After Death
Let the wounds bleed. Shed the dead cells of dead weight, empty baggage. Let them be dead.
It’s noble to donate organs, but sinful to leave them feeling bored before you’re dead.
Make them work for you give them meaning.
Fight concrete and rock and bones with your bones. When you’re dead, they’ll crumble to dust anyway.
See the droplets turn to streams and race back to earth
for the heavens feel the same way sometimes. Watch a flies six thousand simple eyes sync undeniable hedonism with fate.
A death three thousand times simpler awaits.
As the final leaves fall, to her knees does the hollow mother.
The river spills its guts in gentle chorus to know its destiny.
Seurer
Clouds weep deafness in dank submission and the
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Frank
Clouds weep deafness in dank submission and the indigenous people waltz, bathed in beams of purpose to a gentle chorus.
Let the wounds bleed and dance the waltz with falling streams.
Let the blood spill, your two eyes weep.
Bleed and weep until your blood runs dry and tears hum.
There’s nothing left for us indigenous people to do until death.
Seurer
14
Frank
15
“Such a Thing of a Cure For Fear” Jazmine Campos
16
“The Layers of the 3 Eyes” Jazmine Campos
17
“The Same Life Cycle” Jazmine Campos
The sun swam up the horizon, even still while my bed kept the warm in, not letting any slip out.
Today I went to work, walked myself to my car after,
when I got home, my television set worked, every electric appliance in the house worked, heavy with power.
There were no reported car crashes on the news, nor earthquakes, hurricanes, robberies, famines, genocides.
For the first time the world ate, and laughed, and dreamed, and breathed.
While I imagined the sky splitting in half, every lightbulb on earth blowing out, power lines intertwining on their own, a static chaotic mess.
How it would feel to have my bedsheets wrapped around my body, suffocating, thinking
This might not be the worst way to go.
This morning I woke up, alone in bed
looking out my window, as the rest of the world went on forgetting how you are not in it.
Micaela Dalzell
This is How Love Grieves
18
“Funeral for My Ego Death” Emma E. Pesin 19
What is a good poem?
You ask with a side-eye smirk and hypocrite lip
I don’t know why you’re asking me.
I despise every line I write I hate every shaky sound vomited out of my throat
And I can't focus long enough to Read to Listen to Hear.
“It gets better”
My therapist preaches. But what does she know? She told me to quit my job And I did
While she leans back
In the slick leather chair
Her husband killed for Getting paid To lie.
“You’ve changed”
Mom looks right through me Like I’m a ghost
In my own home. She is not wrong. I am invisible
To her
To myself
Because I’m trying to be A good daughter.
Good daughters
Don’t kill themselves.
Amethyst Bernard
20
Good daughters
Don’t kill themselves.
Good patients
Don’t cuss out their shrinks.
Good poets Don’t Break The Rules.
Amethyst Bernard
I don’t think I am meant to be good.
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22
“big lady” Angelina Hayes
The Skin that Drags Behind
And there she goes,
Climbing out of bed
Into the skin she hung
On a broken hanger
The night before.
It’s wilted and never dries
Completely right, never heals
But always alters slightly; As if someone is rewriting
The DNA that comprises it while
Her eyes are closed.
Some days the belly
Is stretched a little more
Or the forehead wrinkles
Become clearer than the day before
(And she always notices.)
She trudges on with toes
Sometimes too long, With bones sometimes
Too squished and aching
Until one day she stares Into a mirror (missing pieces.)
Terran Noreyko
23
Until one day she stares Into a mirror (missing pieces.)
Reaching into the convoluted Glass she grabs hold Of something on the other side, Unknown but reassuring –And there she goes.
Terran Noreyko
24
“A
Jazmin Castaneda 25
second chance”
Father ’s Day
I can’t remember the last father ’s day I celebrated. I couldn’t tell you if I ever bought a beer coozie Or a “World’s Best Dad” mug. That day in June usually sneaks up on me.
