2018 Teens Write

Salt Lake Teens Write

The Wayfarer Cantus

Volume 8 May 2018

Salt Lake Teens Write is published by the SLCC Community Writing Center All inquiries should be directed to: SLCC Community Writing Center 210 East 400 South, Suite 8, Salt Lake City, UT 84111 Salt Lake Community College (SLCC), The Salt Lake City Public Library, the Salt Lake City Arts Council, and the SLCC Community Writing Center (CWC) are not responsible for the opinions expressed in Salt Lake Teens Write, nor does the writing represent any official position of these organizations. Individual authors are solely responsible for the opinions expressed herein.

Each author retains copyright individually. Reprinting of this publication is permitted only with prior consultation and approval from the SLCC Community Writing Center.

This edition of Salt Lake Teens Write was compiled and edited by Kayden Groves, Ashley McFarland, Justice Morath, and CWC Staff Members.

Cover art created by .

Salt Lake Teens Write: 2018 Title ©2018 ISBN:

Table of Contents Secrets Alyssa Nielsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Thanatology Maya Miro Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Late Night Hallucinations Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Refugee Poem Desange Kuenihira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

The Earth Ponders Childbearing Maya Miro Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Imagine Salma Abdalla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Like the movies Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Untitled Alyssa Nielsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Saturday Desange Kuenihira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Failure Liz Lara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

My Fairytale (an excerpt from Metanoia) Alyssa Minjares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

A Less Than Meaningful Conversation Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Untitled Alyssa Nielsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

The Constant End of Days Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Life Storm Desange Kuenihira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Endless Life Desenge Kuenihira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Star Charmed Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Lemon Boy Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Serene Mage Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

A Friend Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Graceful Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Bleary-eyed Nights Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

The Raven Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

The Wayfarer Cantus Maya Miro Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

What I should have said Alyssa Minjares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

A Companion Guide to Uninhabited Islands Maya Miro Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Simple Nights Alyssa Nielsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Jabberwock Speaks (or, a monological treatise on the panoramic nomenclature of words) Maya Miro Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Part One: An Awakening Fiona Bowen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Mine Alyssa Nielsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Secrets Alyssa Nielsen

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The secrets that I keep, Are six feet deep.

Buried for my eyes only.

I sit there, Unable to walk, Unable to move, with a painted on smile.

Tears fall down my cheeks, like an everlasting grace.

It never changes, the scene before you, of the broken girl with secrets, held together by glue.

Thanatology Maya Miro Johnson Here we are At the end of time A quartet is playing in the corner I find myself searching in the fog for clarity

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And instead finding a nametag.

“welcome. You are--- “ “and I am-------” I glance down My name writ in some alien language

fog extends like Hebrew

I can’t remember my name- yet let I chant the world’s history Without me/meaning Insensible Tonguing double time This place is everywhere and nowhere Osiris grins greenly, sternly drooping those full lips The realization that Suddenly

There are mirrors everywhere

My name isDistant…?

Just light Gone Forever?

I am one with geography Neurology Buoyant movement Agathology and ponerology martyrology

An Acyrologist Am I? What am I ?

I recall a life a body a soul But not specifics; people walk about with blank, censored labels hovering over their heads I want to reach out, Call, Yell

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Toxicology

Their names Which bite my tongue like rat-mites as they travel forward, Then stop as lemmings do in contemplation of their fate There is a feeling of a blacklist in the air Though prismatic light echoes inside my eyeballs Ohgod if this is life then let me die and if this death what then If truth were a woman Salt Lake Teens Write 14

Perhaps we are all entombed in the final, fatal womb And the last opiate is the consolation of this plastic nametag Attached to my spine Which I cannot read Yet will always know

Late Night Hallucinations Fiona Bowen The uncomfortably familiar man regards me from the chair at my desk, legs crossed and hands resting on his knee. Black suit flawless and pressed.

I return his gaze, struggling to recall how either of us got here and trying to place his face.

Where had I seen him before? I certainly don’t know him well enough for him to be sitting at my desk. I tug the bedsheets higher around myself and cast a sidelong glance at the digital clock on my bedside table-- 3:24 am. I don’t think I know anyone well enough for them to be sitting at my desk at 3 am.

I blink, twisting the edge of my shirt between anxious fingers. Trying to ground myself in reality.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I got your name? Or why you’re in my bedroom?”

