Issue VIII of Half Mystic Journal is a constellation of contemporary art, lyrics, poetry, and prose celebrating music in all its forms. This issue showcases the theme of sforzando: the car-struck dissonance—the backslide into wreckage—the single note of shattering. As the world around us snags on the barbs of sickness, we write a livewire lovesong, a hymn to open wounds. The breakage faces us, and we face the breakage, and neither looks away.

Issue VIII features the voices of Jessie Lynn McMains, Elizabeth Ruth Deyro, Alena Zeng, Peter Milne Greiner, Gale Acuff, Elijah Mann, Topaz Winters, C.A. Scheherazade, Cindy Xin, Rodney Wilder, Matt Mitchell, Leela Chantrelle, The Haunt, Jonah Howell, Sophie Zhu, Jam Pascual, Hana Widerman, Love in the Ruins, Yejin Suh, and Joan Pope.

Sforzando is an issue of the body and its expulsions, its disasters, its tectonic shifts. Issue VIII understands better than anyone how abruptly and incandescently blood ends up in all the wrong places. This issue is not a crescendo but a car crash, perfect as death, sudden as becoming. It eats its ghosts alive, mouth raw and open. It refuses to blink.

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Reader photos