I’ll send a message in the chat.
“Hey, want to grab lunch Sunday?”
“Sunday?
Father ’s day.”
Those who don’t know-Or don’t register -May think I’m careless.
“Right right. My bad. The next?”
It can come very casually. An innocent conversation.
“What’s your family doing Sunday?” A coworker would make small talk.
“Sunday? Nothing, really.”
They would look as confused as I was. Why would my family get together on Sunday? Then I’d clock the month. Right. Then there’s 2 choices-- brush it off or be honest.
Brittany Goss
A quick “Well, what about you?” usually works.
It’s a weird roster to run down.
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Then there’s 2 choices-- brush it off or be honest. A quick “Well, what about you?” usually works. It’s a weird roster to run down.
Dad?-- MIA, then dead.
Step dad?-- Complicated, then dead.
Either way, the conversation ends in pity. They feel bad. I feel awkward. Who wants that?
It’s a complicated thing being the daughter of a dead guy. Even more so when he wasn’t all that great as an alive guy.
You normalize it. You make fellow dad-less friends to laugh about the mix ups with. You use dark humor to get you through. It’s normal.
Until sometimes--
Your coworker ’s dad drops in on his lunch break, just to say hi.
Your friend’s dad drives an hour, just to hang a shelf.
Your student tells you about her father-daughter day planned, just because. And then you remember-- oh, yeah. That’s what it’s supposed to be.
Brittany Goss
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“Attempt #5672” Alejandra Ceceña 28
Put me in a cloud where my memories never fade, where Google Image helps me remember what my dad looked like the last time I saw him, sometime in ’99, I think.
Turn me into tiny pixels like in that movie with Gene Wilder, make me larger than life behind a TV screen, so I’m unforgettable to all, maybe even my dad.
This analog life is out of date, old, like vinyl records resting in someone’s house, in crates convert me to an MP3, in any genre, or maybe just my dad’s favorite, he left back in ‘99
Willie Robert Heredia
DIGITIZE ME
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but maybe then he’d hear me out.
Make a video of my faults, flaws, falls and all, have it go viral, then make a second video that shows I survived, but don’t post that one anywhere, send that one directly to my dad, via mail or e-mail, here’s his address: _____________ I mean here’s his email: _____________ Shit, Maybe Google his name, maybe his info is stuck on a web.
On second thought, post that video, have it go viral, maybe my dad’s stuck in ‘99 maybe the video can reach him from the cloud to show him I’m alive and well.
Digitize me, so my sense of self can melt then meld anew
Willie Robert Heredia
30
by
&
Willie Robert Heredia
held afloat
a string of light
energy and as I’m floating in the cloud help me find an algorithm that drops me to his location, so I can look around so I can see what his life looks like without me so I can put a face on the person with the same name as me.
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“Where Do I Go Now?” Peter Hutchinson
32
y ac w a a a y y c y
c y acc a y wa y a b y av y v y y a c
y y v a
ay ’ a az a y x c
how one can combine everything perfect in this universe into one being so nonchalantly, like it’s easy, like you haven’t spent years perfecting the art of existing ay ’ c y av y a c
because it took many men to let you slip through the cracks of their hands for you to find yourself in mine as they’re cramping and aching and failing so so badly.
wa a ay v y b a w b a i’ve died in water much larger than this b y a a a y ca w v y ’ w ay a y c a w a ay w y b a a b a color i hope to see on you
lovebomb
Efren Castro 33
Efren Castro 34
A Reminder
In grade school we learn the human heart is split into halves containing ventricles and atria—
four pockets that pump blood, one of each for each half of the heart.
The two pockets on the left side, the side that receives blood, are smaller than the two pockets
on the right side, the side that sends blood to the rest of the body.
Perhaps suggesting, that by design the heart possesses a greater capacity for giving.
Sometimes we forget these things.
