PbW Chapbook | Vo. 1

PBW CHAPBOOK VO.1

Copyright © 2023 by Penned by Western All rights reserved. Printed in Canada

Thank you for being a part of the authorized edition of this book and complying with copyright laws by not producing, scanning or distributing any part of it in any form without permission.

First Edition: March 2023

Penned by Western Press London, ON /35

Letter From The Editor

Thank you to the writers, the readers, the dreamers, and, most of all, the Penned by Western members (who are really all of the above). Thank you for approaching our little booth at Clubs Week, even though our board was peeling apart because the last time our glue had seen the sun was when Dudley Dursley had a pig’s tail. Thank you for coming to our workshops, week after week, as we delved into the worlds of creative nonfiction and fanfiction, humor writing and Taylor Swift. Thank you for putting up with our rap battles, medieval cello music, and Cadbury Creme Eggs (yes, I had to google how to spell this). Thank you for sharing your laughter, your snaps, and a bit of your souls with us over the last year.

This is Penned’s first-ever chapbook and I was so pleased to be a part of the process that brought these pieces to print. Thank you to Penned’s executives who worked tirelessly to help make this happen and to Dr. Aaron Schneider for their guidance throughout this process.

You, the reader, are in for a treat. These pieces touch on everything from the burning desires of otherworldly love to the beauty in the seemingly mundane. It is full of cleverly crafted metaphors, whimsical turns of phrase, and so much heart. So, sit back, grab a cup of tea, or your preferred reading snack, and enjoy PbW’s first chapbook.

Yours,

Zanna Fong | Editor and Penned by Western President

stargaze; superorganism.

- Darija Silic

(y)our body is light; electromagnetic pathways. each (m/b/tr)illion stars’ photon eyes, when met with mine, does us interinanimate, like lovers’ baby-eyes in gaze. it arrives when my eyes draw in a whirl, twirl, the ribbon light -string from (y)our gift of knowledge. the wavy string, as it descends, speaks the language of my neuron brains and your galaxy chains; can’t you see? we _____ the same. think know are

My Little Exoplanet

- Daria Ariana Drys

A planet so beautifully blue, far away from my solar system, beckoned me towards you.

A planet of slashing glass storms - you deceived me into believing that this was my forever home.

HD 189733 b wasn’t just a number to you. It was the death of me by a thousand cuts, my punishment for your shortcomings and lack of love. Your planet wasn’t like other planets, beauty within and without. It was born in the supernova of all the things you put me through; your blatantly racist jokes, brittle self-confidence, and daddy issues.

But now I’m back on planet Earth, my safe haven away from you. No more half-hearted promises or blinded shooting stars free falling towards your black hole of impulsivity. I will never enter your poisoned atmosphere again.

Piece by piece I rebuild the planets in my solar system. I allow the dust particles to collide and watch them mold into the hearts of wisdom. I finally stop pushing against gravity. My friends become your moons, orbiting your silenced insanity.

To me, you’re merely an exoplanet, sixty-four light years away and drifting further each day. I see the other astronauts venturing your way, I should warn them but I don’t. I’m too busy rebuilding Earth and my little solar system

10 Things I Know To Be True

- Ethan Shi

1. I am breathing.

2. My heart is beating.

3. The sky is blue, or at least it appears that way.

4. We are one small part of a larger ecosystem.

5. Our Earth is beautiful, fragile, yet resilient.

6. There is so much that I don’t know.

7. I, and everyone I know, will someday die.

8. I am afraid of losing those I love.

9. Our lives feel big and expansive, but are no more than a fleeting moment in the universe.

10. I have so much love left in me.

The Summer of Stars

- Xiaohan Yan

Annalise finds the star in the river when she’s just shy of thirteen.

It’s summer. The air is hot and sticky like the underside of tape; heavy like a smothering blanket. Annalise’s mama who is mean and unfair and who she hates won’t pay for air conditioning no matter how much Anna insists that her skin is melting off, because she thinks it’s a waste of money.

So Anna goes down to the river. She likes the river. She used to watch turtles here, bobbing their little green heads, when she was a child she used to trace the shape of the river with her finger in the air and imagine she could follow it to another world.

The star, when she sees it, is sputtering and whining, not much unlike Anna herself in front of her mother moments ago. Anna pushes herself up on her elbows, surprised, and watches its paws bat at the water in a desperate struggle. As she stumbles to her feet, the dog star, Sirius who is really just a dog now to any human who can see turns and gives her a piteous little whine.

Snowbed

- Amy Zheng

Nothing has captured my imagination so,

Like that first drift of heavy snow

Lighting up a cold winter’s night.

Eiderdown snowflakes flutter and fall,

While my trepidations take flight

To form a bed and blanket– welcome to all.

