The Junction 2025

EDITORS

Amelia Ayers

Zoe Priscilla Davis

Matthew Faltas

Leo Kouklanakis

Damien Niesewand

Cat Osorio

Kai Peña-Chavez

Duly Rosenberg

Michele Sherman

Vail Varone

Sabrina Zami

Bridge /

Evan Frisch

FROM THE EDITORS,

It’s been a difficult year for most people, most likely, and we here in the English Department are no exception. Every day it feels like there is something new designed to drain our spirits or make us doubt or place in the world. It’s altogether too easy to feel like we are surrounded by enemies, that we cannot trust those around us, and that we are powerless in the face of something bigger than ourselves. Making this magazine reminds us that none of these things are true. As a cohort, we’ve spent a lot of time this spring talking about our role as artists and as students. It is true that there is much that is out of our control; there is also much that we can take control of. One of the most powerful things that any of us have access to is our voice. To speak up against injustice, or to speak for ourselves when nobody else will, is a terrifying prospect -- but it is also one of the most extraordinary gifts.

We have been so, so blessed by your voices this semester, Brooklyn College. Whether you submitted to the magazine and your powerful words appear within these pages, or you attended the open mic, or you commented on our blog posts, you have all been so present and prescient and stunningly, unapologetically alive. It has been a gift to hear you share your stories. It has been a gift to share our stories with you. Wherever we meet next, please make sure you carry your voice with you always; do not let the boundaries of this campus dictate your ability to speak. What you have to say is worth sharing. You inspire us every day.

The interns also wanted to take a moment to extend our most heartfelt thanks, admiration, and adoration for Dr. Roni Natov, who founded this internship long before any of us were part of it. She has given over fifty years to Brooklyn College; she has touched countless lives both inside of the English Department and outside of it. This semester was her final one as the fearless leader of the English Department interns; she will be retiring in the summer. She has more than earned this rest, but she will be dearly, dearly missed.

Dr. Natov: thank you so much for facilitating this community. We owe you such an enormous debt for allowing us to reach each other and helping us to understand the impact and magnitude of our voices.

Reader, thank you for being here with us. We do not take your presence for granted, and neither should you. We hope to meet you again many, many times in the future — as fellow writers, as peers, as comrades, as friends, as human beings, tied far more together by our shared experiences than we are separate by those who would hope to divide us.

Your friends at the English Department, Riverrun English Majors’ Counseling Office thejunctionbc@gmail.com thejunctionjournal.wordpress.com

Follow us on Facebook and Instagram - @thejunctionbc

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROSE & POETRY

Brent Thomas Whiteside 6, 27, 42

Makenzie R. 7

Leo Kouklanakis 9, 30, 73

Tavina Martha 10

Damien Niesewand 12, 26, 58

Mira 14

Cat Osorio 15, 51, 77

Paradise Flower 16

Brenna G. 18, 69

Mateo 20

Dana Smith 21, 76

Amelia Ayers 22, 41, 55

Liam Gannon 25, 34

Philip Reari 28

Joseph Edelheit 32

Staylin Fernandez 35

Rami Mansi 36

Michele Sherman 39, 44, 53

Sabrina Zami 46, 67

nanikø 47

Naomi Clarke 48

Duly 50, 63

Kai Peña-Chavez 54, 79

Joe Bucci 56

Keke 59

Matthew Faltas 61, 64

Zoe Priscilla Davis 65

Lise Augustin 68

Julian Rubin 70

Vail Varone 72

Parley Cook 74

VISUAL ART

Damien Niesewand Front Cover, 17, 32, 69

Evan Frisch Inside Cover

Angelina Lambros 5, 70

Melanie T 6, 10

Leo Kouklanakis 8, 36, 54, 63

Chthonic 11, 35, 51, 52

Nick Torres 14, 20, 39, 42, 46, 50, 76 heretic 18, 25, 26

Joseph Bucci 22, 74

Duly 24, 60

Mateo 27, 66

Winnie Chow 31, 40, 78, Back Cover

nanikø 59

Apollo Bual 65

Caitlyn Osorio 68

Michele Sherman 72

Praying / Year of the Lily

Brent

Thomas Whiteside

This year i pray you make me a lily

Allow me to meet potential, surround me like clouds i ask this be the year i bloom Lord Enlarge my reach

Where i go grant me grace

Lord make me a lily

Let every dream have its day in the sun

Allow me time in the sun

The sun who now shines for me

Water me, Lord Make me new Make me a lily

Lord please make me a lily

Old Wet Dog

Makenzie R.

The droplets of cold rain pound on my fur Thunder roars and shakes the wet ground

Lightning makes the dark sky light up

You left me outside

I was a bad girl

I bark and bite

I scratch at the wet door with my brittle nails

I cry with whines

Let me in, Put a muzzle on me

I won’t bark again

Put a shock collar on me

I won’t run away again

Pet and hold me, please.

Why are you ignoring me?

Did I ask too much?

Is it my disorder?

Is it my father?

Is it my mother?

Is it the dogs that swoon over me?

Why can’t you let me in?

Let me in.

The cold numbs my petite body, You’re going to kill me.

I’ll change everything if you just let me in

The light in the house flashes with warmth

You hold a new fat dog in your arms

While I’m in your backyard

Scratching at your door

My bones are now shown

You are starving me.

Let me in.

I’ll be different this time.

I promise.

Sheep Drinking Water / Leo Kouklanakis

Their Horns

Leo Kouklanakis

My dad is power tripping. I’m listening to the vacuum cleaner sound from the new vacuum cleaner he bought to win the feud with the neighbor. I wish this wasn’t typical–him cleaning out of spite. Doing all these actions. Going downstairs to check for the package, struggling with it in his arms through the door. Cutting the tape apart with the blade of the scissors. Unboxing. Unwrapping everything. I’m trying to write and so bored of all his noise.

But my mom is listening as he goes on unwrapping, assembling, talking about how the neighbors will not be allowed to take this vacuum. This new possession. He’s doing the carpet in the hallway. She comes over to take a picture of him, saying, “This is a momentous moment!” He sort of laughed and told her to stop, clearly relishing the attention.

I found out today at work, vacuuming in the dark, that the light on the front of the vacuum cleaner makes the dust more visible. Headlights for the floor. Small objects and big shadows. The dirt and the crumbs are never ending.

I’m only mopping the parts of the floor that have paint. Orange and red. Green. I thought I was getting stronger, but everything feels heavier today. The mop, the water.

Horns on bighorn sheep can weigh up to 30 pounds, says the Fast Fact on the calendar. It’s March, which my mom says is the worst month, where it’s still cold and we get no vacations from school. My best friend’s birthday is in March, and that makes the month worth it.

Everyone keeps needing to use the bathroom after we’ve cleaned it. They come in with their shoes on, stepping hesitantly, not wanting to ask but needing to ask. Yes, we say, yes of course you can.

I think about something and then I can’t remember it. I learned that dental hygiene might help prevent Alzheimer’s. I learned that glue used to be made from animal hooves and bones and horns. I get into a pointless discussion about gender in the comments. I have the internet to thank. I check and check again to see if he responded so we can keep fighting.

I was babysitting and we were looking through the window at the sunset and its pink clouds. When I see the sunset, it’s always so beautiful I have to put my head into the pillow. She turned and planted herself facedown on the bed, head burrowing into the pillow. I told her I feel that way, too.

It must feel really good for the bighorn sheep to set their heavy heads down, all 30+ pounds. Resting, breathing out into the night, bellies rising and falling, chins in the dirt. In the dark, their horns invisible.

The Sun and Humanity

Tavina Martha

I think the Earth is dying. I don’t mean to sound gray like the moon, but I can see how the Earth suffers every season. The Moon looks beautiful as ever... It comes out when I leave sometimes... I wonder why. The other planets are so far away from me... I wonder why. I wish I could help the Earth... it cries out to me sometimes, but I don’t know what to do. The Moon tries to help me but there’s nothing that can be done except to shine for the Earth.

I think there’s a type of species down on Earth... Humans, I think they’re called. These humans are ruining the Earth! The Moon tells me at night they do terrible things! It’s a shame that they don’t appreciate the Earth enough. Every time the Earth spins around, I see the destruction that these humans leave behind. I don’t understand why these humans hurt each other. Why? They won’t live forever... Earth won’t live forever... Nothing lasts forever... I won’t even last forever... It’s all pointless. Destruction is pointless... Hatred is pointless... Earth will die for nothing.

As pessimistic as I am, I will hold on to hope, and I will keep shining for Earth... while I can. Love and hope will help Earth live longer. It will help humans live longer. I’m sure of it.

America, After All

Damien Niesewand (after Allen Ginsberg’s America)

America I have been legislated into nothing.

I woke up today, I seem to still exist.

Your Sharpie doesn’t bleed like I do.

America aren’t you tired yet?

Same old story old jokes old men old wounds.

Sixty-nine years on and you haven’t answered the question. I would send it again but DeJoy took my last envelope with him.

He said that you’re quite busy, I can wait.

America when will you forgive us for wanting to live?

When will you hold hands to cross the border?

When will the acid finally burn a hole through your tongue pool in your jaw til you can’t purse your lips to spit?

America they took my passport.

America I am not being a romantic when I say I can never leave you.

Against all odds you still have your admirers, I don’t know what they see when they look at you.

I could tell you what I see but I don’t think you’ll like it.

I’m writing all this down so I’ll remember.

America I wish that I could say this isn’t who you are, but I’m in your tear-stained library’s history section and frankly it’s not looking good.

Tomorrow you’ll go over some of these in Sharpie.

America I am sick of you.

You make me sick and tell me it’s the Red 40 it’s the vaccines it’s the MSG.

I saw the bald eagle on your seal has started coughing, its pate is going purple.

America what does the CDC have to say about that.

America I still spend my life looking for the good in people but I give up on finding it in you.

My therapist says I’m slow to trust.

I sit on the suicide hotline and tell scared shitless strangers it’s going to be alright.

America I’m scared shitless, is it going to be alright?

The school bus driver told me she won’t let those kids go where she can’t follow.

I have never not been followed.

Your hot breath at my nape and in the sky, no wonder it never snows.

America you tell me you’re ready to be great again.