The gentleman smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes and feels more like a threat than a facial expression. “All things considered, I don’t have much to say on either matter.”

I sigh, breaking eye contact and dragging a hand over my face, pinching the bridge of my nose.

The air around me felt upsettingly like wading through a headache.

“Maybe you should be asking why you’re here.” He’s still smiling. He seems to have too many teeth. Much too small and sharp.

“Why I’m here?” I’m fumbling for my phone. Was it under my pillow? Why couldn’t I be consistent with my phone placement? “It doesn’t matter why I’m here. It’s not philosophical, I live here.” My hand finds a small rectangular object that I mistake for my phone. I tug it out from between my bed and the wall just as it grows innumerable sets of millipede esque legs and marches up my arm. I shake it off and watch it scuttle into some dark corner. Unsettling.

The gentleman spins around slowly, second-hand computer chair creaking. “Do you perceive life as a mistake? Are we all here for reason at all? A forgotten game, abandoned by long dead gods?” He draws his legs up and setting his elbows on his knees leans forward. Still spinning.

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“So,” The sharply dressed gentleman is the first to break the silence. “Took you long enough.

Maybe open your eyes every now and then, eh?”

“I just said it’s not philosophical. Some things just are.” I shake my head, wondering why I’m having a late night debate with someone I don’t know. “I don’t see why this matters. Can you leave? I have an early morning.”

He’s frowning now. But not like he means it. Like he’s mocking me. The chair keeps spinning.

He doesn’t speak. His eyes stay locked on me, head never moving despite the still spinning chair. I try not to think about it.

The air warms and I drag my blunt nails over suddenly itchy skin. Above the gentleman’s head grows a buzzing gray cloud like a swarm of flies. It buzzes louder when I look too closely.

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I sniff, unsettled. Looking anywhere but him and the buzzing gray cloud that grows thicker with each turn of the chair, engulfing him further.

“You’re not ready. I can see that.” His voice buzzes, a bit lower than the cloud but rising to match, “think about it. Life. Purpose. I’ll get back to you.” The cloud has completely covered him now, the swirling, buzzing mass emits a slight wave of heat before collapsing in on itself.

There’s a sharp pop. The room is cool. The air calm. The chair still spins.

Refugee Poem Desange Kuenihira I became a refugee through no choice of my own, through no choice of my family’s. If I had been old enough, I would have tried to make the situation better, but I became a refugee when I was two. I lived my whole life scared of being killed because of the war, because of hatred, because of poor conditions. That fear brought me down - it was hard to get up, but I did.

Now I am here in America and I thought that when I would come to America, I would have a better life. I would not have any more fear, but sometimes it feels like I’m still living in the same place. Shootings happen in school and some days I think I’ll be the next one dead.

When I came to America, I found that some people judge you by the color of your skin, but in my mind I had thought that America would be the perfect place. But these experiences show me that there is no true peace in the world. This, if you don’t stand and fight back, can cause you to lose everything you have. America promised me safety, but it seems like it’s not providing me that anymore.

It’s really hurtful to have violence in your life - whether you live in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or the United States. Having that fear means you must focus on surviving, rather than growing. The government should make policies that help everyone to grow - whether that means taking in refugees, making guns off-limits to ordinary people, or making the laws more equal between people who are black and people who are white.

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Being a refugee has taught me a lot of things; it has taught me to stand for my beliefs, no matter where I go. Being a refugee has made me strong. But the way that other countries treat refugees, it makes me feel sorry for them, because of how they deny the people. These governments don’t understand people who have been forced from their homelands. Refugees only want peaceful lives - why can’t they be let in the country?

The Earth Ponders Childbearing Maya Miro Johnson scatter the sun (billion x trillion thousand galaxies circumnavigating infested oceans of magellanic nothingness) like a portent

