Not much. Only everything.
Lover, You are the Vampire
empty streets: / I make illegal left turns at red lights. / the moon bursts and bruises: / a plum as the aftermath of violence / hanging over the web of glowing street lamps.
All day the queen has been chattering in my ear. / I cannot complain; I invited her. / Truthfully, I’m too fond of her—her buzzing shakes something deep in me / And I want to respond with my own cry.
a siren whispered in my ear one night
convinced me to connect the constellations on your backbehind seaweed curtains and underneath sea glass lanterns.the sea called me, with the promise of soft skin and cerulean eyes.our home was a house on stilts, overlooking thecopper water and sharp sand. careful, you said as you showed me where to place my feet to avoid glass-infested blood. […]

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This Is Your Life Now
Later, when you ask the woman you remember as the one with a bloody mouth why she saved your life, she says it’s because she didn’t mean to hurt you. You didn’t ask to be saved. You also didn’t ask for your legs to be crushed, and her bloody mouth didn’t undo the gap between […]
אדם יסודו מעפר וסופו לעפר In the first world, the chosen people had crafted them of mud, and flame, and Word. Cracked clay limbs had softened to flesh, and the Messiah—both elder and child—had awoken to song: Odem yesoydoy meyofor vesoyfo leyofor. Man begins in dust, and ends in dust. Tsayt played beside the park’s […]
The Arsenika submissions portal includes an optional demographics form for people to fill out. The following data was collected between July 2019 and April 2020. Over that time, I received 1,650 submissions of prose & poetry and 111 responses to the demographic survey. As writers can submit multiple pieces for consideration, it’s unclear exactly how […]
The Antidote
Arsenika would like to thank the following people for their support on Patreon. You make this magazine possible! PhosphoraDave NitrogenaErin Hartshorn, Nila Fhiosagam
What You Lost in the Wildermere
Things vanish in the Wildermere. The usual, expected things—livestock, the occasional person—but also the less conventional. The less tangible. You walk to the border between this world and that, stand in the tangled underbrush, and peer between the gap in the ancient redwood trees. And something is snatched away, leaving only the faintest shadow of […]