John Margot
43
“The Invisible Architecture of
John Margot 44
a Poem”
45
“Fallen Angel” Joshua Peterson
ANTEAYER -After N.H. Pritchard
I. BIM’D
aytep etl etl mayske inniña hue dan brayght
giv angiv may pad resaresin 2 thro
uitl. ay uitl anuitl anay aycan sí
theeson bim’d –– ayatra pada aya núros troh
seengay ay ayay canta inoyores
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Rodolfo Avelar
canta inoyores
canta inoyores
canta inoyores
canta inoyores
canta inoyores
canta inoyores
canta inoyores
canta inoyores
canta inoyores
canta inoyores
canta inoyores
canta inoyores canta inoyores
Avelar 47
Rodolfo
u i la n u i t l a y t p e t l e t l s k e i n n i ñ a h u e ‘d a n ú o s t r o in 2 thro theeson bim’d II. ANTE
a y t e p e t l e t l m a y s k e i n n i ñ a h u e d a n b r a y g ht / g i v a n g i v m a y p a d r e s a r e s i n 2 th r o / u i t l . a y u i t l a n u i t l a n a y a y c a n s í / t h e e s o n bi m ’ d ––a y a t r a p a d a a y a n ú r o s t r oh s e e n g a y a y a y a y c a n t a i n o y o r e s
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III. AYER Rodolfo Avelar
Absorb
At the close of summer, still choking on the last piece of loneliness, at my desk
I sat lost in the images in the drywall that will never be found again if
I look away from the textured surface. A gnat like the ghost of an ember
swirls with its shadow down the narrow aisle between my face and the wall
for less than a second before I react with a smack and pin it to the white surface.
I left it mounted there.
A black head on the breadth of bright canvas wall, a poke mark of infection.
The speck of blackhole, the point on the wall that absorbs the light instead of reflecting it back out through the glass
49
J.T. Moles
door it entered through.
The gnat can do nothing but accept the gift of light, unable to repay the sun, and convert it to heat giving way to the decay the wall around it attempts to resist.
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J.T. Moles
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“Caught Between” Noah Hanselman
Learning To Swim Onland
On Sunday we went to the beach for the first time as a family since the pandemic. My aunt, who I also call sister / best friend / mother got there at 10am.
The skies painted a slate grey, looked more like dusk as families dotted the horizon, tiny clusters of galaxies.
I think: I have never experienced the beauty of science, not like art / poetry, until falling in love with a boy who studied subatomic particles.
How it must feel to believe in something that constantly tries to show you how it doesn’t exist – and I remember why we are compatible.
A few yards away, a family with a metal detector is unearthing lost atoms, I wonder how different found / revealed really are.
Hoisting my little cousin out of the sand, small, doughy palms make soft dents in mine, as he becomes an airplane on my shins
I pray he won’t cherry-pick anecdotes from his childhood like I’ve learned to. Yelling in my face “one more time, Micky!” he soars higher and higher above me.
Luckily for him, I think / I know, how this day won’t be singled-out, it will fade into memory, beyond this galaxy. Looking out at the water I do remember one thing from science class:
When currents upwell, or flow up to the surface from beneath, they sweep vital nutrients back to where they’re needed most.
Micaela Dalzell
52
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“An Inevitable Mystery” Michaela Prohov
A thumb, colossal, oily, pressed into the soil, altering the landscape forever, in total ignorance of its effects.
The breezes follow a cycle and pull the grass forward and back, making it softer than anywhere else nearby. A concave so many miles wide. Animal life has escaped to other lands, along with their sounds and footsteps, and they do not think of this place at night or in the bottom months of hibernation. The ecosystem tries to fill the available space across the concave and of course the usable depth of soil and clay underneath and of course the air above, as far as a few inches over the tops of the oldest trees, where the insects fly in nuclear formations to generate heat heading into the night time.
