Spoke the Thunder Volume 6 Issue 1

December 2016 Vol. 6 No. 1

Anthony Wong 1

Editor-in-Chief Miguel M. Perez

Managing Editor Michelle Milner

Associate Editor Monika Zaboklicki

Business Manager Benjamin Kasson

Staff

Ibn-Umar Abbasparker Malika Emin Layla Essaily Eugene Hehemeku Beatrice Hyppolite Jennifer Peshansky

Designer Jay Shah

Submit your short stories, poetry, artwork, & photography: spokethethunder@gmail.com Come to our weekly meetings: Wednesdays 7pm SAC Room 307K Front Cover by David Ackerman Back Cover by Emily Nocito

Produced by The Stony Brook Press Paid for by The Statesman

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I want to be

Catherine Ayscue

I want to be a moth, with wings like the moon, dusty pale & quiet.

Or a beetle the color of a lima bean, body fat & sturdy, with legs like angry eyebrows.

Or a shy sort of butterfly, clear-winged as panes of glass.

Or else a flittery type, black & white, that flies like music notes from staff to ear.

Maybe something crepe-like, almost floral, to adorn a long-lifeless skull; Crimson roses, lemony jonquils, ghostly silver bells.

I could be a whole bouquet of insects.

A dragonfly, not breaking the surface of its pond as you drift by.

A cricket to haunt you on summer nights.

A firefly at twilight, not knowing if its fate is to suffocate in a jar or blink from a distance.

Emily Nocito 3

David Ackerman

Bold Billy Bears His Soul

George Farrell

He still writes you letters like it’s fourth grade, I don’t read them, For that kind of invasion is tantamount To the sneering veneer of your spinster Grade school teacher peering down the bridge Of her nose At your guilty fingers holding Crumpled Lined Looseleaf That says “I lvoe you” And then taking and reading aloud, For all the class to hear, of your lvoe.

This is not to mock For such a declaration of lvoe, A written record, a permanent piece, Takes courage. You knew the risk, you feared The cold dread and snatch of your sentiment.

He still writes you letters like it’s fourth grade He loves you so, With the boldness and bravery only a child would know.

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On Feeling “Safe and Comfortable” Michelle Milner

I am: warrior raised in the cabin, a twisted arm around my father, broken at the joint as I stared at a freshly dug grave.

I am: sticky eyelids, stray dog pissing , typically bloodied.

I am: Jesus Christ, born in his vein, lost deep in my own, honey! honey! sweet honey flowing!

I am: ex-lax in whisky, distilled into nothingness with rage in a puddle left in a squirt-splat stage left.

I am: naked swan song with grimy privates swinging in the East Village.

I am: chaos!

The last true rock and roller. eat shit and die!

I ate shit/I died.

5 Olivia Grodzka

Eight/Eighteen/ Twenty Jannelle Patrick

Ungloved hands Ripped the first fruits and flowerings of spring From the soil Dug their nails into the unripe fruit Until the juices flowed Syrupy and slow Unwilling Buds too hard to bloom Pinched and prodded until Reluctantly Their petals peered outward Still tender and green at the edges Uncolored by sun they now grasped at Wanting to feel warmth But finding nothing I’m afraid of being touched Of familiar hands turned stranger Had too many Reach too deep within me Only to tug Hard When they caught hold of the first Precious thing their fingers found I’ve had too many soft hands Rip my roots from the ground To accept gentleness without fear To not find fault in softness and the deceit that it carries Silently upon its back

Call it Fate, Call it Karma Kimberly Denton

for Anthony Levin

I touch you like a festering wound: calculated, gentle.

While you do nothing but pour your insides out,

I’d take my hair and sew you up;

you always said you liked it long.

There’s enough here to tie up miles and miles and miles–

the places we went and shouldn’t have, but did,

and the ones we never would (from lack of a Me or a You,

not a daring, oh no, dearest— never that).

I’ll grow it out long enough to stitch

up forever and then some,

if it meant you’d just stop bleeding for me already.

I touch you like a festering wound: spilling, grotesque.

While you’re wiping me off before I stain your clothes,

I’d take back my heart from between us, on the asphalt,

dust off the gravel and kiss back the blood,

and not remember whose fault it was—

who let go too soon or who didn’t catch.

I’d take it up before some car runs it over,

windows rolled down to

The Strokes, or Radiohead (one more instant of nights in your car

before there can be no taking-back).

