STAFF
Eleanor B., Indigo D.-M., India E., Frankie K., Louise K., Greta L., Claire L., Phaedra L., Lucy M., Shivraj P., Anna S.-R., Jasper W.-H., Yuli Z.
EDITORS
Gracie M., Margot S., Laiali T.
FACULTY ADVISORS
Liz Fodaski, Nolan Gear
Many thanks to the following people for their support and assistance: Blair Carswell, Alex Darrow, Tom Hill, Mary Lou Kylis, Evan Liu, Shy Parris, Jen Peana, Kenyatte Reid, Veronica Rivera, Marty Skoble, Aidan Thomas, and Amra Tomlinson.
Special thanks to Eli Forsythe for his extra support. Thanks also to the English and Art departments.
We are especially grateful to everyone who submitted work to this magazine.
Copyright ©2025
Saint Ann’s School Brooklyn, New York
www.saintannsny.org
S H am . Helena A.-K.
M S aise . Abbie A.
Anna S.-R.
F P elix .
M F atías .-V.
Jane A.
Teddy C. M R ila . W G illa .
M R ila .
F P elix . Abbie A.
S F am .
Katie Z.
F P elix .
Carter B.
R E yan . Anna S.-R.
R E yan . Frankie K.
Abbie A.
N M ora . J R ames . J R ames . S H am .
Eggshells
In the lake, the children are playing Dropping stones and catching them Under wings of water, before rock hits sand
Later, they will pluck blades From the vast blonde field, Watching the grass lighten As it slips neatly out of the earth
Remember the warmth of the road on Early June days?
Trees weaving overhead, their branches brûléed with crisp, sepia leaves
And the cool, warbling sprinkler that blended with The fragrance of hyacinths, Florets collecting in rings upon garden cement
And we would sit on the deck and watch The children peel back the birchbark And laugh, as if we were not there
Anna S.-R.
Field Burning
The day I met my wife was one of the last in the wet season. It was that peculiar pause, when everything’s too soft, too limp to burn. She stood on the edge of the field, her hand resting on the fence. She hadn’t come to help, but to watch. That is how I knew she understood the land in a way most people did not. We never spoke much, but we didn’t need to. There was a calmness to her, as though she could stand in the center of a fire and rise through the smoke. I suppose that was what drew me her way.
As my illness spread, I began to spend less time in the field. The mornings were colder, the weeds creeping in faster than I could clear them. The hunger of the land was a constant thing and I could not keep up. My daughter appeared as a shadow under the sun. Sometimes, when I was too weak to stand, she would sit with me. We never spoke much, but I always felt her watching, as though she was remembering me in ways that had not yet incinerated.
The night my mother died, I placed the body in her chair and set the house on fire. As I watched the flames engulf the ground floor, I imagined her soul rising through the smoke, past me, the house, and the land. I felt as though I was sinking into the front yard, noiselessly melting into the dirt and my own father below it. I take his hollowed eyes and look up at my mother who is watching from a distance every time I burn the field.
Nice, France at Age 6
I was a tawny-haired girl, And I slid words under my front teeth like notes under a door. My eyes were blue like Grandfather’s Oceans and capital letters. I was smoke-smelling, Wore yellow sandals. I held Daddy’s hand on the rocky beach, And we ate apricots Like they were blots of the sun.
Celeste O.
a poem
it’s the shiver that starts at the nape of my neck then trickles down my spine & thrills through my veins in sweet, serrating ecstasy
it’s the sonic echoes of disdain staining my skin of losing track of my loose ends or remembering the ephemeral things
it’s the moments that just scrape the ice of inconceivable— the cloud-capped mountain tops or gas-giant jupiters or torrential, existential downpours of what was, what if, what’s next?
it’s a visceral thing a chill that drills down to my bones it’s a mumble, or a mystic, or a moan & it’s music: soft and serenading almost like praying for those who choose to listen
it’s the ordinary people with extraordinary dreams the ones who live in half-baked in-betweens the ones who still believe in fairytales & happy endings who stretch expectations to their extremes
& dream of sanity or symphonies or sighs
it’s your hand entangled in mine the trace of your thumb on my knuckle the mix of my sweat & your grime my tears & your crimes and soon our fears pool in the pocket between our palms & i don’t know if it’s reason or if it’s rhyme but i know that i’ll linger for as long as you let me as long as you’re still by my side & that, i know, is poetry.
Buds
When I collect the dry jasmines from the tops of the dusty gold frames of the deities and I cup them in my hands to inhale, I can almost smell something familiar, taste a dessert with brown sugar and ghee, slightly tart from the smell of fruit that fills the humid air.
These flowers I can hold and inhale, already used, offered to God.
They are the color of tea with the right amount of milk, crunch like the wind rustling the branches in the morning, droop like they’ve spent a day bundled up in a braid of coconut-oiled hair.
In these flowers, withered, useless, no longer masked by the stunning, fresh, floral scent, I can almost smell something familial.
Kamala G.
City at Night
A man stands on a street corner
Baseball cap providing shade from the blinding dark
People dribble out of bars arm in arm
Their features blurred with affection
So this is the gentle night, then
Thick and soft and heavy
The blackness beyond the green glow of the gas station
It is in this night that I let my head fall, Buzzing, against the car seat
And let the quiet, hungry dark crawl
Into the hole just below my sternum
Saved for you, left cold and gaping.
I read the white lights that twitch out Morse code towards Manhattan
They say what I am thinking: You have wholly ruined me.
Petra J.
Pearl
The old sagging woman of ex dallas cowboy cheering fame has elbows like huge, hard marbles that contract absurdly under her weight and as she performs for me, poised femininely on my linoleum table, I see her eyes backlit with colorized memory of girls that smelled of hairspray and thin bodies in synchronous motion bodies contracting beneath stadium lights.
G.
The Radio
This morning I awoke to the radio
It was my father’s & It’s a little black contraption with a silver antenna. It’s reminiscent of a beetle, with briny, barbed legs and glossy unseeing Eyes.
It’s programmed to go off at 6:33 each morning & I like to listen to the sound of urgent reporters garbling on about whatever we are Now supposed to be worried about. I like listening while I apply rouge to my winter brushed Pallidity & I
Like listening while I sip on chalky, acrid green tea
From a chipped blue mug.
I like listening while I tug on tights
Moth eaten & threadbare that hold my flesh in momentary warmth As I leave the house & regrettably leave the radio behind. My dad used that old thing
Back when he
Wore scuffed brown shoes & red turtlenecks.
His hair wasn’t salt and pepper (it was sneeze summoning And turned nasals patchy strawberry red and seedy),
Just pepper.
He would also leave the radio behind to drive out past dirty snow banks & the forlorn eyes of cold deer.
Out to the city, out to school.
Back then all the boys in his class (with their gawky frames & The stubble & acne wildgrasses That occupied their chins & jowls)
Had fancied their French teacher who had a perfectly French “Ski slope” nose & Perfectly French Short dark hair.
Chloé P.
Love Poem at the Edge of Extinction
We have talked all afternoon, me lying with my head in the crook of your shoulder, your arm flung across my waist, and we have come to the conclusion that the world is ending. Not in ten years, not in five, but right now. Climate change might be worse than nuclear holocaust simply because it is slow. We kiss each other: our deaths will be long and painful. We could spend our whole lives crying at the unfairness of it all, and we will, later. For now, you will run your hands through my hair again and we will laugh and the heat will rise in my cheeks as outside, the heat rises three degrees above average globally. Your eyes, blue like oceans of plastic. Mine, brown like scorched earth. All I want is to live long enough to get a couple gray hairs, maybe even a wrinkle. But as I listen to the sound of your heartbeat thudding across your skull like lightning moves across plains, I know that this is the closest we will get to a happy ending. We sit at the kitchen table and watch California burn. All I can say, my hand covering yours, listening to the tornado sirens sing high and lonely in the dust-colored distance, is that I hope there will be someone left to remember us—even in another time.
Ari W.
someone will remember us I say, even in another time Sappho 147
Flying Lessons
The bottom of the kite is slippery in my palm & the cord that winds itself around my pinky finger in tightening circles threatens to slip over the nail, cut short. The kite is patterned with the red and black of a ladybug, tender as a bruise disappearing, sweet & fleeting as strawberry crumble in late June. With its nearly perforated wings, the creature is the captain of my ship, obeying the will of the wind and tugging me starboard, right ribs arcing towards the grass & heart towards the sky. From there we are only small, wedged between blades of grass & drowning in morning dew
Take me with you
We are unmoored & directionless:
We are reckless: pulled towards the sun like Icarus and caught between heaven & earth, & we know that feeling well
We want to hold the big dipper in our irises before it falls away, want to hold each other in our palm as we stand still, ascending towards the sky
Hannah B.
The Lonesome Tree
A lonesome man hangs on the lonesome branch of a lonesome dead tree
In a lonesome dry desert
The cracked and dead floor begs for water
The cracked and dehydrated skin of the man begs for life
He sways pushed back and forth by the silent wind
The void air carries the sound of the crying rope miles and miles on end
There he stays watching time run by, running laps around the world
Endlessly and tirelessly
The man is happy at peace he doesn’t miss the world
How it was when he was alive
He is happy here hanging
Finely dressed in his texan hat
Forgotten by friends, family even, his parents
At night he sees death wander
So beautifully she drags her feet back and forth
Camilo C. H.
Reattachments
In sophomore year of high school, when her therapist was not a theraboyfriend, just a boyfriend, and was actually one of those boys who call themselves men and think therapy is for women, his name was David.
They lived in suburbia and David would pick her up in his maroon Toyota every morning before school, lips pursed around his iced latte, her black coffee steaming in the cupholder. As the liquid burned down her throat his skinny hands would drive the car. He had big knuckles. They were especially big on the steering wheel, where they ridged up like hardened grapes, grape juice snaking down his palms and along his wrists and veining up his needle-shoulders. David was a nervous driver. He always braked too early at red lights and had to play an awkward game of gas-brake-gas-brake, slugging along, until he’d inched them up to the intersection. “My bad, babe,” he would say as the nauseous heat of hot coffee rose in her neck, “sorry, sorry, sorry.” It was the only time he ever said that word, at least until he shipped off to therapy school and went weak. Every time, it caught her off guard, and she’d find it in herself to squeeze one of his knuckles as a sort of affirmation to them both before the light turned green and they went back to normal. David retreated into his pretend-man skin and by the time they pulled into the school parking lot, the coffee had burned back down.
David was vegan and drank raw milk and didn’t believe in condoms, and so three weeks after she first kissed him, when they lost their virginities, coldly, on the floor of her bedroom because her kiddie bed wasn’t big enough, when fate aligned—crooked, stupid fate—her stomach bruised itself with a baby. She tried to get rid of it, but the nearest clinic required parental consent and she decided that she couldn’t ask them, couldn’t do that to good, sweet old mom and dad, lest she accidentally expose one of her many great inner truths. She had yet to discover even one, but she knew they were there. Undoubtedly. Hopefully.
She needed someone to tell, though. Someone rough enough, gritty enough, to absorb this news and remain unchanged afterwards.
“I’m going to have a baby,” she told David over speakerphone, then asked him to pick her up from the clinic.
“Oh,” he replied, hanging up. It was the least she’d ever heard him say. He pulled up fifteen minutes later, all maroon and Toyota and creased.
“Hi, babe,” he said as she opened the passenger door. Her gaze reverted to his hands, flexed on the steering wheel, knuckles so white and taut she had the urge to poke them with a knife, just to watch how evenly they would split.
She reached to close the door and he breathed in sharp. “Well,” he said, voice cracking, but she pretended not to hear it. He got upset when she noticed those things, those growing-up things. “I’ve always liked the name Diana. Or Tom. If it’s going to be a
dude.”
She paused, midway to her seat, the car door swinging back open. The silence was fresh. She hated names, thought he knew that. Hated how attached to yourself they made you, how boxed-in, how specific. And, anyway, names were for people, and the grape leeching off her insides was not a person. It was hardly anything.
David looked up at her. “Sorry,” he murmured without knowing what he was apologizing for. She felt bad, though logically she wasn’t in the wrong, was she? Still, something in her said to comfort him. She wanted to melt into him, in fact. She wanted to hold him, to be held: not romantically, not lovingly, but urgently and parentally.
But she couldn’t touch him anymore—the lifespan of their intimacy had ended on that bedroom floor. She could only palm the grape inside her, could only wish for a green light to make things normal again.
“Drive me home, please,” she told him flatly, and when he pulled into the driveway, over the crushing of defeated gravel, she added, “We should break up.” She walked to school the next day, head panging without its morning caffeine.
Soon, the clothes that fit her stomach did not fit her: they were mom-ish, vibrant and flowered and loud, pretty. Their embroidery and decals and sequins only drew more attention to the parts of her slug-body she wanted to hide. But black—cool and mysterious and flattening, obscuring and defining—how she wished to wear her black tights and black skirts and black t-shirts again. Her mother had always told her that black washed her eyes out; her mother was right at the eye-level, color-wise, but so deeply wrong once you looked behind the iris. Black was her damn language.
On a walk one Tuesday—in the absence of a boyfriend she declared meandering her hobby—she found herself at a Walmart a thirty-minute-drive away from home, salivating for a Diet Coke. The man at the counter—twenty-five and his name was Keefe—sold it to her for a handful of quarters and a smile, because you should smile more, baby. She came back for Keefe, smiling, on Wednesday, and on Thursday, and on Friday and on and on. Their mouths tasted smooth when he kissed her, like his tongue was sanded down and her jaw was stuffed with feathers. She missed David’s grittiness.
On a Sunday, perched on the curb outside of their Walmart, her stomach pooling onto the street, Keefe asked if she’d like to trade that Coke for a beer. She’d never had one before. He helped her open it and she drank it in three sips, a cold similar to hard wood and bad sex washing over her as she gulped. She felt she’d just lost something; in an effort to find it, she had another beer. As she placed the empty bottle down, her fingers—accidentally—grazed the grape in her stomach and she felt a wince of something like shame or regret or a missed opportunity. She had another beer. The something turned into a belief that she could do anything she wanted, and she kissed Keefe and since he was so smooth she could fill him up with her spikiness. She had another beer. On Monday, she came back, smiling, for Keefe and for the way he could bottle up
power. On Tuesday, she came back for the power.
All the while, the grape brined and bubbled, filling not with flesh but with liquid, a blister of fruity liquor and globbed-up cells.
Then one night it popped, wine spilling out over her legs, coldly, and onto her bedroom floor, freezing her instantly. Her knees gave out; her muscles quivered, then died; her lips parted and locked. Her nails shook and drummed into her thighs and her back grew stiff on the hardwood. A little trail of sound dribbled unceasingly from her lips, like a whine, like a cry, like grief and pain and perhaps relief, perhaps ugly relief, and perhaps joy.
The grape rolled across the floor and under a stack of baby clothes and when she finally unfroze, she forgot to even look for it.
When she finally unfroze, the wine was half-dried, staining her thighs and room and mom-colored dress purple with sludgy messiah’s blood, and she could move again. She changed. She barely mopped herself up. She called Keefe to come get her, to drive her, and they got drunk in a playground and she kissed him on the see-saw, tugging his face to hers keep balance, until his whole chin seemed to be within her lips and she was gnawing at his nose and he could barely breathe. He drove her home and she owned him.
At seventeen she would have had her baby, but instead she had wine-stained nothing, and somehow the guilt of nothing was worse than the guilt of pregnancy, so after a night kissing and drinking with smooth beautiful Keefe, she left home. Later in life at job interviews and that sort, she would say the whole running away thing was completely government-sanctioned—government-forced, even, emancipation of a minor or whatever—but that would be a lie. Truthfully, she’d never hated her parents. They were good people, nice people. Her mother was usually right and her father hardworking and dependable. But she needed great. And when she left, she could not find anything to miss. Not at seventeen, anyways.
She turned into a cannon ball, got herself some equivalent of a high school diploma, befriended and mourned a trapeze artist, did not really miss her parents, had to leave the circus eventually, and still did not miss home but maybe didn’t want to be so gone, either.
Eventually and suddenly, eating cold pasta against the wall of a furnitureless apartment, she realized that David was a very husband-ish name. On that Sunday night, she looked him up and saw that he’d become the thing his boy-self hated, that he’d become a therapist, that he’d become a man. Within a month, she’d found a job at a Walmart with good health insurance; after her first paycheck, she scheduled a telehealth appointment.
The booking site asked her for her name. Fingers thinking faster than her head, she typed it in: Diana. Did she want him to remember? Was she that stupid, was she
really that stupid? Whatever. She clicked save, then next.
Tuesday came: phone in hand against the wall of her furnitureless apartment, she told him she couldn’t tell him her real name or show him her face but she wanted to be a better person: she told him she wanted to be a mother. He pointed her towards a few local sperm banks, and while she did take the time to look through their offerings, the truth was that none of the blobby blue-light faces spoke to her unless she was drunk. But mothers were not drunks—that was the point, wasn’t it?
The Tuesdays, months of them, came and went. Those afternoons turned dependable, adding nothing to her life but a slightly different shade of neutral. But even that was something, wasn’t it? One night, one glass into the bottle of Sauvignon blanc beside her—but more sober than she’d been in weeks—a little buzzed—but she was always like that—she logged into her telehealth portal and clicked on her most recent conversation. Her only conversation, but still.
“Hi,” she texted David. “It’s me, can we meet? For real, this time, face-to-face, that whole thing?” Or whatever.
His three dots appeared within the minute. “Hello. This is Dr. Smith,” David replied. “How can I help you today?”
“You sound like AI,” she typed back. He didn’t respond, and there, she’d ruined it, hadn’t she? She’d just gone and ruined it. She reached for the bottle, took a swig, another. Evidently, she’d learned nothing from his therapy.
Although now that she thought about it—their conversations had never really been about her vices. More about what led her to depend on them. Her backstory, that sort of thing. Her life. It was almost like David was more interested in her.
Possessed by the thought, she lunged for her phone, frantically tapping the microphone at the bottom of her keyboard, and yelled, “Hello David are you there? Well, I think you’ve recognized my voice by now, but it’s me. And I’d just like to say…. Well, I was wondering whether you’d…. Well, would you give me another chance? Yeah, you know, I think that was the greatest thing about you, even when we were young and—well, when I was young, and stupid, very stupid, even then, you always believed in second chances, and I guess I mean to say that I’ll do good by it now, I’ll be better for you, and also I’m so drunk, wait, I mean, I’m so sor—”
“Sorry,” a clean voice on her phone interrupted, “I didn’t quite catch that. Please try again, maybe enunciate more, speak more clearly, you deranged woman.”