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cat steps half time jitterbug charlestons across flickering pneumatic sunsets which turn out to have been all along in the end optic allusions to death and dying and the afterlife; like basset hounds panting hot with anticipation of icebox punishment, yellow cathedrals devise their narcissus architecture in underground silhouette --- umbilical fluid encasing the tendrilspiraling potentiality of prismatic flowers spiegel im speigel --shredded leather torn by claws of ice and clarinets now tar-papers blue-jay feathers to the ceiling. with glue. not too much. dotting the sky are ravens like stark pupils against a soft grey dawn. with Matthey Brady’s horn-rimmed glasses, the world is framed hollow and deep like sky tears, rips of earthen birthing pains; subtly crooked is the painting, daguerreotype, onto which new life is projected, this play of fledgling shadows; but as if it’s been alive before, as if it’s pulled a mercury bow across a quantum string many times, aiming for the far-flung stars and failing and falling and falling to land every time. thus begins a new firebird song/berceuse, freshly ancient, strangely now: mother mine, “I’d not exchange this cycle within and without (burrowed not buried in dusty not disinfected genomes- go ahead- take a scalp inside, finding fishy eggs!) for all the stable winters, unchanging eternal fields of monkish white (meditative pallor(serenity of the sickly(quiet of the morrigan’s phantom empire” the turbulence of prey and their prayers for kaleidoscopic life, dizzying though it may be, is still an aging life over a living age” inexorable, spring bursts forth, forgetting the past but somehow anxiously recollecting the future

Imagine Salma Abdalla

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Imagine Imagine being targeted for your religion Imagine being separated from your mother Imagine witnessing people getting thrown into crematoriums and locked into gas chambers Imagine the world being dead silent throughout this.

How would you feel if you were targeted for your religion?

As a black Muslim girl I would know Jews were identified by wearing a yellow star-shaped badge I am identified by wearing a hijab People put labels on other people who they think less of , As if they are not people like them.

Jews are humans Muslims are humans People are so quick to judge you and discriminate you and make you feel extremely small because of this I struggle with finding my values and becoming the person I want to become.

My own people has failed The society has failed me Humans all around who are apart of the discrimination has failed me Just like they failed the Jews They remained silent throughout the genocide My hijab does not identify me I am my own person and should be identified that way.

The yellow star - shaped badge does not identify the Jews People don’t get identified for what they are wearing, how they look or what your beliefs are!

Don’t let others wash away your beliefs So now I ask you to not to disrespect other people because of what they are wearing, how they look, what their beliefs are. Look at them for who they really are internally and accept them for that.

Like the movies Fiona Bowen You make me feel like the girl in the movies The one who falls in love with all the wrong guys And then meets the perfect one

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She’s quiet But he brings out the life in her He helps her find herself beneath the layers and behind the walls She talks to him Her voice is soft and she speaks on sensitive topics with finesse He tells her he’s never met someone like her She smiles and says it back You make me feel like that’s true Like that’s something achievable Like maybe Just maybe I am one of kind That I’m real That I’m not just a rip off of someone else’s perfect

Untitled Alyssa Nielsen

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A family that words are not enough to describe, regardless of blood, regardless of homes, regardless of dreams.

They are my brothers, though I have none.

They strengthen me + build me up.

Accepting me when no one else would.

Talking in the dark, they are my brothers + sisters.

They are my home.

Saturday

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Desange Kuenihira Saturday was a random day The train on the railroad Riding not knowing where to go Life is amazing with animals They have peace, they have no stress They’re like a tree that only knows how to produce air And take in carbon dioxide Stress is like a storm wind Like a storm trying to fall But, really you don’t have control over it Sitting on the train Riding, thinking “Today’s Saturday, It should be fun!”

But you have a lot of things to do You have homework, and things happening in life It would be one thing to be a tree Just standing there and not knowing what’s happening Thinking if my life’s going to come Thinking is the dark going to come Thinking which way am I going to survive I don’t know which way to go Just sitting on the train, riding It’s like the life is sucked out of you You know which way to take But you don’t know where to start Just sitting on the train, riding Like a dog that’s sick Driving to die Which can’t speak of itself that I’m dying Which can’t cry

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It just takes in all the pain and barks.

Saturday night should be fun On the weekend we shouldn’t have stress We should be like nature, as human beings Where we can’t see the dark We see the light, which shines every morning And makes us happy The happy ones love the darkness The sad ones love the light Wondering if they will ever be happier Wondering where is the world going It is like a tree that’s lying on the ground Because the storm made it fall The tree can’t get up So, it can’t produce more fruit Welcome to my world.

Failure Liz Lara

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I woke up on December 8th, 2017, 40 minutes late, and needing to pee. This could change my future was the thought I had walking into the bathroom. I may be overreacting but as of right now, this is everything. The ACT is notorious for destroying happiness and self esteem. One may have perfect grades and have many extra curricular activities but once you get below a 30 on the ACT, you’re ruined and won’t have a future. With an iced coffee in my shaky hands, I set out to change my life for the better… or worse.

