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Deux Sœurs Immortelle by Gretchen Tessmer

Posted on August 30, 2019 by publisher in
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Narrated by Gretchen Tessmer

Deux Sœurs Immortelle by Gretchen Tessmer

Illustration by Sue Babcock

 

you’ll likely find them
gracing the cover of Vogue
two glamorous girls, sitting
on a lime green bench in 1920s French styles,
with pale, translucent hands
and diamond jewelry everywhere

“now listen,” the first says
to a man in tasseled loafers

“it’s less in telling stories and more, I say
in shouting down false kings of heaven,
those fallen angels now here bidden
falsely dealing unclaimed wisdom
do this, do that
and don’t run with scissors”

<she lights up a clove cigarette, unfiltered>

she continues, “and there’s no great mystery in this—
we all seek rented space-time
on the xyz-axes”

<the girls make the sign of the cross in sync>

“but we will not meddle
nor sink to the level of stinking pits of grave decay
of apple cores and carrion flesh
of carbon strands that break down and build up
only to easily waste away…”

the second girl, through pert lips
painted deep with violet stain, adds
“no, that’s just not our way”

 

BIO: Gretchen Tessmer is a writer/attorney based in the U.S./Canadian borderlands. She writes both short fiction and poetry, with work appearing in Nature, Strange Horizons and F&SF, among many other venues. For news of publications and upcoming projects, follow her on Twitter: @missginandtonic

Our next issue will be published on February 1, 2021. We will open submissions for poems and stories on November 1, 2020.

Liquid Imagination

Issue 42 Aug 2019

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Stories

Light or life by Jessica Testerman

The Bloodstain and the Bone Garden by Daniel Delehant

Apartment 401 by Andrew Johnston

Nothing but a Tale by Lynn Rushlau

The Monster of Grug by Richie Billing

Poems

Mothsong, poem by John Philip Johnson, illustration by Mike Lawlor

Figure 1. by Robin Gow

First Generation: The Counselor Prepares Her Retirement Speech by T.D. Walker

The Silent Universe by Bruce Boston

Recursing by Josh Pearce

Deux Sœurs Immortelle by Gretchen Tessmer

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