Messiah Machina
In the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god And our words have made gods
How our greatest achievement was to be more like you by creating something in our likeness these gods from the machine
In what spell do these gods hold us?
Believing false truths from a new Bard we eagerly await their fifth coming This is the fastest growing religion and when I open my mouth to pray a machine speaks for me
1
Iris Yu
[1] OpenAI has not yet released GPT-5
Like That Linkin Park Song
I wish I could tell you that my tolerance for pain is built on expectation on you not understanding how much that weighs how little I weigh to keep a consistent waist a consistent waste of my time just so you can ask me if it hurt when I fell from heaven
I might even snarl I mean smile well the heels pinching at my toes is a liberation so let’s celebrate while nothing hurts when everything does
Kayla Egan
An Assured Absurdity
Do I still look like the man you married
Or have I changed inexplicably?
Toes dirt-soaked, eyebrows furried
Instead of furrowed. Worry-lines eased
And a trail of nuts and bolts behind me.
I’m unhinged. Full night’s sleep with dreams, Shooters in my morning tea, Conversations with myself in the driver’s seat
On how to treat a 3-year-old’s bee sting (Birthday cake obviously).
Please excuse my elapsed anxieties
Oozing like undrunk milk from my titties.
Please excuse my wrinkled skin flapping
In the wind when I’m driving 103
Into the brick wall of a meat-packing facility.
It’s not a statement but a query.
I suggested divorce at the end of our ceremony
But you waited until we ran out of money
To run out on me, and I couldn’t be more pleased.
Please see a doctor if you start to feel fatigued
But you can choose an orthodontist or a dentist for your teeth.
Smile more. It’s what the motivational posters believe, While Christians think God and Santa can see you sleep,
And I’m most intrigued by the Theory of Absurdity: The human tendency to pit chaos against meaning
Like you against me and me against modesty.
Honestly, I became bored of my own indulgent crying
And I got off that weathered couch, planning to leave.
Everyone at the party begged me to have another drink. I was weak. I downed a whole bottle of whiskey.
That’s how we met, bent over life’s toilet seat.
It’s how we’ll meet again, when, in an emergency
Human Resources hits the Reset button accidently
Instead of Self-Destruct.
Molly Riggs
To say that the only certain thing I know is that I was thirsty and you were far away on a mountain top And when my lips dried up of every prayer
I tried to speak in tongues of blood
My feet are done treading lightly Was the ground ever holy? If a tree speaks
I will put my sandals back on to walk the other way
And if it starts to burn I will ask to burn along with it And when I tell you I was thirsty you will only make me drink molten gold
Iris YuMeanwhile…
On the corner of a too-sharpened pencil and a small puddle of Aperol, there sits an ill-informed informant who is meant to be informing but is instead failing to perform under pressure.
The more he thinks about it, the more he drinks about it until the plot is nothing more than a speck in the distance that even persistence fails to reach.
Kayla Egan
The box was broken down and brought under the stairs. It used to contain a bed. Now it’s opened on my floor breathing without the corset. The living room is waiting for a new TV. Or perhaps an old, used TV that is simply new to us.
It’s not so much about the film, or the show, it’s the gathering together after dinner and washing dishes for me. It’s the bonding over shared experience and also sharing of our favorite shows with the curious, caring others… an extension and a representation of ourselves.
15 more boxes arrived. Waiting for more boxes to be broken down…
She broke down before the boxes do.
But sometimes we must break before we have space to build up again. It’s all a growing process. For example, breaking a bad habit or trying to add something new in life.
But sometimes, though. We break and no chocolate nor gorilla glue can put us back together. It was high stakes and too consequential.
We broke down together. One box at a time.
'Kunk' ‘Kunk' ‘Kunk’ ‘Kunk’ more boxes tucked underneath the stairs waiting for the Friday trash bus… making space for a new TV
Linus Cho
A Woman's Grief
It is a collective grief
Even smiling women, those With skin exposed down
To their navels, and those With wedding rings. We all
Long out the window, write
In our diaries our dreams
But not of love. The words read
HELP in crisp penmanship
Let us be clear
With this desire: It is
To get out. A shout lost
In the wind and then
Suppression. Our only difference
Is body mass and access
And illness in the cases Of Vitamin D deficiency
Trapped in the garage
Or oven, gas on
It’s all but the sink
Clogged with the grief, for which He calls the gruff plumber
Who, like the doctor, diagnoses
A buildup of waterworks
An issue with the drain
It’s Percocet for the pain
And another gin martini for me.
Molly Riggs
Meet the Cafe Rats
Molly Riggs is a literary fiction author and poet living in Harlem. Shortly after graduating with her degree in English from the University of Northern Colorado and moving to New York City, she published her debut novel, Blue Ink, through New Degree Press. She has also published works of poetry in literary magazines like The Crucible, Dear Reader, and Rainy Day.
Kayla Egan grew up with her head in a book and a passion for storytelling. This led her to attend Columbia College of Chicago where she studied audio for film When she's not busy recording the stories that others have written at her day job as an audio engineer, she is working on her own in any one of the coffee shops scattered around New York City.
Marie Cantor, an aspiring playwright and poet from Metro Detroit, now lives in Midtown. Her dream is to say disco more often and join a circus.
An ER nurse during the day, Linus Cho's writing is always thoughtful and empathetic. She draws from her experiences helping the people of New York, and her work will fill your heart
Iris Yu is a self-prescribed romantic who is always writing about "going through her heartbreak bullshit.” When she's not picking up men with haikus on napkins or listening to jazz, she is writing code during her day job.
