City of Poets, South, Grindstone, High Wolds Poetry Collection and The Critical Fish. She has edited and contributed to the Humber Writers’ collaborations including Hide, Postcards from Hull, Under Travelling Skies, Slipway and Incoming. Recent projects include Shards, a collection of poems celebrating Hornsea Pottery, and The Beauty of Indifference, a response to the work of Marcel Duchamp, Hull City of Culture 2017. She taught Creative Writing at the University of Hull.

Natalie Blake

Natalie Blake is a British-born writer, now living abroad. Her short fiction has most recently appeared in The Bookends Review and Sleet Magazine, among other notable publications. Her flash fiction has also been featured in print anthologies with Pure Slush Books. Through her work, Natalie often explores contemporary issues surrounding gender, sexuality, and the intersectionality of women's lives with wider society.

Charlene Brown

Charlene Brown is a mother, teacher, and poet living in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, near Yosemite. She is obsessed with people and how uniquely each person ventures through this life. Whether she is creating her

next great meal, driving her kids from one place to the next, or trying to convince middle school students that reading is fun, she is always thinking about what words will flow out next. You can find a sampling of her work on instagram @poetallyb, and she will be published in the Heron Clan anthology this coming spring.

Kathy Bruce

Kathy Bruce’s collages explore archetypal female and mythological forms within the context of poetry, literature and the environment. She received an M.F.A from Yale University and a certificate from The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in Three Rooms Press, The Vassar Review, Alchemy Literary Magazine, Open Minds Quarterly Journal, The Perch, Yale University School of Medicine, The New Southern Fugitives, Up the Staircase Quarterly, The Ignition literary Journal, The Variant Literature, Landlocked Literary Magazine, The Rejoiner, The Brooklyn Review, Twyckenham Notes, The Porter House Review, Pushing Out the Boat, and The National Women’s History Museum Journal.

Nataliia Burmaka

Nataliia Burmaka graduated from Boris Danchenko’s National Studio of Fine Arts (Sumy, Ukraine) in 1999 and had been working as an artist designer from 1999 till 2005. Later she made illustrations for books and worked together with her husband creating murals (private orders) She moved to Finland in 2022, escaping from war in Ukraine. She took part in 3 two-person exhibitions in Finland.

Emmett Christolear

Emmett Christolear is a graduate student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he serves as an English composition instructor and graduate assistant director of the University Writing Center He is a faculty member at the Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop and is a lead teacher with Desert Island Supply Co. His poetry as appeared in Screen Door Review and Black Napkin Press. He lives with his husband and four mischievous cats

Rachel Coyne

Rachel Coyne is a writer and painter from Lindstrom Mn.

Martins Deep

Martins Deep (he/him) is a poet of Urhobo descent, a Taurus, photographer,

digital artist, & currently an undergraduate student of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He says hi @martinsdeep1

Sara Dobbie

Sara Dobbie is a Canadian writer from Southern Ontario. Her stories have appeared in Fictive Dream, JMWW, Sage Cigarettes, New World Writing, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Ruminate Online, Trampset, Ellipsis Zine, and elsewhere. Her chapbook "Static Disruption" is available from Alien Buddha Press. Her collection "Flight Instinct" is available from ELJ Editions. Follow her on Twitter @sbdobbie, and on Instagram at @sbdobwrites.

Maja Domagała

Maja Domagała is an undergraduate Creative Writing student at Hamilton College. They were born in Nysa, Poland and raised in Philadelphia, PA. Their writing has been published previously in Arcturus and is forthcoming in Lammergeier. Lesbianism, gender identity, immigration, and mental health are often central to their writing. You can find them on Twitter @mhdoma .

Johnathan Drake

Johnathan Drake (he/they) is a queer writer currently living and writing in Stillwater, Oklahoma where he pursues his PhD in English He received his MFA from Oklahoma State University, and his poems have appeared in Prime Number Magazine, Montana Mouthful, among others.

