Transmissions: Issue 6

s to ship n o i t rela and lves e s r ou rs othe

e t n n t s o c Collaborations

Happiness Is… JBWC Library, p 35, a Cento Collaborative Cento Verse Voyage

Poems After Rodney Graham’s Welsch Oaks #1, Michael DeLaPlante Chasing Shadows, Jessica Park Retrogression, Rosemary Bodine Red Flags, Nautica oh, Alaina Kubiak Untitled, Abuk After Tony Oursler’s Junk, 2003, Athena Fancy Dinner, Keira VanDerBeck

Stories orange, Angelina Tang This Year, Last Year, and the Next, Pride David

Comics How to, Leah Drifting, Pierson Schwartz Girlhood, Natalie Mae Sick in the Root, Natalie Mae George’s Jenny: A Zine, Zeki

Dear Reader, Transmissions is a collection of youth writing from Just Buffalo's Writing Center in Spring 2024. This edition focuses on relationships: both to ourselves and others. Cooking dinner with a friend, conversations with our younger selves, finding love, losing love, and everything in between.

It is important to acknowledge that many relationships are inexplicably formed in the creation of such an anthology. There is a sense of trust between the editor and the writer, a trust to take good care of the tension, tears, and laughter bottled up within those inked-out letters. There is a sense of trust between the writer and the reader, trust that the work will be embraced and consumed with gentle teeth. And of course, there is a sense of trust between us, the editors, and you, the reader, a trust that we are presenting you with honest emotion, with the authentic intent of our lovely talents. Relationships are built between you and me, between the words you read and the soft touch with which you peruse them.

Transmissions is the connection between us and you, and we’re glad we’ve got to have it once again.

—Angelina, Pride

Happiness is...

Happiness Workshop Attendees

Being able to be yourself The way the sun feels warm against your skin when it shines The extra hour of sleep with daylight savings Tiny silverware Cats in boxes that are too small for them Cats in boxes that are too big for them And empty boxes Boxes that are no longer empty sitting across from you in a restaurant booth, not having to force a smile because one has already flowered on my face, on yours; hanging on a friday night in a blue-fresh summer breeze, laughing with friends, sharing ice cream and iced tea, sweet and clear as the water of a blue pool, blue skirt Feeling good about yourself Feeling hopeful And believing that everything always works out for the best

The softness of my dog’s fur The bubbles in my water The crunch of tostadas The way the light hits my wall through my blinds Making a weird collage for Maria and her perfectly broken leg Knowing it’ll be okay despite despite despite

JBWC Library, Page 35, a cento West Valley Field Trip Attendees

Where I watched the sun that never came down A body exits all pages Do not cry out in clumsiness & shame Feeling the feel of too-heavy wings, the too-heavy bird fluttered and tottered and fell Forget about grammar think about potatoes Awake from a bad dream, you are too far away I am attracted to the strange and the strange has always been attracted to me The dark don’t stay dark these days

Collaborative Cento Conversations About Home Workshop Attendees, using Lines from Stepping Into Your Light

I am used to being a casualty I don’t think i want to be empty To get to the end you have to keep walking The light that saved you from the waters saves them too

Verse Voyage Collaboration Mia: it seemed like i never seemed the luckiest with finding love, however it seemed to find me quite a lot bumping into strangers on streets i swore their eyes would glisten as they helped me gather spilled groceries our fingers brushed as we reached for the same orange eyes locking and sharing a small bashful smile before hurriedly standing and going our separate ways with a short goodbye courage to speak seems to be the hardest type of courage to muster as unspoken words pass by as “wish’’s and ”had I not”s echo through my head, and maybe theirs maybe it was retribution for unspoken promises maybe it was payment for the hurried glances but when my eyes met his, it was their turn to shine just not his Never his I had locked into the travesty of time Fallen deeply into a kind of tangled bliss Unify-ily my own Unrequited flashed the caption over my head And I worked to find encounters that might unlock me Like a song that ends in the middle and transports you How could something so constant

Be foreign to the one person that I wanted So, so desperately To follow the formula that others had?

Why was this time any different?

