AGAPANTHUS COLLECTIVE
LUCID
The Agapanthus Collective Issue # 1: Lucid
Spring 2021
Editors:
Junpei Tarashi
Surosree Chaudhuri
Arli Li
Cover Art by Anna Semizhonova
Layout by Junpei Tarashi and Arli Li
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
Dear Reader,
What is it to form a connection?
The Agapanthus Collective was born out of the fact that art is a labor of love; all the euphoria of acceptance, all the frustration of rejection, those ups and downs are a part of that love. Our goal in creating this collective was to recognize the heart behind each piece and make it feel appreciated. To present art is put a piece of oneself into a world that is not always kind.
“Lucid” indicates the act of bringing the clouded into focus, of consciously acting in what may otherwise appear as a dream. As lovers of literary works, it has been our dream to make our little part of the world a warmer place for creatives, regardless of background or experience. The echoes of such a sentiment have been consolidated into a “hello world,” and we have been lucky enough to receive a warm “hello” back. These newfound connections have been a solid ground in the storm of an uncertain world, and it is our deepest desire to see these groundworks grow.
Thank you for picking up this issue and connecting. As always, it is a pleasure for us to maintain this platform for others to share their love, and we hope this makes your day a little brighter.
Much love,
The Editorial Team
Salmon Packed
Robert Beveridge
off the roundabout and straight in to the eon of outmoded myths, the story of the gnoll who ate his weight in gooseberries, the faun who led a good but uninteresting life. The stories around this campfire need more action, will breed with a thousand others in streams a million years in the future.
March/Absolution
Naomi Madlock
Ambiguous pinks set the snow on edge.
At the verge, streetlamps stand ready to off themselves, each with its own crow keeping watch. Nothing startles.
Only the ears of a half-buried fawn flicker, as it listens for its mother or something terrible. It hears the trembling aspens as they splay their shadows over thinning ice. It hears the chirr of a frozen lake relenting to the dawn.
Not long now. Inflamed clouds bead at the brow. And just like that, rain cuts through the forest, red-hot and whetted by thunder.
Under duress, all that hibernates thaws. A road emerges from the lake like a colossal eel, black and palpitating.
Birches, bent double by the ache of hoarfrost, cradle their fallen boughs. And the hours pour themselves to exhaustion. After all, the sublimation of snow is but a breath long held and released; a barely-there horizon, white paper folded and unfolded.
The Big Blue Sky Ana Fores-Tamayo
The mid-afternoon dazzled, I dashing uphill to meet my friend, Breathlessly flashing my sparkling new peter-pan collar. Lovely, isn’t it, I squealed? Brashly enough to whitewash the not-so-new fading blue corduroy that flaked around my knees, My wobbly legs protruding in an abundance of joy and childhood. Let’s race to the top, I mouthed: there, where no one will see us, where no one can stop us, where no one shall make us behave como las chicas we’re supposed to be instead of these wild creatures we are– loving the world… We streaked to the crest of that hill, chanting our joy, our exuberance at being alive, me not caring that mami and papi slaved away trabajando, or perhaps not not caring, but no queriendo comprender, because we were children and we loved our lives and the merry-go-round and rolling down the hill so that my blue corduroy skirt became grass-stained & muddy but it didn’t matter: I just wanted to love the sun and the clouds and the big blue sky looming above.
