EarlGrey, Rule ofThirds
Past, Present, Future
Art • Photography
EarlGrey
A Tea Literary & Arts Zine
Issue 3
EarlGrey is published on an annual basis in both physical and virtual formats, and it is accessible on the website above. The zine serves as an extension of Tea Literary & Arts Magazine and features a diverse collection of fiction, poetry, art, and photography pieces. The opinions expressed in these works are those of our contributors and do not necessarily represent those of EarlGrey editors, staff, or members. The rights to all content featured in the zine are retained by the writers and artists. For further details and information, visit our website.
Layout and design by Ian Jackson
Table of Contents
Letter from the editor
To tea drinkers with experimental taste, EarlGrey began as a passion project — a way to carve out my own space within Tea Literary & Arts Magazine’s long and growing history. But with each issue, I encountered the work of talented artists, writers, and creatives who helped build a small, eccentric EarlGrey community.
The Rule of Thirds is a concept ingrained into all aspects of reality. We often think of time as cleanly divided into past, present, and future — but life rarely obeys such tidy rules. More often, we live at the intersection of those three moments: a mixture of memory, presence, and imagination. I always intended to create three sacred issues of EarlGrey before graduating from the University of Florida, so it felt like the perfect theme for this final volume. The pieces in this issue reflect that blending of boundaries, showing how the past, present, and future can bleed into one another.
While this will be my final EarlGrey, time will tell what happens next. Perhaps the design will evolve, the format will shift, or maybe these three issues will stand alone forever. Whatever the case, the countless creatives who trusted me with their work will always hold a strong place in my heart. When I look back on this time in my life, I’ll remember the excitement and yes, the stress of bringing this publication to life. I hope these three zines I've left behind encourage other creatives to move dauntlessly but steadily toward their goals. Whether you're a seasoned designer or holding on to nothing but passion chase what you want. And if you make something… Follow the Rule of Thirds.
Warmly
Ian Jackson Editor-in-Chief
AHero’sWelcome
James Ivey Barracks, teeming with flesh, house the nation's unfortunate.
Mortar and fired bricks frame boxy windows, allowing me, a passerby, the morbid pleasure of piercing the future veil.
Clean-shaven and smooth-skinned, recruits march single-file into the barracks, spirits high, bodies not yet fragmented.
They chant lullabies and fairy tales. There will be no viewing, only a flag and gunshots.
BrightWhite Sand Dunes
Michael Orlando
Just evening, June, and the scallop-shell sun sinks below the emerald horizon line.
In the golden lungs of the sea oats, white moths startle at the salty air— the wind with its one good limb always whipping against us.
The sea laps at the shore, low tide whose breath is hot and sweet, still sharp, still cleanly cutting the dark air. Before us the crab grass, saw palmetto palms, seagrapes, and saltbushes rise.
All these flora with their hands out. And from this distance, the moths are invisible or just bright enough to be low-flying stars.
Remembering Melengolia
Adrian Morel
12/03/23
Nithya Kunta
we smelled every candle in the store smokey firesides and sweet, fresh linen no one could have anticipated that joy we were cats bathing in sunlight, or maybe it was the moon with 18 wicks in the bag, we drove to a cookie shop it’s true, anyone will wait in a line for something free yet it was only a day before that i paid for a bucket of popcorn “you can get a refill if it’s a large,” he said but i was too unsettled by the songs and the death that i left the theater with an empty stomach last night, we hung up christmas lights and the living room glowed redpinkblueandgreen i went to sleep listening to cinnamon girl thinking that although my keys were lost, i was not
Perception
Wes McCoy
Blood of the Body
Maryn Buchanan
I stand in the shower
And can feel my insides
Sloughing off, liquifying
Turning crimson and iron-rich
Waiting to spill out
This stream of water is my only solace
The only place to let it run
To let myself bleed into nothing
Blood drips from in between my legs
Mixing with the pooling water
The evidence of my empty womb
Carried away, diluted, discarded
A welcome monthly intruder
Here to remind me of my future
Of my past, of my possibilities
Of my potential
Hidden under all this sun
Swasthi Maharaj
Our words dance with God’s
You, smiling taught me that prayer would be all I needed
Before you danced away
As quickly as the sunlight stole you. It must have been the sun
You were too beautiful to dance away in the dark. You, theft of my every syllable I write - in circles
My words spinning to form only the one story
That I don’t get to read the end of.
