Symposium

S S Sy y ym m mp p po o os s si i iu u um m m

An AHSC Publication An AHSC Publication An AHSC Publication

An AHSC Publication

ISSUE ONE | FALL 2025

Copyrights remain with the artists and authors. The responsibility for the content in this publication remains with the artists and authors. The content does not reflect the opinions of the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council (AHSC) or the University Students’ Council (USC).

Wh t w ’ re about

Vice President Publications

Nicole Godlewski Hennigar

Assistant Vice President Publications

Alyssa Naoum

Creative Managing Editor

Tanya Matviyiva

Academic Managing Editor

Lina Drummond

Layout Editor

Evan Rogers

Cover Designer

Kendra Jackson

Copy Editors

Khadeejah Abdul-Khadir

Afrah Fatima

Cadence Desmarais

Iris Zhao

Social Media Coordinator

Beatrix Nemec

Alumni Relations Commissioner

Paige Hammond

Symposium and Semicolon are the official publications of the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council, published bi-annually. To view previous editions or for more information about our publications, please contact us at the AHSC council office in room 2135 at University College. Publications can also be viewed virtually at issuu.com/ahscpubs

Symposium is the creative journal for the AHSC. It accepts outstanding poetry, prose, and visual art created by students enrolled in at least one 0.5 A&H credit.

A Letter From the Editor

Dearest reader,

Living in an age of uncertainty, it is easy to become overwhelmed. We are fed an endless stream of violence, conflict, ecological peril, and technological upheaval at a staggering rate There seems to be so much happening all at once that it becomes difficult to situate ourselves amid the chaos and as A&H students, it certainly doesn’t ease anxiety knowing that AI lurks around every corner, just waiting to snatch our jobs. The theme of this issue is Regenesis, which beckons new ways of thinking about the future It challenges us to question tradition and explore our intimate opinions to help us navigate uncertainty and create space for a brighter future

Symposium and Semicolon have showcased 12 Volumes of exceptional creative and academic work in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities. Each year we are amazed at the dedication and artistry of A&H students, and it is an honour to present to you Issue One of Volume 13 The compilation of poetry, prose, visual art, and essays in this issue is truly a testament to the resilience of art, culture, and intellect We are so proud to represent such phenomenal work within Arts & Humanities and thank you to everyone who submitted.

The AHSC Publications team has been working diligently throughout the semester to produce the publication you are currently reading From carefully selecting your wonderful submissions, to reading over the final products, they have been rising to the occasion every step of the way I would like to extend my gratitude to our AVP Alyssa for all the support; Kendra for the beautiful cover art; Evan for the layout; Tanya and Lina for managing submissions; and to our copy editors, Khadeejah, Iris, Cadence, and Afrah Your contributions have been invaluable

Finally, I would like to thank you, dear reader. Whether your work is featured in this issue, or you are simply skimming through a publication that caught your eye, your support means so much to all of us on the publications team I hope you find something beautiful and learn something new in these pages

NicoleHennigar

Table Table Table of of of Contents Contents Contents

Flight Path by Emma Hardy and Gaza, 1948 by DeeDee El-Hage

Green Eggs and Ham (Figuratively and Abstractly) by Kaisa Frolander and Mountain of Light by Sienna Joshi

I’ m Leaving by William Rodrigues

Plum and Chair by Ronan Prior and Unwelcome by Stephanie Katchabaw

The Kiss by Emma Hardy and The Glow by Owen Buchta

I Pledge by Linda Long and On Our Way by Stephanie Katchabaw

Guide My Return by Celeste

Damn Kids by Teryn Romanick and Men of Today by The Inquisitor

The Butterfly by Cyrus Bechtold

Vantage Point by Meaghan Blythe Lawrence and The Scribe by Yuan Gao

Khaharam by Yasmin Hadizad

Open Pomegranates by Julia Latella and Sicilia by DeeDee El-Hage

Heart to Heart by Nicole Schumacher

The Metamorphosis by Morgan Kerr

Written by DeeDee El-Hage

Gaza, 1948

the first of five calls pulls me from slumber and my ablution freshens the feeling of my face I want to get back in bed after speaking to my shoulders but decide I’ll head over to Jedo and Teta’s place

