Star Giants (cover of starlight issue)
Rachel Coyne
Author: Marcelle Newbold
starlight micropoems
In the leadup to our sixteenth issue, ’starlight’, we shared a series of micropoems from our talented submitters:
Light Meals
Light Meals
Sabrynne Buchholz
the gods eat gems at daybreak, as the sun devours the stars
and us at the bottom, groundlevel, the cogs, we drink the juice of oranges
a gift from the glow of those higher beings, but less than that saved for the heavens
sunbeam rolls over tide to froth on the sand, grains shaped like stars
or shards made in the image of space–leftovers not meant for consumption, but we make do with a day at the beach
fortune is found in freedom, but perhaps can be manufactured
cogs and gears and wheels work hard to create what cannot be found, and
isn’t creation meant only for gods?
the sun and its fellows all roar and consumeyet left in that wake are all the things meant for us
the hierarchy feels muddled sometimes, but
each day starts the same as the last – the gods eat breakfast, the cogs start to turn
day turns to night, and collectively, we all take a breath
fruit can glimmer like crystalAnnika Gangopadhyay
Annika Gangopadhyay
Poetry Contributor
Annika Gangopadhyay is an emerging writer. Her work appears in or is forthcoming in LIGEIA, The Incandescent Review, Blue Marble Review, and the borderline. In her spare time, she likes performing music and reading art criticism.
Works in Nightingale & Sparrow
Meteor Envy
Meteor Envy
RC deWinter
It was an ordinary August night in this sterile suburb by the sea,
cloaking the claustrophobic day with a dark flat curtain
that did nothing to dispel the woolly air that, thick
with the unshed tears of heaven, clotted even as I breathed –
but better to be outside than choked by the clutter
of witless air-conditioned conversation.I dragged a chair across the lawn and settled into in the almost-silence,
punctuated only by the buzz and hum of hungry things with wings and
the snuffling of the neighbor’s ancient dog, freed for his nightly tour of
duty round his postagestamp enclosure.I sat smoking and thinking, trying to figure out how a life once so fully,
freely lived had narrowed to the confines of a holding pen whose only
exit leads straight to the slaughterhouse.
These uffish thoughts spun round the cul-de-sac of my brain
until I wanted to shout and stamp and tear my hair out by the handfuls.Then, unannounced, the ancient hero loosed his minions, a shining
army of footloose cosmic miscreants that blazed across the sky
in the most beautiful disorder imaginable.
Like crazed schoolboys held for detention and finally freed,
these glowing pieces of the stars that made us raced and frolicked,
spinning, tumbling, showing off their colors.I jumped up and ran along the perimeter of the yard,
following, until, winded, I stopped, lit a cigarette –
then anotherandanotherandanother, making my own sparks,
wanting to be one of them, watching until the sky returned to the staid,
empty blue it had been before, all the while hoping when I hit
the slaughterhouse, my indestructibles will find their way to wherever
Perseus is camped so I can enlist.Self Portrait as Luna
Self Portrait as Luna
Annika Gangopadhyay
The clouds whisper my name at dusk— I am born after the sun dies, out of silence. The softness covers my shoulders, wraps itself around my body until I am a shadow. Below me phantoms burn in the dark and men cut my hair into constellations. I still see the silver sickles in my sleep, caving inward, a field of blades cold against my skin. Lovers curl into crescents ablaze with emptiness on the grass, and the world is full of waning lullabies, black skies, clouds falling at my feet like dust. See how I cradle this burgeoning wasteland, this cold inferno. Milk pours out of my skin where the stars should have been, and I gently rock the earth back and forth, back and forth, before the blades nd my throat, before a soft red cuts through the sky, before the constellations are ablaze, Before I die at dawn.Centaur, firing an arrow
Centaur, firing an arrow
Indu Parvathi
At the window, the crow waits for its usual,
half a banana or a biscuit, but the astrologer
reads forefathers’ ire in its calls,
warns of imports. Between cousins
and curtains, the spout
of my Sagittarian teapot tilts
towards his board spilling milky ways.
Impress him. Nebulae rise with the fumes
from the ghee lit lamp,
–Eau de space– it’s acrid. He decodes
cyphers from my palm leaf horoscope,
only a bride crossing the seas.
I touch my feng shui bracelet, remember
there are other doors. In the river crossing
game some stones are dummies. Rahu kalam,
yama ganda kalam, gulika kalam…Angela Acosta
Angela Acosta
Poetry Contributor
Angela Acosta is a bilingual Latina poet and scholar. She was recently nominated for Best of the Net and her work has appeared in Panochazine, Pluma, Toyon Magazine, and Latinx Audio Lit Mag. Her chapbook “Fourth Generation Chicana Unicorn” will be published by Dancing Girl Press in 2023. She is completing her Ph.D. in Iberian Studies at The Ohio State University where she studies the lives and works of early twentieth century Spanish women writers.
Works in Nightingale & Sparrow
Jenny Wong
Jenny Wong
Fiction Contributor
Jenny Wong is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst. Her favorite places to wander are Tokyo alleys, Singapore hawker centers, and Parisian cemeteries. She resides in Canada near the Rocky Mountains and tweets @jenwithwords.
Works in Nightingale & Sparrow
Sabrynne Buchholz
Sabrynne Buchholz
Poetry Contributor
Sabrynne has taken to using poetry as a means of investigating and learning about the world she inhabits, and her work has been published in print and online nationally and internationally, appearing in the Greyrock Review, Bloom Magazine, Studio OUCH! Gazette, and others.
Works in Nightingale & Sparrow
