2024 High School Literary Magazine by Saint Ann's School

SAINT ANN’S HIGH SCHOOL LITERARY MAGAZINE

STAFF

Zora A., Eleanor B., Isabelle C., Nola D., Mae G., Emmett J., Dorien J., Frankie K., Claire L., Phaedra L., Casper L., Charlie L., Gracie M., Amu P., Zoe R., Adelaide S., Max S., Laiali T

EDITORS

Nikita M., Lucy R., Katherine S.-R.

FACULTY ADVISORS

Liz Fodaski, Taylor Zhang

Many thanks to the following people for their support and assistance: Kevin Anderson, Jason Asbury, Blair Carswell, Alex Darrow, Eli Forsythe, Tom Hill, Dov Lebowitz-Nowak, Mary Lou Kylis, Evan Liu, Kenyatte Reid, Veronica Rivera, Amanda Robiolio, Aidan Thomas, and Amra Tomlinson.

Thanks also to the English and Art departments, and in particular G.Giraldo, Larissa Tokmakova, and Kimberlee Venable.

We are especially grateful to everyone who submitted work to this magazine.

Saint Ann’s School Brooklyn, New York

www.saintannsny.org

Collateral

My father never shelled his grief, A frozen soldier, Washed up on the shore.

Each scrape at his double door Is a layer closer to the bomb.

Najla crouched beneath the fire, My mother in her arms, A baby doll in bubble wrap.

Every hiss and pop Is a burn in flesh.

They clamp a cicatrix Between their teeth.

It is collateral damage, Too rotten to swallow.

Moaz M.

Don’t Ask the Poet

In the atlantic dark, I like to think of your breath as a comma splice, something to be groaned at. Patching together two uncertain halves.

Not everyone can look like the dirt, the smog on november’s spit, the bark of a london plane, the jowls of an old dog, the bowels of a hospice grandma.

If you asked the poet, you’d think I meant ugly. If forget-me-nots whisper beauty, the rim of gold licking up the day’s end–then you are ugly one hundred times over.

But there’s the way you make me feel strong, eyelashes tiptoeing on cheekbone, scratches sweet under the ear. Your mouth, that chapped and ripped land bordered by chipped-china teeth. You have things like a voice, the plastic in a drifted candy wrapper, dust-bunny hair, the dreams of a bottomfeeder heading up.

For you, I crave to be again a scrappy tin can rusty and worth it.

Lyla B.

Local to Somewhere Else

She sat in a burnt orange seat, riding backwards on an R train at 11:57 a.m., not knowing when the doors would next open. The lights in the tunnel occasionally flashed through the windows, but the glass was smudged and scratched, coated in handprints and dirt. On the ledge under the window, someone had written in block letters the word “Arson.” She squinted at it, crow’s feet emerging at the corners of eyes, searching for a missing letter.

The seat next to her was empty, so she placed her handbag there as if to reserve it for someone she wished were accompanying her. It contained everything she might need in a day: wallet (just for a Metrocard and a few small bills), tissues (only for the offchance of a watery eye), and a small, wrinkled up family portrait taken before she was old enough to be sentimental. She glanced out the window and watched her hair frame her face and the mechanisms of the tunnel pass by at 15 miles per hour. Almost every strand seemed to be graying except for a few remaining raven-hued ones, and the roots had nearly gone white.

In the fingerprinted glass, the rest of the car started to bloom into focus: a young boy sat behind her, a fifty-something man in front of her, and a woman even a few years older than herself sat across the aisle. As she glanced at each of the others, eyes lifted just slightly, all of them looked back at her and then down at their hands or the speckled floor as they met her gaze. Her vision was still clear and had never faltered, and something about the way the light reflected off her brown irises always made it feel as if she were looking at the dimension behind her subject.

Peering gently at the reflection in the window, she studied the boy behind her. Not quite in his teens, he sat alone with a slim book in one hand and a half-eaten pear in the other, eyes casually darting from one word to the next. The grime of the window may have slightly distorted the shadows of his face, but the pattern in which they fell sent a wave of recognition through the woman’s spine, sent through her that unmistakable feeling of a moment you can’t quite place. And there it was: every Friday after school, she would stop at the grocery store on her way home and purchase the fruit and vegetables needed for the next few days’ cooking, and every Friday, she’d run into a boy who’d buy his family’s allotment of yams and cabbages, peaches and pears, softly whistling a tune he’d heard on the radio that week. He possessed a strange ability to pass her an ear of corn or hold a basket for any elderly gentleman and never ask for anything in return, an ability to exude a quiet warmth and politeness without meaning anything by it. Every Friday, they’d exchange a few smiles, at most a few words, and for a year’s worth of Fridays she wished she could summon the awareness to say something beyond a sim-

ple thank you after he held open a door. The boy was still behind her–she could hear the sound of paper on paper as he turned the pages–but the pear had been bitten down to just a core, the connection in the middle so tenuous that it threatened to snap in half. In front of her, the man fiddled with the hem of his shirt, buttoning and unbuttoning the sleeves. The woman across from her was watching him, too, and she spun her necklace chain around as her head tilted up and back down again. She watched the two of them and another aisle of the grocery store painted itself stroke by stroke in her memory. At the meat counter every Friday, she’d join the queue and wait for the cuts of beef for Saturday night’s roast, often kept company by her next-door neighbor, an older woman who kept a few houseplants and house cats, relied on a cane, and ate spaghetti and meatballs every Sunday. They would talk every week, always a variant of the same conversation, and she feared the woman’s kindness, mistaking it for condescension or pity. In a similar way, the butcher terrified and impressed her: the glinting of his knives under the fluorescent light made her small fingers curl tighter around her grocery basket, and his keenness to crack a joke made her even more cautious to enunciate her pleases and thank yous. But now, looking at the middle-aged man and the older woman careening forward in the tunnel with her, she envied how the butcher could slice pork and veal for so many customers yet seem to remember every wrinkle in every face, remember who liked which cut of lamb and whose grandfather had fallen ill. She envied how the elderly woman could carry a conversation every week without letting her expression contort at all the ghosts she saw in every face.

She let her gaze turn towards the doors as the trains seemed to slow into the station. Not even arson could extinguish all the faces that she had seen, all the new ones that she would continue to see as the old ones rippled through her mind, ever evolving. She stood up and regained her balance. Feeling the warm air on her back, stepping forwards into the light, she stood still to catch her breath, while the doors closed and those three strangers sat together in the car, hurtling forward into time.

Hannah B.

The Sentence Fragment Preceding the Fall of Man

And:

First from the waters

Head twisted eyes shut, The mother of daughters

A bridge for the what

It:

Too small to be hated

Yet born from the ground

Young buds it inflated

Like vowel to sound

Was:

So the clock began ticking

With speed all was past A horse with legs kicking For those they shoot fast

So:

A sting for all authors

It sticks under skin

Like serpents and slaughters

The sound is the sin

Ramona S.

Hallelujah

Hallelujah! He doffed his hat to her merrily. Hallelujah, madame! She was a Martello woman, comely as all her type, trailing behind her a wander of children. She averted her eyes and at their aversion her children did the same. Madame, I said hallelujah! She was almost past him, she and her emulous entourage, yet he repeated it nonetheless. For he was the Hallelujaher of Sandycove, no more, no less, wrapped round with grey greatcoat, gumboots planted firmly amid the bustle and tumble of Saturday’s thoroughfare.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah, good gentlemen! He blew warmth to his cupped palms in between hallelujahs. They gave him whiskey, sometimes, or hot cider, on days like these. February days, days when wind wintered old Sandycove and gusted the people this way and that, to and fro on their way to the butcher, the music hall, the lake feathered with hoar-frost and soon to be graven by ice-skate blades.

Hallelujah! Ten letters: ten times he called them out only to see ten pass him. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah all the same! Traipsing, tramping, they passed him, Lombardo ladies, washerwomen, guileless girls in love, the lot. Cool noon February light soaked up the dead leaves and the dead leaves let their veins alight; let them litter themselves among the grey-blue cobblestones, those weathered witnesses to perennial trodding, abraded like the abrasions in manuscripts where lips have kissed the Lord’s image.

Hallelujah! the Hallelujaher smiling said. Clasping it by its upturned brim in the finger-shaped spaces unfelted by his clasping, he doffed his hat once more, his gaze not lingering on any one passerby, but roaming rather up and down, up and around the street he knew as he knew the cup of his own calloused palm. Hallelujah! He pressed his lips to the cobblestones. The cobblestones glistened godly in reply.

Katherine S.-R.

How to Pull Off the Irish Goodbye

I need you to make sure you don’t make a sound—how do you measure the pleasure of leaving? Certainly not by being loud, the best departures, the deepest sleeps were curtained and mouthed, with no worries of who to keep around.

I need you to put down the drink that kept you grounded here. Think about slinking out and then you will become slunk, and once the tint in your breath and the glass that will not get refilled remain, you will not have to be still, not have to explain.

I need you to take the cold on your open shoulders because your coat would just delay you further, let the wind wake you up after a night of smothered smiles. You will be warm soon, and by next noon you will forget the weather that another you bore.

I need you to realize that you will go unnoticed, people have left in bigger ways - I hope you know this. Do not feel guilt, but I know you won’t; do not feel resentment that you are not there, nothing will happen and no one will care. Anyway, you will linger still, just like your wine on the window sill or a finger in dust or a dry-swallowed pill.

I need you to get in your car and pause, and think about the moments that went wrong. The words you misspoke will haunt none but you, like hired ghosts, they will poke you and tire you out, and maybe you will never speak again. Rest your head on the steering wheel like you’re in a movie, let yourself go on a breathing tangent and wait before you start up the engine.

I need you to think that you could be a spy, the newest recruit in the FBI, then shake your head and laugh. No one at that party is funnier than you.

I need you to keep laughing until your stomach hurts, until nothing is funny except the people you just deserted. And your laughter will echo down the halls, maybe the misspeech ghosts are throwing it back at you, teasing. But at least you laughed—how do you measure the pleasure of leaving?

Clover D.

Oyster

The first time I went down to the ocean and sank into the water like sand, dispersed and reforming, I could not return unchanged. We can’t undo the becomings just morph and morph again & when I left you the last time I never could have known I would grow thick, pearly layers around the agitated grain of sand tangled in my hair. If you could see me now if you could see me now I think I’d be the same as ever & someone you have never seen before. There was no warning. The lasts come silently and quickly and who I was, my last souvenir, slips away.

Emmett J.

Letter of Complaint

To: my Alice

I grew up in a house with four square walls. Green, white, blue, yellow. My mom made sure no two were the same color. I rode horses in the summertime and hitchhiked down to the city at night where I’d steal forgotten drinks off barstools and sweet-talk the managers until they changed the music to some jazz instead of whatever crap made its way to the Top 40. Sometimes I even convinced them to switch off the football games on their fuzzy televisions (to much grunting and smashing of pints). But in the summertime I rode horses and drank sticky sweet tea on the neighbors’ rotting porches, summer sun burning my skin like a cherry. You and I stole money from the corner shop register while the cashier slept in a bathroom stall to buy soda pops we drank while treading water and avoiding algae in the lake.

One morning after we’d hitched back from the downtown redlights and midnight junkyards I woke up with a headache to see you had gone. There might have been a piece of your silvery hair on the pillow next to me. My headache got worse. I went back to bed.

Two weeks later I was riding my bicycle through the levees and daring the wheels to stay away from the water. Summer had gone topsy-turvy. Colors inverted. The lake was a murky orange and the grass bright red. My memory of your eyes should have gone red, too, but they were still green. I made friends with a deer and told it stories to pass the time. Its light coat was a pale teal. The summer leaves around us were all scarlet. I asked around town for you but no one ever answered. Ignored me or said they didn’t know who the hell I was talking about. It couldn’t be right since you had stopped in every store in the lower town and at night had parked in cars with the boys who worked behind the counters. Not a word, though. I sat on the side of the highway and tried to find a trucker who’d let me bring the deer in the cargo bed but didn’t have much luck.

The leaves changed and so did my memories of you. Foggy like a midsummer storm. July was now August and I rode up to the mountaintops in yellow Utah and watched the snow melt off the trees. Some cowboys stopped me on the side of the road to ask me questions about my big-city life—I didn’t have the heart to correct them. The half-true stories about you and me and the hotel managers and rooftop concerts were my mythology. They all laughed so dry and asked in their thick cowboy accents about the folktale you became and I waited until I was back in the car to wipe my eyes.

The days moved like I was stuck in syrup; molasses kept my feet down and my head just above the surface. The sun got impossibly hotter and the nights unbearable without the cat-purr of you sleeping on that pillow next to me, stubbed-out cigarette still in hand.

They have to be screwing me over, though, those pale boys behind the shop counters and the wrinkly ladies on porch-swings and the martini-drinking hotel managers. None of them have a goddamn clue who you are. I think I’m starting to lose my mind. Maybe it’s just the deer and the booze. I don’t know. Is this what summer is supposed to be, Alice? Looking around every post office corner and behind every azalea bush for some sight of your round face? Swimming in the Mississippi until my fingers go prunish and pollution-green? I think maybe we should be going to see shitty box-office hits together and riding our bikes through town. I think maybe we should be drinking malts at the drive-in and pretending not to look at each other too long. I think maybe there should just be you and me and your hands all over my waist and your sweet voice reciting sonnets as we sit on the side of the road. So that’s my complaint. That you won’t come back to me. That I’m going crazy looking for you when everyone tells me you were never there.

I tried to call you on the phone but forgot the number. Your mother used to hang around the salon but I haven’t seen her in there lately. You etched something dirty into the wall of the diner but it’s not there anymore. None of the boys can remember your name. The sketch you drew of me seems to have slipped off the wall. My mind, too, is slipping. Time goes blurry when you’re not here. Maybe if you come back the colors will go back to normal. My mother’s orange eyes and the cat’s blue fur. Maybe come back, and the algae in the lake will dry up. Can’t hope for much more.

From: your dark lady

Margot S.

portrait of my love in red and gold

the night i walked up the mountain and fell asleep in a swath of rose-colored blankets, i dreamt about your back. you were walking down the street, and i was walking behind you, your hand pulling mine forward—and i kept staring at the blue-white expanse of your back, your shoulder blades like the folded wings of a prairie falcon, thinking of how you looked cutting and twisting through the water on that last swimming day of the whole year, the fall, just before the water turned cold. your laughter like white birch branches blowing in the wind. you are the apple core of all my poems. those last few days of summer when the heat of august bled into something new. squeezing out those last few drops of gold with our teeth.

Ari W.

The Barn in Falcon Yard

Alice leaned out, whispering to Lore about needing to use the bathroom but being too afraid to ask to go. She had already gone that period and people would find her weird. Lore smiled but didn’t respond. Alice leaned back in and this time sat straighter. They had planned to meet at the base of the stairs after the ceremony had ended. They wanted to do a last wrap-around the school before they never had to set foot in it again.

Tracing the wall’s one odd ridge (a bump in the wallpaper that the school was too lazy to rectify), they followed the hallways down from where they had Mr. Schwartz’s history class freshman year, Ladybug’s health class, and the changing rooms from last year’s gym class, which seemed to eternally ring from slammed lockers and boys shouting. They loved Ladybug—she was an older woman whose last name resembled bug in German.

They stopped in front of a classroom. Physics. Lore wanted to steal some of Ms. Pock’s pens. They were the special kind, she said. The kind that left blotches so wet it felt like a dripping wound. Alice didn’t understand why that was desirable in a pen. Lore slipped inside.

“No, don’t go. We still haven’t seen the west wing. Aren’t we meeting them soon?”

“Give me a minute. Alice,” she growled. “Just a sec.”

“Fine.” Alice acted as a lookout. No one cared about the pens. No one was coming their way. The rest were outside with their parents, still wearing their gowns and holding big bouquets of flowers. Yet she stood in the hallway, nervously checking both left and right, as if she were waiting to cross the street.

Lore came out after a few moments. It really was only a second. She needed to stop worrying about things. She wouldn’t have even gotten in trouble. It would have been Lore. And even then, what could they have done? Which administrator cared that much to postpone their summer vacation to deal with two barely-troublemakers?

They kept walking.

She heard a second set of footsteps after them. When she turned around, though, the hallway was still deserted. Eventually they neared the tip of the east wing. It got too late to hit the West. They turned around to meet the others.

Alice felt dejected. She wasn’t done with her final walk-through.

They went out to the parking lot. Alice looked around, trying to find the pickup truck. Lore knew where it was—the truck dropped her off at school earlier that day. She had watched Tommy park. Some boys were on the truck bed already. Lore swiftly

opened the latch, jumping on. Alice went on after her.

The radio started playing. Someone was in the driver’s seat. It was an oldies station. Alice didn’t recognize the song. Anders started singing. Tommy joined him. Lore laughed. She shouted at Tommy to start driving. Lore pulled a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips from a duffel bag that was stowed under the bench. Alice hadn’t noticed it was there.

“Let’s go to Falcon Yard,” Lore said, chewing loudly. Tommy nodded and started pulling the car out of the space.

Falcon Yard was an old farm. It wasn’t really functional anymore. A woman lived in the house that was on the land but the farm equipment was gone. No animals lived there. Lore went there often. Alice had gone only once.

Anders grabbed the bag from Lore.

“Hey!”

“I want one.” He tossed the bag back to her.

The drive felt long. Lore talked only to Anders—and shouted over to Tommy. Alice’s legs jiggled as the truck went on dirt roads. Her thighs were sticking to the metal seat and every time she lifted them up the skin suctioned onto the seat. She felt hot and gross.

Where were her parents? She didn’t see them at graduation. Should she have looked harder?

Would it be awkward if she asked for some chips? She didn’t really want chips. She wanted to just say something. Break her silence. She would only be in Farmington for a few more weeks before she would drive with her dad to the Arbor for camp. It was her third year as a camp counselor. She liked camp, even if being a counselor meant she was doing more work than the other campers. She wasn’t much older than them. Maybe by five years. Or less. She was excited about seeing Tilda there. They hadn’t talked since January, and that was by the phone. Were they still friends?

The car stopped. Tommy hopped out, holding four beers like they were trophies. Peeking out of his back pocket was a bottle-opener. The car keys made a lump in his front pocket. Lore jumped out onto the dirt floor without opening the latch. Alice was the last to get off. She didn’t know what they wanted to do at Falcon Yard.

It was still light out. Straw kept getting in her shoes.

They entered the barn. It was a few hundred yards from where the car was parked. Sunlight shone through the cracks in the roof, highlighting a straw loft that was hard to get to. There was a rope attached to a hook, that with enough force one could launch themselves up. Alice vaguely remembered thinking she was good at doing this. Or maybe that one time she tried she got lucky. She went first, while Anders went to

shut the door. She got it on her second try. The first time her leg caught the ledge but the swing didn’t have enough momentum. It took Lore three swings.

Lore dug around the straw. She was looking for something.

“It’s not here!” she shouted, looking down at Tommy and Anders.

They clambered up with the rope one at a time. Alice wondered how they could get down. How did they get down last time? Anders left the rope hanging in the middle of the barn. It wasn’t wrapped around a hook by the ledge like last time.

Krak! Pssssssz.

Tommy had opened the beer bottle. Fizz leaked out.

Alice took out her phone. She got a text from Tilda. Thank god. Now she knew they were still friends. Funny coincidence, thinking about her and then getting a message from her.

TR: Are you coming to camp this year? My mom is driving to the post office to mail in my room order. I wrote down amelia but maybe i can change

TR: It’s only in three weeks. And I don’t know if I can wait for you to decide before telling them who I want to bunk with

AS: wait no say you want to be with me i’ll text my mom right now and have her send it in. don’t room with amelia i don’t want to sign up if i’ll be stuck with some rando

AS: please please please wait

AS: my mom said she’ll mail the stuff in tomorrow. put my name down. i’ll put yours down too

Soon she would be at camp.

She hadn’t noticed until now that Lore and Tommy were making out in the corner, on top of the straw.

Anders was lying on his back, trying to light a match for his cigarette. He kept scraping the match against the stripe. Each time he scraped more wood fibers from the match broke. He got a new one when it snapped completely.

Her pocket buzzed. She checked her phone.

TR: sorry

TR: my mom said it was too late she sent it already. i already wrote amelia

For one month she lived next to her, ate with her, hiked with her, washed rubber Birkenstocks with her, sliced pears with her, cut bangs with her, and dug holes for earth olympics with her.

Last summer she and Tilda took camp jobs helping Andy, the camp founder, organize events. They had a pseudo-prom one night. Andy thought Alice and Tilda could figure out how to decorate by themselves. Alice was upset; it seemed like an impossible

task. They only had until that night. At the time Alice had hated it. In retrospect, though, it was the perfect day. She and Tilda spent hours—seven? Maybe even eight if she factored in their lunch break—blowing up balloons, inhaling helium, drawing on poster boards, cutting streamers. They played Juice Newton while dragging the plastic lunch tables into the kitchen for more space and raiding the pantry for little pre-made cookie packets.

And when the other nine counselors saw their progress they were impressed. Julie even said that the room looked so cool and that she couldn’t have done that herself even if she had the whole week. Alice didn’t believe her. It wasn’t that good. But through the transitive property, Julie thought she was cool. Which was cool.

Alice loved Tilda because she made her feel cool and a part of the counselor friend group. Julie only talked to her because she and Tilda were outside-of-camp friends, and assumed if Tilda liked Alice then she was probably cool.

Cool. Cool. She was cool. Alice had to reassure herself of this every once in a while.

Now what though? Should she even go to camp now? Without bunking with Tilda? Who else did she even like in camp? She couldn’t think of anybody. Julie? God no. Also didn’t Julie move away anyways?

And more importantly, what was left for her in Farmington if she stayed? In Country Day High? Lore had Tommy and her family house in Cape Cod. Alice didn’t even know Anders at all. They just hung out in the same space every once in a while.

Tssz. Anders finally lit the match. He put it against the cigarette and shook it out. He tossed it far across the barn. It fell underneath the loft.

Alice laid down. The straw made the nape of her neck feel itchy. She spread her legs out. She pulled her hair out of the way and closed her eyes.

Lore screamed.

Alice sat up, looked at Lore and then looked straight ahead, following her gaze. The barn had caught on fire. She was groggy. She wanted to lie down again. Lore scrambled up, jumped off the ledge, and miraculously grabbed onto the rope. She ran outside. Tommy and Anders jumped off and followed her.

Why didn’t they wait for her? Should she jump and catch the rope, or try to land straight onto the straw pile. Straw was flammable. What if some of the straw caught on fire before she got out of the pile?

She was probably safer trying to grab the rope.

She readied her stance and closed her eyes. Why did she close her eyes? She needed to see. She opened her eyes again. And then she lept.

She missed. She fell hard onto the floor.

Chkik. Hss. Pwp!

There was a pop. Was that her leg?

She tried standing up, and cried out in pain. The fire waded towards her. Alice started crawling towards the door, scuffing her knees on the itchy straw. She couldn’t see. The barn looked the same in every direction. A gawky and scruffy red, vaguely-retro paneling, and flames. Following the night cold—and fleeing from the heat behind her— she reaches the outside.

Thd.

A wooden plank fell against the hay. The fire reached the upper walls. That was quick. She was lucky she got out. She looked down at her leg now. Her brown nylon legs were torn and melted. The patchy nylon glazed over a sharp lump in her calf.