Ahmed’s alone at his juice cart today stop for fresh-squeezed on the way Jedo and Teta, now tender and frail other named me after a nightingale

the port seeing my flag on the pole g, crunching, pebbles under my sole

I make a wish before leaving to remember this feeling

uddenly the navy waves are no more d Jedo and Teta won’t open their door

ve calls brings me down to my knees my palms toward the sky please God, when all is said and done u help them replant the olive trees?

and Abstractly)

Green Eggs and Ham (Figuratively

by Kaisa Frolander

Written by Sienna Joshi

found. I heard the Koh-i-Noor was found

Centuries ago, shrouded in a kangan

Not a crown, wreathed with tears of gold

That waged wars and bordered quarrels

On alien soil; the union murmured namaskar to Jack Latent with sterling mercy. Humbug

It seemed, as the Ganges meandered in Sanskrit And exorcised the Yorkshire ghosts.

found. Lush textiles

Frolicked with magentas and emeralds

A kaleidoscope nuanced with pearls and braided thread.

The spices; turmeric, cardamom, and cumin, Tethered to the vegetation that yielded their first breath. Mehndi was sacred and knew only

Of umber mosaics of flowers, At dusk, people eagerly awaited worshipping the moon, And zero was just an afterthought

Following July's monsoon.

I’m Leaving

Written by William Rodrigues

I'm not sure how much longer I can stay, it seems to be only a matter of time, something needs to change

I took the southbound train from the city that day, at about 5:30 the train left, and I was gone I couldn't imagine where I was going or what I was going to do when I got to this unknown place, but I wasn't scared for once I was hopeful hope was that soft hum from the wires above, barely audible, beneath the weight of moving steel.

I watched the buildings fall away in the distance, watched the sky open wider than I’d seen in years fields rolled past like forgotten dreams, rusted signs pointed to nowhere, nowhere I was going at least, and I clung to the idea that the distance might be enough there was a man across the aisle muttering to himself in a language I couldn’t understand. He kept staring at the floor, as if something sacred or broken was buried beneath it I envied him; he seemed to believe in something. I tried to read, but the words blurred, a paragraph, a line, and then just the weight of the page in my hands when I arrived, the place greeted me with a defening silence. no birds, no cars, just the sound of something old settling into its ruin the motel key was heavy in my palm, room twelve, end of the hall, a place where the yellow wallpaper peeled like old skin and the television spoke in static tongues

I sat by the window for hours, watching light decay into the dark shapes of trees with no leaves and no memory I told myself I just needed rest. a few days to breathe, to shake the dust off the soul. but the air here never moved even the wind seemed unsure of itself I walked the streets like a ghost in a town that had already forgotten the living Hollowed shops and hallowed grounds, the church locked its doors to everyone, and the only thing growing was the quiet on the fourth morning, I stopped writing the pen dried in my hand like a branch no words came. just the feeling of falling through something with no bottom that night, I stood by the mirror and didn’t see myself only a shape, unrooted unfinished there are moments when the world doesn’t end, it simply closes around you, soft and slow like a blanket of snow over something once warm and in the morning, there was no note, no sound only an open window, curtains breathing in the wind, and the sky, just as empty as the day before

Plum by Ronan Prior Chair by Ronan Prior

Unwelcome

Written by Stephenie Katchabaw

I hear you through the brittle walls and think you must be unwelcome here When I peer through the window, past the inky curtain of the sky, it’s not just you, but also a friend. You call to each other. You sound like sunshine.

The air hangs full of the syrupy sweet scent of rot. I wince but cannot pull my eyes away from you as you find refuge in the pale sea of soggy cardboard, shattered glass, and mouldy fruit. Wisps of plastic creak under your tiny feet. Your tail sweeps the sour yogurt-smeared ground underneath. You lovingly nip at a twisted ghost of a pizza crust

What would you eat if we were not here to provide? What was your favourite food before we were here? The pristine white stripe down your back is not aesthetic, but an open, infected wound –a reminder of a time when your favourite foods did not poison you, too

The melody created between you and your friend softens the hard edges that the nighttime presents My muscles relax, and in a moment, I realize that perhaps you are not the one who should be unwelcome here.