What I thought was a curse Had become something I wanted To haunt me one last time. beside me, the boy laughed. it was a pleasant thing, bells jingling lightly, but I’d take his hyena cackle over an entire chorus of bells any day. I put his laugh into my deepest pocket.

I carried it with me everywhere and felt it buzz.

Robin: Sometimes getting lost is the quickest way to find yourself.

Lost seed in tooth.

Lost thought in panic.

Lost heart.

I used to write the directions down on the back of envelopes.Then I printed them from the internet. Now they are barked at me from the dashboard and I never even look at them.

It’s hard to tell when exactly you’re getting lost when you’re not even really sure where you’re meant to be going in the first place As I drive down the winding road to my parents obsolete cottage the GPS

screams to make a sharp right bumping off the paved road onto a measly track of dirt no tire track to indicate I’m heading in the right direction Screams still echo through my ears, the sound coming from everywhere and nowhere at once As the car almost pirouettes down the side Tumbling masses of leaves and branches grabbing at me Grabbing at her Until all that I could find of myself, or maybe her Were the two measly footprints, stained with blood So I became two then Or I became none then My mother never found me My phone continued its tracking voice beyond my own Audible trace The orderly finds me or her Tracking a sound only I can hear My mother doesn’t hear me nor I her.

This entire situation had become Lost on me.

What began as a simple drive, Ended with me Broken, Scattered, And definitely scarred.

Maybe mentally, And definitely physically.

I knew where I should be going.

I knew that the GPS had me following the main road for 4 miles.

I knew I had to turn into a shaded driveway.

My heart’s pounding reverberated in my ears and shook my body, But if I scraped off the dirt and blood, I would be okay, I could make it.

Delaney: It was a warm day when she decided to start peeling my oranges, The type of day where the sun shines brightly through scattered clouds, And it seems perfect enough that it could be fake.

I stood by the garbage can, trying and trying and trying to force the peel to unravel.

Failing and failing and failing to get it to fall away in a singular piece.

I felt her presence, A cool shadow behind me, But she more closely resembled the warmth of the sun.

She held out her hand and I almost took it.

Until I realized she was reaching for my sad orange.

I handed it to her and she said something whimsical into my eyes so that I didn’t even notice the peel fall to the grass in one long story. I wanted it to be our story.

It didn’t matter, I could see where it started and ended.

Or that it began with a failure.

My mother always used to tell me that it takes failing to learn anything, to grow even the slightest I hated the fact that I couldn’t be perfect in one fell swoop I couldn’t exert my anger onto the orange,

sinking my nails deep into the rind until the sticky pulp coated my fingertips Some things should be protected from frustration for they are too delicate to resist a heavy hand Which is to say that though she was magical she was neither delicate not unangry I learned anger could be beyond righteous could be spark Could quench a thirst could hold a beam Could be unspoken and revealed all at once But that’s only one view one cut On the opposite side of a fingernail or tracing past its ridge Whether cut or filed or chewed A fingerprint Inside of which one might say Contained within lies blood Lies DNA. With these fingerprints, These unique pieces of ourselves, We also find that we cannot do it all.

We may be scared to admit this, Cowering from it as it raises a balled fist.

But sometimes, an imperfection Is what ends with something As perfect as a well-peeled orange.

Rosemary: My family and I have never gotten along the greatest, And with the way things have been, things aren’t getting much better.

It’s hard to say why, but the connections have always seemed severed.

It’s nobody's fault (and if it was, it would not be mine) that we have been so distant from one another in the past.

These things happen, at least that’s what my friends say. (but do they really?)

Every night, we perform the same dance: Our separate paths meet across the table, But our eyes only infrequently meet in the stoney silence; And then we return to our usual places Like expensive dolls, Only played with briefly, before being positioned again.

Would it be better if we were to scream at each other?

If we were to finally slice through the silence?

Could I complain then?

Would the effort of the complaint be worth it?

Instead we pass the salt. We jiggle the ice in our glasses. We speak of rain.

Once we almost dumped all our secrets onto the table like packets of takeout ketchup.

A few of them burst open and stained my grandmother’s tablecloth.

