Worship

By Mark Yin

Solve. Coagula. Solve. Coagula… Voices rise over one another from behind scarlet cloaks; the procession marches. At the head, the horned demon Baphomet, unfurling its terrible wings. Solve. Coagula. The procession halts.

“Blessed art thou, O Sabbatic Goat, before whose sigil we gather today. Praised be the flame upon thy pate, for it guides us, the carnal and the meek, to glory in damnation eternal.”

The figures remove their cloaks and begin to copulate. Solve. Coagula. Lightning in the distance.

(Content warning: mention of suicide)

Train By Day, Joe Rogan Podcast By Night! All Day!

By Joel Mak

I’m not toxic I’m the cure. Watch me show my nine-year-old intermittent fasting, no-gi imanari rolls, the Joe Rogan Experience, exogenous ketones, Mark Hunt don’t swear in this house mate, picograms of turinabol in his ethically-hunted kangaroo breakfast burger, open-air mosquito buffet Thai camps, hill runs, beep tests, suicides, ringside girls’ Instagram pages. Cage Warriors reruns, hyperbaric chamber therapy, Chinese bone lengthening because you want that reach tiger, folk style free style all styles, sambo not samba. Sure, paint, write, and dance, but shit son, you wanna be the GOAT or what? I’m not toxic I’m the cure.

have you ever

By Natalie Fong Chun Min

spill something anything everywhere something will stick
in the forest
goats inhabit that helps blend green with the
greener things in life
goats don’t intend to slice themselves
with silver linings but men always get what they want
even if they spill everything somehow anyhow something
will become something else
milk will graduate to shampoo and lotion
some form of scented devotion (doe to kid)
misconstrued by human intervention (‘done’ to ‘did’)
to be held in the wrong arms
is assuring all the same
the goats allow us to use them wisely
and would we prove to be in vain?

Homecoming

By Stephanie Kee

That autumn, the goats returned to the sea.

They roamed in herds of about twenty, enthralling visitors all along the Cretan coast. Flanked by the most wizened among them, they traversed the beaches languorously but with a certain focus, as though searching for something unknowable.

The elderly were the first to go when autumn arrived. Illuminated by starlight, they slipped between the waves, calmly, as if practised. No one noticed, day after day, until only bleating younglings remained. And then they too were gone.

No goat carcasses ever washed ashore. Up among the stars, Pricus wept with joyous sorrow.