Flying Island

Amulets by Bailey Burnette We sit in these wine-stained, burgundy wingbacks, Cloaked in the velvet security of affinity, Unaware of the transcendent grit held hidden in your back pocket. With Black Magic in our cups, too much sugar, and the occasional Sigh of familiarity, destiny, I see someone new in you. I feel power in the touch as your gift falls into my palm, As though they had craved to feel my skin after all these lives, To smell my musk, alluring in its warmth and potency. The scent Of us. Brilliance permeates our space; it lingers, and we feel. We see, through hazy filters of mist and illusion, our ghosts among the coffee splattered wood floors and acoustic musings of artists, The other in rose-tinted petticoats, walking. You wave a fan as Soft dampness rests on your flushed cheeks, and I whisper a slow-motion drama. Pale, pastel earrings adorn my ears; and you touch them. An ephemeral twinkling, seizing our mystic, sealing it into a

by Jim Powell The mansion’s owner Mr. Harris is checking my work again, fourth time today. This safe room my boss Settle and I are building for him. He gauges the vaulted doorframe, the drywall hiding steel like smooth limestone masked the rough blocks of ancient pyramids. Harris sneers at me like I’m some pharaoh’s slave. He’s into Egypt big time, like I was in middle school. Glass cases show off his collection—figurines, amulets, painted potsherds. But downstairs there’s another secret room—reached via a panel in the library—that Settle built last year to protect precious, and my bet illegal, artifacts. I’ve snuck in there though its chill creeps me out. Papyrus scrolls, golden scarabs, god-headed staffs, a mummy’s sarcophagus—without the mummy, thank Isis! On one wall that crazy old artist Taft (he who newsworthily drowned in the estate’s pond) painted a mural with the god Horus’s head replaced by Harris’s own hawk-like face! The man is obsessed—with Egypt and himself.

Yellow house by Andrew Chapman Where I’m from is a poisoned place. Walls of lead-chalk and asbestos bones. The basement brims wickedness. Feel the doorknob: it’s fever-warm. Once dusk falls, huddle close, hear new dangers, what becomes of young girls who open doors for handsome men in collared shirts. Grandma knows, this was her— years ago in late October, the fields fresh mown when he married her, when he carried her here, the yellow house. He wore white with a paper hat, drove diesel trucks, drank black lacquer. Enamel-coated his guts but never died just mouldered, seeped into floorboards. She sighs, says, “Enough of yesterday’s blues.” Now’s the time to spread sleeping bags on carpet stains still smelling of his leather turpentine. In the pitchblack, if we can hold our breath, we’ll hear the cheap piano play, faint but faithful, those half-decent drinking songs he taught it In the Wee Small Hours