I bounce the ball onto the sizzling court. Sweat pouring from my forehead and my stomach in knots, this tournament could change everything. I recall my dad from a young age pushing me to do my best. He dedicated countless hours to my wellbeing and tennis success. “It’s all mental” my dad would say whenever I would mess up I’ve always been athletically superior than others but not always mentally superior. My dad would tell me that my own mind would get the better of me, before my opponent even had the chance to sneak into it. Whether it be a bad loss or a good win, my father was always on the sidelines supporting me. The girl I’m playing was that one girl who you can’t help but like because of her charisma. Not only was she friendly and pretty, but dominated at the game of tennis. With her consistency and experience, everyone expected her to win. On that court, she was dominating, mentally challenging me to break down and miss. I was losing. The first set, I was down 3 games at 1-4 and I was beating myself up. “What should I expect, she’s just better than me” I kept telling myself, expecting that it could change things. Every shot seemed forced and unnatural, it frustrated me, and she knew that. She decimated me, and after that, I decided to quit tennis.

My hands are clammy and my brain is fuzzy with caffeine, I really can’t do this, I think, my fists clenched as they give me the test. The pale lights and familiar teacher welcome me. As the teacher drones on the prerequisites of the test, I am dying on the inside. My confidence on how well I’ll do on the test dwindles and It seems as the minutes go by my memory on everything i’ve ever learned starts to fade. My friend glances over at me, lazily giving me a lopsided smile as they ask where we are going to eat after the test. Unlike my friend, my mind was not on food, but the test I had anticipated for weeks on end. Why is it that she seems unaffected while I’m chock full of nerves? The countless, intimidating little circles scattered my paper, I check the clock and its almost 8, almost time to start the test. My three perfectly sharpened pencils glistened and were ready for action, my calculator and eraser close by.

In my dark lamp-lit room, I stared at a small monitor. My eyes scanned the $50,000-$100,000 tuitions. The panic inside me built as I knew that I could never be accepted to such an expensive college. My calculator was stuffed with potential solutions on how I could pay these ridiculous amounts. After awhile, the realization did not give me heart palpitations. I finally understood that I don’t need to go to a prestigious college, what would that do? They are simply names used to get more money from the students. Learning is what you make of it. I quickly typed down “University of Utah” and accepted it. I wasn’t going to a college with a cool name, and I was okay with it.

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After the test, I let the tension fall from my shoulders. Sleeping seemed like the perfect conclusion to the last few weeks of utter hell. This test has taught me that I am taking life too seriously, I thought as I waited for my mom to pick me up. This test took up so much of my time that I wouldn’t even speak to my family due to the studying. I had let this test overtake my life and I needed to reclaim it. Taking the ACT was not as difficult as I had once thought, and I almost scoffed at my nervousness. I felt at ease with myself because I had done a three hour test without crying the entire time. The cloud of anxiousness and uncertainty had lifted because I believe I had done my absolute best and that’s all I could do. Dwelling on things I can’t change has been a problem for me and I need to understand that i’m okay with failure as it comes.

My Fairytale (an excerpt from Metanoia) Alyssa Minjares

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This is my fairytale.

My knight in shining armor does not wear armor nor does he own a shield or sword.

No, my knight owns good, has a wonderful mother, and an amazing aunt.

His hair appears lighter in the blazing sunlight, and his eyes … if you could see his eyes then you’d see that they aren’t normal brown eyes.

No instead they’re two endless pools and I …

I wouldn’t mind drowning in them.

This is my fairytale.

My knight is a boy, a boy with so many dreams and talents.

A boy who paints better than Picasso.

A boy who loves comedy movies and horrible romances.

A Less Than Meaningful Conversation Fiona Bowen I breathe in, the cold morning air flooding my lungs. Behind me the revolving door of my apartment building spins slowly, squeaking. To my left the doorman buzzes to life with a mechanical shutter, eyes opening, blinking like old fashioned camera lenses.

‘Chilly day, isn’t it?’ I nod at the sky and then glance at the doorman, ‘rain?’ I ask. It takes him a moment, internal gears still warming up, I can see faint plumes of steam rising out from his coat collar.