The Glow The Glow

Written by Owen Buchta

It’s quiet, and foggy, yet you can see every constellation in the sky. A light breeze pushes against my back, just cold enough to make me feel warm inside As I walk by the trees, I can hear the crashing of waves against the rocks getting louder.

There’s a gap in the branches and I can see you, bright and beautiful. You seem more complete than ever, and it makes me so happy to see you like this I see our spot on the rocks, slowly darkening with the slick of waves and I think that’s where I’ll spend the rest of the night.

When I look at you, you make me feel real I struggle to feel that sometimes The way your glow fills me can ease any pain Like on that one night, it was here at this park, when my friends all left and didn’t tell me. You were there for me that night. We were small then. Look at us now. The lake is cold tonight I can feel it rising as it splashes me The wind howls like one of your acolytes. I suppose what I am doing is not so different, but what we have is genuine. Whenever I tell someone about you and not to worry I don’t disclose your identity they always suggest our relationship might be parasocial As if I’m some cuckoo or something How foolish they are to dismiss us.

Do you remember when I found out about my parents? We lay here until dawn, when you had to go I had never felt so drained, and you left me full I’m sorry I was never able to do the same for you A part of you is missing from me and I need you to fill it tonight. Maybe if you pull the waves over me, I’ll finally be able to reach you God, you are stunning Surrounded by stars and still you make them all look foolish. That’s what I am a star. Darling, the sky is not our limit; it is only the beginning If there’s one thing my father taught me before he died, it’s that you can be anything if you believe it enough

I Pledge

Written by Linda Long

We, immigrants and their children, were promised one wish: Prosperity, Integrity and Truth

In infancy we pledged with hope and a smile

As adults the allegiance rings hollow and mocking

For how could we expect our lives to leap to unimaginable highs

When the humans next to us stand low without homes and dignity

How many of us have bled into the grass, clutching onto a hope wrung on false whispers

President, how firmly do you truly believe in the American Dream?

I look back on our past and realize

How selective this dream is!

As our ancestors toiled on railways connecting the country

They were separated from their families

Paid in nickels and dimes

While your settlers sat on mountains of gold

You praise our model behaviour, yet spit at our culture

Spit on our ethnicity

Spit on our dignity

Spit on our humanity

Still, you expect our silence

You called it the American Dream

I realize now that dreams can only appear in fantasy

And success is not bounded to One land

One language

One culture

We were promised one wish, yet you gave us another, of Poverty, Inequity and Lies

As I turn to a new path

I shall make a new pledge of allegiance

To a new path of our own

One that you never intended to build

On OUr W YA

Written by Stephenie Katchabaw

Is it embarrassing or is it profound to say that right now, I feel community most when haphazardly pressed against strangers at 9AM?

A strand of her hair wisps across my neck

His backpack rests on my side I watch the video they’re watching, peeking over their shoulder (which isn’t hard, they’re much shorter than me)

The captions are in a language I don’t recognize, but it’s a video I’ve seen before.

We both laugh silently on cue.

A keychain jingles

An affirmative beep of a pass being used.

A debate on if soup counts as a beverage or food

A page frantically being flipped

A note being scrawled

A tapping foot

A dingstop requested.

Someone’s phone rings They answer it, saying, yes, the midterm went okay, and no, they don’t know when they’ll be home, but sure, they’re able to go out tomorrow night, and of course, they’ll bring more people along

The world reclines in front of us all, ebbing, flowing, slowing, then crashing past our field of vision, a waterfall in the vast ocean of getting to class on time

Someone switches their screen over to the messages app.

“We’re on our way, ” they text,”Karl Marx if he was a sigma male ”

We’re on our way.

Guide

Written by Celeste

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end, after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy.”

