Content Warning: blood, dark themes
Ankh Spice – It’s all set up to keep you down
​
The world takes its bites from you
every way it can. Whole rooms here
we 2am through, set up for sharp corners
to find the knee. Smelling blood & exhaustion,
the algorithms call in the sharks.
Confession: I sneak your phone each time
you think you’ve lost it. I click the heart
on a sunchoir of brave iris, a galaxy of starlings
whistling Mozart. A beetle suddening the metal
of its name—all caps—& every magic restless carpet
flown when someone shares the sea. Over & over
I am feeding the hum of human awe
to this maw of code that dares to fold us
small and tight, tacked to iron-dark. It shakes
like prey; quotes back all your history of liking
for its tastes. I tell it you learn fast. This is a trap
I’ve come to understand—
& click & click until my finger is the bruise
& you, that heart, a little less.
Ankh Spice is an Aotearoa New Zealand poet, author of The Water Engine (Femme Salvé Books, 2021). His poetry is eight times nominated for Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net. He’s a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine and co-edits at IceFloe Press. Website: www.ankhspice-seagoatscreamspoetry.com, Twitter: @SeaGoatScreamsPoetry, Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry.
Photograph: love is frozen congealed racoon blood clinging to a twig in the shape of a heart by Danny Leonard
Danny Leonard is a Boston-based writer, storyteller, and filmmaker. Danny’s short story Of Tides and Melons was runner-up in the Solstice Literary Journal’s 2022 annual contest. In August 2022, he was a selected participant at the renowned Stowe Story Labs where he worked on his feature-length script titled Fire and Thirst that deals with the human impact of climate change. He wrote and produced Demi's Panic, an award-winning animated short film. In 2020, Danny appeared on World Channel’s nationally televised program Stories from the Stage, a storytelling event filmed in front of a live audience. His story recounted showing up for his first date with his future wife with someone else’s blood on his hands. Danny has a BA in English literature and an MA in Japanese language and literature from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. When not writing, Danny spends time with his wife, two daughters, and a pesky rescue mutt named Blue.