She was heaving, her breath spent, but she actually would have tried again, she would have, if David—the real David—hadn’t messaged her just then: “Sorry about that. Auto reply.” God, he was dull! Come on, David, give a woman something to work with. “Is our normal time on Tuesday still convenient for you?”
“Yes,” she replied. Fight bland with bland.
“Great,” he said, “I’ll have Rosalind send over an invoice when we open
tomorrow.”
It occurred to her then that she had contacted him well beyond normal working hours, even for a therapist. “It’s two a.m.,” she said, a smile hitching up her lips. “You’re up late.” What was she hoping to get from him?
“I look forward to meeting you, Diana.”
The next Tuesday, she pulled up to one of three parking spaces outside 301 Burbank St., half-looking for a maroon Toyota in the adjacent lots. But the only other car parked outside was a gray Honda. A sad, gray Honda. She took a breath and walked inside, jingle bells on the door announcing her entry.
“Hi,” said a sunny woman behind the counter, “I’m Rosalind, and you must be Diana?”
She nodded vaguely in reply, not really giving an answer, and waited for Rosalind to say something else. She seemed like a woman who liked talking. Sure enough, Rosalind went on. “Okay, well, you can just have a seat right there, honey. Dr. Smith will be right with you.”
Five minutes later he walked out, took one look at the dreadfully familiar woman sitting in his waiting room, and said, “Oh.”
“It’s me,” she offered, trying to coax her lips into a smile. He looked at her dumbly.
“So. You’re an alcoholic now?” he asked her once they were seated in his office, which had all the regular, thoughtless fixtures of a therapist’s office: ugly oatmeal chair; uglier oatmeal couch; fake plant that somehow still looked dead; porcelain box of tissues. She sank into the couch. It had terrible back support.
“Oh, it’s okay,” she responded lightly, “we don’t need to talk about that. I want to hear about you!” She twitched at her own peppiness, soldiering on. “How have you been? What’s it like—the Life of a Therapist? Do you, um, do you have kids?” She attempted a laugh, but it came out more like a cough.
David sighed. “No kids, Di—” and then he paused and it all paused and then it all came down on him, a big blow to his thick skull, and his thin lips collapsed and he whimpered. “Diana. Oh, God, I’m such an idiot,” he whispered, clenching and unclenching his hands, knuckles blinking white. “Oh.”
He looked up at her then, gaze wide, and she noticed how gray his eyes had become over the years, so startlingly nothing. “And what, exactly, did you hope to get from this?” His voice was half-bedside-manner, half-broken.
“There you are, Mr. Therapist,” she laughed again.
“No,” David shook his head like a little boy, “stop that. This is me. This is just us, and this is just me. And, truly,” he used words like truly now, “I want to know. Talk to me. Please, just be honest, just talk to me. I just want to know. I mean, what, what were you—what did you—how could—”
“Shut up,” she whispered, “shh, shh, shh,” and in a swoop she bridged the space between their oatmeal cushions and kissed him. It was not a good kiss, kind of sloppy, they were both out of practice, but it felt familiar, and he didn’t pull away, and that was all she needed. She felt his face crumpling under hers and she almost yelled at him, “Don’t cry, don’t!” but contained it to a sad murmur.
“I think I love you,” she told him once they’d finally fallen back to their sides of the office.
“Well,” he answered, “let me at least drive you home.” And it wasn’t a no.
Kai M. S.
Crying Faces
Each morning,
On the bus to madrasa, You cried at the thought of your parents
Dead on the floor by the time you got home.
I started to cry in my first class, For some reason unknown, But you picked me up And we fried crepes in our kitchen.
In that moment, I was reminded Of playing Conquian with your mother
On the carpet of the old apartment in Beirut, The food and the crying king in her hands.
Sometimes, you’ll call me on my commute And I tell you I can’t pick up.
I don’t know why I’m so scared that if I do, I’ll hear your cries on the other end.
You’re fifty-one years old
And my grandparents had to move out, Yet we are all still there
In the crying faces of disfeatured children.
Moaz M.
Bless this home
I walked thousands of miles back to the land of freedom
Just to find you collapsed on the cracked grounds
Of our hopeless American dream
Drinking the American night sky
Through wide-open arms
Begging for solidarity,
Praying for solace.
I walked all the way back to the land of freedom
Just to discover an elegy to the 226 that fought to keep
What once was ours
And to think
That what completed them Was what defeated them, To think
This was my home, To think, to think
Until I’ve pruned over
From being drenched in What once was And what’s to come
And all I have left
Are the chipped floorboards
Of your mother’s old house.
Tonight, we will sink to our knees
To thank the 50 stars on the American flag, My cracked fingertips pressed together, Yours touching your lips.
Tonight, I will pray for the Border-separated families and the Sanity of young mothers
And Sinai patients
And the holy release of their hospital dismissal. I will pray for the pistol cracking the air
2,000 miles away
Like magnets colliding
As you etch your blessings into the underside
Of your school desk.
And in all, and end all I’ve walked thousands of miles back to the land of freedom
Just to bathe in the ruins of our helpless land
A sparse thread in the fabric of our futures, Our children’s futures & their children’s futures
And all that’s left of our blood-dried American glory.
Azalea W.
Nebraska
Today marks the 57th time I have told my mother she cannot, under any circumstances, purchase the state of Nebraska.
By the 23rd time, 50 days ago, I made the decision to take her to a home. She twisted and fought and kicked as if she had not borne me for 9 months, as if I were not her child. As I awoke the next morning, I discovered I had begun to bruise along my shin and thigh from where she struck. She chastised and berated me, exclaiming I meant “nothing” to her, as if we didn’t go grocery shopping together every Sunday before I moved away, as if she had not sat on the couch and braided my hair every morning for 4 years straight, as if she had never loved me. At that moment, I understood the mother I once had was long gone.
Today, I stare at the tube running up her nose, delivering some sort of pale liquid into her body, and the dozens of needles pricked into her translucent skin, likely measuring something or giving her something she can no longer give herself. The fluorescent lighting reveals her expression to be sunken and lifeless. Dozens of monitors beep at a constant rate all around her. The air is heavily saturated in evaporated bleach. Vaguely, it wafts the scent of adult diapers—floral, but only to conceal the stench.
Today, my mother does not remember who I am, but she does remember Nebraska and will continue to ask me if she can purchase it. Today, it doesn’t matter how I answer because she will not remember. Today marks the 57th time I have told my mother she cannot, under any circumstances, purchase the state of Nebraska.
A.-K.
Bubbles
“My life is surrounded by bubbles,” someone once told me. “Like so many Russian dolls, each one cloaked by a Larger sister, they wait to be popped.”
I close my eyelids so that I can become invisible So that those crouched over me cannot yet Read my mind as the trees do So that the colors and illusions are my own, And the little snake in the corner is unable to Bite me because I cannot yet die–
I used to see colors when I closed my eyes, but now I see smoke graffitied on the peripher y of the sky Gray like the snowmen who gulp light from winter days Until they thaw and become A few quarts in the lichened creekbed–
I search on the slopes beneath my eyes, across valleys and hills between Ivory wainscoting. Time is plentiful, Yet the walnut dusks sweep by too quickly. Fleeting as ships, Bound to plunge towards the stone fountain’s pennied basin–
Dipping fennel into olive oil, squeezing oranges into sweet blood on blue-daisied tiles In the quarry, the water tastes like tree roots and the air smells of moss And though the poplars grow and the infants watch, the rocks remain the same
Afraid of Dogs
The sky is pitch-black and I’m talking to the dog. He’s barking, tugging on the leash and tugging my arm out of its socket because he knows I’m afraid, and I tell him, “Yeah, yeah, you can smell the fear on me.” (Don’t look at the strangers. They know you’re crazy. Look at the dog.) “I’m afraid of dogs, we all know it,” I tell him. The dog isn’t mine. He is white and in the darkness he reflects whatever light we pass. When we pass the dollar store he is sick and green. When we pass the motel with the pool he is shifting and blue. When we pass the streetlight he is metallic and orange. In between spots of light, the dog is plain white. (He looks like the moon.) He isn’t mine. If he can smell fear, I can smell turkey stuffing from the house still only three blocks behind us. I can smell velvety sage, bristling thyme, elegant rosemary. I can feel the veins in my grandmother’s hands as she presses the seeds into my palm. They take root and bloom in summer and she bakes them into the turkey ten years later. But I’m allergic to rosemary and the stuffing doesn’t agree with me. (My relatives don’t agree with me. We make small talk. We make small talk so small you can’t even see it.) New research suggests that early exposure can reduce the risk of deadly allergies. (That never worked for me.) The dog stalks under the table. (This is why I’m afraid of dogs: we let them sleep in our houses and dress them in Halloween costumes while their cousins live in the woods and kill deer.) They say the dog must be feeling quite cooped up.
So the sky is a great gaping hole and I’m talking to the dog as I take him around the block. “You want to go to the beach?” I ask him. “I thought you’d never ask,” he says. (Or barks, at least. I don’t presume to know the thoughts of the dog.) He sets off running and I don’t bother yanking on the leash. I run after him. (I’m afraid of dogs.) He cuts through backyards and holes in fences. He knows the suburbs better than I do. The rows and columns arranged like regiments. He lives here. I only visit twice a year. (Thanksgiving and Christmas are non-negotiable. I can usually get out of Easter. I tell them it’s a medical emergency, which is true, in a way.) We break through the last line of houses and I see the ocean. He takes me down the dunes and we crash into the waves. The saltwater seeps right through my socks and into my bones. He thrashes further out. I can’t find the bottom. I can’t find the sand. I keep the leash wrapped around my hand because if I lose him, there will be a scene. I swim. One last gasp of life before I succumb to hypothermia. He howls at the starless sky. “Light pollution,” I tell him, but I don’t think he hears me. I can’t hear myself either.
Pull of the current. Sweet whisper to ruin. Gravity. Inevitable. Swim anyway. Prorogue. The dog and I. I’m afraid of dogs. Before I die, I wonder if he is afraid of me too.
I don’t die. He turns and drags me back to shore. I stumble onto the beach and he shakes himself dry. We go back to my grandmother’s house. My hair hangs clumped and wet. We stand on the porch. The dog looks at me and I look at the window, lit up red from all the candles and holiday good cheer. We stand watching. I reach out for him and he snaps his teeth. Fair enough.
Jasper W.-H.
A Ferry Across an Endless River
There’s a bridge over the Bklyn-Qns Expwy It isn’t symmetrical i.e.
The inland side is a slow slope down While the side by the waterfront Takes you up a flight of stairs Before turning 90° to cross
I only ever cross one way Up the stairs, down the ramp
The bridge doesn’t get salted In the wintertime
The snow is trampled and Little bits are shorn off the edge
Like when chunks of dirty ice
Splintering off an iceberg And falling into the water create Two large waves in succession That sweep across the sea
Turning over anything Floating in the water
I’m watching and Falling snow caused a pileup on the Bklyn-Qns Expwy
And saltwater starts bubbling up, Quenching fires and rinsing blood and Washing away the thin layer of snow
Built up on debris
And now the water rises further It sweeps the wreckage Into the harbor
And the traffic Can flow freely again
Felix C
Fireflies
I was told stories as a child about glowing bugs you could trap and keep Bugs that wouldn’t bite or sting
But bugs who led you through the endless dark.
Summers would come and go but my jar always stayed empty
I would fall asleep every night in the pitch black.
I would tiptoe out of my bedroom on summer nights
Wrapping my two hands around the jar
The jar my dad had drilled holes into the night before I would push the door open with my elbow making sure not to wake the house.
Then I would wait.
I would wait till I fell asleep on my porch with my jar in hand I would wake up confused only to be in my bed.
My hope started to run out
Summers went by quicker
A glowing screen soon replaced the shiny bugs.
I started to like sleeping in the dark.
I had grown up
My children would come and play in the yard that raised me
They would stay up late with a jar in hand
Ready to catch something that would get them through their nightmares
They would fall asleep and I would carry them back into bed
I would spot the empty jar that always disappointed me
I sat.
I sat on the porch that put me to sleep
I sat with the jar that had stayed empty till I grew old
I sat till a little golden fly flew into my jar
A fly that I kept till I couldn’t
Abby G.
Leech
As I pedal down a gravel road
Freshly enveloped in darkness
I think back to skin
To flesh
To touch
Unable to be replicated
But I still try
Reaching out towards hopeless endeavors
That I don’t really want to be a part of
I hate myself while doing so
And I’m only widening the void within me
Further perpetuating this draining
Lonely cycle
This town only makes it worse
I bike through puddles and thunderstorms
As the heart in my chest rusts along with all feeling
I reach down into the damp beach
My hand gripped by the sand
Like my thoughts by the dissatisfaction of longing
While gliding towards the bay
I remind myself that independence isn’t all bad
If my time in this town has taught me anything
It would be that
By the time I reach the water
I think
Even realize
Maybe I’m not so parasitic
Aiden S.
Internal Vows of a Willing Host
You told me once that you loved the feeling of being a trespasser in your own skin. You said we had become too comfortable
Too passive
You were the dreamer. You believed we could change the world.
I was your little friend. I have always been uncomfortable within myself. You said that was what you loved about me. You were wrong (alas!), I am not the mountain-mover you thought I was.
I, too, am passive, self-absorbed, unaware.
So I tried. I “put myself out there,” subject to discomfort and pain. I made space internally, for others. Most of all for you.
I was praised and applauded for being selfless. You stood before me, shielding me from their praise. You always were a protector.
And you helped me, too. Helped me crack open my ribcage like an over-plump oyster. Helped me remove the shards of my sternum from the soft mush within.
You said I was beautiful, all I could think about was how disgusting my innards were. You helped me rearrange my internal organs, helped me sift through them like old memories, helped me decide what to keep, and once there was enough room, it was my turn to help.
I helped you raise your leg as if getting into a deep bathtub. I held your head down so you wouldn’t bump it as you crawled inside, and I helped you find a seat, before I stitched myself up.
I helped you feel like an imposter within skin, just as you always wanted.
As the days passed and we became fused, I had to take my meals with you and you had to wake up beside me. You beamed down at me and your face creased, and yet you were praised for these imperfections:
“They show how happy a life you’ve lived!”
And I, chasing the high, the high you first gave me, smiled too.
We were tied, inextricably, by a cardiac umbilical cord.
As I sit and pick the lice from your head with my teeth, your blonde hair cuts into my gums and makes them bleed.
Daniella S.
The drive back from the wake was uneventful, save for the occasional sound of an acorn pinging off the top of our car. All told, it wasn’t a very lengthy drive; however, the deafening silence intensified the brutal monotony of the thing. Mother wasn’t crying anymore, but from the back seat you could make out the red blotches around her eyes in the car mirror, like a pair of melancholy eyeglasses. Father was upset too, his left hand on the wheel, his right snaking out of his shirtsleeve to grasp Mother’s palm. Was there not something so laughable about it all? His legs, thin and spindly, like sticks under that ragged blanket. Imagine him in a football game! Or running a marathon! And that voice, so raspy, like he had to tug ferociously on each word to withdraw it. His breathing, like the rustling of brittle leaves in the winter. And oh god, how those old, bumbling, dark-clothed geezers descended onto the house like vultures. Old, wrinkly vultures, their faces pinched into sympathy, eyes open like an embrace, arms bearing their foul-smelling home cooking, a sacrificial offering thrust bluntly into my grandma’s hands. They had all begun to circle around, speaking in muted tones so as not to wake the dead man. What was it about the sound of muted crying that made one so desperately want to burst into unapologetic mirth? At one point, upon hearing a frail old woman recounting the yell of anguish that had escaped her on hearing the tragic news of the departed, a laugh very nearly escaped me. However, I was able to pass it off as a sneeze, after which I was bombarded from all angles by a chorus of ‘bless you.’ Is death an instant thing, or is it more drawn out? Of course, with each second we draw closer to death, but when all the speculation ends and the real thing begins to happen, what really goes on? Are you alive one second, and dead the next? Or do you hang in a kind of limbo, a space in between, until all life drains from your body? Would the old man think of his life, and what he’d done with it, as he felt his last breaths escape? Would he look back on old memories? The day I was born, the way I ripped at his brown wrapping paper on Christmas morning, the percussive thud of my baseball hitting his glove. Would any of these smudges of being enter his mind in his final hour, the way they’ve come to infect mine? Or would the old lump just sit there, helpless, powerless, without a final thought, or a word, or even a feeling of love.
Leo B.
Song For Adrianne
The chorus is awake, Mila.
The middle is shrinking, my love.
My love, how the leaves hover and orbit themselves like clouds of angry gnats.
So awake are our slipping skins that we adjust thoughtlessly.
How you would bring your thumb beneath the shirt strap that had fallen down your mountain-like shoulder, pinkish lace lining a cliff face.
How your pretty fingers wedged between your flesh and that pale elastic.
How orderly that all seems now.
So awake is the pavement which spreads itself beneath the simple autumn of a Chicago suburb and arches over duck-laden streams, colder than the air from which they rush away.
The Swedish moss and the gray, dying dogwood.
The raging mass of white hairs on the settee.
The catbirds have gone.
So awake is the need for glass tinted and rag dolls perched on the windowsill.
Don’t let the hostas see our hands.
Don’t mask your childish palette.
Don’t ever wash my sheets once I’ve left.
The wasps are low-down.
I rub vinegar on your chapped lips and you are the messiah reborn, swaying with the tepid inky waves of eastern Pennsylvania.
Witness me in my great splendor, curating a passionate confession in a poplar confessional:
The chorus is awake, Mila.
The song is for you.
Adrianne, Adrianne, Adrianne.
You named the dogs, you sealed your sweatshirt, you smiled from the terminal.
Adrianne, Adrianne, Adrianne.
I care for your red leather and your pinkish plaster and your blue.
Adrianne, Adrianne, speed up!
Weighed down by charcoal marks like black grain on your forearms and elbows. The chorus is awake, Mila. The middle is bobbing and breathing. The leaves dangle like gold pendants. I found you in a trench curled like a shrimp, gulping rainwater and off-run runoff from the nearby septic station. You, Mila, were meager. You, Mila, were meek.
And to think, all that could complete you, all that could draw the smoke from your lungs and the liquid from your esophagus, all that could sing, was Adrianne, Adrianne, Adrianne.
Callum H.
