Editor’s Letter
The internet can be burned like a book.
We’re at the mercy of whoever is in charge (which is also why we’re banned from actually sharing the link to our website in our Instagram bio). Things are removed, deleted, forgotten all the time; despite the promise and threat of the permanence of a digital footprint.
Why bother with something that will inevitably become meaningless?
I studied Classical Civilizations and English Literature in college, the perfect degree combination for being just okay at niche trivia nights and nothing else. If you ask me about Roman history, I can only tell you that Caligula was a freak.
Years later, it feels strange that I remember so little about topics I was once knowledgable about. The knowledge is gone, but the interest is there. I am sure that if I refreshed my memory and clicked through ancient PowerPoints, it would all come back. Regaining lost knowledge would ultimately make my life better by restoring meaning to the part of my life when I was dedicated to these topics.
But it feels like work. This is how it feels to create, too, more often than not. I wrote about John Keats’ idea of Negative Capability in our debut edition, Chariot. I used to fully agree with the idea that good ideas just flow in their own time -- but now I’m taking a middle ground. Creating is worth it even when it is a challenge. Stone by stone we’re building a castle. Forgotten or not, it means something in the moment.
I used this edition as both a reason and excuse to teleport back to The Tragedies of Euripides: Bacchae; inspired by this edition’s Dionysian themes:
DESIRE/PLAY/RISK/THORN/
RESISTANCE/CURIOSITY
Thank you for helping us build a welcoming digital empire built from your art and words. And thank you to Caitlin, Lauren, and my girlfriend Eliška for helping me edit this edition in Claude’s temporary absence.
Long live your creativity and LONG LIVE OPAL AGE!
<3 katie
co-signed by claude joven and peter rogers
Welcome to the Party
Moral Alignment Party Movie Edition
by katie
she/her
Lawful Good
Lawful Neutral
Lawful Evil
Neutral Good
True Neutral
Neutral Evil
Chaotic Good
Chaotic Neutral
Chaotic Evil
castle pics 4 u <3
by Katie
she/her
From the Archives of Unfinished Dreams...
by Ingrid Martinez
she/her
“detail of my favorite work in progress…
I fell into a cactus”
oil on canvas, 4’x3.5’
Jump
by Katarina Pavičić-Ivelja
she/her
We stand at a crossroads
and your body transmutes
into billions of bright stars.
The street elongates and
I stretch my hand forth to
catch you before you too
are engulfed by the rift that
swallows all the universe.
I cling to the fabric of time
and space and bargain with
the night sky to let me cross
over the chasm and into the
spiraling fractals of your lips.
I know, I know, I know I could
reach you if only I could
jump.
Ceridwen
by Lindsey A K Appell
they/she
O
Apothecary—
poet, who
birthed the stag—
headed sea raven
and loved the utter
darkness of your
second son
so that you
brewed for him
a philter of protection
from those true
monsters who could not
stand to see
one such as him
beloved, I
wonder:
When you devoured
the little weaver
who desecrated your cauldron
only to birth him, too,
a third son
sent across the living sea
to spread his wisdom,
word of you,
a hag—
Did you smile?
Did you write your sister
Eris in the Aegean realm
to brag about what chaos
was wrought
by your hunger?
“My chair
my cauldron
and my laws—”
a spilled bowl of alphabet
soup
Herne
by Lindsey A K Appell
they/she
Then tell me what’s a pantheon without a horned god
to navigate the leaf-strewn cracked
and dandelion’d pavement paths
to rotted stairs which lead
to your apartment.
And there you’ve lain your hands
between your thighs upon the couch
as sweat and sweetness soak
the tangled cotton as you try
to recall desire.
Where he demands you honor him
by offering his wrists and then
his ankles to the bindweed’s knot.
He bends with deity’s supplicant power
and whimpers please
My Grandfather and I Play Briscola Sometimes
by Katarina Pavičić-Ivelja
she/her
My grandfather and I play briscola sometimes
when I am a child and his voice is made of starlight
that speaks the likeness of the ace and the three of
spade and denari.
We play and play and play
with the weathered cards from his ancient deck,
like we did when his words were born of flesh,
in the childhood living room of my dreamscape.
It’s a numbers game, he speaks, oh curious child,
and in our celestial home that isn't, we celebrate
the digit string plaited by the pale, paper hands of
the knave, knight and king.
Twenty-one – the last digits of the year of his birth
Twenty-one – the months in a concentration camp
Twenty-one – the apartment number of his youth
...
We pluck and pluck the cards out of the deck until
there are none left but two.
The ace of spade and the three of denari –
They add up to twenty-one, too.
Anhaga
by Lindsey A K Appell
they/she
The exile speaks of death and glory in those golden days,
as fondly remembered, as visceral and real
as a wax paper boat set with a message across the oily waves
which in her mind is ever rime-coated, making its way
upon the sea-path, with its ardent appeal,
as the exile speaks of death and glory in those golden days.
What other wanderers would echo this praise,
folded, resting in the stomach of a seal,
this wax paper boat set with a message across the oily waves?
All the world’s treasure is lost, she says,
my faith a barnacle crusted to keel.
The exile speaks of death and glory in those golden days
as though what has been lost is the gilt on our graves,
a fine silken altar cloth, incentive to kneel,
a wax paper boat set with a message across the oily waves.
I no longer find comfort in moments of play,
she says, when nothing remains to be healed.
The exile speaks of death and glory in those golden days,
a wax paper boat set with a message across the oily waves.