Yelling would be too easy, An argument wouldn’t cover the years of pent up resentment

A scream would break the silence, sure, but I’m not sure anything would break the wall built between us The rift has grown to wide it’s began to swallow all my childhood memories, most of them are now tainted with the knowledge that things have changed so much since then She had a small tea set when we were young One she carefully stored under the foot of her bed after each use She always wanted a clear marking A dog marking territory And yet she tinkered with mine I had been the first to declare my love, though younger Nina: They were late to the gig, and being pulled over, just outside the city of L.A., sunset rush hour. Inside the van, someone opened a guitar case, peeled back a compartment, handed up a wad of cash. Hand over hand from the backseat it traveled. The cop was by then walking towards them, the driver's hands were on the wheel. The cash made it to the passenger seat, under a leg, before the driver lowered the window. The cop’s voice asks in an almost piercing, yet familiar tone, “Hello boys, do you know why I pulled you over?”

The driver perks up in an attempt to act natural, “Uhhh… We were probably going over the speed limit, yeah?” He turns to the rest of the passengers as if they were behind the wheel rather than himself.

The cop scoffs and sarcastically points out to the driver, along with the rest of those in the car, “Yeah, just 20 miles over. No big deal, right?” It was clear that the usual solution

(the cash) was likely to not work, but what other choice was there?

The driver looked over at his companions before turning his gaze back towards the cop. “No big deal.” Small snickers from his bandmates made their way throughout the van, and as a snicker passed from one passenger to the next, someone attempted to shush it, like a sorry attempt at a game of telephone. The corner of the driver’s mouth turned upwards in a smirk. The corner of the cop’s mouth turned downwards in a frown.

The billboard out the window told us to get out and explore. We were trying. Were we trying? The cop’s daughter was playing with her dolls in the neighbor’s backyard. Singing a song about something she knew nothing of. And wasn’t that the same thing the band did every night? They stood on the stage, illuminated by spotlights and vibrant colored clothing, and they sang of love of fortune and the secrets of life (what did they know about any of that?). On the inside, every single one of them were confused children, singing glorified nursery rhymes and playing dress up in front of thousands of people.

Jessica: Salty winds kiss rosied cheeks as water sprayed against the stones as sun-kissed hands trace nearly lazily around the moss-ridden rocks.

Once-careless eyes gaze mournfully at the almost shining castle, wedding bells sending shockwaves through each nerve in her body.

“Humans are just not worth it,” her father once said “Humans only bring pain,” her mother once said

And perhaps it was true as blistering, burning needle pricks spread, starting from the soles of her feet to the smallest hair on her head.

Frenzied legs danced through the pain, time after time, as a puppet would for a puppetmaster, all for the eyes of a human who would never glance her way To be able to have her tongue back, Having made it to the ocean, Having left the ceremony, What the parents hadn’t wanted to hear.

She had been willing to risk.

The scales emerging one long dangle until coiled around A bodily mass Her bodily mass No longer contained in human form.

She had returned to her roots, Reminded of what she had forced herself to do.

Bad decisions made in the name of what, Or perhaps a better word is who, She thought she loved.

Whispers had always come to her That those who lived this way Could give her everything she ever wanted.

Is this it? Is this everything?

This surely could not be everything That she ever wanted.

Everything was not a body, Not her body, Trapped within a prison of scales.

Everything was not barely moving For months on end —Or was it years? She wasn’t quite sure— Her jaw unhinged but instead of sound coming out, their mistakes, the size of melons, the size of wedding presents, went in. She swallowed them whole. Uninterested in what they held.

It didn’t matter, All she wanted to feel was full Happiness, Joy, Love None of it mattered anymore She was simply tired of feeling utterly empty Surely this would fill the gaping hole in her soul …but it probably wouldn’t

These pieces were written collaboratively. The name listed is the person who began the story but multiple writers contributed to each piece.

After Rodney Graham’s Welsch Oaks #1 Michael DeLaPlante

Oh what these branches have seen. the good, the bad, people sad, the new beginnings, the final moments, the budding leaves, the people grieve.

The end of ages of all ages. Leaves falling. people hanging.