Bronx Zoo
Dear director of the Bronx Zoo, or should I say Jim Brehny. I wish to apologize for causing you so much trouble and inconvenience over the weekend. I never should have fed those animals normal human food. It was foolish and irresponsible of me to do so and I deeply regret my actions. I am also aware that there are signs that specifically say not to feed the animals which I guess makes what I did worse. In that case, I would also like to apologize for taking down those signs. But to be fair, they were blocking my view, and how else am I supposed to feed the animals if I can’t see them? I guess if I’m apologizing for feeding the animals (which do look a little underfed) I should also apologize for setting some of said animals free. I am now aware that it is strictly against the rules of the zoo to free any animals. I will say that the wording for that rule was a bit weird, so I thought it was saying you can’t free any singular animal which is why I freed twenty of the monkeys. I should also add that when I was opening the gates to the zoo I was not trying to free all of the animals, but I was just making it easier for people to leave the zoo. Now I know what you might be thinking: ‘But no one was at the zoo! It was one in the morning!’ to which I respond by saying I wasn’t trying to trespass on the property, I simply got confused about what the visiting hours were. All of this wouldn’t have happened if your website worked! On the subject of working websites, I am also sorry for breaking into the server room and getting a walrus to break all of the servers. Okay, if the non-functioning website is on me, then I guess you’re gonna try to say that it’s my fault that the parrots can’t stop repeating the nuclear launch codes over and over again. If I’m guilty of that then I guess you are also gonna try to frame me as the person who lived-streamed the parrots saying the launch codes. My response to those accusations is that the monkeys set up that livestream, not I! Monkeys are brilliant creatures so it makes perfect sense that they would set it up. You know what? I think I’m gonna do this again! I don’t care that I can’t be within five hundred feet of the zoo! My team of monkey lawyers will challenge the judge’s decision in court and I’ll be back in no time!
Nicholas R.
My feet tell me I like to walk in circles, heel, toe, heel, toe—rhythmic circles— Sometimes I dance along to soft percussion, others my legs whine and claim fatigue
So that the toe of my shoe drags as I walk, adding to the tune in a squeamish, Sickly way, so that one can hear the cement scrape or the gravel kick, the sand fly & Cling to my calves—
My mother says she disagrees with my Feet but whenever we walk together she insists on Rushing through the tangled trails
Steering me out of pretty patterns until we are zigzagging, then walking straight. Later my feet always insist on rewalking our paths & I Force their frustrated ends to meet & they grudgingly form mixed up & messy spheres
I wish that I could learn to love knotted Friendship bracelet string and jumbled headphone Cords, I want to love the chips in the wood Floorboards at my aunt’s, they sing when stepped on— Grime on Grandmother’s bike—all seasoned spokes And flattened tires that creak like tired bones Begging to be oiled, pleading for youth.
This bike tells me I shouldn’t waste my brown hairs, at least not on silly circles, shoe drags, Repetitions & the gravel on the backs of my heels, however lovely it Seems. For it is true, I will have years & years for whiny, pesky legs and retraced Steps, years for making dead ends meet in spheres & years for neat goodbyes and edelweiss & years for sweet cherry kisses wary Years, the only ones I could let myself
Hold in my palm’s pocket, the only years I let hide under my nail beds during Thunderstorms the only years I could walk—
My feet— heel, toe, heel, toe—
like my mother is a road that I walk on— like my mother is the road where I learned to crawl Like how my mother taught me how to walk, how to braid hair in the summer, how to make floorboards sing how to cry, how to kiss scraped knees—
heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, toe—
My mother, my mother my mother
Louise K
The Apartment 2020
As the man practically sprinted off the metro onto the Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, he oriented himself briefly, and sweat began to spread across the underarms of his pale blue dress shirt. On one elbow his Tom Ford suit jacket was crumpled carelessly to leave his hands free for his phone. Barcelona in August was about 10 degrees C too hot for anyone to survive in long sleeves and pants, never mind a jacket. Using his free hand to shield the glare of the sun, he examined Google Maps. “Carrer del Comte d’Urgell, 65, L’Eixample,” he mumbled.
The address was of a bakery in Eixample, Granier. Judging by the number of locations on Google Maps it was a popular chain here. He had been asked to meet up with a woman, Cecilia, to interview for an opening at the English language school down the street. He was late, and desperately had to use the restroom. As he rounded the corner onto Carrer del Comte d’Urgell, he was relieved to see the black banner with an ornate white Granier shading a window full of pastries. At one of the tables out front, he glimpsed a woman sitting, reading a Kindle, whom he was almost positive was Cecilia. She was old, maybe in her 60s, but she had a youthful style and confidence. She hadn’t seen him so he continued on inside, hoping to sneak away to the bathroom before their introduction. He shook his leg impatiently as the man in front of him ordered “una ensaïmada y café con leche” and quickly ordered an americano before asking for the bathroom. He paid and dashed to the back of the restaurant, just to avoid a certain disaster.
As he strolled back out, drying his hands on a napkin, he folded his suit jacket and grabbed his coffee from the counter before heading outside to introduce himself. “Cecilia?” he asked as he approached her. Then, in Spanish, “Henry. I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were sitting out here! I was inside, hiding from the heat—I guess I haven’t adjusted. London is much colder this time of year.”
“Oh, it’s fine. I didn’t see you either.” She spoke English with an American accent, and her expression betrayed an amused hint of skepticism as her eyes darted to the sweat stains on his shirt.
They talked outside the cafe about Henry’s education, and why he chose to move to Barcelona just out of university, until Henry had forced down his hot beverage, the last thing he wanted to consume in this heat, and Cecilia suggested she show him around the school because they were only a block away. As they walked over, the excitement of imminent air conditioning revived Henry and they chatted about the lovely neighborhood and city. About twenty feet from the Granier Cecilia paused and turned around. She pointed up at a balcony four floors above the bakery. “That balcony there with the red shutters, that was the first apartment I ever lived in, in Barcelona. I
moved there just after college like you.” She smiled. “It was the best decision I’ve made. Gosh, so many memories on this street. I’m so glad I work around here now, I get to relive my youth.”
“Wow,” Henry responded. “Any idea if it’s still available? I’d love to find a place in Eixample so close to the metro.”
“Unfortunately I think it sold years ago, after I moved out. But I hope you do find something like it!” She sighed and looked longingly at the thin balcony. It couldn’t have been more than two by four feet, but it was obvious the memories it brought back to her.
1980
Cecilia lugged her suitcase up the three marble stairs to the door marked 67. She rifled through the papers in her bag—a copy of her passport, her contract with the Alamillas, her lease of the apartment, which was in fact at 67, Carrer del Comte d’Urgell. She rang the bell, per the instructions the Alamillas had described; the landlady would let her in and give her the key to the apartment provided with the job. She shivered in the brisk January air of Barcelona. She was accustomed to winters in Florida, which could hardly be called winters at all. She tried not to think about how far she was from everyone and everything she knew. At the complete mercy of her employers, the mother, Jestine Almilla, had reassured her that they used this apartment with the past two au pairs they employed and had “grandes experiencias!” But that just made Cecilia more nervous. The children were only 5 and 11. How many au pairs could they have had? and why did they keep needing new ones? Her mind was racing through the worst case. Maybe they were crazy, or super particular. Would she get fired or have to quit? What would she do for a living then, oh my god and her visa was dependent on her employment.
Thankfully, before she could crash out completely within the first 8 hours in Spain, a teenager opened the door; he looked about 15. Confused, she asked him about the landlady—“Maria?”—in her stilted Spanish. He pointed her toward a table at the end of the hall just before the stairs and the smallest elevator she had ever seen, and in perfect English explained, “My mom’s out right now but she left a letter with your key and information. You can let yourself in.”
Cecilia walked over and scanned the contents. “Apartment 4C… no loud music past 10 pm…make sure to close and latch the outside door…mail on the first floor.” She pulled her luggage over and looked with dismay at the minuscule elevator. Once the doors opened she quickly realized she would have to leave a bag down here and come back for it. She did her best to hide her duffle, shoving it under the table where she had found the envelope, and rode up to the 4th floor.
After an embarrassing struggle with the key, her new home finally clicked
unlocked and she shoved her whole back into the door to push it open. The apartment was small and minimally furnished. The door opened into a combined kitchen and living room area with a small bathroom off to the left. The bathroom had a window looking into the inside of the building. “Lovely,” she thought, “I can meet my neighbors while I shower.” She dragged the suitcase into the bedroom, the only other room in the apartment, and her favorite so far. It had no windows except a large glass double door that let out onto a tiny balcony. Cecilia smiled. She had hoped for a balcony, and couldn’t wait to sit and watch the city below.
Suddenly she remembered her duffel sitting unattended in the lobby and she rushed back down, almost forgetting the key to get back into the apartment. She thought only the worst as she rode back down to reclaim her duffel. What would she do without all of her money and passport? It was idiotic to bring up her clothes and leave her valuables alone down there.
She crouched by the table and felt for the handle of her duffel where the marble floor met the wooden trim of the wall. As she grasped it, her hand brushed the corner of some thick paper. She dragged her duffel out from its poorly concealed hiding place and uncovered the corner of a tattered old envelope half lodged in the wall. She yanked on it a few times, bending but not ripping the old paper, and dislodged a sealed envelope. The name Manuel was written in cursive across the front. It had no stamps or dates but in the upper corner: 18/7/1946.
That evening she sat, legs crossed, on her tiny balcony. A glass of white wine, a 450 esp bottle from the supermarket below, sat half full beside her as she turned the letter in her hand. She knew that it was frowned upon to open others’ mail, but there was no way she would ever get this letter to Manuel anyway, so she slid her nail under the seal and pulled out a folded letter.
1946
A woman dressed to travel paced in the entryway of 67, Carrer del Comte d’Urgell. Her tattered suitcase sat on the table by the stairs next to her last-ditch effort to contact her brother. Maria and her husband had waited long enough. He had returned two months ago and since then the oppression of Catalans in the city had only gotten worse. They had to get out of Barcelona. The train to London left that afternoon, and she wouldn’t hesitate, except that Manuel had not yet come home. It was doubtful that he would make it back this long after the end of the war but the lack of concrete bad news gnawed at her. What if he finally made it back and they were just gone? She couldn’t bear it. The letter on the table was her last hope. If he came back maybe he could find it.
What was taking Paul so long was delivering some blankets and pots they had sold to a family down the street in an effort to bring as little on the train as possible. He
had brought them down the street on a bike, an item they would also have to abandon in Spain. Paul’s mother had been English, and his aunt was still living, just outside of London, so it made sense for them to go there. Nevertheless, Maria hated the idea of them having to leave their home. She had almost broken down at the sight of their barren apartment earlier that day.
A piercing horn from the street shattered her thoughts. She looked up and gasped. Through the glass and iron of the door, she could see the collision between two automobiles. A smaller red car had crashed into a larger black one, causing them, together, to barrel into a bike. She gasped at the blue bike, and as her head filled with the worst she grabbed her suitcase and raced outside. As it slid off the table the leather corner hit the letter and it slipped, behind the table on the first floor of 67, Carrer del Comte d’Urgell.
The heart Of man Is like the line To hell
Shuffles In little steps On its way To condemnation
Moaz M.
Every artery of desire
This heart Of mine Is waiting In hell
Leaps In giant steps Out To absolution
Holy Days
The black leather of the steering wheel slithers under your hands and you tame it with a touch of grace and giddiness, strength in small things. The landscape speeds by at 70 mph in my periphery and I want to hold you still and wind back the dial, peel away layers of arid breeze and fermented smoke from your skin. The next quarter mile of the highway lies in our headlights, too bright and too empty. The wind is whistling through your bones and the joints kiss each other where they don’t want to. I never learned how to whistle, to exhale remembrance through chapped lips in the shape of a melody. But I am learning from you now: the flick of the wrist to pluck limes from the tree, the proper fearlessness to step on an escalator even as space seems to move underfoot. To you it’s all as simple as perpetual ascendence, from the perfume to the perennial plants, to the perseids. We lacquer over jagged edges, snake our ring fingers in diamond dust, clothe our limbs in meteoric flame and ash: concentric layers of armor, the fossils that we excavate to beat dusk. Flint to start a fire that births all that we have not yet had.
Hannah B.
Shallow Cavities
Am I but
Sacrificial deliciousness
And ripe plum
Pure and carried or Stumbling dread soaked up
The mountain?
Or instead am I running
Up through the meadows that have until this moment
Been mine
To end up at the Altar of divine
In the palm of my father?
The pain creates then some
Shallow cavities in my spine and heart
Filled with what I know now
What my children too will know about being delicate children
And then
Fingernails into the dirt and wood
Because Here I Am
And here is my father’s fear with a knife in his hand
Here is the devotion
I lay down in green pastures and is this
The house of the lord forever?
Phoebe B.
mantra for a future survivor
you count your blessings & i count myself blessed. you stand
on the toilet as another gunshot cracks the air like an egg & i pray, even though i am
an ocean’s length from your school. i thank the creator because he made us & you
worry this morning he’ll snuff you out. now i watch you struggle like a sparrow
in a crinkled deli bag; instead of following the drills, you shake until the stall opens
its mouth of dread. i toss a coin into destiny’s fallowed water & i drop in a wish
for all of us. i breathe. your thoughts expand like a held breath with nowhere to go & i pray
for a future missing, for holy water on parched lips after your hospital dismissal. you keep your faith
mirthless like a mother stretched promethean on a rock & i admire your strength—
but alone, you are soft as a mother’s calfskin belly. fate stores surprises in the sky & we appreciate
every staccato kiss, every crumpled dollar bill & trip to seven-eleven. we appreciate every cool rain
spiraling in from london, the best kind of trouble we could wrap ourselves inside, the wool coat
from your mom, every birthday wish, every flaking war medal passed down by lost relatives & the cresting
arch shielding your front door, the fairytales you authored in third grade, your childhood toy: lamb-baa,
your grandmother’s gift on your first day on earth. you baptize your sixteen-year-old self
in the bluest depths of your hurt, forgetting the bland girls, how desperately you once wanted
to be one & i carry your laughter like stones in my pocket, up my school’s front steps, rattling
like a kettledrum. a teacher tells me to be quiet & so silently i write a poem. we can speak
truth to undress spackled bullet holes, can cleanse bloodied school uniforms—but across our faces
thoughts will still rifle like determined thieves through every drawer, searching for the gift of life.
Adelaide S.
Teenage Boy with a Great Understanding of his Own Psyche (a Midwestern Blues Song)
I am as popular as a boy gets at Middlebrook High of Southwestern Indiana. I am a hero in every seasonal sport. I will occasionally go to a party. The thing that makes me most popular, though, is the fact that most every time I am invited to anything after school, I come up with various excuses, giving the illusion that I am wanted in many places and have no time for, say, an after-school diner hangout with the baseball team, or “a date” with “a girl.” I am very strategic with these excuses, so that no one can unravel my web of lies, so to speak. Even my parents. Because where I go in the afternoons is not my house, and certainly not to hang out with the cool kids in the next town over, no. I pretty much head over to the “abandoned” stone building on the edge of town, one of those 19thcentury-land-baron-wanted-his-own-castle type of deals, and I pretty much copy out the dictionary with a candle to light my desk, so I really feel like a medieval monk. This activity is so enriching and fulfilling for me, in fact, that I think without it I would die of boredom, which might sound counterintuitive, but here’s the why, the psychological kicker that you’ve been waiting for: basically, my everyday life, the social atmosphere of Middlebrook High of Southwestern Indiana and surrounding and associated people and places is so mind-numbingly stupidly dumb that I need some sort of escape. I would just call it the modern world that’s so oppressive to my psyche, but I really think that Middlebrook, Indiana may be the worst, least inspiring place in this god-forsaken country. So I copy out the dictionary, which, as an obviously boring task, actually gives me a crucial sense of control, as well as peace. The mechanical act in addition to the tranquil setting is very beneficial. It is also not completely un-entertaining: there are some interesting words. A bedlamer is an immature harp or hooded seal. I definitely wouldn’t know the technical definition of an Anglican chant, or the technical name for an iron lung, which is Drinker respirator. Contrary to popular assumption, many people do like a guy that knows a lot of fun facts. I am very popular.
E.
Autobiography
I drip from birchwood shelves
Like pools of gleaming dismay
Heavy with the weight of Misused potential
Prodding my own innocence with a Steel-cut spoon.
They keep me downstairs
With the discount love potions
For someone to come and use me.
While I sit and wait in this cheap-jungle paradise
My mind grows evermore tangled, My wings evermore cracked.
W.
Five Minutes
So I took a lick of the honey on my tray. I was stuck in a lunch class, twiddling my thumbs. It set off bells in my head. Christmas bells. It was Christmas. The cafeteria was serving breakfast all day. I was in line with my pancakes and syrup. Not waiting. Gobbling them down. Before I made it to my chair, I was back to the lunch lady asking for another stack. Four minutes till the bell: lunch bell, class bell. My sticky fingers wouldn’t let a pancake tray slip out of my hands. I trudged my way to the A stairs, but the syrup gloss under my shoes didn’t want to release me from the lunchroom. The stairs weren’t much better. Everyone’s trays were dripping and their mouths were drooling syrup onto the ground. Hordes of kids were now plowing through the syrup avalanche, to no avail. A traffic jam. Their soles were fusing with the floor. One kid tried slipping out of his shoes, only to plod his socks a step forward into the sludge—a moment of silence. A boy just ahead of me burst out laughing. I hung in the doorframe, my knees and shoes pressed against the walls to stay suspended.
PHhhhhe. A pillowy saucer sailed through the air, flinging syrup in all directions as it spun. I shielded my eyes from the sticky bomb and slipped a little down the door. THWOP. I heard it flatten against the wall beside me. The shoeless boy was grinning. “FOOD FIGHT!” he yelled at the boy who laughed at him. His smile was met with a pancake in the face. That grin disappeared real quick. He scrambled for more ammunition. Three minutes. The kids in the lunchroom got the message. Pancakes were flying everywhere. “I’m out,” the shoeless kid cried, and ducked down to avoid brain damage.
A few kids realized that if they crumpled their pancakes into balls and dipped them into the syrup they hit way harder. The heavy, pancake bowling balls came rolling down the stairs. STEEERIKE, I heard from above. Ten kids got knocked down and were rolling down the stairs. The mancake was gaining momentum.
