The Tower, Fall 2019

THE TOWER fall 2019

THE TOWER fall 2019

Special Thanks Our Advisor, Jessica Handler School Printing Oglethorpe University SGA All Contributing Artists

Masthead Editors in Chief Ivy Jones Sophia Summerlin Daisy Astudillo

Bella Barbone

Aleece Bustamante

Jeremy Cooper

Lexi Covalsen

Emily Farmer

Laurann Herrington

Mattie Jones

Dani Lindmier

Milo McGehee

Khushboo Patel

Rae Pinheiro

Julia Price

Emily Rodriguez

Hannah San Juan

Jason Thomas

Contents PT I : BABY ........................................................... 11 Untitled, Sharon Olubajo ........................................ 14 The Hierophant, Eros, the Love God ...................... 15 U Up? No, Aleece Bustamante ................................ 17 My Flowers, ivk ...................................................... 18 Untitled, Khushboo Patel ........................................ 19 Devoted to Suicide , Dani G. Lindmier ................... 20 Real, Lexi Covalsen ................................................ 20 Anger and Love are Both Red, Elijah Quinn .......... 21 Late Fees, Ryan Holtzen ......................................... 21 Of Blaze and Cinder, Pamela Patterson .................. 22 Bella's Lullaby, Ryan Holtzen ................................. 23 War on the Mind, Emily Scoular ............................. 25 TOFU I, Sophia Summerlin .................................... 25 Untitled, Lexi Covalsen .......................................... 27 Daddy, I Want to Hear Too!, Laurann Herrington .. 28 Driver, Iden McCallie ............................................. 29 Untitled, Sharon Olubajo ........................................ 30 Snow Angels, Daisy Astudillo ................................ 31 Sorry to call at 4 am but its 3 there, you’re still awake and I love you, Elijah Quinn ................................... 32 10.22.19, Nick Kochan ............................................ 32 The Cartoon, M. C. Regets ...................................... 33 Unfair Life, Chrysta Avers ...................................... 35 Fight Over Baby Socks Leads to SWAT Team Standoff ............................................................................ 36 Untitled, Sharon Olubajo ........................................ 38 Parrotfish, Dani G. Lindmier ................................. 39 The Red Book, Raquel Battaglia ............................. 40

Cherry Baby, Emily Rodriguez ............................... 42 Baby, Yasmin Tehrani .............................................. 43 insomnia + cycle, ivk .............................................. 48 God Bruised my Brain and Broke my Mother's Heart, Ryan Holtzen .......................................................... 49 Am I More?, Raquel Battaglia ................................ 50 ANGER WITH WOMAN, Raquel Battaglia .......... 51 Untitled, Chrysta Avers ........................................... 54 Let Me, Dani G. Lindmier ...................................... 55 Moonshine, Lily Dove ............................................ 56 Something to Desire, Aleece Bustamante ............... 57 Under Capitalism We're All Clowns, Chrysta Avers 58 P(ARREST|ZOO), ivk ............................................ 58 Of Magic and Sky, Pamela Patterson ..................... 62 Love Otherworldly, Melody Weckel-Confer ........... 63 White Trash, Lexi Covalsen ................................... 65 Little Lady, Khushboo Patel ................................... 67 Untitled, Sharon Olubajo ......................................... 68

PT II : NEVER BABY .................................................. 71 Black Swan, Daisy Astudillo ................................... 72 TOFU II, Sophia Summerlin ................................... 73 Soft Things that Refuse to Die, Laurann Herrington ... ...................................................................................76 Daybreak ................................................................. 77 Swamp Thing, Mattie Jones .................................... 79 New Moon New Me, Chrysta Avers ....................... 80 Sappho Says, Hannah San Juan ............................... 80 sweet valen, ivk ....................................................... 81 Wanderer, Josh Barkley ........................................... 82 The Largest Salad in the World, Raquel Battaglia .. 83 Sprezzatura, Hannah San Juan ................................ 85 Wandering Song, Josh Barkley ............................... 85 Messiah, Aleece Bustamante ................................... 86 Dirge of November, Alex Ray ................................. 87 You Can Love Up To Here, Lily Dove .................... 88 WE MADE A PROMISE TO THIS MOUNTAIN, Daisy Astudillo ........................................................ 89 Revenants Among the Reeds, Sin, the Moon God .. 90 Little Job of Horrors, Chrysta Avers ........................ 91 Love or Lunacy, Alex Ray ....................................... 92 Pussy Cell, Chrysta Avers ........................................ 93 Void, Josh Barkley ................................................... 95 Yellow, Aleece Bustamante ..................................... 95 Something Borrowed, Someone Blue, Melody Weckel-Confer .................................................................. 96 Supper in Shiloh, Ryan Holtzen .............................. 96 Untitled, Sharon Olubajo ....................................... 100 Forbidden, Dani G. Lindmier ................................ 101 Feral, Emily Rodriguez ......................................... 102 This is Maybe About You, Hannah San Juan ........ 103

Cave Painting, Josh Barkley .................................. 105 The Dancing Reaper, Raquel Battaglia ................. 106 SHE, Savannah Rootes .......................................... 111 “I’m not into him physically but sometimes I like to imagine what dating Hozier would be like”, Elijah Quinn ..................................................................... 111 Astral Projection, Daisy Astudillo ......................... 112 TEARS, Savannah Rootes ..................................... 113 Blood Birth, Sophia Summerlin ............................ 115 Untitled, Aleece Bustamante ................................ 116 divine cityscape, ivk .............................................. 117 THE GARDEN, Savannah Rootes ....................... 118 Untitled, Part 2, Khushboo Patel ........................... 119 If You Know, You Know, Mattie Jones ................. 120 blackout, Lily Dove ............................................... 121 How ----- Began, Daisy Astudillo ......................... 123 The Beauty of Poison, Melody Weckel-Confer ..... 124 Rosemary, Sin, the Moon God .............................. 126 TOFU III, Sophia Summerlin ................................ 128

Bolded and italicized works have been selected as winners of The Tower's awards: Handler's Choice and Editors' Choice.

Handler's Choice is given to works in the categories of art and writing by our advisor, Jessica Handler.

Editors' Choice is given to works by the editors in chief.

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PT I : BABY

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Sharon Olubajo

The Hierophant Eros, the Love God

What is a hero without a villain.

When can hero fill mouth with “boredom,” Stomach with peanut and orange and free drink, Arms with the embrace of a stranger, Heaven with worship of the Hierophant, And Hell with a new reign of the Emperor?

Does the villain strike you as a curious man?

Better yet, Does he strike you as a tempted man?

Nothing tempts him more than his fantasy. There is no fantasy here. It’s all too real.

Did he strike as a man who answers his own questions?

Even better, Does the devil strike you as a man above the cunning it takes to see true evil lies in kindness?

Debauch Debauch Dethrone Design a dance to do Dance it dance it dance it He puts his idols in drawers and Hope in clasped hands Before rubying his calluses.

He finds youth in disparity of gas prices.

He flashes his teeth, Milky white and prolific, 15

May hero discern a villain’s love from lust the same as hero does mountain and molehill?

The villain pities the man who finds view from molehill comparable to that of mountain.

Who would rather be strong?

Who would rather be durable?

Which does it take when breathing persuasion into orbit of Saturn to learn of where she keeps her rings at night— Is it the strength to send it Or the durability to take it when it comes back?

Who would rather be attentive to the lyrics of the bird than merely allured by its song?

Can Apollo even hear the cries of the Moon?

She invented children Just To Have Something To give her youth But she swallowed them, Weaving their cries into Mary Magdalene basket to keep her eggs-Yes, all her eggs, all for You, Andrew Mar Vell, You you you— The lover to a girl of some indigo Aphrodite

The message was still received.

What message Comes of god without fear of the devil?

What message Comes of faith in Waffle House?

What message Comes of new hero without old villain?

These are the questions he does not answer himself, So may the reign fall upon the dawn of the Emperor And dusk of the hierophant.

U Up? No Aleece Bustamante17

My Flowers The grass is alive— it leaves me stained with a greenish rhyme up my calves. Up my brain.

ivk

This is the place we go to live this is the place I leave changed from driveless to driven by nothing but old age, But I am not old.

I am a seashell baby who cannot cry or be shouldered by a mother. By a coup.

Take us down, like the plastic sippy cup filled with petals, flowers who have mastered the art of kissing, kissing our lips one by one in their garden.

When I hold your hand, I believe in no other BASTARD than my burden— my absent FUCKING mother— who left us at breakfast sooner than you could snap her heartstrings, her bluer eyes, the ones that can trap

and trap and trap AND TRAP I think of things as I lay here— the flowers in my lap, the flowers in my hair.

Untitled Khushboo Patel

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Devoted to Suicide Dani G. Lindmier

I learned how to swim in Archeron, But my aching limbs cried out for mercy, So I plunged into the depths of Lethe And held my breath till the skill was gone.

I learned how to sing among the stones, But my throat could feel the burning flames That arose from remembering names and notes, So I cast them off, resigned to moans.

I forged myself in the fires of hell, But the Devil, unsettled, crept into my head To remind me I was dead and lost And to take my second soul out of this shell.

I keep rebuilding to topple back down; Like a phoenix devoted to suicide, I build up the pyre that’s my mind and then I watch as my ashes stain the ground.

Real

Lexi Covalsen

In the dark on a Thursday I bring my mother a peach.