America I have yet to see it.

You pull your sword to cut the knot that strangles the world threads of billionaires melting ice caps fascist genocidal states profits over peoples a thousand and one phobias and isms you pull your sword to cut the knot and you put it to the neck of those just starting to rise from their knees.

There was another shooting yesterday and California burns.

Shiny girl in a dress worth twice my rent makes Oreos from scratch.

Five listicles in my inbox to tell me five reasons each I can’t trust my eyes.

The obstetrician says it’s the healthy rebirth of a nation and insurance won’t cover it; the hospital bill sucks its teeth, says well it’s gonna cost you those huddled masses.

America are you tired of winning yet?

America can I tell you something?

I am tired of being brave without being free.

I try to bite the hand that feeds me but my bone-hungry teeth only fight each other.

When the subway’s between stations I can pretend the world already ended.

America it’s just you and me left. You drove away everybody else.

We could sit in the dark and tell secrets.

America is there anybody that you like?

I know it isn’t me. It isn’t the students reaching down your throat grasping blindly for your conscience or those who fought to be here instead of blinking in by chance or the DEI woke moralist radical left illegal aliens getting sex changes in prison, we pry the front doors open and steal silver spoons from babies’ mouths, we pick your slivered history from our bloodied palms and hold it to the light. Was it such a crime to ask if you could love us?

If we could build a home here?

America I want to go home but I don’t know where it is.

America I want to say I don’t know who you are, but I’m afraid that I do.

You don’t know me. I don’t exist. The Sharpie says so it must be true.

America I woke up today, I seem to still be here.

My gums are bleeding where the new teeth burst through, I’ve got more bite left in me.

If you don’t see me yet you will.

In art therapy we did fingerpainting I can sign my name in red I can strike your order through. America I am digging in my transgendered heels.

I Am Me

Mira

Who am I?

I don’t really know.

I can tell you my experiences, my choices, my likes and dislikes. But I don’t feel that shows the true me. I can tell you about the anxiety I once felt when I woke up or the constant thoughts of failure in my head. But I don’t feel that shows the true me.

I have been described as kind, caring, even seen as a mother figure. I give advice but don’t take it. I can tell you about my wonderful friends who have helped me along the way.

I am many things to many people, but I have yet to discover what I mean to me.

I don’t know what shows the real me and I continue to ask myself… Who am I really?

I am still on a trip of self-discovery. And every day my happiness grows and my fears seem to fade away. I work towards a goal that excites me. I have come far and learned far more. You asked who am I? I guess you can say I am me.

For Their Viewing

Cat Osorio

(inspired by Sean Baker’s Anora)

What is a man? He is the bridge I must cross for my survival. And for men, I am the ballerina who dances and twirls effortlessly for him. I let no opportunity for sweat to appear on my body. My clothes cling perfectly to me, my smile always on display. My arms and legs stretch out enticingly, my backside slightly pushed out to accentuate my curves—all for the pleasure of their viewing. They supply me with survival, and I give them intimacy, an escape, or whatever they might crave.

He is not a dream; he is not a refuge; he is a job. This sentiment, which has been programmed into my brain, cycles over and over again. I don’t let myself forget it, and neither will they—until you came. You came in on your white horse and offered me a dream. I knew sooner or later my legs would give out, so I let you pull me so that we could ride together. They always say that dreams aren’t meant for people like me, but I’m only 23, after all. Your life was so tantalizing, and I always dreamed of a better life. What else was I supposed to do?

Your wealth was projected all over your walls, and I thought that I’d fit in quite nicely as an ornamental figurine. You cloaked me in fur, dressed me in diamonds, flew me halfway across the country just to tell me that you loved me. And I believed you, because I didn’t know how disposable in your world I was. I was the side quest in your hero’s journey, the funny story you tell just to prove how wild you were in your youth, and your “fuck you” to your parents. Your creation of me was made to appease you, to take on your problems. I was so quick to mold into your hands, forgetting that even though you made me promises, you were still just another transaction.

When I was finally tossed aside, I didn’t cry; I couldn’t cry. The me that was with you wasn’t made for that. I was still the girl who twirled and danced.

So, a man to me is economic prosperity in exchange for being burdened with pain. A pain that’s meant to be absorbed and pushed down until it comes back up and spreads across my body as a barrier between who I am and who they think I am.

Yet, after all of this, I still cry when you are kind, because your kindness tore through my barrier and showed me that the world I wanted would keep on spinning until I grew dizzy and drifted away, back to where I belonged.

As I look in the mirror, I see this girl who is not me, Her reflection tells a story, one I wish I couldn’t see. She used to be strong, dreams bright as can be, But now her eyes are lost, her spirit’s not free.

I look in the mirror and see this girl who is not me, Grades and goals once clear, now fade away slowly. Pessimism clouds her days, turning light to grey, And dreams that once soared have lost their way.

It’s crazy how a year changes 17 years of who you used to be, I look in the mirror and see this girl who is not me, Kindness was her strength, too gentle to decree. She trusted the world, saw no shadows in the light, Now she trusts no one, lost in the night.

I look in the mirror and see this girl who is not me, Her heart scarred by love, the pain plain to see. Clinging to the past, the people she’s lost, Healing feels distant, the future a cost.

It’s crazy how a year changed 17 years of who you used to be, I look in the mirror and see this girl who is not me, But within the sorrow, there’s a glimmer of hope to see. In strength and healing, a heart redefined, Rising from the ashes, a soul redesigned.

Mirror

Paradise Flower

Pomegranate

Brenna G.

I.

I was never meant to be palatable.

My flesh is tart and my bones are bitter and my hands still shake with the force of my offering.

I plucked each seed carefully out of my pockmarked and pale chest. I dried them and set them in pretty rows upon a platter that I served to him. I drizzled them in sugar and honey to make them more inviting, more desirable.

My red-stained hands are shaking and empty and seeds cover the floor.

I kneel as he walks away, trying to pick them up and up and up.

II.

I was never meant to be palatable. Even the snake wouldn’t ever try to suggest me as a sin to unknowing victims.

No one wanted me so I tried to want myself.

Red juice stains my tongue and my lips and my hands.

I have eaten myself alive for years and have never found a way to keep myself down.

III.

I was never meant to be palatable.

I was made for tough hands and careful fingers. I was made to be handled with certainty as well as tenderness.

Never did I think I would be digestible.

Never did I think anyone would want all that I have to offer. But you consume me like that’s what I was made for. You take me in and ask for more and my dear, I am happy to oblige.

Hermana

12/31/24 6:57 pm: My sister has realized her own mortality. She’s scared of what’ll happen after death and looks to me for advice. I don’t really know what to tell her. It’s the not knowing which scares her. Actually, I now remember it being 2012 New Years Eve and crying about not wanting the year to change; I was about 6 and she’s now 10. No answer will satisfy my sister. She’ll have to work this out on her own while I can only give guidance. When she comes to my room crying I can give her my opinion but it all leads to me saying I don’t know.

I don’t know how well I’m helping her. She has a sense of religious guilt attached to herself. She’s not sure if heaven exists and worries that if it does, that she’ll be sent to hell for doubting its existence. She’s worried about this all week and when she asks if I believe in heaven, I can only say “I don’t know.” She asked if I’m an atheist, to which I know I’m not. She also asked how I got over my existentialism: I don’t know, but I know I got happier working towards my goals.

For a moment her fears leaked onto me. I was having a moment of existentialism pondering her fears and imagining what death could be. It’s an insurmountable challenge. She’d live forever if she could. She’s on her phone so much I don’t imagine it’s not related. I get worried about her endless scrolling and a content addiction. It would truthfully be selfish of her to live forever; living to mindlessly consume. I wonder what kind of person she’ll grow to be. I remember being similarly anxious despite never being quite the religious type. he’ll easily be smarter than me if she chooses. It’s good that she’s thinking of these questions: I just hope she doesn’t get consumed by them. I tell her this and urge her to work towards her dreams, and after she tells me that she doesn’t have any dreams, I tell her to find some. She came to my room to thank me while writing this, so I guess I did help.

Mateo

Mattress on the floor

Stained fitted sheet corner coming off

Drywall fragments litter carpet

Bozeman

Dana Smith

Youknowthat’showmoldgrows

Disgusting. Iloveit

The Boss’s croon, Clarence’s wail—I hit the mattress

Cut off denim shorts bound flat under tank top

Absolutely nothing straight about what we’re about to do

Strandedinthejungle,tryingtotakeinalltheheattheywasgiving

Backwoods of Montana feet slip over mud and rocks

Cow skeleton bleached by sun

Youknowwhentheydigupyourbonesthey’llcallyouawoman

But right now my bones are surrounded by flesh

Flesh

Surrounded by Water of creek

1.62% gel pump

Mother sobbing over the phone

Howlongcanthisstayinahotcarfor?

Youknowyou’llneverhavekidsnow

And my knowledge— nonevernotinamillionyears

Theseboneswerenotmadeforthat

Cigarette flicked in Montana grass

Non-alcoholic beer on porch swing, arm around my shoulders

Salt of you on my tongue as I come up for air

And The Boss’s croon and Clarence’s wail

birding

Amelia Ayers

You wait in the aching time of your room. There is a great, oaken bed, perhaps; perhaps an Ikea particleboard frame; perhaps only the ground is that second layer of armor around you after the mattress. You are face down in unforgiveness. A small bird rests in wood on your bookshelf. It might take years to move, you think. The room is coffee-colored, cold and warm and winnowed of constancy, beyond you, in those sheets, waiting for daybreak: to sleep, and linger.

You pray your flesh tender and you find it is only so under the knife. You hope yourself smooth and silken, a gossamer harp. A man bursts in broken fifths. You dream the air into your bones, porous and birdlike, and you feel them crack in a great wind. There is no flight, you say, no way out. You can’t stop saying it.

The sun rises. A great flock of geese pass over your mother’s home. A robin screeches at spring. Wingbeats heavy, a swan mourns its egg. Chickadees peruse the debris of winter. A crow calls for you outside your window. The loon sings its past into air. In the summer, a hummingbird zips by your ear, and you smile at her tenacity.

