Agapanthus Collective Issue #5: EROSion

The Agapanthus Collective

Issue # 5: EROSion

Spring 2023

Editors: Junpei Tarashi

Surosree Chaudhuri

Arli Li

Readers:

Leo Altman

Cover Art by Arli

Layout by Junpei Tarashi

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Dear Reader,

Erosion is one of the many ways we become cognizant of the passage of time, the gradual destruction at the hands of nature a reflection upon the ephemerality of our existence. The pieces in this issue focus on that very metamorphosis, particularly as it pertains to our often fragile relations.

Thank you for picking up this issue, and taking in the impressive works of our lovely contributors. As always, we’re excited to share their work with you!

Much love, The Editorial Team

Antiques Roadshow

Sharon Scholl

When we’re gone, will they just give all this away? The question hangs between us. The shared mystery of values, who cares about what, saturates our chatter in old age.

What difference will it make when we are scraps of bone, for the fate of coins, a hand made clavichord, the paint-cracked hull of a model ship?

Nothing here is part of our heirs’ time or of a past they’ve lived. Not their aha when a mis-stamped coin appeared in pizza parlor change. Not their look at this! in a dusty attic.

They will not have sense or patience to track down prices the world assigns decrepit silverware, a crochet table cloth. Nor can we convince them to regard this dusty pile as “shabby chic”.

La Caille Brune

nicole flaherty

Like any good wife I spread my legs and make love look easy. I say grace at the dinner table and carve out the winter stew. I unwrap my child, who is skeletal by the door.

I moan and coo at the thought of you–you, that master of limbo who keeps me instinctually moving forward without wanting to.

Like all good things, the sun warms the bottle all the way down to the knees.

Like all suns, they are at war.

Click/ insert death

A thunder/say flounder fish [fleshed ocean bar]

My heart slows to a stop.

Mother shutters at all the loving things an evil man will say.

Size/ Compulsory red toilet bowl

Each foot is rivered and I am spread across a bee’s dwelling. Say/together and last in mind

Grasslands thick with moss and soap.

Gown grass.

Mother picks up the phone.

What is it that is making you so sick?

Brown quails fly overhead as their yolks hatch briefly.

Father’s finger caresses the opening while raking over the pages of 1984.

Mother shutters and invites flies over for dinner. Her baby is both wrinkling and undone. Warm pants running over the blood.

Father counts the tiles on the ceiling, mumbling while holding his ears in a swinging motion. One ...two...three...

Mother shutters and invites flies over for dinner. Spring...autumn... glass... thirteen ... twenty six.... twenty two... My sculpture looks good.

Somewhere in the next life I have kids, and make art from resin oils.

My husband is kind.

Like a good wife I spread my legs and make love look easy.

I count the suns, I look at all I have.

My great- grandfather survived Auschwitz and reminds me in my dreams.

My great- grandfather was powdered across La Caille. My great-grandfather would say to my mother: “Hold your tears, little one. For it is only at the beginning that we have any real purpose. Souffrir au lever du soleil–”

Island of tranquility/ Touch, umbrage, touch. Kneeling in the pond patterned light.

You okay/ depressed light. Held on tight/what might replace your tongue? Seven...eight/

He slept with the ink tattoo on his left arm for 85 years. Somewhere in the next life I am once again reminded.

Did you grow? Marry me. Did I grow? Carry me. What I said was alien to me, too. Vapid belles–lettres–what–could–have–been– lip/ More than a song/more than a dream/more than a nightmare–

My great-grandfather fled by bird to a farm in Haute-Garonne, France. The year was 1940. The coordinates were 43º05’46”N 0º42’20”E–Melons covered the exit hole. If not the soldiers then a cubic neon green bullet skimming my skull, his skull–soul of the flesh basking on broken glass.

What I’m trying to say is life finds a way

AS MINE EYES SWELLED

Andrew Lafleche

Preacher-man locked eyes like the devil himself had climbed through an ajar window, selected the furthest pew from the pulpit he could find and settled in for a listen what the God-man had to say.