Above, a girl threw her last pancake, the last pancake. It hit me in the shoulder. I almost lost my grip on the door. She was fed to the mancake. The shoeless boy sat in horror, as his butt was now also stuck to the ground. He stuck his arms out and prayed. For a moment he caught the mancake, maybe it was all over. Then his fingers, his elbows, and arms disappeared into the ball of doom. Run while you can, the words got pushed out of his lungs by overwhelming pancake pressure… I couldn’t watch. I shut the door and ran to the B stairs. 2 minutes. The lunch lady was still serving pancakes, but to no customers. Boy was I hungry. But I remembered my dead friends in the stairs and it felt a little
cannibalistic. And I still had to go to English class. The B stairs were peaceful, freezing cold, but quiet. I went up the stairs, three at a time. Then there it was. A fallen soldier, lost in the lines of battle. Someone had dropped their precious pancake on the floor. I ate it. It was cold.
BOOOM.
The sound wasn’t unusual. The buildings under construction near school dropped things all the time.
WSHH.
Now that didn’t sound right.
I was coming up to the eighth floor, alone on the stairs when it hit me: the explosion was definitely mancake.
1 minute.
A layer of syrup was quickly rising up the stairs. I made a running dive for my English class and slammed the door. 30 seconds. At least I wasn’t late. The syrup was coming…
A tidal wave, the thick mass could only have been pulled by the moon. I sat on my desk, the syrup poured through the cracks in the door. How long would it hold? Was I going to die? Through the glass of the door was shoeless boy. A miracle! He was surfing the sweet waves on his desk. I too closed my eyes and prayed. Then the syrup filled my shoes, dragging me down. I clawed at the desk but there was no hope. 1 second …
DING. The bell rang. “Class is over, Savi, you can go now,” said Mr. Khoury. I got up to leave, and my feet made an all too familiar squelch.
Savi R.
Belly of the Beast
Trapped, underground, in a tin can no wider than a Honda Civic.
The land of darkness and despair beckons, as your crowd of a couple hundred sit, stewing. Lives that have no significance for one another are suddenly pressed against each other in this singular point of time. A singularity. You are all in the underworld, the eyes and ears and last thoughts of the long dead swirl past, in and out of unopened windows like ghosts. But that’s exactly what they are. Musicians, or businessmen, or just an average person from time immemorial. You are at their mercy now, their hold over you becoming unbearable. Maybe it’s time to let go. Maybe it’s okay to not feel the need to have to be somewhere, sometime, someone. Maybe you can just sit.
The lights, yellowed like the recipes in the back of your grandmother’s closet, flicker. It’s dark, but maybe that’s okay too. Maybe it’s better than the alternative, the bleached, sterile lights, harsh and unwelcoming. These lights know better. They whisper, in hushed tones, I’ll take care of you. Everything’s going to be all right. These have been traveled, worn, by the age and familiarity of these ghosts. They are your guide, your Hermes through rough-and-tumble waters. They are the familiarity of a nice, warm lamp by your couch, not the rough edge of a knife cutting through the darkness. They know you, and you know them.
The train creaks, and you return, slowly, to the realm of the living.
some day i’ll love edward/eduard lichtman
with his names like glowing tongues under three down blankets & his stomach warm & full. the first choice had two syllables and the warming sensation across your body each vein and nerve open, unending, two inches from the fire and still not burnt. edward,
you are no blonde boy your body nothing & neat, your arms made full-metal & your eyes piercing. when you choose, i want you to know you are making your death-sentence, you are sitting in the cold chair of iron and you are never getting up. look at the tree outside of your window, bejeweled and bright. look at the stack of cassettes, yellowing and half empty and covered in your 18 year old father’s finger prints, still sticky and coated with salt. you have these so do not waste them. you have these so do not lose them. do not speak the empty words of your grandmother or the blunt words of your father. do not leave your imprints on everything you see. three syllables will end you and leave the room like sunrise.
your house is still yours so long as something still lives inside. so long as the kettle can still boil, so long as the sword on your wall is not yours. edward, the god you pray to is dead set on replacing you one of these days. when he hides in the arc, hands balled in old crushed velvet full of dust he will know where you’ve gone. look— in the next room over there is a naming. look— in the next room over there is a celebration of life, swelling in red and blue shades. & when
the wind breaks against your coiled body imprinted onto the side of the roof i want you to laugh, this time. eduard, i want you as an evolution. your father won’t care about the new holes in your body or the free-falling hair. you can’t care about who you are in the face of god or your mother. oh eduard, the empty morning star blinks like a searchlight
looking, only, for you. tell every friend you no longer have that you look for them at every show among the throng of bodies and wounds and how you wish you were 15 again so you could help people out just a little bit more. if you want proof of things changing, just look at the mess of your room. look at the hollow in your bed. one day your friends. there will be no there will be nothing left of you or your god or outflow of cash and no grandmothers and no poetry. all that is left for you is the rising sun.
Ed L
That Upstairs Neighbor
I am that upstairs neighbor, the one who dribbles the ball. I lack empathy when it comes to making noise at 11am on a Saturday. Every so often I will hear three tumultuous taps coming from the floor and I know it is my crotchety neighbor Marilyn. With purple tinted hair and nothing going on in her life, she’s standing on her step stool using her rickety bones to hit the ceiling hard enough that I can hear. I normally follow up with a vicious tomahawk dunk on my mini hoop, slamming the foam ball into the rim. She hears sirens, horns, helicopters, yet complains about me.
Every so often when I descend in the elevator, a wash of dread falls over my body as the red LED light breaks its rhythm, slowing down as it ticks from the thirteenth to the twelfth floor. When this happens, I position myself in the corner, perpendicular to the angled mirror, which allows me to see the person walking in the elevator before they see me because it catches them at a weird angle. This time it is Marilyn, and of course, as she steps over the ravine between the elevator and the twelfth floor, I hear a pompous sigh. She locks eyes with me. After a silent screaming match from within our heads, she follows up in a deceptive tone, “How is your dog?” to which I always respond with “Good” and look back down at my weather app, as I think of ways I can make a ruckus tomorrow.
K.
Disillusion
Eden wakes up early on Sunday mornings
She rolls out of bed, quietly, so she does not disturb her husband
She walks to the other side of the room, where her baby sleeps in the bassinet
With one finger, she gently strokes the baby’s cheek and watches her eyelids flutter
The light streams in through the window, illuminating dust floating through the air
Soon, the dust settles as well, leaving the room with a sense of vacant stillness
The husband and the baby rest
Eden is alone, but not lonely.
Eden wakes up early on Sunday mornings
The husband is already up and the baby’s cries pierce the air
The screams send the sunrays dancing with the dust
The husband starts to yell in harmony with the infant
She submits to the stuffiness of the room as it envelops her lungs
And longs for a time when it was just her
The husband and the baby awake
Eden is lonely, but not alone.
Eden wakes up early on Sunday mornings
She feels the lump in the mattress, still fresh, yet vacant
She follows the dust with her eyes as it drifts slowly, quietly
She does not have the strength to lift herself out of bed and across the room
But if she did, her footsteps would echo throughout the empty cradle
There are no signs of life, and she cannot consider herself alive
The husband and the baby gone
Eden is alone.
Eden is lonely.
Lila L.
Cigarette
Eat a cigarette
Tobacco between your teeth
And paper under your tongue
Bite down on the filter
Little puffs of smoke
Escape through your gums
Swallow a cigarette
Macerated tobacco
Smooth like okra
Smolders in the stomach
Small intestine
Burnt
Scar tissue
Tight and fibrous
Chyme flows slowly
Like algae
Over an old levee
Felix C.
Chirping in Silence: a Fable
Man once scrounged with the animals. But He learned to Think.
And with this gift, He would only despair.
“Imperfections, everywhere!” He cried, incredulous. “Can not even the Self be perfected?” He pondered, for He was scared. The End, which He often brought upon the Lesser Creatures, the only way to stave away his own, was one He could not escape.
All of Man began to despise to Think.
“Our ‘Lessers’ are Free to frolic in peace,” He mused. “Why must we contemplate our actions? Are we cursed?” Indignation bubbled within Him.
The Early Men were forgotten, their questions answered simply by the self-evident truth that life was precious simply by virtue of its existence, an existence defined by what Men holding self-appointed accolades thought it ought to be.
So, The Creator sighed.
One day, a young boy, tan and weathered, thought as to how he could catch wild birds for dinner as easily as his father did. He ran around the forest chasing fowl and poultry all morning but caught nothing. Every time he got close and leaped to capture them, the birds disappeared into their respective dens, up their trees, or into heavy thickets where he could not follow. It seemed as though nearly every day his father came back to their cottage with enough birds to feed ten men, yet the boy was yet to catch even one in his stead.
Thus, the young boy, tan, weathered, and now dirty with grime from scrounging in the forest all morning, decided to capture food another way, and go fishing. He sat at the riverbank, cast his net, and astutely reeled it in at the slightest tug, over and over, all afternoon, but caught nothing. Each time a fish entered the net, the boy’s swift attempts to capture it scared it away. It seemed as though nearly every day, his father came back to their cottage with enough fish to feed ten men, yet the boy was yet to catch even one in his stead.
In a fit of anger, the boy jumped into the river attempting to claw at the fish and catch one by hand. His thrashing was unsuccessful. Soaked, defeated, but now free of grime, the boy returned to the woods for a moment of peace. He sat still on a rock and pondered as to his purpose. What was a man who could neither catch fish nor hunt birds? He was certainly too little to hunt deer, but was also too boyish and prideful to tend to crops like his sister. Tears welled up in his eyes as he resolved to return home empty-handed and at least help in the preparation of that evening’s vegetable stew. Yet, to his surprise, when he wiped the
tears away, he saw that many birds, large and small, had flocked around him, chirping with satisfaction.
He recognized almost all of them from his father’s teachings. An Eastern Bluebird and a Northern Cardinal now perched on his shoulders. The Cardinal’s striking red and Bluebird’s cobalt navy provided a mesmerizing contrast. Anyone who could look upon the boy would mistake him for a spirit of nature. Sadly, these birds were not to be eaten, if possible. But at his feet, a fowl rooster peacefully pecked the dirt for worms. Slowly, without startling the bird, he scooped it up, and walked slowly back towards the family cottage. For dinner that night, the boy’s sister cooked the fowl, and his mother baked some bread.
The next day, impressed by his feat, the boy’s sister requested fish. The boy sighed. The previous day had exhausted him, but he returned to the riverbank to perform his duty. He cast his net and waited. The river was peaceful and the sun beat down on the boy. Before he knew it, he had fallen asleep. When he awoke, miraculously, he saw that he had caught three fish. Satisfied, the boy returned to his cottage, to find his proud mother waiting.
To celebrate, the family had a feast of leftover fowl and vegetables, as well as fresh fish over rice. The boy ate his share and sighed with satisfaction, just as his father would have.
JA. P.
Selling Flowers
a girl waved to me, just out my right window, and I could not help but smile, at her smile because she was selling flowers, and behind her was her mother pushing her out onto the busy trafficked road to collect my money, already crumpling in my palm, as she handed me two roses, yellow and red, and I held those roses tight as she watched me smell them, but by the time I looked out my right window again, she was pushed towards another car
D
On a lonely mountain that overlooks the frozen ocean, The icy wind cuts through the air
Like a sharp talon.
The blinding landscape
Covered in a pale white.
Not a single thing moves
Apart from the trees,
Sweeping from side to side. And the snow
Coating the ground with little white crystals.
On a lonely mountain the ice has finally thawed, It leaves in its trail, Thousands of green buds
Each one fighting for a chance at life.
The air is fresh with the smell of mud and pollen, Mixed together to create a fetid scent.
The bees finally emerge
The low buzz of their wings vibrates across the summit.
On a lonely mountain the sun shines brightly over the thriving landscape, The flowers flourish in between the blades of grass.
The air is coated in a thick scent of the salty ocean That laps back and forth against the soft thin sand.
The gentle wind weaves through the trees, As a quiet rain begins to drop from the clouds.
On a lonely mountain the color of summer begins to shift, The leaves slowly become crinkled
One touch leaving them shattered in a thousand pieces.
Weathered and tested by many gusts of wind
They finally give in,
And let go of their grasp of the branches. As they soar out into the ocean’s abyss.
The air starts to get colder, As the scratch of a talon yet again becomes recognizable.
Henry H.
I lost my eyes
So I waited until after the holidays, When the shops flashed enticing discounts on sidewalk placards
Bright colors of chalk always catch my eyes
As the frost slithered from the clouds
I could not see it, but I knew from the air’s fragrance
That it was time to find new eyes
I held a small pair
* 50% OFF! *
Under my thumb, I felt no ridges on the corneas
And a desire to consume
So I purchased the set and carried them home from the store
In a little polished box, within a larger shopping bag
Twill handles swinging between my fingertips
Once home, I washed them in the sink
With lukewarm water, lavender dish soap
And thought about what I would soon see
The sink was teal and the toilet buttery yellow
But for now, the iron handles were cool against my palms And the eyes seemed possibly sweet, swallowable
I dried them with a tea towel and Replaced them in their cavities, like batteries
Swearing never to lose them
The room was familiar, again: brilliant in color, But not quite as lustrous as the room in my mind
In the medicine cabinet’s freckled mirror, The eyes appeared opalescent and Startlingly pristine
More so than the stained metal of the faucet which,
As I turned the water off, Did not feel quite as cold as before
In the presence of sight
Anna S.-R.
I Saw Your Note
I appreciate the effort You put into informing me That you ate my plums.
I admit it was thoughtful; However, I am confused by how You missed the note I left on The icebox:
I am leaving this note to ensure That my plums will remain unharmed Throughout the day So that they will be Ready to eat Next morning.
I am glad that you enjoyed My plums except I had plans To eat them myself. It pains me that I will never Be able to taste their sweet juices.
I am unsure if you did not read My note on purpose, or if You need to see an eye doctor. Nevertheless, I expect to find a fresh Bowl of plums in the icebox tomorrow So that I may enjoy them for Breakfast as originally intended.
Nicholas R.
The Tree I Am
They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
As the lines on my face grow deeper, and my hair grows thinner
My reflection grows to resemble the very tree
The very tree that I so brutally was flung from Hurtling towards the ground, I landed with a thud and a bump on my head I prayed to thee to abandon me
I am my mother’s daughter undoubtedly I tried to run and hide from the tree
Though my reflection was always taunting, haunting me
No distance traveled nor restraint would rid me of my reality
When I bared my own apple, I carried her down
Though terrifyingly there was the urge to fling her down from my tree I consoled myself, it must have been generational It wasn’t, couldn’t be me for I had carried her down
Was I doomed to repeat history
Born into a life planned to a tee
Better that than my free will allowing me to fling her from my tree
But I didn’t fling her from my tree
I carried her down, bumping her into each thorny branch of my tree She prayed to me to abandon thee
S.
Sweet Water
Your brown hair is disheveled and dripping with sweet water
But your baby hairs are dry and dance around your face frantically in the wind
You hug your towel around you so tight that your slender form can be seen and admired
Blue suits you, blue suits us, I remark
To myself because I can’t bring myself to say it out loud
For you look ethereal and unbothered and I would like to keep it that way
I look at you as your hazel eyes wander about the vast blue and green that surrounds you
And wonder of what you wonder
Yearn for what you have achieved
An inner peace, a meditative state, a world of your own
Even in a place where it is impossible to be by yourself.
You wear a blank expression yet your face explodes with feeling and passion
I realize that I am staring yet I can’t bring myself to stop
I have been told of your grace but I had never believed it until this moment
This moment, the one in which the waves are splashing against my hand as I extend it gently over the side
This moment, the one where you rest your chin on the white, hard surface and stare out as far as you can.
This moment, the one in which the waves lift us up and put us back down gently only enhancing your elegance.
You sit up and make your way to the tip, slip your towel off and sit there
A rush of adrenaline takes over me even though I am just a spectator
I ache to be able to do what you do
Sit in silence for hours upon hours
Be dainty and gentle
But also bold and adventurous
I heard of your daring individuality but I had never believed it until now.
Teach me to live as you do
Love as you do
Feel as you do
And dream as you do
Teach me how to be calm
How to be quiet
How to be loud
How to be bold
Yuli Z.
Searching for Something Greater
Pittsburgh. Sept. 1872.
“Otto, what time is it?” said his mother. He thought her tone belonged more to a teacher. This performative tic bothered him. He couldn’t answer the question, even as she pointed at the clock.
“I don’t know, ma.”
“It’s 8:00. You’re meant to be home before seven, for chores before dinner.”
“I was with Tony, ma.”
“ Tony again? I oughta go around to the Cowles and give them a little lesson about the obligations of my son. Anyhow, Tony should not be interfering. You are home before 7:00 and that’s that.”
“Alright, ma,” Otto replied automatically. His mother’s droning caused a buzzing nausea that he was desperate to escape. His schoolmate Anthony drove this all away easily: the droning of adults, the self-seriousness of “the real world.” So Otto didn’t intend to miss a minute with him. Of course he’d stayed out playing games past his curfew.
Pittsburgh. March 1873.
“My momma makes me go to church,” says Anthony.
“How come?” says Otto.
“She says that’s the way to God and the saving my soul and all, but it’s so dull and I prefer being here with you in this tree.”
Pittsburgh. Nov. 1879.
Otto John Buckley, Pittsburgh, PA [coal car stamp]
Otto – Not much looking up since parents gone, but made my escape from the childrens’ institution. A little old to be there now anyway. Am now in a lumber mill a few towns West. Keep dreaming!
-Your friend, Tony
Otto’s eyebrows drew together and he stared at the postcard for a long while. “Keep dreaming”? What’s that even supposed to mean? And what a story, running away from a damned orphanage and breaking into the lumber industry at 16. Otto only hoped
Anthony didn’t go and hurt himself, or get in any trouble. There was something Otto liked about the short, enigmatic letter—he found himself attached to curious tones and phrasings—so he pinned it on his wall. Having gone through all the mail, he went to the bathroom and slicked his dark hair back with water in the mirror. He had to look presentable, but he didn’t want to look like a picture. His gaunt face would not grow a single hair. His slightly crooked jaw and nose made him smile. He winked at himself in the mirror, his pride a tiny rebellion, thought of Anthony once more, brushed it all off, then left for the law offices where he was to go on reading the law. It was his first year of apprenticeship.