Joseph Bucci

Quickening

Liam Gannon

The rush of the feeling

The dreaming coming to end

The numbers don’t matter, the faces are a jumble

The sequence is set, the future is certain

The crash will come and the silence will kill

But now, in the moment

I know all of my senses and can touch my own face

I flicker past the memories and arrive up until now

The fire is lit, my breath is not steady

And I realise I am not ready

No one ever is

All the better to enjoy the iron taste

And ride this iron throne

Through ice and plasma and something perhaps similar to us

All stardust, moonlight

The beacon of a thousand different signals

All beaming as brightly as our own

And inviting in their hope

As we buckle our belt

And know the coming of the end in streaks of colour

Forming and filming, coming and going

I am rushed and then put out.

Palingenesis

Damien Niesewand

The fire escape opens its mouth to hiss a breath between your teeth — go ahead, confess, your knees were made for bending. The smoke signals might reach her if your devotion conducts the light. Her again, the proverbial her, the holy pronouncement ripped out to sea, and you, the lifeguard thrashing coughing murk, the mildew seeping through the water-wrecked accordion encased between your ribs. These hyphae hers to keep, St. Valentine fractured through the filaments, while the rest of you is thinning obsolescent in her wake. Abandon those mortal fears within the walk-up adytum, bring your lips to the ladder and bite through the latch. Don’t you want to see what happens? You heard this once — it’s science once you write it down — but the same is true of scripture so put down that bouquet of cigarettes and pick up a Sharpie. These mason jars need labels. The homestead vloggers call them fermentation vessels; she’d like that, your alchemical improvisations on Communion wine for when she’s finished tripping on your lactic acid. You took the vertebrae-bracketed path to the cemetery, where you buried her so deeply they couldn’t deconstrict the red-stringed knot, but it’s not hollow ground now; bloating with life ‘til she built a nursery, self-contained samsara within your microbiome. She’s crept up the railing using your arms, she’s here now, your signal flare blooming smoke-devouring spores. Osculum pacis: stick out your tongue and let her suck it clean. At the bottom of the ocean, unformed secrets are playing realtor with a shipwreck, seeking sanctuary in the unsanctified hull you were. Life wants so terribly to live: they’ve DIYed their own whale fall. The rain picks up because you babble rough nothings through your anastomosis, shotgunning stachybotrys chartarum from her swollen, dripping lips; this is what they call speaking in tongues. The warning klaxons all still and silent now. You’re breathless with decay — there’s no longer a need to breathe. Feel how right this is, the natural order, how your tendrils spiral into hers and crowd out your lingering synapses until the only word left is ours. No more earthworms on the sidewalk after a storm — only the consolation in finality. Burst open here, spilling blanket of new beginnings, and know her final blessing to you was this: the cool relief of surrender.

Foreshock

Brent Thomas Whiteside

i’m avoiding eye contact with everyone out of fear that with one look into my eyes they will know the truth:

i’m broke there’s an ache growing on the westside of my head pressing for two days now several hands before me stretched open waiting i’ll wait too

how marvelous it would be to fall apart right now a glorious decline

68 Laps in the Pool

Philip Reari

Lap 1. splish-splash into my lane grateful that I don’t have to share. Looking up as I suction goggles to my face, three marshmallow clouds clump lethargically in the hazy urban sky. In the water I can escape the heat of the day.

Lap 2. Goddamn this leaking left goggle, can never get it airtight. Will have to swim with one eye shut again and then when I finally open it the sun will scald. Maybe I can make an adjustment, or is it hopeless? I bought the cheap pair, but still, a good brand. My nose is wide and my septum uneven, more air flowing in the left side. Maybe that has something to do with it.

Lap 3. Time to start the flip turns. The water burns on inversion but only the first time around. All about getting the moment right. Right now, flip! Ahhhh.

Lap 7. Vision still obscured on one side but I’m powering through it. How is that lady next to me so fast? There it is, starting to feel the burn in my upper arms—deltoids, I think. Can never tell if I’m kicking properly and always feel like I’m over-splashing. Whatever, my stroke wastes a lot of energy, that’s for sure.

Lap 12. There she is, reading again, perched on her city-issued lounger. Is she here every day? Can’t… make… out … the book. Does she have a job? Must be lunch hour. I could learn something about how to relax but I’m too old and busy not to squeeze in a workout.

Lap 20. Almost a third of the way through just like that. Amazing to workout with so little stress on the body. My distant ancestors were fish after all. I’m swimming like a fish, baby.

Lap 24, or was it 26? Shit, I’ll have to do an extra at the end to make sure. For dinner, I’ve got that half jar of alfredo sauce. It wasn’t very good, but I can’t just toss it. What kind of pasta did I buy—maybe rigatoni? Oh, I see, she’s swimming with a floaty between her legs. No wonder.

Lap 28. That guy coming over is only wearing spandex. Why am I too self-conscious to do that? Instead, I swim with shorts on top, which certainly creates some drag but probably not much. I’ve got all this chest hair anyway, like sea moss slowing me down. He’s got a little paunch but his arms dangle like he’ll glide through the water. Please don’t let him drop into my lane. Having a lane to oneself is bliss; allows the mind to wander freely.

Lap 32 and she’s reading in the pool now, looking regal in white bathing suit and dark sunglasses. She appears very focused, but those kids must be distracting. Glad I can barely hear.

Lap 37. Past halfway. I keep thinking that leaf on the bottom of the pool is a condom wrapper. Even the lousiest of swimmers look graceful when observed underwater. I wonder how I look. The security guard at the front desk today could barely write. That made me feel uncomfortable, waiting 20 seconds as he painstakingly copied my name into the log in childish script. I wish I’d discovered this pool sooner. It’s not quite an urban oasis, more like an urban fixture. As natural to this environment as a pond in a swamp.

Lap 44, feeling good. The end is in sight, but not near enough to focus on. When that woman asked me about my American Writers Museum shirt earlier while they tinkered with the chlorine levels and told me she was a writer, why didn’t I tell her I was too? I cut the conversation short by saying my mom got me the shirt and then went and sat in the shade and stared at my phone. She was ready to chat. I maybe could have made a meaningful connection, helpful with my writing ambitions somehow. But I demurred, I guess because I was in swimming mode. But also, it doesn’t come naturally, calling myself a writer.

Lap 48. She’s getting out, the writer lady. She must be close to 60 but she still looks good from certain angles. Oh shit, she slipped…

Lap 49. How long did that take? Maybe 12 minutes. For a second after she fell, I thought she hit her head but, no, something with her hip. Probably fractured. Good thing there’s always an ambulance close by around here.

Lap 53. Muscles feeling invincible, almost like Rich Roll said—water pushing me rather than me pulling through it. Man, that guy seems like a douche, and yet I still follow him.

Lap 55, exercise really does help keep you sane as you age.

Lap 59. A cloud has come between me and the sun. Incredible how that can happen; how the universe can align. It’s so hard to create art that gets at the sharp, monetary intensities of life but also the ceaseless dull undercurrents. I want something that stabs me. But also, I want asinine television most nights.

Lap 62. If I have to hear that Whitman quote about containing multitudes one more time my multitudes will explode all over the place…oh look, the lovely book-reader is leaving. Looks like a romantasy novel. She’s putting on her oversize t-shirt and making her way to the exit. Our overlap in time and space is over, perhaps forever. Pools close next week, and who knows where we’ll be next summer.

Lap 66. My heart has been beating hard for a while, amazing that it doesn’t burst. That Karl Ove Knausgaard quote is lodged in my mind, “For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops.”

Lap 68, almost done. Pound the water hands, feet, arms. Breathe to the beat.

while eating

Leo Kouklanakis

sitting in my own darkness i was watching Midnight Gospel the last episode where Clancy interviews his mom who is also i think a psychiatrist or psychologist or something and she was showing him an exercise like if you’re washed up or stuck on the side of the river suffering and you have nothing else you can still i guess be connected to the world so she told him to feel the inside of his hand like feel it from the inside so of course i was trying it too but he couldn’t do it which made me feel better because i couldn’t do it either so they started with a fingertip and i found my fingertip so she went back to the whole hand and his mom was also dying of stage 4 cancer the whole episode was really emotional but i couldn’t find the inside of my hand i closed my eyes but couldn’t feel it so i just started thinking very frantically where’s my hand! where’s my hand! and two big teardrops fell from my eyes onto the bag of chips i was eating look at all this salt and i was thinking how did i get this disjointed but the next step of the exercise was to listen and i thought i can do that so i paused the show and listened (from the inside that i can be in) to the nighttime birds and the nighttime trucks that drive around in the outside that i can love

The Aurum King

Joseph Edelheit

There, on the highest peak of the tallest mountain, which roils and rumbles, and pricks the sky itself, at the very center of the Realm, the Aurum King greets the peaceful dawn with contentment. As the Sun makes its daily trip from the inky shores of night to the very top of the great celestial ballroom, and then back down once more, two givers of life meet, eye to eye. One is a glowing bastion of fire, flame, and glory, clad in golden hues, and the other is the Sun. While the Sun warms all things, gives energy to all things, and shepherds all the plants and animals of the Realm along its endless voyage, it is distant, too distant to ever truly connect with.

In a world without the Aurum King, the Realm would be thrown into decay and depravity from this separation. A people unliked from their Creator would have no way to build, no way to grow or learn, no way to manifest their destinies in the lands promised to them. While we decry the actions of the Icarians, in their fatalistic flights to join with the Sun, imagine what darker pathways those of the world would practice, would master, if the Aurum King was not there to guide us when we are lost, to protect us from the darkness as an immovable bastion of life and hope, or to shelter us at our most vulnerable.

But one does not need to necessarily imagine too hard. Look at the gorges at the edge of the Realm, at the coasts of the fog-covered seas of mystery, or the mist-hidden cities that skitter and scamper along ever-changing, unknowable routes. Look upon those who have not felt the grace of the Aurum King, in all his glory; see their plight when they do not have our golden guardian and master.

The Sun is a blue supergiant. At dawn, the orangy red hues that reflect off the central mountaintops and seep down across the Realm and beyond are not colored such by any star’s light, but by blood. Great tributaries of blood, which are so dense and massive they permeate land and sky, and which not only up and back but sideways, through time; endless torments generations in the making. As with any tributaries, these have an origin point from which they spring, and in this case, that is the Aurum King.