When we reached the apex, I unfurled my arms to the sun, to the sky, to the fluffy white clouds scampering like dinosaurs rampaging wind, and I laughed at the speed of their getaway: where were these clouds going? My friend and I threw ourselves to the ground and slouched down, legs sprawled and arms outstretched: we saw bears and whales and hyenas scuttling through the blue, the face of God blowing them forward in an exodus of flight. Part of my mind brought back my mami ironing the three hand-me-downs I would wear to la escuela next week, plus the shorts she scrounged to buy me because I came home one day llorando the boys would pull up my blue corduroy and laugh at my pantaletas de refugiada…
I didn’t want to think of my mami and my papi’s toil. So instead I thought of the tarantula my papi brought home one late afternoon, its big hairy body with its multi-colored legs crawling about, trapped in a jar. Wanting to please his flock of children –this was one of the few things he supposed might bring us joy…
I would delight in telling my horrid schoolmates I was first to witness una tarantula viva, yet my mami scolded: ¿cómo se te ocurre traer algo tan peligroso a la casa? How dare you? she thundered. This horrid creature is poison! Don’t we have enough troubles without having that insect escape, biting one of the children? My mami could see no fun in the spider: she only fretted about doctor bills, worries. But my papi murmured, head hung low, it was crawling about, camouflaged among the stems of bananas. The boats are filled with thousands of pallets, and I’m sure a few odd insects come on board for the ride.
Much later I found out this was the festering legacy the United Fruit Company shipped weekly… I knew it was hard labor what my papi did: for months he carried those giant banana bunches on his ailing back, hora tras hora each day, Moving them out of those massive white boats reflecting the sun so as to keep the temperatures down. The company cared more about the stems of bananas than ever they cared about workers. For measly pay, my papi slaved, his life in tatters. El dinero no era bastante to feed the entire lot of my brothers and sisters, yet it was the only job he could get – not speaking the language –at least the United Fruit Company paid him enough to help us survive…
I closed my mind to it all.
I would look at the clouds now lingering across the big blue sky, I would forget my mami and papi and even my best friend Marlenè, I would stargaze, that big blue sky with the clouds swimming by, I would fill up with dreams we could survive these painful days crammed with worn-out corduroys and many-legged tarantulas, bursting with broken English and sueños perdidos. I gazed at the clouds and peeking past them I would create a colossal benevolent snow-woman kindly showering me with gifts, fantasías y dragones dancing through the red blue sun-streaked skies.
I kept staring at that big blue sky as it turned orange sunset. I would forget Marlenè and my mami and papi, I would forget the tarantula and my refugee panties… And then as I conjured the azure skyline turning violet orange with the clouds ambling off dreamily past the horizon, I witnessed a splendorous phoenix emerge, its magnificence overwhelming, giving me fuerza, the strength to get up, to go down that hill, to walk into mi futuro, Head held high.
Coro Coras, Ana Fores-Tamayo
Turned Up Leaves Bring Revelations
Candria Slamin
i asked a friend once, to come down that country road with me,
sit close in the back seat, talk nerdy things to pass
the time away. midway through, she looks out and says
“it’s gonna rain later,” points to the trees and adds “look
at how the leaves are turned up.” i don’t remember the leaves, the way they must have shown their underbelly, sea of bright green
at the sides of the road, or the clouds that must have been nearby, the gray looming at the horizon. but i remember the way she looked in the light of the windows, with the fields as her background,
familiar peanut stores that whipped by ignored for the novelty of her laugh
echoed in the cab of my father’s truck, soft music played from the radio in time with her, waiting for the rain.
Girls’ Night, Caroline Dinh
In Process
Ana Fores-Tamayo
The veined pipes pulsate in the room’s radiant whiteness. Sun straining through the shattered curtains, his voice drowns swans in heaven.
And while her breathing foot dances on in eloquence, the shadows glitter snowflakes prancing through the fairytales of ancient gods.
But as his baritone maintains undulating waves of symbolled passages, he eloquently words those silences in a science lost to all antiquity.
No colored orange blued the sunset of her dreams, though. No void could quench the hope of hopeless emptiness she lusted—
And the cycle still continues.
The torrid storm does rage an onward circling, it swivels down the hushed unbounded road,
the rivers flowing into a drought of failing senselessness.
That tacit process is determined by its voiceless essence, its muted sound is stifled once again by the silence of those demoned bells.
So the layered channels quiver in the chamber’s crucified calamity. The sun strains blood through splintered gossamer. She hears him lecture, but she dreams on furtively, while his voice muffles on and on...
