Two Poems — Peatsmoke

Painting in pastel colors (pinks, purple, and blues) with a semi-transparent horse at the center of the image and human forms throughout the painting. — “Night Walk” by Delta N.A.

Yearn Yarn

I watch the lady duck preen & pine
her neck a swoon that sutures

my own peach eyebrows to the natural world
bombshell akimbo potato sack eyelash

I was assigned wannabe at birth
my yearn yarn coils from my mouth

clouds I nudge into cupped hands
so precious about my pluralities

so alternate universe of me
how I get those knuckle tattoos

superstitio bay leaf taped to my fingers
to keep out the bugs there I am alive

my hull wriggles pale stretch marks
here I suck parsley to prevent potential voltas

always tinkering with the machine of me my
artificial denouements I eat finger sandwiches

I look like a finger sandwich lettuce ruffle
crusts cut off the grass is meaner on this side

like draping my body across a chaise
I wonder is it clock me as in

to recognize me or clock me as in punch me
with your finger sandwiches I say I am full

of eggs! after some jammy sunny side up
& you say like a spider queen! Calamine pink is

another way to say my blood is delicious
I just learned what foie gras is writing this poem

lady duck’s eyes are bigger than her hummocks
wink I love wearing your clothes in the dreamscape

& irrigating the future via hickey suction
still to be abandoned means henceforth

you are sentenced to cultivating an ever-
peaking beauty I lay on my side & my pussy

side-eyes you wet high beams one day the stakes
of my poems won’t wear days of the week

underwear they’ll drink Rob Roys & know
that hair stylist trick Sweet N’ Low in the bleach

to keep the scalp from singing bacon bringer
or lounge singer I am afraid it’s neither here nor

fair when you admit you like my topography
I could find myself under any skylight

lemony & redeemed I am so fixated on
your irises I become soil for you to make of me

what you will

Mixed media art depicting a winged person wearing black shorts and black tape in an "X" over both nipples against a black background of words highlighted in white and red, red roses and purple octopi. — “Gorgon” by K.S.Y. Varnam

Sour Dandelions

When I started masturbating, I tried to think about angels. It was that news story of the 6-year old meeting an angel, the summer I tried to color in my Grandpa’s planter desk with pink pastel before I knew planter was an occupation and not warts from soccer cleats, before my Grandpa’s Alzhimer’s surfaced like minnows from pond scum. I was sitting on my ankle funny and got that feeling like when we drove the hills to West Virginia. I figured this was the revelation everyone was talking about. I took myself very seriously from then on. When I talked to the angels, the stars spoke back in Leviathan tongues of phosphene. Dead butterflies found me like songs I had heard before but didn’t know where. I took to sitting on my roof like a buzzard, harbinger of I didn’t know what, but waiting. Saving each shiny rock I came across just in case. Quartz, I would say to my partner-in-crime, the tree stump fairy city half-way between my house and the 7-11, and pocket them to study later. I was holy and doomed before I knew it was an occupation, before the neighbor girl and I took our proverbial lunch pails to the souring dandelions to butterfly kiss, to collect their heads.

About the author

Sara Mae is a high fem writer and style witch raised on the Chesapeake Bay. Their work appears in or is forthcoming from Waxwing, Grimoire, FENCE and elsewhere. Their first chapbook, Priestess of Tankinis, is out via Game Over Books. They write shimmery rock music as The Noisy, and are currently an Associate Poetry Editor at Grist. And yes, they love Old Bay.

about the artists

Delta N.A. are a couple in life and art, working together by painting in unison. They learn from each other and share a creative flow poured into their artworks, a common language that makes each artwork realized by two pairs of hands look like a single artist’s creation. In love and collaboration they find the key to face and accept differences, crumbling the boundaries separating human nature from freedom. The artworks signed by the duo are present in numerous public and private collections and have been exhibited in solo and group shows across Europe, U.S.A., and Asia.

K.S.Y. Varnam is a Toronto artist, writer, and editor. As a visual artist, Kit’s work primarily explores queer, neurodivergent, and disabled identity through mythological, anatomical, and floral imagery. They work primarily in acrylics and mixed media.