Desert Unicorn – Angelina Ribeiro Jones
Jalapeño Essay – Elise Marie Cleva
Going to Ground – Angelina Ribeiro Jones
The World’s Hottest Pepper – Brandon Mead
Vivid Embrace – Saba Akram
Wisteria – Cierra Morrison
Poppy Field – Saba Akram
Invocation – Luck Zytowski
Sun Worship – Angelina Ribeiro Jones
Zephyr and the Sea – Laila Covington
Desert Unicorn
Jalapeño Essay
i.
In our house, only my father
could eat them,
usually not in their intact form—
tiny green kayaks,
caustic teats—but liquefied
into hot sauce. He’d let it out
occasionally, prompted
by who-knew-what
to unleash it on his dinner—
a tawny outburst
serrating the air of our home.
ii.
Years later, a requested jalapeño, sliced
to enliven my husband’s portion of our meal,
seeped a trace of capsaicin on my fingertip.
I rubbed the corner of my eye, inciting
full-on fight-or-flight beneath the lid.
For a few minutes, I saw only searing heat.
Afterwards, not estrangement, but I was sure
to handle knife and pepper with the buffer
of an exam glove, elastic as the phrase
your mother’s daughter.
iii.
A scrap of jalapeño on a cutting board
is a borough on the map of Pennsylvania—
Centralia, under which a mine fire
has been raging since 1962.
Signs warn of harmful gases. Smoke and steam
rise from fissures in the tenuous ground.
Most buildings have decayed or been destroyed.
Most residents have left—bought out, ordered out.
The last census counted five.
But people return—
worshipers for church, volunteers
for removing trash and planting trees.
And the borough? It persists—
existing, burning.
It doesn’t know that those who care could be closer.
Going to Ground
The World’s Hottest Pepper
CW: mentions of drug use and brief sex
By Brandon Mead
When we met, Byron’s first love was cocaine. This was in a bar with more sequins on the floor than attached to the drag queens. More pool tables than places to safely set your drink. He ordered the same thing half a dozen times every night. Beer and a shot. Like in a movie when you don’t have to be specific about the brand or type. Byron was just that kind of regular.
In a bathroom plastered with two decades worth of Pride stickers and glitter graffiti, he had the entire kit. A bill, a bag, and a boy. Because for a long time I liked that Byron was a hot Daddy who was always holding. It got me hard that he wanted me to straddle the gender-non-specific toilet and tongue the rogue white powder from his mustache.
I loved everything about being his so much that when he decided to join AA, I went too.
We did the whole thing, all the steps. The crying, the apologizing, the inventorying of every evening wasted in that club. Every shot, every beer, every bag, every late night spent rabidly fucking instead of learning about each other.
What I know about Byron now is that he doesn’t actually know how to quit. That just because someone is getting up instead of going to bed at 5 A.M., doesn’t mean they have good intentions. What Daddy does between meetings is prune. He reads erotic literature to the little peppers he’s been growing in the backyard of the house we bought together. “Makes them spicier,” he says.
As a replacement for getting high, Byron adds chili flakes to every meal I make. In the hours he used to be dialing up his dealer, he records videos of him eating hot chips and peanuts. Any snack that could make him cry so hard it hurts. Borderline poisoning himself to achieve painful euphoria. A direct effect of him ignoring the signals from his body telling him that what he’s consuming is dangerous, a skill he’s been perfecting for longer than he’s been what they call a “chili head”.
The community he’s part of, the type of people who put their bizarre shared misery on the internet for other people to enjoy, most are heterosexual, but all of them still want the same thing. To grow and consume the world’s hottest pepper.
A lot of them are ex-addicts, all seeking their next fix via some new challenge. They have that in common. Where they differ is their plants.
The way a straight man names their peppers: The Carolina Reaper, The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, Pepper X. All things frightening and predatory. Stupid market-driven monikers they hope will look cool on a neon-wrapped bottle next to Sean Evans while he interviews a celebrity. The little shriveled red, orange, and yellow sacks flourishing in the space we could be using to build a pool are called things like: The Mask of Valentina, Linda Evangilista, Shady Pines. This is how a gay man names something scary or powerful. After women and woman-adjacent people he admires.
