VPVA Zine: Holding Space by ad1783

Holding Space

Zac Lomas

Static Waves 2023

a/c

VPVA

Zine 2023

Holding Space /hohl•ding•speys/ verb

Holding space refers to the act of being fully present and supportive of someone in a non-judgmental way. It involves creating a safe and supportive environment for someone to express themselves without fear of criticism, interruption, or dismissal. Holding space can be seen as a way of “holding” someone emotionally, allowing them to feel heard, seen, and accepted. It can be a powerful way to provide emotional support and help someone feel validated and understood. Holding space can be done in various settings, including personal relationships, therapy, and support groups.

Zac Lomas ............................Cover Art: “Static Waves”

Dillon Dixon..........................................”An Echo Held”

Noah Roberts........................The Day I Became a Man

Jessy Cocciolone..............................It Hurts to Become

Angelina Cheng..................................................Deja Vu

Brianna Nashae..................................”I Paid Attention”

Nafisa Hasna.......................................................Artwork

Emily Winters.........................................”Airport Poem”

Dillon Dixon.......................................”What You Hold”

Heather Landfield........................................Photograph

Emily WInters..........................”The Could Be Will Be”

Kelvin Fong...................The Ceremony of Innoncence

Kelvin Fong...................................................Photograph

Edited by: Amanda DeBellis Dr. Jillian Sayre

Special Thanks to Laura Luciano & Dave Buckley

“An Echo Held”

By Dillon Dixon

I’ve seen the end of you your shadow’s reflection holding the echo I cast and chase in silences if you could see it, you would know that mirrors are glass a fragile weapon, held at our throats by the voices of souls trapped within them let them cut for the skin is a cocoon no longer will your eyes border the sky and find comfort in its absence

I’ve seen the beginning of a beauty that only the ocean can hold

The Day I Became a Man

By Noah Roberts

Why do I see myself on the edges of the ceiling at night?

Why does the moon shine with such intensity? The way that I speak “gives me no right,”

But when the sun goes down I am nothing but a pathetic entity

Walking down the long halls of a swimming pool, The fish and their eyes spin around me. A red fish with blazing eyes, so cool

My air tank is possessed by the trance I cannot see.

I am dancing on the roof, the rain soaks my eyes What I do not understand is how I left control.

I could see myself floating above with a man I would come to despise

Yet I was weaved within a web, my happiness that he stole. I tell myself that it was me and me alone, Laying in my bed and gazing at the sun. My soul melted into my phone, My mind would remain to come undone.

I have been told this feeling will never end, I will burn up in the daylight, shrivel up in the night. I carry it like a bag, a terrible life long friend, And the thing is, I know that in his eyes I will never be right.

I look into the mirror and all I can see

An empty galaxy staring back at me

Dark chocolate honey combs, they sparkle in the light

Once always moving, full of life

Yet unexpectedly

A sudden vacancy

Black out sun, blot out the colors

Clock strikes out at twelve thirty three

Time’s at a stand still for me

I look to my left and see twenty three of me

Each one a fragment of who I was, who I was meant to be

Eyeliner blending with her tears

She smiles back at me

As knives enter me repeatedly

Her expression, not reassuringly

Is void of hope, melancholy

She says “it’ll be over soon, eventually”

Acid rain runs down my cheeks

The path it leads stings endlessly

Down my brand new choker, can you see

How firm it is, tight as can be

If I asked to see the stars

Would he be down to take me

I part my cracked, bone dry lips

To see if words spill out for me

A reservoir of vocabulary

Spills out into the Dead Sea

And all I see are muted screams

Drowning out my desperate pleas

To escape into a sanctuary

But there is no safe place for me

Trapped inside this purgatory

Stuck between me and being free

A shadow of pure misery

I look in the mirror again and see

Back on the bridge, the stone, and trees

The shadow’s hands all over me

Stealing bits and pieces

Of who I was and used to be

From 2020 to 23

Deja Vu By Angelina Cheng Was I doomed to repeat history?

I always “PAID” attention when I wasn’t treated the same. Nobody ever listens to “BRI.” I often “PAID” attention when I didn’t get the invitation, the congratulatory trinkets, or the abusive belligerent apologies. I “PAID” attention when “FAMILY” believed “LIES” about “BRI” and never asked “BRI”. I “PAID” attention when “BRI’S” important life events didn’t get a phone call or text. “I” also “PAID” attention to the constant “DISRESPECT” and yes “I” took it “PERSONAL.”

