Half Mystic Radio, Season I, Episode II: Figs-and-Honey Sweet

Welcome to Episode II of Season I of Half Mystic Radio! We’re thrilled to share that HMR is now available to stream on all of your favourite podcast platforms: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher. You can subscribe to the podcast for free, & stream all available episodes on those platforms now. Please also leave a rating & review if you enjoy Half Mystic’s work, so that we can reach more listeners!

If you prefer to listen in here, Episode II: Figs-and-Honey Sweet is available now—

This episode features Stefan Y's poems "MLVLNT" & "Darling Amphibian", & ÊMIA's song "Routines". Stefan Y lives in the Midwestern United States. He loves good tea & rooms full of books. ÊMIA is the electro-pop project of singer/songwriter & producer, Anh Le. Her covers, songwriting tutorials, & music videos have amassed over 16,000 subscribers & 3 million views on YouTube. She has been featured on online publications such as MTV Europe, Pilerats, Aviencloud, ENM, Purple Melon, PopJustice, & TrapStyle. She is currently releasing monthly singles, carving an exciting trajectory for herself in the music industry.

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Want to get involved? We are now open to submissions from both writers & musicians for inclusion in the podcast! Send us your symphony. We promise we won’t flinch. & if you would like to support Half Mystic financially, the best way to do so is by purchasing one of our books or journal issues, right here.

There’s more: thanks to popular demand from listeners, we are so excited to tell you that we’re also sharing the full text of the poems in each episode from now on. Here we are…

MLVLNT

You hated me on our drive home through the mountains 
I thought you might take that hammer to my skull 
once and for all 
Leave me forever like your brothers did 

Instead you let me live long enough to cut you off completely 
Like a cat I watched you 
watching me, my feline stare, your father-like 
hate, and oh God, others must have seen, watched curiously 
from the safety of their own cars—
our abandoned hearts! 

Ahead the road curved and dipped for miles 
and songs we both loved played on the radio 
If something like mercy sprouted between us 
I burned it straight away 

When we passed through our state border 
you seemed to soften quite a bit—
then more still when we entered our county 

Then I reminded you

Darling Amphibian

 i.

Younger me was salamander-slick; claws
and fur came later, after my marriage
failed to fail. At age 12 we’d perch on trees
keeping on the lookout for a deep blue
Challenger—howling hard when we saw it—
because that was a serial killer
car, a serial killer in car form.

Nobody does that anymore. No one
after adopting quiet life thinks to.

ii.

We sit in the amber light on the porch
while the twins wrestle on the grass. It was
twins, I remember it now, it was twins
the serial killer gobbled up first.
As this thought occurs to me, my wife shifts
as if she’s read my mind; she was there, too,
we were 12 together, watching T.V.
and each other, and the open window.

Come inside! she calls, her thin voice wrestling
to be figs-and-honey sweet, like before.

iii.

I tuck the boys in and sing them a song
from another time. They hate it so much.
They sing back with better voices, and life
from before—all that horror—is nothing.
It’s as if a snake charmer has bent his
forces on the Devil himself, pushing
him into the bowels of the great tree
until next time. The boys finish with pride.
Quite uninterested in things that kill.