Alexandra Fössinger

Alexandra Fössinger is the author of the poetry collection Contrapasso (Cephalopress, 2022). Her work is published in numerous journals including Tears in the Fence, Frogmore Papers, Wild Court, Oyster River Pages, Green Ink Poetry, Mono, and La Piccioletta Barca.

Taylor Franson-Thiel

Taylor Franson-Thiel is a graduate student at Utah State University pursuing her Master’s in Creative Writing. Her writing frequently centers on her experience as a Division One basketball player, her family, the female body, abusive relationships and mental health struggles.

Sara Gorske

Sara Gorske (she/her) is a graduate student, yoga instructor, and poet currently

based in Southern California. Her debut chapbook, I Left a Piece of Me in a Dream and Now I Don’t Fit Together Anymore, was published by Bottlecap Press in 2022, and her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Cornell Claritas and Soft Star Magazine.

Sarah Megan Jenkins

Sarah Megan Jenkins studied at Memphis College of Art, in Tennessee, where she completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2010, with a major in Painting and a minor in Art History. Sarah received the Award of Excellence in Painting during her final semester at MCA. After college, Sarah relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana, where her Art career bloomed and became a full time artist. Sarah participates in many exhibits and represents herself at many Fine Art festivals around the Gulf South.

Chris Kerr

Chris Kerr has published Extra Long Matches with Penteract Press, Nam Gal Sips Clark with Hesterglock Press, Citidyll with Broken Sleep Books and /code --poetry, a collaboration with Daniel Holden. A new, expanded edition of ./code --poetry is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books. Twitter: @c c kerr Instagram: @chrisckerr

Carmina Masoliver

Carmina Masoliver is a London poet, and founder of She Grrrowls feminist arts nights. Her latest book ‘Circles’ is published by Burning Eye Books (2019) and she recently self-published ‘Selected Poems: 2007 – 2012’, a mixed media pamphlet of poems. Carmina was long-listed for the Young Poet Laureate for London award in 2013, the inaugural Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships in 2017 and the Out-Spoken Prize in Performance Poetry 2018 and 2022. She has featured at nights and festivals including Bang Said the Gun, Latitude, Bestival and Lovebox both as a collective and individually.

Joan Mazza

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops nationally on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, The MacGuffin, Slant, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, The Nation, and many other publications. She lives in rural central Virginia and writes every day.

Antonella Nicolino

Antonella Nicolino is a Brazilian illustrator and writer. She loves all forms of art, has been making illustrations for fun and professionally since she was 16, and some of her short stories and poems were published in a few books in Brazil, such as the anthology 1001 Poetas by the Casa Brasileira de Livros

Michael Noonan

Michael Noonan comes from Halifax (famous for its Piece Hall), West Yorkshire. Has a background in retail, food production and office work. He has had artworks published in literary journals, including After the Pause, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, Noctivigant Press, Wild-Roof-Journal, Odd Magazine, and Spellbinder, literary and arts quarterly. His own painting can be seen on the cover of a volume of his short stories, entitled, SEVEN TALL

TALES. And one of his drawings is on the cover of a novella he has penned, called Deadman's Treasure, that can be seen at the website, www.inkitt.com/stories/thrillers/662376.

Titilope Olowofela

Titilope Olowofela is a self-taught digital artist and mobile photographer from Nigeria. She is also a student at Olabisi Onabanjo University, where she's studying Mass Communication. Her works tend to explore the beauty of nature, solitude, motherhood, and self-discovery. She has been published in Lucent Dreaming.

Salem Paige

Salem Paige (they/them) is a transgender poet living in Ottawa, Ontario. Their works explore identity through existential and often visceral imagery. They have been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and longlisted for the ROOM Poetry Prize. Their poems have appeared in Beyond Words magazine, STREETCAKE magazine, flo. literary magazine, Ariel Chart Literary Journal, BiPan magazine, and others. More on Paige can be found at www.corpseofapoet.com or @corpseofapoet on instagram and twitter.