Before long, the rosy colours of dawn

Seep the landscape in a warm glow,

From behind velvet curtains I look upon

The white-topped trees as daybreak draws near I'm weary, but I don't mind in the slightest,

While winter is the darkest season of the year, I would argue it's the brightest.

But like all good things, it must come to an end,

Once again, I say goodbye to my lovely friend.

By Tuesday it all melts away,

Sloshing down the drain

Never to be seen again.

Cherry Blossoms

- Aqleema McBean (Kleema Mac)

[cherry blossoms bloom…] within my veins making pretty out of pity and sapping up love i’m afraid to give yet their roots don’t suck me cold i’m still warmed by this uncomfortable feeling this intense want for you for me with you but i’ll glow too bright too pink and temporary

you’ll shield your eyes like i’m an eclipse you’re not allowed to see and too hesitant to touch because cherry blossoms were only meant for spring and you’re looking to forever

Songbird

- Abigail Scott

I will walk into the darkness with my arms spread wide in welcome, singing like a sparrow in spring, my soft little heart beating fit to burst. Sometimes the only light you have to see by is what you create yourself. So go whistling past the graveyard, and be not afraid.

Release

- Sarah VanDuzer

Burden slips off shoulders and onto the floor.

Layer by layer, I remove my shell until all that’s left is me.

Light has died dim. Night is born bright.

The hum quiets and the shifting stills.

I tuck my knees in and smile.

12:45am

- Ann Ping

I want to stay cramped in this inverted, windowless, upside-down corner of my room, where I am unburdened by yesterday and tomorrow, the body around my mind, and the world around my body.

But every other Saturday at 12:45 am, she gently unlocks the door, takes my hand, and walks me through liminal corridors, towards subliminal horrors and surging white noise.

In these moments,

I want to unzip the skin that wraps me and leap away from time and circumstance.

I want to press into the ground, swim to the Earth’s core,

And wrap myself around it until warmth is no longer skin-deep and life is no longer 3D.

Mechanized Mind

- Claudia Kindrachuk

Mechanized mind, automated planet –there’s nothing more lonely.

I’ll apparel myself in your blood like garnets –it’s nothing but a commodity.

I bluescreen when my sensor-hands slip through your hair, unable to analyze the lines of genetic code in silky strands –in your arms only the flood of data dies. Did you consider the long-term effects of having an Android lover? Remember, everything is about sex except sex, which is about cold-blooded murder.

StrangeAddiction

- Hira Ansari

And in that moment I knew that he had become my vice, my strange addiction, my guilty pleasure. I watched him as he slept, the rise and fall of his chest as he took perfectly rhythmic breaths, the incandescent light of the moon outlining his perfect features. It shouldn’t be allowed, I thought. It shouldn’t be allowed to be this beautiful. I had spent so long resenting him but now as I stared at his face, all I could feel was complete awe for the boy in front of me. Perhaps it was a product of my own infatuation, that my feelings were making him more alluring in my eyes. Whatever it was, I never wanted it to end. I wanted to drink up the view, to store it in my mind forever, to lock it up somewhere safe where only I could access it.

How could someone this gentle love something this jagged?

- Gray Brogden

Before bed, I practice “I love you” in the bathroom mirror

The words never escape unrooted

Instead, my mouth contorts and curls

Like braided tree roots, gnarled and knotted

You tell me you love me with a smile

You lace your hand with mine

You kiss my temple and close your eyes

I sleep in the middle of the bed

Boxing invisible opponents from my dreams

Wrapping the sheets around my body like chainmail

I think I missed the lesson about sharing

You sleep curled around my body

You keep an extra blanket on the bedside table

You never wake up exhausted

In the morning, I push your name around my mouth

Scrape it against the backs of my teeth

Flatten it beneath my tongue

Six months and I still can’t decide how you taste

You say my name with ease

You always hold my gaze

You say loving me is the simplest thing to do

Fragments.

- Maia Ross

She whispers softly about her love

I fell in love with my shadow my own mirror image – some may say I am my generation's Narcissus

i would have been better off, to be forced off, and turned into something beautiful metamorphosis for I never was.

I would watch Hestia each day and night for she is the forgotten one – she sees more than anyone else.

Witnesses the connections or the collisions of family and friends of neighbors, spouses, those who antagonize our very spirit.

She tells me stories of those who have been forgotten just as she has been.

These stories remind me of the stories I heard as a child.

Ones you don't hear anymore in the light of the day (for they can only be heard in the night amongst the stars).