Sunset in Venezuela, Ana Fores-Tamayo
One of Those Summer Storms
DS Maolalai
sky’s open. rain dropping blocks like a torn bag of potatoes hanging from the back of a drunkdriven truck.
one of those storms which come suddenly with thunder – the air still hot, and we left this morning mostly without jackets. ahead of us
the dog runs through puddles and stops to smell something dead. when we approach she shoots again, though always stays in eyeshot. the rain doesn’t much bother her but has killed our conversation. jack has a stick he picked up for some reason and all of us of course have our bottles. behind me, chrys hides her hair with her handbag.
beside us the earth of the ditch starts to rise. it was dry a second ago; now you expect toads. it’s like this for minutes – our silence a roar and our sandwiches soaking. then the sun strikes white windmills rising on top of the mountain. they shine and we watch as it approaches slowly like pastures with grey horses.
No Sale, No Return
Mike Hickman
They hadn’t included the heart. Tom told the bored guy on the phone that he remembered distinctly what he had ordered that night. He remembered the words he’d given up to the sky and he remembered the agreement as the Confirmation Star appeared directly above him.
“I saw it, mate, I saw it. That only means one thing. That order was received.”
The bored guy sounded like he was chewing something. Coffee grounds, perhaps. Grit. Grape nuts. Something of that order. “I’ve no record here,” he said, before resuming his mastication. “I mean, you say that…”
“I do, mate, I do.”
“…but we get a lot of so-called returns of this kind. A lot of them. And, you know how it is, not everyone follows through with the payment. Not every card swipes.”
Tom shook his head, even though the guy couldn’t see him. “The star, mate, the star.”
He couldn’t see it now, even though he was, again, back on the doorstep, as he’d been when he’d first made the deal. The sky was overcast, suiting the occasion, and perhaps it was an hour or two later. Or earlier. And perhaps it was harder to see without his glasses. Not that he had any choice there anymore. He’d broken them, hadn’t he? They’d been thrown, hadn’t they? The same night he’d ended up with the bruises. And the black eye.
“They missed it off the order,” Tom said. “I distinctly remember what I asked for.”
“Indeed.” The bored guy didn’t sound the ‘indeed’ type, but there it was, all the same. “Perhaps if you ran through it for me, I could check the system.”
“You do that, mate.”
“But if you didn’t follow through…”
“I’m telling you I did.” Tom slammed a fist down into the doorstep. His knuckles were still sore from the night he’d lost his glasses. And the rest.
Face down, they’d found him. He could remember that much.
“Alright, sir.” The gritty grape nut chewing resumed and there was something about that sound, Tom thought. Like the guy was somehow trolling him. But how was he to know?
Of course he knew. He knew the contents of his wishes. He knew what Tom had wished as 18
he’d looked up at that sky. The name he’d said. What he’d wanted from her. What, for a time, he had received.
For a time.
“And you saw the Confirmation Star? You said her name and it came out, you say?”
Tom rubbed his knuckles. They’d dragged against the ground, like the rest of him. Red raw, he’d been, when they picked him up.
“I did. It did. You’ve gotta have a record there on your system. You’ve gotta be able to see what you missed.”
And again with the gravel.
With the gravel.
Tom remembered the blues and twos and the boots and the chatter of the radios before he’d been hauled up by his shirt front. The same shirt he was wearing now, in fact. The collar practically detached.
If they’d heard his bloody order properly it would never have happened. She’d have said what he needed her to say and yet she never once said to him the whole time because they had got his order wrong.
He wouldn’t have had to react like that.
There was no chewing of gravel now. Perhaps the guy thought there was no longer any need.
“You asked for her…”
“I did – and I got the Star. It came out. I wanted it, I damn well wished for it, and it came out.”
“And you asked for her heart?”
“I’m telling you, yes.” Tom had been more sentimental than he’d ever been, begging the silent, unyielding sky to give him a sign that he could have it. And he’d been rewarded. He’d been given the sign.
