Celestial Bodies
At the school fete you remember: that, the only planet
not named for god rotates in green and blue. The children
dance on open flame, scrawl shapes across the sky
you feel the ground vibrate as they raise hell
on all your futures. We want to learn they say: the difference
between fete and fate. A fete is a fare a carnival an occasion
fate is a choice you believe or you don’t. Illusion illusion illusion
you say. In darts of light they’re off their feet, chasing currents
in stop-warmed air to lean across the sky, and hang from trees
hollah and crow—divine lights calling
omens from the central fire. And as the sun shakes
they gather, like lines on a palm that waits to be read.
Hands knotting together: and yours, once knotted too
with theirs in classical shapes, now hang by your sides. Free
to imagine futures where they’ll do all the things
you planned to do: like cast a glittering queen
in legs of heavy iron, and watch her palace come crashing down
tiny crystals, satellites, yes, to burrow in the earth. And when
the gates set to orbit and dying stars fall still, you realise
another year is done: by every step she gets a little further
a little closer. Just one more go on hook-a-duck you say
as if like Ibn Bajjah you’ve spotted two black spots
creeping on the face of the Sun. But in the pull of earthly objects
you see you can do nothing. Nothing. That word that means
everything. Nothing: but to try to keep her dreams—
neat, uncomplicated, safe.
Oh, my Jesus!
Plump, in ecstasy
hot-tanned eruption.
I come
in search of lost time.
To beg a little a lot
to search and find a little
a lot.
Always waiting
the never-never coming.
I want to tell you it’s no fun
living in retreat
holding tight balls of fists
bursting at the seams.
I want to tell you:
I’m looking for the moment
that other people have
like caterpillars
cemented safely in their cocoons.
And when you come
I try to mask
my disappointment.
I don’t want to ask if this is it.
Come with it you tell me
come at me with abandon.
And so I do.
I need a secular saint!
I yell.
I need to know that somewhere
something wants to devour me.
I need to feel hot-headed
and scared.
And as you walk away
I feel somehow bold.
If you can do all that:
I’ll love you forever!
small boats in the english channel
there was no sky there was no sea the sea there was was red and cold
on the little boat we folded in this way that way and in each way you said no
and the sea was there and there was no sea and we laughed about this
laughed about us and we reached an island and on that land we grumbled
and laughed with no food and more than we knew what to do with and you
saw a man but there was no man not that I could see but i trusted you
and you trusted him said we needed to show him show this man who wasn’t
that we were something anything but redundant
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AN Grace is the nom de plume of a writer living in Liverpool, England. He has too many children and not enough time. His short fiction and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly, Seize The Press, Queen’s Quarterly and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; with essays in The New Inquiry, Raritan, Los Angeles Review of Books and The Atlantic.
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Tain Leonard-Peck writes poetry, plays, and short stories, and is completing his first novel. He is also an actor, monologist, and model. He paints and composes music, and is a competitive sailor, skier, and fencer. His work has been published in literary journals, including the 2020 Anthology of Youth Writing on Human Rights & Social Justice; TAEM; Sleet Magazine; The Elevation Review; Idle Ink; Crack The Spine Magazine; The Riva Collective; Molecule; Multiplicity Magazine; Czykmate; and others. He won Honorable Mention for the Creators of Literary Justice Award, by IHRAF, the largest human rights art festival in the world; was a finalist for #ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence; and won the first place poetry fellowship to the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.
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