Whenever he came in from the garden, after softly reading the ladies some Anne Rice as A.N. Roquelaure novel, he’d tell me, “Linda is going to absolutely smoke ‘em this year.” But so much of me wished she wouldn’t.
A year sober proved that it wasn’t just the drugs. I was attracted to Byron and wanted to build a real life together. The sex was, admittedly, becoming a problem. Not the quality or the frequency. Moreso what it feels like to have a grown man drip flaming sweat into your eyes after he pops two dozen Naga Vipers. The first time we barebacked after one of his live streams, I went to the doctor convinced at least one of us had some mutant form of an STD.
Endless blood tests and swabs later, the doctor told me the molten hot magma coating my insides was actually partially digested capsaicin. “It will find any hole to get out,” she said. While she suggested a milk enema and just saying “no” to spicy food, I told her, “I don’t even like Sriracha.” She said, “Imagine how his asshole must feel.”
Byron was destroying his body and bringing mine along for the ride. The exit process is bad enough, but what the phytonutrient that gives hot peppers their heat can do on the way in is bind with pain receptors in the esophagus. That burning sensation can spread to the chest and cause the kind of acid reflux that never goes away. The one night I persuaded Byron to take me to the movies instead of swallowing rebranded hellfire on camera, I spent most of the film watching him shotgun a tube of cherry flavored Rolaids like SweeTarts. This was not a man refocusing his life on long-term commitments. This was a man willing to suffer for his new addiction.
Even our brief vacations were centered around restaurants serving up burn as a flavor.
Giving people t-shirts for guzzling down the sort of curry you have to sign a waiver to eat in New York City. Copying some wing challenge from Man vs. Food in California where you’re not even allowed to use a napkin. Taking me to exotic locations like South Carolina just so I can watch him absolutely house spicy tuna rolls to get his polaroid scotch-taped to crumbling brick.
I didn’t mind his quest for glory. Even the voyeurism of him wanting to be watched by other people wasn’t my main concern. Fetish is as complex as dependency and a lot of times, it’s not always about physical reliance. It’s compulsion. Habit. Fixation. If I was going to get my husband back, I needed to get him hooked on something else.
Kink was first on the list. I took apart our guest room bed and filled the space with a sling. Bought the variety of custom sex furniture that can’t possibly double as anything else. Stocked up on lube and condoms I really hoped he would use. He ignored my new jockstraps, barely turned around to see how good my chest looked in the harness with collar and built-in restraints. While I showed him Sniffies messages and BDSM-themed AirBnBs, he texted his buddies about how Ed Currie was going to want to throat his cock after he sampled the Look How Fucking Orange You Look Girl. That Johnny Scoville’s chin braid was going to absolutely unfurl when he tasted what Daddy was about to harvest.
Maybe what my husband needed was the great outdoors. Like what you hear about all the time in recovery. How nature can help process trauma and cure disorders. Long distance hiking. Tree hugging. Horse therapy. All Byron said at the peak of Angel’s Landing, after risking our lives to climb one of the most treacherous trails in North America was, “Gotta hit the ramen joint before we fly back out of Vegas. Eight minutes, three pounds of noodles, four million units of heat. All that math equals me immortalized on the Wall of Warriors and eating for free!”
I was losing him. If there was any hope left, I had to get more serious. Since rehab,
Daddy hesitated to even take Ibuprofen. He’d hack pieces of his lungs into the sink to fight a
cold before considering anything with dextromethorphan or the stuff they can boil down into meth. If it was going to be pills, he wasn’t going to take them himself.
Crushing some in with dinner would have been the easiest way. With all the extracts and dehydrated seed bottles he was using like one of those parmesan cheese guns at the Olive Garden, he’d never even taste the chemicals. Depending on which over the counter box or childproof orange bottle I chose, he’d probably just assume he was sick. That maybe the spice was really getting to him. Perhaps, it was time for a break.
