Breaking the Skin

ictus. Issue No. 1 - Summer 2026

Table of Contents

• Breaking the Skin: Dani Rose

  • The Guest Who Arrived After the Feast was Eaten

  • Passion, Aliens, and Spitfire

  • Epiphany Whilst Dining on My Couch One Early Late Spring/Autumn Night-Morning

  • Sunshine and Destruction

  • It’d Be Me

• Breaking the Skin: Jenna Tobias

  • amoeba.

  • Does Ouroboros Mourn? (previously published in The Vehicle)

  • Slaughterhouse Softness

  • Who is an Ethical Slut?

  • CORAL CITY!!!!

• Breaking the Skin: Morgan Baker

  • What If I Were To Drown?

  • Breathing Is Claustrophobic

  • Undiagnosed

  • Her Green Guardians

  • Get Off Your Phone

  • Did You Win or Lose?

  • Midwestern Rain

  • Midwest Fairy

• Breaking the Skin: Pamela Zimmerman

  • emotional dysregulation as an epic or a tragedy or maybe a possession in an unwilling body

    (or maybe the process of dissociation)

  • Woman, Green

  • fear

  • Heaven Was

  • stitch

• Breaking the Skin: Nicholas Dillman

  • Disappointment

  • Play Words Your With Don't

  • I Thought You Were Dead

  • Just treat me well

  • A B C Dictatorship

• Breaking the Skin: Shelbi Owen

  • one

  • two

  • three

• Breaking the Skin: Anj Baker

  • Flesh Would Melt