"To mourn is also to acknowledge the limitations of language." (Gavin Yuan Gao on Elegy)

Elegy is the séance we hold as we pray for a visitation from the ones we have lost. We invite them to haunt us. We sing to them, and listen for song in return.

Literature, Music, Personal EssayGuestJune 29, 2022Gavin Yuan Gao

X: Elegy | Uncomposed: "Shrine to July"

I was praying the only way I knew how. I was trying to build a boat, to take me through the waves of grief on your street, right up to your door.

Columns, Music, Literature, Personal EssayPaola BennetJune 23, 2022uncomposed

From the Editor, & the Launch of Hazem Fahmy's Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo

This collection was born out of the search for something bigger than the silence & static. On Friday, I think we came close to finding it.

"I am learning to call things disruptive instead of radical." (An Interview With Hazem Fahmy)

I am at a point in my life where the question most on my mind isn’t what am I asking from a place, but rather what I owe a place I have made a home.

Literature, Music, InterviewsKate WilsonMarch 13, 2022Hazem Fahmy, Frank Ocean, Zaid Khaled, Wegz, Sfire, Sheikh Imam

Frank Haunts Me Across a Decade (Hazem Fahmy on Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo)

By 2020, Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo had become a kind of phantom; a project that haunted me, yet whose future seemed illusive.

Music, LiteratureGuestMarch 9, 2022Hazem Fahmy, Frank Ocean

The Synaesthesia Letters (A Selection)

When a poem reaches its most potent limits, I consider it reaching into the state of song.

"The essential mystery of things is sometimes best articulated by their own organic resonances." (Ryan Griffith on Synaesthesia)

The artist’s dictum “trust your materials” only started to make sense in collage, with strange fabrics and colors and patterns coalescing in startling meaning.

"Maybe there’s a world where feeling is the same as knowing." (Sunny Vuong on Synaesthesia)

But for three minutes and 23 seconds, that magic stretch of a song where my poem lives as both love letter and record player, synaesthesia is more like a bridge.

Music, Film, LiteratureGuestJune 15, 2021Sunny Vuong, Frankie Valli, Gil Junger, Heath Ledger

Ode to the Gothic Heroine (A Selection)

Our heroine keeps walking, and we follow, unseen ally, shadow of hope, anticipating the thrills and horrors lying in wait.

You Are Believed / A Statement on Plagiarism by a Half Mystic Author

Half Mystic is committed to upholding the highest standards of originality, integrity, & literary citizenship in our authors & the work we publish.

Announcements, Music, LiteratureTopaz WintersMarch 1, 2021Rona Wang, Christina Qiu