For Chris, Made to Order Poetry at the Albright Knox Art Gallery

Chasing Shadows Jessica Park

The sky weeps with blood, pouring down as I call out Each breath I take escapes me as I call out for you Heaving gasps inbetween each cry as I wait for a response that never comes Each heavy step masked by the onslaught of the fear and pain Each step mirrored by yours as we search for something that’s never quite there A mirror, of sorts to something that isn’t quite there

Shared during the Youth Fellow Workshop

Retrogression Rosemary Bodine

Art is dying, Breathe life back into it.

Stop commenting on the Dead horse.

We taught you CPR, Why don’t you save it?

Stars aren’t made From dust as they once were, Instead, you’re supposed to Get up, and exist In the place of the dust.

Does life feel dull Because the art is dying?

Then you forge the star, Create the name, Become the face, Change lives; Even yours.

Who are you?

That’s no longer you.

Stop hoping that the art Will revive itself, When you’re excited For that shitty sequel Of a cult classic, Or that remake Of the game you played 13 times before, And become A solution.

Create the art, Create more, Do it because You wish to see it.

They made fun of it, That banana taped to a wall, But is it not just commentary?

Art is gasping for its final breaths, Will you watch that “new” Live-action Disney movie, Killing the art you wish to save; Or will you stand the hell up, And start pumping life Back into the art With your bare * Hands?

Red Flags Nautica

1st grade, I fell in love with a boy. He didn’t love me.

6th grade, I fell in love with a boy. He didn’t love me either.

7th and 8th grade, I fell in love with a boy and another. One broke my heart by impregnating a girl. I fell out of love with the other because I wasn’t ready yet. He grew jealous of my best friend and tricked me for a favor.

11th grade, I fell in love again. He touched a girl and I ghosted him. I still see his face in the halls and fight the urge to talk to him.

12th grade, I fell in love with a boy. Please let this be the last. I don’t want to be hurt by another boy who couldn’t be the right one for me.

Not again.

from a workshop based on Kiese Laymon’s writing

oh Alaina Kubiak

O is a solemn letter, a letter dashed in the tears of funeral bells, drowned in the blue of banishment.

O is a quiet letter, though he is never alone, for O is afraid of silence.

O is one half of the infinity symbol.

One half of eternity, and yet O has never been eternal.

His ponderings are often existential, dark in their material, warm and heavy— in his hands like sun baked soil.

O is gentle, his words are soft, though his lips may be cracked and bleeding, dusted with the remnants of stories he has told before.

O is a letter on his lonesome.

A great reader of Jane Austen, though his shelves are full of unread Shakespeare.

O a forgotten letter, a forgotten letter who longs to remember what it felt like to be cherished.

This poem was shared during the Synesthesia Workshop

Untitled Abuk

Muck skidding at the palate, the smog still-stuck in windpipe What I’m trying to say is, I can only speak of what I remember That making the mind a graveyard That being unwritten eulogies and improper burials What I said No what I meant What I’m trying to say No, what I mean is No— I am pushing metallic down the throat in hopes of suppressing muck— That being silence, windpipes and the sound of windshields brushing inside out I am trying to tell the truth without the cost being resurrection

from a workshop based on Kiese Laymon’s writing

After Tony Oursler’s Junk, 2003 Athena

My classmates always thought I was different.

They’d watch as I devoured my ham sandwich, congealed with yellow mustard. Snacking as crumbs spilled out of my mouth.

They picked at the mustard yellow sweater I wore to school, taunting its frayed edges.

Their small fingers worked like damselflies As they sopped mustard onto my glasses.

It dripped into my bloodshot eyes & pooled onto my thin, parched lips I took a picture of my vandalized eyes & littered them into my classmate’s backpack, a reminder that I would never forget & that I’d always be watching.

Made to Order Poetry at the Albright Knox Art Gallery

Fancy Dinner Keira VanDerBeck

Once every year or so the stars align so we decide it’s the perfect time to make a fancy dinner so we spill the tea while we cook the fish in the end we have no idea what we are doing so we grab a bunch of random spices from the cupboard and hope for the best Somehow it’s delicious in the magical way only food cooked with your best friend can be While we cook we talk about everything and nothing at all In talking laughing and cooking our souls reveal that we are idiots and intelligent beautiful women and scared little kids Stay with me here.

