Last Lament of a Soundcloud LUCAS CUNNINGHAM Artist

Last Lament of a Soundcloud Artist

LUCAS CUNNINGHAM Upon my waist a Gucci belt Upon my hips a Glock And likewise on my RAFs the girls Like loons in fall - do flock They know my bars - and so my name But do they know my soul? The wisdom deep within the Clout Diamond Rollie out of coal

I know I’ve fame beyond compare My domain reigns - Supreme Yet still the call beyond the willows Sips my soul like lean

For what is life but that ‘fore Death And what is Death but naught For through my Ice the Reaper calls The cold Drip of a Red Dot

fucca

BRIAN BISHOP

JULIENNE HO That inhabitant of the medicine cabinet most frequently left on the counter is not properly to be called a bottle of aspirin, for his contents are brick-red and circular like trail-mix chocolates. Aspirin inspires the idea of a store-brand, generic drug: minimal white tablets with starchy binding agents that reminisce a bitter taste on the tongue, the unranked, uniformed footsoldier of the pain-relieving world. The mind calls upon the image of a minimal but bright affect of clear-cut words on the label of the cylindrical vessel. Nevertheless the present specimen, clad with his printed label faded from days in the sun atop its original store identification, sat with repurposed confidence atop the table. The day is strained, with pinched expressions scattered throughout the library accompanied by tense whispers wafting through couples on ruby-red cushions. The librarian perches on her toes, combing the landscape for aberrations in the monotonous buzz of stress, although I am unsure whether this is to find a conversation to join or just to reprimand noise. This same energy lives in the bottle: the basal urge to abandon the moment of difficulty in favor of ease became increasingly appealing to those who feel that the buzz in their heads begins to overwhelm. One could not help but glance at him.

This is a pastiche of a work by Virginia Woolf.

Morning Bike Ride

ELLA GARDNER

So, I’ll try to keep this short, because maybe you’ve already heard parts of this from your mom and Nana, but you’ve probably only heard the parts where they swoop in to play the hero, and obviously there’s more to the story than that. It was the morning after our St. Patrick’s Day party and they weren’t doing so hot themselves, sleeping off some wicked hangovers upstairs. The house on Wavecrest was a disaster zone, naturally. There were still at least four or five of Nana’s friends conked out and snoring on the living room floor when I came down. Mo McGee was wearing Paul Sibley’s tie around her forehead like a bandana, and his shirt was all rumpled and unbuttoned down the front, which was pretty goofy because he’d been my high school principal just two years before. I was always getting sent to his office for the shenanigans me and my boys would pull, but he knew I was basically acing all my classes except math, and he thought I was funny so I got Snickers bars instead of punishments. Pretty radical, I know. He even made me and my bro Patrick “prefects,” which didn’t mean jack shit but made your mom jealous because she was accustomed to being the golden child. Anyway, I stepped over Paul and went out to the porch, where Lucian was munching on this gnargly-lookin’ piece of toast, all burnt up and black. I used to call him “Lotion” because he had such a smooth way of talking, and when he was stoned, I called him “Lotion-in-slowmotion.” Lotion-in-slow-motion didn’t even look at me as I hustled past. He was busy brushing crumbs out of his hippie beard and staring up at a dirty piece of fabric wrapped around a high branch on the maple out front. (You probably don’t know this, but Nana took some allergy meds in the ‘70s that made her psychotic, and she spent a whole afternoon cutting her bathrobe into thin strips and flying them from that tree, like blue cotton streamers. That was a few years before she married Lucian, so he couldn’t have known the full story unless the neighbors ratted, but there he was, contemplating the leftover evidence with bloodshot eyes. Hah.) Anyway, I went around to the garage, grabbed my bike, and split. It was a wet morning, which I did not appreciate, because I had a long ride ahead of me. Now strap in, because this is the part of the story where I lose people: I knew something horrendous was going to happen if I didn’t stop it. I won’t tell you how I knew, because you wouldn’t get it, but that fact

was as real to me as you are, sitting in front of me now. In my opinion, psychic intuitions are not so different from psychotic breaks, but you don’t see palm-readers getting rounded up and pumped full of lithium. Hah. Anyway, I would have made a clean break of it if I hadn’t stopped by Patrick’s house to nab the rain jacket I’d lent him. Braw was in to all kinds of psychedelics, and on top of that he called himself a poet (and you know a lot of poets are just con-artists with egos), so he essentially had no right to judge me for anything, but he asked, and I gave him the skinny; I was biking to Santa Barbara to stop an earthquake from killing Nana and Heather. If I didn’t go immediately, Quackenbush the plague doctor would remove his mask and split the earth in a catastrophic Quacken-quake, and creepy crawlers from below would wiggle out of the seams and drag my family down to the underworld. So yeah, I needed my raincoat lickety-split. I didn’t get the feeling he really gave a shit when I told him, but I guess he must of because basically an hour later, Lotion’s car pulled up in front of me and Nana tackled me straight to the ground. I’d already shralped about thirty miles up the PCH, which might surprise you because I’m so skinny now, but remember back then I was practically a professional skater, getting featured in Thrasher and all that. Even so, Nana walloped me right off the bike and dragged me in to the backseat, and then they stuck me in the hospital while Quackenbush squatted at the bus stop out front and cackled through his beak. It was pretty preposterous. Long story short, they got their diagnosis. I got a prescription and a parade of rinky-dink shrinks. And now everybody gets to continue drinking and smoking and tearing apart their bathrobes and marriages and none of that matters because apparently, I out-did them all. Hah. So, what’s your mom’s version of that story?

secret garden.

KAYLA LEE

in our Secret Garden, you picked the tips of the wheat stalks, crumbling the grains into my hands, and flowers grew from the scars of my body, covering me in beauty that you strongly believed in; don’t worry about the clouds, hayeon, you whispered, pointing to the white-naped crane, it is god’s backdrop for all living things; the green moss would serve as our bed, as you explained your deep knowledge of the world, the stars and my future that seemingly aligned for you that i struggled to find meaning in; soup is the core of your body, hayeon, it is what warms your soul and makes you move, have some more, you poured your life into my body; your breath served as the eternal, spring winds that touched the corners of our space, as deer strolled across the patterns of your zen garden, but when your mind slowly slipped from my hands, i wasn’t sure what to do. The gates closed to our secret garden. I couldn’t feel your presence, and I could no longer hear the swishing of the wheat stalks. Four years ago, your mind was gone, it had disappeared, you did not remember our secret garden, you did not remember me, when you held my hands silently, surrounded by wires, cords, and a metal jungle, you asked me who I was, and I could only reply with, I am an extension of you, lost in the maze of your mind, our secret garden it is only now that I am able to map the location, drawing the outline to our end of the world. the smell of soup, the sound of cicadas, the beating of the bird’s wings, they all call to me, and as i step back onto our cobblestone path, surrounded by the wild, pastel blue hydrangeas, i wonder if the thorns that poke into my feet and the rain that surrounds my body are your memories, and if this is the path that leads me to our Secret Garden, even if i get cold and tired, will you wait for me?

Sunday Poem

TALIA IVRY Some Sundays slog by alongside the road, clogged up with dread. So dreadfully commonplace, that they leave the same bitter ache in your teeth, in your jaw as grinds your car to a halt, stop among the sitting people, not touching, waiting for Monday.

Ecosystem

TIFFANY CHANG