Would you stitch me up again,

darling, if I can shove my heart back in my chest?

Would you grow out your hair, just for me?

Here comes the car now.

Do you care if I make it in time?

Or worse, standby as I hunch down in the street

and watch me be obliterated again by: Me in the passenger seat on the

long drive home from who-knows-where, and You fidgeting and lost, but

“We’ll get there somehow,” and

“What song is this? Is this The Strokes?”

“Call it Fate, Call it Karma” Call me Bulletproof… I Wish I Was.

In the middle of the road

my hair trails out to either side;

my hair trails out to your feet at the curb.

Anthony Wong

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Avalon Hill Erick Saltzer

My love, here I stand in sorrow, with only memories of you for tomorrow.

Where are you.

You are here in my heart.

Cannot you hear it beating.

It yearns for you endlessly.

Such is the heart torn by your absence.

Oh Lord, hear my prayer.

Here, on Avalon’s hill I am.

By your grace, my love to come back again.

In sweet whispers towards me.

Only then, healed my heart shall be.

acne

Pamela Best

my skin froths subcutaneously. cellular tallow bubbles and seeps up through pink tissue like dew from the earth, a patina speckled with yellow pearls embossed with blushing rose swells dotted with ruby concavities so that the whole effect is that my cheeks are swathed in a film of fine lace many patterned shifting as the august sky

Her Brown Boots Christopher Stuebenrauch

Her eight years shone like the sun off a crimson sea And it didn’t take long for us to know She’d be somebody.

It hurts to know there was no warning When they came for her And it makes me think about if I would have been to help In some way Or if all humans are more or less powerless.

I still keep her brown boots, their tiny silhouettes Just in case.

I found them on the sidewalk much later than I was supposed to After I was told all I could do is wait.

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Nicholas Bechtel

Miguel M. Perez

Suddenly and With No Explanation Nikolai Hersfeldt

They tend not to talk about it. It’s improper, they say. Each has their own version of the story and none of them can reasonably be called the truth. They saw how the journalists ran wild when word first got out. They want no further part of it.

Keep searching, however, and you may get lucky. You might be walking down the street and spot Will Barkley half-jogging along, a stack of flyers tucked under his arm. He’ll tell you—between warnings that They would prefer this didn’t get out—that the town happens to sit on a confluence of active psychic energy, which is why the Others came to take her. If you aren’t discouraged by this first encounter, you can stop by the church and find Mrs. Jennings sitting in one of the many empty pews. She’ll tell you it was a miracle and she doesn’t understand why the reverend doesn’t bring it up in his sermons. She might go up there herself if she had the energy for it. End your day at the bar and you’ve got a good chance of meeting Jim Matthews, chatting with everybody but no one in particular. He’ll say he’s not convinced it ever happened at all. He thinks they just made it

up, that it’s some perverse plan to encourage tourism. Someone else in the bar might respond by asking, if that’s so, why haven’t they opened a theme park or something?

Jim will think this over a while and then order another drink.

Keep asking, and the townspeople might grudgingly direct you to Tim Emmett, who did a journalism project on it in high school. He’ll say that all of the witness agree on a few key facts: Susie Garneau walked into the middle of the street just after sunset on a Thursday evening, stood still for a few moments, then rose into the sky and was never seen again. She made no sound, though what expression she wore is a matter of some debate.

This is as far as most get. The townspeople will get angry at this point. Is this the only thing that defines their community, they’ll ask. Did you know that they have an annual pumpkin-growing competition and that thousands attend? Did you know that their school system is ranked one of the best in the state?

Under no circumstances, they tell you, are you to speak to any of the family.

But ignore these protests, and eventually you’ll encounter a young woman who cashiers at the gas station. After work, she’ll light up a cigarette and tell you to follow her. She’ll lead you to an abandoned tent in the woods, now collapsed and overgrown. She’ll say that Susie hung out here with the other kids after school. Susie knew an older guy who could get them liquor if they asked. The way Susie and that guy looked at each other creeped her out sometimes. He was way too old for her.

She’ll say that there was nothing particularly special about Susie, at least nothing to suggest she was in communication with higher powers. She does recall one time, however, when the older guy brought a package of something home from college and Susie had too much of it. Susie said she felt empty sometimes, that she didn’t know what was keeping her tethered down when she felt like the slightest breath of wind could whisk her away.

At this point, she’ll put out her cigarette and leave you in the woods so she can return to her life.