Where we can be all that we are and all that we aren’t and everything is drowned in oil and spices.

From “Be Mine” workshop

orange Angelina Tang

Everything is orange on the west coast.

Orange sunsets. Orange fruit. Orange-tinted sunglasses. My little white dress with the orange lace decals. I get tired of it all, the sameness. It was all so exciting. It’s supposed to be so exciting. When did it stop?

The sky looks grey, most of the time. Seagulls with grey wings and colorless feathers, staring up at me from the sand with those bright orange-red eyes, they seem to stare right through me and rip me apart into little digestible shreds.

You left so long ago, and the excitement went with you. You took the life, the colors, apart from orange, with you, and I am bitter to this very sunset over it. You were my sunshine, a little nursery rhyme maraschino cherry—the real sun and golden hour rays are only a caricature of you, your heat. They make me so angry.

You were a good lover. Good at loving, good at kissing in the salty sea waves, good at driving fast with an arm around my narrow sunscreen-sticky shoulders, a thin white shirt and tiny shorts thrown over a scarlet bikini you’d approved of with a kiss and a cocktail that tasted of grenadine and vodka with a little paper parasol stuck on the rim.

I recline on the yellow sand after a long day’s work, a summer weekend part-time at the beach’s bar. So many people. You’d known all the best spots, the secret spots only you knew, a local, a Californian, all-American boy. It’s too

quiet, the drone of other beachgoers a dull hum like the call of seagulls—something I have learned to block out.

Music has grown to grate on my senses recently. The music on the bar—I can hardly hear it sometimes for the noise of the customers. When I can, it seems so tuneless to me. It’s a vibe, it’s a bop, it’s a jam, but it’s not sweet. It doesn’t smooth out the jagged lines crisscrossing my brain. It doesn’t roll like the acoustics of your little red car going 50 on the 35 down the seaside roads blasting Lana Del Rey making me feel like a real Americana girl fit with red heart-shaped sunglasses and a lover’s lipstick, the same shade as the one smudged on your flimsy white shirt collar.

I want your music back.

I open my eyes and I see your eyes in the sky, your face above mine. I wish I could dream and remember your face, instead of autumn rainfall and summer’s end, a final visit to the beach before I had to drive inland to work and work and slave away under a grey roof and grey sky.

I really hate orange, and I miss the sun.

This Year, Last Year, and the Next Pride David

When I was 15, my grandmother told me never to fall in love.

I had a crush on a guy in my math class, and although it wasn’t more than a sheer feeling of bubbly anticipation, my grandmother sat me down and told me never to fall in love.

She said falling in love would be a slow yet painful and pointless process that would either end in marriage, breaking it off somehow or, death.

When I was 16, my mother told me to expect disappointment. I had just come home from my thengirlfriend Fara breaking it off with me, saying she had fallen out of love. At the time, something in me couldn’t understand or accept that. How could you fall out of love with someone you’ve been in love with forever? I was heartbroken. In a mess of tears and with the urge to vomit, my mother sat me down and told me to expect disappointment. Dating is a series of highs and lows, and I’d be better off staying away from it altogether and focusing on dreams and aspirations that wouldn’t include someone else.

I’m 17 now. I don’t fall in love anymore or believe in doing so. If love is only going to be painful and end in disappointment, there’s little point in trying, right? I haven’t strayed too far from it, though. I write romance stories, watching my characters fall in love, learn about themselves and the world, get heartbroken, repair the pieces, and return to their dreamy, idealistic lives.

I try to concentrate on the blank page on my laptop screen, trying to remember what I was talking about on the previous page, except that there’s nothing on the previous page. It’s blank. This is a new story. A new story I have yet to write with words.

I look around the coffee shop, hoping to get inspiration from someone talking to a friend or the barista calling out someone’s order, but today it’s practically vacant, and the most noise I hear is the lo-fi-covers of pop songs that play on the speakers. I look out the window at the people walking by. Lots of athleisure and sweatshirts with different college names across the front as people walk by either with their dogs, a stroller, or a group of friends. In Buffalo, it seems like everyone has a goal of getting out. Sometimes, I wonder what all is out there, but most days, I find comfort and inspiration in its familiarity.

