Chinedu Gospel

& I remember August like
I remember the death of my
grandmother —humid & icy
& colourless like water. Or
isn’t that how a wilted leaf
turns back green? I love to
imagine my tongue a taproot
cast deep into the soil of
songs. I love to imagine that
it grows into a tree. I love to
imagine that its sweetest
fruit is a dirge with a grape’s
geometry. & carotene. I love
to imagine that my lover
eats the seed & begets grief.
The pastor on television
speaks a word of prayer. But,
I do not voice my amen like
there’s a fire in its etymology.
Because, I am tired of burning.
I am as silent as when ashes hit
the ground. Believe me, I still
sing love songs. & holy psalms.
Though, the aubades remind
me of my dead. The hymns,
my unholiness. There’s a dark
ness at the tip of my tongue.
There’s always a voice —vast
like the sea —that swallows me.
& it’s not of my making. In this
poem, I prepare a room for joy
in the presence of my sorrow.
I anoint my tongue with oil.
& my songs overflow.

 

Chinedu Gospel (Frontier IV) is an emerging poet & undergraduate from Anambra, Nigeria. He plays chess & tweets @gonspoetry. He is a Best of the Net nominee. He is the winner of the StarLit Award, AsterLit 2021 winter Issue. He won an honorable mention in the 2021 Kreative Diadem annual contest (poetry category) & Dan Veach Prize for younger poets, 2022. He was longlisted for the 2022 Unserious collective Fellowship. His works of poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Bath Magg, Trampset, The Drift mag, Gutter Magazine, Fiyah Magazine, Sonder Magazine, Roughcut Press, Consequence Forum, Agbowo Magazine, The Deadlands, Blue Marble Review among many others.

life lately:
fridays narrowing in my vision,
then falling out of sight; midnight
snaking in and out between todays
and tomorrows; moments
becoming currency—do you have
a minute? spare me just a
second?—to be counted, folded
into pockets without another
glance; steadying breaths,
collecting shadows, staring at the
ceiling; I have nothing left to give;
pencil lines that cannot be erased;
moons turning too soon; forgetting,
forgetting, forgetting; existence but
not experience; present mistakes
for latent futures; questions best
left unanswered;
a sickening haze, a blur:
never ending.

 

Caroline Chou (she/her) is a writer from Maryland with a love for leitmotifs and magical realism. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Awards and published in The Aurora Journal and Aster Lit, among others. When she’s not writing, you can find her reading fantasy, playing golf, or doodling everywhere she shouldn’t.

blah blah blah transition.
the second shifters are coming home.
it is midnight and i am in a restaurant without patrons.
i’ll join the traffic outside soon enough.
maybe i’ll tell you about liminality again:
that dharma is only unity
where space and time are concerned.

blah blah blah samsara.
i’m cleaning a table and realize i
have to do this again in thirty minutes.
i dread it.
maybe i’ll tell you about cycles again:
that Ouroboros and titanium combine to create
eternal self-fulfilling prophecy.

blah blah blah antitheses.
there is a bug on the booth.
i kill it with my broom and sweep it away.
maybe i’ll tell you about harmony again:
that life requires death
not only for the sake of comfort.

blah blah blah
the stars seem to rotate in the sky
and the moon pulls the tides
i’ll go outside and track the constellations and wade in the ocean.
maybe i’ll feel connected again.

 

 

 

Gill Noffert is a sixteen-year-old poet from Wichita, Kansas who is driven by dichotomy. She creates homes for herself between spaces of pride and despair, fear and exhilaration, and abstract and concrete. Poetry is her space to question, build, and unify her thoughts.

When the artist grew up, she promised herself she’d finally change
her name. If she was sad she would be sad in a way that was useful
for her art. She would keep her money in a small purse,
a notebook in her right pocket.
She would become a regular at aquariums.
The artist went to college to learn about machines.
She spent days writing equations in small side stapled books
she bought for a dollar apiece. She built models of ships
from scrap wood and left them on her beloveds’ stoops.
That summer, the artist told her mother she was in love
with a woman, and then the woman left her
for a residency in Paris where she’d study the mating rituals
of Atlantic eels and how they relate to love, and death,
and the body, and then her mother turned into a terrible silence.
The artist couldn’t remember why she wanted
to grow up. She was writing a book of confessions,
inspired by photographs of herself as a child. She was writing
a set of poems that she wanted to give to her mother
once they forgave each other. She was trying
to take buses to every single place where she was born:
her mother’s hospital, her elementary school,
the spot of asphalt where she skinned her knee
for the first time. She was trying to remember.
She was trying to find a good reason to last.

 

 

Gaia Rajan is the author of the chapbooks Moth Funerals (Glass Poetry Press 2020) and Killing It (Black Lawrence Press 2022). Her work is published or forthcoming in Best New Poets 2022, the 2022 Best of the Net anthology, The Kenyon Review, THRUSH, Split Lip Magazine, diode, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. Gaia is an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University, studying computer science and creative writing. She lives in Pittsburgh. You can find her at @gaiarajan on Twitter or Instagram.

On my knees beside the bed
we often share, I read a collection

of poetry and blast Spotify radio through
pain-inducing earbuds – KALEO sings

“Oh darling, save yourself.”  I crave
words tumbling over words so I let

them spill from me too, cut myself open
with pen and paper for more words, words,

words – a different kind of wound, easier
to hide if I give it a name: poetry.

 

 

Rachel is a recent graduate of the University of Central Arkansas with a BA in English and Creative Writing, and  a Spanish minor. She is from Bentonville, Arkansas and currently lives in Conway, Arkansas where she went to college. She is an aspiring writer and avid reader. She has an Instagram page where she posts about the books she reads (@racheljohnsonreads). Her first creative publication is in the Vortex, UCA’s literary magazine, Spring 2022 print issue in which three of her poems and two pieces of creative nonfiction appear. Her book review “Learning to Love Matt Mitchell” was published by the Southern Indiana Review in May 2023.

 

For the first time in a while
the air is nice. The midnight
gas station atmosphere—
I bask in the bulk of headlight.
Photosynthesizing in the LED luminescence.
Wind touching the worst parts of me—
letting it all be exactly what it is.

Exactly a week later I am quartering
tomatoes and there is already a light line
of guidance, the reddish ghost of a cross
my knife shovels into. Sometimes
I make things out to be more complicated
than they are.

Sometimes all I have
is in my hands.
And every part of me
is necessary.

 

 

Lucy Somers is a Midwestern poet who is deeply inspired by her natural surroundings and familial bonds. Common themes in her work are: grief, connection, and coming of age.