Ailun Shi

today i walked outside and saw
orange walled sky
like the desert had thrown its skirts
on the ceiling and the walls

i breathe deep
(for it is like this every morning)
i think the orange is searing my lungs
coloring it the same as the expanse above me
heavy as a body
it sinks
(or perhaps it is I who sinks)

i think if i think hard enough
stare long enough
i can make beauty out of this —
this orange plumed Sky with its blood-inked sun
its matching twin peeking out at night
like a blue moon but better because
orange is unmentioned and should therefore be rarer

until there is a scratch within my throat
i cough.
saliva. sticky. phlegm.
i rush inside.

 

Ailun Shi recently withdrew from UC Berkeley in order to take a gap year to go on the adventure of her life. Her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and published in Helen: a literary magazine, Germ Magazine, the Apprentice Writer, and more. She’s an avid novelist and calligrapher. Her gap adventures can be found on ailunshi.wordpress.com.

i should be ashamed but i’m flattered. beauty

exists in solitude and sadness. i did nothing but
hide you in brushstrokes and poetry. the
redundancy of your memory deemed normal. your
soul, the yearning to understand you as boundless
as the ocean. from this terrible addicting hope for
something with you. it’s revolting, how much i say

i’ll love you through words, how much i want to give
you the skeleton of the universe and the secrets
of every burning star and how much i want to
hold you under the gentle yellow light of a
dying afternoon. what little time we spent

barely, barely held any meaning but through the
murky lens of the world, you saw me crystal
clear. i can’t count how many times i felt
ready to run to the ends of the earth for you. sometimes,
all the time, all that i am
is the sublimation of my desires for

you. i turned you into poetic value, capitalized
what should’ve been empathy into a dozen flowery
words. loving you has become a solitary act, a
solitary sin for the ages.

 

Zoe is an aspiring neuroscience major with a love for ink and calligraphy and a deep hatred for milk. She spends her time dabbling in poetry and the arts and watching the same sitcoms over and over.

To speak
is to sing.

Just try to say
a sentence and not

make music.
Every word

a rhythm,
every syllable

a song.
O, phonemes

simple sounds
separating

drink from
dragon,

feast from
famine,

Zeus, zipline,
zinfandel.

Strawberries and cream,
American Dream.

Right, wrong,
Atomic bomb.

Holy, harmonic,
Human.

 

Nick Trelstad is a senior in the College of St. Scholastica’s English education program. He still stans Phillis Wheatley to this day.

Joy is the prescription of practice
between a body and another
a new anthem plays on the radio
and I am floating
all I want is to dance
till I dissolve into the rhythm.
Without hesitation, I rename my country
& translate my allegiance to love yet
another language,
provocating a new form of survival
I don’t know if I am entitled to this poem.
Of this newness, that has formed
a devotion on my tongue.

Oluwafisayo Akinfolami is a Nigerian poet. Her poems has appeared on Undivided Magazine, Perhappened Mag, Praxis Mag Online, Written Tales, Writer Space Africa and elsewhere.

Sunsets feel – like skylarks –
as if they have always been there
draping around you, remaking the touch
of hand in hand, arm around shoulder.

The cold makes us talk in staccato,
short syllables we bite down on and share
drinking in that playground
in the still Scottish air

now, we watch hoverflies on the buddleia
tracing its purple into the coming dusk —

the last ray of light flecks
the gold of your cider onto skin.

In the dark, the clink of buckles
as Orion’s belt braids your hair in silver
braids your heart in stars.

 

Nick Newman grew up in China and Scotland, and studies English Lit at the Uni of Leeds. His work appears in Marías at Sampaguitas, Stone of Madness Press, and Riggwelter Press, and you can find him procrastinating on twitter @_NickNewman

i.

dreams continue to wither & fade behind
gloomy paint-peeling doors; will you succumb to
your own consternation?
the honey is laced with poison, so
stir in covert fructose imposters–
they’ll drink your stomach acid &
splatter it against the walls in the
shadows: beset with the throes of
femininity, you bleed once more
into your open palm: tea dripping
into porcelain saucer.

ii.

 silent dissension seems tangible in
the dark, saccharine uneasiness
vying for your tastebuds’ attention:
the cloying smell of your vitreous humor
set aflame. hope owes you no favors–
she leaves you suffocating in the night,
acid in your uterus, ash on your
tongue, concrete filling your rib cage.

iii.

 optic struggles, neurotic mindset:
& you gasp as nitric oxide floods your trachea.
vaseline in your salivary glands, sweat in your
follicles, hands on the doorknob, desperate
to burst into the light– & tenebrosity grabs your
ankle, shoving you back into the filth that is
the time after sleep but before streetlights
ignite. witching hour paints constellations on
your hammering chest: your blood, your tears,
your pigment, your penumbra.
cadaver girl, living husk; your heart thrums,
but your aorta is rubber: a charlatan beneath your lungs.
your irises dim, your pupils dilate,
& you’re left in the dark with smoky green tea,
unsweetened and ashen, just as you despise.

 

Mia Golden (she/her) is a teen writer from California with a passion for activism and love for all things chocolate. She is an editor at Interstellar Lit. Mia is published or forthcoming in Indigo Lit and the Trouvaille Review, among others. She hopes you have a great day!