Opus II, Issue III of Half Mystic Journal is a constellation of contemporary poetry, prose, and visual art celebrating music in all its forms. This issue showcases the theme of vesper: an event horizon, a bell tolling in a vacuum, a cicada’s song harsh and generous enough to wear twilight to bone. Sister and darkest answer to Issue III’s nocturne theme, vesper troubles the gravity of waking. Our thirteenth issue breathes best in the hour without honest name. It is 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 Karrick, Maria Gray, Ava Chen, Abigail Sims, Joel Peckham, K.M. Hanslik, Hana Saad, Topaz Winters, Kaitlin Tan, Rucker Manley, arushi (aera) rege, Es K. Harvey, B. Sancho, and Jaydra Johnson.

The vesper issue does not arrive so much as descend: unhurried as smog or sleep paralysis, inevitable as the ouroboros’ endless coil. A shattered mirror multiplies the face of darkness, silence textured and breathing, the body made uncertain of its edges. You’ve been here before, in the dream that returns you always to the same locked room. The door opens only inward. You’ve been knocking all night. Come inside.

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