SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
A bride and groom walk from the altar into a world filled with zombies…
A mother gives birth to a stomach, not a baby, and it’s hungry….
A daughter mourns her lost mother tongue…
A father buries the body of his own father, over and over, only to watch him rise again…
On Halloween, when the veil between worlds is thinnest, step into art, prose, and poetry that take love and language beyond the border of empire and the border of life and death.
step into…
M E N A C E I S S U E T W O
…a sneak preview ft. poetry by Aparna Paul
Aparna Paul (she/her) is a writer, chemical engineer, banana bread enthusiast, & amateur crossword constructor based in Cambridge, MA. Her poetry & prose has been recognized by Reckoning, DMQ Review, & Gaining Ground, among others. She edited the anthology Reflections of The Land (Literary Cleveland, 2022) and is a co-editor of GOOD SOUP, now on hiatus (@goodsoup.mag on Instagram). She performs regularly, hosts occasionally, and slams sometimes at the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge. HOME FREE (Game Over Books, 2025) is her debut full-length poetry collection.
ISSUE TWO PREVIEW
ISSUE TWO PREVIEW
“…when a language dies
the last words to go are the colors
when the lady on the bus tells me
she doesn’t see color does she know
she is killing something between us?”
— “Native Speaker” by Aparna Paul
NATIVE SPEAKER
poetry by Aparna Paul
this language is laal.
no this language is chomona.
no this language is red.
red red bloody mouth. all
dying languages made prey
caught in the teeth. a prayer
before my lips could make
a sound. this language is red
as the tongue fleshy frightened
feeble the only muscle i know
how to flex & it can’t carry
a damn thing except all this
history. when a language dies
the last words to go are the colors
when the lady on the bus tells me
she doesn’t see color does she know
she is killing something between us? this language
is red laal chomona this language is red as
lineage: my mother’s worry / my father’s patience
the words that can’t describe either but we still
try. this language is dead like every day we destroy
it & make it something new this language
is red like the fire in which
it burned this language is red as rebirth
this language is spoken
it is not read
i am standing in the kitchen
with six native speakers
of gujarati & i find
none of them know
how to read & write the language
it doesn’t exist anywhere in this home
except between our laughter &
behind our teeth
