babyteeth w23 issue 3

b aby tee baby te etth h / w 23 / is i s s ue no .3

I don’t remember much of you; Your hair in the garden’s breeze, A joke at the ready With a paintbrush in hand.

But what I do remember is sweet.

A glorious laugh birthing teething smiles While I lost my breath to song Your smile upon us all.

I don’t remember much of you Your snakes escaping through the house Your head, rambunctious with ideas, empty of hair Or your newspaper hats.

But what I do remember is sweet Nerves at thanksgiving dinner With a calm, gentle voice beside me Guiding my mind through the muddle of conversation Your smile upon us all.

I don’t remember much of you, The comfort you gave to your brother, my dad Or the tears you shared with my mother, Your insistence on the third: me.

But what I do remember is sweet.

Driving hours to swim when you couldn’t, Getting burgers at a diner on the side of the road, And watching you, weak as you were, muster a laugh.

Your smile upon us all.

Steal more glances, Filch another look, How many more chances, Will you get in this book.

The blue hugh of darkness Swaddles my birth of death I put down my pen and paper So I may enjoy the rest.

A crow calls to no one Only silence answers back Rain falls on its black feathers As it flies to the ends of its almanac

Left: Summer Camp - Elsa Snowbeck

Colin James

Cortado I looked up the word “cortado” and it means “with a little milk,” in regards to coffee.

I am so glad to live in a world in which I can drink coffee with a little milk!

Elsa Snowbeck

Drew Rodriguez Micheal

Why do ducks swim in circles?

The river smelled of rot And the water rippled around surface level ice patches which tried to cage imaginary fish that by this point were probably long gone.

Do fish sleep under the ice in the winter?

Or deep down below do they swim on?

Maybe they form a little fish city, where bundled up together they all ride out a long icy season.

I like that better.

I tried to walk alongside the ducks.

Why do ducks swim in circles?

Retracing their steps like they forgot something Do ducks know how to forget?

When I look out on the horizon it feels like I'm the only insignificant person that's ever existed, so when I walk alongside the ducks, maybe they are sharing their big-small world with me.

My cheeks tingle and the dead old shrubs jostle in the wind And next spring they’ll be alive and green again.

Maybe not all of them, but enough.

I think the two of us, the lone duck swimming upstream and I, feel the same way.

In the spring we’ll be alive again.

Minnesota winter barreled in.

Rolling over flattened, desolate earth.

But the river still runs under all that ice.

There's a fish city down there!

And at least we’ll see its persistent flow again in the spring, even if the ducks still swim in circles, without regard for the direction of the current.

Ashley Rosenberg

Doodles - Aselya Gullickson

how much does a human heart weigh noel wang

how much the wanting makes you empty. the language in which your hunger speaks to you is a language I think I understand. my mother tongue is water singing from your mouth you will never have enough I am ten years ago and I am a daughter of bones with holes and three soft, open mouths: one each for the dead, the living, and the person I am today who is neither and still so fucking hungry itʼs slowly killing me. let me feed on your air like Iʼm starving. let me taste ink on the insides of your teeth and yes I know you think your mouth is too wide but you are still not big enough to hold me. I lay sweetly curled under your molars. I have considered the possibility that our arrangement —me, seated in the gap between your perfectly symmetrical canines and the back of your throat— is causing you some kind of pain. this has led me to believe that there are some things I donʼt need to find out. like, why you wonʼt cry in front of me when I have loved the softest parts of you. like, Iʼm being unfair. I have loved the softest parts of you. I carry you with me. in slowly amassing an army myself, a colossus of immeasurability, I had forgotten all but these ten ounces.

collage ethan whiteaker

puke poem can’t be clean can at least be empty after long-day and sweating waking from long-sleep (a piece of shit; a waste; a non-thing) nose stuck in the trash pushed next to bloody tampons and half-eaten rotting soft’ning bananas. puke. vomit. hurl. throw up. mush, all the way down. tears flooding nose dripping for the first in a while view the innards: inside you are just black-brown-gray slop.

Who knew?

Well, I did and so did you.

It seeps and smells out.

olivia ho

love poem today my mind is firmly set outside amid the bright dazzling day and the snow casting light upwards unto the broken dead branches of the woods today my mind is not invested in notes nor articles. pens and pencils seem ornament to labor without love. today the paths I tread were so frigid cold and my nose red with stinging ice but even the warm inside cannot contain my eyes, walking with the squirrels and unseen singing birds upon ice-coated earth. today my eyes are set determinedly out the window and I project myself with toes-tapping impatient tune a thousand miles beyond to a place I know you are.

billy bratton

ruby dirks

stewie goon