From the concave, human visitors have drawn thirty-seven new constellations while swatting the bugs they’ve made dizzy with all their fanciful young-talk. The visitors try to name each astrological invention, stumbling through accidental mentions of the well-worn names of relatives, partners, painters, mathematics textbook authors, unpleasant work associates, musicians beloved in adolescence, dentists, family physicians. These aren’t good enough, and so the constellations disappear
Roots get greedy and tickle tectonic plates further down, and this starts the vibration. Conversations are had under the earth, all jazzed up with ancient discomfort. There are no concessions or clever compromises. The plates sit, touching. For the surface molecules, these are
Michael Schuck
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\............………….…………concave….………………………………./////////////////////
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sustained moments of mayhem and excision as the interior mass sleeps its way through another eon.
The soil in the concave must be superior, someone thinks, and the someone travels to investigate, fills tubes, brushes rocks, pinches mosquito’s left hind leg, returns home to analyze, finds that the soil is unremarkable, and in their sleep they think that maybe the world, already so indisposed, has always been unremarkable, always in conversation with itself.
The trees are too tall for their biology. The cells, wearing their best blinders, grow out, anywhere, and the stability just isn’t there. Their kind has never been left so unhindered, and when the breezes sweep one way then the other way, the tippest parts of the trees start to fly. If there were a witness, they might worry that it will all come apart.
Evolution doesn’t have any ideas for a place like this. It will, eventually. The concave will mean something, later.
Michael Schuck
#
55
“Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” I Sam Rivas
56
“Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” II Sam Rivas
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“Invitation” Elise LeSage 58
dualities I grow tired of girl / boy
woman / man
mexican / american
the here & now / dimensions you can’t reach what you understand / what I mean grammatical regulations / a poet’s intentions
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Sam Fernandez
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“Dees Motha Fucka’s ain’t stopping me” Ali Laredo
Where the adults I grew up knowing Are passing.
It was my Tio Nacho, Three years ago, that Was the first domino
To fall, in the line That ends for everyone. Then it was my Abuela
Three months later. Then Carlos, my Padrino’s best friend Who showed me how To skateboard and Introduced me to Rap. Then it was Ruben, from Cancer, he was always at Our family parties, laughing Then Don Lara, who Babysat me with his wife, And taught me to box
To defend myself, Because I was small, And he saw himself in me.
Pete my neighbor, who
Talked to me about all things Basketball and let me borrow his Hoop, back when I was A kid with dreams to go pro. I never grew tall. He caught covid.
At times I still think I’m A boy, and able to ask them Just one more slight question. But now I have diabetes Like how some of them passed, Each wound takes longer to heal.
My nephew asks me about comic Books and movies. I let him borrow The classics. He calls me old.
I’m at that age, And it doesn’t end.
I wait for my domino to fall next.
Daniel Gonzalez
I’m at That Age
61
“Transition” Michaela Prohov 62
It’s forty-eight degrees. I’m in Leggings and a T-shirt
To build my California-coddled tolerance. I’m getting out of here one day, So my jacket hangs from my purse as i traverse
L.A. at 11:20 PM,
Fantasizing about five years later in my favorite Bristol neighborhood.
You’re crouched at your portable grill, braving this crowd of callous strangers on the off chance one or two might want a hotdog.
It’s a quiet question, a single word
Repeated meekly because you already have the answer.
And it’s forty-eight degrees, and you’re alone, and you speak like my mother, softening hard consonants so it lands in the ear like
“Haldogh? Haldogh?”
I wonder how many people walked past you
Today, how many nights youve tried
Despite the fruitless ones before. Does every sale bring you closer to shoes
For a sweet baby boy who doesn’t yet know why November is colder than August?
I dare to assume
Kimberly O’Campo
Sunset Blvd
63
It’s enough to face you,
At least acknowledge your humanity as I decline your offering. I pretend
“no , thank you” makes up for the dollars we withhold.
