ISSUE FIVE

Lavandula

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

Finding My Fix

I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.

Investigation of the Spectacle

Our mission is not a drunken pub-crawl, per se, but examination of all possibilities…

Fallout Shelter

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

Wilderness

The land here is scarred and wrinkled.

Forest Walk on a Friday

Every time I come to the forest, it’s different, but so am I.

The Kotel in Jerusalem is Filled with Cracks

We found in his suitcase T-shirts, his siddur, gifts he bought for his grandchildren…

Laika Came Home

When Laika the space dog comes back, bulleted to earth in a tiny white escape pod that dissolves upon opening, nobody can believe it.

Bisect

Bisect by Amanda Yskamp This image is featured as the cover of Abandon Journal, issue…

Sisters of the Divine Apparatus

The day does not conclude with the gentle exhale of the earth, but with Mother Superior flipping the hourglass over, again.

Submission

Directly after the arrival of the Armada, this model made sense, as the gap between Unthulanian and Human cultures prevented a commensurable exchange of practices…

Reconnaissance

another self emerges between assignments, to follow the dog into winter dusk and watch the snow fall. Not sociable, but perceiving

Aging Punks

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.

Behind This Fence in Future Tense

My new neighbor is making a violin from a cigar box. He got the cigar box from a guard. The guard, presumably, got it from outside the Fence.

I could, even now, go down to the water

Even from this distance I could go out
the door it would bang shut and crumble

A note on the artwork in this issue: Other than the cover, all of the images in Issue #5 of Abandon Journal were created by Phillip Scott Mandel using AI. The cover is “Bisect” by Amanda Yskamp.