Sweet Tooth Issue 1

COVER ART

BAUM

SWEET TOOTH ISSUE ONE

SWEETTOOTH

Copyright Sweet Tooth 2022

All poems in this issue are property of their original author(s). Read with care. Keep it real.

EDITOR'S NOTE

This issue is sort of a first pancake. Thank you for eating with us. I’ve been thinking a lot about the distinction between art and craft lately. Craft can be taught, practiced, sometimes even perfected. Art, not so much. Art is more a case of knowing it when you see it, of feeling it before you could ever explain it to someone else. I wanted to create a journal where craft is respected, but art is adored. I hope that when you read these poems, before you get a chance to really consider what you think of them and why, you are confronted with how they make you feel. I hope you like their rhythm, their groove, the way they taste on your tongue. To me, these poems are like a song on the radio that you catch yourself tapping your foot to before you ’ re even really aware that you ’ re listening. Thank you for tuning in.

We were right, we were giving, That’s how we kept what we gave away. Neil Young, Comes A Time

There are poems in this issue about love, about war, about wanting something better, and being something worse, about where we are and where we ’ re going. Fortunately, it seems that the more we write the more we have to say, and the wider our world gets. It’s lucky for us that we can’t run out of hope, or love, or art. These things aren’t finite resources, they’re practices; The more we give away, the more we ’ re going to have. Where there is hope for something better there will one day be something better. That energy has to go somewhere. I’m so excited to see where all the energy that went into these poems and this issue goes. They’re out in the world now, yours as much as they are mine, it’s up to you what you do with them. I don’t labour under the illusion that art alone will change the world. I don’t even think most of it is trying to. But now and forever, there will be art, and the world will change. I don’t know about you, but I’m glad we ’ re all along for the ride.

Megan O'Driscoll

SPACESHARK wanna make out in a great white shark screaming into infinity and run me over his seven sets of teeth back and forth just grate me into a pile of pink ribbons you braid into a lasso i told you to truss me a 10-pound bird on the tip of his tongue the length and width of my great-grandmother’s grave but you wanted this to last you wanted to make me a choker of a mother of pearl because you are the cowboy from my dreams

a x N a t a l n a

Utopia Poem 2

We nationalise love last There are no mixtapes and there is no you. Sorry!

Utopia only has things I like Okay. That was unfair.

I like you just fine.

I had a long day

My feet ache from the bar.

I haven’t gotten tipped since I shaved my head Utopia is by-prescription.

Utopia is on-demand.

Utopia is everyone loves me (Now tell me you want in.)

I leave my phone at home and walk to the woods Nature grows over loss. Loss succumbs beneath root. The grass is clawed I am clawed. I have grown away from hope. Hand me that rock

S o p h i e F u r l o n g T i g h e

the first time i met your friends you took me to the national gallery and said I’M SO HAPPY YOU’RE IN MY LIFE SOPHIE

he he is reading geometry on the park bench I’m sprawled stretched spider-corpse in grass call this conduit call it connection permissed attentionseek mute my music look make it a double remember when he told you honestly, don’t bother staying friends with Sophie

wonder if that makes him the one to text: don’t worry, they’re not looking well they’re heaving publicly grieving where is the balance between performance and spectacle maybe maybe maybe doesn’t know I know his girlfriend doesn’t love him doesn’t know I know you’d hate to end up like him doesn’t know I know what happened when you were twentytwo and gurning how you did think but never use the word / yearning

Dinner Together Megan Luddy O'Leary

BREAKING MY SILENCE:

MOTH POOPED ON ME TODAY AND NOW I’M TOO DISGUSTED TO TOUCH IT AGAIN

it is a pulsating mass of insect-cum, spider-like in its legs, playing dead all day at the bottom of its cage, sitting wings-open in a pool of its own excrement. my t-shirt smells of moth shit. i am worried this was a bad idea i am worried about what to do with them when they die. i am eager for them to die. you know i’m not telling the truth, not really, i named them and everything, i think there is something beautiful about how much they despise me i wonder if they will fuck: i wonder if they know what it feels like to have desire before function. who am i kidding, of course they do, of course they are simply waiting to be let at each other, hoping to make the most of their one wild and precious life, 7 days in our bedroom. would you call me if you were dying. tell the truth. don’t. don’t. i said don’t. stop doing everything you think you're supposed to stop pretending you don’t want me. don’t. look. there is an exactness to this circumstance. once [redacted] asked me what i want from you: figs, books, whiskey, more careful with the restraint,

you might choke someone different you might fuck someone different. have you learnt the difference between attraction and fondness yet. can you teach me moral exactness can you teach me how to make a negroni can you teach me how to say it out loud. it has been three years since you tried to touch me and i tried to try to try not to touch you and everything since is like an overgrown, apocalyptic city: overly vegetated, dysfunctional, beautiful i wonder what it is that killed us

Eating My Own Arm

I addressed a thought to you & disguised it as a prayer It must be spring making me forgetful

Dear Someone James Diaz

Assless Chaps, Number 9

The only book I’ve ever read was made of pine and wheat and summer rain.

