Moon Goddess
ISSUE IV — WINTER 2022
— prose —
The Trip
BY JENNA KAY DUXBURY
I wasn’t in the habit of doing drugs. Alex, my boyfriend, was a bit of a stoner though. I smoked with him once in a while but didn’t really like it. Weed made my heart race, my appetite insatiable, my anxiety shoot off the charts. Or maybe that’s just how I felt most of the time, and the weed exacerbated it.
Ephemeral
BY RITA NOOR
Whenever my name comes up in Selene’s court, she giggles and lifts an ivory hand to barely obscure a waxing grin. “Muia, you ask?” she’ll muse coyly. “Why, I turned her into a fly. A wretched little girl, how irksome.”
My story is, at best, a minor flourishment to warn mortals, to bow their heads and retreat to the shadows when the gods visit the lands they manifested for our precarious existence.
The Lilac Moon
BY KAURA GRANDE
On a warm summer night in the middle of June, Clara woke suddenly to the sound of children laughing outside her bedroom window. Wanting to play too she threw off her lilac sheets, raced to her closet, and pulled out her boots of the same color. Not wanting to wake up her parents and be told to go back to bed she silently slid her chair under her window and climbed out, landing softly on the damp grass below.
A Godless Goddess
BY ANDY NARANJO
Slain by the fruitless sky, an athel tree slumbers with a groan. Its only flower teeters in the cradle of an abandoned wasp’s hive. Though its life has lapsed, its roots continue to grow like varicose veins. Through and into the city, it reaches out, choking it.
The Maiden and the Hound
BY JESSICA R. WOEHLER
Long ago and long forgotten in a forest buried deep in the old country, there once lived a young maiden. The story goes that she was sent to spend her life alone because of a curse placed upon her father. The man was unable to learn the truth about selflessness and sacrifice, so an enchantress took his only child in hopes to make him understand the value of those characteristics.
Materials Collected: Seized Documents and Propaganda
BY GILES STUART
I have failed you, Goddess. The fate of heaven and earth cannot rest on my shoulders lest all creation follow me to my shallow grave. I dream of smoke, reborn of fire, I’d soon adjust to my newfound immortality as I’d take to the human custom of clothing.
The Girl With the Jade Eyes
BY REBECCA CARLYLE
It was late in the evening and a chilly breeze rattled through his bones. He was rushing home from the corner store with a bag of groceries with his eyes on his feet, making sure he didn’t slip and fall. He should have looked up, but he didn’t. That’s when his body slammed into another, softer body and rebounded backward.
It’s Just a Phase
BY DEANNA NGUYEN
Night had settled in by the time Hằng finished hauling in the last cardboard box filled with her belongings into the apartment. Hands on her hips, she let out a huff as she surveyed her new home. The studio apartment, with its chalky white walls and simple hardwood flooring, left its personality up to her.
— poetry —
The Seamstresses
BY MARIE DAVIS-WILLIAMS
The surgeon of hand bones said
a constellation of time, pressure and genetics
caused the osteoarthritic pain
at the base of my thumbs.
He turned my palms skyward to trace
the path his incision would take.
In that darkened room, the x-ray illuminator
was the only light he navigated by.
Ix Chel and Anahita: A Collection
BY CINDY RINNE
Jaguar crone chases the sun
Her lover disappears beneath Tides she controls
Long ago, they wove medicine
All bodies of water into existence
Reflections of the Moon: A Collection
BY SARAH WAGNER
“Live by the sun / Love by the moon”
A cheap rhyme I scribbled down
and tucked into the corner of my gown
Sentimentality sounds prettier
when she’s dressed in satin and lace
Loving the Moon
BY KAURA GRANDE
Our love was safest when the Jade Rabbit
came out
his light illuminating the dark sky.
It was then that we would trace our fingers
letting them linger
on the napes of necks and tips of lips.
The Moon and Jelly: A Collection
BY ARI CHADWICK-SAUND
A long time ago on a dusty old shelf
Sat a pot of jelly who talked to herself.
She’d mumble all day, but at night she did stare
Right up at the moon that hung in the night air.
The Waxing Cold Moon: A Collection
BY HEATHER CORBALLY BRYANT
To Selene we pray—
On this cold crepuscular evening, we race to Little Dan Hole Pond
To see the miracle—
Poems From Minotaur: A Collection
BY G.A. KLAUSNER
White as porcelain the way to the wilderness
And the leaves coloured silver and dark
Shadows are the thresholds that lead me
Through nomoi beyond the human realm
Just Until Morning
BY KAURA GRANDE
You were always the moon to me
I would wait for the Jade Rabbit
to come out so you would too
because that was when our love was safest
cast away the complexity of colors
bathed only in blacks and grays
What is the moon?
BY JORDAN NISHKIAN
I mouthed out the syllables to the
rhythm of clacking keys
The page loaded—not quick
enough for me to ignore how stupid
the question looked, musing now manifested—
and told me all the world’s answers…