Now she could see.

But where was Lore? And the others? She’d crawl to the car. Maybe they were there.

Her hands swiped over the wood chips as she moved. Her fingers sliced open. She looked up, and saw the truck still in the same place. Thank god. They didn’t leave her there.

Lore wasn’t there. Neither were Tommy and the other one. The driver’s seat. It was empty. Tommy definitely left the keys in the car. She clicked open the glove box and grabbed the keys. The car doesn’t start at first. Growling at her, it hesitated to move. But eventually does.

Where was Lore? They couldn’t have walked home. It was too far.

Alice drove through the farm; it was so dark she couldn’t find the main road they first came on. She saw the main house, which was settled haphazardly in the middle of the farm.

The lights were on, and a woman’s voice reached Alice through the open kitchen windows. Smoke squeezed out of the raggedy chimney. The shadow of a man crossed the window.

Trailing from the house was the road. Alice pulled out her phone to set up the GPS for home. Forty minutes. She turned the radio on. The oldies station was playing Juice Newton.

Anaka P.

Echoes

Follow me to new and frightened mornings (Follow me to new and frightened mornings) Where echoes, left unanswered too long, linger (Where echoes, left unanswered too long, linger) Follow echoes, frightened and new, where long, unanswered mornings, too, left me to linger.

I hear my voice come back from the dark tunnels (I hear my voice come back from the dark tunnels) And see warped reflections in rivers (And see warped reflections in rivers) Dark reflections come in tunnels, and, warped from the rivers, I hear back my voice.

The wind carries another whole world within (The wind carries another whole world within) In past conversations, nothings, I’ve found change (In past conversations, nothings, I’ve found change) The past carries conversations with another wind, In whole worlds, I’ve found, nothing’s changed.

(Follow whole worlds, past rivers and tunnels to frightened conversations where nothing’s new. I’ve found dark changes in mornings. I come from the warped me the wind carries within. Linger, and hear back, left unanswered long, in another reflection— my voice, too, echoes.)

Maisie S.

The cloth–some salivated subversion, a barrier rubbing threadbare with every cloying kiss. Her chin digs into his. His nose digs into hers.

Divine symmetry.

I doubt you would have been painted with eyes. I doubt there’s anything behind that cloth at all. Just two pairs of empty sockets and a rough outline of your drawn-from-memory, drooping face. I bet you’re bitter about it.

I bet whatever raw flesh and muscle you retain seethes as your lips meet your cloth meets his cloth meets his lips, four degrees of distinction and disorder.

Callum H.

The Lovers II by Rene Magritte

Hope it rises on gossamer wings of confetti caught in an updraft on lost breath plumed against windowpanes & palms pressed to frosted february glass on a blanket tossed over a street sleeping man by a stranger’s hands.

it rises like a cresting wave before the tidal plunge.

it wakes you at 3am to write this poem wrenched from fitful sleep you unpick life’s seams; shape a misshapen cube of clay into clean water that bubbles in your throat, twist curlicues of smoke/terror/flame into an aubergine night, silent, still strung with fairy lights mold a mother’s thickening embrace strong enough to hold the hiss of pain, the thud of missiles, the pomegranate stain on your face/family/land.

it is the spluttering current that meets pain, vitriol, courage & suffering with open palms. 12:12 make a wish as an officer with a careworn smile hands you a crisp american passport suddenly your country is ours & your face is mine suddenly worry is a bald eagle & uncertainty a bison. suddenly you throw your arms around a tidal wave & catch it before it breaks.

hope: the earth-shaker, the walk-on-water-change-maker the caduceus-bearer, the cultivator be the ocean as the lightning bolt strikes be the hope because you are hope.

open your palms to the future & let it alight on your windowsill.

Adelaide S.

Pointed Arches

Wednesday mornings, they all prayed in solitude, hands clasped upon their identical chestnut desks in their identical chambers. By eleven, the delicate click clack of Mary Janes on marble would echo through the convent as they descended to the kitchen for lunch. Elisa would sit in her usual seat between Sister Ana Maria and Sister Teresa and eagerly recount Mother Superior’s mistake during Night Prayer. For the entire ceremony, her prayer book had been upside down. Elisa had been sitting in the pew closest to the front and felt it was her duty to alert her, but Mother’s glorious expression—her pale lips twisted into a small smile, her eyes shining with tears—had given her pause. Mother Superior was talking to God, Elisa was sure of it. She didn’t want to interrupt.

Holy Trinity, one God, have Mercy on me. Now, Elisa breathed in the earthy scent of chestnut wood. These silent days sometimes made way for loneliness to creep in. Not the kind she felt on the crowded train station in Naples, surrounded by beggars wrapped in scarves and men smoking pipes and children screaming don’t go, don’t go, but a dull longing she knew would fade by dinnertime.

Where was she? Holy Mary, Mother of Mercy, pray for me. Stop thinking about Naples! Stop thinking, for once. If she didn’t drift away so often, maybe she would finally hear God, see Him even, and He would confirm that her hours of solitary whispering reached beyond the pointed arches of the convent. She never doubted His existence and that people like Mother Superior could communicate with Him. She was certain He listened to her. But did He listen to Elisa? How could He, when she was always so distracted? Don’t think about Naples, don’t think about what they’ll serve for lunch. Don’t think about Giulia. Elisa drew in a breath and began again: Holy Mary, Mother of Mercy, pray for me.

A muffled tap-tap-tap. She wrenched open the impossible chestnut door to the figure of young, doe-eyed Sister Nicholas, whom she rarely saw because she was always busy greeting visitors, and Elisa never had any visitors.

“Good morning. I apologize for interrupting your silent prayer,” Sister Nicholas chirped.

“Why have you come to see me?” Elisa ignored her apology.

“Somebody has called upon you. A bespectacled man. Is he your brother?”

Sister Nicholas was always prying.

A bespectacled man? Surely they had the wrong Sister Elisa. There were many others; it was likely that at least one had a bespectacled brother. Perhaps this man was given the wrong address, she suggested, but Sister Nicholas insisted.

“He asked for Elisa Maria Agosti. That is your given name, isn’t it?”

Click clack, click clack. Elisa shuffled down the marble steps. Everyone else was still shut in their chambers, well into the morning prayer by now. Sun streamed through the stained glass windows; particles of dust danced in its glow. She dreaded the awkward conversation which would ensue between her and this bespectacled man, whether he would greet her as a daughter or a sister or an aunt, and how he would react when he realized he had come to the wrong convent. It had been ages since she had spoken with anyone besides her Sisters, Mother Superior, and the priest.

Now, she stepped out into the crisp air, walking briskly through the arched stone tunnel which led to the entrance. The breeze rippled through her habit. On the other side of the tunnel, she could make out the figure of what she assumed was the bespectacled man. He was standing away from her, facing the mountains, his tall frame half-swallowed by an enormous tweed overcoat. Upon hearing her footsteps, he turned around.

“Leo?”

He was hardly recognizable, with cropped gray hair and tortoiseshell spectacles. His forehead was lined. A gold watch caught her eye. His old one had been smaller, with a brown leather band. Hers was the same, she wore it still. A wedding gift from his aunt.

“Elisa!”

He pulled her into an embrace—mechanical and efficient. He smelled different. Some kind of cologne.

“Why didn’t you write me? I-I would have liked to prepare for your visit,” Elisa stammered, too stunned to hide her irritation.

“I apologize. Believe me, I am just as surprised as you are.”

He had been visiting his wife’s family in Turin. They had all gone off to see a film by the father’s friend (they were sophisticated people, friends of artists), so Leo, who found films unbearably boring, decided to go for a drive through the mountains instead. His oldest friend Antonio, an avid traveler, had advised him to take Passo dello Stelvio, and an hour into the drive he noticed a sign for the convent.

“I followed the signs, and arrived within the next hour. I had no idea it was so close.”

“What’s her name?” Elisa asked, forgetting there were more pressing matters at hand other than his new wife.

“Who? Oh, yes. Adele. Adele Verga.”

Verga. The name was vaguely familiar from furniture advertisements in the papers. Their business was famous, they were millionaires, probably. The watch and the

cologne and the spectacles.

“When did you...”

“Three years ago. In May,” he added, as if she could be equally curious about the season. As though reading her mind, he offered:

“She has two children at the university. They’re not very fond of me, but I don’t mind.”

Two children. He would attend their graduation ceremony, and he would probably cry. He had wept during the birth, louder than little Giulia herself.

“I haven’t forgotten her. I think back to the baptism every day. That was the last time I ever prayed,” Leo said softly, again seeming to read Elisa’s thoughts. The priest solemnly lowering the child into the water. Her thick, black tangles dripping as he lifts her out, her bellows reverberating through the cathedral. Elisa watching from the first pew, like she watched Mother Superior during Night Prayer, unnerved, longing to snatch Giulia from the arms of the priest and dry her with the skirt of her pale yellow dress. The priest holding the child high above his head, her shrieks ringing out beyond the pointed arches, all the way to heaven, farther than Elisa’s prayers ever—

“I don’t ride the train anymore.” He sounded strangely hopeful. “Does it help, being here?”

Did it help, did what help, help what?

“I don’t know.”

His watch sparkled.

“Does it help to be in the city?”

“Sometimes,” Leo admitted, as though confessing a sin. Something tugged at Elisa’s chest, and she knew she could not bear to be here, with him, any longer.

“I need to leave. I need to finish my morning prayer,” she announced, careful not to let her voice waver. He nodded.

“I’ll come here again next time we visit. I want to see you again,” he said, but she had already turned back towards the tunnel.

Click clack up the marble steps. By now, everyone was shuffling downstairs for lunch in droves of black and white. Elisa’s heart was still pounding. Leo, who she thought was dead or in America, with two grown children and a wealthy wife and probably a small white dog. In Turin, near the university, near a park and a library and thousands of people. Thousands of people and hundreds of little girls with dark curls. Did it help? Sometimes.

When would God reveal Himself to her? Nine years ago, talking to him had been enough. The act itself, resting her head on the desk and letting her thoughts cycle and swerve, had given her solace. Now, she had seen Mother Superior pray every day, seen her as she not only spoke but was understood. She had thought being a nun required one to give oneself entirely to somebody who could give nothing in return. But Mother and her Sisters and the priest seemed to think it was the opposite—they constantly thanked God for His kindness, as though their devotion were something they owed Him. One day, Elisa asked Sister Anne Marie and Sister Teresa if God ever spoke to them. They gave her a funny look and told her that of course He spoke to them, He spoke to them every time they sat down to pray. He was always with them, guiding them.

“Don’t you feel him here?”

Did she? He certainly never spoke to her. She heard only her own voice when she prayed, an endless loop of the same thoughts over and over.

In the chapel that night, Elisa sat in the first pew again. Mother Superior’s prayer book was rightside up this time. On her way to the chapel, Elisa had decided to offer God an ultimatum of sorts. He had to speak to her tonight. For the past nine years, she had blamed herself for her ineptitude, but now she wondered if it was His fault. Maybe he was non confrontational, like Leo, like all men when they feel responsible. Holy Trinity, one God, have Mercy on me. Holy Mary, Mother of Mercy, pray for me. Holy... Peeking above the page, Elisa saw that Mother Superior’s prayer book was upside down again. How was that possible? Had she turned it herself? Mother had that serene smile on her face. Elisa felt the usual pang in her chest, which she now recognized as jealousy. Then, curiosity. Perhaps the upside down book had never been a mistake. Perhaps it helped Mother Superior, allowed her to really speak rather than recite the same text He had heard thousands of times. Elisa reckoned she had some of the prayer memorized, and she could fill in the blanks with the thoughts which always cycled in the background.

Hoping nobody would notice, she slowly rotated her prayer book. The text was foreign, indecipherable, stretches of strange shapes and meaningless negative space. Holy Trinity, one God, have Mercy on me. Holy Mary, Mother of Mercy, pray for me. Let the trains bring home the fathers, let the heap of pink fabric and black curls rest on the dusty tracks. Let a philanthropic millionaire (Adele Verga, maybe) stop when she sees a beggar at the station. Let her and Leo attend the graduation and weep. Let me sit in silence without it gnawing at me. Let me see her, some time. Show me to her room when I arrive.

Ellie P.

Hell is empty.

His silver spires, towering, complete with roaring fires, waste their breath on promises they won’t keep. they look for souls to fill the mire. come back, they say. Lucifer is lonely.

Here, Our lives have been reduced to ash— the Damned rage rampant, unabashed— Demons dream in corners. seven sins, emerged from the inferno, paint the city, red and deadly, pencil pointed to the starry sky.

So, yes, Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.

Lizzie

This Woman Is Jesus

Her foot taps and her mouth is slack and her eyes are so very blue. The chair is plastic and it squeaks every time she shifts, like a puppy and she’s kicking it over and over again and it’s on the ground bloody murmuring bruising silent soft still gone. Then she takes the carcass to her backyard and plants it and in the spring grows a rosebush blank of petals, only thorns. The dog’s name was Jeremy. She’d planned on keeping it forever but then it died after only a week, how cheap and inconsiderate, and now she could never name anything Jeremy ever again so might as well not get married or have kids or be happy. Or whatever.

She can feel the space between her and the other people. Not just because they’re three feet apart, like there’s some plague for screw-ups going around. No, she can feel it: thrumming inside her, nestling into the gaps in her holy holey heart, infecting her blood. Personally, she doesn’t mind the feeling. When she has panic attacks—a common occurance nowadays, or whatever—she finds herself wishing they went on longer. Something about how they force her to breathe fast and open and loose. Something about how they make people on the streets scamper away like dumb rats. Something about the power.

So this space is good. She shifts her chair back a bit more, three and a half feet now. She clenches her fists and feels blank air, digs her nails into her palms and catches a vein and now everything’s red, dripping onto the plastic and then to the linoleum and then it’s drowning everyone in the room and they’re all floating corpses and she’s parting the red sea and leaving the other screw-ups in the dust and driving her Toyota up to the moon.

Her body grows numb in the chair and she can’t tell if it’s emotion or age. She feels a bit woozy. She feels stiff. She feels, and it’s weird, she doesn’t usually do that. It makes her insides squirm, the worms are colonizing her intestines and she can’t do anything about it. Alcohol trickled into her life like a slimy little slug in a sequin dress just big enough to cover its little slug bits. So, yes, it was noticeable, but the sequins were so very pretty, and she loves power. She loves power and gets drunk to feel more of it, lets the burn turn her into a puppeteer. Her limbs are marionettes: tearing out her hair, kissing girls in street corners, calling her therapist to profess her love for him then laughing and hanging up when he says it back. She knows it messes her up but when she drinks she is dirt, she is a raven, she is nature itself and she is the fruit of the world.

A couple years ago she tried therapy but it was too beige. After a year, she worked up the courage to see her therapist in person and he turned out to be her high school boyfriend and a few days later they were dating again except for an hour every

Tuesday afternoon when she sat dumbly on his sad beige sofa. The theraboyfriend said she had a God complex, except he called it anxiety. “Anxiety is my drug,” she replied, “and you’re making me really high.” He asked if this was her flirting with him and she said nothing and he told her that he was sorry about that, but maybe it wasn’t really him, maybe it was some trauma elf making a mess in her brain, let’s unpack that. All she thought was that the elf seemed nice and sexy and cool, so later that day, she broke up with her beige-hearted shrink over text, asked out the elf, and moved on.

The plastic chairs have heads and one of the heads is talking. Weird. Its name is Cindya because its parents couldn’t decide on one name, so might as well have two. Also weird. In the technical sense she did have parents, but they hadn’t spoken since she’d emancipated herself at the age of twelve and gone to join the circus. It turned out she was a great cannonball, the most enthusiastic they’d had by far. With the gunpowder in her lungs she felt alive, and when she emerged, covered head to toe to teeth in soot, she felt like dust itself. She felt death, life, she felt the good and the evil and the simple and the complicated. She felt queen of the world, at least until the applause came and she remembered she had shaky bones.

Cindya is talking about wanting to kill herself, and she’d feel bad if everyone else wasn’t nodding their heads sympathetically. One chair is crying. God, it’s not like this is the surprise of the century. Cindya is a model depressed woman. She talks about hating her one son and feeling guilty for it and then hating herself and on and on and on, and would somebody please strangle her already, that ungrateful cow, or whatever. Cindya is not special, not here. When she leaves she gets to go back to her family and her house and everyone treats her like she’s their perfect angel. Her parents bought her a brand new car for her sixteenth birthday, and when she wanted to be an artist instead of a lawyer they smiled and said they loved her, and when her nice nice husband cheated on her with the delivery nurse she stayed with him anyways because she couldn’t let her perfect son grow up in a broken home. Cindya has a three-ply safety net. Meanwhile, it’s like this: the one friend she’d had in life, the trapeze artist, fell out of the sky one day and snapped her neck in half. Shut up and move on, Cindya.

She kind of wants a drink right now. She used to drink alone, in quiet corners of time, but now she only drinks around other people—not for safety’s sake, nor fun’s, but for the noise and whirl and thrill. She can do whatever she wants when she is drunk. Her body is a temple, plundered by a new, better, boozier religion, twisted into a woman she doesn’t remotely know but wholly admires. She’ll hit on a married man, steal his ring, pawn it for next month’s rent. Or, if she doesn’t feel like her landlord deserves it, she’ll blow the cash on scratch-offs and a new knife set. Cindya probably has fifty knife sets, and a Le Creuset, probably the whole rainbow, probably makes casseroles and

cookies and “Let’s go Brady!” Rice Krispie treats in them for her sad sack son’s soccer team. Shut up, shut up, shut up. The bar: music and flirting and the saccharine burn of a cocktail that makes her throat feel open and alive. There’s one right down the street to the left, called “Sharon’s,” right across from a women’s shelter, isn’t that just so nice of Sharon, taking care of lost women like that. She wonders if Sharon is even real. Probably as real as Cindya.

Who has stopped talking about her stupid life and resolved into melty, watery plastic. The chair next to Cindya squeezes her hand, tight, then starts talking about how its parents never loved it and it moved in with its grandma at fourteen because the stench of hatred was too unbearable, and when grandma died two years later there was no one but it couldn’t go back so it went nowhere instead. Yada yada yada. All that matters is that the chairs are getting closer and her mouth is drying out and does she remember the English language? She must, because she thinks, but all she knows now is that stupid dead Jeremy dog with its blood rattling up the inside of her head. When she opens her lips all that pours out is blood, and when she tries to listen the blood clogs up her eardrums, and when she breathes in she snorts up red red red red red. Agh!

She rehearses: I joined the circus. I killed my dog but I was seven so it wasn’t, I mean, it isn’t my fault. My parents abandoned me, or I emancipated myself, or whatever. I hate Cindya, but don’t kill yourself based on that because nothing I say matters, and also you’re kind of funny. Why are you all chairs and why are you talking? I want to blow up this place, pass out at the bar, and wake up in three years. I kissed my therapist and it was really bad, but he had a twin sister and we got along swell and dated for six years. The alcohol feels like slugs. The alcohol feels like slugs. The alcohol feels like slugs.

The chairs are getting closer and closer and closer and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She can’t say any of that. She doesn’t feel any of that. She can’t feel the power anymore, and she doesn’t know how to get it back. The alcohol feels like slugs if the slugs were dictators of the world. No. No! The space is tugging on her and it is frantic, a massage therapist with inch-long acrylic nails in the most violent green possible, digging over and over into her neck and face and feet and lower back. She doesn’t know what to do, where to be, who to be, what and why—

And all at once she is quiet. Her foot is not tapping. Her teeth are not chattering. Her fingernails are not click-click-clacking. The stagnancy is infuriating, she hates this, hates it so much. As she looks into the gaping mouth of silence, she dares it to eat her. Swallow her whole like a handful of Xanax. Lick its lips for crumbs and run its tongue along its teeth so it might remember her flavor forever. There there. No more plastic chairs, no more circles, no more pulling or pushing or being. Just the esophagus of quiet.

She realizes how so very alone she is, how so very stupid. How so very small. Her jaunt in the circus is a speck compared to the greatness of the world. Her dead dog Jeremy and his awful thorny rosebush? Well, there are thousands of Jeremies, and thousands of roses, saved aside for other, greater people to find first. She is not special. She broke her therapist’s heart and got with his twin sister for fun, for fun, she gets drunk with strangers for fun, she pretends she hates a woman who wants to kill herself, for fun for fun for fun. How so desperately sad.

But here is this circle. Here are these chairs, messy and incomplete. They are all failures, each of them, failing in every which way. They find dead ends no matter where or to whom they turn. They sing songs and the pitch is off and the notes squeak and they realize they have perpetual laryngitis, of the courage variety. But together? All together? Well, together they are fantastic. Each of these miserable, failing chairs are humming and alive and trembling with beauty and breath and personhood. They are full on themselves. They are really, truly fantastic.

The quiet will evaporate soon, so she seizes it, sinks her fingertips into its flesh and doesn’t let go. Not ever. Her throat stirs, quaking into motion, and when she opens her mouth a sound comes out, maybe the beginning of an old song, maybe one her parents liked, maybe one they danced to whenever they felt like loving. They might even have taught her that dance, and she just forgot, because she does things like that. She grips her knees, tight tight tight. The chairs lean in, anxious, holding, hugging her. She feels the safety net, poised to catch her errant words and the power she never really had. It’s time to shed skin. She molds her lips into the shape of words:

“My name is Jenny,” she whispers, “and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hello Jenny,” the chairs reply.

Kai M. S.

Passing the Good Silver

Her smoke is carried up to the pomegranates by the breeze

Take off and land, carry a message to the other coast

Slices of beef are at the base of her house of cabbage and bean sprouts

The tea kettle sings minuets; its body would burn her palms

Take off and land, carry a message to the other coast

Cleaning the knives with water and geraniums out the window

The tea kettle sings minuets; its body would burn your palms

At high tide small creatures bite your ankles and peel the doubt from your skin

Cleaning the knives with water and geraniums out the window

You polished the cable car swinging on the bracelet chain: where next?

At high tide small creatures bite my ankles and peel the doubt from my skin

Warmth on her spine as luminescence shoots through the clouds

I polished the cable car swinging on the bracelet chain: where next?

At night the boats pass in the harbor, lights reflecting in her eyes

Warmth on your spine as luminescence shoots through the clouds

She soaps the Buddha’s hand and the dirt transfers to her fingernails

At night the boats pass in the harbor, lights reflecting in my eyes

Once, a Christmas ornament cracked in my grasp, glass and glitter

You soap the Buddha’s hand and the dirt transfers to my fingernails

Night sky with airplane blinks, stars, moon

Hannah B.

Flashy sign: THE DEBTORS’ CASINO. A bent up old man with sun spots, whitening hair, and thick framed glasses walks in, checking all around him. He heads in.

Inside the old flickering lights that once flashed their bright colors in your eyes sputter feebly, trying to make just a minute more of light. Two older men, one with a gray mustache and newsboy hat, the other with darker skin, saggy jowls, and a wooden cane sit at a poker table, dealing out cards (very, very slowly). The first man struts (again, very slowly) towards the other two, getting a feel for the place. He lowers himself down into the stiff chair.

“You here to play?” says the man with the cane (Dain) to the man with glasses (David).

“Deal me in,” David responds.