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Fruit Boy James Lekstutis He rests his lips Tired from lonely hours in company Jaw aching from palms Claws that pull him closer And he’s looked down upon He is in a passioned home But for the first time in his life Last night he slept alone He remembers that cold Before rushing back in to kiss Hot and empty mess A sexless sex And sweat fills the air Scent of peaches sweet and fresh Like a blindfold hand Saving the man who shoots his dog A money man Picking fruit from a lonely boy The only boy who loved men Used tomorrow and tomorrow again

Deep in the rice fields, suffering takes on strange forms.

No gods, only rice.

Nelson Pascuzzi

Catherine Work 9

Love as a form of revolution Monika Zaboklicki

I love you in a way I don’t have to love my white friends. I worry that you and your friends will be lazy-walking somewhere and your comebacks will make everyone erupt with stomach-grabbing, head-throwing-back, weakkneed laughter, and police will see your joy as destruction. They’ll cause a different stomach-grabbing, head-throwing-back, weak-kneed-ness to keep your lava from spreading. They call it containment.But I’m not trying to say things that have been said before by the activists; this is a love poem between me & you, & love is simple.

Love means I am always afraid of losing you when I do not have to.

My dad says to me, “stop trying to save the world with n*****s and poems” But not trying to save the world is letting you die.

I do not want a revolution, but I want you to be safe is I want you to be freed from these shackles, but silently.

Remember, always to reposition the tectonic plates we stand on is an earthquake.

To those at the top, it is mess & noise & losing their balance.

To us it is justice To me it is trusting you will be back in my arms, so long as you please.

David Ackerman 10

Higher Rates Eleftherios Mastronikolas

The hollow, fleshy slap of wet, vinegar-scented balls on silicon ass cheeks.

Screams, shouts, moans; all manner of gurgling, gagging, gasping, choking, strangling sounds echoing off the peeling wallpaper and reverberating through his spine into his slowly hardening cock. Seated stoic at the foot of the bed, Freddy was looking at the woman lounging in the leopard print love seat across the room, herself naked except for black patent leather heels, fishnets, and one of those goofy feather scarves, her skin black and oily, nipples astoundingly radial, like sunflowers without their petals. Freddy smoked a cocaine-laced Parliament, still not sure exactly what he was paying for that evening.

“And exactly what,” she rasped in a husky alto, “are you paying for this evening?”

His eyes widened in abject terror.

The sour sweat on his forehead caused by the speed in his blood and the heat in the air was joined by bitter pinpricks of adrenaline on his otherwise numbed tongue. How in the ever loving fuck did she know what he was thinking? I mean, down to the syllable, what she said and what he had thought were the exact same fucking thing. His paranoid eyes darted about the room, looking for thought-stealers, a rare breed of insect invisible to sober eyes, and though Freddy was paralyzed by a swarm of creepy-crawlies infesting the walls, he found there wasn’t a single thought-stealer among them.

The insects dismissed, the idea now dawned on Freddy, like that space rock dawned on the monkeys in 2001, that he thought the words after she said them; that instead of reading his mind she had actually implanted the words there by speaking them; that he failed to process the words immediately because the pathway between his ears and his language center was congested by an generalized accumulation of cerebral tar; and lastly that due to this inclement mental climate, it took fewer quantum thought cycles (his only reliable measurement of time) to rethink the phonemes of a heard sentence by routing them first to the music center and then to the

language center, allowing him to interpret their meaning harmonically instead of wasting brain-joules on semantic word-listening.

Lately time had a habit of stretching, compressing, reversing, and fast-forwarding itself. Looking at his watch he found its seconds hand ran backwards, its hours hand was stuck running up and down between 3 and 4 o’ clock, and its minutes hand had vanished entirely. He remembered buying a digital in preparation for this exact phenomenon.

“Great,” he muttered, “just fucking great. Fifteen dollars on this thing and it can’t even see through this bullshit?” Literally before he knew it they were fucking, had fucked, and were going to fuck, all in the same stretch of destabilized spacetime.

Freddy wasn’t sure if that actually happened1. He lit a cigarette and took inventory of the past five minutes and deduced that they hadn’t happened; more accurately that they hadn’t happened to him, but rather to an alternate timeline version of himself, whose consciousness the witch had temporarily induced him to Imagine the Real of: advanced Jungian trickery, manifest through an insanity spell. He realized now that he was dealing with a sorceress of at least the Fourteenth Level2.