This is a real thing that happened.

She cries over voice text: “Are. You. Coming Home.

Alone? Don’t. Forget. Your. Bookbag.”

The light from the television casts us in deep blue, movie darkness. The whole room grows thin around me like hair.

Late Fees

Ryan Holtzen

There’s an olive tree in Greece I’d love to whisper to, sleep cheek to cheek—but I owe the librarian 50 cents. There’s a double-helix strand that lives a few houses down, dreams loud and proud—but I owe the librarian a dollar. There’s nothing real inside a lost-book cluttered Heart.

Anger and Love are Both Red Elijah Quinn

Love is not patient nor kind. It bites and tears at your chest till you bleed and feel the anger that lives there, just underneath the hot red blood of you.

But darling, had you asked for my heart I would push my shaking fingers past my stubborn ribs to give it to you still beating.

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Of Blaze and Cinder Pamela Patterson

Bella’s Lullaby Ryan Holzten

Truth is a lullaby, sing-songed for Bella—Ta Tum Te Ta Tum’d drowsily on the couch.

You breathe heavy, and loud, and thick. The little oregano plant on the windowsill is awake and beastly—His name is Havana and he reeks of herb and spice. I hope he doesn’t wake you—or your sensitive nose—while you dream of Christmas, or Hanukkah, or whatever dogs dream of when it’s cold outside. Jack Frost came all the way from the North Pole for you tonight.

Tomorrow, truth will be a walk outside—a red leash that the ghosts in the house like to hide and steal from us. If your feet get icy just tell me; your double-helix of a mother lives close by, and her house is warm, and better suited for your silver snout.

It’s Sylvia Plath’s birthday today! On this day 11 years ago my mom started growing roses—neither of us had ever read poetry. Mrs. Hughes would shake her head, but if you were with us, I’m sure she’d love you—Bella, do you know me as Angelina? Or a man who shares this house? Either way I hope you’re here to celebrate Sylvia with me next year. Bella do you speak? Bella do you sleep? Bella do you doze by plants and ghosts while I whisper my favorite songs? I hope the couch is warm tonight.

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War on the Mind Emily Scoular

TOFU I

Sophia Summerlin

The softness of the willing wander’s voice implies that there is someone always being tenderly sought.

A bite of spite hangs from her bottom lip for later tasting.

Purple in the center of my vision As the many planes monitoring her and I Pass over Our nest.

She, my crow, loves rye bread marbled to the crust loathes loaves of pumpernickel, even when I leave it warm on a doily.

My hefty sandals pound against the linoleum tile as I approach the garbage bin containing freshly wilting blossoms entangled in their stems and browning leaves.

Underneath is the disposable plasticware from Monday night’s General Tso’s Tofu.

Clean white rice slips under the bag and now I rinse wet coffee grounds and fluffy pearls into the sink.

Same sink where I wash my fish tank Fish’s tank I wish I believed he had more will, but I love him manipulative-like and feed him as I please.

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I do most of the pleasing by morning.

Halfmoon fighter fish, you are a lover if I make you one.

His blue gravel clogs the drain as I sift his shit in my palms: the only way to assure the pebbles are clean.

If you are not certain, it is bad luck to select any button on an elevator.

All of the floors know you And they will take you there and take you there again Because of your stammering fingers A face illuminated by nothing was unreceivedHushedBy the salutations given by stained teethThe taste of which are sour and gritty, Like pus in the sand: A meal fit for a champion, Or reserved for me.

I dine alone but I do not dine often Arms like blood logged roots cross across my new slender body.

Slender implies silk which the spine is not.

Rung Rung Rung

A ladder up to my mind bends me over bends of bones and bends of fabric with nets and knots.

Strapped down by dense ropes to an itchy tombstone bed, I leave the crumbs on the covers to absorb my smelly waterless sweat.

But mother rode in with father and now I must pretend to be fed.

Tofu and granny smith apples- I swear I have been satiated.

Rub my fat tummy, skinny belly, belly button.

Untitled

Lexi Covalsen

When I was six I scraped off all my freckles or rather they were moles but mole is an ugly word so I called them freckles. Blood came real watery and pink in lip gloss colored tracks all over my chin. Amber said “I wish I was sexy like Britney Spears” and I said “Me too” and kept scraping.

That night I cried like a baby on the bottom bunk and spent hours wanting to lean up into her limp hand and be pet like a cat but I never did. The pain of it rang out like a bell.

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Daddy, I Want to Hear Too! Laurann Herrington

Driver

Iden McCallie

A small boy shivers inside a cramped house at the end of a cul-de-sac.

He emerges shuffling through the sodden earth with mud-caked sneakers.

A bright yellow cab waits on the corner, illuminated by dim street lights.

As he opens the cab door, the residence in the distance consumed his mind in gray, tear-swelled clouds.

The driver smiles.

The boy nods.

The clouds burst into heavy downpour.

He gasps, searching for air above the torrent of water.

Bubbles form at his mouth as he’s submerged under the waves, Each one froths, popping at the surface, echoing like the taunts seeping from the walls of his home.

The floodgates behind his eyes shake, washing away the muddied world surrounding him.

The driver nods, rambling away

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about his own hell-bent boyhood.

And his voice feels like home.

Home never seemed to last.

Sharon Olubajo

Snow Angels Icicles for eyes, Vacant orbs That shatter the reflective window My body, my soul.

Daisy Astudillo

And the mist turns to frost on the glass, Carving lonely smiles, Imprints of hands Vanishing the next day.

Bite my skin on the white, gleaming snow Cubes of ice dangling from the foreseeing globes.

Haunting echoes of silence Laying on the pure, winter ground.

Will you make snow angels with me, my love?

Will your flesh touch the snow And hold my blue, bitten hand?

We lie together, our angels Never touching.

You disappear into the morning, winter Sky

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Sorry to call at 4 am but its 3 there, you’re still awake and I love you Elijah Quinn Oh honey, darling, I’m far too gone to decipher your words though I know their meaning. I love you more than there are stars in the sky and hens laying eggs. You’re every comet that’s decided to grace my tired eyes with their presence and the meteor shower of my dreams, keeping me awake at night. I could paint a most beautiful skyline with your coloring made into a palette of overwhelming and intoxicating colors. You are every beautiful thing I’ve passed on the road and picked up, happy to see and overjoyed to bring home with me. You’re light and you fill my chest till I think it would burst open and bring about a new sun. And every time I say your name I think of a most holy man surrounded by the wonders of the galaxy, being gentle when all of his movements are as loaded as his gaze.

10.22.19

Nick Kochan

If I were to look through the pages, Of any history book Or any recollection Separated from the here and now,

I would find the same story as the one I’m living. / Heartbreak is human nature But it doesn’t make it hurt any less Nor does it smooth the edges of the world Which I know now to be sharp and unrelenting / Maybe in some distant day I will feel less alone Knowing that this is just one cycle of many That repeats, unrelenting

The Cartoon

M.C. Regets

It feels like I’m watching a snowball as it tumbles down a hill. I can see it, slowly making its way down the mountain, picking up more and more snow along its trail, bouncing and rebounding off the trees as it goes, its path becoming more and more chaotic. Like something out of a cartoon, the scene cuts to a small snow village, each happy character with one too little fingers walking along the paths in their perfectly fictional lives, all with no idea of the turmoil that is headed their way. Then you see the heroine, at the far edge of town, beads of sweat coming off her forehead like bullets and freezing before they hit the ground, because she alone sees the damage that is coming. I see the snowball again, and the gross monstrosity of its size

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promises a level of detriment the likes of this small ski village has never seen. I flinch as it hits the first street in the town, miraculously hitting no one, and even less shockingly, no one is disturbed from their original routes. Like a bull in a china shop, the snowball makes its way through the village, hitting nothing and no one but the ground beneath its pregnant form. The heroine still stands in her spot at the far edge of town, waiting for a destruction that the rest of her peers are oblivious to. The beads of sweat grow larger as the bulbous, frozen monster grows nearer. At the last second it slows, takes a turn that the audience was mostly unaware of beforehand, and she thinks herself saved. The sweat stops pouring and freezing in piles to her left and right, and she is saved. Then the snowball gives Newton the finger and turns on her heels, heading right back to our heroine and hitting her with a force far greater than originally predicted.

I feel like I’m just wondering, at this point, something far different than the rest of the audience. While they wonder how all this could have happened, how this one person could be the only victim, I am left with an entirely different problem. Will she poke her head out of this pile of snow? Will I see her head come up with her hat askew and birds flying around her head with stars in her eyes? Or will it end like the Bell Jar, and you be left to only assume that she escapes? So far, I’m assuming my escape, but know-

ing that my life is not a cartoon, and knowing how hard our heroine was just hit, it may be foolish to think we’ll ever get up.

Unfair Life Chrysta Avers

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Fight Over Baby Socks Leads to SWAT Team Standoff

Ryan Holtzen

Inside is a small apartment, and a smaller nursery, filled to the brim with blue and red bits of baby’s toys—her favorite colors; she squeaks a toothless smile and bites her thumb and cries because it hurts. Blue bruised thumb on the red wet lip. Ocean waves line the edges of her bedroom, Noah and the animals are there to keep her company. He smiles, and loads the elephants and the giraffes and the zebras onto his big wooden boat, and when the rain comes he will float away in the storm for forty days and forty nights. He’ll bring baby with him and keep her in the Captain’s quarters. He feeds her applesauce in the corner and it keeps raining, raining until the room is wet, raining until baby starts to float.