The Aurum King stands over seven feet tall, a burning bastion of flame that is forever clad in gleaming golden armor; as the name may imply. What the name does not necessarily imply is how the Aurum King claimed this wealth—not through peace and trade, certainly not through industry and smithery, but through the unending wellspring of malice that fills the gap where a soul should be. The Aurum King is a flame like any other, a predatory maker of desolation, but one uniquely unchained from the single greatest weakness of fire; its inherent and intrinsic impermanence—the Aurum King is immortal.

It is true that the Aurum King lights a path of progress and advancement, because taking any other path promises only the swift, brutal end by his hand. The pyres that throw this light along the path are of his power directly, but are made from the corpses of his enemies, of nations broken, of peoples splintered, made to be examples for the cost of impertinence, or so his followers claim. Impertinence, in the sense that demanding one’s own freedom, defending one’s own right to the lands of their ancestors, and desiring to live and love and yes, even die, on one’s own terms, are all childishly insolent; for not even a scrap of dignity can be afforded to his enemies, not a moment of mutual consideration—so long as they can be infantilized, they are of no consequence.

There is a reason our cities skitter, a reason we flee to the fog; it is the Aurum King.

I Don’t Love

Liam Gannon

I know I am here

I know you are too

I know the sun is in the sky

And the cricket comes out at night

I know there is a now

And it can never truly go away

But I feel all this slide through my fingers

Down my body

Past my vision

And into some great, beautiful

Terrifying possibility

That I will never follow.

I do not taste

I do not breathe

I do not walk and I do not understand

All I am is want

A want for the light

A want for the sound

A want for the chance

And a want for me

Just me

To finally get it

To be past the shore

Past the breakers

Past the blue and the black and the deep

Into some alien, awful existence

Where I think home should be

And where I am definitely not.

My head is a flower yet to bloom

And no sun

No water

No growth and no hope

Will ever yield

If I cannot yearn for it be here

Giving it a chance to ripen, ruin, wither and die

The only chance any of us can get

Is that death is certain

Is that pain is truth

Is that there is an end

A great breaking, a full falling

A sudden and abrupt stop in the ride

And we eventually have to get off

And wonder what we do with ourselves next

Yes it is scary

No it is not bad

And we will all be there

To hold your hand.

25 (Jaded)

Staylin Fernandez

It’s late again. The world hums somewhere far away, Cars sigh down empty streets, And the clock keeps time like it has something to prove.

There’s a beautiful stillness in the way the night settles. How it envelopes everything around but there’s something else, Not peace exactly, But something close enough if I don’t look too hard.

My thoughts move slow, Spilling over the edges of half formed dreams, Drifting between what was and what could be. I wonder if you do the same.

Maybe you lie still, Embracing the stillness in its entirety. Staring at your ceiling, Feeling the weight of everything and nothing, Waiting for sleep that will never come.

And maybe, in some quiet, untouchable way, We exist together in this inbetween, where time forgets to move, And the world forgets to ask for more.

And for now, that is more than enough.

AngelBoy

Rami Mansi

Discarded

Angel Boy sits as one of one.

A bruise on his knee,

A cut causing

His skin to peel off.

His breath is heavy and Angel Boy’s mind tells him to stay put

The boy doesn’t listen

Just sits upright

They pick themself up, Easily getting a head rush

Angel Boy, always so abrupt

They fall over, scraping their arm

Magnify the injuries, Brush away the pain

Confused by his own puzzle

Angel Boy tries to walk away

From discarded feelings,

That have been put away tight

Begins to unravel

Like a seamstress running to fight

The thread on Angel Boy has run thin

The spool is showing.

Angel Boy is walking now

The boy who just wants something, Kept company on his walk by his battered bones

No one to hold him,

No bandages for cuts. No ride to help them up

Only their wings, which Angel Boy has forgotten lie folded on his back.

Fly

Angel Boy stuck on his luck

Picked himself back up after Struggling to walk,

So he chose to fly

Standing straight, wincing at the sharp stab in their spine

His wings began to flap, fluffing the air beneath the winged creature

The floor started to dust away, Because he chose to fly

Their feet lifted above the ground

Stepping on the stones of their love,

Love others have for them, love Angel Boy has when they look in the mirror

Coming close to clouds, cause they chose to fly

Alone in the sky

Angel Boy is finally away

Humans have never been the type for the banished servant

Humans are the reason Angel Boy chose to fly

With no human hurting his heart, body, and soul

Humanity has hope for his mind

A flight to escape, yet, journeying through air doesn’t help

Soaring with broken wings, because he chose to fly

Angel flies to the sea and back

The boy soars the sunrise edge

Their wing’s strength tampers with the wind direction

Free from others, yet constrained by mind, Because Angel Boy chose to fly

One

After saying goodbye and hello to the sun,

Angel Boy became stuck in a feud between

His gift of resilience

And his desire to find out why

Cast from heaven like the last Valkyrie in the war

Angel Boy’s damned to be the last loud soul amongst the quietly dying humanity

Born to fly with snow-white wings,

Forced to be society’s outlier

Letting his mind accomplish its goal,

Angel Boy landed and discovered himself on an island

The island was just like the sky, only stars gave Angel Boy company,

Until, the now-greyed-winged boy, witnessed a sight never seen

Lights of orange, glimmers of bright crimson, and a familiar sound,

Angel Boy discovers a person, being, thing, crying on the trunk of a tree

With their dimming orange flame, and crimson-red skin,

The Red Gentleman shed tears of coal and their head was suffocated in their claws

With wings of inhuman proportions,

Angel Boy was spotted.

Startled, the air went silent and leaves rustled away.

Winged as he is, the boy took to the skylights once again in search.

A glowing blaze and growing wild beneath the smoke

Angel Boy cooled the wildfires with gusts of energy once solemn.

Red Gentleman’s flames suffocated through the wind,

Once a master to their flame, the gentleman was surprised by the storm’s submission

The atmosphere is filled with grey and the land is barren and black,

Angel Boy left the midnight sky and began viewing his saving of the once-colorful land

Red Gentleman, stuck at the nucleus of his fears,

Stares up at the once-heavenly being, and Angel stares back

Two locked eyes, One fused destiny,

Angel Boy’s heart matched rhyme with the beating inferno of the gentleman

One of air, two of fiery emotion

Enraptured by their close enough bodies

This is why Angel Boy chose to fly

To find his why

He is how the Red Gentleman would learn and love his burns

As wings to a flame, air to a fire, Angel Boy and Red Gentleman begin to pulse as one.

come one, come all

Michele Sherman

i watch you, object of my bleeding heart, shifting weight on tightrope that unspools beneath your feet, circus attraction on display for no one but the stragglers wandered in and hungry for this spectacle

one night only! stretches into two, into decades, jumping through hoops doused in kerosene and a lit match between your teeth, and this dazzling, searing one-woman show! where she will stick the landing or burn right up like we’ve been waiting for, wanting for, the cost of admission steep enough that we’d like to see a little blood, a little skin, let this food for the soul! rot us from the inside out and turn rancid in our bellies as the lights dim, the show ends, begins again.

grief and other gods

Amelia Ayers

Death is a man in Midtown being fitted for a suit you will see a hundred times and recognize once. His tailor cracks a pistachio open in the back and ponders what tape he can find to measure the thinness of this tall, tall man’s waist. The tailor is dressing him for a cousin’s wedding; he wonders how to make the presence just enough known. A festival bell; a spectre; ending; looming. Silk is swallowed into the space between his ribs.

Death orders a sandwich at his neighborhood deli. He and the man behind the counter have known each other for many years. The work accumulates in the man’s knuckles, ligament stripping off of joint until he cries out, keening. Death mourns him as he buckles over in pain, knowing that he may find him soon. As the man’s aunts and cousins and sons rush to him, preening, Death rings the service bell: who will make him his food?

Death walks by the gate of a stranger’s brownstone. A couple argues in the window just next to the top of the flight. The man says he wants kids. A woman says she will never, under any circumstances have his children. The man says ok, then I’ll kill myself, right here, right now. Death pauses below the stoop. The man won’t, obviously, yes, I know honey, I’m sorry, a plea through the bramble of her golden blond covering his lips. Death moves on, slowly, leaving just echoes of himself for the end of them.

Death sits alone in the library at closing hours. A young woman has fallen asleep reading Poe in one of the lounge chairs. In her dreams she asks him: when my mother dies, where will she go? I don’t know, he says, I only visit. I come to you in your houses, your workplaces, with your families, alone, on the street, in fields of flowers and at dawn; I come, and I take you, but I do not go. That is for grief and other gods. The world collapses to a finite curve; a security guard brushes her shoulder: closing time. When she blinks awake, she finds Death, rising to leave, smiling at her.

The Fierce, the Sapphic

Brent Thomas Whiteside

What’s haunting me the most is the last thing [redacted] said to me. After the noise surrounding my birthday party settled down, we sat at my kitchen table—I had just cleaned it. They expressed how they were under the impression that this whole ordeal would pass, simply because they (and apparently everyone else) thought I would “get over it.” At first, I thought this was further testament to the lack of consideration and care I had initially called out—the call-out that led us here. At first, I felt vindicated, but now that I’ve had time to ruminate and obsess over it, I realize that this was actually punishment for showing up strong, resilient, and possessing the curse of being able to bounce back. For it is my ability to bounce that renders me unable to be held, still. No water off this duck’s back, for I will settle and find solace on other terrains. It’s water that suits me, but I’m fine over elsewhere. It’s within this inability that consideration was lost. So used to me bouncing back, getting over, finding fine, that no one held space for what lies in between: hurt, loss, rage. But I did, in fact, get over it. What’s also haunting is realizing, now on the other side of ‘it,’ there is no you.

The Weight of Letting Go

Staylin Fernandez

To let you go is to achieve both everything I ever wanted and nothing at all, like pouring water into an ocean that stretches as far as the eye can see, or separating sediment from sand an act so careful, so deliberate, yet meaningless in the end. I tell myself that absence is a kind of clarity, that distance will carve space for something softer, but love clings like salt in the air, settling deep into the bones, refusing to leave. What is freedom if it tastes like loneliness? What is peace if it echoes with your name? I stand here, hands empty, heart full of the weight of you, both unburdened and unbearably lost.

per aspera ad astra

my softness was rotting in the ground before i ever got the chance to mourn her.