The third man (Ivan), nods in acknowledgement of the third player. Dain deals out another hand, but David stops him.

“Redeal. So it’s fair and square,” he grunts.

Dain sighs and shuffles again, beginning to deal them out again. Once everyone is settled, David tries to pick up a conversation.

“What Church do you’s go to?” he asks.

“Church? Bah!” retorts Ivan. “Tell me about the big man with the lightning bolts and I’ll listen.”

“One word: Buddha,” Dain nods.

“Huh,” David ends.

A pause in which they all look up.

“All in,” Dain breaks their stares. The other two nod, slowly looking away from the ceiling; vast swirling gold bands of light twist and turn, the arches adorned with intricate black and blue patterns. Dain looks up again, perhaps seeing something he didn’t see before. He shakes his head, and shoves his chips forward.

Ivan abruptly stands up, and walks over to the vending machine, adjusting his cap. He stands there for a while, punching buttons and waiting. He turns around, looks around, sighs, and heads back to their table. Sitting down, he sighs again. Dain and David look at each other, then stare around them, noting the few other people sitting in the silent casino. The other populated tables have no one really sitting at them, but simply faceless bodies.

Small blind, big blind. 2, 4, 6 cards. Ace, clubs, diamonds. Piling up. Tired bodies and irritated minds. The lights flicker, the ceiling closes in on them, no one else, not the faceless inhabitants of the other tables, not the man standing in the parking lot outside,

smoking a cigarette. Feeble lights come together to make a large orb of flashy casino lights. The orb settles into the middle of their table and emerges from it in a new form in front of the three men.

“Jesus Christ,” says David.

Dain nods slowly, in understanding perhaps.

“Knew it,” mutters Ivan.

The form glows harshly over them all, as it flips up a few cards, changing the numbers into its letters of choice. G-O-O-D E-V-E-N-I-N-G.

“God?” David whispers, tears of joy forming in his eyes. Dain scoffs at David, Ivan shakes his head.

N-O.

“...B-Buddha?” Dain stutters out, now in raptures.

N-O.

“Zeus,” Ivan says, softly but surely. “It’s the light, I’m telling you’s…”

N-O.

Silence. A whirring noise. The vending machine has started spitting bags of chips and packets of cookies out of the pick-up box, and soon they pile up, compiling to a sea of snacks on the maroon-carpeted floor. The plastic crinkles its way over the vast expanse of the casino, more mass than should be held by vending machines. More and more bags come out, so many that the three men are now knee-deep in them. They all look to Not-God-Buddha-or-Zeus, but it’s disappeared. Wading through the wrappers, Dain makes it to the door of the casino, holding it open for Ivan and David. When he opens it, though, the packets spill onto the asphalt, shiny from rain. They all manage to escape to the parking lot, running as fast as their respective ages allow.

Finally safe, backed up against the farthest reaches of the parking lot, they look up into the casino’s windows. Ivan gasps as they follow the orb of light with their fixed gazes. David points to another glowing figure, and soon they look all around, watching as yellow-lighted orbs made up of the dying casino lights float past them, not noticing the three men who stumbled upon the DEBTOR’S CASINO one strange night.

Camille G.

A Shattered Window Collected

Out the window Time passes.

A cataract Of frost sublime On the window grows.

III

I was the knight anointed By the heavenly hues Of angels and saints Petrified in the stained glass window.

The ghost of Wings splayed open Are remembered on My lying window’s false sky.

A window’s shard, Now a child’s precious treasure Sits with sand, shells, and rocks In swim trunk pockets.

A spider’s web On the window cracked Catches souls like bugs.

VII

Through the window

Warm light streams in On beams of gold dust,

VIII

Cars climb the walls; Silent pilgrims of the night.

Camera obscura

Of a window’s eye.

Small fingers

Mark hearts and smiles

In laughing breath And fade on the window.

X Myself

And the sea, By the windows faint reflection, One.

XI Out the window Time passes.

Sam H.

Down with the Ship

In the last days of New York City, we explored the option of moving underground. I had been flipping through a magazine when a particular bunker struck my fancy. Without any dollar bills to my name, I paid the realtor in quarters and dimes.

“I’m taking my artist collective underground with me,” I told him while he counted the coins. “We’ve been together for five years, close as sailors.” With the transaction complete, I found myself the proud owner of a beautiful underground space. When it came to the necessities, we packed heavily. Amazon boxes were filled with raw penne, with skim milk, with beans and Diet Coke. We stuffed fitted sheets with space heaters, Tamagotchi keychains, bars of lavender soap, scented candles, and fuzzy socks. We rolled double-seated strollers filled with Shakespeare down the block. We poured wine into our guitars. For my contribution, I brought an enormity of tomato seeds. I had saved them up for years, hidden within jewelry boxes and compact mirrors, tucked like babies in bed between book pages. On the third of December, we kissed goodbye to our Brooklyn loft, to stationary stores, to museum gift shops and impassioned subway musicians, and made the descent underground.

In the bunker, I set my sights on cultivating the seeds. I hoped that with time and attention I could grow us a plentiful garden, one that could satiate our physical and spiritual needs. After many months of green fruit and spiky vines and heat lamps hung from the ceiling by knit scarves, these dreams came to fruition, and it was that very garden that kept us sane, kept us creative.

Life in the bunker proved to be a dance between scarcity and excess. We would go days consuming nothing but rice cakes and black beans, tea with no tea bags, the rinds of oranges. Then, suddenly, we would turn to the tomatoes. During these frenzied feedings we threw aside our neckties and dress shoes and expensive watches, and became worshipers of the fruit. We crushed the red gems between our teeth, between our fingers; we filled our throats with cherry-colored nectar. The juices dripped down our necks and dyed our clothes, stained the carpets. We wrote plays about tomatoes, developed film photography involving tomatoes. Someone had brought a tattoo gun, and with it we tattooed tomatoes on our backs, our chests, our foreheads. New York City -- subway fares and iced coffee and five-cent reusable bags -- became a distant memory.

As our days below ground stretched toward eccentric eternity, we noticed the quality of our bunker deteriorating. It started with rain water seeping through damp tiles, cracks zigzagging behind the loveseat. Our electricity spasmed in and out; our milk curdled. We convened a meeting to address this problem, and it was in this way that we began to see two clear options. Firstly, we could leave behind our way of life, our temple

of art and of course our tomatoes, and venture back above ground into the unknown, now foreign, world. Secondly, we could stay and face the demise of the bunker, go down with the ship. We could leave all that we had built or stay with it until the end. We put it to a vote, and decided to stay.

The bunker, once a vessel for the survival and longevity of our art and our lives, had now become our stage, our Rockefeller Center, our tomb. As the walls around us quivered, threatening to give way, we took once again to the fruit.

Mae G.

Ugly Resolutions

My resolution for this year stares sideways through the bathroom mirror as I kneel beside the toilet.

My resolution for the last yells back at me when I open the refrigerator door.

My resolution for the next keeps its back pressed up to mine so stubbornly I’m beginning to think it doesn’t have a face at all.

In fact, they’re all lacking one feature at the minimum, but I don’t mind; I’m not the superficial type.

Moaz M.

How To Be a Loser

First, try to be a normal teenager. Cut your bangs with craft scissors in your bathroom. Really fuck it up. Accidentally have microbangs. When you go downstairs from your ‘barber shop,’ your mom looks at you with that pitying, confused look and says, “Oh, sweetie… what did you do? Is this a cry for help?” She hugs you and rubs your back in an attempt to comfort you, but you don’t hug her back. You push her away and say, “I like it, I really like it.” She knows your fib but disregards it and says, “Well, alright, as long as it was intentional… I still love you,” and kisses your forehead. In the confinement of your bedroom, you look into your reflection and let hot tears stream down your cheeks. After school, you go to the closest salon with a discolored sign that says ‘Walk-ins Welcome!’ but the 30-something-year-old will pick at the tiny brown coils that caress your forehead and say, “I wish I could help you, but you’re a lost cause. We’ll just have to wait for it to grow out.” She offers to help even out the back a bit, but you sit with your legs crossed the entire appointment, and without your knowledge, the back of your hair is uneven for the next six months. You wear a hat to try to cover the damage, but eventually, you succumb to the horrible haircut you inflicted on yourself. Learn how to have a crush. Sit next to the cutest guy in your Bio class. Your palms sweat a little. You hardly pay attention because you’re too busy doodling and ensuring your bangs look OK. They look bad. You look stupid. And now, on top of that, you’re bad at Bio. On a day you feel confident, you stick your pencil case in the depths of your bag, turn to him, and ask, “Can I have a pencil?” He looks down at the pencil in his hand, briefly looks at your face, and says, “Sorry, this is the only one I got,” and shrugs. You take the rejection to heart. In the next class, you sit in the farthest possible seat from him. You never look him in the eye, even if his gaze somehow drifts in your direction. On your walk home, you blast “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” by The Smiths. You don’t know if you even really liked him, but you blame the rejection on your haircut and being a teenager. You hate yourself, and you hate your life. Go to your first party. Go with some people in a pre-existing friend group that offers you friendship out of pity. You are nervous. You wear your Smiths shirt. You stare at Morrissey’s face, warped on the side of your ribcage. You wonder why he resonates with teenage girls so much. You take a car to your friend’s house, exchange bleak words, and walk to the party. Your new friends suck. They are too loud and too outgoing, and they know everyone, and you do not. You arrive and are greeted by a living room full of teenagers and a gray haze in the air. You squeeze through the pockets of small talk

and find yourself in front of a table full of multicolored drinks. You grab a red Solo cup and fill it with ginger ale. You are not comfortable getting drunk with these people, and you have never been drunk, except for when you were 13 and your mom let you have Champagne on New Year’s Eve, and you had six by the end of the night. You start thinking too hard, even though parties are not the place you should think, and you know that. You become uncomfortable by over-intellectualizing the idea of parties and their semi-animalistic nature, and suddenly, the beer pong and the loud music no longer seem enticing. You go into the backyard. You do not know where your friends went. They are probably having fun. You are not. You sit at the picnic table. Two people are making out in one corner, and a guy is peeing in the other. You agree with your previous statement that teenagers are similar to animals. You stare awkwardly into the depths of your red Solo cup, sloshing the ginger ale. Some guy with glasses, holding a beer, says, “Hey, nice shirt.” You leave. You don’t text your friends.

Ostracize yourself. Don’t answer calls or text messages. Even if people who genuinely enjoy your company are trying to see you. You are lonely but hate people, so you’re unsure why you’re so fucking lonely. You don’t want to see your half-assed, barely friends. Your real friends are concerned about you. They have not heard from you in a few weeks. You fantasize about the missing posters with your face plastered across them. You hope they choose a flattering photo, one where you didn’t have bangs or that other haircut that you no longer talk about. You later abandon the idea of going missing. You appreciate parts of your life, primarily your bedroom. Your dad got you a Donnie Darko poster for your 14th birthday. You start to wonder if you woke up in the wrong reality, the one where you got a stupid haircut. You think maybe, if you’re lucky, an airplane engine will soon fall on your house, fixing the strange parallel universe you’ve found yourself in, just like in the movie. You rewatch Donnie Darko for the seventh time. Afterward, you scroll on your phone for a few hours. You see some guy break his leg while skateboarding and decide never to go on your phone again.

Learn or relearn how to play music. Make sure not to choose something cool, like drums. This only leaves bass, guitar, or ukelele, but the bass is just lame, and you don’t hate yourself enough to play the ukelele. Under piles of your childhood books and toys, you reach the guitar sitting in your basement for the last four years. It was one of your grandmother’s last gifts to you before she passed away when you were 10. Before you give it a strum, you wipe the layer of dust that has been collecting on the

deep umber body of the guitar. The strings are frail, and your high e-string produces a twangy ping. You know it is bound to break, but you don’t fix it. A week later, the string will snap straight across the back of your hand, leaving a red mark for two days. You rekindle your middle-school guitar knowledge by writing a song, but after a few minutes, it only consists of two chords and five words. You don’t have much to say. You realize maybe songwriting isn’t for you. You put the guitar back in the basement. Two weeks later, you put it in storage with your childhood books and toys and never see it again. Sometime within the next two years, you figure out how to not hate yourself so much. Somewhere along the lines, your bangs grew a little; you finally got the blonde hair you had been pining for since you were eight. Rejection is still your biggest fear, but you no longer get so defeated after asking for a pencil. Your music taste has expanded from Morrissey’s moaning to Thom Yorke’s groaning. You have new friends, ones that no longer drown you in their presence. You no longer wear your Smiths shirt to parties. Things are good.

Helena A.-K.

Confessions

I hold many things close to my heart. Stuffed animals, Five years old Rot on my bedsheets untouched. The virtue of letting go is not one that I possess. Friends who have long stopped caring about me, I call every Christmas. I said we should hang out soon, But I am always met with weakly formed excuses. I think, (deep down) There is an old hag Who only ever wanted to be loved.

Soleil B.-C.

Thirty Years

A pack of cigarettes. Blackened gums, and yellow teeth hide inside a lopsided smile. I imagine this is what he will look like in thirty years; just a worn out shell of himself, barely able to speak without coughing up ashy phlegm. He does not look like that now, in the winter’s gloomy light. He looks like a Greek statue, every vein and nerve carved from thick, slippery clay. As if Michelangelo himself took a knife to the curve of his hip, or the arch of his cheekbone. I imagine he is sick of hearing about his beauty, but I cannot help myself from fantasizing about the artist who blessed his figure. Did they descend from the sunrise clouds in a ray of morning sunshine, draped in satin fabric? Did they kneel beside his bed and form his shoulders with rough, artisan hands? Did they kiss his head, sending him off into the world with a final gift? I imagine that every night he gets on his knees and prays to whoever carved him from a lump of hardening pottery.

Now, on the winter’s first cold night, I am not so caught up in his beauty. Maybe I have grown used to the way his eyes do not end. I do not look into them the way I used to, yearning for them to tell me something. He holds the rolled paper as an accessory, draping off of his figure like clothing. The burning tip glows amber as he inhales at the base. I watch with an envious eye.

His fingers grip the cigarette loosely. He isn’t afraid of it falling from his grasp. His nails are short stubs, caked with burn marks and black dirt. He fidgets with the lighter in his other hand, turning it on and off again, occasionally burning the tips of his fingers without even realizing it. The scent of smoke flows from his lips as he speaks, turning this way and that. He is careless, and I am mesmerized by it. He hands me the burning paper, and I grip it tight as if I am scared it will get up and walk away. When I bring it to my lips, I can taste the mint chapstick he uses, it stings and I try not to imagine what it would feel like to have his mouth on mine. I inhale, feeling the warm sensation glide over my throat and into the back of my lungs. I breathe out in short sputtered gasps and coughs. I try to hold it in, to not be embarrassing to him watching. The back of my throat burns, and the taste in my mouth is acidic.

His shiny teeth plaster into a smile. Blackened gums, and yellow plaque inside a lopsided smile. This is what I imagine he will look like in thirty years.

Rebecca H.

Sometimes I Live in the Country, Sometimes I Live in Town

It was damp and blue and just past midnight by the time David left the bar. Inside, it was still simmering with low chatter: performers enjoying their complimentary drinks, high people, the overlap between the two. David tried not to think about the inside. It was gonna be an early night, he was gonna go home and get some sleep. He hadn’t actually started his walk yet, but he would. For now, he was just staring down Seaton Street thinking about that one guy’s—didn’t catch his name– performance. The stage was covered with silver boxes and black knobs and dials. Red, blue, and yellow wires twisted out of them at seemingly random points. The wires smoothed the boxes form out, made them seem organic. It could’ve functioned as a visual art piece, really, but that night it was just an assortment of analog synths. Other than that the guy had a microphone which he occasionally hummed into. It wasn’t really a “good” performance, but it was one worth admiration. He thought he ought to talk to the guy.

“People want an artist who kills themself because they want tragedy, who gives a shit about tragic art? They wanna see tragic people,” Rob said.

David took a sip of his beer. “So, what’s your point then?”

“Doesn’t it follow that if you wanna be a great artist, if you wanna be in ‘the canon’ you should play into that.”

“As in… pretend to want to kill yourself?” David asked. He liked Rob, but this was insufferable.

“Well—not exactly,” Rob faltered, he was talking out of his ass. “I don’t know man” he said, “I’m just talking out of my ass.”

“I know,” David said.

“Well, fuck you.”

“You just said the same thing.”

“Yeah… fuck you,” Rob said.

David had tried to talk to the weird synth guy but he seemed high on something serious and started mumbling about getting kicked out of fashion school. He didn’t really know if he wanted to talk to him anyway though. Rob was still around so he had sat with him.

“Why do you look so pissy?” Rob said.

“I don’t look pissy.”

“Why are you so pissy?”

David thought for a second; he was vaguely pissy. “I don’t know man. You know, Sue’s a sophomore in college now and I think—I think I’m too old to be doing this.”

“Performing?”

“No, well—sort of. I just mean, I’m too old to perform, yeah sure—but, I’m too old to do all of this. I’m too old to drink and talk like this and not have my shit together.”

“What shit do you not have together?”

David paused. It was one o’clock now and he could feel his desire for sleep, and all possibility of getting an early night, slipping away.

“I hate it when I get a surge of energy late at night, like my body thinks it’s gonna be in for a long haul–it has no faith in me.”

Rob ignored this. “You think you’re too old to drink and perform? Stop drinking and performing then.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Kind of is.”

David looked closely at his hands. “I just mean, the problem’s not just drinking—you know—I talk to Sue maybe once a month, once a month if it’s a good month.”

“Call Sue then, unless it’s—” Rob did air quotes with his hand and put on a mock voice “not that simple, mannn.”

“Quit fucking with me I’m serious.”

“I’m not fucking with you. Call Sue—call Sue right now.

“Right now right now?”

“Yeah, right now, like this very moment.”

“She won’t be up.”

“She’s a college student, why would she not be up?”

“She wouldn’t wanna talk.”

“You’re her Dad, who gives a shit?”

David was quiet for a moment.

“Ok,” he said.

David walked outside. After three rings, he heard his daughter’s voice: “What’s up?”

David paused for a second. “Listen to the songs I send you, asshole.”

“I do, I always listen to them.”

“You don’t respond though, so how am I supposed to know?”

“I don’t need to respond if it’s just a link to a Youtube video—why are you calling me right now anyway, isn’t it like one in the morning for you right now?”

David had forgotten about the time zone difference.

“I’m not doing questions. What do you think of Goodnight Irene?”

“What’s that?”

“That’s the song I’ve sent you seven different covers of, jackass.”

“Oh yeah, it’s good.”

“Listen to it.” David paused for a second. “Listen to it and we can talk about it—and we can talk about college and everything too.”

“Ok, sure.”

“Alright, I love you.”

“Love you.”

Sue hung up. David leaned against the wall of the bar. He texted Rob to let him know he was heading home.

David walked into his dingy kitchen and sat next to the windowsill. The street lamp was broken and flickering. There was nobody on the road. Rob was an asshole. He didn’t talk to Sue enough. There was a bottle of liquor staring at him from across the kitchen; he didn’t reach for it yet. He had given up on convincing himself to like the synth thing. Goodnight Irene was a beautiful song though. He oughta get some sleep. The weather could be worse. He wasn’t gonna reach for the bottle. Rob could sometimes be helpful. David loved Sue very much.

Dechen C.

thinking about you

i wonder if you think about me the way that I think about you when I hear the soft pattering of rain on my windowsill when I watch countless droplets of water slide down and across the car windshield playing tag with each other as they skate across the glass as we race down the country highway

when I hear that familiar tune of summer spinning around the record in a haze creaking as it travels around and around the turntable carrying the warm blaze of the July sun back to my face as the sound waves bounce around the room

i wonder if you think about me the way that I think about you when the leaves start changing once more shades of ginger, almond, and maroon bright yellow like daisies we would pick back in july covering the city sidewalks in patchwork blankets and the country hills in spotted sheets of color that we would rake into uneven piles and wreck instantaneously like the kids we once were

i wonder if every time i see that one book we could never put down i’ll always think about you or if one day it’ll be different like how it’s different now when the first snow of the year comes around routinely every december and we don’t trace our names in car windows along brooklyn streets like we used to laughing as new snowflakes fell softly into our letters filling our writing so we’d have to trace our small fingers through the cool powder once more

and i wonder if i’ll stop seeing your face in new york crowds like i used to see across from me in the train booth and beside me in the colorful classroom and in front of me on the same yellow monkey bars year after year

and i wonder if one day i’ll stop thinking about you or if our memories will always follow me like how the seasons follow us into the next year and year after year carrying us from childhood into adulthood

Zora A.

The Whole World Curves

Sometimes when I walk downstairs at night I scare myself. It’s not my reflection in the mirror, which is as banal and powerless as the midday sun so often reveals. Nor is it the sound of shuffling footsteps and creaking floorboards; those have long ago faded outside of my range of hearing. They hang now as a murmur over the world, like silty waves breaking on distant shores. When lights flash through the wide crystal windows, pan over the room, lighting up chairs piled high with books and a perfectly preserved coffee table, never allowed to rot away, when these lights come I know they are only warships out past the kitchen, fields, and down the steeply carved cliff where it was cleaved by some primordial force, broken quickly from the land so as to fall away into the ocean. The lights are bright enough that even from far off into the ocean, far enough that all I can see of the men and their ocean home is a small streak of gray, they pierce across the grasses mingling with budding wildflowers in my front yard and wash my house in a sour gold. Then they fade from view and I know that these are not witchlights as have often been seen around these parts.

That is, often seen down the other side of the hill, where it curves ever so slowly until it reaches the forest basin of the mountain, fed by the winding river Lethe. Down there, they tell stories about fae and goblins and creatures that would like more than anything to make off with your children in the night. And if I ever come up in conversation, which I believe I do not, I am sure it is when, gathered around a fire, cocooned in warmth, they call me one of those, they tell my story and they scream. But I am sure they do not talk about me, as they never really think about the other side of the river, where the ground is too marshy and then the hill too rocky to plant, and then it climbs all the way up to my house which has stood for so long and is so sturdy that I am sure it has been forgotten about as it never does bring any sort of excitement. Witches, goblins, and the creatures of the night are much more thrilling.

Unfortunately for me though I know that these lights that play across my windows in the night, the sounds of crashing waves down below and rushed winds up above are not the work of these creatures. No, if these creatures do exist, which I hope they do, they too seem not to wish to tread beyond the river that cuts through the valley. I say I hope they do although I really don’t care this way or that. I am far too old to be snatched in the night and I don’t think I would make much of a meal for a goblin or some hungry fae. My collection of herbs and spices, which hangs like an inverted garden on my kitchen ceiling—the smell is my favorite thing, and so every morning, first thing, I like to come downstairs and smell it all: the rosemary and thyme; the oregano and sage; the chamomile and calendula; and the lilac, oh, the lilac, like summers I dream about

remembering, and twilights I wish for again and again—is far too meager for the likes of a witch. None of the night creatures would have much use for me.

