Midnight Breakfast

M idnight

BREAKFAST

AN EMPTY ZINE #6

midnight breakfast will peacock

i. breakfast for dinner

ii. la petite panique

with great warmth skin touches skin i feel you glowing, radiating against me as i gingerly flip these skillet potatoes

i pour the inky black and bitter brew and slug it down my gullet like the crack of a whip i’m up and i’m dressed and i’m up and i’m stressed like never before and every before for the last four days i’m sweating stressing breathing, heavy jolted like lightning and now i am ready to file my taxes.

your curves nestled into me like plucked, sweet fruit in my palm a moment, crystallized in time, viewed only in memory tainted by grief and pungent with sonder

iii. the emptiness it is unfortunate that this everything bagel toasted, slathered in cream cheese cannot fill the anxious pit deep in my stomach cannot mend a broken heart cannot solve all of my problems but it can solve a couple and that’s good enough for me (it’ll have to be)

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drinking chocolate Hannah Levin since I was small I drank my hot chocolate in a tall mug with a spoon of specific proportions like an elongated soup it didn’t make much sense but neither do you Oh how I hate to love the same as she sucking on grapes over paint and sun rolling stems around across my teeth

I’m not sure if I've ever had an original thought before falling in love with long spoons I left the book there on the windowsill ashes fall on the cover and smoke stains the pages

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Et Tu , Brooklyn Twink?

G. R. Tomaini

Blarney Stone — By God — Rubbed E ’ vermore — Eyesore — Nay ! Not Another One Of Those — Not A Brooklyn Twink , To Launch — In This Most Degenerate Of Times — A Feral Fit Of Feisty Melancholia . . .

Be Thou As Thou May Be — A Fleshy Fruit Fit For Fucking — Be That As That May — & Get Gone !

Leering From Your Jackal Eyes , You . . .

Seek to Console Tempestuous Moi — Answer Me This , Lover : Et Tu , Twink ?

Whom Shall Be Laid Waste To , Next ?

The Only Emperor For Damn Sure . . .

Isn ’ t That Bastard Emperor Of Ice Cream !

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note on fridge Benjamin Roy

to whoever bought the butter bread i’m sorry. i’ve been making sandwiches all week + i owe you something back. they were good sandwiches (it was good bread) & i hope that doesn’t hurt to hear. i will do whatever you want to pay you back, such as: 1. buy you a loaf (the same kind or different) 2. hand over its equivalent in cash 3. something else that mends this i really like living with you & i’m sorry i make so many mistakes. i am struggling + you are better at having good things on hand. you can keep this note as a promissory that i will make you a yummy sandwich whenever :)! i am lucky to live here & like a sandwich i get better the more you warm me. we will figure this out. your roommate, ben

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I Woke Up

Hannah Wolfe I woke up. I didn’t want to wake up.

I had to heat my coffee up.

It was the morning.

The door between earth and the dream space now closed.

I saw him standing in front of me, my eyes half open, stars and mist around us both.

I couldn’t bring myself to wake up.

Then a honk outside my window, loud and obnoxious, hurtled me back to reality.

Awake and moving, I looked around my room to find myself disoriented. Alone.

He wasn’t home, except for the playlist I made of songs he sent me I that still have on my phone.

Everything. His scent, his arms, the sparkle in his smile.

When he held me in the parking lot two summers ago I felt like I could fly.

My knees nearly crumbled and my heart sprang open when he leaned down to kiss me.

No one will ever kiss me like he did.

With the sweet taste of tequila still on his lips — I thought, “This must be what dreams taste like.”

I went home alone and when I woke up I could still smell his cologne.

And then he was gone.

As the days and weeks and years have gone by, I have waited.

He’s never returned, though I know we’ll find each other again someday, somehow.

For now, I have to make breakfast. Two eggs scrambled, a little hot sauce and some fruit.

I listen to the news. I hear birds chirping on the tree across the street.

The sun comes through the blinds shining dull, golden light on the floor.

I look over my shoulder and see a picture of a friend of ours and stop.

I’m drifting back into myself again. Loosing my footing, my grip.

I didn’t want to wake up, but I had to heat my coffee up.

Pain and sadness consume parts of me everyday, the farther you wander away.

Understanding that maybe one day may be a long time from now.

Do you ever think about me? What you might say?

All I can do as I clean up my kitchen is pray: that I make it through today.