So why would she never use the words? Coyly avoiding them every time she heard him say them.
Was that the faintest crunch on the other end of the phone line?
“Well, there you go, then, sir. We’ve found your problem for you, haven’t we?”
“We have?”
“The payment didn’t go through.”
“It didn’t?”
The guy sighed. “You asked for her heart, sir. Now, I know you think you’ve paid quite enough what with the contretemps and everything else that has you sitting there at three in the morning in your underwear talking to yourself, but you don’t need me to tell you the real price, do you? It didn’t swipe. It didn’t scan. Not even from the first when the Confirmation Star was ready to receive it. So, I’m afraid, in this instance, there’ll be no refund.” He paused, shovelling something into his mouth that, again, brought back the memory of grit and pavements and what happens when someone thinks they’re entitled to something they couldn’t even begin to return. “The lady, I’m happy to say, is likely to be rather more fortunate.”
Lamentation of Swans at a Muleskinner’s Soiree
Colin James
“Bestiality should not be construed as an idiom.”
A sign over the toilette stalls the bar, and every exit door. Your long neck, I’m digging it. Very Capucine.
Air violin you knew it was coming like circles of smoke getting more attention than fire. Please don’t leave with this dude? He carries his Fowler’s Word Usage like an excuse.
Revised by Sir Ernest Gowers.
Scenario from the Second Floor
William Doreski
The summer night sighs over us in a shrug of linen sheets. I’ve long dreamt of this moment, your sleek ego subdued at last. Downstairs, strangers chat and drink vodka and fruit concoctions
that fidget them with yellow fire. They drop naked into a pool lit by underwater lighting that scorches away their privacies. We abandoned that scene in favor of this moment of rustling and tact.
Yet you can’t reveal the last revelation, the biblical one. Your mouth works at a word
I’ve never heard before. The vowels force a smile, but consonants outweigh it. At the foot of the bed
a mirror explains us in shapes we don’t recognize unless we’re the same geometries
The summer night sighs over us in a shrug of linen sheets. I’ve long dreamt of this moment, Euclid defined by their angles. Touching the surfaces of which you’re apparently composed fails to move heaven or earth. Maybe the people downstairs sporting their raucous party hats feel the textures that elude us. Should we have downed another drink or two to numb our parts?
You’ve already fallen asleep in a lack of color that even in a dark room looks suspicious.
Something creeps under the covers and cuddles you to its coolness, ignoring my whispered dismay.
Tender Cherie
Jerica Taylor
My eyes go uneven when the headaches are bad. One droops and you can tell as soon as you look at me what I need. I’m so overstimulated I can hear the depression of the keys before the note. Time and perception go woolly with pain. You start to play the sweetest song, wide sweeps of melody recalling a town we’ve never visited. I can’t speak the title, aphasia setting in. I say ‘cherie,’ somehow both the song and my affection. Your huff of a laugh is a held note, the soft thunk of the foot pedal.
Candy Floss, Jacy Zhang
Nature
DS Maolalai
the coffee steam rasps through the dark hairs on your elbow like a posse of tigers prowling a over documentary screens.
on the side of the building our windows make colour; photographed flowers blooming from cacti.
I get up, check the sausages, hippos in the pan. break one with a fork and offer it.
do craneflies bite?
Jane Ayres
you stink of lies but i only have eyes for you better not go into the woods today.