Pittsburgh. June 1881
Otto Buckley sat at his desk in his own study in his own apartment (only a few blocks from the house he’d grown up in) and looked back and forth between the case materials on the desk and the postcards from Anthony Edward Cowles, formerly of Pittsburgh, which had accumulated on his wall, none of them featuring a return address. Anthony wrote with optimism despite his circumstances, and poetry despite his conciseness. It occurred to Otto that without the memory of Anthony and the continued proof that he still existed, his life would be a room without windows, a forgone conclusion. As he ruminated on this thought, initially pleasant, Otto became quite hopeless. He thought that despite having the window, there were still no doors. A lawyer? Why? He allowed himself to realize finally that he was on a fast track to the epitome of the adult dullness that had so mystified him as a child. The congratulations on this from his parents only ever depressed him and almost felt like an insult.
Peoria. Oct. 1882.
As they walked, Anthony looked down for the millionth time at the address on the letter to make sure it was right, even though it was the only address he ever wrote. It would be his first letter from Peoria, where he now was, having moved west with the union.
“Look, Tony, what’s the damn point?” said Big Ted, ending a long silence.
“‘ What’s the point’?”
“Yeah, of doing this, recording your life like a Romantic, sending it off to God knows where at the end of the day…” That part stung, because he indeed did not have any way of knowing if his letters got to Otto, or really if they had ever been going anywhere at all. Perhaps the Postal Service was a scam devised to funnel off the hopes and
dreams of poor lonely men or their aimless records, or to collect these pathetic records just to laugh at them.
“It’s for my own peace of mind, Ted, my own sanity. I like to make sure, or think I’m making sure, that someone or something—Gosh, that someone knows I’m alive, I guess.”
Pod #86701. 39th cycle, Milky Way period (A.D. 1882, Earth Time).
I do take a passing interest in Humans, and this new Species-Tapping that’s been popular. I am wary of it as a fad (fads are distracting to Purpose), but I recognize the entertainment, and even inspirational value. I have been Living for four cycles, and I do know the Earth Time conversion, which is three eons. Everyone is doing conversions, unless you’re from the Old Time.
At the moment I take particular interest in the brand-new social organization unit called America. I like the name; it sounds like a person’s name. I read the Species-Tapping papers that come out about America. There was one emotional case study done on a young man—not at all notable, but that was the point of the study—whose thought readings have been coming up disillusionment and sentimentality about what should be a successful trajectory. The conclusion of the case study was that ultimately, that sort of attitude cannot lead to a good or interesting life, and I agree. Yearning and melancholy and disappointment… We never find this in stories of the Great Human Livers. This is the conclusion of the article. The popular view is that “The Great Human Livers” is a theoretical pantheon, the concept being of their invention, of course, but that nonetheless Humans strive to join. In fact, despite being literally unaware of this concept, we believe that implicitly this is what they want; they are a personal-achievement-oriented rather than a larger-cosmos-oriented species. Over the species’ brief existence, the exceptional individual has been venerated only above the self. It all appears to add up to a vicious, selfish tournament for the pantheon.
Peoria. Oct. 1882.
“But there’s one man in particular I want to know I’m still alive. As long as we’re both living. Even if I never see him again. Even if I never know about his success, and I never hear it from his mouth whether or not he thinks I’m a failure.” Anthony wore a determined expression. Big Ted just sighed.
Pittsburgh. Sept. 1883.
For those working on the third floor of the new H., H., & Assoc. building, 4:00 p.m. was packing-in time. Rows and columns of men cleared their desks, turned off their little green lamps, and put on their overcoats and hats. Otto Buckley was among them, but as he watched them he always thought it was impossible that he was actually part of the total synchronization; he must be lagging behind. It seemed these days, though, that no matter how little he felt he was putting into his low-level attorney position, he was congratulated and encouraged, and it all left him with a bad taste in his mouth.
Otto joined the elegant tapping of city shoes on marble and left the building, escaping finally into the dim light, for it was that o’clock during that time of year when it was darker earlier but the street lamps were not yet being lighted earlier. Otto stopped at a newspaper stand, picked a magazine off its clip, and turned to the table of contents. What he supposed was a social-commentary opinion piece caught his eye, one that on first blush appeared to be about one not-particularly-interesting man, a lawyer in fact. But what Otto found when he turned to that page was completely shocking. It was about this man’s personality, as if he was an animal being studied in a laboratory, and halfway down, his name was given, as if a person’s name was an irrelevant factoid. O. J. Buckley.
Otto stood there sputtering. It had begun to rain. The man at the stand insisted Otto pay for the magazine, so he took it home, where a few letters were waiting for him. He stood on the threshold staring at the magazine article. It had to be a mistake. But how many O. J. Buckley lawyers could there possibly be? And who wrote this, and how the devil did someone know so much about him, and what business did anyone have telling him—or this other O. J. Buckley—that he could be a sensation in American law if he wasn’t so apprehensive? And, God almighty, a sensation in American law, what a dull nightmare!
Otto opened up the letter he knew was from Anthony by the handwriting, and hoped in the back of his mind that he had the answers, all the answers.
Dear Otto,
I want you to know that I’ve run away to Colorado now, wild man that I am. I want you to know. I’ve been thinking about that. Hence why I’ve attached my address. I’ll leave it at that, Otto. I hope you’re still at least somewhat free. It’s rough out here, but I like it. I love the enormous sky, and riding the horses, and my God! what mountains! Otto, I want you here.
-Anthony Edward Cowles c/o Banks Farm, Ellicott, CO
Otto’s heart was beating a terrific pace, and he read the note over several times,
but the words that stuck were “I want you.” He tried to remember where he’d put his suitcase. He was going to get out of Pittsburgh for good.
Ellicott. Oct. 1883.
The cows were out to pasture and the stable had been mucked and Anthony sat smoking a corn cob pipe on the bench in front of the barn. In his view, the wide dirt road led sharply up, so that there was a line of solid earth that abruptly cut off and gave way to the mountains in the distance. There was a gentle breeze, and then Anthony saw the top of a grey trilby hat emerge beyond the hill. He drew in a sharp breath, put down his pipe, and vigorously rubbed life into his face.
“Anthony? Anthony Cowles?” said the tall, dark man as he approached.
“Yes, Otto! My Otto! Escaped at last!” cried Anthony, running to him. Otto laughed incredulously.
“Something like that,” Otto replied, and a smile more sincere than any other smile he had ever smiled took over his face. As he let Anthony embrace him very tightly, Otto’s arms hung there unmoving, carrying his briefcase in one hand and overnight bag in the other. Anthony stepped back and squeezed Otto’s shoulders, looking him up and down and laughing at the obviously metropolitan formality of his get-up.
“My God, you’re… Where’s your shiny automobile!”
“I dropped some things on the way.”
“You’re serious?”
“No, Tony,” Otto gave him a fond look, “I took a train most of the way.”
Otto moved into the rooming house off the main road. He had a partial view of the mountains there, through bright-white lace curtains. He spent a long time thinking on that view. If he were the outdoors type, he’d like to climb them, but he was not. If he were a painter, he’d paint them, but a painter he was not. And really, what’s the use of these hypotheticals, because what he was was a looker, an enjoyer, a sensitive man. Yes, I am an appreciator of beauty, he thought, and smiled victoriously as he looked in the mirror. His long, crooked face and slightly sunken eyes looked back.
Anthony came to get him and asked him, “Are you wanting to become an attorney around here, or in Denver?” Otto grabbed him by the ear and shook him and said, “Absolutely not. Final answer,” and added after a pause: “I am ready to live my life as it is, not trying to be anyone. Even if I don’t end up a Great Liver.”
“A ‘Great Liver,’ huh?”
“Yeah… Matter of fact, I’d hate to be a Great Liver. I don’t need to do anything
special, I just want to live in Ellicott, Colorado with you, Tony.”
“Aww,” Anthony laughed, but not unsympathetically. He was smoking his corn cob pipe again. “Not a bad idea. But, you know… Well, do you believe in God, Otto?”
“No,” was the reply, after some time.
“No… Neither do I, but I believe in something greater. I think our short lives matter somehow, like they’re recorded in some cosmic book,” Anthony said decidedly. Otto scoffed and raised his eyebrows.
“You don’t know how right you are, Tony,” Otto put an arm around him amicably. “But what I’m getting at is, supposing that’s true, that isn’t what makes life worth living.”
“And tell me, Otto, what is it that makes life worth living?”
“ Well, I might argue that life is just worth living, no matter what you’re doing, but really, it’s…”
“ What?” Anthony pressed, turning towards Otto, whose face was so close that Anthony could see vividly his crooked nose, which he remembered having been broken by a seesaw.
“ Well, gosh, Tony… You! Alright?”
“Oh, you goddamn sap.”
Windigo
We didn’t really meet until my ninth, when I was too old for hide and seek and something else came to live in those empty, secret spots behind dad’s desk & between the drawers Underneath my bed
She has black eyes and shaky hands, nocturnal till my twelfth, a secret Till my thirteenth
At first she was spontaneous All fiery and red—she lived in moonshadows and picked my nail beds while I slept That was when I first saw her—in the Blood on my fingers—
She likes to sit behind me, On my shoulders, underneath my chair Picking at my cold ears, whispering in My cold, red ears—
She invades me Everywhere, Writing at the table, invading me invading my pen My pages red and confused, blood on my fingers—
Sometimes I think I hear her screaming in the kitchen, Rush downstairs to find the house all empty, But the stove is on and something is
Burning, I think something is burning.
Louise K.
In Lieu of Love
You said I was the dream, the labored thought, The hand that wouldn’t kill, couldn’t touch, Yet my own flesh has worn too thin, Starved and waited for so long I’ve blackened at the ends, Split up the sutures You provided In lieu of your respect, And I gave you what I could, Parceled myself in pieces of what I once believed, Each bigger than what was left with me, But you received my offerings like shards— I figure you had reason there. Though, you must have known A tattered thing is light to hold In lieu of love.
Moaz M.
The Car Ride Over
I stare out my window gazing upon the emotionless sea
Brushing back the strands of what was left behind
On the car ride over the sun streamed freely for the first time in miles upon the barren corn fields of Oklahoma
On the car ride over
The echoes of those who passed before haunt our neverlasting dreams
On the car ride over This rattled down minivan that we permanently call home will never cease operating
On the car ride over our destination is no longer the finish line
Rather it is a passageway to someone above
On the car ride over there will be no shame or disgrace for these words are all our souls embody
On the car ride over there is hope to see a greater tomorrow
Avi M.
commandments
Honor your mother and father
Honor your lineage, your truth, your story
Take in their words and their wisdom
Believe their stories, and their no-nonsense facts
Follow their good choices and their bad
Whether that’s sleeping with their co-workers, Or smoking weed on the terrace after a long day
Honor thy mother and father
Put no other god before me
For I am the one you shall follow
I am the one with the stories and the histories
The ones you must learn from
You must take them in sickness and in health
Because my stories wait for no one
No, not even you the power hungry human
You must wait,
Now watch and learn the mistakes that came before And put no other god before me
Remember the sabbath day
Remember to use your fancy bubble baths and bath salts
Follow your guided meditations and your sun salutations
Take in the air on your nature walks
Ignore your alarm clock and just sleep in
Remember your sabbath day
Frankie K.
you’ re lucky. no halves or splitting, for you. all uneven edge and dark steel. all mottle. it’s a blessing to be whole like that, though dusty and b ehind the shine of glass. when people tug their children by they can tell you ’re something infeasible. they’re never going to make you again. no more molten red and violent bubbling, steam hissing and rising in the coo lair. no more rhythm to how you were hammered and pr essed together, no more con stant folding, no more gold or silver inlay, no more lengt h specked like storm clouds. no repairs & no rhythm & no more purpose. teeming toge ther, in that case, you & your old enemies, sharing stories like the non-living veterans you are. metallic language tinny against organic voices & sounds. the strike of your swift laughter rattling the smooth edge of the old grey a xe in its little holster. is there rivalry? or at this point do you all become brothers? do you all argue about your placeme nt? is there shame in surviving the fight—just to stay motio nless for centuries? do you all dream great ore-filled dream s of being bent and shattered beyond repair? was surviving the great fight any part of your purpose? in your crystal tom b, surrounded by your beginning & your end, your friends & foes. when the museum finally crumbles like your homeland maybe you will be found among the rubble, sword in stone, l ike a lost classic, ready to be held once more.
Ed L.
Ode to New York
i have been trying to write an ode to new york as long as i can remember but the words never seem to flow onto paper not the way my thoughts dance around ever so poetically in the west village upon affectionate observance of ruddy townhouses, and the city breaking its perfect grid lines providing testament to tenth street that i try to remember the whole train ride home (i never remember, brilliance only ever strikes when i have no pen) i start to scribble as soon as i can seize paper with my greedy hand
i always start with how new york runs through my veins, how the frantic energy aerates my bloodstream how the sirens sing stories of so many lives i will never know still i spend endless subway rides guessing about the family dynamics of the reunion taking up half of the car that i sit in silently, pretending to be annoyed at the noise but adoring and attaching to the conversation fragments that my ears cannot escape or analyzing and inferring why the man across from me has not turned the page of his magazine in five stops maybe he is getting a divorce—he’s the right age anyways my body knows new york better than anything else it has ever known walking through central park is muscle memory twists and turns, paths and exits are ingrained in my weary feet, far past 15,000 steps after all what is a saturday without getting lost i stopped using google maps some years ago it is better to rely on the body to become a part of the twists and turns instead of making sharp jerks in order to avoid them
i know new york is mine because when i hear the clink of high heels down fifth i know the age of their owner the smell of cigarette smoke after sunset feels like a familial hug, ever familiar, eliciting annoyed affection there is something healing in the consistency, the constant stream of the aroma down riverside drive that my nose has known my whole life, at the very least my whole life i would not be surprised if it was longer i am no aphrodite but maybe i was born of the hudson river
yesterday’s new york times and coffee cups, which should have been recycled, that my neural pathways never needed to know in order to adore
i love the drums that reverberate through union sq on the right saturday breaking up the finance frantic of flatiron with another chaos altogether
or the instruments i still do not know the names of but love all the same an ancient man playing in washington sq park, where it is impossible not to be entertained the strings plucked lovingly amongst screaming and sirens exactly how i imagine the lyre (sans olympus?) maybe he is apollo you never know in new york
sometimes i suspect that this city knows me the way i know it maybe enough of my tears have flowed into the reservoir or my smiles into rockaway shores that my breath has aerated the city sky and i have entered into the city air the way that new york has fallen into me there is nothing about new york that is perfect it is human tangible&terrifying&turbulent beautiful&brilliant&bright no matter how much i learn, or how many saturdays are spent lost there will always be more secrets to learn, and more people to share smiles with over subway songs or silent saturdays on elizabeth st more songs to learn from half conversations on city streets, more coffee shops to fall in love with and never find again inside the maze of the streets that i will never memorize, but always know new york is endless, new york is eternal new york is my olympus, my opus, it belongs to everyone (which is why it is mine at all)
Sofia Z.
Dear Mr. Khoury,
Please excuse my absence from class on Monday.
I have pondered for too long if, or how, I should navigate this uncomfortable matter. Finding myself as I have in this hellish mirror maze of indecision, I know the only escape to be the truth. I’ll start at the beginning.
It started on Sunday. It was late. 11 p.m., maybe. Misty like I’d never seen it. The world seemed to jump down your unsuspecting throat every time you inhaled. It was surely too late to be out, especially on a biting January night, but there I was. I had just finished a particularly nagging essay on our last book, and felt I needed a brisk walk through the cold to clear my mind before bed. I slipped my snow boots on, those pinched, wrinkled ones, and headed out. A light frost was on the ground, and my steps had a sort of earthy crackle. I had yet to leave the block when I saw him. A hooded figure, shadowy, odd. The type of fellow you’d look twice at if you saw him across the street. He was about thirty feet ahead of me, moving with a sinister purpose about his every step. And in that moment of recklessness, of absurd and irrational excitement, I decided to follow him.
He walked, striding heavily, briskly, through the midnight mist. There were patches of light that radiated from the lampposts, revealing a million tiny droplets in the air. The man seemed to shy away from the light, dodging around it, as if a single photon would cause him excruciating pain. I wasn’t far behind him, my breath coming out in excited plumes. The man turned suddenly. Looked around. I paused, unsure whether he’d seen me. After a tense moment, he turned into a narrow alleyway, one where the buildings seemed to lean imperiously over the street, hanging like ghosts. The same one my parents used to steer me briskly away from on the way home from school. I headed in after him, silencing any voice of reason that remained within me. The man leaned against the wall. He checked his watch. He looked around. No one could see us here, I thought. I felt the urge to hide, and ducked behind an octagonal metal garbage can, wincing as the cold from the ground seeped through my thin pants. And then he removed his hood, and immediately I knew who I had followed all this way, and it was all I could do to keep a shocked yelp from escaping my lips. It was you, Mr. Khoury. Unmistakable, though at this point the lines of my consciousness were hazy.
Before I could stomach my shock, another man was there. He’d come in the same way I had. I shifted around my garbage can to remain undetected. The man was a monster, a mass of muscles and unadulterated terror. Despite the cold, he wore nothing but a face mask, a black tank top, and ripped jeans (I had a feeling that the tears in the denim were
not a product of the factory). He approached you. I could see you facing him, could see both of your heads from my vantage point behind the garbage can. You seemed to look down on him, despite the feebleness of your stature compared to his. He seemed to shrink, shrivel under your sharp, accusatory gaze. He began to talk, in a guttural voice.
“I’m sorry I’m--”
“Late.” Your voice cut through him. He seemed to stagger back. “Late again. And I thought you understood the importance of this. Of what I’m asking of you.”
The man was shocked. “Of—of course sir. I—” “Is it done?”
At this point I was beyond confused. Sure, you’d been known to get a bit vexed when papers were late, but this was different. Something was off about you. I’d never seen such a manic gleam in your eye. A savage, almost sadistic look. And the way your voice cleaved the air…
“I said, is it done?” Your voice was hard as rock. I shifted around behind the garbage can, my teeth chattering.
“It’s done. I did it. I took care of it.”
It was silent for a moment. You stared at him. He wouldn’t meet your eye.
In that moment, somehow, for some reason, I knew what was about to happen. I felt the air suck out of the world. I saw it in the burly man’s eyes as your torso twitched, your face contorted, and your fist swung around towards him. Everything paused as you struck him. It seemed that the sound hung in the air for a second before it reached my ears, a cold, emotionless pop.
The man crumpled at your feet. You kicked him, merciless.
“Liar. You’re lying to me. You think I don’t know what you did, Johnny? I know you.”