Michele Sherman

reverence does not come gently; selflessness a skin all too easy to slip into

i wonder if my softness made yours obsolete; if it made you want to rise to the challenge, if you did.

does it kill you that the act of mercy is too hard to understand? always out of reach, someone to kiss your knuckles, wipe the blood away, pretend it doesn’t sting.

i’ve never taken kindly to blood in my teeth, biting my own tongue for fear of taking up too much space in my own mouth.

we are building a home out of i love you’s, one brick, one skeleton at a time.

i put trap doors in every room like a failsafe neon exit signs so bright they lead to nowhere, overhead lights that flicker in morse code.

(dot-dot-dot-dash-dash-dash-dot-dot-dot.)

this, too, will pass but that doesn’t make it any less heavy or, this, too, will pass but it will only get heavier or, it won’t pass and it will come back my body will say hello, unfurl itself and all its thorns open up against better judgment against rhyme or reason or consequence because it knew you days ago or years ago it can’t really remember, it just knows the feeling of your skin against mine and it will always, always, let you back in. perasperaadastra–throughhardshipstothestars.

it’s you (it’s me)

Sabrina

Zami

It’s not fair.

You filled my head with promises, promises of a wonderful life. I didn’t ask for them, told you I didn’t need them. All I asked is that you would keep walking together, come what will. I thought I could trust you to do that much. But you let me down.

What was even the point?

Nothing changed. Nothing matters. I am trapped here with no hope of escape. You are free, but lonely. So what was all this for? Maybe you shouldn’t have come in the first place. Maybe I’d be less lonely now. I wouldn’t feel betrayed, at least.

You played exactly into his hands.

He was banking on you being weak, cowardly, lacking the strength to go on. That’s why he put my fate on your shoulders- he hoped you’d fail. I had more faith than that; I willingly put my fate in your hands. You were the only person who could have saved me, but you didn’t

You couldn’t bear the thought of leaving me behind. Was that it? Did you love me too much, too much that you had to sabotage it? You had to check to see that I was okay, condemning me to hell in the process. I would have walked a thousand miles for you, and I know you would have done the same.

Maybe it’s just human nature for doubt to come in. To self sabotage. You couldn’t literally resist screwing everything up and turning back. You gave up on me, on us, and on the last step, too. Maybe it’s not your fault, but something you were compelled to do.

Maybe the biggest unfairness of all is that I blame you.

Of death, and death, and death— I’ve died so many times, I think I forgot how to cry.

Prophecy

nanikø

Then your memory rushes back into me—oh the betrayal! And in the depths of anguish, a question begs to be answered:

Whatisgrief?

Rememberingloveafterdeath? I’vedefinitelylearnedhowtoforget, Learnedhowtochasenewlife, Forgettingtobethereforyourlastbreath

…

Look yonder!

A creature perched, crouched crookedly on a mountainside. Something like a cross between an eagle and a vulture, but worse— Griefless— as it kills not for survival, but for twisted pleasure.

Violently, is how I want you. Still scraping bitter flesh from between my teeth, I spot your tender beauty— And I can know no other satisfaction but to forget to be there for your last breath as you perish in agony.

Fresh hunger grows to dominate, To intimidate and lord over you.

In the hot sweats of fever dreams, I hold you delicately cradled in rounded palm, I slowly crush you— Elixir of dying light rejuvenates my crumbling form.

Looking down across my chest, right hand reaches gingerly across, softly pressing you into the gangrenous sore. My hand slicked with dark glossy hate oozing out— Thefoxandthegrapes,soured. Healing unobtainable, I paint you my enemy.

Your loathing is saccharine, nauseating, that envious hatred, your burden— Slow-burning, it entices me.

Obsession ripe, I invite you in, remove your shoes at the door…

In your soft eyes full of desire, I see my target, Glittering and pathetic. Pointed sweetly at me, that naked look Your innocence is shameful and embarrassing— That I’ll never be again.

Your wanting is my calling; Dare to light the fire, my Prometheus Dazzled by my burning flesh, writhing and crying, The scent takes you somewhere buried deep…

You know this story, Yet still ask me, desperately, to chain you. Sitting patiently, the slithering shackles lock with a definitive click—

Forever bound to the eagle, Beautiful, blinding screams when she devours your liver. Zeusreservesnomercyforeitherofus.

Prisoner rests when eagle leaves, Flying tirelessly between her victims The hunger, it never ceases.

The Dairy Market

Naomi Clarke

This place wasn’t all that different from how I remembered it. The stench of cheese hits you in the face as soon as you walk through the store’s doors. A stench so pungent that you’ll always leave this place smelling just like it.

Right after the entrance are the many free sample stands lined up like a fair. A cheese fair. That’s where the smell comes from. Every stand with plates of a variety of cheeses and behind them, the face of an employee wearing a smile that makes me uneasy.

I made sure to look straight ahead as I moved past them so as to not make eye contact with any of the salesmen at the stands, their eyes following me as I passed. All of them donned the classic Dairy Market uniform; a cow print vest with shiny milk jug-shaped badges displaying their name so you know who to talk to to join their cow cult…or to ask general questions about what sales they’re having, I guess.

I wasn’t here for cow cult-related distractions, however, I only have one mission; Get the milk. Milk prices all over town have sky-rocketed as of late, and guess who just ran out of milk this morning? This place sells the cheapest gallons of milk in town; a dollar a gallon. And I wasn’t going to spend six dollars on a gallon of milk again.

After the cheese stands is the holy grail of refrigerated dairy products. The entire store was just aisles, upon aisles, upon aisles, of refrigerators. And every fridge was stocked to the brim with dairy products. One aisle for every ice cream flavor known and unknown to mankind. One aisle for every type of milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, custard, cream, pudding, and the list goes on. If it’s a milk-based product, it’ll be here.

The milk aisle was all the way in the back of the store. That was rather unfortunate for me, I didn’t want to be in this place too long. A business strategy. The cheap milk is a loss leader.

I moved past the aisles, resisting any urge to look at any of the other products. I kept my eyes on the cow print tiles that lined the floors, watching my feet stride across them. Reminding myself to not look up. When I reached the milk section, I finally released my eyes from the ground. The refrigerators stared back at me. All of them were filled with different sorts of milk. I walk through the aisle, looking through all the options. I was only here for whole milk, but it was hard to locate. My eyes scan down the options till they reach the whole milk. Plain old whole milk. I open the fridge and pick out the gallon of milk. The sticker on the jug features the Dairy Market’s beloved mascot, Betsy the Cow.

Betsy the cartoon cow has these big eyes. They stare at me. We’re having a staring contest. I lose. I sigh and look back down at the floor. I remember that all I have left to do is to make it to the register and pay. Then I can finally leave.

I retrace my steps away from the milk section, keeping my eyes lowered and not paying much attention to all that’s in front of me. That is until my eyes meet up with a pair of cowboy boots. I look up and before me stands an employee. His eyes meet mine and he opens his mouth. “You’re Donna’s boy, right?” he says with a smile.

I look at him and try to think of a response. Trying to analyze a way to get out of this situation. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. All I had to do was buy the milk and leave, but the universe had other plans.

“Jay, right?”, the guy asks, waiting for something, anything from me.

But I just stare at him. Frozen and unsure of anything. Maybe it’s the cheese smell finally getting to me.

“It’s been rough for you, right? I’m sorry for your loss. When I heard the news I couldn’t believe it. 17 years. It hurt us all when we lost her. Donna was the best manager we ever had.” Here it comes. The memories. I tried so hard to ignore it, but it didn’t want to be ignored any longer.

My mother worked here for 17 years. Got the job after ending things with my father, as she tried to find a way to support the two of us. It didn’t pay much, but we got by. Besides, she loved this place endlessly. She gave her life to this place. All the silly cow-related decorations and gimmicks are her design. She even created Betsy the cartoon cow.

Sometimes she’d take me with her during her shift after school ended. I was too young to be left alone at home so she’d bring me here and let me roam the aisles. I’d choose a product from one of the aisles and we’d eat it together. Our favorite was goat cheese.

Some days, I’d sit in her office and watch her work. Now and then, she would look up from her desk and when her loving brown eyes met mine, she smiled like all was right with the world. And all was right with the world when I had her. And now I didn’t.

My eyes were watery so I wiped them with my palm. It had been a year since she had passed. A year without her light.

The worker was still there, staring at me with empathy. I had forgotten where I was for a moment.

“You alright?” he said, patting my back.

I simply nodded my head.

“I’ll give you a discount on that milk,” he said.

I nodded my head again and he walked with me down the aisles toward the registers. I finally looked up and around at the store. It wasn’t as intimidating as before.

When we reached the register, he scanned my milk, the scanner making a moo sound instead of a beep. I catch myself smiling a little. He places the milk into a bag before handing it to me. I pay fifty cents for the jug.

“Have a mootastic day!” the guy chuckles.

I smile softly at him and nod. As I walked back to the front doors of the store, I glanced at the cheese stands again. One of them offered goat cheese.

The employee at the stand greeted me and asked me,

“Would you like to try a sample?”

I nodded yes and he handed me a slice of cheese skewered with a toothpick. I chewed it slowly, trying to recall the taste in my mind. It was nostalgic.

I said a small thank you and walked out the doors of the store. Maybe I’ll come here next week to buy a block of goat cheese.

on shame

Duly

my mother’s shame is not mine to carry around on my back like a small child whose needs i cannot meet. it does not have to be my inheritance, passed down generation to generation like an unwanted family heirloom that none of us can bear to get rid of.

my mother’s shame is not mine to carry, though for so long i was fed nothing but, made to swallow it whole so that no one had to look at it anymore, mouth washed out with soap until only bubbles flew out anytime i tried to say the word no.

my mother’s shame is not mine to carry, the seeds were planted long before my branch in the family tree. i always thought my mother hated me because i was not like her, but i know with certainty now that when she looked at me she saw only a reflection of the parts of herself that she’d long since disowned— it was never really me that she couldn’t love.

my mother’s shame is not mine to carry, her wounds are not mine to heal though i’ve tried (and tried and tried and tried)

i do not have to be the scapegoat or the black sheep, the monster or the sinner—

i was not the problem child i was made out to be, but it hurts sometimes, to be the one who sees.