Over the years I have realized that humans continue to touch everything into life and perhaps we are our own hamartia because gods typically inflict their hamartia upon the mortal We are left sacrificing ourselves

Sacrificial Poet

- Izzy Siebert

Ambrosia doesn’t do it for me. Instead, I get drunk on nostalgia, feel the buzz in my marrow. I’m beginning to understand why Orpheus looked back.

Eurydice is myth: a lover made up to make the journey make sense. When I enter the dark, I’m seeking more than a muse. On most visits, I don’t make it past the water.

The words are liquid memory, dark as ink, the syllables slurring into song. I bury my hands in the river of language, searching by feel for something I’ll only recognize once I’ve found it.

It was never about immortality, it was only about keeping a feeling breathing a little while longer. And when I turn back, I’m not looking for her. I already know she’s gone.

No, I am craning my neck, straining my ears, reaching back, greedily, for one last silver song to take with me.

Piano Seat

- Hollie Rosewood

“Something's eating you away,”

I say, “What's going on?

You've been staring straight forward but you don't see nothin’ at all.

You say your mind's a cursed battlefield; what you see, it's not real. I know that you don't like words, so make me a deal:

You don't have to speak. Just leave it in the Piano Seat for me to find.”

She scribbles it out and pouts. She shouts, “Why am I so lost?”

How long until she figures out her thoughts don't deserve to be tossed?

Tie her to a chair, force her to make a choice; that wouldn’t count. How could you expect her to use her voice when she's afraid of the sound?

“You don't have to speak. Just leave it in the Piano Seat for me to find.

“You don't have to speak. Just leave it in the Piano Seat for me to find.”

Her Catastrophe

- Nadia Parhizgar

Her life was a small city at shore and she embodied a tsunami.

Always sought out to be the bad guy, my heart could not help but hollow for her.

It sounds crazy, I know, but if you asked her to control it, She’d only look at you with eyes even hollower.

And although the words never left the tip of her tongue, You could read them on her face saying, “I never wanted this to happen, please forgive me, please.”

One moment she is still, tranquil even. You couldn’t differentiate the quiet and her existence, Like the words “peace” and “her” were synonyms for one another.

And in the blink of an eye, Before you could raise your arms above your head

In some empty hope it would shield you from the impact like a force field, “Peace” turns into war, into chaos, into ruin.

As the little of what remains of her washes onto the sand, All she is left with is the wicked aftermath of her own destruction.

Poisoned by saltwater, she lies still, exhausting her last breath to cry out for help,

But the words only sink into the ground along with her.

Exercise #3

- Victor Knyazev

She stands there, out of breath, sniffling either from the cold or her own embarrassment, and hands in the drooping paper with her name on it.

It is soaked through by rain or worse. A large footprint covers half of the front of the page while the brown outline of a maple leaf accents the back. Holding it proves difficult due to how heavy it is from water, not to mention the creases that are on the verge of ripping and only looking for an excuse to finish the job.

Nevertheless, the work beneath is still legible, and practically impeccable. The mathematical formulas are used in proper logical fashion, and the results do not stray from the correct answers by even a single digit. Not a decimal point is out of place, though the specks of dust and dirt do attempt to misdirect.

It is uncomfortable to touch and, in instinctively letting go of it to wipe one’s hands, the corner rips and it falls to the ground with a wet plop.

A moment of silence before she carefully scoops it up again and lays it out across her hands. They’re not able to get much dirtier at this point.

“Professor?” She pleads.

“Well, just get it to me by the end of the day,” he says before placing a sticky note on the attendance sheet and writing: Andrea 100.

Because

- Holly Barrans

Did you know Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted The Swing?

For the past 20 minutes, I’ve been googling him because

I was watching a video on tornados, because

I was thinking of the Anemoi Thuellai, because

I was brushing up on Greek mythology, because

I was reading a book and it mentioned Achilles, because What else am I meant to do at 3 am?

If I let my mind wander, and fill my search history with Facts, figures, and dates that I may never need again then

I can satisfy all the curiosities that will ever come to me, or

I can have an answer to other people's questions one day, or

I can finally distract myself from the thoughts in my head, or I can force myself to stay awake all night, because

Did you know? Fragonard won the Prix de Rome scholarship

- Sahir Farooq

Kepler… Kepler… now where did I hear that name? I remember it well; the word incessant like the chirping of crickets at night. Every moment it would reach my ears, but I can’t recall where I first heard the name. Who first uttered the word to me? Where was I when I first heard it? I cannot remember. I only know the name and a feeling of wonder associated with it. Every time I think of it, I feel… joy. It’s like my heart swells and opens up, accepting all the wonders of the universe. I feel excited, yet at ease at the same time. I want to run and jump and scream, but also to lie down and close my eyes to bask in relaxation that washes over me.