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A LOVE LETTER

DEAR FRIENDS OF DECADENT COSMOS, what an amazing 3 years we have spent together! writing this now feels right but it also feels strange. when decadent cosmos first came to be, i had no idea how it would progress. i don’t actually know if i expected it to “progress”. at the time, it arose as a response to a need i felt within the spaces that i shared with other creatives. i didn’t have a plan so much as ideas that only occasionally lent themselves to reality by taking form in

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the shape of conversations, later zines, and eventually spectacular art events that defied the possibilities available to artists like us. i want to thank each and every person who has given their energy, creativity, love, and weirdness to the projects that have made decadent cosmos shine. without all you weirdos, nothing like this ever would have seen the light of day. i hope that everyone who had their first published poem or piece of art shown at one of our events feels the bolder for it now. i hope that everyone who has moved the crowds at our shows with words and songs and sounds knows how powerful that sort of experience is for us creatives. i hope that everyone who has been touched by decadent cosmos feels a little more fearless, a little more inspired, a lot gayer and, hopefully, more resilient thanks to the community we’ve been able to share.

Tuesday November 14, 2023

ironically, without decadent cosmos, i wouldn’t be able to do what i’m doing now which is letting it rest. this very special publication is also our final publication. following the release of this zine, i will be retiring the entire decadent cosmos project to pursue some new endeavors. i have learned so much through everything and everyone involved in this project and i am only ready to move on now because of what i have learned.

i hope that sentiment is shared by everyone who has been a part of our weird and wonderful community because i can assure you this is just the beginning.

SO MUCH LOVE, TASHA

Blood and Water arame sy

I want to meet my ancestors I long to lick their wounds, suckle their breasts, and braid their hair as they tell me the secrets I desire to see the faces that weren’t photographed Listen to the voices that were muzzled And if that is impossible I want the blood from the leaves to collect in a cup I can drink out of The water that their bodies have steeped in for centuries to be the water that I drink The dirt that they rested in to be what I pot my plants with I want them to live in me To sing the songs they couldn’t with my mouth To make the art they couldn’t with my hands Their quotes being my daily punchlines Their hips being the ones I whine with So I imagine I imagine that when I fall into an exhausted yet restless slumber they are the ones spooning me to sleep When I write they are the ones guiding the pen That when I sob they are the ones massaging my back When I want to drown they are the ones carrying me to shore It comforts me to know that I live under the same sun they did Swim in the same ocean waters they steeped in And when that water evaporates into the clouds I am happy to know that it will drip into my hair when it rains I am my ancestors wildest dreams and a figment of their imagination

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university ave

constance klippen it’s not a silly little moment. it’s standing on a street corner in a leather jacket with paint stains, after i promised i wouldn’t ruin this one. it’s being here with you, after i said i wouldn’t this time. it’s being more quiet than usual, walking by a skeleton, mistaking it for a mirror. it’s the thought in the back of my mind that maybe the most we have in common is being unsatisfied. i don’t like it when you say we’re the same, and then act so alone.

still, book the hotel i need a new notepad to write something like, “this feels like home” and leave it on the mirror in the lobby for the hotel staff to find later. i hope when you think of me you think of a dark night with brick buildings and city lights, not a broken silhouette over your shoulder begging you to pull me closer. it’s really hard for me to act like i need something from someone. i like that the train is right here and that i could leave if i wanted to.

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Our Lady's Beetle Indigo Ryder

Oh, who am I kidding? When I get going ‘bout ladybugs it always sounds like I’m talking ‘bout family. The only hibernating colony I was groomed to understand was that which resides in the North Eastern woods. There, when ladybugs died in piles, sundried on windowsills, I would walk– or maybe still, only produce a crawl? Gathering ruby pests in my soft chunky hands.

The flavor escapes me yet that crunch remains distinct. With my young tongue I would remove wings from bodies, mashing polka dots between my molars. My buyers would Google plenty over this display of unusual adolescent behavior. As odd as it may have been, at least those lovely red ladybirds made it to adulthood. They got to feel the sun before greeting an end sunk in bile.

Mother ladybugs can lay as many as 1,000 eggs in a single birthing season. So many treats for me! Yet, my urgency bleeds greedy. Those same devoted mothers, when their stubby legs can't carry them to a sufficient supply of prey, will eat their golden eggs. Mothers care for offspring but Mothers know their limits, they know best. That's why my mother flew me up from Florida to live in these buggy woods. Eat the egg or abandon.

Instinct urged her to provide me with a new mother. What a fruitful harvest I was for my buyers. They wanted a sign from Their God. They wanted an awesome blessing. Ladygirls similarly were a symbol of blessing from the Virgin Mary.

Providing health and protection over a crop one tune-in-toingenuity at a time.

