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Dear Jojober, I hope this finds you well, old friend. I write to you from the deserts of Akosa, from a place so dry and far inland that the natives simply laugh at my tales of the sea. They call them eb’yore. Mirage-stories. I am the silly man who speaks in riddles, whose memories are dreams. Ha! If they only knew how true my stories are. If they only knew what kind of man I used to be.
1. Wake at dawn. 2. La ciguapa finds you, but you must first pay her homage. Lore dictates she is tucked in the lush mountains of the Dominican Republic. Try the countryside of Constanza, away from the business of the valley below. Follow the crushed line of cliffs set against the horizon.
We were at the mouth of the cave, peering into the darkness that glimmered faintly with the gold of the dragon’s hoard, when my phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my leather satchel just far enough to see that it was, in fact, the daycare. My heart sank.
it is a windless evening in april/ & night drinks my exhalations /in my palms are corpses of fireflies as i sprawl/ here, my aching back reclined /on the breast/ of a half-timbered wall/ above me, the glorious reincarnations of fireflies /mostly with autopsy reports/ “a child’s curiosity” / to steal into a child’s body/ is to be granted magic/ to breathe in wonder/ it is to want eyes /that mirror gods too perfectly, they flutter by, in bodies of/ butterflies calling you by your poison /beyond the cliff
Ynes doesn’t remember the marigold, but she has a recurring dream in which she accidentally swallows an entire tangerine. She grows very warm and realizes it was not a tangerine at all but a small sun. She knows if she tells her mother what she swallowed, there will be a panic. So instead, she keeps her mouth shut. The sun sits warm in her belly and shines tendrils of light down her arms and legs. When rays escape her fingertips, she puts on mittens.
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This issue's cover art by
warmtail/Adobe Stock Image.
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