Hear that? It’s a bell ringing in your heart. It’s the four horsemen as whistling ducks perched on a telephone line, watching a trail of chemical smoke cross the sky. It’s spill after spill rolling through grass from a metal snake miles long. A whale made of more plastic than whale, squeaking. It’s a shelf breaking like bone into the ocean, whose swash is getting closer. It’s the heavy breath of the sun and atmospheric film sizzling. It’s billionaires asking the bleeding edge how to stash resources for doomsday instead of how to prevent it. It’s us gobbling up the stomachs of the rich when the food runs out. Or maybe it was just the wind.

Knell is Anklebiters Publishing’s fourth volume of literature and art, and its theme is a topic that is tragically and increasingly prescient: apocalypse, climate change, our unreliable future. The pieces selected here speculate on our future in this context or simply live in the reality of its present beginning, the cracks having already formed. We keep putting more weight on the ice, unaware that some have already fallen in. We love to grasp and grasp for more, but that’s what is great about this work. That it doesn’t give up. Maybe that sound is the world’s death knell, or maybe it’s an alarm clock, or a windchime, an opening in the crystal, and what we’re graping for is hands reaching out for help.

Kalen Rowe
Editor-in-Chief

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Knell is the fourth literary and arts journal from Anklebiters Publishing. This site houses all the digital content that couldn’t be put in print. Kill Line has over 40 contributors and is available for free as a downloadable PDF and for purchase as a gorgeous full-color, 156-page, perfect-bound book.