Guisada

Cat Osorio

Saturday was when I would see her and the day that she resembled. Her hair always dyed a burnt orange, frizzy from the disregard she would give it. She had curly hair, but her culture expected her to neglect it, as it was seen as “bad hair.” So brushing it dry was her solution to denying her hair. Her ears were long and stretched from her almost daily wear of ornate, chunky earrings. It gave her a certain elf-like quality and added to her mischievous nature.

She would always be watching Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune, screaming “Idiot!” in her thick accent when inevitably a contestant got something wrong. She never quite learned to speak English, but it was enough to survive on. When she would speak to me in English, it was always one word, followed by her long fingers grabbing any body part she could find and squeezing it. It was her way of saying “I love you.”

They used to say that I was the mosaic to her eccentric heart, the way she would burst out into song or the way she wove lies into stories, but I don’t see the resemblance.

She was usually sprawled out on the couch, always shaking her leg, trying to get her mind to focus on anything but the pain. Pain is so consuming that she would look forward to her ritual of pulling out all her pain meds in a disciplined fashion, saying each of their names in perfect English. Each one giving her a different high, her very own blessing from God Himself.

Dinner was always ready by six, and she never strayed from what she would make for us. It would either be Carne Guisada (beef stew) or Pollo Guisado (chicken stew). She’d cook in pots that had seen at least 40 years of chicken and beef, all of them scarred with scratches—a testament to the warmth they’ve given, forever imbued with the flavor of her cooking. She always made too much, but I was always glad to take some home.

But now, I no longer eat there every Saturday. The pots no longer remember the taste. The rooms of her house don’t smell of cumin and oregano. And I can’t describe to you what it tasted like; I’ve forgotten. I can only tell you that I loved it and that it made me feel loved. I wish I had asked her how it was made. I wish I could eat it one last time.

Covet

Michele Sherman

spit-slick teeth in the hum of the fluorescents the ruby-red tinge of a murmur beating, hushed –frantic.

swallowed up in darting glances a pilfered, thieving thing tucked away in half-smiles half-truths half-buried, exorcised, dug up and put to rest half-heartedly

this stolen thing, my sticky fingers, the kind of wanting that insists upon itself, unabashed and sixteen again, me again, robbing flowers of their petals and begging answers of the universe dime-a-dozen cookie fortunes turned crumpled gospel, bleeding paper cuts of hope and kissing quarters before throwing them to wishing wells.

how to love a dead man

Kai Peña-Chavez

how to love a dead man mourn him even as you love him when you embrace him hold closely his grotesque parts just as you do the familiar try to learn this new, familiar, butchered man

host the longest funeral thin flowers everyday

for the feast prepare unworldly food a mountain, fractured obsidian, his father’s hat

an open grave, leave his slippers on the upturned ground

goodbye

goodbye goodbye

you could wait forever for nothing

Wood Worms / Leo Kouklanakis

Barbizon

Amelia Ayers

she tells me more than the plaque: the Barbizon rolls across breathing hills towards water-lilies; her hand under my rib like a remembrance of warm July; three haystacks lighting the distance; saffron sun cloaks a cliffside painted in an unreality of honest wilderness; she waits for me to measure it; land stretches onto a mammoth smallness of windowed green–

I lean forward to check my reflection; a woman’s fork punctures gold under eaves of aspen; the flat of a witnessed life pressures under my tongue; another’s crimson shawl toils bent to an earth; a mourning wakes in my instinct; my fingers clutch at time; glass separates the canvas and now; we wander into frame; she tells me I am beautiful; I wonder: in the light of what making?

Four-stroke Cycle

Joe Bucci

Notes of honey in the wind

Ferrous beat build within A chamber opens Sought or seduced To enjoy a breath From a scent To a taste To a saturation Sparks infatuation Impulse apprehending Occupation unrelenting Pistons churning Passion burning Pulse felt through the flood Clawing forward Blindly toward Fuel enriching blood Every rotation Dripping elation My culmination Met with a Friction As the gears stutter Winch winces Stranded Halfway up Pistons squeeze and cycle But the Fuel Slows Each

Than The Last

want to Want to scream Want to struggle But The rods seize The sparks cease Dragged down Clawing Fading into striations Waning Palpitations N ot salvation But temptation By a saffron summit Never to be mine Instead The rigid pulse Melts to a hum Waiting for when New notes in the wind Seduce

i love you like mirrors do

Damien Niesewand

When you are born in the cider-drenched late morning I have my arms spread wide to receive you. I make a nest of myself. Arrange the blankets just so. I’m always adjusting something. I used to do it so I’d make a prettier picture. Photo studio head tilt and tasteful draping, sprinkle of water and trace the rivulet down the column of my throat. But you are slowly drowning the director in my head. You slide right down the shooting sunlight and I open up without wondering what it looks like.

When I was a kid, I used to eat the Play-Doh. My mom tried making some at home from a recipe the internet told her would be safe if ingested. It wasn’t really the same. Safer alternatives never really are, I think; you lose something at the heart of the matter when you make it palatable for consumption. Like the playground where I broke my arm when I was seven, you remember that story? They ripped the whole thing up a few months later, replaced the woodchips with this weird foamy stuff that flexed beneath your feet, and took down all the structures you could hang from. No more injuries and no more fun. The not-quite PlayDoh was like that too. It started to harden after too long in the air, so it stopped working after you played with it too much, and the colours weren’t as bright. It didn’t even really taste good. Too much salt, I think. Why is it that the shit that’s bad for you is always so much more compelling?

You’re a nicer sculptor. Sculpture. Stuff for sculpting. You fold beneath my fingers, pulling pinching pressing into shape. I think I’m getting a sense of you. I’m shifting too. Fashioning my chest to fit the curve of your head. You never fail to impress me. Spread your legs for the needle like it’s nothing. My hands guiding a lifelong tattoo of your name, yourself, radiating thigh-outwards til it washes over you. I am watching you change all the time. Stepping into yourself. Born again to a tea-steeped sunrise. When you speak now, it’s with your voice. When I tuck my arm around you, tongue to the base of your neck, you’re all salt too. I’ve shed all my cells three times since childhood; I have all new taste buds. I like it more now.

Your sister asks you if it would be so bad to grow your hair. Change our names for a while. It wouldn’t be for forever, she says, just until it’s safe again. Cheating death comes at a cost. We haven’t quite solidified; there’s still time to turn back. I can’t imagine you as anything other than a cockatiel. The photos you’ve shown me were of someone else. After they changed the park, kids stopped going there on the weekends. When I’d walk by the school I wouldn’t even look over; the silence told me it was empty. After the first batch of notquite Play-Doh froze to death in its tub I didn’t open another one. I don’t want to live as a safer alternative. Unharmed untouched unmade unhappy. I don’t want to lose the heart of ourselves; I like the one I’ve woven my future into.

I shouldn’t have worried. You already told her to stop asking such stupid fucking questions.

The day breaks our window with a shaft of grey. Weather forecast says the sky’s bruised, the roads are sharp, the future is uncertain. I asked you if you were scared last night. That was a stupid fucking question too, I know the answer’s yes, but I get more grace than your sister so you showed me the shield blooming from your back. I am re-forming around the stones. I am keeping the nest soft for you. We are not letting this change everything. We are not going back. We are half-asleep still, on the cusp of bud and bloom, bending towards the light. Our dangerous faces searching for the sun.

The Perfect Christmas Gift Keke

November 12, 2024, 8:40 PM in NYC.

43 days later it’s December 25, 2024.

During those days I’ll probably have spent countless seconds, hours, minutes, days, months, weeks, and lines on a piece of paper trying to write you the perfect poem. Maybe one day I’ll find the right words. For now I’ll just keep writing.

Leech in the Egg

Matthew Faltas

The metallic blue light flickering from the TV illuminated the room in the darkness. It saturated the room in its color; the beige carpet, blue, the off white couch, blue, the wooden walls, blue, Mustafa, blue. But it would quickly disappear, submerging the room into darkness once again, just appearing moments later.

There was nothing special about the room, it was just our basement. We spent most of our nights here sitting on our couch and watching TV. So much so that it felt almost more like a painting in the room. I could probably still see the area in front of our couch if I closed my eyes. Our grey, cube like capable tv wrapped up in its mahogany wood container, two shelves, barely filled, on the opposite sides of it, both hugging close to the wall. All the random boxes left partially opened behind the TV filling up the space behind it all. Almost like every construction box was a tessera in the mosaic background of our portrait.

“What are you just standing there for?” Mustafa turned to me, I found it so interesting watching the blue light move across his face as he turned, how his glasses almost sparkled to me. “Ponyboy, it’s getting good,”

I guess he was right, I was just standing there like an idiot. I walked over and sat next to him on the couch, reclining into my seat and throwing my leg over my knee. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“He can’t swim,” was all Mustafa said as he pointed to the TV. It was some cartoon I had never seen before. The art style was flat with barely any shading and clear outlines. The characters, likewise, were also very similar with undetailed bodies. The only real distinction made by the artists seemed to be to be their heads, torsos, legs, and arms. The bare minimum.

They were at sea. The water was dark and murky, a greenish black, like a cup of water used to clean paint off brushes, and it moved wildly. The sky was a deep blue, practically felt black. With the outline of clouds drawn in towards the top, and piercing blue lightning striking every few frames. The two characters in the scene were on a dark brown, I assume wooden, boat with little lines of different shades of brown drawn into its surface to indicate texture.

One, a skinny male figure with a circular head about the same width as its shoulders, was completely paper white. With the outline of goggles drawn onto its face, to serve as eyes, and a line that changed shape to serve as a mouth. This character was hanging off from the ledge of the boat, clearly on the verge of getting swept away. The other was built practically the same, except it was just pitch black, barely sticking out from the sky that overarched him.