But today is not one of those days.

“There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” An eerily familiar voice squeaks out, and I look up to see a girl who looks like the younger version of me sitting down in the seat across from me.

“I went to the house, but Mom and Abuelita said you went somewhere to write.”

“Who are you?”

“Solana.” She says with a glowing smile, but stops when she sees that my face's confusion has grown more. “I’m your sixteen-yearold self.”

“No way.”

“Yeah way.”

“How did you get here?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I did something similar to time traveling since I got connected to myself in different dimensions, and it turns out that in a different world, I am an incredible

mathematician like in that one movie Interstellar-” “Why did you do that?”

“I got bored.” She shrugs. “I’m always writing stories of other people living at least semi-interesting lives, and I figured it’s time for me to start living my own.”

“Well, if one thing is for certain, you’re more confident than your seventeen-year-old self.” I look down at my laptop screen, but the only change is my dead battery. I pull the charger out of my tote bag. “Can you plug this in? The port is behind you.”

“Sure.” She plugs it in, and my laptop is restored to life again.

“But you really shouldn’t say that. I’m sure seventeen-year-old Sol is plenty confident.”

Was my sixteen-year-old self really this optimistic? I can’t tell if I find it annoying or aspirational.

“Why are you here?”

“I won’t be here for long, I don’t think I could even if I wanted to, but I’m supposed to get advice from you. I met this girl Fara a few weeks ago, and I really like her, and not in a friend way. I’ve never liked anyone like this before, and I’ve especially never liked a girl, and I was wondering if…” She trails off. “If what Abuelita said about love was true.”

My first response is to tell her yes, that it is true, and that Mom will tell her shortly after something similar to expect disappointment, but then I look into her dark brown eyes and remember that she’s the younger, more naive version of me. The only life she has lived has been the one she was told. She hasn’t been hurt yet, and she finds hope in the small chance of fighting against the narrative her grandmother has engraved into her for the past year. She believes in the good and hope of people, and she looks up to me. In some ways, I look up to her, too.

But is it better to be honest and break her heart, tell her a lie and let her find out later, and be even more heartbroken than I was?

“It’s true.” After a long silence, the words come out of my mouth slowly. “We started dating Fara, and just as quickly as we fell into love with her, she fell out of it. I’m sorry.”

“Why would you be sorry? It’s not like you told her to fall out of love with you.” She says. “Unless you did. Then you’d be kind of weird.”

“No, of course I didn’t.” I stir my straw around my iced coffee, noticing that by now, most of the ice has melted, but at least that’s something else for me to focus on instead of crying. I don’t want to let her see my cry. I can’t let her see me cry.

“Why are you sad then?”

“Because it feels like I failed you in a way. I always thought my older self would have these wise words of wisdom and experience, but there aren’t any new words to say unless you want to be disappointed. I mean, I don’t even write anymore. Or at least, I haven’t in the past six months.”

She doesn’t say anything for the next couple of moments. “I don’t think you can ever fail me. You’re Sol at the end of the day.

The older, cooler version of me who might no longer have a girlfriend she’s madly in love with, and thinks that her words are disappointing but carries experiences and wisdom with her in life and, if she ever wanted to, could carry them into a new relationship with someone.”

“Oh, that’s not something I do.”

“What relationships?”

“Yeah, those. After I came home that night, Mom told me to expect disappointment in relationships and Abuelita insisted for

weeks that she told me so, relationships were pointless, and being anything more than friends with a girl was even more pointless, so I just…stopped and swore off of it.”

“Would you ever want to try again?”

I think about it for a moment. I would say no, but a small part of me would also say yes, that I would consider it. I would love it more than anything to be able to try again. It definitely wouldn’t be a today thing, but it could be a someday thing. And maybe I could love someone in a way that wasn’t romantic—platonic love. I haven’t had a real friend in years. The only thing I had closest to friends I had were Faras, and when we broke up, everyone took her side.

“I think so.”

