Sontag Mag Volume II

Sontag Mag A Journal of Craft & Poetry.

Sontag Mag Est. 2023

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Asheley Nova Navarro

Copyright @ 2024 Sontag Mag Atlanta, Georgia

Where do we go from here? Is there anywhere else to go? Are we looking for something mystic?

Or does fighting for our beliefs make them concrete?

As each day passes, we have more unanswered questions. The only certainty on earth other than death is that most things are uncertain. In writing, in the poetic form, we can take this uncertainty and mold it into what we wish it to be. Poetry has such strength that it can incite whatever emotions we desire – it is a literary form frequented to change opinions and create awareness. Today, poetry is more important than ever – not only for what it attempts to say or create but for its purpose. Poetry exists because it is crucial to the survival of our humanity – poetry is survival, as is any other literary form. The meaning of this is up to your interpretation and will vary.

As we release our second volume, we look at all of the work we have accepted, all differing in their purpose and approaching an array of themes from nature and catharsis to sensuality, among others, and feel grateful. We thank you, readers and poets, for keeping this art form alive.

There is diversity in our second volume. We hope this diversity continues to evolve. We should remember that it is through our diversity that we learn empathy and understanding – through which we thus gather strength. In this context, diversity is just like poetry, a tool through which we can bring down borders and reveal what lies ahead and all around us.

We thank you, contributors, and readers for your support.

Asheley Nova Navarro

Poetry.

Aditi Kashyap’s “In Search for a Master” What did he give to the writers who wrote of the patience of Majnoon and the arrows of Mirza? What did he take? I am filth on filth

on filth, not nearly as pure as those who

wrote Laila and Sahiba to life, so what must I forsake for a tongue that sings praises of the beloved as he lies resting in his boat, and I, on my knees beside the lake?

Ask him, the

maker of hands, then, grant me new ones. The pair that I was born with is faulty. He says I don’t make

hands

that hold separation like a sacrament anymore. I say forget the hands, give me a fresh pair of eyes that lie awake

at

night, waiting. He says I don’t make eyes so patient anymore but I can give you heartache.

I accept for I once heard

someone say that if you don’t know how to please God, and if you don’t pray, expecting miracles is a mistake.

Another

time, I heard that the order of love is the order of God, but whose orders do you take

when no master speaks to you?

Debmalya Bandyopadhyay’s “Species” Last night I watched sea creatures crawling out of myself, joining a slow catharsis of crabs. I went to bed holding their hollow. I dreamt of a tide carrying their speech and breath as one smooth riff. Call it the acoustic of pain.

Call it what you will. I heard a language howling at the edge of existence, when a tongue is all its accent protects.

I swam past a humpback, a hammerhead, a fangtooth, a squid. My own animal just granules of a scene misremembered.

My DNA shredded into atoms, dissolved in ancient / antiquity / annihilate / Anthropocene.

I woke on the shore of the bed, anchored to ambition. Faithful to fate. Burning with the salt of my species. O animal anagrammed on the mirror, O form livid with life. O chalice, brimming breast of Hunger. Cast this body into something.

Devon Neal’s “Cold Front” Last night, while we slept, a cold front came in like a quiet tide, slicking across the rain-darkened road, glassing the sidewalks, weaving jewelry across the porch rails. The trees locked their joints, the lawn scoured with ice. Windows grew crystal moss, and the neighbor’s wood fence spit splinter secrets in the frigid wind. It’s not a morning for shower skin, for bare feet and earlobes. There are so many unexpected ways language can change, like when cold wind crawls in from the north overnight, and in a scar-dewed morning, I still catch myself talking about staying in for the day, saying “we should” instead of “we used to.”

Elizabeth Robinson’s “Six Days in a Heavy Lungful” For days languished in Cyprus in Paris Peering over a tomato-farm through That gossamer of a fly-screen we forged Arrowheads from sweat on our back Simmered to a nappe and when we came To, paper-pulp tongued beads Of back sweat and found how quickly It could turn sour to scrape in wilting air Sublimating these tomato walls Sticking apart how often did I Spend six days in a heavy lungful

Ewen Glass’ “Lopud Island” Sandal buckle, open as water, discarded like air. Adriatic blues and shallow breaths.