It told of lives at risk and lovers hiding in a loft exposed by sparrows scolding It told of rivers/tempers rising kept in check or not of assless chaps left drying on a rock beside the pond one man long-limbed exposed to sun and scorpions of wives and daughters growing into the power of their wombs of lightning burning through a prairie or a town

intellect and ambition

grilling like bison steaks shared with the Lakota.

I am an avid reader of the pine the wheat the summer rain

S t a n G a l l o

My Every Night

I’m no Aphrodite I didn’t trudge out of the ocean, didn’t shake off the sea foam, didn’t shed my embryo all beautiful. No, I’m no Aphrodite. I’m more like the very first guy on land. I’m like the first fish with legs, not walking, but waddling, struggling, squirming, breathing open air for the very first time and it burns, the sun burns, hitting me head-on for the very first time, making me all translucent and you can see every milkwhite bone and every clumsy vein and every organ millions of years in the making and you can even see my little heart through my ribcage, but baby you still look at me like I’m Aphrodite anyway, still run your hands over me like I’m Aphrodite anyway, still hold me like I’m Aphrodite anyway, and I’m no Aphrodite, but give me time and I’ll stretch my spine and I’ll rearrange my limbs. I’ll evolve hands to caress your cheek and lips to kiss you. Baby, when I finally get on two legs, I’m all yours

Y a s h a d e l a L u n a

I've been praying

I've been praying, or maybe, I've been dreaming on my knees. I want to be your moonlight reverie, your summer fling, your craving, your midnight, your every night, your goodnight I’ve been dreaming real rosy in your bed, in your arms, in your kitchen, in your car; in empty halls, on the moon, in your guest room I’ve been dreaming loud at the gay bar, making eyes at you at the gay bar, slow dancing with you at the gay bar, finding God at the gay bar, head on my pillow, because when I was dreaming, I was praying, I was raving, craving, burning, loving.

written while watching gossip girl

i am trying to decide which character to like (if any) serena faces no consequences blair is cruel, jenny is, well, jenny and she sold her blue sewing machine and has an absent mother in hudson who hardly ever appears but when she does is very pretty & you have to admire the casting they look like a family without acting like one which is to say, an accidental impression jill drove a vw and was embarrassed faith scratched jay’s porsche in the lot i helped andrew scrub off the mark he made on lilith’s car during lunch i parked a block away because i got my license too late to get a spot & felt a thrill every time i slid into somebody else’s space

taking something from them however small i was late to graduation which i thought was funny a little curtsy in the white dresses they made us wear stained in the pits with my mid-traffic sweat laughing my head off the empty box walking across the stage to grab headmistresses hands like talons around my shoulders a hug and the box is mine velvet with nothing inside i read somewhere: the main difference between public and private schools in america is who the security guards police like: kids caught hiding in the garden from campus security like: once our guard knelt down beside me and taught me about god and willem does coke in the bathroom while susanna knows not to bring any to class because on tuesday they’ll be searching bags

v a C h a p m a n

one of my friends has started to wear her signet ring as a style choice its 500 dollar gold pretending at something else jumbled with all the rest of them on her fingers i wonder if i counted them how much it would add up to i wonder if this kind of thought means we shouldn’t be friends one of my friends is waiting for her father to die facetiming me from his wine cellar whispering slow into the microphone bottles shining blasphemous another’s sliding doors lead out to the pool which she wades into sometimes skin sleek with the waiting all my rich friends are lonely this they get right on TV and all the dan humphrey’s of the world are self pitying social climbers shrill voices the same i didn’t get a ring at graduation like i live in a slightly less expensive neighborhood oh my poor brooklyn loft oh my terrible gentrifying house surrounded by hip coffee shops

and B-list celebrities

i’ll still use your credit card though buy myself something better the east village is reportedly getting cheaper the residents having fled to second houses despite myself a glitter a sliver of sympathy or the rich & their superstitions cockroaches creeping up to their empty lofts

v a C h a p m a n

Climate Consumer Alannah Maxwell

Saint Zara

This particular Zara is a marble donut of a place. From the fourth floor, I peered over the railing, imagined my body bulleting to the ground a sure, humiliating splat. I told my friend I’d pictured going over the edge and it made my palms sweat. Probably, he said, everyone would keep on shopping. But in my 30-second-spot, the armed soldiers in the fitting rooms lines break rank, cover my body in seasonal linens, adorn me in lavender rayon, embalm me in perfume strips, and make me a martyr of something, anything