Return My

Sing in me, of his follies his faults, the deeds that damned souls of many that latched onto him as he tarried upon sea and shore, awaiting the divine retribution enlightenment, that would guide him unto the bed of his covenant, lest he be rafted by the dreaded ferryman

Sing in me, of his unity, the night of everlasting days, as Selene blessed their re-consummation upon the hard wood and torn threads of a work undone, a shroud unfinished, a man unburied; Sing in me the serenity of the night, the prize thought won

Sing to me, Muse, this story once more, of a war fought, a company lost, and a soul forever damned to the lyrics of your sweet words; it is sung, and he returns to wander, harry, plunder until the diminuendo of the sun on his marriage cot crescendos into the hum of the moonlight as the next muse, songbird, poet warms their throat

Sing to me, of what is to be greater than man, to be trapped among the thorns of legacy, to feel the poke of the next teller urging me from my sleep, to re-embark on roads so known, seas so travelled, songs so sung.

Sing to me, awaken my eyes to Troy, again, peck at my liver, oh songbird, hum as I am woven back with torn-out threads, for the work will be undone under the blessing of Helios

Sing, write, tell of me, Muse, to the souls unburdened by the globe of deathless legacy

Sing of me, tear me, enlighten me, arouse me from the stupor of the poem for I am spoken I am reborn Sing of me, Muse, and guide the return of my genesis.

Damn Kids by Teryn Romanick

Men of Today

Written by The Inquisitor

They crowd the city streets. Their eyes thick with yellow, their faces gaunt and sickly. Their skin, like tight latex, showing off every rib in their chest. They are very unhappy.

And yet so many of them relish in their unhappiness. No good can come from their right hand, but still, they devour the excrement placed in it. They have grown very pale, they have grown very thin, and they have grown very weary

In many of them, all light has burned up and died. Their candle has blown out, their sun is gone, never to rise; living in perpetual night.

Still, there is some hope left. In a small few, the flame of their candle still flickers and burns, and they know the dawn of tomorrow, for their sun still rises. And in the rising sun, they have seen the revolutionary red and yellow that accompany it, and have severed their right hand.

And smaller still—though they do exist—are the men who have seen, curled around the sun, the serpent that eats its own tail. Men who have, with a sombre love for those to come, buried their seed in sterile soil.

Written by Cyrus Bechtold

The Butterfly

Peter stood on his little stoop of safety at the front of his hotel, looking out at the rain falling only inches away He could either call a cab (a waste of money, the restaurant was only a seven minute walk) or trek through the rain (a waste of a perfectly good set of clothes, and he’d be stuck all night with that uncomfortable level of moisture that constantly pruned his fingers ever so slightly).

He decided to risk it, and thought he could make it in four minutes if he ran

Wrong

When he finally did show up at the bar, he was late since he had slipped in a puddle as he ran His ass now soaked, and his ego in tatters, Peter was greeted warmly by his friends. When the group was onto their third round of drinks, Peter half listened to his friend, Max, head down on the table, sobbing about his last heartbreak (it had been a week ago, a man he had been seeing for only a month, though he claimed it was the best sex he had ever had. Whether Max was sad due to the absence of the man or, rather, just the sex, Peter could not determine). The other half of his attention (as it had been throughout the night) was on the girl at the bar behind Max Striking, obviously Beautiful, of course But it was something else that grabbed Peter’s attention about her Something ethereal, yet mundane Divine, yet distant. As if she were an angel but had long since lost her wings, and over the years had begun to forget that part of herself Peter could imagine it all; the way she had come here to be among humans, to live outside the perfection of wherever she came from Maybe she had fallen for someone, lived an entire life with them, and when they passed, instead of going with them, she had decided to stay here. Or perhaps she hadn’t decided to stay, but had forgotten that she had the option to go, forgotten that she could simply fly up, back to wherever it is she came from, and continue to live with whoever it was Or maybe she had fallen for something Art, perhaps Maybe she had seen the beauties humanity had created, had even tried it for herself, but had never been able to recreate something of her own without the years of practice. In impatience, she determined that the only way to match it was to be human entirely, so she had cut off her own wings, sawing through flesh, screaming, crying, but believing it was worth it Maybe now, she was stuck here, the twin scars on her back still healing from where the wings once were, and if Peter could just peer below her jacket, he would see them, jagged and imperfect, but perfect to him

He sees now that she is getting ready to leave, grabbing her jacket and paying her tab He knows now is his chance to go up to her, to say something. But he can’t, he can’t bear to face her in his sodden clothing, with his cheeks that are starting to flush, and his words which he knew would be halting instead of elegant

So he watches her leave.