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Once upon a time our ancestors prayed to Dear Mary for an intercession. Out onto the fields flew the swarm of red-orange armor girls. At first, the people feared the blistering bugs. As they tanked onto the scene folks fretted the odds chanced against them. Yet the ladybugs protected the harvest. And so the people proclaimed the ladybirds as “Our Lady’s Beetle.” You ever just sense that ur number one girl in the sky is behind something wonderful? Mother Mary ought to have been hyped, after granting such a grace, to receive praise for her engined army. Likewise to prayers instigating a reaping, my mother evoked adoption for her spiritual health's sake. To her abortion was not an option. Neither consumption. So I was sold, bought, and renamed.

Made into a new lil bugger for a foreign family to love. When ladybugs find me now I return to the windowsill hungry. Aching for yesteryear. This is often agonizing as it resurfaces roots in Massachusetts. There my sores grew plenty. A reprise was the scenery: sprouting lady slippers, blueberry bushes, and deer guiding their fawn safely through landscaping. Another brand of history exists too. To reveal it I sift my yearning through a mesh of aspirations. Memories fly to me flocks. Delayed, they arrived incomplete on my twelfth birthday. Detailed on the title page’s inscription in that damned lilac leather bible. My longing tucks itself underneath a forced solitude, hunkering down like a ladybug mid-storm. No heat, no flight. No family, no love.

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These colors make me violent Nico Zinos These colors make me violent Beauty pushes me out However much I pull closer The others laugh and stare And see that I am no man Just a worm that pleads insanity And quells the wrath of mine own soul To struggle is so human To languish is divine And yet i struggle for an ounce or less Of pure God; but purer is the hole Where people carouse and sit and smoke And I look in but cannot take hold They grasp each other with a tightness that forms A shape that I cannot but revile For who am I to say where you become them Yet say I must For I was given the tongue and staff and whip Those vile gifts passed down to me By a man who took his face in hands And died on a pedestal of dung I was birthed out that state And fell to pieces before the deed was done Rebuild me, O leviathan, Into a shape that they will clutch Cherish and hold me to your breast Let me sleep within your grasp And whisper a fantasy into my head Tell me I am no man and no worm I am but a mass of figures Numbers and shapes arranged in beautiful logic The difference between yours and mine Is no different than yours and them Whisper oh sibilant beast I crave your fancies and your utterance Amalgamate these hands and feet and hair With every beast who pays you homage And let me worship blind and jubilant Break your fast of 40 days Break my heart and chip my grin

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Make me imperfect so in the dark He will clasp my bruises and feel the scars And know that I also was in that pit He will touch me with his healing hands To feed me from his mouth to mine God makes love to me and from my lips I cry Blasphemy ------or-----I feel like a piece of toast With a little pat of butter Eat me with a good dark roast And I won't even mutter

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My Grandmother's Recipe Anna Geneva Renz

A recipe from my grandmother Alicia, related as closely as I can remember.

Before you go to a protest get Korean sweet potatoes, the little ones. You can use fingerlings but they aren't as good. You boil them, pat them dry, and wrap them in tin foil and put them in your coat pockets. They're your hand warmers. You'll be outside for a while if there are speeches, or if you’re marching, and it gets cold when the fog comes in. You can eat them afterwards. You can throw them. If you get arrested you can eat them in the police van. It's called riot food.

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DECADENT COSMOS

TEAM EDITOR-IN-CHIEF TASHA Z

ART DIRECTOR ADAM GIORDANO

ART ASSISTANT HANNAH LEVIN

MANAGING EDITOR SAM DE SOTO

AN EMPTY ZINE #6

MIDNIGHT BREAKFAST

Contributors Harmony Witte (she/they) Android Goes to Ole South for German Pancakes, front cover Harmony used a technique they call digital watercolor collage to create this piece. Using watercolors painted throughout the last decade, they pieced them together together digitally with their rudimentary computer skills using Photoshop and Art Studio Pro to give a glimpse into a world where everyone, even androids, give in to cravings for pancakes at midnight.

Especially when they are German pancakes served by a surly waitress at the Ole South in Fort Worth.

Will Peacock (he/him) midnight breakfast, p. 2 Will is a non-binary composer, singer, and poet based in the Boston area.

Will is particularly interested in the junction where philosophy, gender, love, sex, politics, and social justice intersect, and aspires to ponder these themes through music and the written word, and often expresses these ponderings in a brutally candid (and often humorous) way.

TASHA Z (any pronouns) an angel came, p. 3 TASHA strives to synthesize the spiritual aspects of the traditions and movements they find most inspiring, namely Greek and Russian Orthodox iconography, many Modernist movements including, Symbolism, Surrealism, and Dada, and countless Outsider and Folk artists. TASHA's love of cinema has contributed to their aesthetic philosophy by suggesting that time may play a significant role in the way that we explore and experience images.