For the Record
Shareeen Murayama
In Japan, Nomura’s jellyfish grow from rice grain to over-sized humans like growth charts & percentile trends
Arms akimbo with powdered donuts on lips
T-shirt sizes correlate with age: size 7
Increased heat causes divisions to deploy targeting power plants & fishing nets
Shoe sizes don’t differentiate for gender Chart change: children (4-6), youth (7-12)
Cherubic bulbs side-stroke the current their carpeted beards of varying blushes
Immunization 11-12 years: HPV (or as early as 9)
They pause & propel through inner cities an underground army cradling prey
They’re predators with no brains & no hearts underaged women & men: a lethal sting
At age six, baby teeth are toggled & rooted allowing the mouth to hold in what’s permanent
to convey
Grace Alice Evans
i sit and listen and grieve in an eagerness for an undoing of the stitches on my lips to be capable to convey again
to sear my esophagus on the charring fury of the thousands of dialogues clawing within me. not strong enough yet to quell the fear which warps thoughts into mangled effigies.
the knight, the damsel, the rogue
Joyce Liu
Tell me how you’d kill me and I’ll kiss you even harder. I’ve always wanted to taste my blood on your lips.
How would you do it? Push me in front of a car? Let me lick poison off your fingers? I think I’d do it. I think I’d stare you in the eye and swallow it all without breathing. I’ve always wanted to be destroyed at the hands of another for once instead of my own, and your hands are beautiful, pale and pianist and precise around my neck, between my fingers, by my cheek. Better you than me. I’ve always liked other people more than myself.
If it has to end, at least make it pretty. Let the blood pool just so by the corner of my mouth. Weep nicely for me, drape yourself over my body. You know how to do it. You’ve been acting since you were born, just like me, just like him. The knight, the damsel, the rogue. Medieval archetype or modern tarot card, i just know the story is as old as we are. It sinks into place with narrative heft, like blade into bone.
You and I fit together in a way that is perversely right. We are driving ourselves off the edge of a cliff but god does that engine hum. The seats are heated, the steering wheel too. It’s a pity you only know how to kill yourself with it.
What a waste of a wonderful night.
You are guiding me out of the tower. You are locked in the tower. I’m saving you from the broken keys, I’m hacking my way through the thorns, I’m battling the dragon but you never make it out. I chip a small hole in the wall and say, well, that’s all I’ve got. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I tried.
I’m sorry too.
And then there’s a rogue, and he steals hearts and keys and swords as well as gold, and he’s wearing a crown of it, and I want to believe it’s his but we know it isn’t. There are so many things I want to believe but I know I can’t.
You can’t own people, which means you can’t steal them, but lord does he try anyway. I think he almost does it, but quick fingers often make for quick tongues, quick hearts. The damsel can’t keep up, so she gets left behind.
I don’t want the rogue to be part of this story. He doesn’t fit, makes it ugly, rips up the edges, frays the hems. He’s a stick but he’s stretching the waistband, he’s a rogue and he’s stealing the narrative. He’s mean and ambitious and ruthless and everything you hate to love and love to hate all rolled up in one. He makes you feel flattened. He makes you feel glowing. He makes you feel, and you think it’s enough until one day it isn’t, and you are scrabbling for stones to swallow.
It’s supposed to be us, supposed to be knight and damsel. Rescues from towers and kisses in caves and flowers against dark hair. That’s how the story goes, that’s how it was going, until you had to go and run into a rogue with a stolen crown.
And by you I mean me, my knight, because sometimes I can’t bear to look at myself in the mirror anymore. Thanks for the armour. I can’t say I’ll give it back.
Speaking of back, here I am again, I’m sorry I let the rogue take me, I’m sorry I left. I’m always apologizing and you’re always forgiving and one of these days I wish you would just take my sorry neck and end it but I know you won’t. It’s why I love you. It’s why I leave you, again and again. I am always looking for a way to implode. Do you just wait for me to come back? Do you just sit in your tower, o knight, and watch it all happen?
When do you stop watching? When do you stop being symbol and start being story? Where does it stop, and where does it begin? I’m tumbling through brambles and cutting myself on branches and you just wait for me to come home to the tower. Maybe you’ll have dinner ready. Maybe it’ll be a knife.
Tell me how you’d kill me and I’ll kiss you even harder, even if you would never do it. Fantasies work until they run out of road and we’re not at the edge of the cliff yet, love.
Do you think you’d kiss me as we went over? Do you think you would want to?