Her belly goes up and down, she giggles, it’s bath time. Baby isn’t scared of rain, baby isn’t scared of thunder. She thinks that rain is blue and thunder red. Baby thinks outside is pretty, and it is. The men outside are waiting in line to get on the boat. Baby doesn’t wonder if they can swim, baby doesn’t know. She sits and cries and plays with the bits against the wallpaper of the nursery and bites her binky now and not her

thumb. Mommy and Daddy are making more thunder—more flashes through the window. The window lets it in—the rain, the thunder—and splashes all the red and all the blue against Noah and the animals, against the applesauce in the corner, against Baby and her bare feet. Baby likes the light show.

Baby will never remember. Baby will never remember the eventual lonesome pillowcase, or the echoes inside her mother’s mouth. She won’t remember the kicks, yells, or struggle. Baby won’t remember red and blue. And the rain and the thunder and the elephants and the hippos.

Baby will forget the men outside, shouting to be let in on the boat—they were getting wet and they couldn’t swim. Baby will forget that her father wouldn’t let them in—would have rather they drowned. Baby won’t remember many things.

Baby will never make sense of it. Every memory, every word is red and blue and gone. Baby will sit and bite her binky until Noah comes alive and picks her up and takes her away to a special place, where the world is bright and overbearing. Noah wears a brown suit, and it’s wet from the rain outside. Sopping in the bleeding light, sobbing in the stormy night—baby won’t remember. Her face is wet with baby spit and Noah’s tears. The ark is full—the ark is full, Baby can’t get on.

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Sharon Olubajo

Parrotfish* Who Are You? A Queer and Pleasant Danger The Left Hand of Darkness Sister Outsider Freakboy Gender Outlaw Middlesex One of a Kind, Like Me Undoing Gender Redefining Realness The Art of Being Normal Everyday The Way I Used to Be She’s Not There For Today I am a Boy Golden Boy Raising My Rainbow It’s Okay to be Different The Symptoms of Being Human Come As You Are They, She, He, Me: Free to be!

Queerly Beloved Parrotfish.

Dani G. Lindmier

*Each line is a title from a LGBT-related book.

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The Red Book

Raquel Battaglia

I stalk my captive quarry. Weeks. My name, lonely, tattooed to its back. Furrows where its name once was, I open the mucid and quiet smell of sacred text. The librarians’ eyes creak in their sockets as they haunt me to the door. The electric taste of theft jagged and sweet along my teeth.

On Mother and the Moon Dani G. Lindmier

Sometimes I wonder what would happen If I were to drill a hole in the moon, place it on a string, And give it to the Earth as a mother’s day gift.

Would she thank me for it and shower me with love, Or would she choose to neglect me all the same?

Would I still be one of the millions of middle children, Doomed to be lost in the clamor of Adam, Eve, and the end?

Sometimes, when I stand barefoot on the damp midnight grass, I imagine that she is choosing to embrace me and me alone,

That she would wear my gift constantly and with pride if only I would give it.

But the morning comes, and my hopes have left me.

Again.

Burnt to a crisp by the glaring flames of the sun, my soul Shudders to think that it could have stayed with me so long When my own mother never brought me to her bosom.

Then it leaves me. All alone.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen If I were to drill a hole in the moon and just seal myself up inside.

Would mother notice me at all? Would I feel any more alone?

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Cherry Baby Emily Rodriguez

Baby Yasmin Tehrani

And so that’s how I sat. My hands tied under my knees, fingers gripping my wrists, ass on the pavement, little pebbles pressing into my skin. I knew I would soon stand up with red impressions of the gravel on my legs. I also knew I would eventually have to stand. For the kudzu was eternal, but the hot sun was not, and I would not tingle forever in this moment. I wanted to walk away before the feathery awareness of nature’s omniscience, her weighty presence eyeing me curiously, turned her gaze and left me feeling simple. This moment in July, sweaty Georgia air breathing down my throat and dampening every pore on my body: that was slipping, running away along the ancient leaves, leaving me in blue silence. Eventually, the kinetic city would slow down, the sun would close her twinkling eyes and the kudzu would curl back its seductive fingers for the night. Now, the sun cast back her glance one last time, coyly stroking the sky and smudging her yawning oranges, pinks, and purples. Southern repose, like clockwork, floods into every Atlanta mind, foggy warm full. I waited for this tide, eyeing the adamant kudzu and wondering if it would actually feel like a leafy bed if I dived in.

The sudden rush of the incoming evening sent my skin prickling. I stood up and walked back along the sagging pavement, a sense of profound loss 43

wiggling in the pit of my stomach. It threatened to shoot out as tears. The sun was gone.

The moment had passed and the threads tying me to this singular experience we all had five minutes ago, the 3 million other necks cracking to catch the last of the afternoon, cut. Again, I was alone.

Finally, after turning street after street, I arrived to my own grey driveway, knocking my ankles along the outgrown hedge until I shoulder shoved my way through the front door.

This room, my living room (was it really my living room?), perpetually stuck in afternoon slumber, a blanket never farther away than a generous lean and stretch of the arm. I mused for some time on the couch as to whether I should remain in this suspended dusk and write about the feeling of inbetween or nap like I knew I was going to anyway. Two hours later, when the in between was over and the intrusive living room lamp was plucked on, I, blinking awake, got my answer.

Baby was cooking. I could smell onions. Padding to the kitchen, I saw her elongated frame standing at the stove, her weight shifted to one hip so she looked like half a question mark. I hated her. Even the way she moved around onions in a pan felt postured. Pouty lips bubbling up lip gloss, endless ocean eyes, creamy translucent skin caught on bones like lace collars on

pulsing neck. That was Baby. Put her in any eon of time, put her beyond the collapse of fucking time itself and she would be there with her pan and onions, half smile inviting seducing enchanting. Would the kudzu look her in the eye?

Invite her into its home?

“Hello sleepy how was the nap?” she chirped and sauteed. Taking a long sip of my tepid juice, I smiled in mock mysterious fashion, and responded, “Who knows, it took about three milliseconds for my ass to reach the couch and pass out.” Realizing I didn’t even answer the question, I offered, “I do feel, like, mildly refreshed though.” I felt the “like” pivot into an uncomfortable octave: the only common ground I felt I could share with Baby. She wasn’t dumb.

She didn’t use her “likes” flagrantly or as filler, but it was punctuation for her. She rested so much meaning on them. “Like, you know what I mean?” “It was like my whole heart.” “She was so nice but like, clearly socialized to just have niceness as a personality.” The “like” in her sentences were conjunction, anticipatory to white girl idiocy but always unnervingly followed by a comment of substance. Floating above the English language, she threw in “likes” and “you knows” like you did know, like she would be taken seriously any way, even if it was just because her blue eyes sucked you in and demanded recogni-

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tion.

Of all the flavors of whiteness, she was the most dangerous. Because she was uncategorizable, transient between accessible femininity and obscure taste. You always got the sense, as she nodded and blinked, that she already knew more about what you were talking about than you ever could. Baby invited you into her world, she kindly took your hand and made you believe that the both of you were the same. But at the doorstep of intimacy, of sisterhood, she withdrew.

She would not enter your world. Her eyes would not flicker when it was your turn to speak.

Rather, well timed nods and that pouty smile would extend courtesy, even keen interest. Yet, I still found myself rushing to finish my sentences, so that glossy pucker could release and begin its artful intelligence again.

She nodded, knowingly. “Yeah, I always get like that in the summer. My mom says it’s because I move around so much during the day, my body just gives up by night.” I moved to the sink to put down my empty glass, not pointing out the fact that she was still awake and moving, her body having not given up at all.

I brushed past her, feeling gross. I wanted to be alone to self-pity and begin the nightly ritual of thinking, masturbating, and eventually mustering the focus to read a few pages.

Who did I think I was, sitting in my isolated tower, hating everyone but loving everything?

Me. I. Muddy and green brown. Quivering brown eyes hair everywhere. Dark hair. My chin my arms my lip my cheeks my fingers toes and left and right corners of my hands my stomach back and ass. Eyebrows unruly, ancient, like princess Jasmine they spit, wow you must be middle eastern they scream. Let me guess, Arabic? No. lenient laugh. that’s actually a language. Then what are you? Yes, what am I? What am I? But it is the packaged Iranian-American that I kneel down and offer. Oh, wow yes I see it now, of course you are. The hyphen has connected us. Do you see it? See what? My commanding nose, my pulled eyes and expansive eyebrows? Did I reach out to you like summer kudzu and touch your vision with my features and did you let yourself believe you did in fact see it?

Hair and nose, that is what I am.

I sighed, twirling a floof of frizz around in my finger.

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God Bruised my Brain and Broke my Mother’s Heart Ryan Holtzen I had my first concussion when I was six years old.

My head rang like a bell against the concrete, My mother only ten feet away, rinsing my helmet with the water hose. She wore an after-church floral sundress. It stuck to the roses as she ran to me. A little rip at the seam, a loose thread of shame, vulnerability as a mother—the child broken in the driveway, bile rising in his throat, honeysuckle sour, then puddled on the ground. I felt dark and cold—Dull hum ringing in my skull, still soft and young. Heaven is real baby, don’t close your eyes, Don’t close your eyes.

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Am I More?

