The clockhouse submissions period is open

While you consider submitting to CLOCKHOUSE Volume Nine, here's something to read from Volume Five.  Submissions are open until December 15, and the guidelines and submissions upload button are on the website.

from Helene Barker Kiser’s poem, Bathsheba, to Her First Child:

The moment I tilted my face to the sun,
hot, even sinking, I felt the king.
Or rather, felt eyes sharp as a crow’s.
Heat like touch, like a wall
of film around me, a substance, heat
of his hands but not his hands
. My body a fever--
blood-red bloom of a cactus--
the bath water evaporated,
surprised by the burn.
Strangely calmed by the attention,
I loved the early evening,
the beginnings of shadows. The sun,
I thought it the sun still,
unrelenting. I didn’t know
there were men around, the war
raging on. I didn’t know
there was something the king had to do.