I shiver as a nervous chill runs down my spine. I shove my hands into my jacket pockets, spinning around and starting off down the sidewalk, walking just a bit faster than usual.

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Finally, he nods haltingly, silent other than the buzzing and clicking from inside his coat. He blinks at me, almost seeming to be thinking, considering me. I shift, pulling my jacket tighter around myself. The quiet stretches uncomfortably between us, and just as I began to wonder if the doorman had broken down, he whirs louder, clicking like a finished cassette tape and slowly shutting down.

Untitled

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Alyssa Nielsen It hurts enough, not having you, not ever being able to taste your lips.

I see you every day, your smile, your calm, your confidence.

I remember our conversations, our understandings, of wanting to leave home.

Yet I will never be more to you.

I will never make you smile.

I will never get to hold you.

And it hurts enough.

The Constant End of Days Fiona Bowen

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The apocalypse never happens like you’d picture Because it’s slow and unnatural It’s manufactured and a man made destruction Like most destruction Because you wake up everyday and don’t realize how many died while you slept How many creatures of land and sea and sky have vanished Because man takes and takes and doesn’t grasp the concept of too much Or doesn’t want to The apocalypse isn’t waking up to fire and brimstone raining from the heavens It’s waking up and not noticing until it’s too late to act It’s slow and purposeful and real But people won’t acknowledge what scares them They close their eyes and hope someone else will handle it And in doing so they only help fuel the fire Because the apocalypse is constant and continuing and will eventually suffocate us all

Life Storm

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Desange Kuenihira Life is beautiful when you’re happy Life is beautiful when your family and your loved ones are happy Life is amazing when you don’t have to worry about anything Life is great when you really laugh hard and urinate in your pants The happy times in life are worthy of living Life is really good when you are confident in yourself When you know you’ll push on no matter what But life gets harder when you have storms in your life.

When you know your loved ones and friends are far away Life gets scary when you think that if you fall you’ll never get up But at some point in life It’s better to be in the dark in your room and cry To let it all out It feels better, when you let it all out You think it’s getting better, but each day is getting worse You can’t keep the tears back anymore So you let them out You think about the beautiful moments you’ve had in your life And during your storm, they put a smile on your face.

Then you know that tomorrow is a new day And you have to start over Because you’re not living in yesterday.

It’s really hard in life to love someone And you know that person loves you But you’re both too scared to admit it Both of you are the type of people who focus on your school And you don’t want the distraction, So you spend your days ignoring, hurting each other Sometimes it’s just good to lose it and just enjoy your life Push on, smile;

Like you know today is the last day in the world At some point in life, you just have to get it all together Life is too short to take on hate, to take on pain We should rather be like the rain during a storm Just continuing on without stopping.

Don’t let the storm in life scare you.

Don’t let it shake you.

Stand like a rock And you will win at life.

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Endless Life

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Desenge Kuenihira

Star Charmed Fiona Bowen

The Wayfarer Cantus 33

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Lemon Boy Fiona Bowen

Serene Mage Fiona Bowen

The Wayfarer Cantus 35

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A Friend Fiona Bowen

Graceful Fiona Bowen

The Wayfarer Cantus 37

Bleary-eyed Nights

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Fiona Bowen

The Raven Fiona Bowen

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The Wayfarer Cantus Maya Miro Johnson One

I. windchill negative 60 whistling through the gut canary singing sweet praises to Jesus Salt Lake Teens Write 40

Shiva sharpening his knives II. pulsating bubbling from within I am as a bird decomposing in the nest III. With a sense of togetherness do we leap into lightning, hoping to die, defied by gravity the sun uplifts our desires and exposes our ultraviolet skulls and their grinning tendencies

IV. restless, we walk in place bound by piano wire to the rusted, splintered bedframe of the future must we die so pitifully with nothing to our name but the past ?