We have dinner reservations, where I’ll pay eighteen dollars
For a handful of mushroom and cucumber slices drenched in a green chilli sauce. So
Do you see?
Not one in our party of five
Can afford
To be late
Or get full before the pretty food arrives.
They’re walking ahead of me now. The wax museum looks so cool and Instagram is waiting.
They urge me to hurry,
And I do.
Like every loathsome egoist before me.
I keep walking, brazenly forgetting
There’s a hundred dollar bill tucked
Between my credit cards, Never thinking
This jacket I clearly don’t need
Might be your size.
Kimberly O’Campo
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“Gotta Get Out of My Head” Peter Hutchinson 65
Cory Cascella 66
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“Four for a Boy” Oisín McCool
Estoy presente evermore pressed darling of my love continues vaguely sweet marble wet marbles llevando pasando sonar loses lynching love
I want to know if you want me another marble circles on me the placement se me cansa carita conmigo ausente abrigo estos versos to yours cantan darling con pausa tranquility pensamientos writing valor stagnant pictures completely you and me acariciame promise me bailamos en semanas hacemos amor~convert my words recuerdos dark spaces marbles rotate upside down glass punch stacks around que necesito que hacer para dejar de amar: another kiss transfers fragmenting low marbled ring finger empty: hearts alcanzar partido exuberante volante cante rodillas rilan hasta death comes tomorrow pa mi amor living is beautiful pa mi amor pulses my heart circular ovals shine burnt marks half-kept presents for you?
Vacio
Anillo
Canto
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Eduardo Brandi
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“amalgam” Angelina Hayes
Ali Laredo: Ali/Thong Thong is from Hawaiian Gardens, California and is glad to meet y’all here today! He is working as a Residential Painter in California, OMG he’s so nervous, he loves fresh Lemonade with a dash of Beyoncé and is a self taught baddie! Bitch please (hair flip).
Instagram: @thongthong_n_harmony
Joshua Peterson: Joshua is a photographer, sculptor and poet with a focus on pictorialist photography. He attempts to use a series of photographs to create a narrative in the viewer’s head, most of his big projects employed storyboards and set design akin to a film production. His main philosophy when taking photographs is if he doesn’t see the scene he wants, he makes it.
Instagram: @joshpoltergeist
Efren Castro: Efren Castro (they/them) is a queer Latinx poet, editor, workshop presenter, and record collector originally from Lennox, CA. They are a UCR creative writing MFA candidate who writes, designs, and publishes their own zines. Their work is inspired by the past; nostalgia, retro 80s/90s aesthetics, and stories from their past. They are dedicated to community building through the sharing and preservation of stories often lost in modern popular culture. Their poetry zine “Heartbreak Stories” was published by Mi Casita Press in March 2020 and their art zine “Days in my Life” is available now with Curious Publishing!
Instagram & TikTok: @namehere360
Rachel Graves: Rachel is a multimedia artist from Los Angeles currently studying at NYU. Her work is heavily influenced by groups that she is surrounded by as a young adult in the big city. Through her work, Rachel hopes to provide her audience with tangible insight to how she absorbs the human experience.
Instagram: @sidesouporsalad / @urflyisdown
Micaela Dalzell: Long Beach native Micaela Dalzell, received her BA in English with an emphasis in creative writing during the pandemic. While she has since started working in marketing, story-telling is still very much a part of her day-to-day. Her writing often centers around a theme many poets engage with, that being family. She relates ego / death to the death of our individual egos, a process that she feels has much grieving and healing attached to it. Micaela believes that through understanding our family narratives can we fully accept how it has affected our egos and help us to break free of generational trauma.
