The Dark Arts

If I look different, taller or fitter, it may be because a kind of prisoner swap has taken place. Somehow I’ve wriggled out from under the extreme judgments of a cold, tyrannical god. I’m still me but not the same. My failures suddenly seem less painful, viewable in retrospect as a series of valiant gestures against the authority of received narratives. Indigenous names for places have been restored, our pale winter bodies renourished. And so we lie down together, she and I, consumers of dreams, while angels dabble in the dark arts and the sniper kneels at the corner window.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie is author of the poetry book, The Dark, available from Sacred Parasite, which will also publish his book, Akimbo, in 2025.

Progress

NATURE SUBMISSION:

Kyrel sucks the last remaining liquid from his glucose package and drops the empty packet on the floor. His mother always complains about the lack of variety, but GelCorp has come out with three new flavors in the last month, all thoroughly tested on young consumers to ensure their likability.

His mother's always going on about the way things used to be. Kyrel is more modern in his outlook. The companies are simply responding to consumer demand, not forcing anything on anyone. Who wants to eat so-called food when you can get your nutrition custom-engineered to your exact genetic profiles?

From Guest Contributor Jeff Heston

Kelp

Life as a kelp farmer meant eating a lot of kelp. They said it was the most efficient source of nutrition known to humankind, but that did nothing to offset its blandness. If anything, knowing how healthy it was for you made it worse.

An entire industry had opened up around making kelp palatable to consumers. There were kelp salads, kelp chips, kelp sandwiches on kelp bread, even kelp burgers.

If it were up to Monica, she'd be doing just about anything else. But these days, there was only job, and that was harvesting kelp. So that's what she did.