V. -ken only by the ticking of a vanished clock, the bloodless scratch of a pen inscribes your fate your lungs your liver your heartbeat your string snaps with the pencil lead all the world’s your sharpener

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Quietude bro-

VI. words are the air which we breathe music the water in which we drown

VII. He pounds like a bear in the maelstrom convulses

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trying to wipe his tears in panic as the torrents joyfully devour his home hide alone remains to chide him for his failings insignificant twitches command his life now

VIII. Might you be wrong/Sir/ about their relationship status/ma’am/? father-son what does it matter if one may (or may not) be a ghost they are both dead

IX. I end in the middle cut off by an apparition, unaneled I starved with bread in my mouth, teeth gnashed against the process of inevitability; I will not end I refuse I an intruder

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if such is the case

X. Blue is the only color it’s worth mentioning how delightful how sudden that this misery comes upon its Berenice her pearliness

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XI. The bells have rebelled chimes ch ch ch ch like machine guns in their predictability precocious in their capacity for violence sparked once. firefly! you died toosoontotell if you were a portent XII. In the midst of a storm we do not miss the desert yet in the red rocks do we dream of rain

XIII. plosive comes fricatives constrict the gums restrain the fingernails else we’d maim the self, maul with words beyond our grasp blind prophets (such as Tiresias and the rest) had only to glimpse the supernova light of the death of an idea/birth of a cause they were poisoned with periphery they embraced the darkness, greeting an old friend they never knew with the loving malice of a kiss their ears are their torture now XIV. an acrid blue awaits as typically seen in your parents’ dining room wallpaper of the late nineteen-sixties might you be wrong in this choice of companion bluebirds, after all, rarely live long but what do I know except the enjoyment of sin(e) waves aqueous and adolescent as they crash and rage against the moon

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and like thorns

XV. amputation was the only option they told of survivors and plague but mostly survivors- amnesiac though not deafto the chattering bones of legs that never walked again XVI. Sisyphus.

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what knowledge do you carry with you more leaden than rocks what heaviness in the brain replaces your suitcase weightier than an aircraft might you be discovered I think not only presume that my consciousness indicates thinking so but nothing good nor evil suppositions unlaced trip the surest runner on their ascent – chin hits marble, topmost stair hair splits/muscles crack and knowing the extent of the shattering tumbles down to begin again, not anew praying that memory might be severed its policy cancelled its existence disbanded

Two

I. the sunset dribbles purple saliva upon an unsuspecting nettle unsettling the horizon

II. The fog hollows out each atom is indivisible yet this colony is splintered to ice like the torn flesh of saints and their purest of sanguine expressions

clamatio in the subtle din of crickets a coloratura speaks her peace

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back-arched-cat-like

III. Before long we will know the prognosis major fractures punctuate minor synapses campfires in the brain

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Snap like cufflinks into place what will become of the residue I wonder The flowers are stricken sterile, rendered thus in color barely born, 16 years later I mistook you for your grandfather in this chaos of light sublime darkness is longed for it is a sin devoutly to be embalmed in

IV. We share a story Mister and I long ago he bred me born and raised

ripping through ears of corn of wheat canals of birth

V. I am not what you seem under this sort of fluorescent light bare bone sparse so full of blood devoid of electricity in this darkened room far from love

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shafts

VI. The last autumn of our existence we danced and danced the harvest was good that year. not so long ago we vanished

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(others say we burst, like a bubble borne aloft by demons) but most everyone knows now that we simply faded into winter and never awoke that last autumn of our existence was the best

Inspired by the works of Michael Hersch

What I should have said Alyssa Minjares “Why do I matter so much to you?” It was a question that caught me off guard. Had I never made it obvious enough or were you never really looking? It was a question that ignited a fire within me but not out of anger but out of all the things I could say and you would believe that Shakespeare had wrote them himself. I wanted to scream it at you but I bit my tongue in fear that you wouldn’t understand instead I replied. “Why wouldn’t you?”

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I should have told you … What I should have said was, “Because without you, I don’t feel complete and the thought of something happening to you sends my mind into a frenzy and nothing else matters.” I should have said, “It’s like drowning but you’re my breath of fresh air and I only want you. It’s telling myself that I’ll see you soon because I’ve become so attached that I no longer want to be apart from you.” I should have said, “It’s because I’m so hopelessly in love with you that I begin to panic when my phone is dry of your texts. It’s because I’m so in love with you that I’ll push every single rational reasoning away and jump to the worst.” I should have said, “It’s because I’m in love with you that you’ll always matter so much.”