Instagram: @micaela.dalzell
Audge Dwyer: Audge is a student studying Fine Art and Graphic Design at DePaul University. Her work is about obscuring the self and the body to explore ideas of change and personal development. As a 20-year-old, crossing the threshold from teenager to young adult has brought immense personal change. However, her metamorphosis into adulthood has come with a bitter twist; the beginning of “adulthood” was not only marked by graduating high
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school and moving away from home, but a global pandemic to boot. She turned 18 in September 2019 but became an adult in March 2020. Her understanding of the world completely shifted, and so did the foundations on which she built her identity. Becoming an adult brought with it excitement, independence, and found families, but it has also brought hopelessness and an identity crisis. These paintings meditate on growing up while your sense of self is falling apart. Perhaps when everything you understand about yourself turns to ash, something beautiful will materialize in the smoke.
Instagram: @artbyaudgie
Sarah Vaughn: Sarah Vaughn is a freelance writer and aspiring short fiction author who graduated from Cal State Long Beach in Spring of 2020. Sarah hopes to continue attempting to publish her work as well as further building the stories she’s been working on and more in the future.
Instagram & Twitter: @bootlegbetamax
Sam Fernandez: Sam Fernandez is a bilingual writer and artist from Riverside, California with roots in Guanajuato and Zacatecas, Mexico. Sam is a UCLA alumnus and recent UCR MFA graduate. Sam takes pride in how their queer and millennial point of view informs their writing.
Instagram: @dntgiveasam
Meg Linnan: Meg Linnan is an interdisciplinary artist from coastal New Hampshire. Meg graduated with a BFA in printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2019. Her works focus on one’s connection to their surroundings, dissecting the moments of liminality in transformative times in life. She creates her work and prints in a barn in her backyard.
Instagram: @legminnan Website: meglinnan.com
Frank Seurer: Frankie is a poet and novelist from Kansas City. He has published two poetry books and posts thought pieces on his Substack page regularly. He is currently a graduate student studying philosophy at the University of Tartu.
Instagram: @fseurer18
Jazmine Campos: Jazmine Campos is a 20 year old artist. Her artwork is very closely related to her relationship with nature and the connection we all have with it. Her art is a representation of her world view. She would explain her art as multimedia, integrating magazine collaging and using textures such as moss, leaves, string and just about anything! In her art, you will notice she uses eyes in many parts of her pieces. Eyes are very important to her, as she believes “you will understand a person so deeply through eye contact, many things do not need verbal exaggeration as it is felt through the eyes.” She likes her art to tell a story that can be interpreted any way you need it to. The possibilities and wonders that can emerge from just one magazine or canvas is amazing. When she creates her art, it feels as if her eye is expanding and she is just following
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its movement.
Instagram: @mydivinehammer and @cicobluff
Emma E. Pesin: Emma is a Brooklyn based multimedia artist. Through drawing, design, installation, video, and performance, she fabricates an ever-changing reality. Their work centers around self identification though emotional experiences in a cynical and nihilistic lens. By mimicking facades and familiarity, losing grasp onto expectation, and spiraling down a rabbit-hole of contradicting subconsciousness Pesin navigates their emotional journey of being all too human and not human at all.
Instagram: @evangelaart Website: www.emmaep.com
Amethyst Bernard: Amethyst (they/them) is a poet and artist from Long Beach, California. They love to write about queer joy and mental health. When they aren’t writing, you can find them painting, catching sunsets, or charging their crystals.
Instagram: @amethystttt_ / @artbyamethystt
Angelina Hayes: Angelina is a 22 year old self taught artist working out of small town in Montana. They use acrylics to create strange portraits and figures.
Instagram: @spoopioopii Website: spoopioopi.bigcartel.com
Terran Noreyko: Terran Noreyko is a poet, musician, and true creative. Terran has always had a passion for writing and often found herself writing short poems even when she was young. Having had her work published multiple times, Terran has honed in on the development of her poetry and aims to make a career of her writing.
Instagram: @terrannoreyko
Jazmin Castaneda: Jazmin is a Latina artist based in Whittier, California. Her passion in art continues to evolve from drawing to painting to mural work and currently glasswork art pieces. Art is her favorite kind of release, and loves to share it to the people she loves.