Freddy squinted at her. Presently, her hair was snakes. The VHS tape skipped a frame. Bait and switch. “Not me, man, I’m too fucking clever. I am Perseus with his mirror shield, succubus, and I have come to avenge or possibly save my lady Andromeda from your clutches or some such shit. Long story short,” dragging heroically, “I know your game. Flip it around, play it backwards, be kind rewind, restocking fee, the whole nine yards. I promise you bitch I have seen it all before, I have seen it all,” and he coughed up a lung.

The torrid lung on the floor throbbed, sanguine, a tepid, bubbling pool seeping from its charred tissues, staining the carpet, and for a moment Freddy thought he was having a stroke. The moment passed.

“Jesus Christ,” he said aloud, “I have got to quit this shit.”

“Yes, mister, you do,” the harlot, annoyed, her voice rising steadily in pitch from that of a Winehouse to more of a Houston, “and if you just want to talk like one of those lonely-ass seventeen-year-old red-cap-wearin-ass first-time-at-the-

whore-house runaway motherfuckers,” still rising, nearly stratospheric, “then I’m gonna have to charge you a higher rate.” She squeaked this final clause at approximately eleven thousand hertz.

The lung had disappeared, as had his cigarette, both into the ashtray. Freddy blinked at the empty space of mauve shag and then looked up at her.

“Higher rate? There are higher rates?” The prostitute rolled her eyes nearly out of her skull, and Freddy thought longingly of the blowjob he came here for which was slipping further and further and further out of potentiality.

“Yes, there are higher rates. Boss says it’s a misuse of product to just have us talk to you, that beds aren’t free, that they certainly aren’t shrink couches, that it’s a union thing with the suicide hotline people in the building next door or some shit like that, so he has to charge higher rates if we just sit here and fuckin talk.”

“I’d like to have a few words with this boss of yours,” he said, standing, statuesque, staggering. “Bring me to him! I want to see what kind of a degenerate asshole has the nerve to charge me a higher rate for a goddamn chit chat.”

The sudden, cranial rush of oxygen-and-nicotine-rich blood instigated by his meteoric rise catalyzed a number of psychedelic reactions, precipitating first as a faint buzzing sensation in his skull which blossomed out his ears and onto the tacky, floral-print walls. Following the acid closely, the coke was by now doing its work, rocketing across his medulla like a fistful of cherry bombs, setting arcane fire to the same synapses that went off that one time on the playground in fifth grade when he bullied Jimmy Parsons from down the block, that computer nerd ginger motherfucker with the freckles and glasses that reminded him of his father. Christ, didn’t that pipsqueak know he got enough of Pops at home?

Some fucking nerve of him showing up at my monkey bars dressed like that.

“Nice suspenders, shitface.” The bells were ringing but he wasn’t sure yet if it was the train station announcing the 12:08’s arrival, or the school bell announcing the end of recess which could be any time from 11:50 to 12:15. The bells, nearly identical for some reason, always came from the same direction, so it wasn’t always easy to tell them apart unless you had a watch

1. Freddy also deemed it impossible that the event was happening, and he could only infer that it wasn’t going to happen. As of this writing it remains to be seen if the event is happening.

2. Cook, Monte; Tweet, Jonathan; and Williams, Skip. Player’s Handbook. 3.5 ed. Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2003. 54, 194. Print.

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on, and in this iteration of the flashback, Freddy only had his temporally confused digital-cum-analogue.

“That’s a bad word,” Parsons replied meekly, speech impeded by his braces, and his lisp, the latter of which his hard-working but unlucky parents were dipping into his college fund to correct, but luckily for him he wouldn’t need it (the college fund, that is), as he would invent a new computer file processing system for IBM that would make him rich at the age of 18, and how the in the ever loving fuck did Freddy know all this in fifth grade?

“I’m telling Mrs. Keene on you, Freddy.”

“Fuck,” he thought, and said, and he looked over his shoulder at the school, and he worried that Mrs. Keene was watching the whole sorry exchange anyway, but even in his most sober reflections on this moment he couldn’t be certain because he needed glasses, too, but he felt he looked too much like his father while he was wearing them. Neither here nor there, he remembered, and he looked back at whimpering little Jimmy Parsons like he did every time and launched a riotous five-fingered injustice straight into his left, bespectacled, innocent, blue eye. Across town, at that very instant, when the sun was at the top of the sky on that gorgeous, crisp October day, and God, the leaves were just turning orange to match Jimmy’s hair, it was so fucking clear, so nauseatingly lucid, Freddy’s father, drunk, jumped in front of the 12:08 and was splattered spectacularly across Main Street. An eyeball lolling stupidly up the sidewalk3.