You punctuated each word with a blow to the man’s body. He recoiled, like a child, curled up in the frost.
“You would jeopardize my entire operation—”
The man was whimpering now, but you, Mr. Khoury, you did not stop. I found myself in a trance, unable to leave. And then I saw it. My foot was stuck beneath the metal can,
weighed down by pound after pound of garbage. I panicked. You were still hitting the man, and a long trickle of blood was making its way from the man’s face towards you.
“—for your own cowardice.”
A final stomp. I heard it, heard the empty sound of the impact, the hollow breaths from the body on the ground. Unable to bear any more, I jerked my torso upwards, yanking my foot out of my boot. I ran, hearing your final words as I lunged for safety.
“I hate cowards.”
I had reached the corner, and turned to cast a final look back. I saw you savagely wipe your hands on your coat, and turn slowly towards me. That was enough. I ran as fast as my half-shod feet could carry me, all the way home, where I woke up the next day in my bed, to the screech of my alarm. It had been sounding for an hour already. I was late to school, and had missed my English class. So that’s the story. This bizarre dream, this dream so far-fetched it could never be considered reality, is the reason I am late. But to be completely truthful, the mysterious overnight disappearance of one of my snow boots did little to help my cause.
Leo B.
Co-op Board Potion
*note: all ingredients in this potion can be found at one real co-op in Brooklyn*
Purpose: to dissolve tensions and disputes between various factions of a co-op board
Ingredients:
- Water damaged paint from the stairway that is only used when the elevator is out of service
- Keys to the home of the woman who died a year ago in her apartment and no one knew for days until neighbors complained of a smell and whose home is still not on the market
- Tuft of white hair from Kazakhstani super who may or may not be wildly misogynistic
- Urine samples from the 17 dogs all named Frankie, Bandit and Quincy
- 2 retired clowns and their car
- The iron fist of Sharon who leads the roof garden committee
- 22 angr y listserv emails about leaving the door propped open without prior permission, all ending with “THIS. IS. NOT. OKAY.”
- 4 boxes of Ex Lax found in the one-day-to-be-renovated basement, a relic from the building’s past life
- 1 “monkey house” where said Ex Lax was tested on monkeys who would go crazy and shit themselves, now transformed into a 300,000 dollar attachment to apartment 5G
- 3 threatening emails about suing the building
- The Humboldt Fog from 12 meetings about refinancing the mortgage
- 1 alleged microaggression almost requiring full building diversity training
Directions:
Begin with the super’s hair heated until it smokes like certain neighbors’ ears after he denies them service because he doesn’t feel like it. To the smoking hair, add the 4 boxes of Ex Lax crushed to a fine paste. Stir over low heat. Once the paste thickens, add the threatening emails slowly, as they will splatter. Next melt the keys and iron fist over high heat until they glow red. Wait for it to cool slightly before adding to the mixture. While waiting for that to cool, add the urine samples from the dogs and stir until it’s at a rolling boil. Finely mince the monkey house until you can no longer hear echoes of the animal’s
screeches. Once combined, burn the listserv emails over an open flame and pulse the ashes in a blender with the cheese from the refinancing meeting. Whisk the clowns with alleged microaggression until the mixture turns light and fluffy and stops juggling. Finally sprinkle with the flakes of water-damaged paint. Combine and stir over medium high heat forever, with the hope of one day having enough money to fix the roof and facade, and redo the basement.
Repeat ad infinitum:
At least we have that one nice neighbor
At least we have that one nice neighbor
At least we have that one nice neighbor
Restless Dreaming
When my eyelids grow heavy It has been twenty days Or has it been twenty seconds?
During the day a thought will pass me by They send a welcome letter And come back to reach the finish line
Spilling worry and wishes and wonder
I am suddenly being cradled in a bed of fish Somewhere in Key West A room of Post-It notes
In a tank of long-necked women I will be reached soon
I will be dragged from the barriers of my mattress And at four o’clock I will no longer be covered in red clay
Mila R.
Sour Cherry Juice
I lie in bed and the lights are out
Just so
And the window is positioned
Just so
Little strips of stars like shadows on
Popcorn ceiling
Can be seen between dusty plastic shades
The window ajar
A bat flies in
Chasing
A mosquito
Chasing
My breath
He is my savior and A man is with me in the silence
I always made sour cherr y jam in the summertime
I stood on a stool so I could reach the bowl to pit the cherries
The juices ran down my arms and dripped from my elbows
I couldn’t lick my fingers until the cherries were done
Cause then I would have to walk to the sink
To wash my hands before I finished pitting the cherries
And at the end I got to taste it
The juice was tart and warm and made my face contort
And it was just as I remembered
I am alone in the silence
My window screen torn so
Bugs can get in
And everything is stale and damp
Felix C.
Predatory
Through the crack in the wood of the tree that shields me I watch him
He prowls on four limbs, clawing at the earth
His back arched, his ears wide He listens close
Where my face meets the bark I make not a sound I breathe softly
He prances across the grasses
Slithering on his belly, his arms outstretched
He searches for me
When my limbs hug the trunk like a mother holds her fawn I rustle the leaves
He perks up, ready to prey
His teeth snarling, his muscles tense
He spots me
While the tree fades from sight and the rest flies by I run away
His hind legs in motion, he begins to follow
His eyes bulging, his body strong
He is close now
Rising over the canopy and above the clouds I watch him
He grabs my carcass, and later feasts
His grin widens, his musket hot How manly
Lila L.
La Mujer del Monte
there, i saw him disappear in the snow i stayed there, lying nearly dead by the foot of the mountain there dying of cold my veins hardened and my blood coagulated death came to remind me i had time left so i thanked life my eyes opened to intake all the light possible and i remembered my blessed mother who watched me birth from song and dirt i remembered the saddened voice of Victor Jara’s lonesome guitar my brother appeared from the snow like a newborn baby spider and on all four legs he crawled up to me to say goodbye i remembered lovingly my town at the foot of the mountain which had only ever existed in my dreams and i asked death to take me away but she repeated then that i had time left so i waited there embraced by the cold i gazed upon the shriveled leaves of the tree one last time i felt the ice melt and the water run by my fingers one last time i sang to my brother one last time i remembered a thousand memories one last time and i asked death to sing me one last song
Extra Honey & Extra Lemon
Each morning he comes in alone. He orders a black coffee with six sugars. His eyes are not quite open in the moment before he steps through the door, but the jingle of the bell above the doorway always startles him awake. For a second, each morning, I am met with the clearest, most alarming blue I have ever seen, and then his eyelids droop and he does not look at me again. He sits with his head in his hands, waiting for me to make his coffee. The liquid drips through the coffee grounds, thick and pungent as new soil after a summer storm. The smell of the coffee wraps around me and twines its flavor through my hair. When I go home tonight, my mother will not mention it, but she will breathe in deep, and smile. I pour in one packet of sugar.
The crystals sink quickly into the dark. I tear the next packet open, and tip it in. Each packet must be poured with more caution than the last, in order to avoid forming a sludge at the bottom of the cup. There will be some residue, of course, it is unavoidable, but I try to do it in the way I know he likes. He would never say it, but I know. The first few days that he came here, he left the sludge of sugar at the bottom. I had never received an order like this one, and I didn’t know how to do it right. Some people like the sludge, though, and eat it with a spoon. I am not to blame for the peculiarities of others. There is one dollar in the tip jar, and when I lean over to grab the sugar supply kept by the register, I notice that it smells like sweat and like hands. I wonder if his hands smell like money. I place the cup on the counter, and it rattles, and it looks like it might spill, but of course it doesn’t. He is draped over the table like a dying flower, and he half walks, half crawls to the counter. He picks up the drink as though it is made of lead. I look straight at him, and I know he will not look back.
As he drinks his coffee, he begins to straighten up. First he lifts the cup with greater ease, then he holds his head up higher. Soon, he is looking at me. Only for a few moments as he glances around the room, but his eyes do alight upon me once or twice. I keep my head down and work on my next order. There are a few beads of lavender syrup on my green apron, and they are sinking into the fabric. When I look back up he is gone, and a stained napkin floats on the darkly polished wood of his table. I know without watching that he wiped his mouth once, at the end. I call out the order I have just prepared—peach lavender oat milk latte and the words roll over my tongue. They have a certain foreign quality to them when I say them. I try to make myself sound like I am speaking another language. Sometimes, when the cafe is busy and I am tired, I give the words meanings in my made-up language. Ginger means I love you and chai means come back soon and green
tea means today is a new day and black coffee means don’t look at me and pastry means don’t ever talk to me again. It is an interesting language because it is not up to me what I say to anyone. I only parrot what they said first. People flood through the cafe, and in the breakfast rush I tell a lot of young office workers don’t ever talk to me again through danishes and quiches. Everyone ordered lattes yesterday, which tends to happen on rainy days. Today they want frappuccinos and things with cinnamon. Sometimes people tell me that the clouds swirling through the sky remind them of milk in their coffee, and—they always laugh clumsily as they say this—well, here they are now!
The bell on the door jingles. It is 11:22 and the breakfast rush has slowed to a lazy trickle of rich women and tired men. I know it is him by the shadow that cuts through the patch of sun under the wide open windows. I also know it is him because it is always him, every day. I look up, out of courtesy, and as usual, he walks with a woman. She wears a long white skirt smudged with paint, and her hair falls in long dark locks, glowing softly brown in the sunlight. She is always laughing, and his eyes crinkle tenderly at the sound. I do not laugh. I move towards the cash register. She wants a chamomile tea with honey and one ice cube, and he wants an iced matcha latte with oat milk and strawberry syrup. Usually he would have his latte with vanilla syrup, but the sun is out today. The two of them sit by the window, and she laughs some more at things he murmurs. Customers drift through with increasing frequency as the clock inches closer to twelve, and I say today is a new day through green tea three or four times.
With her, he is gentle and sweet. In the mornings he is empty and drained, but when he comes in with her, he is full of life again. He never leaves tips when he is with her, but the dollar in the tip jar is still proof of the early mornings. Something still remains that he has touched, and I like to imagine that it is still warm. They leave around half past noon. She has somewhere to be. He always walks her wherever it is, with one hand on her arm. He does not look back when he passes through the doorway. The bell jingles. More customers come through. An elderly woman with a little girl, a young woman with a middle-aged man, and a young man alone. A girl with short hair and a golden retriever puppy. Steamed milk, hot chocolate, hot tea, espresso, iced tea, matcha latte, and one dog biscuit. Hours pass, milk-stained, overheated, then cooling. I know it is 4:00 when he comes in a third time, surrounded by a laughing crowd. Today, I count five other men and one woman with tattoos on her neck. They all line up, and as the others order, they glance at the wall behind me, tilting their eyes away from my face. He looks right at me, and I try to be brave and look right back at him. His eyes are bright and clear, and he asks me for an iced hazelnut latte. I smile, nod, and say very little. Another dollar in the tip jar. He
flashes me a quick smile and sits down at the table with his friends. Now, he is loud and boisterous, and every joke he makes evokes a ripple of laughter from his friends. I watch as some of the others at the table try to mimic his effortless humor, and the dry chuckles that roll like tumbleweeds at their attempts. I smile again as if practicing and try not to think too hard about the second dollar in the tip jar and how it might feel between my fingers. When he leaves, I like to believe I hardly notice, and it is only when I begin to sweep up the crumbs under the table he sat at that I am struck by the fact that he is no longer here. The cafe is nearly empty now (at 6:30 most people are home having dinner) and though I should not be, I am always surprised when he steps through the door again. Sometimes he catches me when I am still sweeping, or taking the last pastries out of the display case to bring home for my mother.
For the fourth and final time, he enters the cafe. This time, he speaks to me. Every day he says something different. Yesterday we talked about the weather, and the day before that he complimented my new red blouse. Today he smiles, and I imagine that we are sitting together at the table by the window, and his eyes are crinkling at the sound of my laugh. I laugh a little just to try it out, and he smiles again, but there is a little confusion behind his eyes. I sigh softly so that he won’t notice, but he does, and asks what’s wrong. I imagine that if I know all that I do about him, what can be the harm in him knowing a little more about me? I imagine that he will grin and take my hands in his hands, and I won’t have to imagine their warmth anymore. I imagine that I will know. I tell him it has been a long day, then laugh again and say, well, he would know that, he’s been here for most of it. There is something sharp behind his eyes and I look away before it can get to me. I boil the water, I steep the tea, I stir the thick golden honey until it is thin and yellow, I squeeze the lemon juice in and it stings against a papercut on my fingers. He stands by the counter, looking out the window into the early spring dark. “One ginger tea with extra honey and extra lemon,” I say, and I mean I love you. Say it back.
Petra J.
Between Grass and Dirt
The rusty papers of her History
Brushed the backs of her knees
Reminding her of when she would
Run through the spindly grasses
Where her mother warned of ticks
And she would prick the edges of her feet
On thistles and the cast-off stingers of bees
The empty oceans of her Voyage
Streamed down her face
Reminding her of when she would
Skid across the 6 am glass of Michigan
As the tentacles of deep monsters pulled at her ankles
She would tumble into them and accept
Their scratches as a welcome embrace
The humid words of her Tradition
Breathed hot on her neck
Reminding her of when she would Lay out on the back dock
And allow the sun to bake her skin
While shards of rotted wood burrowed into her back
The fish watched her as she stretched out her limbs
The culmination of her Experiences
Stung in her eyes
Reminding her of when she would
Eat zucchini and perch as the sun set in the kitchen
Peeking over the cafe curtains
Blinding her to all she had done
Reminding her of what was to come
Maisie S.
The Renaissance of a Phantom
Curled and coiled I try to conceive you in my mind
But, herein, hands of bones and skin is all I can design
For your body is disintegrating, lost in lowered eyes and hunched spines
But I believed those parts to be decaying, ere death, a long time.
But your hands, built and rebuilt by the trenches of true motherhood, Soft palms and thin fingers which held me first, in the name of good
Love enlaced with the warmth of shared blood and witnessed childhood
All cared for my eyes of hatred and the mind only you understood.
And so as it goes, I lie here alone and imagine
Our holograms embracing with a sort of ancestral passion
For no other sort of solace fills my satisfaction
Like the ever-blue nostalgia of my years of youth, my years of compassion.
But perhaps it is the the figment of feeling that keeps me drowned, The falsity of your visiting phantom that keeps me bound
To my pillar of reviving you from misconceived shadows, that has never allowed
An acceptance that what you are is far away, a cadaver in the ground.
D.
JACKFRUIT
My girlfriend, who is always asleep and who wears the same clothes every day, who never leaves our apartment except to film herself eating strange foods or to follow me to work, where she sometimes falls asleep on the limey couches, was transfigured, some time in the night, into a goose with bulging wet marble-eyes and a low bowing neck, like a white curtain folded up to the side of the window. Soon, when it is morning and she sees herself, I will tell her that she is beautiful as a goose, more so than as a human girl. That white feathers are prettier than yellow hair. Soon I will get her mother, who calls the daughter daily from a red phone. But for now we are happy, and she is sleeping greedily, and I am stroking her egg white feathers.
Mae G.
A bolt of lightning in the valley strikes. I’m slipping through Green Mountains and I take On shouts called down from spillways up to hikes— “Vermont destroys her,” way down in the wake.
See Mountain Men, see to forget-me-not, In angels where the cell phone towers fall. In Plymouth, walking back, we’ll pull truth taut—
Two summers of revival made me call.
Said prayers to your necklaces and front lawn. Now nothing echoes but your dad’s guitars
When I pray to the hills and early dawn.
Tell me “Green Hats”—I know something that mars.
Sixteen in the woods and a hiking pack.
Like a bolt of lightning, I’m holding back.
Freya G.
Someday I’ll Love Summer Again
Summer boiled in its brittle shell. Dad left no forwarding address. Tire marks streaked our front lawn yellow until the gods finally cried. I couldn’t peel the meat from the lobster; I couldn’t crack its armor. Nana said lobsters can’t feel pain. As she cooked, I watched papaya-seed eyes pop in the boiling water. A lobster’s pain was the absolute value of its need to escape. Maybe dad’s was, too. A man in a blue shirt hammered a for sale sign into the mouth of wilting hydrangeas. Mum milked tears from her drywater eyes. The hydrangeas were once her pride and joy. I rode my bike everywhere and nowhere. I pedalled as hard as I could, until the trees raced backwards. I pedalled until the sky stood still and I gasped for air. Plump cherries in plastic sleeves filled our fridge. I loved cherries, the sting of their sweetness. They dyed my teeth purple, left the rims of my nails sweet. I couldn’t bring myself to eat any. I couldn’t stand the spat-out seeds and the bellyache. I wished for winter, for numb fingers and nights of rimy solitude. I wished for everything that was not, until we packed a rubbish bag full of not anymore: his rough brown flip flops, faded t-shirts still damp with memories. Mum and I drove to the Salvation Army in watery silence. After, I lay in his empty closet and clung to the i love you he muttered as his car rolled away. He rolled away like a marble down a drain. It was hopeless, so I swam in the ocean. I sold the salt of my sadness to the Atlantic. Floating on my back, I prayed for the ocean to swallow me whole. That night, I dreamt my mother was a baby cradled in a lobster trap. I woke sobbing.
Adelaide S
I Cannot Return
I don’t know where it is
Inside of me
But there is something very rigid
A slow amassing
Of gold and dirt and psalms and old blood
And I am again beginning school and hundreds of days have passed
Since the seventh
And Yom Kippur and May 1948
And
Yet I don’t know why I know these dates
But certain dust compels me to
My mother fell in and out of love with a boy
In love with Haifa
My grandfather is made of so much more rigidity than I am
And even more prideful unvarnished love
I fear I am irredeemably varnished
Why must it always be so hard
And there is no balance
Fear of being killed killing
I cannot tell if things are different the more I look
Broken bodies underneath the biggest skies
Cries are just the same as always
In any language
On any tortured stretch of land
I was not at Treblinka
Or Babi Yar
Or Nir Oz
Was I even at Sinai?