Now, I hardly ever leave my “BUBBLE,” and I choose my “PEACE”in “MODERN” time. If “I” make it to an event consider it a “BLESSING” I raised the “BAR” like a “LAW” star, for who has the access to my “SPIRIT” both near and “FAR”

BY: Brianna Nashae

”I Paid Attention”

p S

Space H o lding Space Holding S pace Holding S pace lding Space pace Space H o lding Holdin

Holding

By Emily Winters

I swear your cotton candy brain doesn’t turn me off. Too mesmerized by the way your skin turns to Fairy floss when we’re crushed beneath the Moon

My bones illuminated in the off-green blur of the Pool light at the other end of the long hallway like the One we’ll walk on our way to give God the yearly tax returns, Something resembling a Stroll on the bottom of the sea like she’s so heavy like a Hop, skip, and a jump in zero gravity, obsessive orbit. And she lay reclined in sweet repose, hands

Fluttering miming her frustrations towards men who lie when They’re asked what their favorite part of a woman is, and I’d ask how we know they are lying if I

Wasn’t too caught up hiding my hands beneath my Thighs because my hands were on fire and I knew You’d burn too if I grazed your knee because my hands were On fire so

I swallowed them whole, chomped at the Mental bits, she my phantom limb.

Fingers shadow puppets from the searchlight mounted on the Back of your parent’s house as the blades of Grass punctured the soft bits on upper thighs and the

“The could be will be”

Backs of our arms, and I find you exquisite. But I’ll shutter myself because you know what happens to the Girl who makes the ones she adores Science projects, shoves them in a Jar to see how they’ll make her feel in a week or two, month or Two and whether that inhale-exhale that she put in that Jar with you still twinges when the weather is about to turn – come a Week, will I still grow weak with the ghost of your warmth? But the memories of the yet to come, all the walks we haven’t Taken, will never make as we settle with a shudder and an Ache and a creak, another unfinished foundation stabbed into the Floor of the sea and We won’t move for hours yet and my nails nip at my thighs but I won’t let up, won’t give in, won’t let the could be will be and Who are you or I to call this fear? Maybe it’s a deeper wisdom, Holdover from prehistoric times, Whispering with a long finger tracing the spot where my shirt Collar doesn’t quite cover my neck, slithering soliloquies along the Lines of it’s

Impossible to live without oxygen and it’s

Impossible to live while burning and it’s

Impossible to live

“Airport Poem”

By Emily Winters

Humans crave intimacy. Still here we Sit or would rather stand than sit in between Two strangers at the airport, Here we dissociate neutralize stray thoughts Petrify our saints and worship at their Grizzled mummy bodies

Here in the land of tune out turn up

We are individual orbs whirling at a capacity beyond Visual recognition beyond spatial

Comprehension we bend our auras to curve around the Space between our outreached arms the space between the Manufactured distance between our torsos while We pose in front of what some call the Grand Canyon, two bros being bros being Dudes not touching except each other’s Asses on occasion and

It’s all fine and well and if it’s not we can Photoshop them out later

Purge the wedding photos of the tinder

Date from hell

Brad or Chad or Stephen

Then it’s back to business as usual well oiled

Machine the rough parts sanded by Starbucks and matcha powder and Vodka and you see

These things are not a spark they are not Eye contact over low lighting they are not Lightning reflected in what some call a

Pond back behind the covered porch where Speckled puppies writhe in innocence and Snuggle against their mother away from the storm outside you See the gentle sooty pen stroke of Her eyelashes resting on the top of her Cheeks while the Rain pets the window panes cannot be Mass produced mimicked, though the metaphor could be Put into a bottle shaken not stirred and Poured out the lips of several other Poets wallowing in mediocrity and bad Homemade coffee and sleepless days after the Night shift playing cop at the local mall wondering Whether some of Stranger Things was real, at Least in the 80s not now and

That same toy night cop and the same sleeping beauty are Probably siblings and they probably played Pretend when they were young where the nocturnal mall cop wrote Elaborate scripts ripped off some Vincent Price Special and the woman, maybe that same woman who Dated Brad or Chad or Stephen with disastrous results

Refused to play the damsel and played Buffy every time, much to her brother’s consternation.

But still, if they passed each other in the terminal on their Way to Cincinnati and Hong Kong, they’d probably think it was a Fluke after all. Why would that stranger’s eyes remind me of Edgar Allan Poe? And they sit

A seat in between them a border a wall a Gaping galaxy empty space white noise and They don’t glance up from their phones.