Mark
by Eva Carson
The son turned up when Donald died. First time any of us had seen him. He was there to clear the house. He did ask us what the marks were. His own name was Mark, isn’t that funny? Och, well sometimes you have to laugh. It’s not nice what happened to him, no.
Donald would have meant it after the Gospel. Calling the boy Mark. Very religious man, but in the old way. Not always to do with the church.
They’re marks against the devil, we told him. Mark had found them on the lintels of the doors. Donald had favoured a circular design, the kind with simple petals carved inside.
There will be an old shoe somewhere by the fireplace, we said. So that was our fault, that he knew to look there and was able to take it out. He scraped the marks off the doors. We saw a few spots of shaved wood in the kitchen as well, when we forced our way in, so he must’ve found some there.
The mother had raised him in London, and Donald hadn’t had much to do with him. But he’d left him the house. He put in his papers that the timbers and fabric of the building should be left in place, we do know that. So maybe it was a kind of spite in the boy that he shaved them off and tore the shoe out of the bricks.
Anyway, we found him sitting in the armchair. It was Donald’s old armchair, the only one in the room. It faces the door, so he would have seen it come in.
The Secateurs
after Rosalind Easton, by Bel Wallace
She draws me from the darkness eleven months confined
drowning in dreams of green of the dry wind dancing
with one mismatched eye I watch her glow in the sunrise
she holds me firm her cool hands on my smooth thighs
and gently slips the catch to open me once more
We walk entwined through the old vines
begin the harvest dance three weeks of bliss
every night she bathes me in sweet soapy water
massages olive oil into my cracks with her warm fingers
until the stiffness falls away then she lays me down
on Sundays the thrill of the whetstone along my cutting edge
But now she laughs with the others this short season closing
the grapes in the vat I’ll be cast again into winter
abandoned for ladle and pen so in this last embrace
I nip her with the tips of my teeth I cannot stop myself
I bite that fickle finger just enough to draw her crimson blood
Janus
by Amy DeBellis
you return to the island / to find the someone you left there three years ago
now pickled in bottom-shelf vodka / grimy / withered / brine-drenched as the
sea / the lighthouse gray in the sunrise / slowly bleaching to bone / and at the
top / the someone you left / is cackling into a radio / which is playing the
only recording he has of your / voice / overlapping / voice / overlapping
voice / turning everything hideous / radiant / a prism-like prison of sound /
identity hurled against the walls / glass splintered like memories / he tells you
“you smell like saltwater” and you reply “so do you” / because it’s as though
instead of watching the sea / he’s tried to drown himself in it / his eyes full
dark / his hair straggling past his shoulderblades / and if you combed through
it you know it would come off / in your hands / he gazes at you reverent / like
you’re some pirate girl half-dreamed / ensnaring him with your scent of
waterlogged driftwood / your grin a creeper wrapping round a trellis / and as
you embrace him / you know that somewhere it is winter / and somewhere
someone is worshiping / a god with two faces
Eva Carson was born in Glasgow in 1984 and now lives in Fife. She’s inspired by the spooky and the strange, towns and cities, and stories of the coast.
Bel Wallace is a carer who practises yoga and enjoys long walks. Her work was short-listed for the 2022 Bridport Poetry Prize and recently published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Raceme, Allegro, Lighthouse and Magma. In a previous life, she was a teacher in various countries including Palestine, Spain and Mozambique. She recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and has now gone back to writing the novel which she may one day finish.
Amy DeBellis is a writer from New York. Her debut novel is forthcoming from CLASH Books (2024). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various publications including The Shore, JMWW, Pithead Chapel, Maudlin House, and Atticus Review.