I worry I may have lost a train of thought in my ramblings. I find more and more that when I do get the chance to speak, I talk in epics: long winded, winding roads that just seem to spiral on and on for hours. I used to be a much better storyteller, and I like to think maybe I still am so I will not bore you anymore with the little details of my nights and my days. If you really, truly would like to know what scares me, what brings me to a breathless halt in the night, I will tell you. Do you truly want to know? It is that sometimes, when it is dark enough, and I have just woken up from another translucent realm, and I take a step, I gasp because I remember that the whole world curves, rolls like an orange or a sweet summer plum. I take a step and I can feel the loop and bend of the Earth. I live on the edge of a cliff in a house too old to collect anything, even dust, and if some force decided suddenly it had not taken quite enough of the cliff for the sea and pulled me down past the curve, out of the circle, there would be nothing to stop my fall. The world would keep rolling on and when the winter came, people would grab their firewood and head inside and forget for a while the smell of lilac.

Leo G.

Still

She stands in a field of gold. Shined upon by the Sun and Moon. A deserted forest and lush deserts are nothing out of the ordinary. She is still. The sky glows a a pinkish green, and clouds cast a red shadow upon the ground around. The fish sing a song of flight, and the birds: a song of water. She is still. The streams, blossoming with water, and the flowers, flowing in the wind. The tiny ants and bugs move proudly in the grass, while bears cower in fear from the thought of the nearby predators, yet she is still. Much like me, standing here observing this painting. Still.

Archie H.

Ice Cream Days

I was four years old on the Fourth of July in 2013, and my dead dog was 11. He had prostate cancer and needed an adult diaper but for dogs because the cancer made him pee in the house, like a puppy. This was hilarious to me, and kind of still is, but the funny has frayed at the edges; it’s a little more dark and complicated.

My dead dog was lying on his bed in the living room, the equivalent of hospice care for dying beagles, I guess, when the vet came round to put him out. She had a big black bag and a big bad needle and my mother told my father to bring me up the street for ice cream so she could cry alone. I got rainbow sherbet on a wafer cone with Oreo crumble and my dog got pentobarbital. I remember sitting on that bench outside that ice cream store, melting into a confused, sugar-infused daze, and then we walked back and it was two weeks later and I got to keep his clay pawprint as a souvenir of his life, but more importantly, his death.

On July Fourth of 2015, I was six, and my new puppy came off a truck and into my arms, with a stomachful of highway plastic and a ribcage piercing through his fur. He was black and squiggly and scared of the fireworks and all ears and no brain and I love him to bits and now it’s eight years later and his rainbow sherbet day is coming too soon and it’s a shame because I really do love ice cream.

Kai M. S.

Marriage Vows

Dearest Albert, I must confess, I love you for your head: Your stache, your hair, your pensive brows, and all you leave unsaid.

My love for you is not true love, of passion and regret. Ours, my dear, is a love of minds, our home a tête-à-tête.

I love you as a brain divorced, removed from neck and spine. Only in your world of math will you be mine, Einstein.

For, to be fair, I love you not, I only seek your smarts. As one, our minds will conquer all, I know in my heart of hearts.

Each equation we will solve, and awake the vast unknown, The world is lost and must be saved — I can’t do it alone.

And so, good friend, I wed you not, this I do for science. Destiny calls, the world awaits; from you I demand compliance.

Ramona S.

Let’s think about this logically now. Are you a Smith, or are you “John”? Which is more important, really? Which one raised you? From which did you come, fully formed, into the world, just a crying little thing, screaming your head off—completely, utterly useless. Which one held your hand as you fell down over and over again, pulled you back up with their own grace until eventually you learned to walk on your own. Which one fed you, bathed you, taught you smiles, hugs, pats on the back, maybe even love. And which one gave you language, shared with you every tool you needed so that when someone even said the word “John” you could have any idea what they meant?

So you are a Smith before you are John. But then, does it really matter that you are John at all? Really, if every Smith was, say, going somewhere together, would you even stop and think: But I’m also John? You wouldn’t stand there, alone on a cliff, waiting for all the other Johns who are thinking, “Who is this freak who didn’t go along with the Smiths?” They are definitely not coming to pick you up. They’re all at home, all the Browns and Greenes and Kims and Goldmans, sitting in their dining rooms and eating dinner around those long dining tables that always have room for at least three more. And you’re standing on the edge of the cliff, a freaking weirdo loner, knowing you’re going to have to walk home alone in the dead of night, thinking, “How did I get here?” You wouldn’t want to be that John. And you definitely wouldn’t want to be that Smith, the one that all the other Smiths think of around the campfire before rolling their eyes and praying Grandma Smith won’t mention her grandson who betrayed the family name. You wouldn’t want to be the Smith that makes Grandma Smith cry, “Why would he leave us? Were we really so terrible?” And you wouldn’t want to be that Smith that lies alone in his bed at night while your mother strokes your grandmother’s hand and whispers soothing words, soothing words you can almost hear but are just barely out of reach. So who cares that you’re John Smith. And who even cares that you’re anything at all. Because once you’ve joined the masses, the crowd streaming out into the valleys and the mountains, escaping or searching or whatever, once you are a piece of this huge puzzle where all the shapes are really just the same if you don’t look that carefully—and who’s looking at you that carefully—once you are one of a million, who would really need to know your name? It’s not like anyone’s listening anyway. Sure, you just said something, but so did that Smith over there. And actually, if we’re counting, that John Smith said it, too, and there was something about his tone that was just… better than you. You altogether. All of you is just not that interesting. So unless you have something really witty to say—I mean really knee slapping funny, so biting or clever or intelligent any other Smith would stop talking long enough to listen to it, unless you can do that, you’re really nothing more than Man In Background. Or maybe Man in Coat. Maybe Man Jogging, Man on the Bus, Man Who Can’t Seem to Remember Why He Even Came Here, Man

Who Used to Love This Kind of Thing, Man Who Finally Fucking Sees What He’s Been Blind To, Man Who Opened the Goddamn Curtains, Man with Cat. An extra. Except at least extras get paid.

Why should it matter that you were born in the Bronx? Why should it matter that you’ve watched every season of The Bachelor, that you love prosciutto? Why should it matter that sometimes you sing in the shower and then realize you’re singing and cover your mouth, but then smile at yourself because you’re a grown adult and who cares if you sing sometimes? Why should it matter that your cat’s tongue feels like wet sandpaper when he licks you every morning as you lie in bed, trying to fall back asleep, trying to pretend you never woke up because you don’t want to feed him. But he really wants to be fed and he just keeps crying and licking your cheek and you love him so much that you start laughing and you get up with a smile, feed the cat, shower, change, do it all, and then you think “Maybe me and”— insert someone who cares— “will get sandwiches today from that new sandwich shop on the corner. I can’t remember the name but I think it was funny, and I think they have something with prosciutto it and oh my fucking god I love prosciutto.” Why does any of that matter, Man With Cat? And really, what happens when your cat dies? Think about it, Man With Cat. Do you go to the end of the line, wait for a spot to open up that they just absolutely need you for, like Man Who Can Count To Nine in Portuguese But Always Forgets How to Say Ten, or Man Who Loves Prosciutto. Or if that never happens then you’ll just wait until you’re the only option left, front of the line, and they sigh and pick you and you get to be Man In House, Man On Phone, Man Who—blah blah blah blah blah. Just blah.

While you are Man With Cat, I would make the most of it. Try to bring up your cat in conversation, see if anyone has a cat themselves. Maybe connect with someone over a shared love of cats. Maybe grow closer over a shared love of life. Maybe fall in love. Maybe invite them over. Maybe teach them how to pet your cat. Maybe wake up to the sound of their laughter, as your cat licks their cheek, and they giggle while they say, “It feels like wet sandpaper!” And you smile because there is finally someone who feels everything you feel, and gets everything you get.

That’s a big ask.

Maybe think about all this before you say you want to skip family game night.

Leo G.

The Pawn

First to kill

First to be killed

First to make a move

First line of defense

The start of clashes

And plenty more to come

Powerless

But necessary

Pushing forward

One step

At a time

Attacking

At A glance

With victory or defeat

Sacrificing themselves for their king

Only to remain in service to him when it’s all over

Constantine D.

Bastard

Daughter

To be learned

Is to make stories

Of tracing paper animals

Keeping your dollhouse

When the gardeners weren’t looking Soon

The young girl’s stories shifted From the solitude of her staircase

By dawn

Her youthful dreams of becoming a writer Had failed

Derivative romances

And Witty female protagonists Crashed into a wall of her own imagination

Attracting the attention

Of an

Enchanted mind

Is hard for a daughter who grew up too fast

Imaginative Perhaps persistent

To its loss

Frankie K.

Fruit in Winter

Apples and oranges. There are simple things, small things like these that one can choose to occupy her time with. There are some people in this world who are so particular about their fruits that they can spend hours choosing between the two. There are little girls who delight in deciding between the two fruits. There are even people who derive pleasure from picking the kind of apple they might want. They all have beautiful names, of course, almost like the names of paints—Golden Delicious, Macintosh, Macoun, Lady Alice.

And think of oranges. Think of the gooseflesh on their skin, the way they must be peeled to be eaten, the explosion of sweetness when you split the film of resistance with your teeth. Oranges have names too. There is Valencia, and Hamlin, and Ambersweet.

But you must be careful not to think of apples and oranges too much. You could be caught dreaming of the color of a particular shade of apple, or turning the word “Ambersweet” over and over again in your mouth like the name of a lover. And this is how you fall into the trap.

You can think of the names of apples and oranges, and you think of the names of paints, and you can think of the word apple, and you can think of breasts, and you can think of women like Lempicka, the Polish portrait painter. And suddenly they sound less like the names of paints and more like the names of strippers. And then you can start to think about the state of the world, and the state of women, and the state of the skin of the oranges. And suddenly you don’t believe in fruit.

I am a painter. I believe in things like Naples Yellow and bad breath and shoelaces. But I do not believe in love. Tamara de Lempicka wasn’t interested in apples and oranges. She was only interested in tobacco and opium and women, and not love. She liked colors, she probably took her drinks shaken and her nights dark and hot. She was Russian and she was Polish and she was disciplined. But she was no fool.

My mother always believed in coincidences. But of course she did. She was a Catholic, a Catholic of the very worst kind. She believed in fate and love and fruit and not in women. Of course, as a lover of apples and oranges, she naturally picked her confirmation name to be Agatha, the one whose breasts were chopped off for some reason or another. But my mother liked coincidences, and she didn’t like me. But today is one day, and don’t ask me tomorrow, because I won’t be saying things like this tomorrow—today is one day I wish that I could talk to her.

I woke up early this morning, when the birds weren’t even out. It’s so crisp and dark these days, you can hardly tell night from day from dusk. But I woke up when the sky was blushing a damask rose, dappled with Cadmium Red. And I decided to go for a walk.

But as soon as I set foot outside my apartment, something hit the back of my neck. It felt like an angry raindrop, or a penny from the woman downstairs who would eat my guts for breakfast. So I whipped around, but all I could find was an orange seed. And, of course, I am so over apples and oranges. So I kept walking.

The sky was ripening to a Raw Sienna, which of course reminded me of the oranges. But I soldiered on, forcing one foot in front of the other, thumbing the jagged edge of my key and trying to focus on the sting of the morning wind on my cheek. I reminded myself of the paints to mix, the canvases that needed stretching. I pondered my next stroke on the knuckle of a portrait. And then the cobblestones evened out, and I knew I had arrived.

The park, this wonderful park, is really just a tiny secret garden. No one knows about it—I only came across it through careful search, evaluation and introspection, and you certainly don’t know it. And of course, usually, there isn’t anyone else in my park. But this morning, when my feet sighed as they pressed into the familiar stone path, I stopped in my tracks. There was a couple there, dressed in all red and orange, making a scene and making absurd fools of themselves, existing in such a way that one could not tell whose limbs were whose. It was really still just the morning, and the sun’s light was sweet and thin. But somehow, they had found my park, all by themselves. And somehow, my park had allowed two fools like these—fools who clearly believed in the weak joke of love—to enter its sacred walls. Well, that was okay. I would just have to keep walking.

I summoned up my parts and continued down the path, bathed in orange glow, trying not to let these fools ruffle my feathers. I reached my favorite spot in the whole park, the foot of a great oak tree. I settled in, reclining into a gap in the roots and breathing in the frigid air. But something seemed amiss; I could not shake the feeling that there was someone watching me. I carefully scanned the horizon to no avail. Perhaps I had just imagined it.

But suddenly, a figure approached me. I don’t know where they came from or where they went after that. All I know is that as soon as I saw this person, I felt something prick at my ribs and sting my lips the way the pesticide on apples does. Was it a man? Was it a woman? I could not say. All I could say is that I felt something glowing, something scary, and

something perhaps a little good, in the pit of my stomach. And I was scared. I shook the way an old house shakes in a hurricane. I did not understand what was happening. I don’t even remember what the person looked like. All I remember is what they seemed like—dark and sweet and mysterious, like the autumn breeze, like the sapling from an apple seed. And I remember gazing at them, and finding it difficult to look away. I looked so much at them that I began to feel a little sick. I do not know what happened after that—I do not know where they went, or who they were, or how I found myself suddenly at home just a few minutes later. But with this lingering strange feeling, a kind of warmth despite the freezing winter cold, I had some faith, almost like my mother, that I would see them again.

When I got home, I didn’t paint the knuckle I’d pondered. I didn’t paint a landscape, or prime the new canvases. I attempted to paint this strange feeling. And in attempting to put the feeling to canvas, I found myself with a mess of reds and oranges, of things round and tender and sweet and messy and sticky. I had painted apples and oranges.

Now, a few hours and a few mugs of tea later, I have thought this feeling over, the feeling that still sits heavy in my stomach. I have looked at my painting, and I have thought about Lempicka. Perhaps Lempicka liked painting portraits beyond the colors and the strokes—perhaps passion wasn’t such a bad part of her story. I am sure that amidst the smoky dream she lived, she indulged in apples and oranges. Maybe Lempicka has had this feeling too—the feeling of sickly wonder, of golden need that I feel today. This feeling, I think, is something akin to what little girls feel when deciding between apples and oranges. And perhaps there is nothing really wrong with apples and oranges—their sweetness, their forgiving tenderness, their color. And perhaps there is nothing wrong with love.

Lyla B.

Observing

She was staring at the sunset. It was one of those sunsets that disappoint you. It was mostly blue with a tinge of pink and purple on the edges. It wasn’t a gasp-worthy or even picture-worthy sunset. But she was staring at it, and it wasn’t a blank stare either. There was something behind her brown eyes. But it wasn’t a thin brown. It was a deep brown that was slightly covered by the squinting of her eyelids. You can tell simply by the way her eyebrows curve slightly inward that she has stuff on her mind. But in a way doesn’t everyone?

If you zoom in closely you can tell that her head runs too quickly. Thoughts are spewing out and she doesn’t seem to know what to do with them.

She didn’t want much for her life. Just to be happy. It was that simple. But then again, if you already have the money and the setup, that’s a much easier thing to desire. She’s oblivious to the fact that she has that privilege, but who’s she to think about things that seem so far away from her? Then again, maybe she has thought about it. Maybe it flits across her mind once in a while and all she can do is shove it further down her throat, which will make it harder and harder for her to breathe as more things are pushed away. But she doesn’t have to think about that. Maybe she never has.

It’s interesting to look this closely at someone. Follow every wrinkle and scar on their face, trace it back to whatever caused the skin to age or the cut to form.

If we try to go a little further into her mind we can find some more shards. Shards of forgotten things; she has the things she wants to remember (or doesn’t) locked away.

Let’s zoom out again, to the little cliché moment of her looking at this sunset. She’s breathing slowly, a sense of calm peeking through but not yet fully emerged. She’s happy though. More than she thinks she is. She already has her want in the palm of her hand, but she just can’t grasp it in the way that she needs.

She’ll get there one day.

Phaedra L.

Jeffrey Rose, Who Wrote Letters to the Dead

I.

You are about to begin reading Jeffrey Rose’s new novel: [UNTITLED]

He tried to relax. He tried to concentrate. He tried to dispel every thought from his mind. He tried to think of all that was beautiful, like landscapes or guitar strings or cigarette butts smoldering in the ashtray. He wanted to see the world how everyone else saw it, clearly. Staring out at a starless sky, he tried to think of a time when that same exact sky had been illuminated with wonderful things like space shuttles and meteors that crashed together in infernos a million miles away.

Instead, he thought of the radiator.

Oh, how cold were those winter nights! He could hardly stand it. Even now, thinking of the moments where candles burned low and the children huddled together under patchwork blankets brought a chill to his spine.

He took the small metallic Zippo lighter from the corner of the desk. The wrathful orange flame flickered in the dark room, and the radiator continued to hiss. As he stared at the blaze, he almost thought he saw his reflection. Then, he remembered what he had to do. Jeffrey picked up the paper, now blemished by ink, and held it up to the light. Holding the lighter to the corner of the page, he watched as the now incandescent words ceased to exist outside of his mind.

He could write tomorrow. No thoughts would come to his mind, and no words would come to his hand. He climbed beneath the thick wool blanket and closed his eyes. That night he saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing.

Nothing but the radiator.

Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?

I had a dream, It was you and me

In the war of the end times. Still, I followed you Down winding roads

To the top of hillsides desolate

To the ends of the earth.

II.

Jeffrey placed this sheet in a box with thousands of others that was labeled “EVENTUALLY.” He closed his eyes again. Though rotten saliva covered his tongue, his hand felt free. Maybe his mind would be clearer now. Today, unlike most days, he had a destination.

Each month there came a day where Jeffrey ventured to a brick building on the corner of 4th Street and Avenue B. When he arrived, his father would open the door slowly. Jeffrey would let his eyes look before he could see, before he could remember. When he would enter the room, he would already know who would be there occupying the old leather armchair by the window. It would be his father.

But that wasn’t until later. Now, he had nothing to do.

He pulled on his jacket (it was cold out, right?) and left the room, letting the door swing closed behind him. The hallway was narrow and dark. Lights flickered overhead as the hard soles of his black boots met the marble floor. With each step, he was reminded of the sound of a bowling ball hitting pins or of missiles exploding far, far away. Finally, as he stepped outside he felt the bitter air crudely strike his face. He took a breath, hoping to feel the world inside his chest, and he began to walk.

It was The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. Jeffrey watched as two lovers held each other close on the corner of Broome & Elizabeth Street. He saw their hands touch, breaths colliding in frosty air. He wondered if love was real. For a moment, he hoped it was. But when the man looked at the body he held in his arms, he saw nothing more than a puppet. Touching her, feeling her, he was really doing nothing more than trying to pull the strings.

Or maybe he was like a wolf, and she was a sheep. She smiled when he touched her, but her eyes were filled with pain. These were the things Jeffrey could sense. He knew there was no escape. He could try to save her, try to intervene, but any attempt would prove futile. So, all he could do was watch, no longer part of the whole. They looked in each other’s eyes, and Jeffrey began to doubt that he really understood. He watched them for one more moment, his face ambiguous and unremarkable. Then he kept walking.

He had nowhere to be, at least, not until 3:00 pm. It had to be exactly at 3:00, it had been that time for the last fifteen years. So he walked down the street, thinking of what he would say to the man waiting by the window.

Hey dad, no. No, it couldn’t be “dad,” he hadn’t been “dad” for a long time. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything. He would enter the room in silence, feeling the stale and dormant air. Hopefully his father would say something to him, offer him some

words of advice or maybe comfort. Who was he kidding? He would hand him an envelope, of the same weight as every other envelope, and they would sit in silence. It had been this way since his first visit at the age of sixteen, and it would continue until the day he stopped knocking on the door or his father stopped answering.

He sighed. Well, more of a grunt. From his jacket pocket he retrieved a carton of cigarettes and a small lighter. Dropping the last cigarette into his palm, he flicked the lighter several times without a flame. It was windy. Maybe it was a message. Finally, tucking his hand inside his jacket, he allowed the fire to flicker and burn.

Some people spend their time rolling these, he thought.

He hoped they were okay.

He realized he did not want to smell like cigarette smoke when he entered his father’s domicile. Before even raising it to his lips, he dropped the thin white and orange roll of paper and tobacco on the ground. He watched as the light inside of it slowly died.

Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

III.

The world had changed. Planes flew above, no longer leaving trails of white but now making tears in the sky itself. Jeffrey looked up and saw this, and he knew these lacerations could never be repaired. Beneath the sky he heard the birds, who had abandoned singing long ago, and now wailed with dread and sorrow. These were the things he could sense.

Jeffrey thought of his father. All these years he had sat by the window and watched the earth twist and turn, but done nothing about it. Why didn’t he warn them? Why didn’t he try to stop it? He couldn’t. No, he could. He wouldn’t. He would sit by the window and wait and watch and open the door once a month at 3:00 pm. It was 2:58.

The old brick building was unchanged. The air was colder, and now Jeffrey could feel it pinching at his fingertips. But the stone in his stomach returned, just as he knew it would. It was all the same.

Jeffrey saw the door. It was wooden, sturdy and despicable. He pounded it twice with his fist, then turned his gaze to the floor. There was no answer, for now. Jeffrey knew better than to knock again. So he stood there, with his feet growing roots into the ground. The clock in his head continued to tick. A second passed, then five, then ten. A minute passed, then five, then ten. Jeffrey remained there, in the center of the frame, while visions of his father finally opening the door flashed in and out of his mind.

It was 3:15, and the door stayed closed. Jeffrey’s hand burned, how badly he wanted to knock once more! He was determined to simply move his knuckles to the hard oak frame, but invisible weights fixed his arms to his side. Once he was able to understand that his arms were stuck, he tried his feet. Miraculously, he willed his feet away from the door, out of the building, and back into the wind.

Cars turned on their headlights, and the beams of light forced Jeffrey to look up at the sky. All he could see were the lights turning on in apartment buildings. He tried to imagine the people inside the buildings, whether they knew the yellow gleamed that gleamed in their windows was engulfing them, soul and all. Were they happy? He knew them, knew what they were. They danced and they cried and when they were done crying they danced again. They would never come down and converge with Jeffrey on the ground. They would never meet.

It was The Year of the Chewable Ambien Tab. By midnight he found his building again. It was a dreadful place, and he wanted to never enter it again. Though they had no feeling, Jeffrey knew his legs were tired. Resentfully, he went inside, hoping it would be the last time. The key rattled in the door, reminding Jeffrey of shooting a gun with an empty chamber. He found his bed, and collapsed on it facing the ceiling. For an hour or so he lay like this, without thoughts, feelings, or dreams.

And the days are not full enough / And the nights are not full enough

IV. Memoir

My mother and father could not agree on my name. My father had his heart set on John, mostly due to the fact that it was his father’s name. My mother detested the idea. Every time they discussed the topic, she would throw her pregnant body to the floor, sobbing until he apologetically threw his arms around her. She wanted a different name, traditional but non-biblical, something like Elliot or Hugo. Eventually, they settled on Jeffrey. Jeffrey John Rose, I was the first of their disagreements. Still, my days of infancy were blissful. An only child, I was the sole focus of my parents’ undivided attention. My mother stayed home and cared for me, never letting me leave her sight for a moment. She was not controlling or overbearing, simply enamored. Much to his discontent, my father was a banker. As he would sit at his desk flipping through papers or listening to some young couple asking for a loan, his mind would constantly wander back to us. He would see us, me crying and my mother doing the same

because she couldn’t understand what reason her baby had to cry. He could barely stand it. Each day he would run more than a mile home as soon as he could leave, just to see us again. For a few years, life continued like this.