Why do I feel as though I am running against a rope anchored with some deep horrible collection of bodies and water weight when all I have ever had
is gold gelt and themed bat mitzvahs
Tonight I will write an elegy For the 6
And the 1200 on the seventh And the 40,000 and 6 million
And my grandmother I will make a vase for flowers with a lip so wide we will all be in the valley of the shadow of death
As we walked off the plane at Ben Gurion
The cantor from my temple said welcome home and she began to cry I did not understand and now I do That there has never been a place so familiar (like my mother’s warm skin) So shattering
Perhaps in the gelt there has also been tears I have tasted that salt in my mouth and I cannot return The fold of neutrality is impossible I have jumped Into my rigidity and will now spend my life examining the wounds
It is very strange to have a loyalty inside that disagrees with you
To have a loyalty that often makes you feel as if your skin is too small to hold it and anything else
There are only passing moments when some loyalties come close enough together to provide shade for one another But those are the moments you bask in Drink because they are the father and mother of hope
This loyalty grabs my stomach and my lungs, pierces the peach thin skin and reinflates them just to show it can. Just so that I feel it when I am trying so
desperately hard to be perfectly palatable. Pretending there is no plum pit inside
I am all soft all sweet and anyone can look right into me and see that I am just like them.
May the one who makes peace on high
Let this be the time
Finally finally finally finally
Phoebe B
His eyes unfocused, music plays He crosses his leg behind the other He pivots on the glossy hardwood floor. Just as a child’s spinning toy top, thrown by The hands of a young girl who has just received it— Yet to become practiced, unstable In its movement—ripples like the surface Of a still lake when the cone of a pine Is dislodged from its low-hung branch And falls dramatically in the water; It slows and devolves into chaos with a flourish, And clatters to the ground. The floor bloodied The crowd leaps forward,
Mrs. Platt
Every other week Mrs. Louisa Platt braved the dangerous journey downtown to see Dr. Almond, her dermatologist. She loved to be examined by him, to have her skin looked at closely under a microscope.
“Mrs. Platt,” Dr. Almond said slowly after her examination. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but your head has grown considerably.” He reached for his clipboard. “Yes, almost two inches since the last time I saw you.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” cooed Mrs. Platt. “I’ve been very busy.”
“You should keep an eye on that. At the very least,” he brushed her hair out of her face, “it can’t be good for your neck.”
Mrs. Platt spent a considerable amount of money every year to minimize the stress in her life. Through all hours of the day young women went in and out of her apartment, bags of groceries and warm towels and high-tech vacuum cleaners in hand. She filled the apartment her husband left empty every day with these women, whom she studied coolly from her seat in the living room.
“I think my head is getting bigger,” Mrs. Platt told her husband that night over dinner.
“Pish posh.” He leaned across the table to kiss her forehead.
Mr. Clive Platt was a podiatrist, and with his knowledge of feet came the constant anxiety surrounding his wife’s. He implored her to wear shoes with all the toes separated, to take long baths before bed, to electronically heat her bedroom floor, etc. In their first years of marriage she loved to indulge him. She loved his stutter, his contact lenses, his cookie monster mittens. Now, as she listened to him ramble on, she felt like gouging her eyes out.
The next day when Mrs. Platt inspected her head in the bathroom mirror, she estimated it to have grown almost another inch. Clive was going on a work trip somewhere in the Midwest. Mrs. Platt had never been, but the word itself evoked images of tan waiting rooms with vending machines and little plastic chairs pressed against the wall. Girls balanced on fence posts with their hair in two darling braids. Lost tires that babbled down black highways. Though this all seemed incredibly diverting, she could not conceive of going anywhere, with her body being in the state that it was. She imagined the looks of surprise Clive’s colleagues would try to conceal upon being introduced to her. My! They would think. Mr. Platt’s wife is a regular humpty dumpty.
In the emptiness of the house, vacated by her husband and most of his things,
void of all the regular help she had sent away in her shame, Mrs. Platt felt very curious. Her isolation had strange effects on her. She began listening to audiobooks that covered sad topics: the trenches of World War One, North Korea, sexual slavery. She liked the narrations when she played them at normal pace, but she liked them even more when she sped them up.
She googled the symptoms of her ailment, scrolled dead forums, commented on them, and received no replies. She was afraid of traditional doctors, and too embarrassed to leave her home anyway. She even canceled with dear Dr. Almond.
She installed a sauna in the living room and spent much of her time lying naked on the hot planks. She took photos of herself while she did this. To send to Clive or to a different, nonexistent male lover, she did not know. This only stopped when eventually she could no longer fit her enormous head through the sauna door. She found that since her head had begun its expansion, she no longer felt the urge to eat, or to sleep, or to move her body. All she wanted was to breathe warm air and listen to her audiobooks. Where before leaving her house caused her minor anxiety at most, now she found it nearly impossible to do so much as look out the window. She was consumed with paranoia and deep sadness. When did my life become so small? she wondered. It seemed not long ago she had been parading around as a normal person, with friends and hobbies and a Vitamix. Now, she couldn’t even pretend. She spent all her energy keeping her head on her shoulders, as opposed to sliding off and rolling away.
As Mrs. Platt lounged on the floor outside her sauna, trying to breathe in the fumes it emitted through the small bamboo door, she was shaken alert by a strange feeling. After weeks of her head weighing her down, of pain and sluggishness, she felt as weightless as a flag. She went to the window and opened it, breathing the delicious summer air into her throat and lungs. Then, with calm acceptance, Mrs. Louisa Platt felt her body being lifted by her head, now lighter than air, out the window and into the warm night. Goodbye apartment, she thought. Goodbye Mr. Platt and goodbye sauna. The breeze blew her gently this way and that until she disappeared, like a bubble going underwater, into the blue sky.
On Friendship
Our inexorable march forward is woven, fingers knotted
We walk in the autumnal haze as you calmly let me offer my soul in my palms for us to gaze at and inspect
We knead the dough as you watch and I want to be nourishing, to fill you all up with everything that is good and kind and warm
Our voices ribbon out into the darkness of our rooms as we confer Our constellations swirl above
The platonic is an ascent, where my outstretched fingers go numb, where the primordial need for the other fills the tips of my toes and the roots of my hair
But the now is us curled into the couch, watching a movie
Ariadne
Every day is the same. The sun rises, the sun sets. I watch your back as it turns further from me. There was light in your eyes once, put there by a man whom you mistook for the sun. It’s gone now. It’s getting cold. I think I love you. It’s not enough.
When I was younger I read a book about a man and a woman who loved him. He left her on an island while she was sleeping. The part of the story that struck me was the way it described them together: her, staring up at his face; him, staring out at the sea. We eat dinner in bed. You don’t touch me once.
Ari W.
Continuation… est. 2007
& I sit on the foot of my bed shaking from the impact my fingers twisted, bathing in the fear of what I could become.
Inhale
I tilt my chin up to the gods and surrender so fate can rinse my body of its resistance
Exhale and I slowly watch myself fade into you, trip into the path you paved for me back in 2007 before my world collapsed as you knelt and wrapped yourself around it.
In 2012 you faded to black & white & soot and left the memory pressed behind my mother’s eyelids like two numbers branded into the skin, forgiven but never forgotten. My mother has left everything to the imagination so I stare at the black marble dining room table you left us in 08’ and let my mind envision you leaning over it, years of anxiety sprawled out in front of you as you pound your fist on the table’s surface, regrets trickling into bourbon breath and staggered words.
Now as I sit encapsulated by the darkness–nothing but midnight’s glow to consume me, I breathe you out all over again
and let my memory recount November of 2014–the earliest I can remember of you.
Why I can’t remember anything before 2014, I’ve been wondering for years–I suppose it’s because I begin with you.
Recalling that night is like watching the stars collide, like discovering something all over again, the crumble of innocence, the stutter of two more words, just to hold on a little longer, the thought of you citrus and stinging as I burn it into my memory.
Awoken in the middle of the night, shaking and skin dampened, I find myself tracing honeyed consonants with my voice to convince myself I will always have you. My mind can recite 2014 like my mother recites your words.
So if you ask me why I can’t recall anything before that night in November, maybe it’s because I begin with you, maybe it’s because I’m an inevitable continuation of you, a circulation of you, and if you ask me why I feel I’ve fallen dangerously into your arms over years of prescriptions and gin & tonic
I suppose it’s because I end with you too.
Azalea W.
Elsewhere Travel Agency
I, Dina Smith, am—and always will be—a travel agent. I was hired at Elsewhere Travel Agency in the summer of 1989 at age thirty-one. It wasn’t the first time I had seen the offices of Elsewhere. My mother had taken me when I was twelve to plan a trip to Sicily. (Or, at least, I think it was Sicily. It may have been Florence.) She picked me up after school, blowing her cigarette smoke discreetly out the window of the Chevy as we pulled into the strip mall parking lot. I was mesmerized by everything about the place. The racks of postcards, the maps lining the walls, the posters with smiling faces and funny slogans like “better in the Bahamas!” The agency’s ambiance was immeasurable.
I was thrumming with excitement when I showed up to my first day at work. I still remember pulling up to the sidewalk and meeting my boss, Mr. Ericson. That silly man. He had a very big tie and even bigger hands, a grease-lathered combover, and awkward square spectacles, which somehow collected condensation even in midwinter. In the first five minutes on the job, he introduced me to his white Ford Mustang—which he had named Linda—and stuck a nametag in the shape of a palm tree on my lapel. He showed me to my desk, outfitted with my very own globe and Newton’s cradle. I’m proud to say that my Newton’s cradle has been clacking away for close to thirty five years now.
We were a tight-knit group at Elsewhere. It was me, Mr. Ericson, Joan Mumford, Nick Portnoy, Maria Murphy (may God rest her soul), and a few others who came and went. The work isn’t for everybody, but I sure loved the job. If I’m honest, I loved the clientele most of all. Full families with flushed cheeks and wide grins. Cold-fisted businessmen who used strong verbs and drank hard liquor in the evenings. Well-to-do spinsters who wasted little time and lots of money. I was even in contact with a wellknown celebrity who lived in the area. Of course, I won’t say who exactly. I will say that he was the star of a certain hospital-based sitcom from the 90s.
My life was exciting. I lived vicariously through these people and their travels. For instance, there was Mr. Gardner, who visited us regularly. He always approached my desk—he seemed to like me more than the other attendants—in his vest, no tie. He would always be heading to the most far-flung places. “Oh? Mr. Gardner?” I’d say, for instance. “I would love to book your flight. May I ask what kind of business you have planned in Zimbabwe?”
“Oh, the usual, Dina,” he’d say with a smirk. “I’ll shake some hands, see some sights. But I’ll tell you all about my time there when I return home.”
He never did, however. If I asked how his last trip went, he would just laugh to himself, rub his stubble, and say, “a gentleman never reveals his secrets, nor does a magi-
cian kiss and tell.”
Somehow, I think the mystery of Mr. Gardner was more satisfying than if he had indulged me in his stories. Whenever Mr. Gardner stopped by, the rest of my day was automatically filled with daydreaming. Whose hands did he shake? Just what sights did he see? I still wonder to this day.
I have had a lot of time to wonder about the Mr. Gardners of the world recently. The fact is—despite my utter pain at even admitting this—the field of travel guidance has lost nearly all of its respectability since I first joined Elsewhere Travel Agency in 1989. The great drought of customers began around 1995. In the span of a few months, business became totally and utterly stagnant. Inert. The internet was suddenly the best thing out there. Families no longer relied on us to deliver and plan their fun. Businessmen found quicker and cheaper ways to buy their tickets. Spinsters stayed home with their computers.
My coworkers abandoned ship. Maria Murphy first: she was old, after all, and was planning on retiring, anyway. Joan Mumford and Nick Portnoy had apparently been fostering a private, romantic relationship behind our backs. They ran off to Spain together. God knows what they are doing now. For a while there, it was just me and Mr. Ericson, who was getting balder by the hour and fatter by the second.
I’ve barely changed since I first took the job. My clientele, on the other hand, is unrecognizable. After the drought, only a few very strange characters asked for our guidance at Elsewhere. Bloodless, shellshocked twenty-somethings with obviously fake names and trembling lips. Elderly couples who could neither hear nor follow through with their carefully illustrated travel plans. No occasional celebrities. No Mr. Gardner.
It was around the turn of the century when Mr. Ericson called me into his office. “I’m sorry, Dina,” he said, “but I have a family. This place is no longer the cultural mecca it once was.”
I tried to argue with him, but his mind was made up. “We are no longer serving anyone,” he said. “Listen, I don’t know what you want to do with the place, but it’s yours. I don’t know if you have any family or pets to take care of. If you do, I sincerely recommend selling the place. You gotta pay for them somehow, and I doubt you’d make enough for anyone other than yourself. Now, open your palm.”
I placed my open hand on his desk. “Close your eyes,” he said.
I closed my eyes. Like a drop of water off an icicle, a keychain fell into my grasp. On the silver ring hung a car key labelled “LINDA.”
“Take care of her. She’ll treat you better than anybody.”
At five o’clock, I watched Mr. Ericson’s big hand push open the door to the agency. With the jangle of the brass bell above the door frame, he was gone.
It occured to me that Mr. Gardner never said goodbye. I believe his last trip was to Greenland. Now that I think of it, he seemed more impatient during his final consultation. How strange.
Today, I am the only staff member at Elsewhere Travel Agency. I make just enough to pay for myself and for the upkeep of the office. I drive Linda to work every day and, although there is no longer any smoke trailing from the window, I think of my mother very often. That old Newton’s cradle is still going. The racks of postcards still stand full. The maps stay tacked to the walls, though they may be a little out of date. And, as the poster proclaims, it is still “better in the Bahamas!”
How to become involuntary
1. Accept the pregnant bliss after a satisfactory apology
2. Decide becoming beautiful is reproachable, repugnant
3. Become blended with the subtle bliss of fluorescent clouds
4. Dissociate from the task of yearning
5. Maintain availability
3. Become unblended
6. Learn to live with the notion of another’s intelligence.
7. Be loved.
8. Create a turquoise monster and keep it in your left breast shirt pocket
3. Eat the fluorescent clouds
9. Sleep silently, as to not disturb the buoyant pink lilies that rest in the pond of wept tears
10. Don’t be sad
8. Become the turquoise monster
11. Take off your shirt and outline yourself in pen so you may show your pleasant insides to whoever requests proof of your exposed existence
1. Don’t repeat.
Durete M.
The House of Snails
I.
The house had been still for many years now. The parents had gone to somewhere nicer, like Florida. The children were off discovering their own homes. The house, now almost emptied, had gotten accustomed to not containing human life. Once, children slammed the doors, stomping their feet through the large living room; parents, working, sympathizing for the house. But that was no-longer. Now, dust lightly falling to the floor, hardly making a sound; mold building up in the basement, on the doors.
The mold is what attracted them, slowly increasing in number, taking up the exterior of the house. Doors weren’t slammed, but stuck together, by shell after shell of snail. Snails, making their slow journey up the door and finding a home. Snails, now the face of this door.
That is what Lou—or Little Lou, as everyone called her—first saw when she moved in next door. Her house had never experienced emptiness. One family after the next moving in then leaving. Lou was bored, even with a new home. She was bored of being Little Lou, bored of not having something of her own.
She liked exploring. She liked being alone, because when she was alone she could be anything she wanted: a solo explorer looking for signs of life, a rescuer, picking up the “injured” fallen leaves, a climber, scaling the highest trees she could find. She never got very far though. She preferred sitting on a branch, looking at her feet dangle below her and the ground sit steadily below her feet. She liked not being steady in the tree, or just changing her routine exploration each day.
As much as she liked exploring, Lou wouldn’t dare cross into the property of the house next door. It was “haunted,” as her brothers said. The house seemed ancient, dead. She didn’t like how there were no signs of life.
She didn’t like that until she realized she was alive.
II.
Lou could bring her life into the house, gift it to the house. She became determined to help this house, to be the first on the moon, the first in that house.
Lou packed lightly, it was still only next door. She packed her signature—a grilled cheese sandwich with Swiss. She would show it to the house. She would also show her book—about a large family who went exploring together. If only Lou’s family would go explore with her. Lou loved reading. She could immerse herself into a life she didn’t have, couldn’t have. She could explore other parts of the world from her own bed.
Lou set off in the early morning, when the neighborhood was still sleeping. She
grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She put on her new running shoes, ready for anything.
For the first time, Lou turned left. The stones beneath her feet were unknown, she was careful not to trip. She imagined she was Indiana Jones, going forth for the good of humanity. Finding this house, her house, could be a revelation.
The house loomed over her small body. The shadow darkened her bright pink hat and blue shirt. She walked forth, ready to open the door when she was taken aback.
III.
Something was on the door! More like things plural. Little spirals crowded the door. Snails. Lou hadn’t seen many snails, but she sure saw a lot on that door. She was curious about the sliminess, the gooey trail the snails left behind on their slow path. She wasn’t to touch them though, there was no need for an extra having to wash hands. Lou was crushed. The snails had beaten her. There was indeed life in the house. Many breaths were being taken per second. The house didn’t need her life. She once again came last—snails, her brothers, no difference.
But there was a difference. These snails had nowhere else to go. They found this door a sanctuary. Maybe Lou could too, maybe that’s what she was supposed to find. She found there was something beautiful about these snails. Maybe what she found beautiful is that they reminded her of herself. These two categories of life had both gone on an adventure and turned up at the same doorstep. They were meant to meet. Lou had found the large family she could go exploring with. Who cares for washing hands? Lou picked a snail up and waited for its neck to come out. The neck never came out, it was just a shell! Lou tried the next snail, then the next, and the one after that, but none were alive. What was this house—it killed all her snails! She hadn’t found her family after all.
Theodora S.
Reverse Ode for City Girls
so long, city girls! so long to your sloshing stomachs and your secret crucibles, your stashes of Ozempic—the green juice syringes you store in your prayer bead boxes; you pray to every redemption-skinned dawn peeling thin, as you bathe in sunlight, glistening like honeyed teaspoons and quartered lemons. i pretend i don’t see you side-angling me in the hallway & preening your pride in the downstairs bathroom; your feathers duly drenched in the sweat & lawless heat of last night; a night rubbed with lard and coconut butter and hot almond milk tears slivering into shavings, thin as the hopes you dashed against the pavement on the corner of Park Avenue and 72nd Street.
the fisherman slipknots catch in the rungs of your sparkly braces: tufts of algae, clustered barnacles stemming like grapes, tartly glowing. city girls, just young girls diving into another graceless schism. city girls, pretty girls — city girls and consequences, mutually exclusive. at six, the first time my aunt brushed mascara across my lashes, it was for her wedding. she curled my hair, blotted Tom Ford’s Rose Creme on the apples of my cheeks until they were ripe. you brushed the back of your hand against them & watched my eyes blur, fishbowl-glassy with shame. i carried the full weight of that carcass, our carcass a lightweight year later, I became a city girl, too.
Adelaide S.