Apologies
Practicing Into Your Voicemail Excuses
Jo Goykhberg
I just want you to know that nothing should hurts as it everything shouldn’t in bed
I am lying to you
For the thousandth time some consistency
hoping the same choices will somehow lead to different outcomes night’s a full rest will be good for me day’s
(I repeat for the thousandth time) sleep
I am trying to dream
but it seems I can only live in extremes awake
I am always asleep hungry
I am always bloated freezing I am my soul out sweating dreams in intangible days that slip through my fingers like sleek fish in a river . friends
No one needs me but my self and even that relationship is tenuous.
I am trying — desperately — to be the worst person I can leave just to give you a reason to stay have always been Our choices are set in stone. will always be We just have to make them first. I lie— The phone beeps an ending. I dial again.
I try to gloss over the tweet about makeshift morgues in the hospital and focus my attention to the thread that starts with “meeting my editor in the beforetime”
—after Eve Ewing’s Twitter thread on March 26th, 2020
Haley Winkle
in the beforetime there were fewer birds and it was winter. there was no consistent snow silence comfortably coating sound. digressions were alerted. in the nowtime I can tell it’s raining even without glasses –the parking lot below is darker than earlier. in the nowtime I’ll talk about time as it corresponds to the weather: i’ll walk to your house before it rains and throw the book into your mailbox. in the nowtime I’ll read an article about grief while it rains and feel dry comfort in my towel and try not to miss the beforetime too much. while it rains, in the nowtime, and in the futuretime, and in time, I’ll succumb again; for all I know, it might not even be raining.
Things I Have to Do Today
Naomi Madlock
All morning I have shouldered this damp-swollen door, warped and groaning, shinbones bowed from pushing against the futility. In the end, one or both of us will break.
All morning bent at this goddamn desk pressing pen nib to empty page the way one rubs a dog’s nose in its own mess: Look at what you haven’t done.
Every hour every tendon drawn taut under the thunderstorm thrum of tension headache stacked on tension headache praying this will be the one that pops the top
clean off, thank god, I can’t stand these dizzy spells, coffee spills wringing the cloth until my wrists give out, after all, it might be better to snap. The finality of it.
Electricity and Water Don’t Mix, Caroline Dinh
Samsara
Robert Beveridge
when he collapsed it was not a dramatic thing
he had time to place his bowl of cereal on the counter before he slid to the floor traces of the blue terrycloth of his bathrobe got stuck in the cracks he lay on the floor and tried to breathe and hoped someone would notice
gaslights
Joyce Liu
I am all burnt eyes shaken hands wobbly mouth and you
You are always a pillar of justice. An upstanding citizen. Mouth set like you know what you’re talking about. You tilt your head like I’m stupid. Stupid for you, maybe, because every mask I’ve ever worn seems to melt under your eyes and I’m left there with nothing to hide the worst parts of me. The shame, the need, the raw carcass of my heart after it has been left out in the rain, which nobody ever, ever wants.
Do you want to know about it? Are you listening? I wanted to give you something else, something other than the clearance rack of my thoughts, but I don’t think there’s anything I can give you anymore that you would take, so why bother trying to make it better?
We’ve never been able to square the circle and we won’t start now, love. I know us better than that. I finally do, know it like breathing, like my phone password, like the swipe of a thumb against the corner of my mouth, like sharing breaths from across the room and looking away. I still call you love because i don’t know how not to. Because despite everything, maybe some part of me still thinks love tastes like blood and tears, like iron and salt, like the taste of failure and restarts. Because maybe I miss being touched so much that I’ll take the punch for the moment I feel warmth against my skin, and bleeding is a kind of art too, in that something from deep inside of you is made external. Every time you hurt me you rewrite the world. Every time, it’s a kind of terrible art.
Here’s what I found in our pockets. Three quarters, five dimes, a throat that never opens again, hands that don’t stop shaking, a little stick of gum, two years of anguish and anger with nowhere to go. Keep the change. I don’t need it. I think you’ve left me with enough.