At the age of five, I was sent to school for the first time. My mother cried as she held me at the entrance of the building, but I was determined to stay composed. My top lip quivered and my eyes blurred, but I shed no tears. I was excited to learn, to meet people, to become myself. For a while, everything was alright. My mother would be outside as soon as the school bell rang, but after some time her eyes were no longer bloodshot. She was okay, I was okay, we were okay. At least, for a little while.

She was sent away for the first time the week after my ninth birthday. At first, my father told me she was just taking a vacation to visit her sister. When she didn’t come back after two weeks, he told me the truth. I didn’t understand it, she seemed perfectly fine? Yet I was told she needed help, and that she would be better soon.

Eventually, she did come back. It was six months after she’d first left. When I saw her again, I ran up to her and she held me in her arms. I could feel her chest moving as tears streamed down her face and onto mine. Finally she let me go, and I saw her new face. She had the same features, a slender nose and rigid, defined cheekbones. But her eyes were different. They were unfocused, and when she looked at me it seemed that she was looking past me. I didn’t care, I was just happy that she was back with me. Even though she spoke less, and never seemed to know where or who she was, she was there with us. We were together, that’s all that mattered then.

The last time I ever saw her was on my eleventh Christmas. She acted differently that day, she must’ve known she was going to be taken away again. For one last time, she was her old self. As we sang carols and ate and laughed, I thought that maybe life was back to the way it should be. She tucked me into bed for the first time in years, holding me for what seemed like hours. She watched as I fell asleep. I didn’t hear her scream as my father forced her out of the apartment.

She died when I was fifteen. Though I never saw her after that Christmas day, we still exchanged letters. Her handwriting was increasingly erratic, but I would decipher the words for as long as it took. One day, after the letters had stopped, my father told me the news. A few months later we had a funeral. It was a beautiful day, and we buried her in the plot next to her mother and father. Many people came, but I can’t recall their faces or names.

My father didn’t speak to me for a long time. For nearly a year, we existed in taut silence. One day, he couldn’t take it anymore. He handed me an envelope, and told

me that I was my own man. He told me he had done what he could, and now he needed to live for himself. In the envelope was a key to a small apartment, bills of assorted sizes, and a picture of my mother. I just nodded my head. At that moment, I knew no words, and had no voice. My throat burned and demons entered my mind. I just walked out of the house, no longer a home, and didn’t return for thirty days. This was my life.

The pen hit the floor, the papers lay on the table. Jeffrey glanced at the lighter, then turned his vision to the window. He looked out that window for a long while, maybe forever. He did not need to see anything else, nothing else was real.

There, looking out the window, he returned to imagining the world. Now, he understood that destruction was imminent. The wonder lingered and the shame remained. The sound of the bombs would not fade away. Families built houses of aluminum and dined on cinnamon. To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.

Noah G.

Liebestraum

That night I slept badly. It was that summer when I dreamt of the strangest things. I wrote love letters in languages I didn’t speak. So tired from late nights that the words looked blurry anyway. It’s the same now because the pages disappeared sometime when I wasn’t looking. Like none of it was real. I never thought about what I had seen. I woke up. I got sick when I felt the world spinning. I closed my eyes. I saw faces I had only ever seen in fever hazes. I heard the pure music of the rooster and the wolf interval of the alarm bell.

in the same strange scene— so sick and tired of love it’s like a fever dream

Maisie S.

Maybe

Are you awake?

Are you asleep?

Are you awake and you’re pretending to be asleep so that I leave you alone?

Are you dreaming? Is it a nightmare? Do you have a lot of nightmares?

Do you want me to go away?

Don’t you think there’s something weird about dreaming? About the incessant beating of the heart? Why does dreaming sometimes coincide with sleeping? Can it happen without heart-beating?

Why are colors brighter in dreams? Why are whispers louder than screams? Why do the stars stop spinning and the clocks stop ticking and the clouds freeze directly overhead?

Why is it colder in dreams? Why am I bolder in dreams? Why do I wish I could leave?

Why is there no in-between? Why do I suffer more plainly and proudly than anyone else in their dreams?

Is there an answer?

Maybe.

Do you know the answer?

Is it just that you don’t want to tell me?

Are you listening? Are you asleep?

When you fall asleep, does it happen right away? Does peace come easy or do you wait, eyes closed, hours piling up and around as you pretend not to notice?

How do you know if you’re more asleep than awake? Is there a line between conscious and not? Or are there two: between eyes open and eyes closed, dreaming and undreaming, and everything else is shades of gray?

Have you ever wondered what happens to the dreams we forget? Do you think they all live together on an island of miscreants, happy? Are the skies star-struck and the sunsets painted in pastels and perfection?

Do they like it over there more than with me?

Is that why I’m only left with the nightmares?

Why can’t I remember the good ones, too?

Why can’t I live a life for a night and like it?

Why can’t I, even if only in dreaming?

Are you listening to me?

Are you asleep?

Lizzie O.

874 Park Ave, New York, NY

02.24.1989

11:45 PM

Living alone with you for the past 14 years has been intolerable. I always felt guilty about it—being so angry with you all the time. I tried out all kinds of excuses for you. For a portion of time, just because you were single, I told myself you were lonely and needed me. Writing that down now... god, it’s kind of pathetic isn’t it? I was just so naive. I mean, I watched the ladies leave our apartment in your fancy button downs; sometimes they even stayed for breakfast. We used to walk to Madison and go to that store with the foreign name and the fluorescent lights. I would slouch around on the velvet couch and the cashier would serve me cola or grapefruit juice. You liked those kinds of stores—the beveragey, perfumey ones. You would pick up the shirt that this morning’s blonde had left in and ask me if I liked it. Then you’d laugh—you’d literally laugh. God, I can just see your face right now—pretending to be all incredulous and innocent. You’re such a joke. Anyway—you remember—I would laugh too. I would probably even say something like, “Yes daddy, the navy brings out the blue in your eyes.” You were probably in hysterics after that one. I hate your stupid mirthful face when you think you’re being funny. I hate how I made you feel like all that garbage was some hilarious inside joke. I remember telling mom about one of our days in the city and that I had tried 7UP for the first time. She told me not to “get used to cable knit” and yelled at you over the phone because I wasn’t allowed sugary drinks and “you knew that.” Of course you didn’t know that. Of course you couldn’t have given a rat’s ass about my immune system or the mood swings that sugar can cause in kids. If it was your way, you would have had me eat all the sweets in the world. You probably wanted all the sugar to gnaw at my gut and liquify my intestines and kill me so you didn’t have to care for me anymore. You smoked differently too, around those women. You held the cigarette differently—all nonchalant like you were hoping it would fall right out of your hand and onto the table. I couldn’t look away. You were just different. Your fingertips were all yellowy orange because of the way you let the thick smoke run up your fingers. I hated when you touched me with your stupid carrot fingers. It was like some other girl’s dad was trying to hold my hand. My real dad wouldn’t have such carroty fingers—he absolutely wouldn’t. By the way, I never had more fun with you than I did with mom. I just needed to get that out of the way. It seemed like you always thought that. Of course you would think that—that’s so you. Up on your high horse as usual. I’m serious, you can be really really really really boring. I remember a specifically tortuous dreary dinner: you had made vegetable soup. This was during that ridiculous time when you decided to go vegetarian for what I can only imag-

ine was an absolutely idiotic reason that I’m better off being ignorant of because it might make me doubt your IQ and thus my own. Because, despite how much I wish this wasn’t true, you are my biological father.

Anyway, the vegetable soup. It wasn’t very good and you weren’t being very entertaining. No really, I was chasing a piece of celery around with my spoon and that— just that little game of tag with an inert piece of produce—was more interesting than whatever you were saying. I literally remember that. Another thing about that piece of celery—I am sure you don’t like celery. I have never ever seen you eat it in my whole life. You included it in the meal because that’s what you think an Italian vegetable soup would have in it. Now, I know you very well, and I know that you are exactly the kind of person who would use celery in their soup for an entirely aesthetic purpose. That just goes to show how large your ego is— how you would do literally anything to aid others' perception of you. You see? I see right through you. I can’t believe you’re leaving mom again. I can’t believe you got back with her in the first place. I can’t believe you would do that to her. I can’t believe you got her hopes up like that and then just ditched. By the way, I know I've been using the proverbial phrase “I can’t believe” but of course I can believe all of those things. It's so typical of you really. I just hate that you promised me things would be good again. I hate that you lost another fancy shirt this morning to a stupid nasally tall blondie. I just hate it. I’m really not the type of person to have a bee in their bonnet about a little white lie, but that was a big-time, silver-screen, all lights on you, huge, gigantic lie. I know I said everything was fine and I agreed to sleeping here this weekend, but I’ve been in bed for an hour and I promise I’ve thought through this decision. I can’t wake up tomorrow morning and look in your eyes knowing everything was a big fat lie. I just can’t. I’m going to Rachel’s house. You know, my cousin. Your sister’s daughter. I hope you haven’t forgotten about her. You better not have. But who knows, that’s the sort of thing you would do nowadays. I’m sorry that you’ll probably be scared when I’m not there in the morning and that you’ll have to eat breakfast alone. But, then again, I’m not really. You deserve it... seriously.

If you even care, your daughter

The Jorstle

A week-withered Jorstle sang sultry and slow, A sweet song sung softly from lung long ago. It didn’t hear them though they tried and they cried For their thistles and whistles were chittered and fried.

The Jorstle then chortled! Oh withered and wan With its bland feathers tethered to terrible plans. They reached him through modes quite the codes in themselves, A snot sniv’ling effort from effortless elves.

The dwarves found the Jorstle; They grew to be men; Assured in their speeches Again and Again.

Jorstles are poems. They’re rhythm and rhyme. You might love them now but you’ll hate them in time. They’re a sandwich of sandboxes sent to the sea. But we can’t live without them; I know that to be.

Max K.

The Beach at Night

In a whirlpool, I stared up at the sky And laughed at the stars for being so cruel.

Sitting on a lifeguard’s chair, I counted The goosebumps on the night sky’s skin.

I was terrified of the faint voices That echoed in the ocean breeze.

Below, the black waves were Forever protruding towards me.

You don’t want me, I cried out, For I had already jumped in.

Tanner Q.

How To Raise a Teenage Girl (As a Mom)

Stop interrogating her. Yes, two thirds of her words are lies, but attempting to uncover them will only force her to create more intricate lies, ones requiring her to steal your phone and change your contacts. Speaking of that, call her friends’ parents every month or so. Wait until they pick up, then quickly hang up and text them ‘sry accident.’ If they don’t pick up, wait for them to call you back. If they don’t, your daughter has quite likely changed the contact on your phone to one of her friend’s numbers, sending her texts to copy and paste back to you.

Or skip the first clause. Some of us choose to be naive. ‘She wouldn’t, she’s baking cookies with Maggie!’ you tell yourself. Sorry, no ovens are turning on tonight, but don’t be hard on yourself for wanting to believe it. It’s easier, and besides, there’s nothing you can do. She’s sneaking out either way so cut yourself some slack and stop tracking her. Get in bed and watch The British Baking Show until you fall asleep. It’s hard to, I know. We both know. She’s too clever.

Be cynical. As soon as you let the twelve-minute conversation she carried out give you a tinge of hope, she’ll break up with you. And yes, teenage girls are like boyfriends. More like the boys you tried to chase in your early twenties. They think they’re too cool for you, and let’s be real, you do too. You both spend years slaving to be the fun father or the best friend mother, and it used to work up until you said no to ice cream. But since her metamorphosis, she’s the one rejecting the trip to Mister Softee. “Bring me back a scoop,” she’ll say, not looking up from her tik tok draft. Pretend to get an email notification from work, a last-minute meeting that prevents you from going. Don’t tell her that it’s because the whole idea was just another plot to have alone time with her. It’s embarrassing.

Patience has no self-esteem. Sit there for hours, listening to her trivial rants about her friend who’s too obsessed with her. Ask questions. We all know she’s going to tell you every detail anyways, so you might as well let her believe you’re interested. Don’t be surprised when she doesn’t finish with asking about your day, your life. She won’t ask so don’t tell her. We all make that mistake, thinking that if we simply start narrating our issues, she’ll have to listen since we listened to her. Don’t learn this from experience, learn it from me; it’ll only lead you to realize you’re nothing more than a cotton ball. And you know from soaking the cotton in your reeking nail-polish remover that they can’t be wrung out.

You’re usually the compact, Walmart kind, so don’t take it for granted when she

treats you like the Sephora jumbo cotton balls. This only happens when she’s in distress, but absorb her tears like a lagoon and say nothing. “You don’t need him, you’re too good for him anyways,” you say. “The fuck mom, so you don’t think he likes me,” she sobs. Not what you were implying, I know. Just hold her and appreciate that she’s letting you peek into this compelling world of boys and Pink Whitney. Say nothing.

Don’t count on her. Don’t rely on her to fly home from her Miami girls trip to comfort you just because your husband cheated. She’s busy tanning but she’ll make a better excuse. You would serve a life sentence for her, but don’t expect the same in return. It’s not her fault; she doesn’t have the maternal empathy that we do. Or any, it seems.

Don’t divorce her father. She’ll judge and resent you, but she doesn’t understand. It’s the second time mom, stop doing this to yourself. Ignore her. It’s different for us. She has you, a Golden Retriever that would bite its own legs off for her. She feels alone too, but it’s never the same; she knows you’re always holding her. Your husband too. You hate him now (I do too), but he knows you’ll always care for him. If you’ve been with him for over four years, you know what I’m talking about. It was all fun and romance at first, but now he’s like another child to you. Yeah, maternal instincts fucked us. And the worst part is, unless you live with your own eighty year-old mother, you’re the only one in your cramped apartment without the unconditional nurture. Don’t divorce him. She’ll get over it. She’s leaving for college soon; don’t make him leave too. Once the eightyyear-old dies, you’ll have no one.

Asha M.

Ho e Dies at 76

try to see In a time when squeaky-clean, controversy was banned by America, she recalled hidden meaning speculation denied a time when people were sexual my bike the thrill of first love born on Queens jazz turned at an early age, making her public at 4. By the time she was in high school she was already in local houses the dens of New York acting Regardless of her intentions Little wonder a cocaine-fueled pornography industry in

smog -choked days played featured roller skates

the turn-table never scaled her success contemporaries said It was way too cherubic

She seemed weary of her famous steel-wheeled locomotion, and perhaps joys she had expressed reservations about this beatific image of ever so precious, every bit of person wanted to be perceived as someone with relevance.

She was Soul a two-hit wonder. Living bell made it to

72, sharing the Nickel 73, failed to crack made little impact. Still, prolific even in her later years she had Mode and her composition Devil

S he died in 2010 a survivor.

Ren B.

John Mullen hadn’t had a day off work since January 1st, 2000. He had worked Christmases and New Year’s Days. He had convinced Michael to let him open on Labor Day. He had never been sick. He had spent 8,859 days at the bar. On the second day of the new millennium, the night guy hadn’t shown, and John had taken his shift. The guy never showed again. His name had also been John. So John Mullen worked 9-12 AM. He had, for 8,859 days. But it was April 4th, 2024, 9:45 AM, and John was sitting at his kitchen table. He knew that it was 9:45 because he was looking at his clock, and he knew also that he had been looking at his clock for the past twenty-three minutes. He had ordered this clock online on June 8th, 2013, and it had come in the mail on June 16th. He had never seen the hands point to 9: anything.

He had known for a month that he was not going to be working on April 4th, 2024, and for a month he had put off thinking about what he would do with all those spare hours. Now it was April 4th, and he still did not know what he was going to do.

John Mullen didn’t have hobbies. He didn’t have television shows he liked to watch or poems he liked to revisit. He’d never bought plants he could water and he’d never made friends he could call. His records were stacked in boxes on a shelf he couldn’t reach and his player was under a stack of boxes he couldn’t lift. What he did was wipe down the bar, and open taps, and mix margaritas. Without that, what?

When he stood up, John Mullen saw himself reflected in the face of the clock. He was a tall man. He stood at six feet and four inches tall. He had been a smallish boy. Between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, he had gone from five feet four inches, to six feet two. As a seventeen-year-old he grew two more inches, and that was it.

John saw himself in the face of the clock and saw that he looked sad, and went into his bathroom and saw in the mirror that he looked pale. Maybe he had always looked pale. He was rarely under the sun.

He stood in front of the mirror for another minute and let his bare toes trace the lines of black grout connecting his smooth tiles, and thought about the lines he drew in blue crayon on his walls as a child. He had no shirt on now, and in his memory, Child John had no shirt on either. Adult John turned and walked to his bedroom and opened his closet door. He didn’t think he could wear a work shirt or sleep shirt today, so he reached for his dress shirt, and found that his nicest tie was looped around the neck of the hanger. He hadn’t worn either piece of clothing since New Year’s Day, 2000.

He watched himself button his shirt in the mirror of the vanity Elaine had brought home in 1999. He tied his tie. He sat down in front of the mirror, and looked at himself, and couldn’t help but wonder what he was all dressed up for.

He had closed his eyes for a moment, and he opened them now. He saw himself in the mirror in his shirt and tie and thought he looked just like he had on his first dates with Elaine. They had started going out in 1971. He was 16 then, and she 17. She was beautiful, and she was nice to him. She loved theater. He was shorter than her.

Over the summer, they ate sandwiches together in the park. With the money from his summer job, he bought them tickets to a production of Hamlet in the next town over, on the last Sunday before school started.

The plan was for John to ring her doorbell at 12:30 and for Elaine to answer him at the door. They would eat their regular sandwiches at her house, and at 1:30 they would get in her father’s car, and Elaine would drive them to the theater. John had given her her ticket the day before and would bring his along with him, and at 2:00 they would show their tickets at the booth and go in and sit down and she would squeeze his hand as the show started and again each time she cried, which would be twice. He would give her a kiss at intermission, and as they walked out he would confess that he hadn’t quite understood what was going on, and she would explain the whole thing on the drive back, and they’d kiss goodbye, and he would smile a lot as he biked back to his house.

John opened the drawer of the vanity. It was full of ticket stubs. Elaine loved theater. He pulled the drawer all the way out and placed it on the desk. His hand plunged into a sea of paper, each ticket stub with a partner for the seat next to it. His fingers found the one he was in search of. He pulled it out. Hamlet, September 5th, Row R, seat 16. The ticket was still attached to the stub. Somewhere in the pile was the stub for Row R, seat 15, with no ticket attached.

John hadn’t made it to Hamlet. He had lost his ticket. At 12:10, he had been ready to leave the house and bike over to Elaine’s. He had had the ticket in his money clip. He had put both tickets in when he got them from the seller, and had taken one out the next day to give to Elaine. That night he had almost left the money clip in the front right pocket of his jeans (his phone now took precedence of the right, and his clip had been retired to the left), but he had felt the weight when he threw them in his laundry, so he found the clip, dollar bills and one ticket still inside, and put it on his bedside table. Now, the ticket was gone. John felt he could cry.

He looked around his room. It was 12:30 now. He should have been ringing Elaine’s doorbell. The ticket was nowhere to be found.

It did not occur to him to call Elaine’s home phone, and tell her what he was doing, because he didn’t know what he was doing, or what he was going to do. He tore the sheets off his bed. Nothing fell out.

He sat down in his armchair and put his head in his hands. Suddenly he looked up

and it was 1:06, and he was not at Elaine’s house, and he could not stand this knowledge, so he fell asleep in his chair. He slept through four calls from Elaine. He found the ticket under his rug the next morning.

This may still have been John’s greatest regret. But now he had the ticket in his hand, and a day off work, and he was all dressed up.

3

John squinted into the sun as he left the apartment building. He was leaving the house at 12:25 (which he hadn’t done in twenty-four years). This was enough time. He was going to make it.

His car was parked a block away. Before his clock at home struck 12:27, John had his key in the ignition. He was not going to be late.

The car started reluctantly. It was twenty-eight years old. John hadn’t noticed. He turned on the radio and out into his street, and started off on his journey.

It was smooth sailing over to the West Side Highway. They played some early Beatles on the radio. John smiled at “Love Me Do.” He tapped his fingers along with the song on the steering wheel and passed his ticket between his pinky and ring and his thumb. Hamlet, it said. Row R, seat 16. He flew up the highway when he got on it. He was going to be there this time, he thought. He was going to kiss Elaine during intermission, and squeeze her hand goodbye. Then he saw the ramp to the George Washington Bridge. The cars were packed like sardines, moving at a snail’s pace, if they were moving at all. They looked like a million roly-poly bugs, tight-packed, hard gray shells glittering in the sun. John checked the time: it was 12:44. He whispered a prayer. He was forced to slow down to a crawl. The other cars filled in around him, and he became a roly-poly. The bugs stopped at a red light. The man on the radio was talking about bands who’d been influenced by the Beatles. The light turned green, and nobody moved. John honked the horn. Nobody moved. He honked the horn again, and held it. The man in the car next to him gave him the finger. He took his hand off the horn, and lifted it to his forehead. He felt hot. His hair was hot. He closed the sunroof.

God, he thought. He was going to be late. He wasn’t going to make it. He started to cry. They played an Oasis song on the radio. He flicked it off. God, he thought, and he moved his palm to cover his eyes and feel his lashes, sticky with tears. God! he thought. He was going to be late! He didn’t sob, but tears ran fast down his cheeks. He hadn’t cried like this in eight years. He was going to be so late. The cars started to roll forward, and he put his foot on the pedal. He sniffed. He blinked. The cars stopped again, and started slowly, and stopped. He fiddled with his ticket. He had to be at Hamlet at 2:00. He couldn’t think why he hadn’t been before: he just knew he had to do it now. He

could offset whatever had gone wrong between Elaine and him. Hamlet was the root of it all, he thought. He had to be there. They would let him in. The traffic moved. He started turning. He was about to be on the bridge. It was 1:15. He stared out the windshield at the sea of bugs ahead of him and listened to the chorus of honking. There was nothing he could do, and half an hour passed before he made it to the other side of the bridge. Then the traffic started to thin, and he was able to drive without stopping. He wiped his sweaty palms on the bottom of the steering wheel and smiled a little. He thought about getting to the theater and seeing her again, and holding the ticket out to the woman in the booth. He weaved it between his fingers again in his left hand, hovering above the steering wheel. He thought about taking seat 16 right next to her and how she would smile to herself as she sat, because she loved the theater, and she loved him bringing her there. The road opened up in front of John. He was going to make it by 2:05, probably, and that didn’t worry him at all. Elaine had told him that the play hadn’t started for ten minutes after she had sat down alone, and that she’d nearly cried in those ten minutes. John couldn’t wait to run in and find her there, to prove her wrong. He sped up, over the speed limit. 2:04 was better yet.

He thought he knew his way exactly. But at four past two, he pulled in in front of a mini-mart. “Established 1973,” boasted the awning.

He fiddled with his ticket. Hamlet, September 5th, Row R, seat 16, it said. September 5th, 1971. God, he was late. Elaine wasn’t here. Hamlet wasn’t here. He was so very late.

Celeste O.