Slide Forty Four, Goals and Objectives

This summer, we’ll leverage the passionate fervor of this badass, loyal community to foster growth, engagement, awareness, and spread word of mouth via the production of custom, quality content, designed to speak to what people love most about our brand’s unique offering, lifestyle, and persona that feels more like a best friend than a kick in the nuts, which by the way is half-off through August, that’s right, we ’ re bringing the audience into the inner circle, rewarding their years of friendship with surprise and delight and titanium rods an inch deep into their skull, it’s the new craze that’s taking over tiktok and we ’ re going to dominate people’s feeds by activating and inspiring and plastering social media accounts with striking, eye catching, thumb-stopping headlines that make you say, wait a minute, is that legal and it won’t be, it’s a grey-white space we ’ re taking full advantage of to reach gen-z, who hates brands and hates you and hates the microplastics gathering in their tummies, and we’ll be like hey guys, and they’ll be like, hey besties, and we’ll be like, doesn’t all this summer fun make you fucking god damn thirsty for an ice cold sugarfree soda?

a r y K a t e N y l a n d

My grandma and I baked chocolate chip cookies

We worked on them all afternoon

The flour spilt on the flour

We broke all twelve eggs

We added the sugar too soon.

All my nervous excitement

But when we opened the oven

I saw burnt, I got very sad

But my grandma just smiled, She took a huge bite

‘Oh, what a sweet problem to have.’

Jack Buck

Toy Story Five

Toy Story but it’s people’s tattoos at night come alive after the body has fallen sleep and there is always an adjustment period wherein the tattoo thinks they are whatever they represent like tigers, roaming endlessly across the plains of sweaty chest, come across children locked forever in youth, their fangs unable to needle through skin until they resign under the shade of inspirational quote

Toy Story but a husband and wife sleep back to back, covered with only a sheet and the flickering yellow streetlight leaking in through the bent vinyl blinds of their 1-bedroom apartment

K r i s H u e l g a s

the plot will be two tattoos, a cowboy and an astronaut each sitting on a spouse ’ s shoulder, locked in isolation until by chance, they meet after the couple has an argument at the deli about how she refuses to stand in line and is difficult (but really, she pulled a number from the ticket machine) and his need to always control and the tattoos fall in love and make plans to tear free from their dermal prisons, become tattoos on the night sky but as the husband and wife rekindle their romance they fear they will never meet again so endeavor to ruin the marriage and be free

K r i s H u e l g a s

Philosophy Minors

did plato think he father of Western thought might one day be drawn in pixel art cir Windows 95 forced to listen upon wordless looped hip hop beats his bust having lost its colors over millennia spinning in a quiet white across neon geometry

did plato curl the finger of a monkey’s paw when he wished the lands to be ruled over by philosophers did plato envision 30 second soliloquies broadcast to millions over tiktok beneath a filter that transforms every face into a smoothed anglo doll head did plato foresee poli sci class debates over the right of a teenager to own and operate a Smith & Wesson MP15 to bring it to an active protest to create an environment in which it is justified to kill to allow himself to indulge in sweet catharsis & pump lead into a man who raised a skateboard at him in anger to slap on his prom suit and weep dryly in front of 11 white jurors and 1 not did plato envision the allegory of the cave in the context of season 20 of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, imagine iron silhouettes of Kourtney and Khloe dancing wickedly in the firelight their shadows bobbing in static dance and fleeing from the snake like visage of their mother did plato’s mimesis give birth to nihilism in a cave

did the cave give birth to the corporate twitter quiz did plato think of mimesis as the cascading reflections of Jared Leto in two parallel mirrors, blasting Letos into infinity (and if so which of these is his favorite)

a Jared Leto at the Met Gala, encased in a reverse iron maiden of fish rib bones b Jared Leto as Rayon from Dallas Buyers Club c Jared Leto dressed in all white in the sober morning sun, his light cascading across the red cheeked congregation of Mars Island d. a mirror held at eye level by soft, ominously Caucasian hands that may or may not be Jared Leto e the shadow of a sallow man cast upon the cave wall

r i s H u e l g a s

What's Left Megan Luddy O'Leary

Ashford

I am somewhere beautiful: Ashford, County Wicklow. There's a hill and some trees, a stream And a boy who hates pastoral poetry, Standing in silence amongst bus-strangers

How many mouths has Ashford fed? How many nights has Ashford kept behind the M11, Nights where The Big Wicklow folk drink and smoke; talking of the big city on the other end of the bus?

How many mouths haven't spoken of the same city? Mouths gaping wide at hills and trees and streams, like nothing ever tasted so beautiful:

As the grass couldn't be greener than here The hills couldn't change, the trees couldn't change, And the clouds couldn't be anywhere else And the clouds have nowhere better to be.

