Originally published in The Dread Machine in June 2023.

The Goth Girls’ Gun Gang

she passed a bullet from her tongue

to mine.

it tasted like blood—

metallic, sweet as the lilies lining

our sisters’ desert graves.

she placed a pomegranate on my head,

shot seeds into bone-dry air

and licked the juice from the corners

of my bloodshot eyes.

I cut her hair into a batea

drank whisky under the stars

and picked gold flakes from the scars

adorning her scalp.

the four of us left,

turned scorpions out of our boots

patched up holes in our knees our lives

and headed west

chasing the sunset over

and over

and over the horizon

again.

Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts, on Pocumtuck and Abenaki land. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Vastarien, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nightmare Magazine, and others. She is the flash winner of the 2022 F(r)iction Spring Literary Contest and has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, Pushcart, Best of the Net, Elgin, Utopia, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars awards. Her Bram Stoker and Elgin Award-nominated poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, is out now from Android Press.