Raquel Battaglia

My mother’s art; beautiful. It covered most of the windows in our house like glass, tinted worldviews. The sunlight fought through the framed examples of the worthy things. I would sit and study them, cowered beneath their perfect nature.

Always gentle, simple watercolors of mountains and waves and birds and trees and lakes and beauty and beauty and only beauty.

Mom, do you remember the beautiful branch you painted that spring when I was ten?

When dad was gone for the first time and you were angry. The branch outside the kitchen window. It was covered in blue blossoms and made the kitchen smell like a meadow every time you opened the window when you washed the dishes.

Then it got cold. The frost sprayed the flowers dead and the petals fell and the branch wasn’t beautiful. You stopped painting it and used it to paint me. It was bare and naked and ugly, and you beat me with it. You sentenced me with fresh lines, crimson crosses. Until the branch broke. Until you broke into tears. Sorry? Were you sorry the branch was not beautiful? Are you sorry I am not beautiful? I am not your art. I am angry.

I am angry that I am not beautiful. My anger is a wildfire that sinks its teeth into me and shakes me like how you say the pit bulls do with the little children. You don’t paint pit bulls.

ANGER WITH WOMAN Raquel Battaglia51

Remember that article about dog bites statistics I sent you when I was sixteen? The one from my friend who you didn’t like because she painted my fingernails red which is a color you hate because you say it’s whorish and you made me scrape off the color before dinner. You read the article. And still. You don’t paint pit bulls. Maybe you can see things without beauty and just forget about them. Maybe you can see me. You don’t paint me either. Except for with that branch when I was ten. I remember.

Maybe you painted the truth. The truth that I am not beautiful and the world is beautiful except when it isn’t and when it isn’t it is me and it bites and there is shaking. I am under siege, a legion. Lie again. Differently. Please. Paint the glints of sunshine on their armor for me. Look through it and see me beautifully. I am beautiful?

I am sometimes beautiful. My red stains grow blue then yellow then tan again as I frame my body in color: worthy and gentle. Beautiful. I am the spring branch in blossom, too soft for the autumnal death of red. But I get cold and my petals fall again. They fall and they rot. Like when I sweat through my floral perfume. Rotten. I am rotten mother. I am sorry.

Do you remember the self-portrait I made when I was nineteen? The angry one with the naked black ink lines on the white paper with red fin-

ger paint. A desperate cry for clarity. Title: “ANGER WITH WOMAN.” You laughed. Do you laugh at me too? In the self-portrait. I don’t think you noticed. The red was outside the lines; the lines of me. A fantasy where my anger was kept outside my frame, which is monochrome in dreams, by sheer willpower. It wasn’t beautiful.

I am not beautiful. In my portrait, my art. I am sorry. I am sorry for being naked? Like the ugly branch.

I am red. I am angry. When you made me, I came into the world covered in your red.

Yours. You must claim me. You must claim me and my dog bites and my fingernails colored how you hate and how I scream when I am naked.

Like how I screamed when I was ten. Could you hear me screaming? Under the bare branch? Or was that not beautiful?

Your art, your mountains and waves and birds and trees and lakes are not all beauty.

Mountains explode and waves flood and birds are electrocuted by telephone wires and trees burn and lakes go stagnant and breed mosquitoes. I blow up and flow over, electric and hot and contagious. I am the world that you paint but the world is not as you paint it. I am more than your art. Your beautiful art that makes me angry. I am so much more. Mom, am I more?

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Snake Girl Chrysta Avers

Let Me

Dani G. Lindmier

Let me get drunk on the sorbet that tastes like sangria And stroll through the streets until there is enough sun on my skin To carry it away with me and keep it until the morning.

Let me feel the tingle of bubbles rising in my throat Until they tickle my tongue, forcing me to laugh And then release them into the sky where they belong.

Let me clasp my lover’s hand and lace our fingers together So that we can sway back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, Giggling and staggering along like the smiling children we once were, Uninhibited by the coldness we fall into whenever the world is watching.

Let them stare if they want, but let me look through a rose-colored lens Until I forget there are such colors as black, blue, or gray.

Let me wipe out the memory of brown altogether before you bring me back.

Let me be a fool this once; let me find happiness and hold onto it Before the world reminds me that I’m not a believer, That it has seldom heard my laugh, Or that my sangria is just sorbet.

Let me live in this moment long enough and maybe I will find my faith And follow one of the bubbles up into the sky, Build my house in the clouds, and live beside the sun.

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Moonshine

Lily Dove

Let’s get an apartment on the moon.

And hang out our laundry to dry.

And drink cherry-cola all morning, And drink cherry-cola all afternoon.

I’ll steep my tea, For too long, While you sleep, As much as you want.

And I’ll forget to water the plants, Again, But you’ll never be upset, With me.

We’ll get in your car, And drive, Between the stars and the planets, To Earth.

And we’ll lie, When friends ask for our address.

And I’ll drag you to the sea.

And wonder why you hate the beach.

And wonder why you don’t hate me.

I’ll never want to leave.

But I’ll go everywhere on Earth, With you.

Then Saturn.

To Neptune.

Until the stars fall out of the sky, And explode, And destroy that world of mine.

Something to Desire Aleece Bustamante

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Under Capitalism, We're All Clowns Chrysta Avers

P(ARREST|ZOO)

ivk

“the probability of arrest given zoo”

Say the news is playing. Say it’s showing convicts. A line-up, perhaps. Say it’s you on the screen. Say you’re not actually there. Say there’s a fake-you— a portrait of you— up there as you sip Sprite from a curly straw on a coral-colored bench at the Toledo Zoo. Nobody here notices, or if they do, they don’t bother you.

The fans attached to the ceiling of the open room do nothing to combat the sticky heat. Say it’s summer. You’re here for the bird room, but you’ve taken a break to get hydrated with something sweeter and bubblier than water.

Maybe you’ll climb into that half-egg in the foyer of the bird room. Take a selfie. Make it go viral and get yourself caught. Or not. Nobody’s recognized you yet, and there are scarcely any children around (say it’s a school day, 9:30am) so it wouldn’t be hard to just step up into that egg and take just one little picture, Sprite can in hand. Post it to Twitter. Of course, you’ll recycle!

No, you didn’t commit a crime, of course not!

Make sure to turn off your location before that ordeal.

Sweat sheens on your face, and you press the cold can to your forehead. Ah, that’s better. Say you’re the only one sitting in this screened-in patio, the Bird Spot, as the televisions mounted to the ceiling spout off, say, the news.

Why is the news on? Why not the slideshow of information about penguins, the waterpark, and places you can breastfeed? Is this what zoo-goers watch these days? What happened to The Happiest Place on Earth? (Say that’ll be in Ohio and not in Florida.) The morning news, especially the one reporting on crimes, is not, in fact, appropriate for a zoo, in your opinion.

The woman behind the counter’s eyes flit to you as you lift the can to your head but then flit back to staring straight ahead into nothing. But then,

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again, doing a double-take, she notices who you are.

Say you whisper: Oh shit.

Say she steps from behind the counter and asks: Are you…?

Say you clear your throat and reply: Yes. I must be leaving. I’m on the run.

Say you whisper, again: Oh shit.

You shouldn’t have told her that. Wow, that was dumb. You stand up quickly and run into the screen door before opening it and exiting. Will she be calling the police? You think so. She might not be a fan. She might not appreciate your social media following. Was her face happy when recognizing you? You don’t remember. You take a thoughtful sip of Sprite.

But she isn’t following behind. She has a job to do, unlike you. You take a clean-paven path towards a building, slam-dunking the empty can into the recycling bin right outside, and go inside, bathing yourself in darkness. Behind a window, seals are playing in the water. Fun. You snap a selfie with them. The bird room plan is aborted.

But your followers would have loved that egg selfie. Eggs are all in. There’s an emoji for eggs.

Is there an emoji for seals? Oh well. The picture is cute. Your smile is cute. You tweet the picture without a caption. It’s funnier that way.

Just as you close the app, however, someone enters the room behind you. Say you see the reflection of two burly men alongside the underwater

seals.

Say you greet them with: Hello.

Say they reply: You’re under arrest for the murder of…

Say you give in but speak anyway: You have the wrong man. I’m a Twitter influencer. I have over one-hundred-thousand followers. I’m verified. I just got between a rock in a hard place with that guy. It’s not my fault.

Say they reply: Hands on your head. You’re coming with us.

Maybe the zoo wasn’t the best place to hide. It was all for the damn egg, and you didn’t even make it there. Was it the tattle-tale worker or were you tracked? Or was it Twitter? Say you left your location on, despite knowing you shouldn’t have.

Say you’re being escorted to a cop car in handcuffs as other patrons of the zoo gawk and whisper about how you’re that famous person from the internet with all of the followers and good content. Wow, your fans will love you throughout anything, even your conviction.

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Of Magic and Sky Pamela Patterson

Love Otherworldly Melody Weckel-Confer The dreamy books of love: love only exists between humans and aliens. Affection is best heard through earthling ears, whispered as sweet-nothings by a Martian to her lover. Back then, we didn’t know that the only real love is interspecies.

The Buddhists discovered the universal truth before anyone else on Earth. The enlightened opened their third eye and saw blue creatures of light—they felt warmth in their hearts like when their mother smiled upon them as a child. A loving oven.