A Companion Guide to Uninhabited Islands Maya Miro Johnson And on your right, ladies and gentlemen, you’ll see White-rock bay: Salt-encrusted sea-shore Where she’s selling the existence of Avalon, Far off the hazy dawn smothers a grey-blue horizon

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And if you don’t mind peering over to the left Camera flat: A warrior-king stands Monolithic against the orange, October rushes His bison pelt twitching with flies Soft eyes somehow have a granite gaze Now, you may not have guessed, but actually This place is circular somehow The same patch of scrub-brush twirls before the eyes of god again and again The Island Belonging to Antelope Sits like an egg in a fluid nest of brine shrimp Ladyfinger finger-paints the bottom of the sea, Mysterious,

Are there ghosts? Who knows, folks, who knows?

Barren, Like a seahorse It stands, squats like Scotland under snow and Tanzania in summer Bridger Bay, crescent-shaped Crescendos to a feverous shatter in the storm Well, I’m afraid we’ve hit a patch of bad weather. Terribly sorry but all ferries and picnics are canceled, with full reimbursement and sincere apologies, naturally

Pawprints in the dirt indicate the existence of man long ago, Beasts now This here is Buffalo’s scaffold, Where The gentlest creatures alive hurled themselves into battle to meet the oncoming dust And sweat of men Fielding-Garr, garrulous and mistrustful, stoops in the distance, hunkered down and quaintly miserly Coyotes pass by at night down Lone-tree road, their eyes like glistening green stars, their teeth flashing like fireflies Ridges like skeleton brains and femur fractures are roads For the unwise and the ancient

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Buffalo point trembles against the wrath of lightning, finger outstretched to the heavens

With lassoes and compasses, respectively, Each kestrel, curlew, avocet, willet, osprey, falcon, partridge, heron, killdeer, owl, grebe has a different name for the same deserted nests Each badger, bobcat, porcupine, jackrabbit, bighorn, squirrel, deer Has different legends about That same horizon,

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Which Merlin threw like dice so many millennia ago, Which slices and stitches past and present and future together Thanks for your attention, folks, haveanicestaycomeagain! (wuldja mind fillin’ out this brief survey?

Rate your experience 1 thru 5) And beckons dawn to dusk to dawn again in a cyclic rhythm This island is a never-ending circle There are some places here unnamable Run down the giant’s Causeway!

Towards Infinity

Simple Nights Alyssa Nielsen

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Simple nights, smoothies + two-door cars.

We talk about the future, how marriage will be possible with the right person, sometimes wishing we already found love.

Some nights though, we relive the precious moments, the laughs, the tears, the joy.

Wanting to save them, as if they are the last lights of summer.

The rest of the nights we jam out, Beatles + all, talking about the boys we like.

Simple nights, catching up, I’ll never forget that feeling.

Jabberwock Speaks (or, a monological treatise on the panoramic nomenclature of words) Maya Miro Johnson Roses by other names Gather ‘round the garden

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Their thorns taste different

saline

brick-baked

destitute

Fibonacci overdubbed your saturn’s rings 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 you were read like a book and translated into the language of truth (supposing it were a wombat or a woman or a wizzard or wozand or any other kind of W-entry) The purified blooms surround In a nibelungen ring of sprinklers, coating the lawn in an ossiferous dust Thy syllables are baptized In salato-wasser of kestrel’s reincarnation fluids Which pour from the womb of earth Abu Dhabi and Mogadishu’s desert petals spake Pluto’s devolution did not go over well in the city of flowers By whose vacuumed night wafted the scent of sand and xenon Ensign’s peak was not an insignia for sky but a repentant pendant-pennant of the stars A remnant of the flood The loch ness monsternessie, to her friendsbreathed sodium without realizing it had a different consistency from the sustenance of her CO2 E=MC^2 H20 playmates- for she was disappointed to learn that she had no Dog’s tags or monkey’s paws to adorn the witch

Doctor’s Staff short-circuited Google glasses/Gobbled down the dabke – dancing ad infinitum the wolf’s jig, The goblin’s rookery Full of insane wives and anthropomorphic owls Was riveted by iron needles to an ellipsis in reality The meaning of things is obscured by

thicker, slicking, slicing glasses

Double helices entwine life in a thorned ivy embrace around the dying embers of truth Post-apocalypse-of-name ?

That a montague is a capulet if he says so?