I pictured myself nursing him back to health, taking him to the doctor who treated me for my rectal lava injection. If I could get her on my side, have her tell him it was medically necessary to stop, we could be happy again. But something sat wrong about dosing him. I didn’t want to Gypsy Rose my husband into thinking he needed medication when he didn’t. Byron had never had a problem picking up an obsession though, so maybe he just needed to be reintroduced to an old friend.
When I hung up, I knew I shouldn’t have made the call. The number shouldn’t have even been in my phone at all. But within hours, the tiny bags were in my hands and it all flooded back. I could taste everything. The shots, the beers, the sticky heat of a stranger’s facial hair in my mouth before he bent me over the only flat surface of the stall. The way my elbows and forearms would come up dusted in white powder that had blended in with the porcelain. Daddy’s spit on my wrists and fingers while he licked me clean and rubbed what was left of the sugary snow into his gums.
In our home now, blue floral wallpaper lines the stairs to the primary bedroom. The dining area has a hutch full of antique teacups. Before we got clean, we slept on dirty couches and busted barstools. The closest we got to gardening was doing reverse cowboy on a Central Park bench. Everything in this house we’ve earned and every piece of it is delicate.
Tonight, as dusk settles in, Byron kneels in the Bermuda grass of our backyard. The sun nearly gone he wipes gloved hands on dirty jeans then cradles a paperback book. He whispers to his newly budding precious girl, “Beauty, you must learn it. You must accept and yield, and then you shall see, everything is simple.”
So I do. I yield. I open every little bag, run it under the faucet, then roll the mushy contents in luxuriously thick paper towels. Where they land to be buried and rot under pasta boxes and chili stems, reminds me that perfection takes patience. And whether we’re digging ourselves out of an avalanche or trying to grow the world’s hottest pepper, we’ll do it together.
Because my love for him is something that can’t be measured in Scovilles.
Vivid Embrace
Wisteria
I wish I were vengeful in the way that meant I got things done instead of caustic petty barbs spewed beneath my breath as if that did anything other than color me as someone to be pitied for her inability to control herself and I wish and I wish and I wish that I knew how to make rage useful and let it power me until I won earth scorched and bodies buried so I could sleep for thousands and thousands and thousands of years to mend a soul battered and exhausted from work instead I’ll sit and sit and sit and smile nice an’ wide body bloated and wrecked from the noxious gas of inconsequential anger uselessly powering me through the day as if it made any of this pointless repetition okay how do I become hydrogen how do I explode how do I rip right through the battlements how do I coat my barbs in deadly poison and dig them deep beneath your skin lethal tethers dragging you down here into the dirt to my level where the hate has buried me deep with the worms and soft inner workings of the earth where nothing ever seems to matter anymore besides how well your flesh and bones are working on decomposing.
Poppy Field
Invocation
Help me recall
the divine light that surrounds me.
I could feel it echo through my skull,
the vibrations were too high for me to hear.
Help me find my salvation
underneath the fire of my torment.
It burned so hot that it was all I could feel,
but I know there once was a growing oak inside of me.
Help me release
all that I’ve held in for so long.
I thought that if I breathed out
all people would see were the flames.
Help me to believe
that I am worth my own love.
I plant myself into the earth
and soak up the divine.
Sun Worship
Zephyr and the Sea
In the heart of the Sahara Desert, where the sun blazed relentlessly and the sand danced in fiery whirls, there lived a young djinn named Zephyr. Born of fire and wind, Zephyr’s essence crackled with the heat of a thousand suns, and his movements were as swift as the desert winds.
For centuries, Zephyr had roamed the scorching dunes, reveling in the searing heat that was his very nature. But as time passed, curiosity stirred within him—a desire to experience something beyond the fiery embrace of the desert.
One fateful day, as the sun beat down with unrelenting intensity, Zephyr heeded the call of the unknown. With a swift leap, he soared into the sky, riding the thermals higher and higher until the desert below was but a shimmering expanse of golden sand.