2016. Death prompts you to paint tears on your face with club soda. Smile when you receive gifts you don’t actually like. This is called a “white lie,” but you imagine it as a muddled purple, like dying violets. Help your grandmother kill the ants in her apartment, squishing each bug until it could be mistaken for a smudge of soil.
2015. Steal a few dollars and spend them on a summertime icee in Prospect Park. Read books in the linen closet, among hand towels and bathmats (between which you are unable to tell the difference). A new friend shows you the ashes of her grandfather, in a blue willow-patterned porcelain box. Her parents let her keep him in her bedroom, atop the piano. He reminds her to practice pentatonic scales.
2014. Push a boy off the balance beam. Don’t feel remorseful. You memorize When We Were Very Young, and score your days with its verses. Steal a strawberry-scented doll from school and bury it in your pajama drawer. It perfumes the house for weeks until it is found and disposed of. You confuse scents with flavors, eating candles and lipstick and jasmine flowers. You sketch in odd positions, always on the floor. Bare legs halfway out the door.
2013. Let the watermelon juice drip down your chest. This year is bright. Botanical. Bury a tin of coins in the garden and never dig it up. Draw on the walls because they look like sheets of paper. Sometime in August your eyes turn green, but your mother believes that they are still blue.
Calypso
In the blue sun year I went on a pilgrimage to see the aching remains of Greenland that had floated through the rivers of Delaware and into the taps of Iowa, where they were stirred into coffee and baked into trim watery pies. In the passenger seat of my yellow taxi cab, which creaked and moaned with the road that snaked out before me, the hitchhiker sat, a red-faced prince whose queen mother had birthed him on her side like an animal on the moon-pale bank of the Long Island sound. He read the map while I drove steadily, the dashboard made artistic by the stacks of colored pages with pins and tape all over, and when we finally reached the monument, that proud continent now diminished into a drifting iceberg with its gaping body pouring out highway signage like a spoilage, far too obscene to photograph, I could not think to drive, and so we slept in the car, shoulder to shoulder like army men the hot red moon above us and the sky carved with contrails that looked like angry scythes.
Mae G.
Someday I’ll Love Change
Until then, let us stick to what we know. Me and my routine. You and your rituals and superstitions.
One day we’ll be forced to improvise, to abandon all that We think we know. Made to adapt, there is no other way.
Until then, let’s hunt for amenity in everything. Our default comfort and Reassurance. Our ability to trace the lines on our palms. Our habit of Biting our fingernails to their lowest. Let us
Continue to ignore any mishaps or distractions, any possibilities Of being led astray from our paths of certainty. Let us. Allow us our customs and formalities, and to search For solace in them.
Our sun setting in the west, our north star–Steadfast, and ready to guide us home from the Maze of our doubts and unease.
Someday, we will learn to love the unfamiliar. The crack in the pattern where light creeps in, The uncharted map sketched through trembling hands. Maybe then we will dance with uncertainty, Joined hand in hand, our movements Wobbly, then sure.
But not today. Today, Allow us to bask in all that we know, that Which we can rely on: The soft tick of a clock, our lefts and rights, Even our own mortality. For now, we remain the author of our own habits, The experts of consistency.
Let us hold onto this, for Someday, Change will Call our names, And we will have no choice But to answer.
Aiden S.
Dear Lichee Nut,
I hope this letter finds you well. Though I visit your establishment in Brooklyn Heights at least thrice a workweek, you may not know my identity. I tend to keep a low profile when in your restaurant, because I, like you, understand the struggles of working in the culinary world. I am not one to sit idly by and show a lack of respect for the waiter’s time as I decide between the Chicken Lo Mein and Chow Mein (though the Chow Mein remains consistently deficient in sauce, making it nearly identical to the Lo Mein to the untrained eye—I will send a follow-up letter regarding how to improve this madness). I am not one to complain to the hostess for once again guiding me to sit at the dreaded wobbly table. So know, Mr. Nut, that this matter has sat very deep in my heart to deserve such a letter.
It was your average Tuesday lunch break. The table wobbled; I didn’t mind. The Chow Mein looked extra Lo-Mein-like; I didn’t mind. Usually after a meal as substandard as this, I treat myself by cheating on my clean, strict diet. The fortune cookie is not what society would call a highbrow dessert and, in all honesty, I wouldn’t call it that either, but I must admit, I find myself charmed by its sweet and crisp flavor, which often brings me back to a simpler time. And as for the writing on the inside, though the predictions usually tend on the side of perfunctory, I allow myself to enjoy them and sometimes even giggle at the grammatical oversights. So understand my surprise when I pulled the sheet out of the cookie, and there, written out in print without error or smear, were the words, “You will, for all eternity, be alone.”
Now I tell you, sir, I am a man of good humor. I can occasionally laugh when I see a New Yorker cartoon if it’s not so overtly political or when a new Adam Sandler movie pops up on Netflix, but this was not a laughing matter. First off, for something to be considered funny, it has to have some sort of truth in it. And I have plenty of people in my life, and if you don’t want to believe me call one Martin Plain (917-897-0912), my upstairs neighbor, or better yet Sheryll Ann Fineman (917-787-1121), my assistant: I’m sure they would be happy to have a word with you. But don’t think I concluded that this little prank was your establishment’s fault without proper investigation. Before I left, I inspected the back of the wrapper to find out where the note originated: The Golden Gate Fortune Factory…
Very well, I thought, I’ll do what has to be done.
The flight felt long, but I did enjoy some views of the Pacific Coast. There are some remarkable beaches over there worth checking out. But anyway, back to the task at hand. Once I disguised myself well enough not to be caught on arrival, I used my inside culinary connections to receive a private factory tour. It was quite a sight, I tell you. Men and women alike poured gallons of sugar and flour into industrial-sized tanks, mixing with spoons larger than life; it was as if you had entered Wonka’s chocolate factory. But the fortune. That damn fortune.
Sternly, I asked to speak to the head writer, and the guide led me up to an elevator. It was a bit of an awkward ride, so I made a little joke about the elevator maybe floating into the sky, but I don’t think he got the reference. I entered the room. It was plain, ordinary, much less of a spectacle than anything below it, and the man behind the desk decorated only with a dusty typewriter, coffee, and a sandwich, introduced himself as Donald Lau, the CFW (Chief Fortune Writer). I pulled the swampy strip of paper from my pocket. “Did you write this fortune, Mr. Lau?” I asked, with the greatest restraint I could muster, and placed it before him.
He looked up at me, then down at the fortune, and repeated this motion many times. “Date?” he asked.
“When I first opened it, it was January 20th, 2012, at 12:36, Eastern Time. 13 years today.”
“And what is your concern?”
“It’s—sir, just read it. It is rude and unwarranted and, frankly, grounds for a defamation lawsuit! I like fortune cookies. Unlike the rest of society, I respect what you do and think it normally does a great deal of good. I was actually in the culinary world myself for some time, if you didn’t know, as a chief executive cashier during my summer vacations, so I also understand the pressure you’re under. But that is no excuse to smear my name and my future!” I stepped back to calm myself down.
Mr. Lau reclined in his chair and stretched out his hands. “I became head fortune writer here in 2016, so this is my father you speak of.”
“Then can I speak with your dad?”
“He’s dead.”
How could I miss such a key piece in all this? The company must have wanted to keep the transfer of power away from the headlines. I was impressed—but what was even more impressive was how they managed to hide it from me. I hesitated before pulling my binder out of my bag. “Would you have any idea why your father would write something like that? Because if you look here, you will see a picture of Martin Plain, my neighbor who also recently passed away, and Sheryll, my old coworker.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t write it.” He looked down and continued writing on his typewriter.
My voice broke. “Then, Mr. Lau, if you wouldn’t mind. Can you—could you, please, please write me a new one?” I spent many hours in the mirror practicing this plea, asking for a new fortune without becoming a beggar or losing my dignity. But now it seemed all preparations flew out the window.
He furrowed his brow. “What would be the point if you’re so convinced that my family’s fortunes do not come true?”
“I’m sorry about that, sir, but could you please just do this for me, and I will leave you alone forever. I promise.”
“Very well.” I stood there waiting for my new fortune. My new life. Finally, a chance to start over and leave this curse behind me. “I am finished.” He loudly released the paper from the typewriter.
“Thank you so much. I’m sure your father would have been very proud of what you’ve done today.”
“Please do not speak any more about my father.” He began to pass me a large piece of paper with a small text in the middle. This was not how I had imagined it.
“Could you make it a bit smaller and put it into a cookie?” I asked. I knew I was testing Mr. Lau’s immense patience, but at this point I couldn’t take any risks.
His eyes darted towards the sandwich on his desk. “No, but I can put it between this tuna fish sandwich if you like?”
“Yes, please.”
Mr. Lau folded the paper a few times and took his half-eaten sandwich off his desk before sliding the fortune in between the two slices of bread. He passed it to me and I looked at him for permission to eat it. He nodded. So, I ate it, surviving through the mushiness of old tuna for the sweet taste of the paper. When it arrived, I took apart the sandwich and unfolded it before him.
“You will meet a friend soon.”
I almost started crying right there. I went up to Mr. Lau and hugged him for his kindness. Halfway through the door, I looked down at Mr. Lau’s new and improved prophecy one last time. I took a long breath in and out before asking him, “Hey, how bout we get lunch after this? Me and you.” I clutched the moist paper in my hand.
He smiled. “Oh, I am very busy with work right now.”
“Okay, maybe another time?” I asked. “I can fly back to San Fran whenever.”
“I am quite often very busy,” he said, but the kindness I saw in his eyes seemed to convey a completely different message all on its own.
“But you could—”
“You promised me you would leave me alone.” His eyes retreated into the typewriter.
So I left the office feeling satisfied, having completed my goal. I assume Mr. Lau didn’t take me up on my offer because it would have been a conflict of interest. If he wrote the prophecy, he obviously couldn’t fulfill it. I guess that’s why he’s the best at what he does. Though I still don’t know whether the original fortune was written by Lau’s father or a stupid prank by one of your employees, it doesn’t matter because I have a new fortune. And it is one I will be, and have been, waiting patiently for.
Walker Crewdson
Today
In a city of rooftops and backyards everything is reduced to shapes and chemicals. The sweet spring air floods into my lungs like soldiers but by the time it reaches my bloodstream, it is only peace. All my quiet aches are drowned out by the heavy hum of the gray sky and the velvet tones of the custard bun in plastic on my lap which sing me to solid, solitary sleep. I dream of nothing real: I dream of black and white rooms which open into great colorful meadows. I dream of lives which can be lived twice. It isn’t about getting it right this time around, it is about getting it wrong in different ways. This time around I am nothing but alive inside the room. This time around there is no love, only laughing. There is no metaphor, no moral, no twist, only the cold which enters my heart, and tomorrow.
Petra J.
After the end of the world, the old farmer learns to put a plate out on the back porch for the horrors that come out at night. He learns that the horrors are fond of home-grown tomatoes. He seasons them well with the wooden salt and pepper shakers made to look like cherubs. He learns to take only shallow breaths when he goes outside to water the crops. His wife makes him masks on her sputtering old sewing machine, out of the flowery curtains in the basement. His wife learns not to drink the tap water anymore. She learns the hard way. The farmer burns her body so that nothing else will haunt it now that she is gone. He learns to put down the dogs when their eyes stop reflecting light. He learns to live a simple life, a small life. He learns to live as his ancestors lived, or how he imagines they lived. He never learns the secrets hidden at the bottom of the ocean or the terrible one in his wife’s heart. He would not have learned them anyway, but now there is no one left who remembers. There is no memory left to make them true. It is something like absolution.
He learns to repair hoses and pipes and hinges. When the clocks break down and the calendar falls to pieces, he learns to count sunrises. On Sundays he prays to the old gods, but he learns to pray to the new ones as well, the ones who crawled out of the sea. He sits on the couch and watches the sky through the big bay windows. He learns the new colors of the sky. Orange, green, violet. They slurry together and settle into gray like ashes. The sky doesn’t go black at night anymore, and when the stars pass through they look out of place. He wishes he could tell them to leave.
Once in a while the sky is blue again. When this happens, he learns to take a drink from the bottle in the cupboard. He learns to stand close to the window until the blue is all he can see. His eyes are wide, wide, horizon-wide, ocean-wide. The bottle is half-full. He does not worry about rationing it. He imagines that it will not run out before he does.
He doesn’t always sleep. He learns to make candles out of crayons from the bedroom that he’s kept neat since his son left. He puts them on teacup saucers to burn and he plays old songs on his record machine. He learns the words to every one.
He never learns to see the sixth dimension, or even the fifth or fourth. If he could, he might see some very interesting things. He might even understand why the world had to end. But he never learns. He does not wonder. His father taught him not to. He does not meddle in what is above him.
A different person would ask why. A different person would sob. But there are none left.
Of course, he doesn’t know it. When he dies, he will have no idea what dies with him.
He learns that his life is not so different after the end of the world. He keeps to his farm. He walks in and out of doorways in the eternal twilight. He drifts without purpose, with his yawning past and future gathered around him like piles of laundry. He sits on the couch next to the sunken impression in the fabric that is the last trace of a woman he loved. He learns to live in his periphery of ghosts until he falls away.
I’m starting to think the blooming season is a myth That spring is all rain on your neck and Wind in your hair
Childhood is like a snowflake— It kisses you on the eyelashes and melts quickly, leaving the waterline wet and a trail down your cheek
We sleep in cold beds with too many pillows, Roll over next to drafty windows
Before I bought myself blackout shades the Light woke me in the mornings, It was gentle and lonely, elderly Crawling on my little fingers, Ladybug-like and warm
Childhood is like a ladybug— It sits on your windowsill and Crawls on your fingers. It is red, and Orange, and a little yellow all at once
Louise K.
George
George my George I miss how your hands move. I have made them over and over in my mind, drawing childrens’ pictures to fill its empty chambers. That last night you pointed at the stars as if you had never seen them before. It is like someone is threading me through with a needle.
George my George at night I pretend I am taller than your blue mountains. I make-believe you choose me over them. In daydreams we lie on the ground and you touch my face. We pray and are emptied. The darkness in us has all been wiped clean, a page filled and erased. You yield like water underneath my fingers.
George my George I keep your letters in a shoebox. You are a handsome girl with sad eyes and you play the flute. I make my own truth with closed eyes: you sit on the subway beside me. George I cannot believe I love you still. It sits in me like dead blood and keeps me awake, telling stories.
In the black night flying home over Montana you put your head on my shoulder. You write films and I bother the stewardess for more coffee. Your hands are never far from me: they stay where I put them. George in this one we have a parrot. She flies above our heads, a small angel.
Margot S.
Little Bright World
newly autumn sunlight on thick green leaves meeting the gentle shadows cast by concrete and plastic or the sharp lines of a feather propelled by leaking air each darkened window is a scar I miss the things I never knew or the things I knew too well my little bright world; don’t ask me but I love you, I love you whenever.
Petra J.
canis aureus after louise glück
Over the parched mountains, the golden jackal cries, waking solitary in thickets of laurel.
I used to loathe myself for being full of interiors.
All those locked, empty rooms that no one who tried to love me could enter.
Jangling locks with wrong sets of keys, swearing, drawn out silences, the sound of a door.
As though loving is the same as breaching, cracking a person open and planting your flag on each piece.
I never thought that the silence might have something to offer me, never thought that when love leaves
all you have left are your own two hands. Golden jackals primarily live in pairs, but they hunt alone.
As he moves across landscapes like a haunting, the jackal does not speak—
He does not tell his lover, today was a good day, today was a bad day. His mouth is either bloody
or it’s not.
The jackal and I hold our vast and featureless interiors. Not empty as I thought, but filled, instead, with light.
Ari W.
The Oldest Man
I was talking to the oldest man, the oldest one there was he didn’t remember much but when he was younger he killed a rabbit
He killed a younger rabbit with a BB gun like the BB in raBBit, and so he knew about double letters before all the other kids.
he felt so bad.
He felt bad when the bullet flew into the rabbit because who thought he was actually going to hit it?
He felt bad when the rabbit’s fur became dirty and red. It needed a bath.
He felt bad when he thought his mom would yell at him, but he felt worse when she didn’t.
He felt bad when he buried the rabbit beneath the honeysuckle bush and didn’t wash his hands.
But oh, it felt good to pull the trigger
good trigger, bad kid
he didn’t remember much but when he was older he killed a man
He killed an older man with a newer gun, and he forgot how to have fun.
he felt so weird.
He felt weird when the bullet flew into the man because he had actually thought he might hit him.
He felt weird when the man’s uniform became dark red because then it looked more like his own.
He felt weird when he expected to be congratulated, and he felt like an alien when he was.
He felt weird when he didn’t sleep that night, but that’s probably just because he hadn’t slept the night before either. good kid, bad trigger
He got back home and the honeysuckles were streaked with red
He drank one and it was bitter, and he felt bitter
But then he drank a sweet one and it didn’t get better.
Clover D.
Double Autobiography
We are becoming masters of retelling, in the process of writing our stories for faceless observers. Our fingers fly over our keyboards at night, trace symbols on lined paper that only we can understand: summations and proofs of our convergence. There is something illuminating about this mundanity, how the words are buoyant when we see only our reflections in the windows, the sky rubber-black. When we pause in our writing, I ask you, Did you get all your stories straight? There is more to remember than there is time to do so; in living these moments, we have saved each other from something, and through retelling we stretch the threads of life in homage to Scheherazade:
& everything began the night you robbed the bank, when you liberated my immanent trust along with $53. But every story begins before we realize it does: we had to first throw our minuscule bodies at the air, immortalizing last decade’s laughs in oblivion.
& today is our day of glory, preserved by skinned fingers and damp shirts, so we stand in circles drunk on Liquid Death and cheese pizza. We are teetering on the verge of adulthood and unencumbered giddiness, letting shared truth (raucous hypotheticals) flow from our lips like well-aged wine.
& there are days when we are drowning in sweat and in our double crisis of confidence, so we ball up our worries like tin foil and throw them into the metal trash can. We miss every time. We exorcise our carbonated anxiety and run from wall to wall like one body, never so afraid and yet never so free
The fourteenth floor houses almost every one of these memories: from the window by the bike, I see the distance that I could fall and you see only how far I can fly. I write for both of us, because we think too much about the long-gone and the impossible. For now we will wait for when we can drink real champagne to celebrate, for when there will be so much beauty that we can trust the present enough to live without writing everything down.
Hannah B.