Parsons was in the dirt, his glasses had shattered, and Freddy tripped and fell into them. The glass cascaded and tessellated around him, each shard spinning in a beautifully calculable orbit; he was older now, in physics class, which was being held today in the Hagia Sophia, didn’t your father get the letter I sent? and Mr. Langley was drilling the significance of the Heisenberg principle and Schrödinger’s cat into their spongey skulls, and the glass shards, he realized, were his classmates, but now they were cats, and they were trying to speak to him, my God, they were all trying to speak to him, and these were the self-replicating machine elves his hippie friend had told him about when he bought this acid from him, marching probabilistic about the Byzantine rotunda, swapping places with

the icons, trying to spirit them away to some other pocket of reality, but fuck, the iconoclasts were coming quick, and as their wild stones flew the Virgin Mary cried out at Her Baby Boy smashed to bits, and those bits splayed and became fractal and ensorcelled him like a Færie circle or sphere and he saw that coded in the electron cloud of each and every atom of his quivering psychosomatic experiencing machine was a message, and that that message was the sum of its parts, that the parts were either one or zero, and that taken as a whole and run through the corrupted executable of his consciousness they were now all telling him, screaming at him, pleading with him to listen to the sensational aria of the shag carpeting cushioning his grizzly cheek.

A diminished seventh chord signaled the sharp pain emanating from his temple, in response to said temple’s impacting the floor. One of the tenors went flat on the tritone as the hallucinatory choir decrescendo’d out of perception; a sorry excuse for a resolution which nevertheless provided marginal relief. Tonight’s piece must have been a Schnittke; the lady took six explosively loud steps toward the door.

Each step was a fucking World War in and of itself, and hidden deep within the resonant harmonics of her heels thundering over the hardwood were howitzers, artillery strikes, air raid alarms, gun shots, cannon shots, flu shots, fucking flu shots even. Come to think of it, it was a bit like Tchaikovsky. She slammed the door behind her and that was louder still.

Deafened, dazed, he pulled himself to his feet and began to plot his escape from the impending higher rates. Lampshade disguise? Comical, but ineffective.

Lamp bludgeon? Jail time. Claim insanity?

Also jail time. Barricade the door? Delaying the inevitable. Scanning the room he was at once smitten by the discerning eye of God manifesting through the window, peering at him and judging his guilty soul, but he noticed after some time in Purgatorio that the eye was not God’s but that of a neon sign hanging from the adjacent building and that between him and it there was a fire escape. Bingo.

Thanking his mind for producing the lamp bludgeon idea, he used the lamp to shatter the glass between himself and freedom. Lighting a victory cigarette, he lurched out the window and slowly, careful-

3. At this moment, in the Real, an accumulation of drool which had thus far been adhering to Freddy’s lower lip, dripped from said lip onto the carpet, and Freddy, his semi-conscious mind reacting to this subtle change in the perceptive totality, as one stirred momentarily from sleep by a lover’s kiss, was reflexively driven to say, “Bastard didn’t even leave a note,” in the most incoherent mumble imaginable.

The by-now standing prostitute, meanwhile, perceiving intuitively the surrender to the Imaginary to which Freddy’s mind was presently submitting, stepped back to make room for Freddy to keel over, the hallucination he was experiencing having fooled his nervous system so completely that it failed even to support his emaciated body weight.

ly, easily now, Freddy, easily, you can do this, Freddily worked his way down the rusted, rickety railing.

He used the full dumpster below to cushion his fall and was in the street now, and it smelled heavily of Chinese food.

Getting his bearings, barely, he looked up at the building behind him and identified the neon eye that had shown him his salvation as that of a huge, glowing caricature of a Chinese chef that seemed by some trickery to look at him no matter where he stood.

He confirmed this hypothesis by walking up and down the street in front of the brothel for the length of his cigarette, watching the eyes carefully for any sudden holographic phase shifts or whatever the fuck. Such pseudo-scientific, YouTube-tier New-Ageist discourse had long since lost its shine, the psychedelic veneer of his Imaginary chipping away under the creeping and the clawing of the Real. He was coming down.

He tossed his victory cigarette into a nearby puddle and sauntered into the restaurant, mouth watering at the very real potential for all-you-can-eat sesame chicken.