Peter will think about this night often, how if he had only changed one thing (walking more carefully, having less to drink), maybe his whole future would be different When he gets married, he will wonder if it would have been possible with her, too Whenever he has sex, he will look at his partner’s back with a glimmer of hope, but it will be smooth, and he will know that there are no scars there, but maybe there could have been, had it not been for his cowardice And when he holds his daughter for the first time, some part of him, buried deep, as every year he suppresses it further and further, will yearn for her to have golden hair, for her to remind her mother of who she once was, that only Peter seems to be able to see.

But his daughter’s hair will remain brown and Peter will live and Peter will die, but always, buried somewhere within him, will be the memory of the woman at the bar, because even if she has forgotten who she was, Peter promised he would not

He decided to hail a cab It would be cheap anyway, and this way his clothes would be dry

When Peter arrived at the bar, he was early He sat down across from Max, who seemed upset about something, but unwilling to share in his sober state

“What’s the matter?” Peter asked

“Oh, nothing. I’m just peachy,” Max replied sarcastically, with a smile.

Their conversation remained mostly small talk, primarily because Peter’s attention kept slipping to the woman at the bar behind Max

“Oh, fuck me then,” Max laughed when Peter lost track of the conversation for the third time, “Just go talk to her. I’ll let the others know you have priorities when they arrive”.

When he finally did work up the courage to go over to her, he said nothing, just awkwardly waited for the bartender to come over. When he finally did get his drink, the bubbles burned his throat like venom as he tried to bring back some moisture so that he could speak Much to Peter’s relief, it was she who started the conversation

When they talked, they were two rivers converging, so smooth was the way their voices overlapped, how their laughs seemed to harmonize together Peter never wanted it to end But, of course, soon his friends would arrive, and he would spend the night with them catching up, telling jokes, rubbing Max’s back when he finally confided in Peter, all the while catching stray grins from the woman at the bar.

Now, as the night draws to a close, Peter sees her shrug on her coat, beckoning him to follow Quickly, Peter bids his friends goodbye, and is met with plenty of laughs when they see why he is leaving He follows her out the door, into the taxi, in which they give the driver two destinations but only end up going to one Peter hopes that their life (yes, he is thinking that far ahead), will remain much the same as their conversation at the bar He can see it unfurling before them, the way they would fill in each other’s gaps, how their bodies would become one, how they would have three beautiful children How they would take turns staying home, cooking, and bringing their children to school

It was beautiful.

But it was wrong

It started like that

(Did it? Did he just ignore the signs? Or could he not even see them through his blindfold of infatuation?). So in love were they, or at least he with her, that he decided he would not leave. Not when they had their first argument Not when she first started calling him names Not when she first threw something at him Not even when she first hit him And not when, underneath his love, he could feel a garden of resentment growing (the product of how utterly betrayed he had been by the woman at the bar, and how, he could now see, a devil had tricked him into thinking her an angel). They will have kids, but if they carry the beauty of their mother, he will fail to recognize it as beauty anymore, and instead, just a reminder of his mistake of falling for her at the bar Shortly after their third, he will be faced with divorce papers, and it is only on the last stroke of his final signature, signing away half of what he lived for to this creature (as that is truly how he will have begun to see her, something evil hiding behind a mask of beauty), that he will wish, plead, pray, for another chance, to go back to that night, to show up late to the bar, to get his clothes wet in a puddle, eliminating his courage to go up to her (oh, how different would his life have been if she had remained a fantasy, if he could have found another woman who loved him purely, then would he have been able to forget this one completely)

Then, he believed, he would have been happy.