A Green Disease

A green disease is my demise

With horns and wings, it beats and flies

To prey upon those graced by God

And loot their hearts, their lives maraud

All good exists without consent it brews in me hot malcontent

Like burning bubbles boiling bright

To raze your smiles and spark delight

All that I am not, you may not be For that could be my fate’s property I feel so damned with you compared Your faults are gold, my traits impaired

So my cancer grows with verve and spite It seeks itself, no object in sight

But when it grasps its eye’s great apple It looks for more, my eternal shackle

Sam H.

There Lies the Blue Faced Man

There, where wretched smell plagues the air

And black red stains the snow white walls

The floorboards creak and cry

Cold dead silence disturbed by laughter

Unknowing children sing and dance

Singing tales of a blue faced man

With blue black spots upon his skin

Which reek of death and sin

And together with the buzzing of a hundred flies

And the meowing of hungry cats

This small dark room is filled with song

And eerie chants

“There lies the blue faced man

With blue black spots upon his arms

Clenching his fallen gun, for when it decides to come

There lies the blue faced man

Who even dead can sing along

Clenching his fallen gun, for when it decides to come

A humble man with a gray-blue face

Who even crows don’t dare to stare

Fearful of his sinful gaze

There lies the blue faced man

Who even dead can sing along’’

The children sing on and on

Night and day seem to pass and there they stay

On and on

His body cold and blue, has fed the cats for long

A pack of starving dogs, circling their prey That’s what these children are Singing on and on Camilo C.

I am prescribing meaning to my life because another pill bottle may be the one that actually kills me. the shake in my walk will stay constant like the rain on late nights and my hips will slant just enough to be too far. if there is something diagnosable within me i could hope for a cure behind your lips and the curl of my cat’s fur. I don’t want to say something about love. i am violent like a dog knowing why it has tasted chocolate. i am g oing to knock the jaw of death clean to the side as i g o under.

I am prescribing meaning. to my life because another pill bottle may be the one that actually kills me. the shake in my walk. will stay constant like the rain. on late nights and my hips will slant just enough to be too far. if there is something diagnosable within me i could hope for a cure behind your lips and the curl of my cat’s fur. I don’t want to say something about love. i violent like a dog knowing why it has tasted chocolate. i am g oing to knock the jaw of death clean to the side as i g o under.

I am prescribing meaning to my life because another pill bottle may be the one that actually kills me. the shake in my walk will stay constant. like the rain on late nights and my hips will slant just enough to be too far. if there is something diagnosable within me i could hope for a cure behind your lips . and the curl of my cat’s fur. I don’t want to say something about love. i am violent like a dog knowing why it has tasted chocolate. i am g oing to knock the jaw of death clean to the side as i g o under.

I am prescribing meaning to my life because another pill bottle may be the one that actually kills me the shake in my walk will stay constant like the rain on late nights. and my hips will slant just enough to be too far. if there is something diagnosable within me.i could hope for a cure behind your lips and the curl of my cats fur. I don’t want to say something about love. i am violent like a dog knowing why it has tasted chocolate i am g oing to knock the jaw of death clean to the side as i g o under.

Eduard Lichtman Eduard L.

Burning Art

The smoke and ash sting my eyes,

The oil paint rolls down my skin leaving trails of warped flesh.

There’s chanting in the background,

Pleas to the legislator

First it was our bodies that they banned

Then our books

Now our minds.

Asking for somebody to free us.

Corruption eases into our government—laughing, Echoing in the halls.

White turns dripping red

Hackles on the guard dog do not rise My empty house with barren walls

Teach but do not teach (they say).

Pose for the camera, kiss the baby–

But do not make change—it will disrupt the eggshell-like peace

The fumes are too much–I must escape for my own sanity.

Katie Z.

Sin of Our Soil

Forget fireside chats and Cats in the Hat Star-bellied Sneetches and Watergate breaches We are the land of greed and home of the depraved.

Spray Agent O on all of Nam drop an atomic bomb (or two for that matter) ignore the news, turn on MLB to watch a batter swing, and miss at a 100 mile per hour fastball ignore the massacred bodies’ fall.

Read Steinbeck (and don’t become a Bolshevik!) see Lenny and the rabbit, don’t fall into a habit of believing the silly allegations on the news don’t you know pssst…(Monica Lewinsky was a ruse).

Whores and bores and the ultra alt-right the man who teaches your children algebra puts on a white hood at night.

Charlottesville and Capitol Hill climb the fence, blood and soil, stop the steal, and buy more oil insurrection is American, rioting is fun Why can’t my 7-year-old son have his own gun?

Becca D.

The Paramedic

The Paramedic may be seen carrying his clothes down and away from the hospital.

The Paramedic speaks in soft and simple phrases so the children may understand him.

The Paramedic listens to their “pardon me”s and “please repeat that”s and he doesn’t get impatient too often.

The Paramedic’s arms are stronger than your arms.

The Paramedic traces the silhouettes swaying in the corridor with his hazel eyes.

Some say they’re brown, but his mother says they’re hazel.

The Paramedic sleeps little and sings lots.

The Paramedic likes small things: fleas and candied walnuts. Sweet things.

The Paramedic is known for the copious amounts of propane he stores in the trunk of his car and for his love of pork liver.

The Paramedic drives a Camry.

It is a red Camry.

Sometimes, the Paramedic wants to dance. He would if his knees weren’t so stiff and if his arms were less chunky.

Some say they’re chunky, but his mother says they’re bulky.

“You’ll need that bulk for lifting the stretcher.”

“I never liked lifting the stretcher,” he’d say, crossing his chunky arms.

The Paramedic sleeps in the hospital at times. When they have a spare room, of course.

The Paramedic likes to feel his skin sifting through the stale sheets. He also likes to hear the mandolin. He also likes to dance.

The Paramedic wears a high visibility vest.

The Paramedic does not smoke but envies those who do. He never quite knew what to do with his hands when walking. Swing them near his hips? Send them waving violently in front of him? Wrap them around a slender cigarette? Why, that’d be simpler.

The Paramedic’s patients are often unconscious. Hospice.

The Paramedic fills the lungs of said patients with propane. Jolts them back awake.

The Paramedic does not listen or respond to the children when they inquire about the canisters in his trunk, filled with gas “devoid of odor and color.”

“Sometimes things aren’t pretty but they need to happen. Sometimes that’s okay.”

Sometimes, the Paramedic wants to dance. Dance down the front stoop of the hospital, his high visibility cloak swinging in the crook of his arm.

Dance to the tinny, stubbed notes of the mandolin when there’s no mandolin playing. When all that could be heard were the children’s questions.

Dance to stale sheets.

Dance to emptiness.

Dance to beer.

Dance to sweet things like candied walnuts and pork liver.

Dance to the mortar spilling out between bricks.

Dance to pretending to relish the flatness, the loneliness.

Dance to “what could I have done better?”

Dance to inhalation.

Dance to doing better.

The Paramedic raises his glass. The children jeer in response. A toast: “To doing better.”

Callum H.

Me and Saint Luke

Once we played tag around the jungle gym, three pairs of small feet running infinity signs under the slides, saintly haloes in the rubber turf.

Sitting on the swings, I was launched all the way to another planet, soaring above the trees, so weightless. Lying on a blue mat, I couldn’t close my eyes, legs still oscillating above the ground & fingers stretching towards the clouds.

I was queen of the reading group, where three of us spelled words longer than the others, anagramming names & neurons.

We constructed Calder-esque silverware mobiles, knives & forks hanging from the ceiling, ready to spear lost time as it floods from the sky, pooling under the monkey bars where we still hang, feet touching the ground.

Hannah B.

The Holy Land

Henry County, Alabama: to most Americans it’s just rows of cotton fields or peanut plants, a gun-toting, greasy, Republican, or maybe even the Amish. (Sometimes you see them with their bonnets and buggies). However, to me, it’s so much more than that. To me it’s the hospitality and the tranquil pace that I feel the moment my plane hits the tarmac, or when my car crosses county lines.

There is a familiar feeling of being connected to everyone while being vastly apart, due to the spaciousness. For once, I’m forced to stop rushing and running around. The town that I drive through feels vastly different from my neighborhood in New York. Diners that haven’t changed much since their creation feel like a black and white 1960s photo inside. Huggin Molly’s, Jimmy’s, and Food Giant “The Giant’’ feeds and nurtures me for a week, while I stay here, unless I decide to go for a 30 minute drive to the “real town.” Despite the small commerce and business, it feels dead and ghostly, but in a soothing way.

Something else that happened to me the last time I was there. I finally felt God. Almost everyone there has some connection with the church, and I swear I’ve never seen more of God’s disciples. You can feel God in the grass between your toes as you tiptoe to your grandmother’s house trying to not step on ant piles. You can feel it in the pinecones that you almost trip on. You can feel it as the Alabama sun hits your face. You can even feel it as you take a bit of your great-aunt’s pound cake. You can feel it as you shell black eyed peas and you hear them ring like a marble down into the metal bowl. You can see it as you watch your great-grandmother blow out her 93rd birthday cake. God lies here.

God’s presence is strongest here, with the farmers that pray for their crops, with the small children at Sunday school, with the blessings before carefully prepared meals. Most people make assumptions about this place. That it’s nothing but cornfields. Back-water trash. A shithole. I used to feel like that too. I learned my lesson. When you come here, or any other small Southern town, don’t shy away from the supernatural. Embrace it. When you go back you can forget it, but while you’re down here, I need you to promise me that.

Naima P.-J.

Brain Cards

Intelligence was my virtue as a child. I gathered heaps of gemstones so I could ramble on about their formation. I dragged my parents to museums so I could give my clueless insights on exhibits. Understandably, my classmates were annoyed by my standoffishness. I often sat alone at recess with a book in hand. While other kids pushed me away, Gary didn’t mind my sensibilities. I was thrilled when he proposed the idea of a playdate. Walking to his apartment, I talked about the moon, dinosaurs, and the construction of the Great Wall. I got many of my talking points from brain cards: handy cardstock strips with fun facts and tidbits of information. When we stepped into the lobby, I walked past an old man with wiry glasses and a poodle by his side. Gary introduced me: ¨This is Mike. He made those cards that you like¨.

¨Brain cards? Oh my god!” I shouted. I spent the next twenty minutes reciting information at Mike that he already knew: inertia, weather patterns, the chips inside computers, and all kinds of gemstones. I didn’t even notice that Gary went upstairs.

Moaz M.

Dancing in the Graveyard

Inspired

by Toni Morrison’s Sula

I will walk to the graveyard I will weave threads of god between ripe teeth will cry out what I want to feel is weathered by seasons of rains spraying a glaze of continuity over the dead sanding the nails off my mother’s hands There is no more green grass

My feet vibrate on leafy ground

Melody sews me into the moment I weave rhythm between my crooked teeth I stomp the moisture out of the ground dry the earth to squeeze out the spirits Stomp on a hollow shell until I release a reflection of the past A blinding bloom of remembrance There for a moment

Consumed by my greed for nostalgia the light fades I, the future, am a self-fulfilling prophecy of forgetfulness

Irene stumbles up the path She embraces the cool air as if there was someone There, she chases threads of moisture between the ground’s stone teeth old words condense on the permanent existence of stone Into Ghosts, dripping off the sides of graves They water the roots of the forgotten

Irene jumps

She follows the relief sculpture

Cracks in the ground that hold memories

The history of the land

Embossed into the perpetual life of the soil

She leaps over decades

Hesitates on single scenes of joy and death

Stomps and screams and cries

Narrating the sculpture

She trips—stones caught between her toes

Her head finds a stone

Claustrophobic microcosm of memory—no longer free

Irene rests in the earth’s hands

The corpse lies slotted into the ground

It finds its divot

Accepts its place

Filling in microscopic abrasions in the surface

The corpse is consumed by the ground

Every bit of flesh

Recycled for the use of the whole

A lifetime of growth dissolved

Absorbed into the surface

Leaving behind threads of moisture

Wrapped around a marble sculpture

A centipede crawls up through her spine

Into her skull and out her mouth

Taking Irene’s last bits of music with it

And with her music gone

Roots dry out

And all meaning is left behind

Felix C.

The Easter Bunny I too hide my avian offspring I plant them across grassy galaxies for others to find the swirls and complexities of a chicken egg are too intense for this world’s gravity Our ungrateful condition tries to sell them and shell them and fry them

What choice do I have but to hide them?

Clover D.

Moon’s Lullaby

Twin white ships rise on the horizon. From the beach, the deepdark waters were known and true, a mere fact for all who dipped their toes upon the shore or nipped at heels with serrated claws. But from here, the ships danced in crystal waters with the sway of the sailors within them. Passengers upon passengers stuffed inside. Bluebears and brownbears in rows and piles stacked across downy decks.

Two captains man the twin ships, and with them, their two mates each. For Captain Kuya, Ina and Other Ina, for myself, Happy and Cherry Blue. We are the crew and the rest are our cruisers, with smiles of thread and guts of cloud.

Baby’s boat’s the silver moon, Sailing in the sky, Sailing o’er the sea of sleep, Whilst the clouds float by.

Crystal waters were stained with ink, now deep and bleeding. The deepdark sea began to swirl, roundandaround, waves ran like arrows sharp and piercing. The two ships made a clinking sound when they hit, like glasses shuddering in their cupboards during a hurricane. Smiles of thread did not fade.

Sail, baby, sail, Out upon that sea, Only don’t forget to sail, Back again to me!

Captain Kuya’s ship lets out a cracking sound, like deep scars on ice before they collapse, downy decks drowning with a glub and dyeing our bluebears bluer than before. Tentacles rise from the sea like waves beating down on the ship walls. Each blow causes a crack, then a shatter as splinters fall from our ships to the heart of the ocean. Down till they’re turned to sand for only the deepest, darkest of creatures to admire.

Baby’s fishing for a dream, Fishing near and far, Her line a silver moonbeam is, Her bait a silver star.

Legs bridge the gap between the ships as cruisers are carried in bunches. Armfuls are tossed to my ship as there is no time. Sinking lower and lower as the last of the cruisers are back in the arms of safety. Captain Kuya fighting off the sea beast, slicing and chopping with a sword of foam. He dives to vanquish the foul thing with one last blow but falls beneath the surface of the inky blue sea. Falling further, deeper like a shooting star, the creature follows diving past. Leaving one twin ship above, like the moon and its star waiting for the sun to shine again.

Sail, baby, sail, Out upon that sea, Only don’t forget to sail, Back again to me

Isa D.V.

The Great Mastermind

The shaky ground He built this place on

Now waiting for someone to slip

Boats on the water searching for death

Birds in the trees listening for lies

The cabins He claimed are slowly inverting their roofs

When we stand in our once sacred place we feel

The manipulated sky caving in

We, our ignorant selves, can only feel played

We beg Him to tell us why it all has to end

Although He tried to hide it

Truth stands there waiting to be accepted

But we don’t want to know

So we now tread the earth slowly losing ourselves

Completely alone and betrayed

Trying desperately to build something new

Always walking opposite

The painfully familiar

Grounds we played

Lake we swam in

Birds we spoke to

The cabins we lived in

The acceptance that

We were created to fall apart

He, the great mastermind, built up our home

Only to tear it down

With His bare hands

Christiane D.

Scopophilia

Every clink of his fork against porcelain at meals. Every closed eye when washing his short brown hair. Every cool breath in his bright white apartment. The exhilaration that any moment could be clothed by someone else’s gaze. Stephen loved being watched.

Stephen carried this predilection since birth. A small smile would grow between his fleshy dimples when Elmo turned to him and asked a question through the screen. He relished the eyes of teachers and grocery store self-checkout security cameras. As he got older, Stephen wrapped himself in neon green, orange, and pink, a walking strobe light attracting the magnetic eyes of passersby.

In college, Stephen was assigned a roommate, someone he spent every day and night with in a hot, stuffy dorm room. Complete contact. Heaven. Brian, an art history major from Ohio, found himself sick of Stephen by the end of the four years, but Stephen had never been happier: close quarters meant perpetual observation. He chose the top bunk and felt Brian’s line of vision burning like lasers through the stale mattress to the clammy flesh of his back.

After this long period of continuous attention from Brian, Stephen found himself alone, unemployed, and unseen in his New York apartment. Shaking and sweating profusely, Stephen experienced a withdrawal, relying on public online video chat rooms for his daily dose of surveillance.

Using what little money he had left, Stephen bought three security cameras which he mounted on the upper walls of his bedroom, living room, and bathroom. Just having them there was electrifying. He had to delete all of his downloaded chat rooms to free up the computer storage, but Stephen could live stream his life, surveyed by friends, family, strangers, maybe even Brian. He’d finally achieved the kind of recognition he had been waiting for, three unblinking eyes forever standing guard.

Callum H.

Under the Acacia Tree

A woman’s body glistens with growing pride

Coated in the juice of passion fruit, and drunk on the everlasting taste of findingShe smells the torn cocoa shells that litter the dusted earthin which her flat-soled toes bless

No longer humerized by dominating in capabilities pure expression blooms towards orange sky of bliss

Lying on mother Acacia’s overlapping roots, she rests her long black neck across Gazing at the thin stretched branche’s growthWarm from the bright Fauna wings overhead

A creation of pure incredibility blessed by the presence of her preserved self worth. Dispersed smell of berbere tossed along her closed thick eyelids

Through three toned lips and wide gapped teeth, she hums her songs of forged beauty.

Durete M.

The Translator

You once asked for a “sick poem” so here it is:

You are my shrapnel, the ache of silver piercing a liver like incisors into peach. You are where i bleed.

You are the bullet in my gut, shot from a toyish gun, ripping through soft tissue like cherry blossom petals.

i have it all memorized—eyes the color of shattered glass. the taste of rotten fruit, the itch of sheep wool or a bruised & forgotten icebox plum. Summer fruit rots so fast.

i feel like throwing up— it’s the sweet sickly aftertaste.

You are a “cancer”, just the way Garfunkel sings it.

You are the chamber ghost, just the way Dickinson scrawled.

It’s almost too easy now, but back then i couldn’t write “sick” poems

because i wanted this to be the poem pinned to my mother’s wall like a captive butterfly,

i wanted to be the poem in your teeth. You & your rat’s nest

of incorrigible teeth. Yet somehow i’d still like to be the poem.

i guess i still can’t write “sick poems” for you, not even once, not even now.

Ezra Pound says a translator should make a good lover—

so i will translate your eyelashes into dark snow,

translate your wrists into my own worn pavement,

translate your unborn tears into an East River crest,

translate you back up north for our ink pudding nights,

our Brooklyn winters. If only you’ll let me, if only you come back around.

Lyla B.

Picking Flowers

I can pick a flower for anyone at all, I’ll roll in their joy, twirl in their call. “It’s beauty, it’s brightness, your lustre and daring! Thank you for giving me something worth sharing.”

I walk home that day and while on my way, I see the plant there in its withering decay. A picked plant for praise, now under my gaze, Is crumbling down in a million ways.

The flower, the power, put in anyone’s grasp, Will not hear the sweet tone of everyone’s laugh. So try as I may, and push as I might, Its pollen will never lift into the night.

Tomorrow I’ll see a flower, blue as can be, I’ll stare and I’ll marvel And leave it to be.

Max K.

August, Again

August

My leg shook relentlessly and my stomach growled as the voices of children sang Abel into the ground. There they stood, barely having had the chance to live, calling for angels of death to take one of their own. We sat in rows of benches facing the pit as the children, assembled on the far side in front of the chapel, came to the end of their song. They filed slowly in behind us as we all stood in unison. The doors of the chapel opened and Father David walked to the pulpit, which had moved outdoors and lovingly surrounded by flowers. As he reached the pulpit we lowered our heads, bowing to the great prophet.

“You may be seated.”

The sound of the hundred of us sitting on the creaky wooden benches was almost comical in the silence of the afternoon, but no faces showed any hint of smiles.

“Everything happens at the right time.”

Father David always started his sermons with that.

“Everything happens when God wills it. Today, on the seventh day of August, on the fifty- second anniversary of my birth, the fifty-second anniversary of God’s greatest gift to His creation, as happens each year He delivers a gift to one of our own. This year Abel has been bestowed with the honor of being welcomed by the Lord into the Eternal Kingdom. This choice, presented to me by the great creator himself, called for me to bless Abel with the greatest gift to ever be given to a mortal. On this holy day, after two days of fast, we will all take part in returning Abel to the great God himself. Amen.”

“Amen,” we replied.

We stood and circled the pit. Abel laid peacefully at the bottom of the pit breathing calmly and looking back up at us. He opened his mouth and recited his final words, “Oh holy Father, I thank you for allowing me the grace of your presence. May I serve you and honor you in my death as I have in my life.” He breathed deeply before shutting his eyes and crossing his hands across his chest. Father David came from the pulpit. He bent down and picked up a handful of the earth that had been dislodged only hours earlier. We all bent down, gripping a handful of the loose dirt. Father threw the dirt on Abel. The little boy’s smile widened, a small tear of joy running down his cheek. Father nodded his head. We took our last look at the boy before hundreds of fistfulls of dirt obscured his body. We threw them and threw them for hours until the ground had leveled out, the pit no longer there.

I breathed a sigh of relief as we all headed to the sustenance building. Accord-

ing to Father David’s instructions we had not eaten for the two days prior, and I was relieved the ceremony was over so I could relieve the pain in my stomach. A little boy in a choir gown ran up to me and hugged my legs. “Good job, Riah! You sang beautifully today!” His little cheeks smiled, still red from a week-old sunburn. My brother at only seven years old was visibly affected by the hunger, his eyes sunken slightly, his forehead too pale. We reached the hall, a sumptuous feast laid out in honor of Abel, and I laughed as all the little children, fumbling in their choir robes rushed to the spread.

February

The night was icy. The wind blew at two degrees below zero, and we had all gathered in the great hall for warmth. The fires along each wall cast a flickering light over the colony. Several families gathered around each hearth, blankets piled high. The clock hands passed two in the morning. I sat against the wall with Uriah curled into my side. It was too bright for me to sleep, so I had passed the past four hours counting every tile on the floor several times. An infuriating numbness filled my leg—at almost eight he weighed enough to put a limb to sleep. I waited for a few more minutes before shaking him awake. He groggily shifted enough to let me readjust. He stretched out like a cat before falling back along my lap, his little curls covering his face.

As I leaned back, ready for more sleepless hours, I saw someone shifting in the corner of my eye. Adina. She lay alone. No brother to hold. Abel is gone. She seemed to be shivering in the cold, shoulders shaking. I held Uriah closer to me. How many times had I seen them together? Adina and Abel. Chasing each other around. Sitting together in chapel. In school. In the fields picking flowers. The twins had been practically inseparable. Yet Adina sat shivering alone tonight, the fire not enough to warm her heart. I had seen her, months earlier, stony-faced as she scattered grass seed across the loose dirt above her own twin’s body. I had thought her coldness was jealousy at the time. Why should he get honored? They had practically lived the same life. I had thought her face was the reason. She had not been blessed with a pure soul, she was tainted by jealousy. But as I watched her, her shaking clearly not from the cold, I realized the reason for her unhappiness. She was not happy for her brother. She was not jealous of him. She missed him. I held the little head in my lap, stroking his baby soft curls. The feeling I had in this moment was one she could never feel again. I looked down at the pale face in my hands. An eyelash rested on his cheek. I picked it up gently and wished something blasphemous

and inexcusable. I hoped that my brother would not be chosen by God, because I, without a doubt, could love him more than any God could.