You, screaming Me, saying I’d kill for it
Saying roses; saying spring; plans that died before they ever reached the steps of the altar.
You, disappearing
Leaving me only pink skies and a yearning for your voice
Me, waiting
Saying - Amen - religiously.
For when the sky is pink
I imagine God painting a world where it is okay. Where spring comes - and I am no longer waiting Hidden under all this sun.
Horsey Jillian Lugod
What it’s Like to Leave
Jordyn Baker
There were Sunday morning creaking floorboards when they spoke to me, all of them. The sound of me sitting and bleeding and scraping letters into the pews with my fingernail. I dreamt of fires and lights and drowning and molars. I can hold my breath for a long time. They said I was meant to be told later when they sang softer and moved stories through throats that weren’t swollen. When the glass was shown differently as the sun set. I have years full of teeth and marks in my palms. They have a name I won’t say anymore and a room on the sixth floor. I know the shape of every hand that took something from me. There was once a dead girl where I used to sleep and they pointed at her rotting. She was soft enough to carve into and could never yell when they took it too far. I wiped what was left off my ribs and told her it wouldn’t go away. The city moved on. They found salvation in a tower fan and the communal garage under an apartment down the street. They got new girls, new wounds, new alibis. They left behind a beating chest and a curse in between my top lip and my gums. A hotel wallpaper and raw hands that crack when they bend. They talk during the static in radio stations and go searching for weeds only when the dirt is wet or when he tells them to. I don’t think I’m happy anymore. They sang their hymns, they dug up the dead girl, they upholstered the furniture, they got rid of their mirrors. I was too loud to be holy.
America, Unfinished
Amanda Werner
Black Cat
Samantha Rakela
In honor of Sheba
Little empty carrier
The saddest thing I’ve ever felt
I never loved you more I’ll never love you any less
Thick as thieves were we A childhood of you and me
Old friend of mine, I wished you for a lifetime
Forever with flowers In my mind
Little weight on my chest
This grief is what I have left I will treasure it
Adrian Smith
Lullaby
Sophia Cvetkovic
A sweltering heat dresses me as I trudge forward with leaden feet. No sound lingers so bothersome as the croaking from the bog, rising like a mother’s tone.
How long have they been at it, the frogs hunkered beneath curtains of matted moss? Their gravelly voices sharpen the sound, abrasive and coarse. I turn away.
Past my blaring music, the sound remains, constant as the cry of a newborn (if only to inform me of its existence).
What I need is a berceuse, a thing to cradle my splitting heart, an embrace now miles away.
I long for the lullaby of cricket chirps, the trails of sand returning home from the beach, the wet squeak of satisfied shoes.
The swelling chorus invades my home, what a prelude to a fresh start. I let myself sleep on the sharp pins of song.
Old-Fashioned Dreams
Sumauria Hunter
"I want to be an astronaut when I grow up,"
Said a once-child who now gazes upon a pixelated sky. Said a once-child who never opens the blinds. Said a once-child who never dreams at night.
When once a child, the sun was easy to caress, The stars were easy to trace, And the moon was easy to bless.
When once a child, the world was never out of reach, Fantasies were easy to teach, And their favorite fruit was a peach.
I was once a child—which is very hard to preach.
I was, I am, I could be—but I'm not a figure of speech.
It's hard being a dreamer that reality shuns. It's hard being anything that I want to become. Whatever happened to the newspapers?
The End
Special thanks to: Mom & Dad, Brianna Bates, Alanis Gonzalez, Charis Cochran, Darien Octave, Gregory Charlestin, Garry Boulard, SPARC352, FrstGyuni, Jupiter Jones, Alejandro Aguirre, revengeivy, all my fellow Pisces, Felix Cabreja, Nick & Mike, Wormhole Books, money from so many plasma donations, the SL8 Gallery, Charles Humes, Gary Jackson, Florida clouds over Publix parking lots, and most importantly my dog Jack Jackson.
