STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
JADE HURTER
Like any wife, I do what I must; the man is not my reward. Perhaps fucking him is strange, but it's all I've ever known—our bed a cavern of smoke and shadow, his cock an ember embedded in my flesh. Affection is not what he demands. Mother refuses to believe it, but I went with him willingly. He presented his terms, and I accepted. In exchange for my body, so lifelike then, a kingdom vast as earth, endless expanse of wandering shades. My gardens now are rows of flame; my mirror, a slick sheet of ice, and don't I look radiant, the only thing alive down here. The dead have become my playthings. They do whatever I command. I can stick a hand through their ribcages, finger their ghostly mist. Of course my husband hungered for solid flesh. All through the spring, I dream only of death.
Jade Hurter is the author of the chapbook Slut Songs (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2017). She was a finalist in the 2016 Tennessee Williams Poetry Contest, judged by Yusef Komunyakaa, and her work has appeared in THRUSH, The Columbia Poetry Review, Glass,Passages North, New South, and elsewhere.