The first human relationship with one of the cosmic race was Buzz Aldrin with a lady of the Moon. A missed connected formed amongst the craters. Love at first step for mankind.

Maybe love is really about worship. Buzz worshipped his lunar love as if she were a goddess.

Maybe love between species is just the same as mortal affection—a long series of misplaced admiration.

Biologically, humans are evolved from earlier versions of ourselves—apes, Neanderthals.

Some people say the aliens are seeking out breeding partners to complete the next evolutionary process. We aren’t supposed to say ‘alien’ anymore.

We need to know where they come from:

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Ivika of Venus, but not Andy of New York. To them we are just people. Humans are a dime a dozen, an aging population. Has our time run its course?

I’ve been told that kissing women from Jupiter tastes like chalk. Champagne and chalk coating the tongue like a cloud of interstellar dust. It’s illegal to make out with a Martian.

They’ve begun to spread propaganda—some of the aliens that is. Humans don’t have enough eyes! This declaration damages my self-esteem. Are my two eyes not valid? When I was a child, I learned that I needed glasses. The space creatures don’t understand some pieces of human technology. They don’t have impaired vision. They don’t have impairs. I went to a doctor to air my eyes. I had them gelled and enlarged to receive my corrective lens. I told my story to an acquaintance from Pluto. He told me my memory sounded like a fresh form of torture.

I looked to my dreams for the answer and found my mother. Love everyone. Love every planetary being. Love the earthlings. Love me in secret. Love me while I love someone else.

Why don’t you share, this thing I have for you, foreign, alien, my abstract love? Kitty is often the victim of love. Give with an excess of take. Self-love isn’t alien but it’s easiest to find amidst the stars, near a blackhole. An eclipsing sun. She once thought she was star-struck. She didn’t realize then her mate is in another galaxy. Hitch-hiking between solar systems.

In the year 2543 there will be no more people. We will be sub-people. Created—not born of this world. The United Nations meets weekly to plan for this eventuality. Extinction looms on the horizon while we integrate into the galactic melting pot. Inter-species marriage is now legal in every nation. The ceremonies speak to the cosmic culture of these creatures—no flowers of love, no rings.

I can never understand the language of their vows.

Native Martian sounds like a singing lawnmower. I don’t understand love. It shifts constantly. Too abstract to understand. Love languages too alien to appreciate. Imaginary tomes tell the tale of romance—in every form, too unreal not to believe.

White Trash Lexi Covalsen Whenever I think about my grandmother’s funeral I think of the smell of lemons. It must have come from someone’s breath or maybe the air freshener in my mother’s car or maybe it was just something secret my brain picked up in the Cedartown air that day— walking barefoot in pantyhose, my toes patting cold and pebble-sour down Rolater Drive. Whenever I think of the South in all its loveliness and ugliness, I think of my grandmother’s funeral and of those lemon

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scented moments. Familial anger, ugly and visceral, sprouted inside my head that filmy February day; went head to head, fists up and bloody toothed with the loveliness of the frozen creek town around us the Cave Springs drenched in childhood, the hills and streets that have become the backdrop to every book I had ever read.

My cousin and I ditched the memorial service halfway through. I don’t really know why. I know it was my idea to walk to the Wendy’s down the road and that it was me who convinced her to tag along in harsh hunched whispers in the yellow curtained bathroom of the funeral home, not the other way around despite the fact that that is the story my mother still swears by to this day.

We were both in black baby heels that ended up dangling by our hands as we walked and in hindsight the image we must have made strikes me as dizzyingly selfish. Just another picture of dumb white trash always eating and eating and loving the fast and the cheap instead of what really matters. I wish we had never walked back, but we did and we listened to “Linger” by the Cranberries on her iPod touch the whole way ⁠— two shallow shack hearts

Little Lady Khushboo Patel

i don’t want to be small anymore i don’t open your mouth and remind me that i am here i am not hidden in the valley i am standing beside you blueberry juice running down my face blueberry flesh between my fingers i am made of oak and wine a drunken reminder of hollowed out wood i once was the morning sunlight chasing fresh dew on wildflower leaves i am no longer here i am small

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Sharon Olubajo

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PT II : NEVER BABY

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Black Swan Daisy Astudillo

My feathered hair was too long And singed black Remnants of the last fire.

The smells of smoke, cries, cigarettes, pleadings, lies, And Death.

The strands would yell into my ears As I tried to cover up the voices that screamed.

Please, oh god, let me protect the children.

Cut the strangling ropes So I slashed with the blades of glistening scissors And I watched them fall to the ground, Worms screaming and evaporating into echoesssSSSSsssSechoechoecho(s) Don’t you dare fucking touch me The scent and touch Can no longer find its way to my sacred mane

TOFU II

Sophia Summerlin

I like that! I like that! I like that you are not afraid to touch me.

The children spring from criss cross position and begin singing ancient laments to their dining mothers and fathers. The last lilt of the airy untrained resonance vanishes as quickly as they can spring out of their untied shoes.

The children run through dusty houses That do not belong to them And lock all of the doors from the inside.

Escape through the dog door!

You locked that one too!

Quickly, the hippo!

Run! Quiet! Oh no, we are too loud! () I dream of an exploit.

Your naked body is still as clear to me as these past Springs have assured. Your belly felt soft and smooth rolling against mine, until the gasp. The breath makes an escape from me when my bottom lip brushes your earlobe. I am stopped here, the only quiet part. I think this was your favorite part.

My sheets are black. I sleep under this heavy shade beneath a golden twinkle. No one sleeps beside me anymore, but the sweat on the pillowcase is hardly mine. We only ever did this under 73

white covers.

I curl my anguish from this dreaming and roll in through my neck and down to my spine and through the coccyx and then the legs and finally the toes. I shield my face in your shoulders when I feel you start rolling, but even that place is soft. I kiss your neck where it begins.

Your lips are cold when you come.

The life has run away and into me.

You are quiet, apologetic as my curled hair laments the lack of occasion.

You drive.

I cried while you were away, fell asleep, cried when you came back, bumbling boldly through a breaking black bedroom.

I cried then and swallowed hard on the water, envisioning ghost siblings falling from a distance I cannot measure.

And to wonder, this may have been everything I ever wanted.

I was in the room when my brother was born I do not remember this.

The summers were hottest for poor kids whose parents’ cars broke down often: -gas stations (that Quick Stop by Joe’s Farmers Mart) -McDonald’s (Mom lifted our ponytails and blew cold breath onto the backs of our necks) -Side of the road in the dark of night with my dad and sister (there were no lights and only field and trees around us. I kept looking out the window

expecting someone to leap from the darkness and charge towards us.)

The people always came out with iced sodas in large cups for the pretty young girls who were sweating, red and learning to resent. My mom included with us.

Now I am rubbed on top of black sheets.

The lights off, I do not want to remember their faces I’ve already confused some names already They do not waste time worrying if I am hot or cold.

I am always cold. You always covered me.

I never invite them to stay the night, but some have taken me for breakfast.

Purple baby!

Moon curse moon curse!

Women burn in a factory fire!

A baby girl lay in a manger!

Do not speak of the coal miners who did not come back home.

Treat yourself to the people when morning weeps, And to powder when you mourn.

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Soft Things That Refuse to Die Laurann Herrington

Daybreak Emily Scoular

I spent my whole life Sitting in a corner And 20 years later Nothing’s changed But maybe one night I’ll step out Introduce myself Become someone else With that new day I’d do all the things that got away from me I’d tell her I loved her How much I suppressed it I still suppress it Because I don’t understand I’d tell him I’m sorry Sorry for the mistakes I made And warn him about me About how awful I am at love I’d tell them of all the ways I messed up How I let them down That things got too deep And won’t ever change 77

But days don’t come like that Nights do At night, I present a solution A universal solution of honesty and ecstasy And all the wonderful people I met because of it I’ll stand up out of the chair And introduce myself With a perfect mask So that I won’t ever have to leave my truths behind Perfect strangers let me into their lives But I’ll leave a mystery A perfect mask that conceals my identity Leaving only an untouched memory Because at the end of the night I shed my cover, completely exposed Vulnerable Sincerity that will lead into the morning Into daybreak when I become myself again And in that new day is a new chance to doing something different And by every daybreak, I wonder what new choices will come And what I will do with them

Swamp Thing Mattie Jones 79

New Moon New Me Chrysta Avers

Sappho Says Hannah San Juan Lo the blue city buildings slumbering already, lights on and off in apartment windows, breeze soft in my hair.

Will I find you there? among strangers and sorrows, in the places people dream to be, music in and out of tune.

I scribble sonnets for her, on wilting rose petals, scenes out of sentences.

Are we all the world’s great lovers?

Wicked disapproval, sneering, shaking, shouting.

She could not avow her love, nor me upon the altar.

Forgiveness is coming home again.

sweet valen ivk (1/? of the barrier sphinx media) i wash my lips with baking soda Before hanging the socks out on the balcony to dry my brother died today But the gun that did it was found without fingerprints buried in a shallow sand grave on the shoreline. i take down my little valen’s hair help to unbutton her smock And migrate it away to the dresser; she never knew her uncle, he did laudanum, i did not, valen’s father didn’t like him, But now he doesn’t have to.

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i turn off the lights rub my eyes to sleep wake up to the sound of Tin Drums below the balcony watch him die again And wake sweet valen up for breakfast

Wanderer Josh Barkley

The Largest Salad in the World

Raquel Battaglia

School assembly is a time to pay attention.