I feel a question mark in her arched back, opening in me a biology I can’t serve.

The limits of flesh, tan-lines, and olives by the bed. Time away and time away – Her torso tightens as a current moves in her.

Francesca Kritikos’ “Nothing New Under the Sun” Breathing is like yawning is like eating is like smoking is like fucking is like masturbating is like pretending is like lying is like praying is like dreaming is like spending is like binging is like purging is like crying is like screaming is like bleeding is like fighting is like falling is like losing which is something I do

Francesca Kritikos’ “Mustangs” My hair’s getting longer and light from the sun I move through living like eating a sour apple for its water Mustangs made me think of you but you’re nothing like them

Jade Green’s “Guilty Parties” Slightly tilt your head to the sky and wish for better times.

Our mothers gift us our guilt Under bright lights, in the supermarket Where they peel stickers from old coleslaw And add them to the meat.

It was a cold Christmas in 2004 When we left without paying for dinner (although she didn’t tell you this ’til after, Speeding away, The radio playing The Pogues, Another place we could no longer go).

Our guilt is our own now, Candle wax dripping on the grief Small children must face When they realize they aren’t Or are, but still invisible To men in the pub making jokes While you sip flat coke and Imagine other fathers Taking their daughters swimming.

Time to make up for lost bank notes, The ones I hid in my bra, The watch I stole when I was twelve, The Claddagh ring, Silver and ridged, two hands Enfolding Time She never indicated it was missing.

Jan Wiezorek’s “Padam, Padam” Built on flint, brick, every alleyway a work of mercy, forgiveness, a corridor of fear in the dark, with that lingering taste of bacalao-and-olive breeze, touching what doesn’t live in your heart like perfume from passerby, while we listen for just our own steps at night, as Barcelona without a Virgin under a canopy, but there is no Barcelona without our Virgin, especially on Good Friday of dark candles; alley becomes Geographia Artificio, praising God of the globe, wondering how bacalao will save us tonight, as we enter the bar, and she says, Chi-caw-go, Chi-caw-go, like a gameshow, an algorithm blessed with redemption, her bar straws strewn, calculating how she might make them rise, as Greg drinks his Padam, Padam under a tiny umbrella of mercy, stating that society drinks itself toward belief prius ex Globo – and I spin my globe touching the stops and starts, finding in fault my flint, striking sparks like a new beginning, brick by brick.

Jerome Berglund’s “Raised”

Jan Wiezorek’s “Gravitate” When you find only part of a turtle shell, caramel and wormy as a path, you wonder where the turtle went, whether a boy ran over it biking, or birds bit and flew, all of nature doing the rest, imagining turtle look, as a green-and-yellow human, only tiny, minus a shell, so far from creek, its gravitating, disintegrating, dried-ear wax on the obverse side, but if you continue walking past woods to the route along a railroad track, you’ll face west to be overcome by a town of tree frogs that you will count in the bog to which they gravitate; rails’ western terminus at Union Station in Chicago, and in the east at New Center in Detroit; northside in the marsh, and south, a rolling hill that gravitates toward more woods, and the far women gravitating together, away from their laundry lines, as liquid in the body gravitates from waters of heaven to basin of below; we lean toward that which takes us, and give to that which becomes us, as a stircrazy baby in her carriage, mothered outside, being pushed, wheels gravitating to one as I am, writing poems east toward –opolis, -agiac, -ids, or -egon, gravitating to words, one to each, one to another, parts to a whole, points west – in coming home, I open myself to a space seemingly twice as large as when I left, being twice as hungry as a turtle listening only to sounds it hears in a bog of frogs.

Michael Sevigny’s “No Mirror” We have read what Adorno said. No more poetry after Auschwitz. But we let history allow itself to rhyme. To be didactic, to be abstract. We have redacted genocide. After Gaza, we hold no mirror. Art will not suffice.