Instagram: @jazzzyfizzles
Brittany Goss: Brittany Goss is a writer, teacher, and lover of all things spooky. She is a native of the High Desert, but currently resides in Los Angeles County. She enjoys unconventional domesticated animals and making herself cry while writing poetry.
Instagram: @gointothevoidz
Alejandra Ceceña: Alejandra Ceceña has a love-hate relationship with making art. It’s a whole lot of ideas and inspiration but not enough motivation (or skill) to follow through. Having said that, the moments she does decide to draw, she always gravitates towards drawing faces. Her favorites to draw belong to her loved ones; they are the easiest to capture because she enjoys getting to dissect their images. This was her first piece in which she feels that she finally
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captured herself. That must be a good sign.
Instagram: @_cecena_
Willie Robert Heredia: Willie is a writer of poetry, fiction, and song lyrics. His poetry has been published in Enjambed from California State University of Dominguez Hills, ¡Pa’lante! from Cerritos College, and Art of Nothing Press’s Issue 1: Bullshit. He lives with his fiancee in North San Bernardino, where he spends a lot of his time reading and writing. He is a new father and is enjoying every minute of parenthood. Oh, and two dogs and two cats are also a part of his small family.
Instagram: @will.in.the.desert
Peter Hutchinson: Peter Hutchinson is an Austin-based visual artist. He is most inspired by nature, music, and emotions. Hutchinson’s psychedelic artwork gives the viewer a unique, visually stimulating experience every time they engage with a piece.
Instagram: @peterhutchinsonart
Mila Fejzo: Mila Fejzo primarily works with oil paint and ceramics. They draw inspiration from their struggles with mental illness, while highlighting their recovery, as well as their prior studies in the biological sciences, and their non-binary gender identity.
Instagram: @milafejzoart
Mary Catherine: Mary Catherine is an artist and writer based in Orange County, California. She received her BA in Theatre Arts from the University of California, San Diego, and is currently working on her MA in Theatre and Communication from Regent University. Past writing credits: Rounds and Love and Loss Vegas produced for the stage at UCSD 2016-2017. The River Takes was created as a staged reading in 2019 and a short film in 2020. Take The Exit and Lake Pontchartrain were produced by The Blindspot Collective as radio shows in 2020 and 2021.
Instagram: @mc_she_artsy
GiGi Kang: GiGi Kang is a Canadian writer currently studying English Literature and Creative Writing in Vancouver. You can find more of her creations on gigikang.com.
Instagram: @k.gigi.k
Jack H. Gehlhoff: Jack H. Gehlhoff is a writer, painter, poet, and musician from Millbrook, New York. He considers his most significant literary influences to be James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Zachary Schomburg, Jack Kerouac, and Leonard Cohen. He is currently pursuing a combined degree in English and secondary education at the University at Buffalo, while working on two separate and highly-experimental novels, as well as a collection of poems. Jack has also released two albums of original music. His work has previously been published by Same Faces Collective and the University at Buffalo’s NAME
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Magazine. He can be reached, analyzed, and observed on Instagram.
Instagram: @jhgehlhoff
John Margot: John Margot is a poet based in Long Beach. He prefers chocolates to candies with the exception of Haribo gummies and the occasional salt taffy.
Instagram: @yawnmargot
Rodolfo Avelar: Rodolfo Avelar is a poet and visual artist from Fresno, CA. Their poetry projects queer people of color into science fiction, the future, outer space, and queer liberation. They hold a Bachelor of Arts from Fresno State, where they studied English Literature and Creative Writing. Currently, they are an MFA candidate in Poetry at UC Riverside. As a Milkweed summer intern in 2019, they designed and edited book length poetry manuscripts. Their poetry can be found online at the Acentos Review, Pleiades, and SPORAZINE, and forthcoming in Até Mais: Until More, an Anthology of Latinx Futurisms, and ANMLY. They hope to publish, edit, & teach poetry, perfect their desk set-up, and play some video games along the way.