To the Moon and Back

There is a funeral on the moon and people tend to forget because they die worse deaths and lead bitter lives. I saw it every night, through the window pane and with a widow's pain The sky bubbled and boiled, but no one ever cared for the burning stars, how the flames licked and lept. Nor for appearances or your husband's gambling. i see the ceremony curled up in blanket of gray in a bed of blue. By some freak of nature, the scene smelled exactly like spiced curry, now every time i look at dinner, i see too-bright constellations

swirling in my meal and a a fading sadness on my spoon. You wouldn't notice , not with the suns spotlight, or with the exiting stars, not when wind still blows and you still hate your mother-in-law my love if i could give you the moon, i would give you the moon, but it seems rather lonely these days.

Night Baths

What if I was the kind of person who took? Night baths?

Where I soaked and pruned until?

I was so water that my skull could rest without shocking the? Suds lying like lilies all around my root-shaped colours?

I’d be so so so different

a i t

a

l e

WARNING: the poetry found in this magazine is not good! It is not in a relatively thick book (yet) and has not (yet) been covered in one of the 7 early Instagram filters. This is not to say the poetry here is bad. That would require it to be written in elvish. Or a script other than latin script - which we must reject as an assertion Bad poetry can be used as an Otter case for your bong Bad poetry is unpublished? Bad poets are men. They are socialists because they have facial hair and wear glasses and are represented in the abstract. If you are a South Park character (top left) you are destined to be a bad poet. Predestination? Good poets have worse eyesight, but can see more? They believe in photography, and when they don’t, they believe in more representative art Surely they are conservative? They are women, people and men.

A bad poem goes like this: A tear fell onto the page I was trying to remember him on Steal back the scrapes inside me Grasp my face one last time, Cast me again throw me into nothingness Lose your chance to tell me I’m perfect. I’m not anymore. The flashes begin to fade I pour myself onto your page

A good poem goes like this: Cascading onto one another the new petals float above the page covered in slow stories and breath the ink washed into the dust. The ink is violet turning and spinning and lime rolling and lining And gold bursting and blooming And sweet smells small sights and ink. Bright, old, dark, fading, ink.

a i t i ú C h a r l e t o n

me as frank o'hara's gayboy dominatrix

okay baby

i can give u an emergency to meditate on xx he truly was the least difficult of men i knew that in the moment i felt his nose bridge break underneath my hand's heel all that boundless love slick down my wrist it is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so he leaves in a hurry, forgetting his coat, dripping everywhere frank's boundless love will never scrub out of my carpets i love gay-bashing, and i love to be gay-bashed violence, like any mother, gets lonely sometimes and she deserves a call every once in a while

l e x M o u n t f i e l d

Boys Jaydra Johnson

Saturday,

p.m.

Guy at the bar says “You know, there’s a part in Return of the Jedi where if you look close you can see Carrie Fisher’s feet,” like he’s trying to feel me out or something, but then swiftly changes the subject back to glamping

Saturday, 12:37 p.m.

I don’t know if hell is empty. Wanting something to be true does not make it true, but some thoughts are so generous they leave a real spark in their wake. When my friend, John, was dying, he kept pointing to the white flowers on the tissue box as if they were real. That’s one.

“My love is bigger than a Cadillac” was something Buddy Holly said. That’s two.

Sunday,

To the silence that gave us moth wings; the silence that first dreamed up the wind: The one time I went to AA, a woman told me anything could be my higher power. “Even your Diet Dr Pepper ” But I knew this was wrong.

a.m.

Tinder dates like these!

This song tastes like realising I was raped!

This floor feels like everyone I love hates me!

The taxi meter reads like my medical chart!

Spinning out of control feels just like heaven!

The beep of my card machine feels like not making rent!

This vodka looks like my anaemia diagnosis!

It'd be so sexy if he sued me for defamation!

His arms around me are the only good things I have ever known!

His cologne smells like no one laughing when I tell the story of the first time I did coke!

Everything for Everyone!

There will be heartbreak in a post-capitalist utopia I assume men will call me a bitch there too. Sex may still hurt on occasion but I am promised that under communism, the sex is better Maybe there will still be gas cards and fights with flatmates over not knowing how to top up the gas. But there might be a way for sunlight to come into underground trains when we need it most We may come to better ways of understanding each other. Of concepts such as sunlight, such as underground. We may eradicate the word bitch, but who knows what of our day-to-day interpersonal dramas is politics and what merely exists only when two people enter into an unspoken contract to hurt each other in private and only be snide at parties of friends.

Who knows what will burn?

Maybe in this brave new world, those equilibriums

a i t l i n Y o u n g

between us all will become easier Will we abolish equilibriums? or concepts of demand? of supply?

Biology indicates the similarity of pleasure and pain to our brain is likely to remain.

Some good things will go in the flames but now I'm burgeoning on Holzer's territory. Maybe in the brave new world intellectual property will not be a case of stepping on toes but a case of simply joining in a conversation A new way to say I love you, and I promise I am not mocking you. There will still be work to be done. Which is all I know, along with the continued existence of heartbreak. I like to think I'll have a newer fresher romantic wound by the time the revolution rolls around. Maybe there will be more zoos to go to.