Do you ever feel like you’re selling yourself? When you’re in the interviews, the group chats, the DMs. When you’re picking at the pieces of yourself and dividing them up. You never said a word
you didn’t need to. You don’t give away your pain for free. Not like me, so ready to carve up my body for other people to eat. You’ve only ever done that for yourself. But then, I’ve never been particularly attached to this body anyway. I’ve always wanted less of it. Everything else is just a means to my end.
You know, I think I will never stop hearing you in my head. Every time I discredit knives disguised as words, you are there, asking if I’m running because they’re knives or because they’re true. That’s the magic of your gaslights. I can never be rehabilitated. You’re the addiction I can’t kick, because I will always have a dealer. Sometimes, in spaces between breaths or heartbeats, when it gets too quiet, I miss you the way the scorched tree misses the lightning bolt. Not because I think it’ll be any different this time, not because I think it won’t hurt as much, but because for one brilliant moment, I was on fire. I was something worth looking at.
How Badly Do You Wish to be Free?, Jessica Li
Oh, to be nothing!
Jo Goykhberg
As my break-neck body races against itself barely fitting in my fabric-skin, rustling against it, sticking out in odds & ends, the nook-cranny of my belly button anchors me to the earth, a hook pulling me down, keeping my head from the clouds.
It is raining and the earth-wet is getting on my shoes reminding me I am in the bug’s bedroom now being swatted at with old dish cloths.
Would a god be disappointed? Are they only electric currents wild flesh-connection hallucinations?
It is raining and the leaves are singing their pattering hymn, offering praise to the wet-god.
Humans put creature-skin on bare-skin and call this fabric-skin their bodies.
Humans poison themselves and call that the good-pain and then make their own rainstorms and build their own solitudes and call this the bad-pain.
(Sometimes I am not human. Sometimes I run naked and think I am only and always have been nothing, a delusion, an amalgamation of flesh-connection currents.)
world submerged
Jane Ayres
we are water will all be water (sooner than we think) a blanket of rivers & oceans no sanctuary in the (d)ark. lights out.
Night Blossom, Anna Semizhonova
Contributor Bios
Based in the UK, Jane Ayres (@workingwords50) re-discovered poetry studying for a part-time MA in Creative Writing at the University of Kent, which she completed in 2019 at the age of 57. She enjoys Open Mic events, is fascinated by hybrid poetry/prose experimental forms and has work published or accepted in Confluence, Postscript, Dissonance, The Agonist, Lighthouse, Viscaria, The Sock Drawer, Streetcake, The North, The Poetry Village, Scrittura, Door is a Jar, Marble and The Forge. She was recently longlisted for the 2020 Women Poets Prize.
Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Blood and Thunder, Feral, and Grand Little Things, among others.
Caroline Dinh is a Vietnamese American writer and artist. She is the founder of Backslash Lit and has work published or forthcoming in perhappened mag, Ample Remains, Strange Horizons, and Flash Point SF. Talk to her anytime about leitmotifs—she doesn’t know too much about them but she wishes she did.
William Doreski has published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His work has appeared in many print and online journals. He has taught at Emerson College, Goddard College, Boston University, and Keene State College. His most recent book is Stirring the Soup. williamdoreski.blogspot.com
Grace Alice Evans (she/they) is a LGBTQ+, mixed-heritage poet, writer, sound/visual artist and survivor, whose work explores living with mental illness, trauma, recovery, and the dichotomy between the inner and outer worlds. Grace’s social media handle is @gracealiceevans.