April

I had watched Adina. I watched her as she sang in the choir with all the others under ten. I watched her as she picked flowers alone in the meadow. I watched when she sat in the chapel. I watched when she stood to pray to Father like it took all the effort in the world. I watched as she looked back at me with eyes that didn’t seem to care I was watching. I watched as she watched the ground where grass had started to sprout and how her eyes hurt. I watched how she looked back up to see she had missed words in the prayers. I watched her cheek heal. But I also watched as she looked at Father David with a devotion that could not be a lie.

July

The meadows echoed with silence. Flowers covered the ground, a thick carpet over the grass. We knelt in a crowd behind Father David as he faced the children. After a full day of silence Father knew. God had told him the purest soul of the children. The one who, on the fifty-third anniversary of the Messiah, would receive the greatest honor known to man. And when the quiet broke, I knew I was being punished. When the prophet spoke the name, I knew it was because of my blasphemy. And when the meadow exploded with cheers and Uriah was hoisted onto the shoulders of everyone who could reach him, my tears weren’t of joy. Because I would miss him. And I wasn’t in the wrong.

August, Again

‘I’m scared,’ he said. He had come to me for help and I had told him everything would be fine. I had told him that God loved him. I had convinced him to go willingly. And as he was lowered into the pit, beyond my line of sight, I knew it was wrong. He was not being honored, this was murder. And I had let it happen.

Oona G.

Prayers to God

Inspired by Toni Morrison’s Sula

Memories like prayers to God.

Memories I know all the way down. From the highest point, un-changed when un-wanted. Shaking New Orleans, New River Road. The air smelled like vegetables; it was hot. Funeral drums, sheeting in tight, and freezing mid jump.

You took me home and from out the window white fabric blowing I heard you call, “Now! By the river!” I heard it drowning down; I’d wanted more.

When soldiers stared on the train, men in green, back in the woods, altitude sickness fell in. In spirals and blurs, matted grey specks. I signed the papers and I left them hanging over the closet door. (Jude’s tie had swung around his neck like that.)

The crows came back, the cold and hot.

My mother was a collector but I wanted her messes gone. Generational passes, wiped away.

I can see the backyard, and I remember the fires. The door is jammed and it’s because too many boys never grow up. It’s because this life takes you. Falling back, digging dirt, un-changed and un-wanted. Slipping out of the hospital and towards the valley. Slipping towards the old folks home and very carefully writing “Miss Sula Mae Peace.”

Like everyone, I remember the winter of 1941, but I remember the summers before too; I remember the boys, I remember the animals, and I dreamt of victory over the bodies that held them. Whisper it to me, like a stone cast of this house. Down the long street, trees and cars, “back when.” Through dead brothers’ cluttered bedrooms, there are stares down the line.

Sneaking under low branches, cutting out, prayers to God.

I’d wanted the good life, I’d wanted to know solar flares in my body. Going wing on wing while the clouds advanced, “hell is change.” We were on a run. A monument of an old man and a baby’s ballet shoes, the first things you see when you’re let go, stumbling.

When the supply runs out, when I’m moving back home. Cisternes and glassware passed down, I’d wanted to be glorious. History collects itself in us, like long exposures. “Just wait, I’ll tell Nel.”

Listen for the ghosts and shutter clicks, the dresses we ripped. Now in the bathroom, in the mirror, and from out the window white fabric blowing I hear you call, “Now! By the river!” Drowning down, I bring her with me.

Lord, if my ribs stop taking in breath let me be warned. We had no fear of being chosen, and no hope of keeping anything at bay.

Freya G.

First/πρῶτος (inspired by Anne Carson’s bakkhai)

dionysus. blink 3 times when you feel him kicking in.

dionysus, the slick god of joie de vivre, sprung from zeus’s meaty joint of a thigh in abnormally good spirits (for a bastard boy).

dionysus, with his bristling thyrsus and beard of blackberries, bruising grapes–the ones squashed between plastic & the metaverse— those reserved especially for creasing between the teeth the tongue kneads dark liquor from a sodden press.

dionysus, the god of firsts; your first head rush tendrils of hair curl themselves round the car door first pop when you open a can of tennis balls a newly strung racket makes the forehand crisp your first surge of unbridled anger scream-at-the-sky curse the chorus & their fumbling lies, gorging on gossip like stripping flesh from a blood-soaked bone.

dionysus forces firsts down your throat; your first goodbye flays an anxious thrashing in your lungs your first stomach lurch as you realize everything changes & people go with ebbing ocean currents your first time hearing “we’re getting divorced” your first lick of praise oxygen kindles a sprouting flame your first yearning pulls like a fish on a hook glassy eyes peer into a treacherous soul the first i’d do anything you said, if you said it with your hands.

no. follow the current the wine only flows one way. down the throat.

dionysus, the god of whirlpooling hysteria; first your maddened fingernails grasp the turf, then look in the mirror; you, privy to sparagmos, crested the wave of the dance, followed the rites dutifully tore a bloodied bull carcass to shreds swallowed the flesh raw, famished & completely forgot you were holding my diced hands in yours.

the first problem— eyes like coming down my brownstone steps mouth like a drought to floodplains cleopatra before she bit the snake jokes none of the other olympians understood biking ‘round chinatown & don’t think about leaving now

fingers laced with a midas touch to meld a magnetized man but dionysus promises a gold rush in caramels & crimsons, cheeks wine-darkly flushed, an oak-paneled bar & a drink to quench the worry —the final solution forgetting.

Adelaide S.

eating batikh in the batuf two words my mouth cannot yet form I bite into red flesh juice dribbles down my chin and onto the plot of land that paid for the journey of my grandfather to the hallowed land of Yankton, North Dakota (where a savior was born)

the wrinkled hands he once sewed back together toil tirelessly over soft dough kneading and rolling and frying on a makeshift tabun the workers of the valley gather on worn plastic chairs and eat the fruits of the old woman’s labor as the za’atar finds refuge in the crevices of their weathered palms already sticky with the syrup of resistance and love

II.

zayt zaytun is thick on my tongue a balm to the wound earned in a tumble from the winding knotted branches of a 2000-year-old tree (the source of my pain births my salvation) worshipping fingers wring every last drop the ancient orchard offers into bottles nestled in a suitcase to sustain my time away from home

the oil fuels my soul but the vessel soon contains only dregs and my heart grows heavy in yearning for the nectar born of history where history was born

III.

the fan chugs away in its futile fight to cool those congregated in the stagnant summer air laughter rings in sync with the cries of the adhan adults gossip about gambling cousins in intimately familiar words I will not understand for years to come

the scene is replicated in the miniature down to the cracks in the green plastic chairs the legs wobble as we giggle in a tongue no one else speaks over a game of uno where our love transcends all language

IV.

my skin is warm with salt water and sun a tooth masquerades as a shell as I spit out the last bite of my lebne sandwich and examine my newfound treasure

beside me, a man tans in the sun he curls on his towel and cradles the machine gun close to his chest he lies on sand stained with blood—his skin blisters under the scorch of the heavens

I bear my keffiyeh like armor as I march onward with a jacket stained with tears (tears of my sister; tears for my sisters; tears for the fallen) the old man’s accordion harmonizes with our cries of anguish as our lanterns spell out desperate pleas in a vigil to pain and love

Laiali T.

The Mystagogue

Hark! Boy, hark!

The mystagogue weaves wind. Listen close, dear child, To that maudlin man who sings

Of red brick cracked and roads unridden, Cast in violet skies and love forbidden.

His song is of life and the turning of leaves, Of the souls great migration and butterfly wings.

Hark! Boy, hark!

The medley crowd grows close

As you sit on that beam. See the worker bees flock, And who their queen?

With no tablet nor doctrine he rode from the mountain, Expounding with gumption all our faults and redemption.

His timbre a tundra of umber and umbra

As his soul bleeds out hot all his ember’s conundra.

Hark! Boy, hark!

Wind blows murmurs and whispers: A savior? Messiah?

Or a man of bad conscience. He stands from his seat, A great mast in the sea, And brings his new troupe, Granting all a new nascence.

On a path unknown with the mystagogue their new guide They strut like great lions in a newfound pride.

Now far, they’re like ants on a trail of sweet words, And all that is left is the song of the birds.

Sam H.

if i was the scar marked on your skin i would stretch to leave space for the dots and the bleedings migrate to bring every part of myself over you;

bring myself like a wolf to the lonely mountains i used to see and choke down the sun if only for a moment. the question: what would they do with my body is answerable. how could i dictate where the scalpel went? how could i tell them to leave enough space for what was left of you? i could leave empty the skin for the bleeding marks & the scratches. i could leave the mundane & sticky fingers alone with a tongue. i could let the cherries fall and bury them on top of the graves.

sometimes things fall & we knew that when you said something about burning a junkyard down. we lived and died with the train schedules and bathed ourselves in our own hands

fingers fumbling and twisting over body parts looking for the hole where the wrongness bloomed out and slowly made us wounds. how long until the red and black took our bodies over? i was never quite sure how to tell you all my favorite things had holes in them like buckshot. and the gun rang like a bell

and my father owned a pistol quieter

than i had ever seen or heard and my mother shot it

like the sight was in the shape of a cut; forward and lonely and it hit like it always would straight in the head leaving an exit like a cherry and passing the sweet animals on its way to the mountains.

Eduard L.

I didn’t cry when my dog, Hugo, died. I didn’t cry when he was diagnosed with cancer, I didn’t cry when he stopped eating, I didn’t cry when he became so skinny my fingers would snag on his ribs when I pet him. I wasn’t scared of my emotions. I wanted to be able to break down and sob, to feel the sting of the tears sliding down my cheeks, to let all of the sadness and anger of those final months dissipate in cathartic release. The meltdown never happened, though. I think about that a lot. I think about what that lack of expression means. I wonder if there’s something innately wrong with me, if I don’t possess the same capacity to feel as most people. More than anything, I regret not grieving Hugo the way he deserved. I regret not being able to show him how much he meant to me, how much it hurt to see him slowly ripped away. I don’t regret our final moments together. I’m glad I sprinted from Saint Ann’s to the subway stop, from the 72nd Street station to my apartment. I got home fifteen minutes before he was taken to be put out of his misery. I spent every one of those minutes sitting with Hugo on the bathroom floor, in that spot next to the right wall that he claimed even as a baby. We stayed there, my leg propping up his head, my fingers tracing the contours of his face, my head resting on his neck, immortalizing his scent in my mind. I didn’t speak. I imagined, for fifteen minutes, that this moment was forever. That was the final time I ever saw him. I’d decided months ago that I wouldn’t go with my family to have him put down. I didn’t want the last Hugo I saw to be the one inside the sterile walls of a doctor’s office, the one with a needle in his side, the one who knew his own pain but didn’t know it was ending soon. And for fifteen minutes, he wasn’t any of that. He wasn’t anything but the dog he’d always been, the dog he’ll always be.

Jake R.

blurring lines

What will become of the line that’s been drawn Between madness and maddening still?

Will it wither away from the weight of the world That’s attached to its weakening will?

What is to happen to tides, to the moon, When the earth has no force to obey? I imagine mankind will descend to disaster Without it to show them the way.

Buildings will slowly collapse into rubble And further dissolve into sand.

And the children, the future, backs broken, bent double, Will yield at the madman’s command.

Some of the lines have been penciled in poorly. Some lines are intended to fade.

I’ve watched it turn blurry. I watched it transform Into darkness, to shadows, to shade.

What should we do when this line disappears

And we’re left to survive in the rain?

It’s the power that binds us—the rule that defines us— The torture that saves us but also confines us— The law that we question—that needs our protection— Without it, it’s my turn to reign.

Lizzie O.

wild women

We are girls, so we want to test the power that was put in our hands before we knew its name. We are girls, so we want to touch the world and watch it ripple and spring back, mouth watering for us. Coyotes nipping at our ankles. We are girls, and we put red lipstick on, gliding the felt tip of the applicator over our top lips, carefully shaping an outline, that chalky, smooth texture. We go out to coffee and smoke fake cigarettes and get dinner at expensive french bistros we can’t afford, flipping our hair and baring our collarbones with smiles that are barely-hidden snarls, clicking our heels on the pavement on these warm summer nights when we walk down Bedford Avenue and feel like lionesses, unleashed into the street, finally powerful. We tremble together on the subway when a man tells me I’m beautiful, I’m gorgeous, can he please have my number, and never texts it because the part that gets his dick hard is not my supposed beauty but seeing my joyful laughs turn uncomfortable, watching me shrink and melt. I keep losing this game that I don’t realize I’m playing. I don’t know how to stop playing, to tap out. This high-wire waltz I don’t know the steps to. We want to push the boundaries, want the rush of inviting desire and then rejecting it, want to toe the line without ending up dead or worse. We say look at me and they do, we say now stop and they don’t. We say this isn’t fun anymore, we don’t want to play anymore, please, but now it’s not up to us, maybe never was up to us. We are girls, and we are high slumped against each other in the backs of Ubers as the stars hover and twinkle in the air above us and the wind blows fast against the cracked windows. We are laughing and laughing, too enthralled by the beauty of this world to be afraid of the man behind the driver’s seat, which in turn makes us a little afraid of ourselves. He says he’s taking a shortcut, so suddenly we are wracking our brains trying to remember how to pray. Men tear my body apart like tissue paper in their minds, make my blood curdle in my veins at the sounds of their voices, and I say thank you, have a nice day, thank you, have a nice day, thank you, have a nice day. A man whispers in my ear, I could break you in half with one hand. A man whispers in my ear, I love you, I love you, I love you. In time, I will learn that they are saying the same thing. On Valentine’s Day, a man asks for directions to a place he knows how to get to, just to stare at my chest. In his hand is a bouquet of roses for a woman his age he’s about to tell he loves. On New Year’s Eve, a man across the steakhouse can’t take his eyes off my young body. He is sitting at a table with his wife and his children, his daughter in his arms. When I was very young, I went to a wedding in a long baby pink dress and a man there had tears that wouldn’t stop falling off his face. His partner had died from AIDS, and his heart was broken. He drank and danced and wept into expensive fabrics and he gave me a warning, he held my hand and looked in my eyes and told me you look like a goddess, men are going to try to hurt you. And even then, even as a child, I gripped his hand and said

they already have. We are girls, and we are dancing, we are dancing and the blue light pools on our skin and somewhere, somewhere far away, a song plays. We are girls and under our skin thrums a quiet resistance. We are soft yet unyielding. Our bodies made of blood and water and something unnamable. We are girls, and we want to grip the whole world in our teeth, we want to draw blood. We are girls, and we are waiting for the bus and an old man is burning holes in our bodies with his magnifying glass eyes and I love you so much, you are maybe stupid, maybe reckless, maybe brave, because you stare back. Because what else is there to do, when you come out of the womb already sinning, already down five points on a bet you never placed, what else is there to do but see how long you can hold your hand in the flame before you burn?

Ari W.

late night drive

through the window the plains are a dark, open sea the trees are thick red waves cresting above the wet asphalt. the light places its thin hand over the night, its vivid veins splayed out across the roads turning the heavy beads of rain that rest on the pine needles into the stained glass of a chapel. the heady, perfumed branches arc and twist prayers dissipate into the stretching, cooling night collect into rain clouds and roll, silent and shining across the hum of the waving grass.

Emmett J.

Meditations on a Stranger

She wore this brilliant pink dress and I swear I saw the moon in her eyes. I didn’t know many people on that boat but I knew her. She spent her nights drifting back and forth between the joyless ballrooms and nightclubs and sneaking into comedy shows to steal the open mic. She waited on the top deck late at night in six-inch heels and no coat to gaze out over the white-caps on the North Sea. She smoked with her friends during trivia nights and struggled not to cough. Still she lives in images: a glimpse of blonde hair leaving the pub; a dim click-clack of heels against the carpeted floor. Living in the night, never coming to the lunch hall or midday seminars, existing only in that vague dimpsy space between sleeping and waking and disappearing when the sun rises.

She’d lean off the railing on the bright white edge of ocean and look out at the waxing moon—and me, watching from the back door, tracking the whip of her hair in the wind. Sometimes when she smiled it was like she was being crushed like a soda can. Lying on the dance floor of the top deck. Her friends were everywhere, people she’d flit back and forth from, in and out of hallways and sleazy bars. Her age was vague and inconstant: she drifted between the easiness of a new adolescent and a young woman, slipping notes into coat pockets and sliding envelopes across dining room tables. Her room was on the lowest floor, not a window in sight and the ocean wind stayed where the other half lived, where she’d go each night.

She flirted with me in a blue elevator and I never saw her again. Our hair in matching updos, toes in matching kitten-heels. Her hand against mine as she told me to come dance and her bright even whistle against the Muzak. I laughed and told her no, that I didn’t really go out very much, and she tried to persuade me to come with a kind of worn-out simplicity she’d clearly used before. The hem of her pink dress sleeping against the side of the elevator and her arm a breath away from mine. How many lives did she live? Where did she go when the sun came up? I wondered endlessly. I filled suite-room notepads and coffee napkins with observations and half-baked thoughts. Still I miss her boreal sadness. I can’t stop picturing her alone in her room on the night when the boat swayed back and forth from the force of the storm, the North wind making us atone for something.

Did we sin that night in the elevator? She looked afraid. In her pink dress she looked at me right in my eyes and smiled that crushed-can smile and looked afraid. Of what, who, of me, I don’t know. I never saw her again. I lived in the dusk-dawn light trying to replicate what she had, feel the touch of her fingers on mine, see the spin of her skirts in the ballroom midnight. Nothing. Running back and forth between bars and nightclubs and the fine dining on the top deck and the employee mess below sea level.

Eventually I disembarked and set off on a train headed for Wales. We must have all gotten off. The helpless thing is still I want to go to the disco with her. When I picture her still I see her lying on the floor on the deck watching the stars dance above in that blue night.

Margot S.

Alternate Names For Nostalgia

after Alternate Names For Black Boys by Danez Smith

1. Licking cobwebs from the stale corners of blackened mahogany bookshelves

2. Cold knuckles rubbing rough patches on threadbare denim

3. Chapped elbows and flaking lips

4. come over i promise it will be great come over

5. Thirty separate bodies arching backwards silently, eyes closed

6. Pinestraw punctured pulp

7. White clouds of breath pushing off of your lips, stretching upwards

8. Look, look I took the tooth out myself

9. Predetermined fates for sentient sketches in notebook margins

10. A pair of lungs filled to the brim with lemon yellow butane

11. Counting seconds until you finally acknowledge my flatly phrased queries

12. Inch-long splinters embedded in my tongue

Callum H.

Fraud

I miss the days when I was in love. Sun-kissed swindler, dancing trickster Always playing the joker.

I miss the days when I was light-hearted, Rosy-cheeked laughter, effortlessly Comedic and barbaric.

And I miss the days when I wasn’t the Malfunctioning machine. Always neurotic and never the player, Always the lawyer, and never the fraud.

Tanner Q.

Charleston West Firle

Lewes

25 January 1961

Beloved, or rather, Ginny Goat,

The downs are most beautiful today. Glancing out the parlor window this morning I almost mistook their sungilded grasses for the crests of waves, dearest, as though for a moment your spirit had passed through me, had passed through all Charleston, for that matter, to make the tattered lampshade, sofa, silent creeping snakefly, appear suddenly exalted. Such it has always been chez toi: I am thinking, for instance, of that day we went to gather T. after mother’s death, how you saw the train steaming a fire of red & aureate light into the station; or when we sat reading in Kensington Gardens, the way Shre became illuminated, became utterly intelligible, and one had that sensation of burning glass.

What I mean to say, V., is that all this time I’ve been painting––the dining room table with pots strewn all over, you, the dining room table stripped of all else. You would be 79 today, though of course you shan’t have cared for such a measurement. Would. Shan’t. Wretched words. All those years we spent, side by side at our standing desks shut up in that mausoleum of a house, you with your Greek, I with my oil. Dark blue, green, dark orange is my feeling. Or blue, dark green, orange. After all my legs ache so going up & down, up & down the old staircase, & Clive says I’ve become Mrs. Bast incarnate.

And so I mix my paints (paltry though they seem compared to incarnadine, multitudinous, seas); I look out towards the downs. How many times did we walk up that hill there together, with the children thronging round, & the washing wet, & the London letters half torn-open? That hill over there remains.

Love, Your Dolphin

Katherine S.-R.

The Bar Cat’s Quarry

Jack stood on the precipice of DUMBO, pausing to look out like a jumper over a cliff deciding whether or not the waves below are worth the panic of the fall. He considers turning, falling back to lesser, safer fun, but the pull, the inescapable pull of the unknown drags him forward, and cautiously he approaches the edge. Thoughts bouncing madly in his mind, each calling and crying; running with such manic pleasure he would be foolish to try to capture one, he is left only with his instincts, to do or not to do. In this case he does. His feet hit the sidewalk, dropping from their place on the stoop. The body follows, long and gangly, its hereditary thin slowly thickening with age. The bar awaits, as the water awaits the jumper; it is distant yet inevitable.

After a few blocks that drew him inland he could see the bar, tall and firmly built. The make was old but in a confused effort to maintain some air of the ancient the owner had removed of the place what truly held power and authenticity and replaced it with things he thought felt, well, “old school,” and he had done so until the place felt new, replacing all the skin until only the bones lay testament to its age. People liked it, enjoyed the feeling of old rather than actual age. It was a place that dragged in tourists and locals alike, and could boast age in only the most technical of ways, and which now housed an already slightly drunk Jack, who sat alone at a small gnarled little table which wobbled dejectedly in the corner.

He was surrounded by familiar songs and an array of almost familiar people, whose faces came together in one large mural of semi-familiarity which he ignored as he drank; mournfully looking out at the bobbing Fridayers whose goal was to fling themselves in wonderful rebellious abandon so as to cleanse themselves from the awful mundanity of the week. Each of them either haunted or egged on by the sense of déja-vu that had struck them as they had entered. Their faces held that look of semi-focused deliberation which tends to worm its way onto test takers and other such practitioners of uninteresting repetitious labor. He himself had lost the expression on his third trip to the bar, but the feeling stuck with him now and with pity and pleasure did he look on at his fellow denizens.

The third time he had been to the bar he had taken Loreli and they had spoken on the matter. He had been excited to bring her, thinking that the low ceilinged tavern would charm her as it had him. That when they entered she would take as much pleasure from the pub’s careful collection as he did. He had pictured the moment for hours before they had gone, watching them grow ever more animated. They would talk first about the bar’s beauty, then they would switch to painters: first Rothko(more beautiful), then Friedrich(even more enchanting), perhaps followed by Rembrandt or Warhol, then Pol-

lock and Fabritus, building upon one another’s scattered yet well-hewn tastes, their joy in the wonders of each other’s minds building, and growing, uncontrollably until they would have no choice but to burst and laugh and cry in one blissful union, holding on to one another as the last physical objects in the world slowly being replaced by blinding euphoria.