Then, he believed, he could have lived

Vantage Point by Meaghan Blythe Lawrence

The Scribe

Written by Yuan Gao

Is it dawn or dusty doom coming down on me?

Is it you who touch to torment and tear?

Faded for the wasteland to flourish is your face, Those fields and flowers and foes and friends all a haze Eternal is the emptiness beheld in my eyes, That by your countenance bewildered becomes,

As are you wings to bird, woods to hare, water to fish Of both dread and joy are your words of worth, Of moon, madness and sweet mead, Of gold and silver scripts, seafarers in sunless seas

For sure two we are, shaper you are and shape I am, With bones breakable and breaths shallow,

But look, with your wondrous lyrics you forever live, And I, under your stern gaze, bend, bleed and burn

With trust

That to thousands of grits you should grind me

As summer snow falls from the sky

Besides Romulus of Rome and wanderers at sea

Should come another tale to tell and beguile at night

Khaharam Khaharam

Written by Yasmin Hadizad

The table was tumbling with the coloured lights and the loose sheen of the netted fabric that fell upon it At times, it jumped and cracked, but the women fell around it in movements too quick to hear, especially not over the sounds that broke the air in swift, simple strokes. The place shone with their shamelessness

I threw off my coat and giggled as a few sisters broke from the circle they had formed around this black, rickety table that we have been abusing with our songs for the past few weeks. They slipped a stained yellow shawl around my neck

I let my feet fall into their needle-point pattern, my body into its pattern of falling. I relished in the feeling of plummeting, and then recovering in a daring, naughty swoop right back up My back sighed in pleasure, my spine eating up the movement

“And how are you, Bahar?” she shouted from behind me, between laughs It was funny; she knew it was stupid to ask over the music, but we were unapologetically loud here.

“Excellent! Excellent, Sister, excellent!”

Once we finished the dance, we wiped the shining sweat off of our brows with our colourful clothes. My sister approached.

“Isn’t it great!”

“It is! I wonder what Mother would think?” I held my chest, gasping I let out a few dry coughs and my sister patted my back

“Yes, I wonder what he would think?” she smiled “Come, let us go get a drink ”

The bar was open to us on a wide countertop stacked with bottles of homemade drinks. Fruit juices, tinged with streaks of settling berry seeds, gleamed in half-full bottles lined all along its edge, and doubled in the dirty mirror on the wall. All this colour, a heavenly dream.

“Sister ”

I jumped at the bright glory of her colour-laden free voice, and swallowed with some difficulty

The music had stopped its high, beautiful, loud twanging in protest against blistered scarred palms.

“I wonder what he would think.”

When I wake at night, I don’t think. I roll a bit, sometimes flail, but don’t think too much. I think I hear him laugh, but maybe it’s just my own sound Sometimes I roll a bit in the sweet, beautiful, feather bed beneath my back and my eyes see the sky above him, wet with the grease of our kitchen, and I wish I had more words for grease; yellow, sickly jaundice.

I took a break from the laughing crowd tonight in the corner of the club, where we played several instruments that we could pick up, hitching them on our hips, and strumming on the chords. Or, we could choose one of the seven gorgeous what is the word? ornate zerbghali lined up like fearful soldiers against the wall I could not play those, but I loved to sneakily kneel by one wrapped in a yellow design, flicking my fingers against the top and hearing the hollow sound

“Sister, come back to the crowd!”

I swallow with some difficulty and re-enter the circle around that ugly old table, laughing. The expensive American radio belted our songs into the air We threw our bodies together and forward, into each other, joining each other, with permission, with chatter as the glue.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Bahar!” shouted the brown haired girl in front of me, her face shining with sweat and the youthful yellow of her shawl, silk and speckled with dirt.

“Yes! Yes!”

I tumbled into her back, noticing its smoothness, and slid my hand into hers. She threw me a girlish smile, her teeth flashing in and out from behind her lip as she panted through the dance, her eyes flashing with hope I, being older, felt my chest struggle a little, pressed between her and my sister behind me.