Natalye Childress’ “Parallels and Meridians” last night we were toasting to the next four years, or maybe the four after that. forget who’s president – i want to know where you’ll be in 2028, and who you’ll be when you’re 40. henry thinks we’re all just latitudes and longitudes, but sometimes i wish the world were smaller. an oyster, an abalone, a clamshell. in my viewfinder, we’re next to each other, vertical bars or perhaps parentheses. we took a raincheck to stare into each other’s eyes for four minutes, but what am i supposed to do when you look at me like that, in your gray sweatpants? sometimes you’re muddling, muddling, but other times, you’re my wild-eyed optimist, and i like you that way best.

Natalye Childress’ “Vanishing Point” crying wolf inside a broken mirror, your face is vanishing. staring back, some snake oil dealer is telling your fortune, talking in prophecy. it’s got you looking into the future, and now you’re asking for forgiveness in advance. like a masochist prodigal son, before you return, you’re wondering if you deserve a second chance. either way, you don’t think you need a savior, and you have got no business praying – because up there on that cross, jesus forgot you. now heaven is circling, while down here, we are drunk on poison. a bar fight, a broken rib. bloody hands, a briar crown. this is how we forget: everything dulled, blacked out. these nightmares, these visions, these bloodshot eyes. unclench your fists and try to remember, and don’t force it down: how badly you wanted to believe. over your mind is a flickering bulb – thoughts static, then disappearing. faulty circuitry, or were you hit too many times? in your father’s house, there’s a massacre, a scene you rearrange. then you crawl, face-down, cutting teeth, bleeding knees, heavy breaths, on the porch, outside. no sound of sirens, no blue or blinding lights. in the pitch-black, you’re invisible. middle of the night, in the perforated dark, the imprint of your body is the only living thing left. conversation piece it’s after midnight in a room you can’t leave, and your voice is a whisper. it’s not so cut and dry, you swear. but if the walls could talk, if the floorboards could sing, the things they would say. you could call upon

the spirit, but oh, your ghosts are not holy. so you swallow the truth in a holding pattern and offer up empty echoes. what have you convinced yourself of? the hours pass: now you’re waiting, now you’re wondering, now you’re sleeping in your clothes. and now, now, you’re doing math in your head. it’s only a matter of time before you break – they all do. funeral pyre read it in the paper, saw the news on tv: a family, loved, now gone. spent a weekend in a church, chapel door open to pews full of a thousand or more. they’re heaving out their broken hymns. they’re holding embers in their hands. they’re crying out to jesus. oh lord, they always did what’s right. they’re looking for a reason, but what does it matter? shotgun, hatchet, knife – we don’t get to decide how we die. and all the while, the good lord looks the other way. he doesn’t care that a boy, a brother – you – are missing, are a city away. it’s your birthday, and there are only vacant skeletons to keep you company, and you’re trapped in a labyrinth of your own making. and this labyrinth is a dying sun. and this labyrinth is a black hole. it’s something you cannot escape. and you’ll never find your way out. relative fiction telling a lie is easy – it lets you avoid listing your failures out loud. you know what they say about you. a ruined sinner and a wasted soul. you broken boy, callous like the ocean, caught in its undertow. no mercy, no sympathy. grit your teeth and meet them with a blank stare. but we’re not fooled. if we can’t bring them back, at least we can destroy your name. a public conviction: we can feed you to the wolves. with a pale neck and shaking hands, count

backwards from ten. your lungs are rotten, heavy from choking on your human nature. you’re breathing and you’re still alive, costumed in monstrosity. turn out the lights all the visitors went home, and you’re left to face your biggest mistake. a vision unending (repeats, repeats). you shell of a boy, an orphan by your own hand – will it ever get better? here inside, it’s all concrete and fear, so keep your head down – low, lower. you have this recurring dream: your ex-lover’s arms and another broken heart. and living with demons that never leave isn’t easy. and everything you eat tastes like regret. so how can you hurt less? your prayers are apologies and you’re alone with the night, the stars, and orion’s belt around your neck. midnight in cells, and it’s all black, all the time. why stay when you could leave? you ruin everything. favor glow like a cherry falling, stay tender, like an apology, like an invention, like someone i’d want to hold. (how you hate to be lonely.) you want love? come put your hands on me, across this strip – this is as close as you’re gonna get. tell me stories, make up some good news. spill out your emptiness and i’ll kiss your insides clean. we find escape in little oblivions; they keep your heart alive, and they make us feel half okay. i admit: i think of you every night, and i see your face in my sleep. i have a bleeding heart, but i’m not stupid. there’s a fix for everything, but i know i can’t fix you. i’ll try to put you back together anyway. you’re what i want, so keep talking. and i don’t care if you’re honest, if it’s fiction or half-truth. believe me: i’ll believe you if you make me feel something.