There are too many people, their heads roll, lifeless, over the backs of their seats as they doze.

The first exit is to the front and towards the left. Six people away. Twenty-two steps. Ten seconds.

The other one is behind me; thirty-five people. One hundred steps. Too many seconds. The bell rings; it’s time for American history. I count my steps as I walk the hallway to class. I could find my way out with my eyes closed.

Hallways are also a time to pay attention.

He marches into the farmers’ market. This man hunts for as much as he can get; his gaze a cornered cat. He came with a system, he goes to the busiest stands, the ones with the most produce. The most. He needs to have the most. He found a recipe online, and a video taught him how to track down perfect head of lettuce. He weighs seven onions, three tomatoes, a carrot, and pays in cash and coin. Armed with tote bags and a methodology, his confidence could kill.

Tornado drill. I package myself under my desk in a rehearsal for disaster. Fear sharp and lemon in my mouth. I study our door. It opens out.

No doorstop could keep the tornado at bay. I think of the hungry shrapnel that would storm into the room. The holes it would give me. I close my eyes, see it still. My body a colander, draining out

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of freshly punched holes.

He knows how to prepare. With a knife sharpened for this very purpose, he opens the packages of vegetables in a rush. He gets a pot to wash them in but drops it. A cavernous, hollow clatter, a splatter as a tomato is crushed. He doesn’t bend to clean it. Blood is thicker than water.

He washes the ones who remain in the gravestone-gray pot and lays them out to dry.

With the alarm over, I perch back on top of my desk. All of us in a row, doves on a telephone wire. The windows don’t open on this floor.

Dozens of birds to be slaughtered with a stone. I look at my phone, I see the headline. There was a shooting over at an Oklahoma High School. Seven students, three teachers, a police officer, and then himself. Ms. Mallory goes over the history of our constitution as I count the bullets.

Count the people, the steps, the seconds to the exits. Count the colander holes.

He cuts them quickly, efficiently. He doesn’t mind the carrot snaps and tomato ooze. He beats the lettuce head to pieces, and he doesn’t cry as he cuts the onions. These vegetable cadavers will win a prize. He catches his pale breath as he pictures his photo in the paper. A headline for American history: Mastermind Behind the Largest Salad in the World. His place in history assured, he turns his knife on himself and joins

Wandering Song Josh Barkley

Wandering Song move through this plastic move through these daylight dances this unbearable happiness dreaming of an empty morning field where one may walk and feel the dew dreaming of faces that float heavy like weighted balloons I suffocate in this ill lit room standing slouched in the corner surrounded by fingers and eyes that stoop through me and laugh

Sprezzatura

Hannah San Juan

“A gentle disdain for men,” All men, any man that even looks at you.

How dare he look at you Sacred and beautiful, marvelous You. Woman - a concept, So malleable in his hands, so pained so sorrowed so so finally set ‘free’

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Messiah Aleece Bustamante

Dirge of November Alex Ray

Glass and broken nails shake like pocket change in your trembling fists.

All out of room to move, the mercy of total imprisonment, the safety of inaction closes in with velvet fangs that drip with honey and the nearly frozen morning dew.

The feet are the first to disappear, then comes the mask, arresting the warm rhythm of your dances, the safe blanket depth of your hospital room smiles.

You will not hear them any longer. The sun has set twice and you can no longer inhale the black cotton of early mornings spent, eyes cast in lead molds as distant no-mores pass like clouds over grey pastures of corporate grown blades of grass that stand at attention like a phalanx of spears leveled at an ambivalent sky.

Yet I am still moved by their crystalline death, a ghostwritten autobiographical mausoleum. The quickly passing light of day exposes the eager gravity of visiting planets that pull your hands beneath the warm hospitality of a kitchen sink you do not own.

Time is irrelevant to our inescapable end and yet we still move, passing ships on a starless season

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You Can Love Up To Here Lily Dove You say I have no faith

In us.

You have too much faith

In me, Who’s never made her own drink, And stays out until 3am, And screams when you take her home.

This is the only love,

That you’ve ever known.

The love that can never bother, To answer the phone when you call.

The love that goes to dinner, And has you spend money,

On alcohol That you don’t like.

You have too much faith,

In me.

To not cheat or strip or become addicted to drugs.

To not die in a car crash.

To not fall out of love.

WE MADE A PROMISE TO THIS MOUNTAIN Daisy Astudillo 89

Revenants Among the Reeds Sin, The Moon God

The moon salivates in anticipation of a new dessert— A pale light moon curse Elucidates vein of new alabaster baby.

Strike the vein and draw cement.

Its new eyes watched as I set the stars ablaze And showered its crumpled feet in rosy embers.

But it wasn’t there for the wedding— To know moth was mere reluctant bride to flame or that Fathers also need fathers, And those fathers just need Wednesday sometimes.

Or that maple sisters may spoon feed their pride Only to choke and spit it out.

They wish they were sweeter strangers and under no risk of changing the world, Unafraid to covet the sap of the other.

However, hope upheaves rock to break upon bosom, Leaving dual freckles like pebbles to litter collarbone And weigh humanity to this Earth.

One day the babe will know red can be blue And that Bellerophon can bud in the garden where I was betrayed— The place I was taken where sorry couldn’t save me— The place where I weaved sorrow to silk And endeavored to attire the flesh I had cannibalized.

It wasn’t there when the sky bent and folded into love handles for me to grab And know of power.

You would’ve known of power.

Now the only power is held by the revenants among the reeds, And I’ll always regret that.

It would’ve marveled at the weeds As consequences of my fate and companions to its will, And it would’ve been loved as a god, Granted permission to raid Olympus And dawn Eros’ name.

But now it’ll be human— As easy to remember as to forget.

Little Job of Horrors 91 Chrysta Avers

Love or Lunacy Alex Ray It’s casual, The planets that align in my Heart every time we touch.

It’s no big deal That sunshine that touches our cheeks Anytime our eyes meet.

It’s just moonlight When our skin glows in the Majesty of nights that create music in Tongues that only we can speak.

But when our lips breathe each other’s Names into the twilight silence that Emanates like an afterthought from the stone Monument to our bloody history that stands Between us, The grey canopy of clouds clear To reveal our naked souls basking in the Glow Of the many moons of our mutual madness.

Pussy Cell Chrysta Avers

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Void

Josh Barkley

Something is ending I don’t know what to call it It is the feeling of something in transit Like snow beginning to melt from the branches that surround this house Today I do nothing but stare at the pale-yellow wall behind the kitchen sink it hurts You and I this cigarette this coffee this morning this void

Yellow Aleece Bustamante

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Something Borrowed, Someone Blue Melody Weckel-Confer

I didn’t invite my mother to the wedding. She knew why.

She accepted and wore the shame like a matron’s gown.

My MIL spent the day with her alcoholism.

An attempted escape from my husband’s next chapter.

My best friend’s mother—the second guardian from my childhood Curled my hair. I felt satisfied and beautiful.

My grandmother is supportive.

She looks back on this day and calls me a child bride.

I wear my independence more proudly than my ring.

Supper in Shiloh Ryan Holtzen

An hour into a long car ride and my dad pulls onto a dirt road, scraping gravel and spitting dirt against our underbelly. Papa and Maggie are waiting for us in the front, American Gothic style, pitchforks in their eyes for interrupting the peach picking. They greet us with a Took y’all long enough, and they walk us towards a no-man’s, hand-made house — half rusted, but well oiled, with the cleanest tap water you’ve ever seen. The spots on Papa’s skin are

growing darker every time I see him, his handshake still firm. He built this brown cake house. A shame he can’t see anymore. Maggie is still fierce with her intuition, but she yells now at everyone, not admitting that her hearing is going.

Inside we’ve tracked red clay across the carpet.

Bella, half-deaf and blind, growls at me.

Maggie yells from across the kitchen now, she don’t bite! but I remember the bruises on Mom after she came back from Shiloh last time. Maggie plates our dinner on the table and says a little loudly, Hurry on, I was hoping it wouldn’t get cold.

All the living things she picked and Papa killed before us on a plate. Papa and Maggie sit down with their forks and knives and wedding bands—Mom and Dad too, nervous but well-mannered. Everyone is reading each other’s minds.

We avoid talking about the looming thing like it isn’t obvious, like it isn’t sitting on our plate, like the food isn’t cold already.

Mom tries to break the silence, “How’s Davy doing anyway?”

He’s stick thin — you should finish your food “He coming home soon?”

Ya like the venison? Your dad shot it last week, I swear he’s as blind as a bat, it’s a damn miracle.

There’s too much clay on the rug—too much red, too much cake packed into their gray carpet.

Bella is watching us eat from the living room. There’s just enough love in the house to keep it together.

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Papa, back with us for a moment, I can see well enough — he looks at my father, then a glance with his lazy eye at me — how’s the little girl doing?

“Hair’s gone.”

Damn shame.

Everything dries brown—the clay, the food, the tap water. The last time I was here I was with Rachel and it was Fall. We learned how to fish in Papa’s pond. Nothing but turtles and cattails kept us company. Papa kept talking about patience, but I’m sure he knew there weren’t any fish in the water. Every time we thought we caught a fish, we’d watch another turtle fall off the line before we could reel him in. It would struggle to turn itself over, legs flailing—what panic among the water weeds. Were we supposed to laugh as children? The only thing I caught that day was an old antler—white and dusty, and dripping wet. My mom hung it up above my bed in my room because I didn’t know how to tell her I wasn’t proud of it.