Catherine Work

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Why’d I Not Sleep? for Kristian Kriete Miguel M Perez

I’ve forced the flat side of a sharp blade on my chest, endlessly imagining instantaneous Shakespearian tragedy; I’ve swallowed (suc/ex)cessive leftover feel-good chalk chunks and dual-colored dust drops to unlock the fateful gilded gateways to highs downstream; I’ve drunk Cabernet from the glass on my own in the clouds of the storm to recall our dorm-corner (f/t)uck-head lightning-strike suspension – I’m coroner of that civil dereliction cabaret; I’ve hidden from the quieted dark under quilts to explore my skin and wits and find what gives; I’ve cried for the sake of Dad, and Mom, and dozens of closest others, hundreds of hypothetical strangers, thousand leaking drips of pupils, mastered mourning a million outcomes; I’ve stared into space to avoid distraction while I thought, then when thoughts pain, I’ve stared into space for distraction; I’ve – stone-faced – gazed at glossy multiplexes instead of rolling in bed, rocked by subliminal funks of salient pop-medial retina-monopolies; I’ve imagined eminence and penury, lionization and estrangement, juvenility and senescence, but none are me for sure; I’ve recited valley-brow arguments to the sight of my face I should’ve made that one time five years (ago/from now) – what wasteful self-reflection; I’ve looked at myself – for some ridiculous reason, for hours sometimes, somehow – some days in awe or disgust or desire to pick or to shame or to pout; I’ve danced to earbuds sprouting flowers – nectars melting, pinnae trickling rhythmically – in rapid electric revival of neurotic virility; I’ve revised and reworked poems in rage upon realization that after intensive grammatical correction, they say nothing; I’ve organized papers, toiletries, TV angles, and dot-light wires, unsteady single-story vertigo of my earthquake hands leaving all but sturdy desk in teardrop shambles; I’ve devised/enacted plans for stealthy late-night smoking, standing (half/fully) (naked and/or mast) at open upper panes for evening owls to watch or yawn or perch or roost at will; I’ve stayed awake enough to watch the sun rise, change sky from violet night plum dusk to periwinkle dawn apricot clouds; all this, on and on until I dream relief of familiar, UV-freckled, cerulean-day irises beaming across the mattress horizon.

Jeri-Anne Vestuto 13

Pamela Best

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Dust

Gabrielle Paniccia Pupils dilated, heart thumping, The thrill of something new pounding through his bloodstream.

With his addled mind, he flew away on powdered dreams, And energized visions, His shattered heart neglected for a moment Amid a rush of synthesized serotonin.

Root.

Eyes wide, knuckles white— White from the dust of one more time, From the tight-handed contortion that pulled his fingers Into a trembling fist.

Breath too fast, he reached for a glass And lost his mind amid a fizzle of what wasn’t meant for him.

Relapse.

Face frozen, lips blue, Staring blankly at the ceiling, The white of one last time now running dull and red.

The heart that thumped Now still as the eyes that would not close.

His shattered heart destroyed Amid a rush that could never cure.

Rigor Mortis.

Robert Alexander 22

The Encounter Nikolai Hersfeldt

I was walking the back trail when I met a chipmunk. He looked at me. I looked at him.

And it was on.

He was a typical chipmunk: brown coat with some markings on the back, bushy tail, cheeks stuffed with half the acorn he still held in his forearms. He was jittering with energy moments before, but now he stood still as the trees and buildings around us.

I was a typical human: A patchy coat of fur barely covering my pink skin, so that I had to steal from other creatures just to bear the late autumn chill. I, too, held an unfinished meal in my hands, though I had the forethought to swallow beforehand. I tried not to move, but lacked my adversary’s self-control and swayed just a little.

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We stood with locked eyes and

tense muscles. We both had places to go and things to do, but neither could retreat for fear of the grave consequences. We were trapped by our determination, our desire for victory. Hunger gripped us. Food sat close at hand but neither dared showed weakness before the other. A single wrong move could end it all.

Time passed. This fact should have favored me; I had the longer lifespan, so I could afford to waste more of it. But I had a schedule. He didn’t have a clock, didn’t have to calculate how long he could delay his next appointment. So long as he got enough food in the day, what did it matter?

