Opus II, Issue II of Half Mystic Journal is a constellation of contemporary poetry, prose, and visual art celebrating music in all its forms. Our twelfth issue showcases the theme of sevdah: a damask veil, a clipped swan’s wing, a memory of a late-night lake with a long-gone lover, when the sky and water turned the same colour and met at the edge of the world. The shadow-self of Issue II’s saudade theme, this collection exalts in its own unquenchable yearning. With a pulse of sage and velvet, it unfolds into a liturgy beneath half lights, holy and heavy as the still before the train comes.

Issue XII features the voices of Adam Falkner, Rita Mookerjee, Natalie Marino, Kathleen A. Wakefield, Angela Sucich, Jordan Silversmith, Jared Povanda, Natalye Childress, Lee Anderson, Sophie Crocker, Allison Cooke, Dontay M. Givens II, Nick Visconti, Amber Cecile Brodie, Amrita Nur, Gordan Struić, and Sjafril.

In the mythic yawn between absence and presence, Opus II, Issue II wanders an empty airport terminal like centre stage. Tenderness blossoms fragile and fragrant here, coiled around the thorn of desire. The sevdah issue breathes at once as song and spell: a vow made in a past world, a memory yet to be lived, chords drinking down silence and lingering long after the ghosts have gone.

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