Rachel and I walked through the woods, crunching leaves, and watching our breaths. Past the pond, past the tire swing, past the abandoned van—brown and rusty now. We walked all the way to the trenches, both of us caked with mud and clay. We jumped in looking for all kinds of artifacts. We found old bullets and dimes and made-believed all the war stories of Shiloh, Georgia. If anything, we weren’t scared of them. We were always drawn further. They were

haunted by an imaginary violence, but we were young enough to only dream why the trenches were there, why we pressed bullets in each other’s palms. Our biggest fears were bees and thorns, the pricks in our skin that reminded us that the world could hurt us — or dinner when we had to come back inside, back through the tangle of trees and branches, and into the cold world of muddy carpets and stained sinks.

But it’s spring now and I can’t eat. Papa’s lazy eye is drifting, and Maggie’s voice is too loud. Dad doesn’t talk much around them, and Mom just wants a nice dinner. I sit and wonder about Rachel’s hair and how it got snagged on a bush on our way back inside last time. I feel my stomach turning.

I excused myself from the cold dead meat and walk the trails around the pond. I like the world of it all. The dirt is so much realer than the concrete driveway at home. There are tunnels of lurching trees. They bend away from the light, overwhelmed by how beautiful the sky is — so blue and bright and life-giving. I stand under them watching branches tug themselves across the path to reach their brothers, their sisters, still brown and orange from the seasons past. If Rachel were here I would hold her hand and watch the trees together — the stretch and bend, and low pulse of life in the shaking leaves. I walk to the trenches and lean over. The roots have grown, and wrapped nests around each other, arm in arm, cradling each other, cradling me and cradling 99

Rachel. So in solidarity with her lonesomeness, we sit under the trees, wrapped in the craggy roots and let the growing warmth of Spring set in — still chilled by the trembling breeze and the After-Winter thaw in the woods around us.

Sharon Olubajo

Forbidden Dani G. Lindmier

You were always the forbidden fruit Hanging from the tree of God, And I had always wondered what it would mean To press you against my lips And take a taste of your sweetness for myself Even though everything in me knew better Than to challenge the role I had been given.

A part of me always feared that I would be kicked out of Eden The moment I attempted to hold you, That you would turn sour once you realized I was foolish enough to believe A girl like me— ignorant and naked— Could grasp for an ounce of truth And a pinch more of sin unpunished.

But I guess the difference lies In that you were far more than a temptation could be.

You were everything I longed for And were on your own my paradise.

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Feral Emily Rodriguez

This is Maybe About You

Hannah San Juan

How can I hold you, how can I know you?

Do you confine yourself to solidarity, or are you just forgetful of other people until the cold two am?

Here at last and-I am always here, Pure, Grounded, Unstoppable Love.

Amiable - but not enough?

I will not wait, will not beg Bid me follow where you lead, Around and Around through the coldest and darkest places.

You guzzle sunlight and try to choke me with shadow.

And who are you? Why did you come?

Open doors are always open, Unless I shut and lock them. “Far away wanders Orestes -� and shall I be like him, too?

Cast out and alone and disgraced?

Or is that you? And if that is you Am I Electra: complacent and dismissed?

No, no. Instead I would be Icarus -

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Ever closer to the eternal warmth, but eventually burned up. Only, Atmospherically, it is cooler as you rise.

Realistically, my wings will never melt.

How much of love is ‘realistic’?

An eternal warmth Still burns out in seven billion years.

And at the end, will we mutter “Et tu, Brute?”

Cries of great betrayal, Things we always see coming but somehow never stop.

What is the end of all this?

I do not need, will not want, have no reason to cry for You can beg and break and bow.

Stay, if you shall. Leave if you must.

Little things cannot destroy me.

Cave Painting Josh Barkley 105

The Dancing Reaper Raquel Battaglia

I dance in the marsh. It is a sticky business; the Cypress roots twitch beneath me and my fingers often get caught in the humidity. I lost my toes a long time ago, I think curious fish ate them. They like my dancing. The water sticks to them and holds them up. The water does not stick to me, I think it only sticks to living things. I don’t mind too much; it helps me be quiet.

Souls stick to me. I find the ones that wander, often heavy, drugged with sadness. There is surprise when they see me, a small joy at my recognition. I dance for them. I entice them with it, a soft turn in my hand, a smooth rhythm in my legs. They reach for me, they touch me, they’re stuck. The surprise loses its joy as they become a stream of inky smudge mothing around my edges. I would feel guilty, but with me, they are safe and get to dance. I am heavy with the saved.

There are those who do not stick. Those still in their bodies recoil when they see me.

They call me many things: a ghoul, an ancestor, ghost, sprite, demon. I had someone once even say that I was just the wind. The fool. The wind is very much alive. I am a dancer. I think I am the only dead thing that dances. The saved souls enjoy it, I think.

Not everyone enjoys it; He doesn’t. I hate He. He does not touch souls and let them stick.

He eats them. I try to find them first, to save the departed from his void. But He hears better and there is no saving an eaten soul. I have to be careful.

He would eat me and my souls away from dancing.

One night, as I danced for the saved, I saw a pair of bodied souls. One was tall, and the tall one, he wore anger creased and tight in his face. It stitched his eyebrows together and made his jaw ache. The other one, the small one, she wore a torn face, lopsided. She looked up at me through it. I froze and braced for the scream. But she was different. She looked at me and waited in quiet.

The tall one did not notice; he was busy with a rope. I watched, curious. He turned to the girl and looped it around her throat. A pale python.

She looked at me again, her eyes prayed to me. They pulled me forward a step.

The tall one noticed the movement and looked.

The anger fell out of his face. He dropped the rope and took a step back. In a shaky voice: “What’re you?”

He didn’t know the consequence of sound.

The praying eyes pulled me forward again.

His confusion gave way to instinct, and he turned and ran. The water tried to get away from him, it sprayed out in splashes from his legs. I turned to the small one.

I reached out a hand, she flinched. I withdrew.

It’s okay. I am a dancer.

I started to sway, slowly. She looked at the water 107

beneath me. It was perfectly still. She moved her foot, slightly. The water stuck to her and rippled out. It was beautiful, the water alive with circles.

I wish I could do that.

I swayed more, turning slowly. She smiled a little, and copied me, loudly, splashing the water. I forgot to fear sound for a moment, the movement was delicious. I spun faster, I jumped, she copied again, and giggled, adding her own sound to that of the water. I smiled. It is vibrant to dance with a bodied soul. My saved souls wriggled and flowed, they bathed in the joy.

This is heaven.

A man’s scream came from across the water: high and faltering, unaccustomed to the octave terror gave it. We stopped dancing.

He found the tall one.

I looked at the girl. She was too alive to be stitched to me with the other souls, but she was too rich in color and movement to be eaten away.

Hide.

She could not hear my thought.

“Hide” I creaked.

She listened well, as if she had practiced escape, and leapt to the nearest cypress tree. She climbed dexterity surprising for a body.

I slid behind the tree, and sunk into the water, just my head left out. I watched, hopeful, fearful. He got closer. I saw He, his wide, grumbling form rolled through the water. I saw a fish get pulled into him, her movement snuffed out with

darkness.

Goodbye my friend.

He got closer to the tree with the small one.

Perhaps he heard her breathe.

He looked up.

The bastard smiled.

I lunged upwards out of the water. She scampered higher into the branches, she clutched them so tightly bark stuck under her fingernails. He was faster. In a moment, his hand was around her ankle. Her leg smoldered and she screamed, a child’s scream. Crisp and new and terrible.

no. No. “NO!” I yelled.

I flung myself up to her and grabbed her arm.

Her soul stuck to me, seething out of her body as it died. He roared and grabbed my back, his fingers sunk into my robe of souls.

I’m sorry. I hoped the saved could hear. Please help.

I felt them tense, then they threw themselves against his hand and bit. He pulled his hand back. He pulled a layer of my souls with him.

I held her tight, she seeped into the night air, condensing among the saved. Not fast enough. He grabbed at me again, his hand sinking in deeper. Like hornets, they swarmed. They were fewer this time. But enough.

He recoiled again, and this tore away millenniums of my souls, but the pause was the instant I needed. She was mine.

I flew away between the trees, with her blended some109

into my darkness. I was lighter than I had been in many ages. I rolled my shoulders back and marveled at how free they felt.

I started to dance, I closed my eyes and lifted my arms and arched my back with a new levity. I savored the freedom, its tangy novelty made me forget for a moment, about the water that wouldn’t stick to me, the fear of He, and the torn face on the small one.

SHE

Savannah Rootes

she loved him so strongly yet her heart he did wither so she washed well her hands now his soul floats the river and he will move forward with her as his martyr and all she will have are her hands splashed with water but what she has now is more than is seen for now, and so sweetly she finds herself clean

“I’m not into him physically but sometimes I like to imagine what dating Hozier would be like”

Elijah Quinn You’re the reason I’m so unsteady. You’re surprising and green and have made me grow in such ways I didn’t expect. You’re nature and love and every wildflower I’ve seen in my backyard that has died, sunk into the earth, and become something new.

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Astral Projection Daisy Astudillo

Moonlight shining on the disgusting, moaning bed Cracks of rustling bones And dangerous sparks igniting the bodies.