She smiles. “Great. Because I think that girl over there who keeps looking at you thinks so too.”

I turn around and see a girl with short dark brown coily hair in a yellow sundress sitting at a table across from us. She’s sitting alone with an iced macchiato, her iPad and a lemon drop cookie. She smiles and gives a small wave.

“You should go talk to her.” She says.

“But what about you?”

“Don’t worry about me; I was never supposed to stay for long anyway.” She gives me a smile and holds my hand from across the table. “I love you, Sol. I’m so proud of you. Always remember that I’m with you and on your side wherever and whatever happens in the future.”

And she fades away. I turn back around, and she’s still looking at me. It’s now or never. I walk over.

“Hi. I’m Solana.”

“Hi, I’m Selena. She smiles and points her head in the direction of my laptop. “Are you a writer?”

“Something like that.” I scratch the back of my head nervously.

“I write, but I haven’t done it in so long that now I have this really bad writer's block where it’s making me question if I’m actually a good writer or if I’ve just been gaslighting myself for the past four years.”

She laughs. “I’m in the same boat. I’ll come over to where you’re sitting. We can brainstorm and talk about our stories more.

I’m in a writer's group, and sometimes that helps.”

“I’d like that.” I smile. “I’d like that a lot.”

“Great.” Selena smiles back. “I’d like it a lot too.”

Read at the Shabby Dollhouse Tour at Fitz Books and Waffles

How to Leah

This is how to maybe, write a graphic novel.

You need to imagine…

To imagine you need to think of that one thing you have in your head, like the Jingle Bell song…

Once you get your imagination going, doodle for fun…draw your favorite characters with ungodly anatomy because in this stage you’re most likely 10-12. because __ is too “uninterested for anything!” Oh, as you draw make a character…give it a name and a quirk…I named mine Allegra and gave it glitch powers… and based her off my hyper energy…do not show anyone who might steal your ill proportioned drawings… you want your worth to be an unknown…now make a story based off of this character. For me, I put my character in a TV world, so that it can match the glitch themes…don’t add your friend’s OC… because one you will forget; and don’t even think about making the other OC’s your love interest because they don’t like you but some bum senior who looks like the lonechild of Ground Megamind. Now, make more characters in the end…this is how to not get attached with any side character…man idk i just scrapped the story and made it about them…develop them

and their backgrounds and make it emotional and dark as possible…and then find your sketchbook from when you were 10-12 and not 11 and look back at when you drew so…ungodly…and cringe at the art you once saw as …remember that step?

Don’t let anyone see it…yeah…now you know its to protect the eyes from seeing this…ifs…and then forget and finally begin to read actual graphic novels…because in some lucky eyes there’s tips on how to write your own storybook…and now…actually make the scene…think, live your characters, go on character a.i. but don’t because you’ll get carried away by making them be in a relationship with the a.i. When they already have a partner …don’t focus on the couple you created…

They’re sweet together…but will make a cavity in your process…don’t be afraid to change anything…make the white green girl into a jamaican green boy just because you can …give them depth and individual benchstones… and finally start to write…get a writers block and shudder and be stupid when you try to explain your work to other people…that’s all i know, i haven’t gotten to the actual art stuff yet…

Shared during the Generation Gaps workshop

Drifting Pierson Schwartz

Shared during a Comics Meet-up

Girlhood Natalie Mae

Sick in the Root Natalie Mae

George’s Jenny: A Zine Zeki

Shared at Comics Meet-Up

WITH GRATITUDE Many thanks to Just Buffalo Writing Center staff, Youth Ambassadors, young writers, and teaching artists.

Thank you to Pride David and Keira VanDerBeck for cover designs.

Thank you to Angelina Tang for interior layout; thank you to Angelina Tang and Pride David for the introduction.

Thank you to YA Ambassadors Angelina, Keira, and Pride, and Writing Center Coordinator Nina for collaboratively editing this issue!

Just Buffalo's Writing Center is a creative community of young writers, artists, & thinkers. Located on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Just Buffalo Literary Center’s mission is to create and strengthen communities through the literary arts.

Learn more at justbuffalo.org

TRANSMISSIONS #6