Ah yes, now I finally remember… there’s only one thing that can make me feel this way, and there’s only one thing Kepler can be… or one thing it was. No one spoke the name to me, nor did they repeat it. No, the word itself was embedded in my mind, playing over and over like a broken record, and all that because Kepler was a place unlike any other to me. Kepler was my home, and it was beautiful.

The curse of knowledge

- Om Shanbhag

Burdened with past truth,

I attempt to embrace knowledge. Lies from the bow of education, cursed shafts scar the learner.

Listening to voices that cut through chaos, stories that bring heavy hearts. Without happy endings, without closure.

Confusion hangs low, clouding the path ahead. Hopefulness for days to come shines through, healing the sins of the past. But scars cannot be erased.

Burdened with the real truth, I embrace knowledge, blessed to correct lies, blessed to mend fallacy.

Gone and Finished

- Syed Wahib

What level have we fallen to?

Where to even say something, away we are shooed

The voice of justice only remains in a few

The rest are companions in the evil that society brews

The period of thought, to express has been bid adieu

Paper with Lincoln is all what humans want to pursue

Remain silent in front of injustice and don’t speak the truth

Is this what society has fallen to, like a tamed mule

Those who are quiet in front of oppression, do you think you are shrewd?

The attitude must change or days remain less when society is doomed

One may say why so bitter is your view

As what I have described is very well true

The world has been held by the power of the few

The change of this begins in the change of you

Writer’s World

- Siddharth Maheshwari

Diasporic static

It’s shocking

The flow of these words

It’s automatic

Tell me

What is sporadic?

Effect into cause

Curving my insides

Apparently, it’s symptomatic

Dendritically branching

Turnstiles of entropy

Inverting expression

Modality in multiplicity

Prompting and receiving

Becoming both

Beginning and End

Meshing boundaries of identity

Into a circle of life.

no return/exchange policy

- Aanya Pereira

the human body, my biology teacher starts over the low-drone-hum of the slide projector, and i find myself looking at a colourful diagram that means nothing to me. i’ve seen human bodies before, saturated with blood and pinned down like butterflies in my mother’s medical books, labelled in ink print. whatever is on the screen is a fake, but that’s not what i have to take away from this.

the human body, my biology teacher starts, and i think of the time that i dreamt of unfolding, not in the way a butterfly sheds a cocoon, but like a martyr of old, flayed open and singing, vocal chords exposed and ready for the sting of an arrow point, my scapulae reformed with the crack crack crack of wishbones snapping, bent backward – like i could be something both holy and doomed.

your body, my mother starts, like i haven’t heard this before, is a gift from god. treat it with care, and i want to carve myself out of it so i could have something that would finally be mine & exposed to the moonlight–not a gift that came with a vow that i didn’t agree to, not a prenuptial between god with its many mouths, and a smattering of embryonic cells. i want to be ever-shifting, birdsong, resurrection, jasmine buds, street light on wet asphalt, and i hear my mother telling me that i am all blasphemy and ungratefulness. that, for now, is enough.

Wake-up Call

- Zanna Fong

These are the shoes that make me get out of bed. That clip molars beneath their two-toned heels carved from my mother’s collarbones straining beneath the weight of flesh.

She has given her one-hundred and thirty-two pounds of it, thinly sliced and plated next to jasmine rice, strung through porcelain eyelets, tied into neat, uniform bows that stand tall, back straight, feet pressed together.

By nature, I am not a shoe-wearer. I am bare toes on subway platforms, open-mouthed kisses on screen doors, I am a sole ready to be calloused.

But these are my mother’s shoes and I am my mother’s daughter.

I made my first credit card payment

- Katherine Walker

I pay for each day in a currency that does not belong to the state of my mind.

I'm in debt I cannot touch, paying interest on my heartbeats. The exchange rate doesn't recognize eyelash wishes off my finger.

This quiet isn't the company of my mom in front of a TV show we stopped watching, sharing homemade popcorn made soggy with butter and a couch that could never be too small.

I must have been robbed.

I was sure I had thousands, but there's an eviction notice on the back of my eyelids and I don’t own enough boxes for all my memories.

My brother will help me lift the heavy things, my dad will drive the truck I do not want to start, and they will sing with me on my way out, but they will not be where I'm going.

I have my own credit card now, and I don’t think I know how to use it.

five things i wish for more than anything in the world

- Asha Saha

to stop time not forever, just a long afternoon to read my favourite book again for the first time with all the best parts appearing on subsequent pages and everything sad and scary melting away into the paper to drink a giant cup of tea that never ends and never gets cold to write poem after poem until i learn how to write about something other than loss to sit here with you and think of nothing bad and watch the sunlight peek in through a crack in the curtains over an open window