I began to break. How long could this last? I wondered. Would I have to wait, eyeing my opponent, until the sun had set, my legs tired, and I finally gave in to exhaustion? Such an outcome was unthinkable, but I needn’t have worried; cold crept

over my hands and up my arms. I hadn’t expected to be out long, and I hadn’t buttoned up. I possessed neither hat nor gloves. Old Man Winter would find me long before the Sandman.

My situation was dire. I had to escape, but how? I could turn and run, but exposing my back was certain defeat. I could bolt up a tree, but surely he was the better climber. The only option was to face him directly. The battle would be fierce and the outcome, uncertain. To enter into it would be to risk everything, more so even than I had already. I considered the dangers, but I had to choose my action before my will faltered.

Before I decided, the chipmunk’s arm twitched. He turned and ran under a bush. It was over.

I had won.

Nicholas Bechtel

Sizable Regret at Mike’s Place Michelle Milner

Greek sweet-nothing’s spill from your lips, as mine meet the pipe and you’ve been telling me to count down from twenty, but I keep forgetting numbers.

who can run in high heels, make more money than you, and still be home in time to cook dinner. You say you love a girl who can smolder and burn, but perhaps I am just a spark you hope will Setting: your friend’s flat on 49th street, catch fire. the one where puddles form next to the sofa, unknown to us whether the In any case, I am here, alone in a culprit is the dripping ceiling or his fat swampy room bursting full with twenty Beagle, lovingly named Toenail, with people vomiting and gagging and his upsetting incontinence. dragging off of floored cigarettes. We all promise each other we were making Your friend has his machine rigged memories instead of admitting we just up and its buzzing gives me headrefuse to take our medicine. Ultimately, aches as it digs caves into my calves. we’re setting off to glorify diseases and I’m his walking canvas, my fleshy legs perhaps catching a few in the process. absorbing the needle as it belches ink.

How could we pass on war stories to He etches obscenities and love songs grandchildren if we can’t stop wishing into follicles and complains that my for death before their conceptions? coarseness is making it hard to express himself.

I hear your cooing loud in my ear, and I drink a few more beers to convince You say you love a girl who’s natural, myself I belong here and that these tata girl who grabs the universe by the toos will make me belong to you, your throat and squeezes until blood rushes friends, your culture and your spirit. into her fingertips. You love a girl

Perhaps I’m just not a walking visionary any more than a greeting card writer is a poet, and perhaps if I had read more books in college, I’d understand what you’re saying. I need more time to prepare before I can become purely pretentious, saying goodbye to a life of doing things for the sake of pleasure and not just to overshadow the next tall tale at your friend’s performance.

I can’t come to terms with a group of people so miserable, caught in a whirlwind hive mind, thinking that wanting to die is more respectful than living.

But now, I’ll always have this sketch embedded in me, the pinprick reminder that I enjoyed my weekend. My members-only jacket I can’t pass on to my next stares back at me, a shaky portrait of a spider with a top hat. This all must be art that I’m not getting.

24

“I’m sorry they made you feel that way” Jennifer Peshansky

Do you think you can defy me You think you can call me out?

I’ll shove you back where you came from You’ll wish you never crawled out.

Fear is powerful, controlling Self preservation is king I will paint you as a threat to Everyone and everything.

All around you will rise branches Dark and thorny, you’re a mess I will keep you there forever In the cage of loneliness.

I will hold you where I want you At a long arm’s length from me Wrapped around my little finger Just where friends are meant to be.

Did you think that I would need you You’re no more than dust, decay I won’t even blink an eye, dear When the wind blows you away.

Christopher Pimentel 25

Just Kinda Feels Good Or Something Daniel Lilly

Walking. That’s it.

Just her walking.

Nothing new to report here.

No big score playing in the background.

No exploding special effects around her.

She just takes a calm stroll.

And if I’m lucky, she smiles.

Not from ear to ear, or even at me.

Just a quick lil’ grin.

But I don’t know why.

I’ll just be walking down the hall.

And I can’t help but take a peek at her.

I try not to look like I’m amazed.

Just like her, I try to keep it cool.

Yet I’ll be forcing it while she just goes with her own flow.

Sometimes I wonder if she sees me in the moment.

I bet she wonders why some oddball like me Would have a thing for a pretty face like her.

It’s nothing new to say she’s cute.

I doubt anyone would debate that.

But me, you could make a convincing argument not in my favor.

It’s not like I take it personal.

After all, what’s a high-schooler to do other than gossip, play sports, or drink booze? Learn?

But I don’t know, I feel like somehow we could be something special.