As he flew, Zephyr felt a coolness in the air—a whisper of something unfamiliar. The Bedouins that traced their way across the golden sands of his home sometimes had this scent clinging to them. ‘Salt’, they called it. Zephyr followed the breeze until he saw the vast expanse of the sea stretching out before him, its azure waters sparkling in the sunlight.
Descending towards meeting sand and water, the heat that had been his constant companion was absent here. Ushered away by cool breezes. It was replaced by a gentle warmth that caressed his fiery form. As he alighted on the sandy beach, Zephyr marveled at the sensation of cool grains beneath his form.
Walking closer to the water’s edge, Zephyr saw it had drawn closer. He stepped into the air and hovered, watching it sink into the grains his feet had rested. When it drew back, he saw they were unharmed. A creature came from the wet sand, scuttering and bubbling up at the mouth. Before the small creature could defend itself, a bird dived and took its meal. With a strong flap of her wings, the thermals carried her high into the sky.
He watched as more water came onto the sand, and except for that crab, nothing was harmed. Perhaps it would be to a being of fire and wind. He wouldn’t know until he tried. Zephyr dipped his hand into the cool waves. It was a sensation unlike anything he had ever experienced—the touch of liquid that did not scald, but soothed and invigorated. The coolness of the waters rushed up and his form steamed and sputtered. Drawing his hand back, he saw it take shape again. Relief washed over him.
Small creatures dashed about in the clear water and scattered at the heat he had made. There were multitudes, the more he focused the more he saw. They moved soundlessly, not like the granulated movements underneath shifting sands.
When the sun dipped low in the sky, Zephyr still lingered by the sea. As night fell and the stars emerged in the darkening sky, Zephyr felt a sense of contentment settle over him—a newfound appreciation for the coolness of the sea and the gentle caress of the breeze.
When the moon rose, a voice rippled across the water towards him, grating and low. “Young one, go back to your desert.”
He called out, “Who’s there?”
“Someone who knows you stray far from home. As for my name, I have had many as the eons roll into one another. Those who come to me call me the ‘Sea’. And I know when a young creature of fire and wind should be where he is safest.”
Zephyr’s form flickered, and he moved farther away, yet the hunger to know more kept him closer than he should have been. He knew he shouldn’t. He had heard the stories—the tales from his older companions about a vast expanse of water that stretched beyond the horizon. Fragments and whispers taken from tales the human caravans weaved as they huddled by their fires. It was a word that had come with warnings, cautionary tales of its ancient power and unforgiving nature. Yet here he stood, face to face with the very thing he had only ever imagined.
“Please, I’ve seen so much in just a day. I wish to explore—”
“That cannot be, young one. I advise you to return to your sands. My waters will drown you to your very core. There will be nothing left.”
His defiance and pride blazed, the sand underneath sizzled and dried despite the surrounding water. “Is that a threat?”
The water lapped up again, slow and gentle. The dry patch healed. “No. I am trying to help.”
“I do not need it!” He flew high, all he wanted was to taste the horizon. A wave from calm water came out and he only managed to keep from getting hit. More like it rose and it was all he could do to weave between the waters.
“Young one, heed my words.” The voice came again.
Zephyr’s frustration peaked. “Why do you keep me away? What harm could it do for me to explore?”
“The harm is not in the exploration, but in the danger you face. I am not a place for beings of heat, dunes, and wind. You belong in the desert, where the sun fuels your essence and the sands provide your home.”
Zephyr paused, hovering above the rolling waves. He understood the sea’s concerns but couldn’t quell his curiosity. “I will not be reckless. I wish to learn and experience the world beyond my desert. Can we not find a way for both of us to be at ease?”
The sea’s voice softened, a mixture of curiosity and a light amusement. As if he had been the first to propose this to a being this entwined with the beginning of time. “What do you propose, young djinn?”
Zephyr thought for a moment before replying, “I will bring you tales and treasures from my home and from my travels. In return, you can share your stories with me. We can learn from each other.”
There was a long silence as the sea considered his offer. Finally, she spoke, “Very well. But heed my warnings and respect my boundaries. We shall exchange stories, and through this, you may explore without venturing too far.”
