Buried Gospel
by Eleanor Ball
Daily reminder that the Day of the Lord
will come like a thief in the night.
Do you hear the howl of judgment?
The log in your eye may have migrated to your ear.
I’m just the God of Jonah, still trying to ring you up.
I carry a land of sinners on my back,
I’ve been made dead and undead a hundred times, and still,
I send warnings of what is to come. I open my eye:
It is the color of a bruise you have trained yourself to forget.
I am the flesh of your tongue, the dirt of your grave,
the stones of your house: I am the God of Adam.
For you to breathe, you must inhale the air out of my lungs.
You say, This land is a church. I say, Start acting like it.
If, as you say, I was birthed by the murder-houses of Hell,
then all the better. I will return home, and I will take you with me.
I am the God of Noah, but I don’t pussyfoot around.
When there is a flood, there is a flood.
A Haunting
(after Laura Kasischke)
by Sloane Allen
And Jehovah. And Alzheimer. And the congregation hall in Indiana after the rain started getting in. And the spores of the carpet, and the carpet rising like moss under your feet, and the motes in the air like prayers. And the psalmbooks fanning out with wet, the pages waving lewdly. And if something disperses from the paper, let’s all agree that it’s the stored attention they soaked up for all those years. Let’s all agree that we imbued the paper with our oils and the mites of our skin, and the germs in our droplets, and now, a reckoning. Off to propagate elsewhere with no need of our input.
On auspices
by Reuben Cohn-Gordon
I would rather extend myself in a less dismal posture, but however I splay my limbs, they arrange themselves into something ill-boding, like telling fortunes by throwing bones. books also open to the wrong page and recently I saw a vulture carry away a baby in its talons, although I should make allowances for short-sightedness and a general feeling of dread.
I would prefer to pull taut the sheets or walk briskly away from this rainy weather, but on each iteration (days comme ci, weeks comme ça) I bumble errantly around overfull gutters until all seven of my woolly jumpers are drenched, layer by heavy layer, and weigh me down to the ground.
Finally, eventually, almost languidly: I cannot seem to move. qué lástima qué lástima qué lástima
It is no small surprise, then, to wake up in early spring, and find the ground thawed, with objects (furniture, root vegetables, the odd woodland animal) strewn haphazardly across the cityscape, making their way back to their preferred cupboards, shelves and burrows.
Ulvsvann
by Alex Mepham
I return to the bank
ground earth clings
my soles soiled I undress
the forest holds its breath
as I submerge each limb
drunk in dark water
Issue 5 of Carmen et Error was guest edited by Nathaniel Spain. Nathaniel Spain is a writer, artist and designer living in Gateshead. He has been published in Gastropoda, Provenance Journal and The Fiction Pool, and you can read his flash fiction piece ‘Mulch’ which appeared in the first issue of Carmen et Error here.
Eleanor Ball is a queer writer from Des Moines, Iowa. Her work is featured or forthcoming in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Bullshit Lit, Vagabond City Lit, Write or Die, and elsewhere.
Sloane Allen is a queer poet/editor currently living in North Carolina. You can find them on Instagram @sloane.the.limehawk or at sloaneallenwrites.com.
Rueben Cohn-Gordon is a linguist currently doing a postdoc at UBC. He’s @ReubenCohn on Twitter.
Alex Mepham (they/them) is a PhD student investigating how background noise impacts speech understanding. Alex writes and translates poetry and short prose, with work appearing in Magma, Dreich, Berlin Lit, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Modern Poetry in Translation among others. Alex is the current Poetry Editor for Queerlings and a Poetry Reader for Kitchen Table Quarterly. Alex lives in York, UK, and can be found at amepham.carrd.co.