“Don’t let me go, please,” the white one said, holding onto the ledge of the boat with one hand and grabbing out towards the black one with its other. “I’m like an leech in an egg shell, Shinouda,”

“Once that egg cracks, I can’t stop myself from biting into others. My anger burns their skin, my tears are caused by their happiness. I just want to be loved, but once that egg is cracked, all I can is survive on the blood of others.”

Shinouda didn’t answer, but just held onto the white one’s hand, looking down at him with a curved neck.

“Please, Shinouda,” the white one begged. “We’re exactly alike, I know it, please tell me how to fix it, how to fix myself,”

“Why can’t I work?” the white one asked. “Why do my wants push others away? Why does every form of self love feel like an attack on others? Why does it feel like the only meat I can live off is the meat of others?”

“Please Shinouda, tell me how to stop being a leech,” the white one pleaded, his voice piercing into his throat like a dog trying to climb a tree. “Why can’t I love others and love myself? Why must I destroy others to save myself?”

“Do I just have to push everyone away? Do I have to live alone forever? Must I starve myself until I die?” His goggles closed like eyelids, too heavy to bear the burden of seeing. “Why does every time I touch my heart it feel like a porcupine’s back? Why is everything right for me, wrong for others?”

“Shinouda, please respond, I know you feel the same,”

Finally, Shinouda spoke, “Baldwin, repeat after me,”

“I am a human and I have weight,”

“I am a human and I have weight,” Baldwin replied,

“I am a human and I have weight,” Shinouda repeated,

“I am a human and I have weight,”

“I am a human and I have weight,”

“I am a human and I have weight,”

And then Shinouda let go of Baldwin’s hand, and kicked him off the ledge of the boat. Baldwin fought all he could against the dark waves, waving his hands back and forth, paddling, spinning his body up and down, side to side, but it was to no avail. His body fell lower, and lower. The “camera” panning down into the sea, as we saw his body get smaller and smaller. The lighting still flashing against the surface, illuminating it as he drowned.

I turned to Mustafa, “Is he gonna swim?” I asked, but all he could do was shrug.

can we fight, for once, the way real people in real places do? can we yell at each other until our throats are raw?

i have always envied the trees, the way they scream, and i am so tired of not making a sound. and can we stop pulling punches, rip each other into pieces? small ones, bite sized— oh to be consumed by you, by something shaped like love and rage, and can we make the fight to the death?

i would rather you stop my heart than break it, i would feed it to you on a platter and i would stay, always, the knife you hold to my throat the only thing standing between us, keeping us upright, keeping the world turning on its axis and the trees swaying in the gentle breeze while we stand still, so still, roots growing out of the soles of our feet, twisting around our ankles, burrowing deep in the ground, reaching, always reaching until we are forever intertwined.

Original Sin in a Paper World

Matthew Faltas

She grabbed a hold of their hand, slowly lifting their arm up as if to guide their body. Their eyes peered up to her, longingly, like a sapling trying to grow, or a fox coming out of its burrow, or even a lamb hiding behind its mother. She gave them one last smile, “I will always love you, no matter what name you go by, but you need to learn how to love.” She wrapped them in her arms, embracing their small body in the vastness of hers, feeling her infinite warmth, it was almost like if for a second they were back in the womb.

“You have to realize that the original sin in your life is that you were never taught how to love, you were never taught what love is,” she said, and all of a sudden they could feel her warmth being dragged away from them.

They could feel her body being lifted up, the warmth of her arms ripped away, the warmth of her chest against their head lifted up like a loose plank of wood. They looked up. The only thing left of her that they could feel was her hand holding onto theirs as she was being pulled away.

“Don’t go away!” they screamed, bringing their second hand to help hold onto her.

The world was losing its color, it was as if it was all a drawing, as if they were drawings, and all they were left with was rough outlines.

“This is it, conejite,” she said, smiling at them once more, a tear shredding down her cheek. Their bodies kept transforming with the world around them, everything became crumpled: the plain white sky, the plain white ground, their plain white paper skin.

The outlines of their world now disappeared too. They were no longer drawings, but two paper cut outs in the shape of a woman, and child on a blank sheet of paper as their earth. The child could no longer hold onto her, as their body fell slowly to the surface, but Reina’s body just flew higher, and higher, as if her soul had somewhere to go.

The child saw words flashed across the surface of her paper skin in Times New Roman font. They said: “You can start, by giving Alicia a kiss for me when you get back,”

Words flashed across the child’s surface too. “I promise I will,”

Eventually, Reina was nowhere to be seen, and the paper world that surrounded the paper child swallowed them whole. As the child laid there unable to move, a lifeless piece of paper themself, the paper world around them started to crumpled itself into a ball.

The last thing they thought before they were swallowed was: ‘I think the reason I feel like this, is because this whole time, I wanted a mother.’

Love Letter to Yeshua

Zoe Priscilla Davis

I used to dream of death. I dreamed of pill bottles and hospital beds, funerals and flowers. I would lie limp in my bed and dream of the day Your breath would leave my lungs. I thought about it more than anything else, writing love songs to those who cared and letters to those who didn’t. My life became too heavy for me to carry. I woke up every day with a weight on my chest, making it hard to move. To breathe.

The world lost its color. The birds stopped singing. When I could no longer look people in the eyes, You called me out to the mountains.

You revealed yourself to me in small, digestible pieces—verses, prophecies, words, and actions. You gave me dreams—visions of You comforting me and rocking me as I cried.

It should have been enough, but I had grown used to the Darkness. I had become one with it, leaving room for it to dwell inside me. It settled there - inside every corner and pocket of my existence. It took up space.

The day I reached the end of myself, I turned my face to the sky and screamed. I told You I wanted nothing to do with You, that I was sick of You and wanted nothing to do with You.

I accused You of being indifferent to my suffering. If You were so good, why hadn’t You come and saved me yet? If You were so loving, why did You leave me to die? To be assaulted by the Darkness?

I tried my very best to put distance between You and me. And when I ran out of breath, I challenged You, telling You to say something fully believing You wouldn’t.

“Okay.” You said. “I love you.”

When You spoke, my soul cried out in response. I had forgotten who I was but You called me by name, shouting it into the void. The Darkness inside of me didn’t scare You. You came face to face with it, instructing it to get behind You. I spent years running from You not knowing that You were running towards me, closing the distance. You were always there, longing for me to let You in. I was so cruel, and the first thing you thought to do was love me, to give me a peace that I couldn’t comprehend; a stillness that surpassed all understanding. You came and held me the same way you promised You would when we were in the mountains.

I was unkind to You and honestly believed it would be enough to make You walk away. I thought that mean words could separate me from You.

But You meant it when You said that nothing ever could. Not death nor life, angels nor demons, the present nor the future, height nor depth. Lord, You said that nothing, not anything in all of creation could tear us apart. Not even myself. Before I knew it, I could breathe again. The world became vibrant. The birds began to sing. The clouds danced across the sky. It wasn’t magic that saved me. It was Your love.

You are Yeshua. My knight in shining armor. You’re my savior.

The One who brought me to life. It is no longer I who lives, but You who lives in me. Death has lost its hold on me. When I close my eyes, I don’t see pill bottles, hospital beds, funerals, or flowers.

I see Your face. And it’s beautiful.

John 3:16, Romans 8:38

Snow Days

Sabrina Zami

Another day, another fight. My son wants to play outside, wants to run around and get all messy. I, however, don’t want to clean up the sopping, squishy, wet mess right now. He reminds me that it’s not like when I was little, and he can’t get sick from snow. I remind him that I’m the parent, and what I say goes.

Once a week. That’s the deal, and he knows it. Once a week, he gets to bundle up and go out to the yard, or the playground, or whatever, and make snowmen that won’t melt and throw snowballs around. Once a week, I have to deal with a wet snowsuit drying on the rack and soaked clothing. He knows that this is how it works, but he still begs to go out. Why?

He reminds me that other kids get to go play; that other moms have adjusted to the endless snow, buying multiple ridiculously overpriced snowsuits and dealing with soaking wet loads of laundry. I remind him that when I was a kid, I never needed more than one snow suit at a time, and didn’t even get new ones every year. And forget about the price — in my day, they were a quarter of the price.

Finally, pleading turns to anger and he says that the world is different, and I didn’t need it because it didn’t snow like it does now. He says that the only thing that didn’t change was me, and that I’m stubborn. Then he storms up to his room and slams the door.

Am I stubborn?

It’s true that it snows year-round, day and night. But I was taught to avoid the snow. I was taught that the snow is not our friend. It’s what makes car engines break and people slip and school to be canceled and work to be delayed. And what would this little eight year old have me do — love it?

I decide to leave him in his room. If he wants to sulk about not being allowed to leave the house, let him sulk. I’m doing this for his own good — the snow is dangerous. It is nothing to enjoy. One day, when it clears up and the weather is nice, I’ll make it up to him.

My best friend calls me naive. She says that there is no one day, that this is our life now. Sure, it may start or stop actively snowing, but the snow will never fully melt. Everyone else adapted, she says, so why can’t you? What is there to be afraid of in snow?

It’ll destroy my car.

She scoffs. Honey, you and I both know there hasn’t been a single car on the market that can’t withstand the snow in fifteen years.

He’ll slip and break something.

First of all, shoes these days are built like cars. There is no slipping. And even if he does, his snowsuit is padded to protect his bones.

I- I, I stammer.

Look at what you’ve done to your kid. Homeschooled, no friends, not even allowed to leave the house. What kind of life is that for him?

I will make it up to him, I say. When? How?

The snow has to stop eventually. And if it doesn’t? Or if he’s already an adult by then, living by himself and refusing to speak to you?

That- that won’t happen, I say faintly. He won’t stop speaking to me.

He won’t stop speaking to you, his prison guard? Who isolates him from the outside world, doesn’t let him play, tears him away from that playground after an hour once a week?

When the snow stops, I say. When the snow stops, I’ll give him everything he wants.

He won’t want it then, she says, not from you, anyway.

Brooklyn Knows My Name

Lise Augustin

I didn’t expect to find home in old Ingersoll— between office hours and long nights of studying. But here I am, playing cards with these kids who somehow became my friends. Having picnics, making memories too important to ever let go. These people healed a heart they never broke.