Contributor Bios
Born and raised in Virginia, Jo Goykhberg (he/she) feels strongly influenced by both deeply personal issues on a microcosmic scale, as well as the natural world which seems so close yet so far away in suburban areas like the kind he grew up in. Being Jewish and queer, from the south and a child of Russian-Jewish immigrants, he has always felt that he exists in contradictions, and this strongly influence his work. He is currently pursuing B.A.s in English and Biology from Case Western University
Mike Hickman (@MikeHicWriter) is a writer from York, England. He has written for Off the Rock Productions (stage and audio), including a 2018 play about Groucho Marx. He has recently had both poetry and fiction published in (amongst others!) EllipsisZine, the Blake-Jones Review, Bitchin’ Kitsch, the Cabinet of Heed, the Potato Soup Journal, and the Trouvaille Review.
Colin James has a couple of chapbooks of poetry published (Dreams Of The Really Annoying from Writing Knights Press and A Thoroughness Not Deprived of Absurdity from Piski’s Porch Press). He lives in Massachusetts.
Jessica Li is an artist from San Diego, California. Among her prior projects is a collaborative graphic novel about environmental stewardship, as well as several murals.
Joyce Liu is a teenage poet from Ottawa, Canada. When she’s not writing she can be found taking long walks in the woods and watching Formula 1 races. More of her work can be found in released and upcoming issues of perhappened, FEED, and Burning Jade Literary and Arts Magazine.
Naomi Madlock is an exhausted poet from Bristol, UK. Her work has appeared in Razz and UEA MA Poetry Anthology. She won the Gamini Salgado prize for her dissertation titled “She Writes in Golden Ink: A Hive of Poems Celebrating the Femininity of the Honeybee”.
Contributor Bios
DS Maolalai has been nominated seven times for Best of the Net and three times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019)
Shareen K. Murayama is a Japanese-Okinawan American poet and educator who lives in Honolulu, Hawai`i. She spends her afternoons surfing and her evenings with her dog named Squid. You can find her on IG and Twitter @ambusypoeming.
Anna Semizhonova is a college student sharing her time between Virginia and Rhode Island. She is fascinated with the images of nonexistent worlds that fiction writers evoke in their texts and aspires to bring those images to life. While not attending an art school, she finds other ways to pursue her aspiration of becoming an illustrator, whether by working on student magazines or vagabonding art classes she couldn’t register for.
Candria Slamin (she/her) is a recent college graduate from Virginia, who is trying to find her place within the writing world. Being a black and gay woman, Candria has taken to poetry and nonfiction to explore the social intersections of her life. In her spare time, she is busy being a nerd on the Internet.
Jerica Taylor is a non-binary neurodivergent queer cook, birder, and chicken herder. Their work has appeared in Dream Journal, Stone of Madness, FERAL, and perhappened. She lives with her wife and young daughter in Western Massachusetts. You can find them on Twitter @jericatruly.
Contributor Bios
Being an academic not paid enough for her trouble, Ana Fores-Tamayo wanted instead to do something that mattered: work with asylum seekers. She advocates for marginalized refugee families from Mexico and Central America. Working with asylum seekers is heart wrenching, yet satisfying, she states. It is also quite humbling. Her labor has eased her own sense of displacement, being a child refugee, always trying to find home. In parallel, poetry is her escape: she has published in The Raving Press, Indolent Books, the Laurel Review, Fronteras and many other anthologies and journals, both domestically and internationally, online and in-print. Her poetry in translation with its accompanying photography has been exhibited in art fairs and galleries as well. Writing is a catharsis from the cruelty yet ecstasy of her work, she claims. Through it, she keeps tilting at windmills.
Haley Winkle (she/her) is an Ann Arbor-based poet, artist, and collector of floral tattoos. Her poetry can be found in Hobart, Funny Looking Dog Quarterly, Hooligan Magazine, and Whatever Keeps the Lights On. Her analog photography can be found in Honey & Lime Lit and Hel[icon]. She Instagrams as @nutellaisgreat.
Jacy Zhang (@JacyLZhang) studies English at the University of Maryland and interns at MoreWithUs - Everyday Jobs, a job search website. Her photography is published or forthcoming in Riggwelter, The Lumiere Review, the winnow magazine, and elsewhere. Besides school, she practices wushu martial arts and worships Jesus with her campus fellowship.