Perhaps there will be no zoos

Maybe I'll see eye to eye with you again, inline on Valentine's day, picking up the state-supplied bread, roses, and champagne

a i t l i n Y o u n g

It's for the Baby Holly Keeler

I'm Sorry (A Runaway's Note)

I'm sorry I threw up on the Chief Justice when I took the oath of office I'm sorry I mispronounced the names of all those foreign dignitaries

I'm sorry I dropped the bomb on Paraguay when the orders were to drop it on Uruguay I'm sorry I got captured by the enemy and gave up all our secrets when they took my food away I'm sorry I messed up every job you ever gave me to do Aide to this and vice ambassador to that I'm sorry I couldn't lift those heavy burdens from the fatigue of all those medications they gave me I'm sorry my brain fought the pills so hard they just couldn't break through the Phoney War in my frontal lobe

I'm sorry for running away without leaving a note instead of a poem without a meter and the whatevers that reach but just never make it

u d S t u r g u e s s

When the World is Made of Energy

I wanna thaw like a June river, all my asleep fish visible and swimming

their hearts out in the lukewarmth; I wanna lay my throat down on a pseudo-heater, drugstorebrand heartsinging from whatever remains of me after; I wanna whistle out an ether tune, dislodging all my lungs’ lovesooths, crawling halfway into your bone cocoon. (In short and sincerity, I am feeling very much like melting, like softening, like heartening the hardened heart.)

I wanna believe my ice would warm down (and up!) under your fingers, all popsicle residue like, blood flow microwaving, lover-style. Let me be hopefully unfatally fatalist today. Oh I’d churn for you!

Quick Will, Sweetbitter

Will be headless in a few months See me out please on the Styx-bank, for a goodbye French and my last time nodding yes to being your little red string No sugared tonguetips to pronounce our love, no nexts but here I am the sorriest I have been that I want no words, that you were a swimmer but your Clementine dove in to drown I wish you a cage-less flight, and some grief selfishly, I beg, please grieve free of The Man , the men , and the pan-kike belus inside them. When my short veins break from the salt they are tethered to, and I disappear amidst the storm I wanted to fight, I will still leave knowing you kissed me with the end in mind, for I want to deny you any spare amount of heartbreak again, selfishly.

TR . S a n

1

A reference to the nursery rhyme ‘Oh My Darling, Clementine’, particularly the ending lines “But alas, I was no swimmer/ So I lost my Clementine”.

A word used to refer to Gen Min Aung Hlaing, the chairman of the military junta and ‘state administration council’ currently governing Myanmar post coup

In association with ‘The Man’, an allusion to the Tatmadaw, the armed forces of Myanmar

A generally malevolent man eating demon with straight fangs, a popular figure in Burmese mythology Literal translation: flower-biting ogre invoking the flower imagery adopted by anti-military resistant fighters and activists in the 2021 “Spring Revolution”

Superstition Mts, AZ (from desert floor) Jack Buck

Medicine for the Revolution

I learn in my lectures about painkillers and opioids, about anti-anxiety medications

Will morphine help me with my survivor’s guilt? Will benzodiazepines help calm me down?

I learn about the hundred and one ways your body can fail and shut down. I pray I don’t fail you, I pray I don’t let your spilled blood runs dry I learn about the immune system, the methods your body enacts to help protect you from bacteria, viruses- your defence system

Hold my hand, I’m not too far, I will defend you. Hide under my wings, hush, listen to my lullaby- focus on my voice, not the bullets.

I learn about fibrosis: the process of scarring, the wound healed, the body intact, all that’s left is a blemish- a remembrance of our strength Triumphant we will emerge The Spring Revolution thrums on, quivering deep and strong in the soil of our homeland, the trees singing of our success, our fallen comrades etched in our bones, in our very essence. Antihypertensives, anti arrhythmics, aspirin, different heart medications, different ways chemicals can tamper with our hearts Know you live on in mine, know your death will not be in vain, know my heart bleeds for you, know you are my medicine.

u Y a d a n a r

coffee with god

u Y a d a n a r

i found god at the bottom of my coffee mug, i wonder whether he takes his coffee black or whether he likes it sweet with milk and sugar i wonder whether he thinks about us when he sips his morning coffee. is it the sweetness of the sugar that makes him recall us, or the bitterness? i wonder if he buys Fairtrade or picks up the cheapest bag on the shelf i wonder whether he believes we ’ ve disappointed him.

i wonder why he doesn’t just tell us why does he not just tell us how he likes his coffee? why does he not just throw the cup out, ask for tea instead? if i top up his coffee, will he tell me then? or will he smile at me, ask me for more? more what? more sugar? more milk? or more of myself?