The hushed breaths, recurring melodies of death – choir Of Devils.

An emptiness surrounding the universe.

Vacuum of still moths on the closet floor.

Absent body, My numbed eyes.

Burning coal withering in my open hands.

(An attempt to birth life) There’s no oxygen. with the bed roaring.

Voices mumbling on the cold sheets, colliding with the screaming bed As I try to shush the crying children. “shhh, shhh, don’t cry” Intertwining chaos My ears ringing with haunting desperation.

I rise with each (awakening) cycle – A void routine.

A midnight cricket chirping.

TEARS tears on a cutting board linoleum floors fathers who sound like the slamming of doors mothers who sweep the floor with their hands broken fine china and no thanksgiving plans brothers who flip since the lightswitch is broke planting over a dog's grave and the faint smell of smoke

Savannah Rootes

fearless and peerless and never say die sixteen and loose-lipped for a mind, the night sky pondering freedom and old books and trees a woman's fast passion with a child's skinned knees crying but silent and smiles for chores 'til transferred to different linoleum floors

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Blood Birth Sophia Summerlin

The crickets bud with want From the pomegranate seeds.

Goose blood puddles and lingers in their steps.

Tacky fat red glue.

Walking sideways, walking with pigeon feet, The crickets grind their legs and moan, Behind lilac October.

Where they sing I vomit At someone’s finger left behind on the field.

The shack creaks like an old house settling; Not in the least bit comfortable, Miming home.

Spit the last of nothing into the plot I dug up.

Wipe my hands on my thighs, Noticing the palms are Wider than the thighbone stepping up to the plate.

The mania twisted my joints around a plea, To escape the void, minimal night; The stars do not beam for me anymore.

This is new devastation. Oh the ruin in me.

I threw the lip stains out from the window; Never heard them land but saw the browning pink mark the tree line.

Slingshot apples to the dumpsters and missed; They absorbed shattered glass.

Mist over the river, I would drown but these boys would save me.

No point.

Acquainted with my waking To unrecognizable verses, I tatter leather To dress in And become the soft old pig skin.

The pain will begin consumption soon, But I beat it.

Indulge in your fingers in my hair and my leg across your pelvis, All before I am strong enough to leave the springs beneath my back.

I am so sorry that the timing has always been too near to loss.

I clean the spilling from my latte, hot in September.

Caught between my bed and the wall closest to the door, I step into it the warm that is and moan like I am waiting to pop from a pomegranate heart.

I was so near that window earlier.

Can’t tell when that death drive kicks in.

Can’t drive anywhere anyway.

Can’t ever leave unless I am finite about it.

You doubt this I see, but worry under your perspiration.

I am bleeding from the forehead! Mom had seizures!

I’m dying. Don’t call! Call. No. I feel like a lost life.

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divine cityscape i am a light haired god but also a child with skin soft as an infant’s and when i cry it is not tears it is all vocal, but i will not say that. i will not admit that. i will do nothing but puff my chest, become light, laugh like winter thunder, and hide my violet eyes behind linked fingers when i catch myself in the dirty city puddles-that is not me. but i have chosen this. i have unwound these buildings and wound them back to make the music box begin again

ivk

Untitled (left) Aleece Bustamante 117

THE GARDEN

Savannah Rootes

she thought seldom of self her confidence lazy yet she'd open her mouth and out would fall daisies and she cared so deeply yet her spine, well it dozes and so from her eyes grew dangerous roses and on her, when slighted a posie would spring 'til they lined her whole body like those showers do bring and those who did hurt her she always would pardon by the time that they killed her her corpse was a garden

Untitled, Part 2 Khushboo Patel

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If You Know, You Know Mattie Jones

blackout

Lily Dove

The storm of September. The part that my brain Will never remember.

But never forget.

The party in October.

Where I tried to get it out of my head.

The piss in the blood.

Screaming at someone I love.

At you.

I was A stranger.

What I did was not in my nature.

But the behavior of Smirnoff And fruity-flavored chasers That abandon you, On the bathroom floor, Without any clothes.

This was what I chose.

Dancing among faceless bodies. Morphing into nameless copies Of whoever I met five minutes ago.

To whoever I asked to watch my phone: Don’t just stand there.

Come dance to the Messy ebb and flow of the music, 121

Exploding from the speakers.

The sounds of Converse sneakers slipping On the contents of someone’s cup.

How long have I been here?

I need you to hold me up.

Tell me not to breathe, The cigarette glowing bright out the front door.

Going back to the dance floor, Before But you can tell me we need to go Home.

I know I told you to leave.

We’ve been here for four hours.

I’m six drinks deep.

(Probably more.)

I’m sorry for pissing on your bathroom floor and saying that I hate you and making it look like you were trying to rape me and for running away and causing a scene and ripping all my clothes off and saying that I Don’t And drinking so fucking much

How --- Began Daisy Astudillo 123

The Beauty of Poison Melody Weckel-Confer

What’s your poison?

The blood of Christ.

Let it trickle down My throat until My insides are Warm.

I like the soft fire.

The welcoming heat.

It’s a safe form Of escape.

You can’t beat this spiritual distraction.

A miracle in my veins.

Salvation mixes with my blood.

When will I be saved?

When resources run dry?

Or when the end is nigh On human life?

Drink your worship.

Scarlet blushes form On dead white cheeks.

The heat brings color The warmth creates life Where there is no chance of growth.

The power of the Holy Ghost Tastes like Merlot or maybe Pinot Noir.

I didn’t bother to ask.

I drank my elixir And let the miracle unfold, The poison set in.

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Rosemary Sin, the Moon God

If rosemary is remembrance, Slather jejune tongue in pity and Cast it in coffin like a rose to feign love for the dead.

The taste of death is not the fear we have; It is the tasting of it during one’s life.

Death is sugar; Shame is Splenda; Disgrace is salt.

Revoke your tongue And burn lips with atonement and apology To feed the passing leviathan— Yet spare me of it.

Then have Zeus shed some thunder And recruit the cherubs to dine upon my curiosity And fatten themselves.

I always wanted to be skinny, And you always wanted to be grand.

If rosemary is remembrance, Invade my pantheon like a daisy and feign innocence.

Snip Samson of the pride he wears And piece together a mosaic heart for the cadaver before you; Fog it with bated breath As you fret your jealous Heaven hasn’t the courtesy to take you as you are.

Then wield the sky needle to thread empyrean with cloud of hope And body with freckles of vocation.

Cut it to see it still bleeds Dixie And mars the blade in martyr.

Snip Samson of the pride he wears— Naked.

If rosemary is remembrance, Pacify some lavender lovers And weep to feign a purity in silence you’ll shake in car engine as you leave.

Shower obituary in frog and locust To cleanse my name just as you cleanse your pallets of the sins I owned.

Then free the child trapped in my once-racing chest And feed him to the wolves you’ve garnered as pets.

Baptize my remains in a smile And auction all you can’t forget on eBay. Call it a creation to glorify Him And erect monument to You, A Slave To his Glory And Harpoon To your Ahab.

If rosemary is remembrance, Bottleneck memory in cans that reek of larkspur to feign levity.

Play the binary, Operating on my margins of compulsion and comfort.

Then carry my coffin to its resting place with the strings that puppeteered my academia.

Litter my epitaph in bad jokes and worse decisions, 127

Like how I left the Underground Man the irony that some piano keys are called accidentals.

If rosemary is remembrance, I shall cast it upon my grave to remind my father of how I robbed him of Another son.

TOFU IIISophia Summerlin My post-war lust inscribed in stone makes, softly, an equal of me and majesty morning.

Time and labor have drained the heart.

I behave like a human animal.

Dull, a chime of my brown eyes in a reflective black window.

If you had seen yourself in the mark of the old witch, her black satin hand mirrors and thick gold pocket watch, How it drained the water from your lips. Red where you have drawn Blood— tugged it, sucked it to surface— Brown where there is only pore and past.

If you had seen yourself in the microwaved wheat bread, lost

Sentiment, Sentience, Sense.

If you had seen yourself dangling out your bedroom window the night you held close what was departing early, you would have said something better.

You would have caught yourself before your hair rose before your flipped eyes and flipped the night.

Falling without a cracked head.

A baby cries in the grove and I, not a mother, she no father, run away from the small perfect screams.

We came back prepared for the bundle of new skin but received this and purple lips and six toes.

His mother should have counted them before he got here.

We carried the baby from the grove to a barbed wire fence, buried him a foot deep hole dug out by a fox and removed it from the map.

Our hands were wrapped in black terrycloth and the witch took my loops and her whirls for her own.

If you had seen yourself in the witch’s fire, you might not have liked 129

seeing yourself with a smile. Unafraid of the licking and crackling.

I laughed in tune with the magic woman.

A girl they say I am, in black and curtained by silver scissors, but never baby.

Swamp Thing (Cover) Mattie Jones 131

For more information, contact ogletower@ gmail.com

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Parrotfish Who Are You? A Queer and Pleasant Danger The Left Hand of Darkness Sister Outsider Freakboy Gender Outlaw Middlesex One of a Kind, Like Me Undoing Gender Redefining Realness The Art of Being Normal Everyday The Way I Used to Be She’s Not There For Today I am a Boy Golden Boy Raising My Rainbow It’s Okay to be Different The Symptoms of Being Human Come As You Are They, She, He, Me: Free to be!

Queerly Beloved Parrotfish.