Antidotes November 2023
Ambergris Caye by Rachel Neve-Midbar
Ambergris Cayeby Rachel Neve-MidbarDid whales once live here near these shores? Impossible. Impossible. Impossible this island, sand bar poor, the water table just two feet down and a barrier reef right offshore, the water tepid as tea all aquamarine and green, a...
Blood and Bone – Delicatae – Repeated Forms by Melissa Jordan Willis
Blood and Bone - Delicatae - Repeated Forms by Melissa Jordan WillisBlood and BoneDelicataeRepeated Forms Melissa Jordan Willis writes and draws to process her own struggles with the fractured communication that comes from loving people who have autism, heroin...
Colonization Story (a corrective) by Petra Chambers
Colonization Story (a corrective)by Petra ChambersHere’s the story I was told. Explorers explored, valiantly. They did not know the way and the terrain was unfamiliar, but they had in-born European smarts – they figured it out. With alacrity and level-headed...
Eldorado by Eleanor Close Kraft
Eldoradoby Eleanor Close KraftFocused on the ground right in front of her, every step an exercise in full concentration. Don’t fall. Keep moving. Don’t fall. She’s holding fast to the mast of my forearm. Wiry male dancers in XXL sombreros and flaring ponchos swirling...
Fighting for a Name by Odi Welter
Fighting for a Name by Odi WelterShe was born in a snowstorm in the middle of May, and she did not have a name for seven days. On the first day, a nurse told her parents that she needed a name so they had something to put on the death certificate. “She’s not dead,”...
Honey – Just Right – Taste the Sunshine by Janina Aza Karpinska
Honey - Just Right - Taste the Sunshine by Janina Aza Karpinska HoneyJust RightTaste the Sunshine Artist statement As a multidisciplinary artist-poet I scavenge for material, ideas and inspiration wherever I go. Happily, a chance discovery of Tom Phillips's A...
Romanticism by Sachiko Sprenger
Romanticism by Sachiko SprengerA youth sits on park bench, shaded by the last-day-of-September-flame-brushed oak trees, eating an apple with a penknife (though in her head, this utensil, as harmless as it appears in its unremarkable size and relative bluntness, is a...
Sleeping Beauty’s Emergency Room Visit by Anna Boughtwood
Sleeping Beauty's Emergency Room Visit by Anna Boughtwood Sleeping Beauty, feeling the consequences of her clandestine chemistry experiments, was still unconscious on her gurney in the hallway nearly eight hours into her emergency room visit. Impatient, one of the...
The Ditch by Charles Venable
The Ditch by Charles VenableWhen the dust settled, the pick-up truck sank another inch into the ditch, and the tractor, with its fanged wheels, soon joined it to the laughter of the men, the woman, and all the birds in the trees – the tick of two engines, a metronome....
The Parrots by Robyn Perros
The Parrots by Robyn PerrosA mother, her three daughters, and their grandmother sit on a bench at the Umgeni River Bird Park in Durban. Behind them is a cage filled with dozens of bright green parrots gnawing on the wire. The sign on the cage says that the parrots are...
The Trouble in Terry’s Lungs by Alicia Hilton
The Trouble in Terry’s Lungsby Alicia HiltonCilia – all the tiny hair-like projections that inhabit Terry’s lungs – have personalities and Helga and Henrietta are twins always vote pro-union Osvaldo the sergeant in arms has a temper Lee the shop steward is an...
When the Light Goes Out by Sarah Schilling
When the Light Goes Outby Sarah SchillingNight falls on late-summer days like a wet kiss. In the damp darkness, our backyard becomes a firefly hotspot. My sister said the pop of light signifies a booty call. I catch one in a sealed jar and run to my sister’s room....
White Fan Day by Moriah Brown
White Fan Dayby Moriah BrownFan blowing clean over my smooth skin new sheets from my closet billowed onto my bed the ache of tomorrow thrown far in the still glow of a Sunday afternoon. I let the day tell me what it is. Moriah Brown is a poet, fiction writer, and...