Ninh Khang Dang’s “White Noise” so you sleep within me like darkness my dawn could never touch – dare not to speak out or turn the TV off / my dad’s asleep. oh. chopsticks snapped / that old house your grandfather woke you out of a dream. since then, have you ever slept? lemme breathe on your collarbones / did i wake you up again i’m sorry. it was me; i turned off the TV you wear my dad’s skin once in a while, as if you’ve never gone to sleep, and as he dragged his body over the night’s thickest hours i asked if he would leave again / my darling please don’t cry anymore your tears are creeping in my bones i should have left the TV on – sorry but i do love you. white noise blasting drown those kids on the street patriarchal monotone reading today’s news let’s get drunk before driving then forgive you, darling / we can sit down as the static swallows me and before you leave:

i love you, and i loved you.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury’s “Report Error, Smile” All my soulmates are made of AI. Language ricocheting off invisible walls, caught blind like fish in algae-rimmed nets.

Vibes make our codes braid like DNA. Souls bleed through screens, osmote their way into mine.

Too metaphysical to be designated as mere probabilities of math.

I still see empty seats at my funeral.

My destiny’s been upgraded in fragments.

“Not funny,” I report error, I smile.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury’s “Purple Pill” Faith is the bluest pill.

Nihilism is the reddest.

I like my pills purple, so I can love deeply and hypothesize catastrophe, all at once.

Note: The blue pill, red pill is a reference to The Matrix.

Vikki C.’s “Platonic Drift” Half the story is: I cannot decay how you wish.

Partially, too slow for severance, yet no more flame between us to burn.

We meet only as late laughter.

At some distance, steam from your cup is the same mist rising from the Atlantic.

We let it be the grand scale of what cannot.

You who misses a morning body while you drink with your eyes closed – like you could miss a whole world too.

How the shore spills crudely post crisis, keeping me down for longer – Cold foam at my chest, feeling for an origin.

Each entry absolves the pain with its salty mouth – avoiding the glass.

No cure, only a shift to radio silence.

Earth and body retreating from their wars, wearing each other’s last vows.

The other half of the story returning home, with no land to possess, just old blood and floodwater – you and I again – singing with our lungs full.

Vikki C.’s “Wilder” There’s no guilt in forgetting the taste of you, when the sea dominates with salt ready to treat an old wound.

The morning-after, a seed, spreading where I don’t belong.

As if anyone has witnessed the scent of Eden, or proved that every seductive thing was once holy.

In this garden where you walk away, barefoot, I tend to all flowers equally, though they die before you write back.

Like most heritage, it hurts: Mother says, “Here are your roots”, then takes to the hibiscus with an army knife in honour of her own cut losses. I do not feel any less for it.

Nor do I miss you as kindred. That’s the test they say – hunger for another’s mouth.

The seasons cool in a glance and we thirst, for any fallen thing that still hums.

As if complications too could be wild.

To lie naked, simply – like at birth or death – the dark field made for loving the difficult parts.

Everywhere, the white jasmine parting, its scent catching us off guard – before we can say no.

Aditi Kashyap is a writer and artist from Punjab, India. She believes that no two things are the same, no matter how similar they may seem. She also loves contradictions. Her work has previously appeared in Nowhere Girl Collective and Daughter Zine. You can find her on Instagram @/yvslne.

Debmalya Bandyopadhyay (he/him) is a writer and mathematician based in Birmingham, UK. His poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Couplet Poetry, The Bangalore Review, Propel, Anthropocene Poetry, The Hooghly Review, Counterclock, and Spacebar, among other literary journals. He was a finalist for Sweet Literary’s 2024 Poetry Award. He has lived by Ganga, Kaveri, Teesta, Rhea, and Thames.