i think i now know how god likes his coffee, i tell you oh yeah? how? bittersweet scorching hot with a dash of apathy, two spoonfuls of indifference.

i wanted to throw the coffee in his face, actually how can he sit by, idly sipping, while the world collapses? that’s what we all do, though we live, ignore the sufferings of others, turn a blind eye, smile in blissful ignorance well we shouldn’t we ’ re better than that better than god? infinitely you really believe that of people? that’s disgustingly, hopelessly optimistic. well well? what else do we have left, apart from each other?

a d a n a r

here, have some more

my late grandmother makes a mean bowl of noodles my partner’s cacio e pepe brings me so much joy my dad loves cutting fruits for me when I come back home my friend draws a smiley face on my pancakes with whipped cream oh, how it feels to be loved, what an absolute dream

I think of my grandmother whenever I scoop up my rice into little balls a reminder of my childhood, a memento my partner bustles around the kitchen, doing a million and one things at once I queue up songs on the living room speaker and watch him; I love him my dad frequents the morning market, choosing and picking the best fruits

I follow with a shopping basket, the morning air’s never felt fresher my friend tells me he’s not the best at drawing, with a sheepish grin it’s the best smiley face I’ve ever seen the kitchen’s too hot, can you open the windows a bit? heat from the boiling pots, warmth from the intimacy of it all take some home for lunch tomorrow, it’s your favorite dish every mouthful tastes of home, of childhood, of longing sit down for a meal, I made some fish we can share it in the sunlight, and feel a sense of belonging it’s not too bad, is it? here, take some of mine

I want you to have more another squeeze of lemon, another glass of wine? this is what I used to eat as a child here, I want you to know me here, I want you to always remember just how much I love you

Waves

I wish for quiet silence from the crash of waves on symmetric shores: their shattering sounds are violent; but they do pale compared to roars of an apocalyptic storm I’ve seen atop a jungle hill of green; reduced to tears, I covered my ears and on that night I wished for dreams of man ’ s resolve, in high esteem; that one could stand upon a shore and hold the tides in bold defiance. But on that night those dreams instead were of the ugly rocks around of twisted, naked, black and wet, of soulless earth-exposing ground, of scars from wounds found self-inflicted of cliffs eroded to the core; that man and nature are one and same. Each year Earth shrinks but more and more

domestic detritus

you know you ’ re fucked when you ’ ve been listening to brand new city by mitski for five hours and the washing machine gave up on its beeping trying to remind you to wake up to wake from this cathartic and hellish nightmare. yes that is me on the cold bathroom tiles at three in the morning, donning headphones, eating roasted almonds by the handful, i am not real, i am not real. every afternoon after coming home from work I fling my backpack onto the dining room table and sit on the back of the sofa. I slide down after worrying I’ll dent the sofa back and spread my legs and imitate my mother giving birth call me crazy or fucked (that one ’ s true) but i’m intergenerational trauma. i’m inner child. i’m cyclical and stupidly stuck. i perpetually have emails to read, emails to send, replies to reply, words to word i can no longer take care of my plants and i must send them off to live in foster homes. and what of my children? i must take care of them i must take care of them how do you love your children? how do you love yourself? how much do you really miss me? how much do i really miss you? it’s been years and i still

L o u i s e K i m

imagine myself back then, imagining what it would feel like to hold your hand and squeeze it. at night my nail beds from beneath their plates whisper, we’d give anything to be back. my fingers feel like they are falling off at all times. folding laundry is the great Sisyphean task cutting the crusts off sandwiches, impulsing cutting my fingers off, making myself the third espresso of the day while i blend past and present and forgetful and hazy and do it all over again and again later i remind the kids to take their vitamins. i am stuck inside the washing machine of life, and the detergent is too soapy and the rose scent is fake and overpowering. my head is perpetually concussed from knocking against the metal drum. and i earn the same amount of money every year, which means i earn less and less and my friends are dying off and my family too. and i’m stuck inside the washing machine of life you’d know you have kids too

L o u i s e K i m

Dublin, on a spring day Jacqueline Bergin

Narcissist, baby

I stopped when she got sick, because I didn't like it anymore. It felt like guilt, not a laugh, or something to pass the time anymore. You could write me a phone number and I'd love it. I love you. My first photo of you in the garden before I realised it was a trap door Do you know they play the radio on the bus? And there’s a radio upstairs, but it doesn’t drown out the crying. Why are you crying? I love you. You could write me a phone number and I’d love it I love you My first photo of you and it's a trap door Do you know they play the radio on the bus? I can’t listen to our one upstairs without remembering the gun in your hands. Why are you crying? I love you. You could write me a phone number and I’d love it.

