Opus II, Issue III of Half Mystic Journal is a constellation of contemporary poetry, prose, and visual art celebrating music in all its forms. Our thirteenth issue showcases the theme of vesper: a lunar mare, a bell tolling in a vacuum, a cicada’s song ringing out harsh and generous enough to puncture the vein of twilight. Sister and darkest answer to Issue III’s nocturne theme, vesper dreams the skin wide open. It breathes best in the hour without honest name: a sound the throat produces only once, at the last lit edge of the world.

Issue XIII features the voices of Jordan Escobar, Justin Groppuso-Cook, David Eileen, Russell Karick, Kevin Grauke, Abigail Sims, Joel Peckham, Kaitlin Tan, B. Sancho, Jaydra Johnson, and more.

The vesper issue does not arrive so much as descend, unhurried as smog or sleep paralysis, inevitable as the ouroboros’ endless coil. Ghosts were invented here, in the first moment of waking to a world eroded by dusk, the body uncertain of its edges, the room’s silence suddenly textured and breathing. A shattered mirror multiplies the face of darkness, and the door to the dream opens only inward. You’ve been knocking all night. Come inside.

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