Excitement and gratitude glowed within Zephyr. “You have my thanks and my gratitude.”
And so began a curious friendship between the young djinn and the ancient sea. Each time Zephyr returned, he brought with him tales of sandstorms and mirages, of Bedouin caravans guided by trickster spirits. He told of the desert’s harsh beauty, the creatures that thrived in its unforgiving environment, and the legends passed down through generations.
In return, the sea shared stories of her depths, of sunken treasures and shipwrecks, of creatures that lurked in the darkest corners of her realm. She spoke of storms that raged across her surface, of the lives of sailors who braved her waters, and the mysteries that lay hidden beneath her waves.
As the days turned into weeks and months, Zephyr found himself looking forward to his visits to the sea, eager to swap stories and learn from this ancient being who had seen so much. He brought her rare stones polished by the sands, tales of mirages that had lured travelers to their doom, and stories of the Bedouin’s resilience and wisdom.
In return, the sea shared tales of her encounters with humans, of their quests and failures, their courage and folly. She revealed the beauty of coral reefs and the danger of whirlpools, the majesty of whales and the cunning of sharks. Zephyr listened with rapt attention, his fiery form flickering with interest as he absorbed each new story.
One evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple, Zephyr asked, “What is it like to be so ancient, to have seen so much?”
The sea’s voice was wistful, carrying the weight of millennia. “It is both a blessing and a burden. I have witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations, the beauty and destruction wrought by time. There is wisdom in age, but also a longing for the simplicity of youth. And you, young djinn, what is it like to be born of fire and wind?”
Zephyr smiled, his fiery essence crackling softly. “It is exhilarating and sometimes overwhelming. The desert is vast and ever-changing, full of life and danger. I am free to roam and explore, but there is also a responsibility to protect the balance of my home.”
The sea’s waves lapped gently at the shore, as if nodding in understanding. “We are both guardians of our realms, in our own ways.”
Their conversations continued, each visit bringing new stories and deepening their bond. Zephyr marveled at the sea’s knowledge and wisdom, while the sea found delight in Zephyr’s youthful curiosity and energy. They were an unlikely pair, but their friendship thrived, built on mutual respect and a shared love for the wonders of their worlds.
As the years passed, Zephyr’s journeys took him to distant lands and brought him new experiences. He encountered other beings of fire and wind, each with their own tales and wisdom. He discovered hidden oases and ancient ruins, learning more about the world beyond the desert.
Each time he returned to the sea, he shared his newfound knowledge, and the sea, in turn, revealed more of her mysteries. They spoke of the ebb and flow of tides, the migration of fish, and the changing seasons. Zephyr brought her exotic shells and colorful stones, and the sea gifted him with pearls and stories of the deep.
One day, as they sat on the sandy shore, the sea asked, “Zephyr, do you ever long to return to the desert and stay there, to be content with what you have seen and experienced?”
Zephyr’s form flickered thoughtfully. “The desert will always be my home, but my heart is filled with a wanderlust that drives me to explore and learn. Each journey enriches my understanding of the world and strengthens my connection to it. And knowing that I can return here, to share my stories with you, makes each adventure even more meaningful.”
The sea’s waves rolled gently, a sign of her approval. “You have a spirit that seeks to bridge the gap between worlds, to find harmony in diversity. It is a rare and precious gift, one that brings balance to the realms you touch.”
Zephyr smiled, his fiery form glowing with warmth. “And you, Sea, have taught me the value of patience and the depth of wisdom that comes with time. Our friendship has shown me that even beings as different as fire and water can find common ground and enrich each other’s lives.”
As the sun set on another day, Zephyr and the sea continued their conversation, sharing stories and dreams. Their bond had transcended the boundaries of their elemental natures, proving that friendship could flourish even in the most unlikely of places.
And so, in the heart of the Sahara Desert and along the shores of the vast sea, a djinn and an ancient being of water found solace and companionship in each other’s presence, their stories weaving a tapestry of unity and understanding that would endure for generations to come.
Skeleton Flowers Press 