Abbreviated

Do ur eyes ever burn When u listen to Classic FM at night I started Drooling when I heard us on the radio My mouth knows the word home but my body never will It deals in Sun magnified through bus windows Dropping definite articles

From sentences No pronouns no attachments no matter no mind and still My mouth knows the word home but my body never will It deals in transition transfiguration transmutation transubstantiation No I won’t say the more obvious one(s) Pre-Fixes I can’t put an end on/to Preposition Reposition Grammar knitting A cardigan of images No sleeves And I know I ought to Pull The drawstrings of my hoodie tight around my neck and pretend they’re ur hands So glad I shaved off all my hair now there’s nothing left for u to Pull I won’t let u Pull It together Skin fizzing Diet Coke Feeling this cold-feet smoke-air breath-fog Weakness Then again there’s not Much I wouldn’t say/give To u My cheeks are bleeding baby I Pick them until My mouth knows the word home but my body never

Love & Landlords

Caught beautiful in love like a fingerprint left in treehouse sap

He sings out "I love you" from the kitchen like a cat would reach a paw to your thigh If the floor holds, he’ll fall asleep with his hands in my hair after dinner.

This is not an accusative sentence, but where is the kettle? Jasmine tea makes me feel older I like it very much, He keeps a box of it beside his coffee on the counter

This is the sort of thing my mother advised me to look out for He is cooking and we are expecting cornflowers in the window box this summer. I’ll be right back, just washing my hands in the washing machine

He runs over to the stairs with a smile like the sun and an "I love you so much" sung up and emphasised on the ‘ so ’ House proud like a sweet wrapper

I will go over to the ready pasta, and the plates that are hot off of us and our love and the space we have made out of it

They make such a noise when they go through the pretend dining table

e gE l i z a b e t h

Max Natalna (he/she/it) is a queer and trans writer based in Queens. He likes dragonflies and the color green. It can be found on twitter @maxnatalna.

Sophie Furlong Tighe is a writer from North Dublin They are the former editor of Icarus Magazine Their first play, EELS, debuted at the Samuel Beckett Theatre in 2022. Their pamphlet, THE SOPHIE FURLONG TIGHE

OF SEXUAL FANTASIES is forthcoming from VIBE press. Recent work can be found in ROPES, Sonder, Wax Nine, and Skylight-47.

Megan Luddy O’Leary is an Irish artist and illustrator She draws, animates, writes, and makes things out of clay, collage and embroidery. She is interested in handmade aesthetics, particularly women ’ s craft work. Her work has been featured by Gill Books, Vibe Magazine, GOMA Gallery and UsFolk Instagram: @megan luddy https://meganluddy cargo site

Umang Kalra is an Indian writer and artist living in Belfast, Ireland. She is a two-time Best of the Net Anthology finalist and a Pushcart nominee. She is the founding EIC of Violet Indigo Blue, Etc., and the author of 'fig' (2022) and 'MINIMALIST

(-algia, 2021). Her website is umkalra persona co and you can buy stuff from her at etsy com/uk/shop/umkalra

Laura Cheney is an emerging poet from North Carolina. Her work focuses on family, memory, and place.

James Diaz (They/Them) is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) All Things Beautiful Are Bent (Alien Buddha, 2021) and the forthcoming Motel Prayers (Alien Buddha, 2022.) They are the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their work has appeared most recently in Orange Blossom Review, Wrongdoing Magazine, and The Hyacinth Review

Stan Galloway writes from the hills of West Virginia. He is the founder and

host of Pier-Glass Poetry, as well as the author/editor of 9 collections of poetry Yasha de la Luna is a poet, artist, actor, director, singer-songwriter, archivist, fencer, Pushcart Prize nominee, and all-around general enthusiast. You can find her work presently or forthcoming in Lavender Review, Sinister Wisdom, Fjords Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal Check out her out at www.yasha.gay or follow her @weirdtwink.

ava rose chapman has no idea what's going on. nevertheless, she manages & is very happy to edit icarus magazine & take photos of friends. avarosechapman com holds all of ava's art Alannah Maxwell began messing around with collaging and photography during her final year at secondary school. Now a meandering college student, she uses the two mediums to investigate and make sense of what she sees Outside of making amateur art, Alannah enjoys spacing out, reading, and kicking her siblings

Mary Kate Nyland is an Irish American writer with an MA in Creative Writing from UCD. Her work has been published in The Waxed Lemon, The Madrigal, and Neon Door Úna enjoys writing so much she occasionally forgets to be embarrassed about it. She has been previously published in Crossways Literary Journal, Green Carnations Anthology, The New Word Order, The Madrigal Press and Morning Fruit Magazine.