The guilt creeps in when I catch myself laughing too hard, while the news from home—too painful to translate— rushes through my memory.

My mother still cries quietly when she calls. And I press mute, so she doesn’t hear the birds outside my dorm window.

Sometimes I wonder if feeling safe here means I’ve left something behind I wasn’t supposed to.

I miss the smell of mangoes on Sunday mornings, the way the sea breathes like a mother. Here, I have sidewalks and quiet— but no memory speaks Creole back to me.

Brooklyn knows my name now. That feels strange to write. It offers arms to hold me when my world is shattering. It offers ears when the thoughts in my mind grow too loud. It offers peace— and silence, at 11 p.m., when everyone has left.

This place, with unfamiliar scents and sounds, has somehow managed to feel like home.

This place holds me. Softly. And I wonder, will I ever want to leave, if it starts to feel too much like love?

In A Dark Time

Brenna G

Good will always be there.

It is woven into our earth, into our core as human beings.

It is in the rush of the water in a stream lit by sunlight, the wave of tree branches dancing in chill winds from far lands, the touch of heaven and earth when rain hits the grass and brings it new life.

It is in the pumping of our blood that keeps us moving and laughing and dancing and touching.

There is good woven into the fabric of being.

Persisting, like a fish swimming upstream, like a sprout growing through dirt, like a hand reaching out.

It exists, my god, it exists.

Elegy of a Dying Breath

Julian Rubin

An old, frail man lays in a hospital bed. Surrounding him are a multitude of beeping machines, keeping him alive. With great effort, the man sits up in his bed, looking out at the audience. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse and frail.

Every person shares two things in common, They’re born, and they die. It’s something we all must come to terms with, no matter who we are. Death awaits us all in the end. They say you die twice. Once, when your body passes away, and the second, when your name is spoken for the last time. There are those we call... immortal, whose legacies are remembered years, decades, centuries after their death. Those who have had a lasting impact on the world. It’s hard to remember sometimes, that these immortals were once people. They lived, they laughed, and they loved. When one thinks of Shakespeare, their minds go to Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, or Macbeth. We don’t think of the hours he must have spent poring over the empty page, wracking his brain to come up with his next sensation. Nobody pictures him buying flowers for his wife, or enjoying a picnic in the park. We don’t contemplate the life he lived, only that which he left behind. We don’t view people like Alexander the Great as human. To us, he is something more, a mythical figure who stands above us all, a conqueror, larger than life. He lived. He was a man. He breathed the same air we do, looked up at the same moon that we do. When we speak of him, we talk of conquest, of battles and bloodshed. We forget, he lived and learned, and made mistakes just like any of us. We call these immortals, those whose legacies have stood the test of time.

The man coughs, sagging into his bed slightly. Readjusting himself, he begins to speak again, his voice now louder, heavily emotional.

BAH, immortals? These were men just like you or I. They lived, they died. Their bodies lie, covered by dirt and wood, flesh turned to rot and ash. They are no more immortal than you or I, only memory remains. Does memory benefit a corpse? Can they bring praise with them to the afterlife? Does their legacy bring them peace? No. They are nothing but dust and bone. Men. They are... were... men, and they died like men. Nobody is immortal.

Another cough.

We can see much of the energy animating this man leaving his body. He lets his head fall back onto his pillow. He reaches for his bedside table, struggling to grab something hidden from the audience. He swiftly pulls it to himself, hiding it under the covers.

Death is truth, one we all must face. But as It gets closer, as the jaws snap shut around me, I can’t help but fear the dark, the cold emptiness of a grave. I can’t help but think of what I will leave behind. Will anyone remember me? Would I be immortal, false as it is? Would my children, my children’s children, speak my name once I pass? It’s not good enough, it’s not... enough.

The man pulls out the object, revealing it to be a syringe filled with a glowing green liquid. He contemplates it for a bit, admiring the glow. He turns back to the audience.

Not enough. Cough, cough. I need more time. I’m not ready for this to end, to face the reaper. Did Shakespeare quake in the face of death? Did Alexander bargain with the devil? Were they dragged, kicking and screaming into the void? Or did they take death’s hand, and begin the next part of their journey. I don’t know. I never will. But I will be different.

He rolls up his sleeve with great effort, revealing pale skin. Holding the syringe, he places it against his skin.

I share one thing in common with every person. I was born, but I will never die.

With one quick motion, he pushes the needle into his skin, gasping quietly in pain. Pushing the stopper, he injects himself with the contents. His eyes close, and he lays back on the hospital bed, silent and still. He isn’t moving. The curtain falls, ending the scene.

Angelina Lambros / “Replica of Woman with a Hat”

Awake at Dusk

Vail Varone

Plush brown curtains wrinkled like a worn old tee veil the west-facing window.

I sit up in bed, relax for breath, and smell mildew.

The curtains float like faint phantoms a foot above the floor.

Not because the window is open; Nature’s breeze is too harsh and humid.

The AC hits them from above At just the right spot, everywhere.

Light seeps through splayed across my bed In horizontal beams.

When I close my eyes: I am Warm, Red Stripes.

Silver Lake

Leo Kouklanakis

Long ago, arid plains groaned under the might of the scarlet sun, which poured over, generously poured heaps of light and heat that pressed the earth in waves which rippled far and wide. What greenery remained was bathed in a suspicious glow. The trees, which were named names like Joshua and Samuel and David, stood around and wept in their stationary solitude. A lonely cry against the scorching, bugless bark, for all the ants and insects abandoned their previous homes and moved downstairs, underneath, in hopes of finding shade and some sweat of the land that by some miracle had been left unturned by the ravenous sun.

Enough of that. This languid is exalting. I’m sprawled bones laid out on a striped blanket listening to the shapely movements of the lake’s many voices, imagining a worse thing. A group of travelers in a desert, searching for a mythical lake. They’re parched and dusty. Dust in their eyelashes and stuck to their nose hairs. Searching for a watery miracle beyond a hill, or downward into a spoonful slope. This language of want is exhausting; the words are steps and shattering heaves within the lung. Imagining for months the glassy hues of light on a shimmering water source. Almost giving up, then finally catching a silver glimpse from a distance, reinvented by the sight of the glistening crater, the grand oasis. Finding the strength to hold tight to their belongings and run gasping to the source, watching it spread out wider as they approach, feeling the coolness before it arrives. Stepping onto the dark muddy bank, wading in under the hot sun and diving head and arm first underneath. But quickly realizing a misunderstanding, touching the surface and burning hot on the skin. What had been mistaken for water was a basin of silver jewelry baking in the sun. Earrings, necklaces, rings, bracelets, anklets, nose rings, glittery chains and big silver pendants stewing in their radiant metallic heat, drowning the travelers.

Seriously enough of that. My friends and I are sitting on the grass on the blanket watching the little waves catch the light then throw it back into our eyes, white, a hundred times and more repeatedly. Nshera’s pearl earrings wrapped in silver wire are swinging by her neck like pendulums.

We like water because it reminds us of jewelry. No, sorry. We like jewelry because it reminds us of water.

Y’all

Come Back Now, Y’hear?

Parley Cook

I hardly remember losing it now. Everyone says, “you don’t have an accent,” and I grin, because wiping that sucker out was damn satisfying. (and if you can hear the twang in this poem, well, just. wait for a minute.)

Walking down the halls of my high school, I murmured to myself, deliberate, shaping the words like braces slowly shift crooked teeth. though it feels a bit disingenuous to use the simile. (I never needed braces, you might remember.)

Don’t ask me what. Vowels, I suppose? Ends and odds? Bringing the long, slow slide—you know, they call the grating of a voice forced to the bottom of its range ‘vocal fry’, and I did that too, but this was vocal summer lost on backroads, ceding to an early winter, and the wind was scattering something deep,

and the POINT being, forgive my meandering, that I needed it, that downpitch forcing myself to be an alto, the vision of going to college somewhere far from podunk Southern towns and anyone who knew me and the gnawing background noise of despair (that, ironically, would rise and try to swallow me in college.)

I was never so smug as the first time a Northerner gaped at me. Did I tell you this story?

I called the accent my party trick— you should have heard the way they laughed in disbelief. That Sound? from That Person?

For a moment, every time I was free of the shackles that bound me, free of the self I hated, tossed into the beautiful expanse of someone unfamiliar, someone, anyone but a gawky Southern girl who failed at the girl part and cast herself out.

The rest is blurry. The rest is fluff because the point is this: you love my drawl.

And that’s not some bullshit, and this isn’t some treatise on the self. You love my drawl, the one I’m not even sure really fits anymore. And it’s nothing, honest, except that sometimes I get so scared, and this isn’t about fear, but.

It is about someone else’s fear, the me so far back I had forgotten she breathed once, was more than photographs and jaded scoffs, was a real collection of wetware with a soul attached. She was so afraid of being dismissed for the rest of her life that she became her own dismissal. Isn’t that just the darnedest thing?

You call her back...to mind? to heart?

You call her back and leave this message on the answering machine: hey, I love you.

I love you.

I’m scared for so many different reasons now, but I don’t have to be scared for that one.

The Quarry

Dana Smith

Andy on the god mic

You can never go back

killed It dead like so many vestigial selves

So much blood

So much blood

Glasses float down can’t see what’s next

Just the five here

27 years to forget Her. you. Here.

So much blood

So much blood

Architect. Author. Driver. Historian. Loser. Lover.

Wake up dead man

It all comes back

Hisbody

Not him anymore

The words stick in your throat

Dead weight like his limbs

A paper boat

Unfolded

Will still always have the creases

In The Quiet Dark

Cat Osorio

There’s not much to do when a child is hurt,

When I cannot pull her from the current,

I cannot tear it from her body,

I cannot devoid it of oxygen,

I cannot cross the indefinite distance between me and her.

Instead, the pain wrings her body out.

Her web of nerves becomes a searing brand, Nothing but a vessel for its life.

I cannot keep her afloat above the howling waves.

Burning passion becomes the dark abyss.

Cold and frozen is our bliss.

I wither as I watch her fade.

The shelter of my protection is no longer enough.

Desperation grips as I see her walk by,

I whisper “Goodnight” with a tear in my eye.

THE NEW COURT OF NERO

Kai Peña-Chavez