Elizabeth Porter

Elizabeth Porter lives, writes, and teaches middle school in south-central Pennsylvania. She has been an educator since 2020 and a ravenous consumer of poetry since her own middle school days.

August Reynolds

August Reynolds is a poet whose work has appeared in Red Cedar Review,

Philologia, The Scarlet Leaf Review, Origami Poems Project, Poetry Nation, Grim & Gilded, Blue Unicorn, and author of a book of poetry titled "The Freedom of Lavenders'' published by Atmosphere Press. He is also a co-editor of a poetry collection published by Pocahontas Press which features an original forward by Nikki Giovanni and he is also a volunteer reader for Ariel Publishing. When he is not writing, he is often heavily invested in a good yet unheard of book or petting his cats.

Alimot Temitope Salami

Salami Alimot Temitope (she/her) NGP X, is an emerging Nigerian writer, phone photographer, digital artist, essayist. She currently studies English Language at Lagos State University, Nigeria. Her works explores themes on life, grief, loss, and family. Her creative works have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Lolwe, Bluemarble Review, The Drinking Gourd Magazine, Typehouse Literary Magazine, IbadanArt, Native Skin Magazine, Olney Magazine, Hey Young Writer, Icefloe Press, Brittle Paper, and elsewhere. She says hi on Twitter & Instagram @lyma lami

Shloka Shankar

Shloka Shankar is a poet and self-taught visual artist from Bangalore, India. A Best of the Net nominee and award-winning haiku poet, Shloka is the Founding Editor of the literary & arts journal Sonic Boom and its imprint Yavanika Press. She is the author of the microchap Points of Arrival (Origami Poems Project, 2021) and her debut full-length haiku collection, The Field of Why (Yavanika Press, 2022). Website: www.shlokashankar.com

Paula Turcotte

Paula Turcotte loves her dog, your dog, and Raisin Bran. She was born and raised on Treaty 7 land, home of the Siksika, Piikani, Kainai, Tsuut'ina and Stoney Nakoda First Nations. She is reading for the MSt of Creative Writing at the University of Oxford.

Joan García Viltró

Joan García Viltró is a poet and teacher based in Cambrils, on the south Catalan coast. His poems are populated by Mediterranean characters and mythologies, and they often reflect his concern with Nature struggling under human pressure. Some of them have appeared in Borders and Belonging (Cephalopress), the erbacce poetry journal, The London Magazine, Full House Literary, and Roi

Fainéant Press, among others Shortlisted in 2023 for the WoLF Poetry Competition; in 2022 for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award.

Piper L. White

Piper L. White is a self-published author and lead marketing/social media coordinator for Grimsy literary magazine. Her work has been featured in Atlantis, Carolina Muse Arts, amongst others. Her debut chapbook, Barefoot In The Woods, was published by Bottlecap Press in May 2022. You can find Piper on Instagram/Twitter @piperlwhite and Piper's website is https://piperwhitewrites.com

Katie Willow

Katie Willow is a mom, writer and library worker from the northwest of England.You can find her on Twitter @Dryadula or Mastodon @Dryadula@mas.to

Full House Literary

J’Atelier9 - Mary Aherne - Natalie Blake - Charlene Brown - Kathy Bruce -

Nataliia Burmaka - Emmett Christolear - Rachel Coyne - Martins Deep -

Sara Dobbie - Maja Domagała - Johnathan Drake - Alexandra Fössinger -

Taylor Franson-Thiel - Sara Gorske - Sarah Megan Jenkins - Chris Kerr -

Carmina Masoliver - Joan Mazza - Antonella Nicolino - Michael Noonan -

Titilope Olowofela - Salem Paige - Elizabeth Porter - August Reynolds -

Alimot Temitope Salami - Shloka Shankar - Paula Turcotte - Joan García

Viltró - Piper L. White - Katie Willow

Insta @fullhouselitmag

Twitter @fullhouselit

https://www.fullhouseliterary.com/