Jack C. Buck is the author of Deer Michigan and Gathering View. He lives in Idaho with his wife and their wild Australian Shepherd. Kris Huelgas is a Los Angeles based poet. Kris studied writing at Cal State University Northridge His work has been featured in Drunk Monkeys When not writing poetry, he enjoys hiking and baking

Cathal Eustace is doing an undergraduate degree in film and English literature at Trinity College Dublin where he is co-editor of Icarus Magazine. Cathal works to examine the places he's been and the places he's going, all the while finding himself somewhere between both. He has very weak lungs Shriya Mkumar (she/her) is a desi poet with a love for brownies, books, and busy days. She is the co-founder of Filter Coffee Zine, her work has been published on various platforms like her work has been published or is forthcoming in various platforms including Bubble Lit Mag, Ice Lolly Review, Tiger Zine, Bibliopunk Lit, Erato Mag, and more Say hi to her on Twitter @filtercoffeemag or @riiwritess!

Maitiú Charleton is a student, writer and journalist. He has worked with TG4, The Journal ie, Raidió Rí-Rá, and has had writing published in Icarus Magazine, The Madrigal Press and his own Google Drive He hates Linkedin. This bio is satire.

Alex Mountfield is from the District of Columbia. They write and publish Hark Herald, a poetry email blog. They used to be the editor of Icarus Magazine Their work has also appeared in Wax Nine, Púca, Sick and Tired, Gold Soundz, and Violet, Indigo, Blue, Etc

Jaydra Johnson is a writer, artist, and educator living in NYC. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, where she co-edited Solar journal Her work has appeared in Guernica, Atmos, and Gossamer magazines, among others You can find her at www jaydrajohnson com

Justin Lacour lives in New Orleans and edits Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry. He is the author of three chapbooks, including My Heart is Shaped Like a Bed: 46 Sonnets (Fjords Books 2022) and This Fire forthcoming from Ursus Americanus Press

Caitlin Young is a writer, editor, menace from Dublin living in Belfast Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sonder Lit, The Honest Ulsterman and The North. She edited the anthology Awkward Middle Children:

Emerging Writers from Northern Ireland and co-founded student literary magazine The Apiary.

Holly Keeler lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with her husband, Paul and three adult daughters. She is a member of the Obsessors poetry group and has published poems in “Spring”, and “The Fieldstone Review”. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies “Apart” and “ Within These Lines”. She has worked for over 30 years as a physiotherapist and as a neighbourhood team manager at Sherbrooke Community Centre, a long term care home in Saskatoon

Bud Sturguess was born in 1986 in the small cotton-and-oil town of Seminole, Texas. He now lives in his "adopted hometown," Amarillo. Sturguess has self-published several books, his latest being the novel Sick Things His work appears in New Pop Lit and Duck Duck Mongoose, as well as the upcoming print anthologies Mid/South from Belle Point Press, and The Daily Drunk's From Parts Unknown. He lives on disability benefits and collects neckties.

T R San (they/them) is a queer, transsexual poet based in Yangon, Myanmar who writes horror without meaning to. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Mister Magazine, Travesties?! Press, Diphthong Lit, and Tigers Zine. They tweet at @trsanpoet.

Su Yadanar (she/her) is currently studying in Ireland and misses her home, Burma, alot. She writes about holding onto hope, finding strength in friends and people, as well as the ongoing crisis in her country. She finds solace through the act of reading and writing poetry. She loves talking about food, watching Anthony Bourdain and her room is filled with books and mementos from her favorite restaurants

Asten Yeo is in constant existential pain Writing poetry and talking to people helps

Louise Kim is a Korean American student at the Horace Mann School in The Bronx, NY. Their writing has been published in a number of publications, including Brown Sugar Lit, Green Ink Poetry, Gypsophila Zine, The WEIGHT Journal, and Panoply Zine Her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

Jacquie Bergin is an Occupational Therapy graduate from Galway, now living in Dublin. She enjoys taking photos of urban life and nature, spending a concerning amount of time in Chapters bookstore, and cooking mediocre meals Ella Bowler is a theorist and poet, exploring queer space and personal life stories. Previous: Poethead, Connection, Nameless Faceless, Dreaming Magazine, GCN and INTIMATE (they/he) Gale Aitken is a student and poet. His work suffers from transgenderism, masochism, autism, and stomach problems. His poetry can be found in Icarus, The Madrigal and other places online.

Meg-Elizabeth Lynch is a 24 year old writer from Cork She writes memoirbased poetry and fiction and can be found on most platforms at @megelizabethabc. She likes clipper white tea and black ink.

Thank you to Sophie Furlong Tighe, for making me feel like a real writer. More importantly, I'm so glad we ' re friends.

Thank you to Su Yadanar, for keeping hope alive, and never forgetting the value of a meal with the people you love.

Thank you to Maya Baum, for our electric cover art. You're a true artist and a true friend.

And thank you, for reading this.

COME BACK SOON

SWEETTOOTH

For more information about Sweet Tooth , visit our social media @sweettoothpoets or email us sweettoothpoetry@gmail.com

If you are unhappy with the quality of work in this issue we advise you to keep it to yourself or to submit to future issues.

Sweet Tooth is edited by Megan O'Driscoll. She'll see you on the road, probably.