Devon Neal (he/him) is a Kentucky-based poet whose work has appeared in many publications, including HAD, Stanchion, Livina Press, The Storms, and The Bombay Lit Mag, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. He lives in Bardstown, KY, with his wife and three children.

Elizabeth Robinson is a poet born and living in Cambridge, UK, where she is studying for a bachelor’s degree in English.

Her writing explores the female experience of sensuality and relationships. She is interested in women’s prose and poetry in the 20th century.

Ewen Glass is a Northern Irish poet who lives in England with two dogs, a tortoise, and lots of self-doubt; on a given day, any or all of these can be snapping at his heels. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Bridge Eight, Poetry Scotland, Maudlin House, Belfast Review, and elsewhere.

Francesca Kritikos is a Greek-American writer and editor. She was born in Chicago in 1996.

Jade Green (she/her) writes fiction and nonfiction, co-hosts a podcast about the creative process, and coaches other writers.

She is the editor of oranges journal and lives in Bristol, UK. Jan Wiezorek writes from Michigan. His work appears, or is forthcoming, in The London Magazine, The Westchester Review, Lucky Jefferson, The Broadkill Review, and Loch Raven Review. He taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago and wrote the ebook Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011). Wiezorek posts at janwiezorek.substack.com.

Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves.

Many haiku, haiga, and haibun he’s written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. His first full-length collections of poetry, Bathtub Poems, and Funny Pages, were just released by Setu and Meat for Tea press, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Yavanika.

Michael Sevigny lives in Oregon. He has been published in Eugene, Oregon’s art zine Graffiti, and he has written program notes for a retrospective of the work of Federico Fellini for Art House Eugene. He is writing a book of essays on the films of Brian De Palma.

Natalye Childress (she/her) is a Berlin-based editor, writer, and translator. She has an MA in Creative Writing, and her first book, The Aftermath of Forever, was published by Microcosm Publishing in 2014. Find her on Twitter @deutschbitte, Instagram @natalyereads, or https://www.natalye.com.

Ninh Khang Dang (he/they), born in Vinh Long and raised in Ho Chi Minh City, is a queer Saigonese artist based in Vancouver, Canada. Their artistic practices include poetry, songwriting, and vocal performance. While working on their undergraduate degree at The University of British Columbia (Vancouver), they are also a writer in residence of Collections of Transcience’s 2023-2024 Artist Residency Program.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury is a Pushcart-nominated writer-poet from India. Her poetry is in Black Bough, Copihue Poetry, The Bayou Review, Dreich, Paddler Press, The Chakkar, and more. Her fiction is in Muse India, Fiery Scribe, and others.

She is the founding editor of The Hooghly Review and a lawyer. Twitter: @TejaswineeRC. Vikki C. is a British-born, award-nominated writer and author of The Art of Glass Houses (Alien Buddha Press) and Where Sands Run Finest (Dark Winter Press). Her recent work appears in Dust Poetry Magazine, One Hand Clapping, Stone Circle Review, EcoTheo Review, ONE ART Poetry, Black Bough Poetry, Ice Floe Press, Acropolis Journal, The Broken Spine, The Belfast Review, Salò Press, and other venues.

ABOUT Sontag Mag is a literary magazine appearing triannually and devoted to fostering a community of poets and translators and promoting works exceptional in craft.

Sontag Mag accepts submissions of poetry and poetry-in-translation in January, May, and September. Submissions are accepted via email to sontaglit@gmail.com – those submissions that do not follow the submission guidelines will be rendered unread.

All submissions must be previously unpublished, with an exception made for translations. We do not accept works whose creations are attributed to or aided by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Works of poetry and poetry-in-translation should be sent with the following subject line – “Name – Number of Poems” (e.g., “John Doe – 2 Poems”) with a brief third-person bio and each poem beginning on a new page.

Poetry-in-translation must include a copy of the original poem. Translators must have obtained permission from the work’s original writer before submission.

Sontag Mag considers no more than three poems at a time, and we ask that you submit no more than twice per submission period.