It is hollow, a sound contained by the boundary lines of my voice that is how I put it; it is a quivering wave travelling as an empty shape, unwilling to break I raise my coloured ribs and he sways over me, and my back writhes. His callouses dig into the throat, with which I want to sing

Unwilling to break, the yellow plain over his head fades, again, sighing, as I leave for the club.

“Bahar What would Mother think?”

“Sister.”

“You need to push him, sometime, Bahar, like you push us!”

“When I push you, we are laughing.”

“We are laughing because we are pushing, Bahar You want to sing, don’t you? You want to write, don’t you!”

“I have tried!”

“Try again!”

I swallow, with some effort

“I wish I could see you again, Sister ”

“Then push him.”

“Then he will really kill me. ”

She furrowed her brow.

“I am trying, sister, but now I don’t know if I can believe in this anymore. ”

She sighed “Khaharam, you never believed You can’t even play those instruments ”

In the night, I breathe in streams with his hands around my throat And then I become music with nameless women, until the morning slides under the curtain and flicks my eyes open, and I am staring at him asleep beside me, feeling at the bruises

I think very much in the morning After an hour I go prepare for the day, and put the layers upon my body. I never speak after he wakes, coming into the kitchen, eating, dressing, and then throwing the door open, signalling with a jerk of his head that we are going out Sunlight; she sneaks through the netted frame in my burqa in slivers

I let my frame fall into its familiar stoop, as he steps beyond the door.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Like the beat to my imaginary singing, with women I will never see behind those sexless masks

I tumble outside, head down, following his feet, keeping my distance

The dirty air makes me cough.

Open Pomegranates by Julia Latella

madonna mia

mia Sicilia

Sicilia mia sea-salt-scented stivale guarda la luna la luna

the moon

mia luna leaves long-lasting looks on l’acqua

the cypress tree

Written by DeeDee El-Hage

nella notte, in the night, il cipresso knows my nose il cipresso dice “basta! stai rubando!”

“enough! you ’ re stealing!”

Sicilian cypress smokiness

Sicilian smoke smoke, fumo fumes ho vista un cipresso in fiamme, una volta

i saw a cypress tree on fire, one time

sto fumando sigarette in Sicilia il cipresso

stealing scents of cypress smokiness

smoke, cigarette sigaretta

i’m smoking cigarettes in Sicily, stealing smells of smoky wood from cypress trees adoro questo stivale

i love this boot ecco, sono qui here, i am here

i am in my boots, in the b the bats above my head fly the bats

i pipistrelli to fly volare

i pipistrelli volano in gruppi di tre tre three tree

il cipresso

il cipresso e io

the cypress tree and me

fumare sigarette

Written by Nicole Schumacher

Nihil sub sole novum

Heart Heart Heart Heart To To

Why do we accept the march of doom?

Why do we listen to the men on the podium who tell us the future

Like a capital sentence,

With no doubt or quiver to their words?

They speak as though it is already done.

They tell us the future, high off noxious fumes,

Dismiss questioning as the antique wanderings of a slow fool.

But what is the purpose of progress that leads where no one wants to go?

Where our Earth is scorched,

And the only water is vapour pouring out in streams from the pipes

Of a computer warehouse:

Children lining up with buckets to catch what falls.

Where art is devoid of heart.

Where what is sacred and earned,

Our labours of blood, sweat and tears,

Are deemed cheap and reproduced as empty artifacts of humanity.

Stolen like the last wish on the tip of a child’s tongue, Before it is lost forever to the fading world of Imagination and innocence. Where nothing requires thought— The thing that brought us here and the only thing that can Fix what is breaking. I am not saying anything new. Like an algorithm of my own, I am regurgitating what I have learned. But the difference is: I care for the words that I speak. Even though I know I stand alone in my consciousness In a vast and possibly meaningless universe, I also know that as far as we can see, Across millions of light years, We are the only place where something can hold onto another, And invent a new world of meaning in the small space Between a heart and a heart. Something more valuable and rare Than anything bartered and sold.

Untitled by Morgan Kerr

Sharing one’s work can be daunting, so the publications team would like to thank all students who submitted. Thank you for trusting us with your pieces.

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