Instagram: @brujeau Twitter: @rodaav Website: www.rodolfoavelar.com
J.T. Moles: J.T. is an East Bay Area poet who writes in pursuit of finding the beauty between the inevitable divisions of the heart. Until the day we are made united— love your family, chosen or otherwise.
Instagram: @jt_moles
Noah Hanselman: Noah Hanselman is a 22 year old collage artist and musician from southern New Jersey. She uses vintage magazines and books to create collages that tell stories of her personal experiences with different kinds of heartbreak, love, and trauma. “Caught Between” is a collage on canvas created to express the feelings of disassociation, depersonalization, and the death of ego.
Instagram: @glueandcoffee
Michaela Prohov: Michaela is an artist and poet who is originally from East Los Angeles. She seeks to understand the mystical and psychological components that bind humans together. As she explores her own existence through her work, she tries to find meaning by using symbols and design.
Instagram: @michaelaprohov
Michael Schuck: Michael Schuck is a writer and visual artist based in Los Angeles. He lives with a cat named Jeanne. His upcoming short story collection is titled Portraits of Secession.
Instagram: @ootlundish
Sam Rivas: Sam Rivas (she/her) is a Chicanx photographer and poet born and raised in Southern California. Currently, she is a first year MFA candidate in the poetry strand at Portland State University and serves as one of two poetry co-editors at The Portland Review.
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Sam’s Instagram: @samrivasphotography and @sam.writes.poetry
Model’s Instagram: @darlajdarling
Elise LeSage: Elise LeSage studied English at Virginia Commonwealth University, where they received the undergraduate writing for poetry (2018) and creative non-fiction (2019). They have served as an editor at Amendment Literary and Arts Journal, Wind-Up Mice, and Plain China Anthology.
Instagram: @e.sages Twitter: @e_sages
Daniel Gonzalez: Born in Anaheim, California, Daniel Gonzalez earned his MFA in Creative Writing from CSULB, where he served as the senior editor of Fiction for RipRap Journal. He has written an award-winning short film Matty Groves and has short fiction & poetry published in ANGLES magazine, About Place Journal, Allium and WhimsicalPoet. He enjoys playing with his dog and writing about morality, death, and those small human moments which we all share.
Instagram: @danielgonzwrites Website: https://danielgonzalez.substack.com
Kimberly O’Campo: Kimberly is an inquisitive human, delighted vegan, and determined voter. She hosts the upcoming As I Wander podcast, which welcomes people of all different careers and passions to share the unique insights and knowledge their experiences have provided. Follow her on Instagram to be notified about the podcast and the poetry website she is considering publishing.
Instagram: @kimberly.1968
Cory Cascella: Cory Cascella is an artist from Warwick, Rhode Island. Between music, writing, drawing, & photography, he loves to help connect people and ideas.
Instagram: @thepetbee
Oisín McCool: Oisín McCool (pronounced oh-sheen) is a California based artist working towards their BFA in Illustration at Laguna College for Art and Design. With a variety of mediums, art has given Oisín a way to transform their feelings into something tangible. It stands as a catalog of thoughts they could never say, and their growing self acceptance. Their recent work revolves around identity, mental health, and the way they intertwine.
Instagram: @moonbirb
Eduardo Brandi: Eduardo Brandi -he/him- (Poetry) is a native from Houston, TX, and a proud Mexican American. His writing can be described as capturing moments of culture through a camera lens. He hopes to use his writing as a bilingual speaker to bridge understanding between people and their space in the world. He has been published through the American Library of Poetry and has attained international awards such as the Benjamin A. Gilman and Freeman-ASIA. His hobbies include playing the guitar, watching anime, and taking adventurous road trips.
Instagram: @luster_poet
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