Least that’s how his stare felt, like I were Legion about to be cast into a herd of swine, forced off a cliff and into the ocean to drown, them demons who been warring on me this life; he just stared,

while talking but I couldn’t hear, something start of the service announcing I gathered, pleading silent with my own eyes he relent his gaze ‘fore the rest of the congregation turned ‘round for a look.

Not sure what even I was doing here once more having never before been in a church that felt like: home, this time sure feeling something quite the opposite as well; preacher just kept staring—

iconography

Alexandra

Colaneri

you didn’t have to prove that you were hurt on the 5 Step Plan to Getting Better, nowhere does it say

1. get shitfaced

2. see what happens and greater love has no man than this i’ll drag you home again, sweating blood. aren’t you just jesus christ begging me to take that cup away

Elle Warren

August, honey, you were mine were every living thing now you’re a stranger & I’m July stuck in the middle, the cusp of an end abuzz with something like hope I don’t live next to the mountains anymore & I traded in people I love for some other people I love. You wanted so badly to love me in the heat of summer beside my vegetable garden bought the whole harvest of cucumbers would have jumped in the lake on the coldest day of summer to be loved back who doesn’t want to be wanted? who doesn’t want to want? who in their most feral state does not want someone else to feel for them?

All this to say, I was not in love the night I told you I was when I called you at midnight to come sleep next to me so let’s say it didn’t happen let’s say it’s July & I’m alone abuzz with something like hope I’m someone at the middle point between two worlds, a pair of suns taking a breath before August

the italicized words are from the song August by Flipturn

CARVING; CARVING; CARVING

mak kram

My heart is a danger & my love is a blessing — the words of my mother. I learn to know the heart as a cartoonish thing. When I’m cut open, I imagine it as a broken heart. It is not that simple. To bury a heart means to dig it up from silence. The heart is just a kid; helpless. Loving. All the things I am not. There is too much violence for me to become gentle, but I learn to brew tenderness in my own house. I know loneliness like the back of my hand.

I Send Sealed Flowers Because I

Don’t Have

Words

Suchita Senthil Kumar

i.

Atop the closed envelope flap, scorpion grass bathed in gold wax— dead but glorious, cold amidst so much warmth.

ii.

I sit huddled amongst my three friends, blanketed by an enormous quilt, our limbs in a tangled mess. Surrounded by so much warmth and yet, I shiver.

i.

I fill my suitcase with memories more than clothes; when I’m away, I want to wear Sunday evenings spent with my friends in Bangalore’s streets over my body.

By the time I return, my walls will turn grey, the jasmines in my garden will wither away. And then I’ll remember—I never grew jasmines in the first place.

ii.

My friends laugh louder than the winter winds but all I hear is white noise numbing my brain from drowning in nostalgia that isn’t mine.

I’m not in their travel snapshots, their school photos or sunrise and sunset reels. The only photograph I’m in, I’m a blurred polaroid pixelated into a forgotten memory.

i.

I mail three envelopes sealed with wax two hours before my train to Chennai. Inside the letter: forget-me-not.

Korean Rebound

Chloe Ang

He wasn’t free on a Sunday I’ve tried the Yellow Pages and illegal pamphlets that blink twice when they need help If I thought less in preschool I might have been less forgiving

But thankfully I settle for less Only Sometimes, not a lifetime Of justified suffering, unanswered

Pleas, someone always watching Me eat my rubber bands, lovingly. Today I wait for my shirts to Roll; Name the wasted beansprouts and the rice pearls that fall from his clogged pores

Velvet Suit

Andrej Bilovsky

This is me selling my velvet suit at a street stall in the Mission District.

I’m in a bathtub.

I’m tooting on a clarinet. I look like the wolfman.

I’m done with the preliminaries. My tombstone’s crooked. I got them unauthorized collapsible movie-star jokeaholic nothing blues.

Hey street zombies. Hey out-of-work bellboy. Hey unlawfully wedded saint. And you, absurd-face. Yes you, unsubstantiated arrangement of black eyes and cut lip.

And you Rimbaud-reading penguin. Waddle over here.