For shame, Romeo, that you might discard your genes so quickly for the pretty shape of a thirteen-year-old girl Blood---

y chasms open up in my fingers

Cisterns of sanguine rupees From which the fount of capital flows/Washington, The progenitor of all denominations, dropped dead today (AD 1799)

leaving the market uncertain

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What does fact mean anymore,

of the intentions of ghouls with pens They plucked feathers from the burgeoning wings of their poor children Blood from between the scapula of dreams So that they could write their treatises with the freshest crachat ---sanguinolent When our English grammar does not cut out hearts with enough acridity Salt Lake Teens Write 58

Or specificity, We apologize for our Viking origins: Desertland mocks me Tipicannoe and Pottawatomie too Poughkeepsie, Punxsutawney, Monongahela-blue Their cities of brotherly love in This year of Our lord Nantucket- they took it In the midst of waters The sun burns like a paper cut Baked in garlic bread In the boggy places Liberty and the pursuit-

il fine subito

of life

Part One: An Awakening Fiona Bowen Margot lays in the backseat of her beat-up car, staring at the ceiling, pockmarked with burns, tears and ambiguous holes. She sighs, dropping an arm over her face, half to block the sun from her eyes, half in defeat. What the hell was she supposed to do? It seemed like every time she turned around there was something else to deal with. Why was it any of her business anyway?

~*~ “Thank you, thank you!” Leo beams out at the crowd of her fellow students, none of whom seemed half as excited as herself, a few clapping half-heartedly as she graciously accepted the title of prom queen. She grins and grabs onto the arm of Thomas Boyd, her date and convenient prom king, who seemed like he’d seen this coming and wasn’t even slightly impressed.

Admittedly, Leo had known that they were going to be prom queen and king at least a month in advance, but she was pumped nonetheless.The night felt magical, like anything was possible.

The glowing orb shaped lights, the general aesthetic of purple and glitter for the ‘Space Romance’ theme only added to the air of infinite possibility.

“Tommy! How cool is this?” she exclaims, still holding his arm as they leave the stage, “I mean, we both knew how it would play out, but still!”

Thomas shrugs. “It’s just Thomas.” he corrects and then shrugs again like it meant anything.

Leo frowns, letting go of his arm and adjusting her crown. “Okay... Thomas. What’s the deal?”

“Nothing’s the deal.” Thomas says, not even looking at her, “I just thought it’d be different.” he tilts his head slightly, peering into the crowd of teenagers, dancing in a way that was definitely discouraged.

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She sits up, groaning at the pain in her back. Sleeping on seat buckles was always a bad idea. Stretching, she clambers gingerly into the front seat and drops her arms onto the steering wheel. Another day. Margot runs a hand through her lazily chopped hair, tucking a few rebellious blue locks behind her ear. Another day, when would it end?

“Different?” Leo feels a bit sick as she watches him look practically anywhere else but at her.

Thomas just shrugs again and steps into a pack of passing football players, still wearing their jerseys despite the semi-formal dress requirement, and disappears. ~*~

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Bird nods to himself, turning the newspaper clipping over in his hands as he looks up at his Mystery Mural, a wall of his living room that he’d dedicated to everything from missing people under strange circumstances to people claiming to have seen Bigfoot. The article he currently held was on a new drug that was popular with the teens and young adults of LA. His running theory was fairy dust mixed with something man-made. What, he couldn’t be sure.

He keeps nodding, more to the music that plays from the record across the room, as he pins it to the wall next to the other articles he’d collected on drugs that he had reason to suspect may not originate from this plane of existence. He skips away from the Mystery Mural and drops on his couch, pulling a blanket and his laptop into his lap. Pausing to check the layers of tape covering the camera of the laptop, seeming satisfied, he switches it on and pulls up the local news. He didn’t know what he’d do if anything on his wall actually turned out to be true, but he didn’t trust anyone else with this research. ~*~ Deep within the forest, something blinks. Blinks with far too many eyes. The something breathes raggedly at first, its body shuddering and causing the surrounding trees to quake, a few falling to the ground with mighty crashes. It settles, breathing becoming steady and it shifts, uprooting more trees as it struggles to rise from the soil it had been slumbering beneath for so long.

Mine Alyssa Nielsen

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Mine, Mine, Mine.

Greed pulls at me, It pulls at my hair, It swallows me + those I love.

Possession overcomes me, Until it wins, pulling me down.

Mine, Mine, Mine.

Greed pulled at me, Until I knew that greed wasn’t love.

Until it tore apart the thing I loved.

And it is forgotten.

Mine. Mine. Mine.