She hadn’t liked the choice. She hadn’t liked him, not as he liked her at least, he could have seen that, though he didn’t, filling out the empty spaces in his portrait of her with features he liked, a laugh that made him laugh, friends whom he did not mind, music that he enjoyed. It comprised nearly half of his perception of her, but alas, that did not matter, and of course it only fueled his interest. After he had seen her, he had begun running, thoughtlessly with wild ferocity and some unclear fleeting goal in sight. It had been so wondrous he had not paused to breathe once and now weeks later he had held his breath still, allowing no corrupting air to infiltrate or dampen his affections. He clung childishly to the idea of their connection until the end of the most treacherous night when she had left amiably by way of an unfortunately fast Uber that had swept her away shortly after her phone twinkled alerting her that it was ten. She had even refused his offer to pay for the cab. He had left defeated but not yet crestfallen believing the evening only the first act of a long dance in which the hero begins by facing tragedy or difficulty. He was not in the slightest bit deterred; if she did not like him now, she would certainly later, if only because above all else it somehow made sense.

More important to his complete assurance to their romance lay in the fact that he was the only man who would ever love her. For the most consequential feature of his portrait of her was that he was the only one who could ever understand her. Be interested in her. Want to be interested in her. He often thought of this as they painted across from one another in the large studio where about seven of them worked. All migrating from their respective nests to perch for the day in the immense studio in Red Hook. Each of them would paint for hours, in a vast array of styles, each quietly enjoying one another’s company and the classical music that spilled from the record player and most of all the marvelously meager contribution to the rent they paid to occupy the space. Staring at her through the yellow hue of his canvas, he would repeat to himself an expression he had devised so as to surmise his interest in her. It was his way of complimenting himself for his own devotion to someone of slightly less classical beauty, a sort of self-congratulation that eventually had tied into his tortured affection. Her beauty, he would say, was tied intimately to her art and had to be viewed in the same way.

At first glance, her portraits—which depicted what she described as insignificant scenes of great import, all drawn from childhood and occasionally recent memory—were quite as beautiful as they were unremarkable. Her style was not ingenuitive, following

some blend of Dutch Realism and Romanticism, and not corrupting the world in any such way that would draw one’s gaze. The kind of work that hung amongst many on some large gallery wall and is most accidentally ignored. Her best work, or what Jack thought of as such, was a large canvas depicting a signal tern crossing a blue cloudless sky. It was pleasant, somehow reminiscent above all else. But as I have said, unexciting, unable to draw the eye. Yet upon closer examination, Jack insisted there was sublime and clever beauty masked, an attention to detail, a quality of brush stroke, how her hair fell, or the slow way she broke into a smile. It was a beauty held in minute quirks, something that must be examined to be enjoyed. It could perhaps be summed up as acquired taste, but Jack, if the phrase was used, would indefinitely scoff at its vulgarity and reject it. Anyone could gain an acquired taste; only he could love Loreli.

Such was his portrait of her. However, in addition to this, he had begun an almost finished portrait of Loreli that was currently sheltered in the back room of his apartment. He had labored at it for days, leading to weeks, and now months. He was eternally unsatisfied. Working tirelessly in pursuit of the exalted image he held in his mind. And instead of beginning a new piece, he had added and added, watching as Loreli the painted became more and more angelic, inhuman in her perfection, all flaws turned to strengths, all strengths turned into examples of perfection. Eventually after realizing that Loreli the painted had separated from her breathing inspiration he had dubbed the piece Saint Loreli and continued unabashed. He had planned to reveal it, when and under what circumstance he was unsure, but the day he had awaited like a misplaced birthday, biding the time until he could impress the girl with her own beauty. It was both magnum opus and symbol of undying love and he loved it almost as much as the girl.

Now he despised both, unfairly and untruly, but with a passion that had led him to this bar for a session of solitary self-pitying in which he mourned as one mourns a parent who has most randomly and brutally died. She had entered the studio with another man; it was not unexpected, nor unlikely as he had convinced himself, but nonetheless the sight of their entwined hands had sickened him as though each twisting finger was a curling filmy serpent entwining itself amongst a collection of similar repugnant beasts. His eyes had bulged, his hand dropped dramatically down his canvas streaking a gash of red across the piece he had begun, now bleeding before him, the watery mixture dripping onto the wood planks below him. He had been civil and kind; the whole ordeal was by all means a quite unremarkable occurrence but as he replayed the image in his mind, the drinks before him became a glass arena of pints and shots and circular wide little glasses whose black rocks still glistened.

He had placed himself in purgatory, a limbo of his own creation where there existed only tawny liquor and the meeting of him and Loreli’s, Loreli’s, Loreli’s (he could

not decide on a word) companion. Over and over the image played sometimes as it had happened, sometimes as it had not, each time his face contorting in further pain and hatred. Until in a display of emotional understanding usually attributed to dogs, the bar cat, a torn mix of pink blotches and black fur, with inquisitive green eyes, pressed back legs to the ground and front legs to the man and jumped, somewhat gracefully, onto his lap and then from there to the table, nearly knocking down several glasses as he did so. He purred without being pet, and Jack could not help but perceive the sound as a sort of self-satisfied smile. The creature turned his head towards him, circling his head in a motion that instructed him to pet it. Reaching out his hand tentatively, he placed the tips of his fingers against the back of the cat’s skull and pulled them upwards scratching him behind his ears. He was disgusted to find the area nearly hairless and covered what he had felt to be dried blood and some other crystallized substance. It was humiliating, and the cat purred again, enjoying the joke. Jack pulled his hand back, placing it protectively in his lap.

Surfacing from the sea of regurgitated memory, Jack tore his eyes away from the collection of glasses which he had gradually manifested; he examined the room with half-closed eyes, not opening them wide enough for the burning within them to become truly uncomfortable. The bartender moved lethargically behind the bar, hand dipping into glasses half-heartedly while his upper half dropped, longing for sleep, the folds of his Stoke City jersey emerging as he furled and then unfurled in long loud yawn. His eyes never left his hand’s methodical turn and Jack felt oddly relieved by the barmans isolated intentions, his silence welcome, the sound of his voice, unheard throughout the evening, somehow dreaded.

The light had changed in the pub. While it was once sporadically bright, obscuring the grotesque, revealing the beautiful, it now took on a dimmer more soothing quality, and upon closer inspection he saw that the bare bulbs that hung from the ceiling had been replaced by large black kerosene lamps that seemed to swing, caught in some invisible breeze. The music too had changed, the once pestilent pop, replaced by a slow-spun bout of classical which emanated from the upper floors, a piano and violin, seemingly live, carrying the tune.

A light, cold and pale, emanated from the windows so that grounding landmarks that could have guided him as successfully as twine were gone, cloaked in mist and the pale glow of otherworlds. His eyes flitted, snagging on each window, hoping one could provide him with escape. None did. He was locked in. Not technically, of course; he had seen no one go to the door and press in the bolt. Then again he seemed to have missed the world morphing around. He wondered if he had somehow been transported through time. That for some reason the bar shifted at twelve, on October twenty-second, but the

quantity of anachronisms littering the room assuaged this fear. Alas, no flapper had yet approached him, no slicked-back smoking fat man had patted his arm. He felt briefly robbed, and then pleased to at least have remained in the present. The cat had not moved and now lay on its back, legs akimbo, watching him, eyes unmoving as its tongue moved across its raw stomach.

He stood. He sat. He stood up again, feeling unsure of what to do. Legs still extended, he pinched himself, taut trembling fingers pulling at his arms. Starting at his wrists, then his forearms, up to his covered biceps, each time harder and with more consideration as though if he reached the right spot he would suddenly find himself awake in bed. He longed for the feeling of sweat and confusion that would arise as his confused eyes looked around his darkened bedroom. He would look to the clock, the little moon hung across the room from his bed, it would be three-thirty, maybe four, that’s when he usually woke. If the dream had been particularly violent or exciting he would sketch or write so he would not forget and then fall back into sleep, hoping to return to the place he had left. He pinched himself again, then seeing the counter to be empty, met his own eyes in the mirror behind the booze, face splintered and spliced by the many bottles strewn across the shelves.

It was a dream. He was quite sure of it now. An interesting one of unclear origin, but a dream nonetheless. In his newfound lucidity he tried first to fly and then to summon Loreli, repeating the thoughts in his head, relishing his temporary divinity. Nothing happened and, annoyed, he pinched his arm once more; if he could not control the dream he did not wish to be in it. The excitement of the oddities fading, he now found himself trapped, stuck in a place where he could do nothing but think the same thoughts over and over again.

It was torturous, as if her name and memory had shifted into an inescapable song, once heard, never unheard, so intoxicating and well crafted that it erased thought. The mind simply becoming a hollow chamber in which the refrains echoed. Once again Jack had sunk to his seat, wishing only to leave, wishing that the light glowing outside were some early echo of sunlight that would soon breach his eyelids and pull him from sleep. His own conscience in his dream had begun to frighten; the fact of his ease of thought, of fear, in a world of supposed randomness, troubled him. When he woke would he not simply follow the same path, be stuck with the same song. He still wished to wake, he had more terrain to cross, he could meet, interact with new people and new paintings. In waking, everything could evolve, would evolve, and he would escape this prison where all that could exist must have already existed.

He considered trying the door. It was open, he was sure. He once again repeated to himself that whatever he would face would exist only in his sleeping mind, but with

the fear of the waking world within him, he refrained, filling the outside world with a multitude of terrors. Chief among them a taunting Loreli and her wretched companion. He too feared a drop. It was a different fear, simpler and yet nearly as prominent. He thought somehow, be it in his mind or in reality, that he had been transported to the edge of the world, the cutoff between what can be understood and what cannot, and fearing some harrowing revelation, he stayed away from the door, leaving the circular handle to fester and rot. He turned his eyes back to the cat, the glass green globes reaching for his gaze with the appearance of one who has waited a long time. Their eyes met and the cat twitched his head towards the barman, now timidly placing down a glass over the sink.

“He says you should go,” the little animal purred, the words spoken for the large man behind him so emotionless that Jack could interpret no element of threat, or warning or plea, yet was still sure of an unseen aspect of the cat’s cool delivery. “He doesn’t care where, of course, why would he, but he doesn’t want you here, it’s troublesome. Annoying even.” The bartender for the first time had looked up from his task, and his eyes swung wildly until they met Jack’s. His hands still moved in out of a glass as if he couldn’t stop, and the expression with which his face was held implied some great reluctance to extract himself from his work, as if the sullen contortion of his lips and eyes were the result of some chains he fought to look up at the last customer. His eyes were small and shoved so deep within his skull, it appeared as though he were staring out from deep pits. As the contact continued Jack felt as though his own eyes were being slowly devoured, as though the bartender was slowly stealing vision from him. He turned back to the cat with the logic of one who has drawn his hand away from a flame when the sensation morphs from pleasure to pain.

“I don’t want to leave, this is a dream, why should I want to leave a dream?” he said, and as he did so the barman scoffed, and spat a deep black bloody wad onto the counter before descending into a trapdoor behind the bar. The effect was almost comedic, however; before he could react the cat sprung onto the counter before him and said in accented but clear crisp English: “And if it’s not a dream?”

“I don’t know, what do you mean if it’s not a dream?” he replied wearily.

“Which would you prefer? is what I meant to ask. Forgive me.” Jack puzzled at the cat, then reached behind the counter, and grabbed a bottle at random and placed the nozzle to his lips, sucking like a babe. His face filled momentarily with a confused disorder that drew in his eyebrows and held fast his lips, puckered, never parting from the bottle.

“A dream I suppose, a dream makes more sense anyways.”

“I would rather it was real, but I suppose that it matters very little what I wish for.”

“Depends whether or not I am dreaming,” Jack replied.

“I suppose.” And here Jack noticed a strange sullen undertone in the cat’s unusual tongue. “I wonder where you’re dreaming from.”

“My bed, I hope anyway.”

“Which one? If this is a dream you could be anywhere, you could be anyone, all your plights may exist here and only here, waiting to evaporate when you wake. I wonder, however; perhaps your troubles will simply double upon revival.” He paused. “I don’t think it’s a dream.” Jack flexed his arms, his legs, testing for reality once more. It was not precisely that the cat’s word had an immediate effect on him, but that he had ingested the words, as one does a fly, or a bit of hair, and wondered now if his subconscious consumption could harm him. He had the feeling that the cat was somehow used to the exchange, as if it did not really know English but had simply memorized the words to this interaction.

“Perhaps you’re in bed, as you put it, where you should be, in your apartment I mean, the one in Cobble. Or maybe you’re in your house, twenty minutes from here, weakness and the sad desire for stagnance having kept you where you are most familiar, in a big house, alone or with a wife who you care about and not much more than that. You’re tossing and turning, arms flailing, you’ve woken her now though you still sleep, and you’re calling a name that you’ve invented, an escape, a revival, some alternate reality, that you will paint, you’re a painter still. And your wife is looking at you with bleary, sleep-filled eyes that open a little wider each time you say.”

“Loreli.” With fear Jack repeated the name dreading waking, and yet wanting to wake to be free of the cat’s gaze, of the awful intimacy, of his knowledge of everything that comprised his life.

“No that’s not it either, maybe you’re nine, and you’re turning in your bed much the same and dreading waking up, and dreading getting old, and getting turned away, and you read that name somewhere and it haunts you irrationally as many children are haunted by irrational things, and you pissed yourself and you’re going to awaken soon, wet through, in a mix of tears and sweat and urine, and you’re ashamed, but at least you’re free and at least you’re nine.” Jack whimpered. For the first time that evening he found the alcohol to be foul and bitter, and his hands too big, and the bar unfamiliar.

“Or maybe you’re at home, the home you think you have, and you’re quite calm and quite pleased and you’re sleeping soundly though you are still haunted by the events of this morning, and this dream is separate from the dreams of it which you have linked to, and you’ll wake and you’ll paint and be glad of having such an odd fantasy, you’ll write a poem about it, about me, and then you’ll hate it, and you’ll hate me, and you’ll return to the portrait of Loreli and you’ll add something that you can’t complain about and

you’ll be pleased and fulfilled. Quite wonderfully content before you remembering your painting, your shame, your failures, and that you won’t be able to show it to anyone, and no one will see but you in the early hours of the morning when you add something to it. Or maybe, just maybe, you’re not Jack at all, but someone you can’t remember, having an odd dream about a tall man and a Russian cat.” Jack said nothing, just shook and shivered and wished he had stayed home.

“So it’s not a dream then? Then why do you want so badly to wake.”

“Loreli,” Jack repeated. She was of course, wherever, whoever he may be, the soul of the dream, its focus despite the presence of black eyed bartenders and talking cats. He could not escape her even now, in this odd haunting analysis of his potential lives. He was filled with the melancholy that does not consume, but covers. That does not remove or destroy, but filters. If we were to say that all emotions came from his heart, then melancholy was a film that lined his throat, that stuck to anger, and joy, and sadness, before they reached his brain, his tongue. He felt melancholic anger, melancholic joy, melancholic fear. And feeling a bit of all of them, he scratched the cat behind his ears.

He felt the raw skin and continued ignoring and then eventually appreciating its odd texture. That cat grimaced and then purred begrudgingly and Jack felt momentarily at ease. Much of the fog had lifted. The cat followed his gaze to the door and then shook his head sadly.

“You can’t leave that way anymore, it’s blocked off in preparation for their arrival.” Jack knew better than to ask whose.

“Then how can I leave?”

“You can’t, not really anyway.” The night had dragged on long enough and Jack wanted to sleep, to rest, to wake, to leave this place. He looked around at the bar which fluctuated between varying levels of lucidity.

“I want to leave now, cat,” he said.

“You should have gone earlier, or when the bartender offered, earlier than that even, but you should at least have…”

“I need to go cat.”

“But you can only go through the back,” he whined, his voice taking on an inhuman pitch which accentuated his point in a way no human word could have. He told him everything he needed to know, told him stories, showed him faces in crippling detail; he received it all, filtered it and swallowed.

“I need to leave now, cat, I can’t stay here anymore. I shouldn’t have stuck around so long anyway, let’s go, come on.” He raised the cat to his shoulder and spun around the counter. The cat cried and whined, mewing like a kitten; he begged him not to go, but he would not leave him. He looked around at the bar one last time, taking in the detail,

finding every edge so that when he painted it no one could deny its beauty and its finery. Then he spun to face the small swinging door behind the counter. He could see nothing through the small circular window, and he didn’t care—he had made his choice. He heard the front door open, and with the confidence of a diver at the edge of the sea, he passed through, greeted by the sound of clinking glasses, glad, in a way, that he could not change his mind.

Casper L.

Place of Entry // Our Cornucopia

Ferried on coolidge and taft, Mothers and Sisters

Born under the full autumn gaze of the man in the moon (round & beautiful). This self is less aged in paperwork because rabbits are luckier than tigers And fooling the entry clowns is a sleight of hand: take all the luck.

She shimmered with coiffed hair and courage at 58 in ‘72; The year was room temperature and warming to her still. Golden threads of luck spun from her cuticles during cards: Gin rummy, gambling back given money.

Passing down misspelled names, first and last inheritance, Blankets blue, woven with beauty and bounty. Land over Sea to new land, a false resident from Mars according to blue eyes. What a wait it must have been, time dragging,

Before she could reach her birthright of fingers touching the sky, the moon extended down to grasp her hand

Hannah B.

When should I expect to see you next? What shall I wear? Will you still be stubborn? In my memory, your treasured image is not perfectly preserved but shifting. When can I expect that gallery to fill with very cold, unfiltered light? I get your letters, I cherish them so. The postman handles them with special care but still I cannot bring myself to write. I am the postman so gentle and mild and my drawer is the mailbox where you live. When should I expect to see you next? I’ll wear a coat and be stubborn as you.

Ryan E.

This is Me at Night

a Golden Shovel after Terrance Hayes and Lady Macbeth

you ask about my sleeptalking when the lights are out so this is Me at Night–damned

& a mouthbreather, & sexy. spot me, breathing little dreams, in and out

like the tides. in dreamland, i’m crazy, i’m sweet & smoky. i have goddam legs and a big nothing. i say things i don’t mean, but things that you like. it’ll be 1 & I’ll say I love you, 2

& I hold a knife to your throat. i don’t know why i’m like this–a wild pretty thing at night, then

a piece of hair in the morning. awake, i’m dead & thin. it is Me at Night who you think of as flame, but only when the time

is good enough to lose my heavy brain in, to lose myself in the mountains your knees made under the covers. so do

it to me when i become part of the dream, do it when you have to fight like hell

to pull some sensible word from between my teeth. it is Me at Night who you love–not this morning me, all split-ends, all murky.

Lyla B.

A Slippery Lunch

I can hear the series of cracks of static before I even see him. He is late. I ordered for him already: oysters, from Cape Cod. The frizz of his mohair dips into the saltwater when he sits down. The liquid turns the frizz into a single mass, uniting each fiber with its surface tension. He tries to brush it off, but it only spreads, flattening each part of the sweater it touches. I watch him struggle for a bit before finally giving up. He looks up at me sheepishly and apologizes for his lateness, I forgive him, and then silence floods the conversation. His eyebrows furrow and he looks off into the distance, drowning in thought. Finally he finds something to hold onto: “I love oysters.” He shares his buoy with me, and together we relearn how to swim. We start with backstroke. I remark on how long it’s been. Nostalgia is potent and its amber envelops us by the time we reach our childhoods. The ruby red syrup of romance is a little thinner but its current carries us to the rapids. If only we knew how rough they would be. It all goes bad. Salty tears douse shattered glass. The restaurant is very gracious and we apologize profusely like the adults we are. The rest of the meal is spent in silence until I request the bill. I get the check. He asks for his food to go but I warn him: “Oysters don’t keep very well.”

Allen E.

Ode to Thwaites, Ode to the End of the World

the cold slate water. sarah’s old hatchback. i love to write poems about driving, but i’m always in the passenger seat. when i try to drive, my hands bloom shaky, fingertips grazing the leather of the steering wheel. sorry, sorry, i’m getting distracted. sarah’s hands, ten and two. blunt nails and a penchant for racking up speeding tickets. we were going to alaska, to see the glaciers, so we would know that we were small. so we would know that the world was ending. so i could care less about having kids and fearing God, and care more about the small of her back where her sports bra dug red lines into her skin.

all the best things are unspoken. sarah and i at a holiday inn every night, always sharing a bed, never talking about it. sarah and i listening to the songs her parents played when she was little. all folk. she sung along, voice smoky and warbling. she remembered every word. the water got colder with every mile. we would pull off the highway to look at the waves, leaning over concrete barriers watching sharp water break frigid, hitting rocky shore. sarah in the cold with a cigarette. i had already started craving the smell. fingers clenched carving white moons into my palms. we got to the glacier; stood side by side, not touching. it creaked and groaned as it calved, as if it could feel each loss intimately. two faces, tears rolling across cheeks silently. i told sarah it looked like a miscarriage—

it was the only thing either of us said. no, that’s not it. when we got to the glacier, it stole all the words from my mouth. huge and cold and gem-blue. we stood, sarah’s hand in mine, fingers laced in wonder.

no, no, i’m sorry. that’s still not what happened. when we got to the glacier— when we got to the glacier i got on my knees, staring up at this old god with its massive celestial body. no, that’s not— that’s not what happened either. we got to the glacier. we got to the glacier and— we got to the glacier and it was gone. we got to the glacier, and it had shrunk, died to nothing. the rocks were feeling sunlight for the first time in millenia. it was a type of sin i didn’t know. we couldn’t fathom it. this ancient thing that we, with our mosquito lives, had outlived. our old dreams faded into white static. the two of us sitting on a bench, staring at green pines framing the absence of a future.

two hours later we got back into the car, cranked the heat up. drove back down the road knowing we were all dying, knowing how the end of the world would look. in the car my hand slid steady over sarah’s on the gearshift, my cold skin against the heat of her. sarah only flinched. sharp tension of desire had cracked, leaving only soft wounds. the glacier left everything suddenly crucial, vital and necessary as a pulse. sarah said she was tired of pushing and pulling like the rising tides. sarah said love me enough to say it out loud, or get the fuck out of my car.

my face pressing into her freckled shoulder— we had no time to pretend, anymore, my lips whispering i love you i love you i love you watching the words melt against her skin like ice.

Ari W.

Advice to Myself

Don’t hang your keys on the rack by the door. You’ll forget them the next morning. Memorize that clinking, stepping sound of your father in the bedroom, a sigh heavy with his unearned rest, his aging love for you tipping over like an unturned faucet. You grow unsteadier and at times like this when you grow unsteady lie on your bedroom carpet and touch the phantom skin of your sister’s bumpy hand and her hair on your ear, gather her hot breath in two hands and open the kitchen window above the sink. The thin air rushes in just enough so that the slit in the window-glass will fill with a fat red moon and you don’t need all that knowledge you keep searching for. Archilochus cannot rewrite the broken story of that room you sleep in or of the mirror in your mother’s closet. Feel the animal inside you take a heaving breath and stretch its paws out on all sides, lie belly-up in the midday sun and relish the burned tip of your nose, peel away the aching skin and look at that redness way deep inside you where it really didn’t belong in the first place. Those biting red guts which long to be free to smile at the stars and to flatten down in midwinter grass and to die in your thick arms and never look towards the heavens again.

Margot S.

fever burns out the fever burns out and the crystal beads of sweat cool on my forehead I am left with the love, unused and congealed as yesterday’s lunch. another me, a separate self left behind and worn away would have wailed at the big, empty sky, gulping down the stars like medicine. today I miss you, simply and callously today I turn away still laughing. the old pain hangs like smoke in the frozen air lit by the evening sun and glowing like an ember and when I reach out, my hand passes through it.

Emmett J.