Bargain of a cat’s lifetime. Will no one buy my velvet suit?

vision from within the womb

Amera Elwesef

While you are sleeping in your mama’s womb you have a creepy vision. Two buffalos dragging your body towards a cameraman. You move your fatty belly from right to lift as a stupid way to prove that you are not hungry anymore. Some mysterious smell flatter in the air like an unfinished task. You start to cry & laugh at the same time.

The two animals indulged their pointed fingers in a pool of dirt. They painted your whole face while dancing on their tippy-toes. The scene lacks Surrealism. You know certain words from an ancient age. You try to shape them into your lips. God watching you as usual. He waves in amusement. Numerous trees grow between your thighs. You crawl toward single laughter escaping from an angel’s chest. You see the world with an open eye.

A woman sitting under you playing with the time machine. She makes a fuss but no one punishes her. You contemplate the world in awe. You love to whisper even when you don’t know what to say.

The two buffalo returned again lifting your body to the level of the Seventh Heaven. You watch million flying fish nursing their babies. A man looks at you. He wears some messy clouds. You think it is not real. You say it is just my imagination. A group of poets embracing mint leaves. Crystal water circles their brownish necks. They bite a bread-shaped poem. You feel amazed. Who am I? You ask. Where am I? You repeat. God still watching. He composes a fresh play. You want to take a look. He knows that. Some of his precious papers fall down intently until reaching your feet. You read it. You feel a sudden shiver. Everything turns upside down. You close your eyes again & keep moving inside your mother’s kingdom.

Supranowicz

Perfect for the Moonchild

Chloe Ang

highly versatile for keen, sarcastic, humor too clever; quick learner

dig to the bottom desire to always be into something nervous

moving project to the next problem or satisfied idea fixed, stable and flexible outlook

wavering critical success is not however, all important to you, slide with nonchalance

Contributor Bios

Regarding poetry, mark Chloe Ang (they/them) as scared and horny. Screen time says that they spend most of their free time stalking Trixie Mattel on Twitter. Do as they say, not as they do.

Andrej Bilovsky (he/him) is a queer poet and performance artist. Former editor of Masculine-Feminine and Kapesnik. His poetry can be found at the Quiver and Down In The Dirt.

Alex Colaneri is a college sophomore from Boston studying marketing. She works in a bakery, spends her free time hiking and playing guitar, and has work published in FATHERFATHER magazine and Moss Puppy Magazine, among others. You can find her ramblings on twitter @luckyarms1 or on insta @decayedrepose.

Amera Elwesef is an award-winning published poet.

N. Flaherty Kimball (she/her) is an emerging Jewish poet from SLC,UT. A four time Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Lit 202, Club Plum, Sunspot Lit, Sky Island Journal, as well as others. Nicole is a Creative Writing student at Utah Valley University. She loves spending time with her husband, family, and Chihuahua named Tinkerbelle.

Mak Kram is a poet in parenthesis, a trans, queer, middle eastern teen who likes to refer to himself as “just some guy” and not much more.

Contributor Bios

Suchita Senthil Kumar is a writer creating chaos from Bangalore, India. Her work has been published in Live Wire India and Brave Voices Magazine, among others. She was a student of UNICEF’s Voices of Youth Mediathon ’21. She makes life decisions asking herself one question: Will Sirius Black be proud?

Andrew Lafleche is the award-winning poet and author of No Diplomacy, Ride, and Spring Summer, Winter, Fall. His work uses spoken style language to blend social criticism, philosophical reflection, explicit prose, and black comedy. Following his service as an infantry soldier in the Canadian Armed Forces, Lafleche received an M.A. in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Gloucestershire. He lives on a farmstead in the Bonnechere Valley. Please visit www.AndrewLafleche.com or follow @AndrewLafleche on Twitter for more information.

Sharon Scholl is a retired college professor (humanities) who convenes a poetry critique group and maintains a website of original music and poetry (www.freeprintmusic.com). Her poetry chapbooks Seasons, Remains, Summer’s Child, are available via Amazon Books. Individual poems are current in Gyroscope Review and Riversedge Review.

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet who has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.

Elle Warren is a midwestern poet and prose writer living in the south. She has a book, Come Back For a Little Bit, forthcoming with Game Over Books in April. You can also find her work in Defunkt magazine. Find her on Instagram @ellewarrenwrites.