I’m not planning on proposing or pampering her like some princess Nor do I expect her to worship me or anything like that.

I’d just want us to be happy, and just have some fun for a little while.

We don’t even have to cross our hearts until we die or whatever.

If we stayed together for a week, so be it.

I bet she knows relationships at our age are like windows against bricks.

I can’t help but laugh when I hear what others say.

They write her letters with all these confessions and “poetic” schlock.

Like “my heart passionately surges every second with you” or some trash like that.

Hell, those “poets” try so hard I’m glad they don’t get vertigo From how high they look down on the rest of us But that’s not how I wanna do it.

I like her and all, but why shove my feelings towards everyone else?

We aren’t Adam and Eve; our love didn’t start it all.

Oh well, I guess it’s something to distract myself from homework and other responsibilities.

I know romance for us is pretty stupid in the end.

But hey, it still just kinda feels good or something, you know?

26

WHY WON’T GOOGLE HAVE SEX WITH ME Michelle Milner

google? are you there god? it’s me, me. how many times listening to yo la tengo is too many times and why do i keep getting sad? most of the songs i’m listening to aren’t even that sad but i’m still sad. google, why am i sad? google, what do i have to write on my okcupid to get boys to like me better? i’m not very smart or interesting so i’m gonna need your help. should i lie about books i read? should i pretend to enjoy reading philosophy? should i grow a third arm that actually just has a penis at the end of it and fuck myself with that instead of attempting to date? google, has anyone ever eaten glass and been okay after? like okay maybe not perfectly 100% normal but okay enough where they lived a somewhat normal life? google, what’s the best way to fry an egg so it doesn’t get those crispy parts on the outside? google, what’s my european shoe size? google, if i die in my apartment, how long will it take before my roommates (who don’t speak to me) find my body? also don’t worry about me, google, i’m fine. i just am afraid that one day i’m going to choke on a skittle and die. google, do you like skittles? google, what does a rotting body actually smell like and will yankee candle ever make some sort of bizzaro scent line where everything is just called “decapitated raccoon” or “egg fart” and actually smells like those things? do you think i’d buy them, google? hey, google, i was thinking earlier about this and i was just wondering if other animals’ bones are digestible like anchovies’ bones are. get back to me ASAP. google QUICK! can i eat lipstick? it smells really good, kinda like cake. okay, truth time: i already ate the lipstick and it didn’t taste like cake so i’m stressing a little bit. i’m sorry i didn’t tell you the full story there at first, but i just didn’t want you to think i was stupid. you never judge me though. i think what we have is pretty special here, don’t you?

27

Christopher Pimentel goooogle, i ate too many french fries. am i going to die? am i actually going to turn into a french fry? i remember my mom said that to me a lot as a kid but it’s not true, right google? google, am i ever going to meet your family? what are they like? google, quick thought: is there a word for when your ass jiggles a little bit when you walk? i bet some other language has a word for it. there’s no word in english, probably. i don’t think we appreciate a good ass as much as other countries. google, is my ass nice? some guys have said so, but for some reason i trust your opinion more than theirs. i think your algorithms are really sexy. is that weird to say? i’m sorry, i don’t want to make our relationship awkward.

wait, are you in love with me, google? google, i am sexually attracted to you and would like to have lights-on, naughty sex with you. i would like to have lots of sex with you and your sexy algorithms. google, you’re a knockout. i’m feeling lucky! google, please, why don’t you answer me any more? fine, call the cops, i’m not logging off ! google, wait before you go, please just one more question. thank you.

google, do you remember my neopets passgoogle, am i offending you with my quesword? i miss all my pets. tions? google, am i pretty? please tell me i’m pretty. google? you there?

Skull of earthen gigabytes Dylan Israelian

Skull of earthen gigabytes, whittling wide Earth ocean-like: halt.(tremble,release)fill.

Memories are no advice!

Salt that trodden soil tower, where teeters reckless totters now: tremble.(release)fill.

Maturity’s no wiser hour!

Assemble ghoulish nervouslings to host your vast unbodyings release.(fill).

Allcauldron but cast iron faces sing:

fill. full. fill.

Peace behoove the woven womb unto alltide lapping fragrant doom bloss(grey)om grey till blue assume. bloss(grey)om grey till blue assume bloss(green)om green till spring assume

Whittling wide Earth ocean-like, skull of earthen gigabytes.

Sara Rothenstein-Henry 28