Brenda Echeverry (she/her) Melt (paint), p. 4; I Resist self-portrait (ink and colored pencil), p. 16; Art = Yummy (collage), back cover Brenda Echeverry is a Colombian American expressive arts therapist and teaching artist based in Dorchester, MA. Brenda has a background in vocal performance, tap dance, visual art, and musical theatre. She enjoys drumming, playing acoustic guitar, cooking, reading, and spending time outdoors. Brenda’s creative work reflects her interests in psychology, spirituality, womanism and the natural world. She believes that equitable access to the arts can benefit the developing mind and help individuals and communities heal, connect, and transform

Hannah (she/they) "drinking chocolate", p. 5

Nullself (he/they) Untitled, ink on paper p. 6 I'm a 29 year old queer, trans, and disabled man living in Boston, MA. My predominant forms of artistic expression are surreal black and white ink illustrations and abstract acrylic paintings, and I also create zine compilations of inkworks and poetry done during impactful times in my life.

I use my art to give a visual design to the experiences and sensations I have in my meditation practice and everyday life, especially as it pertains to self, queerness, and disability.

G.R. Tomaini (he / him) Et Tu , Brooklyn Twink ?, p. 7 G.R. Tomaini is a First-Generation LGBTQ Federal McNair Scholar, an author of eight books who currently attends Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, and is a Poetry Editor at The Incognito Press, as well as a Monthly Contributor to the same; thus far, four works of his have been published across three volumes. Tomaini is currently in the process of recording several Poetry Albums based on his six books of Poetry; what’s more, Tomaini is also converting a few of his Poetry books into stage-plays.

Tomaini's works can be found at grtomaini.com as well as on his Twitter profile, @Gtomaini.

ben roy (he/him) note on fridge, p. 8 Ben Roy is a fiction writer, songwriter, translator, and poet from Haverhill, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard University, where he received a BA in Classical Languages and Literatures. Ben can read Latin, Ancient Greek, and Modern Greek, as well as some French and Biblical Hebrew. He loves rock climbing, singing traditional folk ballads, and his two dogs, Aletheia and Tharrhos. He currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Car (she/her) "I'm Good.", digital, p. 9 When I sit down to make something I usually start with a feeling and start.

Here I started with a persistent emptiness. The type of empty that seems to be an unfillable hole, and you try to fill it up but there are no good choices to fill it with. So you choose to fill it with whatever you can, and pretty quickly you're surrounded by those choices. Hopefully you’re also a little less empty.

slug in a helmet - snail without a shell "What will you contribute to the picnic?", india ink, fineliners, and acrylic, p. 10 Visually dawdling through the internal pasture of a flesh vessel you may have seen in the grocery store.

H.R. Wolfe (she/her) "I woke up, I didn't want to wake up", p. 11 I want to write so my voice will be heard. I want to be remembered for something. I hope my work will allow for that to happen.

Arame (they/them) Blood and Water, p. 14 I am a young black poet, dancer, and student in Minneapolis.

constance (she/her) university ave, p. 15 constance klippen is a creative artist from minnesota. with a natural inclination toward visual art since childhood, she has expanded upon her unique style of expression into adulthood. as a child, she was able to easily visualize ideas for blank space, and as she grew older began to value originality over all else in her work. originality still remains the foundation of her creative ideas and completed work. constance primarily paints on large scale canvas with a combination of acrylic paint, latex paint, and oil pastels. art courses in high school and higher education expanded her technical abilities and their influence can be found in her work today. she remains consistent in drawing inspiration from the images her mind visualizes on blank space, and has deepened intent and complexity throughout the years of her practice.

Indigo Kinsella (xe/xem/xyr) Our Lady's Beetle, pp. 17-18 Indigo Kinsella is a Boston based poet, baker, and beach combing fanatic. Xe explore the incredulous nature of indoctrination through xyr intersecting identities. Xe love public transit, tattoos, and making playlists emotively.

You can find more of xyr work published in En*gendered Lit Mag and follow xem on IG for writing updates at @uglyclogswrites or find xem tweeting via @uglyclogs <3

Ella von Huene (she/they) Tongue, oil on canvas, p. 19

Nico (he/him/his) These colors make me violent, pp. 20-21 Makes pizzas by day, has existential crises by night

Sabel Flynn (he/him; ze/hir) “u’ll never make it in hollywood baby”, pen on paper, p. 22 This image is was burned in my mind for weeks before I drew it. It is partially based on real events, partially based on images that came to mind while listening to the song “Hollywood Baby” by 100 gecs.

Anna Geneva (she/her/hers) My Grandmother's Recipe, p. 23

THIS IS A FEAST

THIS IS A SILENCE