Rachana Hegde, Author at Blue Marble Review

Flush

By Rachana Hegde

I think of freedom as an empty vessel

singing about god’s mercy and how she

thrashed the skies, how the rivers flocked

to her bedside as god sang the mountains

into existence. I think of death blistering along

the underside of our arms or of stabbing

fresh meat until it ripens. I dream of the

release when milk spills from our mouths,

baby teeth gleaming on the rooftop.

I dream of an origami moth’s tongue

folding and bursting into flames.

I think of gulping the smoke billowing

from our cars and wonder how fish

can plunge down the toilet but wash up

on shore, glowing clean, dripping wet

onto the sand. You see, I want to learn

how to flush my sins like purging the

aftertaste from wine. Prayers slip down

the steps of a temple and I ask god how to

wring the sadness from my body. I dream

of scraping the salt from my silhouette.

Rachana Hegde is an eighteen- year-old Indian writer from Hong Kong. Her poetry has appeared in DIALOGIST, Diode Poetry Journal, and The Blueshift Journal. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and nominated for Best of the Net. Find her at www.rachanahegde.weebly.com.

Editor’s Note

By Molly Hill

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.

Simonides

Here in the Midwest, winter lingers on. It might be true that the hardest thing about January ending is that February is only just beginning. Because our writers send us work no matter the season, we’re able to offer a February poetry respite, good for anyone who’s waiting patiently for the days to get longer.

We’re feeling lucky that so many young writers and artists from all over the world have discovered our journal and trusted us with their work. And we’re particularly grateful for the ongoing collaboration with talented co-editors and Tonka Writers: Meili Gong, Addie Gill, Anne Malloy, Faith Quist, Isabella Milacnik, Kate Schiltz, Rebecca Schumacher, Priscilla Trinh, and Alexa Vos. Their careful reading, insightful comments and all around willingness to help was instrumental in pulling this issue together.

Enjoy the poems!

Molly Hill
Editor

January Night

By Hannah Gold

I remember the weight.

I remember asking myself—

“Have you ever felt

This much on top of you?”

On your thighs on your shoulders—

Pushing your knees apart?

Have you ever screamed so internally?

I remember the sounds.

His tongue on my neck beating

My throat was shaking.

Hits 96 moaning in the background,

My choking echoing in the bass.

Screams would be preferable.

I remember before.

The drunkenness the smell of weed

And the car horn outside.

The weight and the thighs—

Sounds my neck him beating.

I remember his hand and the fear.

I remember the shaking the blood.

But I could not tell you what happened.

Hannah Gold lives and writes in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She hopes to attend Boston University next fall and study Russian Literature.

When Crisis Strikes

By Brooklyn Manga

When crisis strikes, the British put the kettle on. But for me, when crisis strikes, I reach a 3.0 GPA after years of hard work, graduate high school, and get accepted to my dream college all in one fell swoop. It was in January that the proverbial skeletons that hid in my family’s closet made their way out into the light, and I found out for the second time about my father’s infidelity. The first time I had found out were not factual occurrences but things that when looked back on in retrospect in the very instant that I learned the truth made it easy for me not to be surprised.

I had heard from my friends their own war stories of when they had found out the same things. They warned me that the divorce would be messy, told me stories of how their mom’s became, and where their dad’s went. But most of all, I was told that it was okay to fall apart a little bit in order to deal with the monumental brokenness that I felt inside me. Except, for me, that’s never been how it works. I had always been more efficient during the storm: I was the person that people leaned on, the one who made sure things were orderly, the defender. It was the last stretch of my senior year, and though my parents fought endlessly over money, over his infidelity, over him going or her staying, I was determined to finish strong.

I never told my teachers. At least, not until near the end when there was no more work to fill my time. Instead, I systematically studied, wrote papers, did homework, asked for extra credit where I could, and when I needed to cry in the middle of class, I excused myself to go to the restroom, and I cried. I always chose the restroom downstairs and near the cafeteria. Nobody ever went into that one. It was far away from most of my classes but it was private, and it was only place where I could breathe.

There was a point when things got so horrible that even now, months later; I have no idea how I got through it. My mother had gotten drunk and left home on a mission to die. She didn’t have to tell me for me to know what she was planning to do. I sat on the floor of my room, crying and texting her. But what strikes me now is the coldness of it all: How my father had left texting and calling and praying for her all to me. He didn’t tell me it would be okay. He didn’t drive out after her to stop her. He went back to bed.

But even during this time, I still managed to finish my readings for Economics. I still managed to get good grades on my essays in English. I still made consistent A’s on my Latin tests. My grades were shining, even though I was not. My attention waxed and waned in school. My sleep schedule was gone. I hardly ate. At night, I listened to my parents screaming at each other. My brother drove me to school. My mom left to live with relatives. My dad told me nothing at all.

Then came the part where I was no longer welcome in my own home. The part where I was blamed for things that were out of my control and I decided to live with my mom and our relatives. My school was an hour away. I slept on the couch. I had only a few pairs of underwear. My brother’s t-shirts. Pants that I came there wearing. But it was easier, and though I felt shattered, I didn’t cry as much. It was at this time that I told my AP Literature teacher what was going on. He was sympathetic and kind. As was my Latin teacher.

But it didn’t matter anymore.

Official grades were coming out soon. I had finally achieved my 3.0 GPA. I was going off to the college of my dreams. Graduation was a week away. These things were enough to make my mom get out of bed even when she felt as broken as I had. They were enough to bring a triumphant smile to her lips, and a put a little glimmer of hope in her eyes. Now, I am in college and though the storm continues, I work and I strive and I drive myself to continue to be her pride. I cannot afford much. I don’t have many clothes or any of the cute room décor items that the other girls have. But I have a reason to continue. My mom.

And that’s more than enough for me.

Brooklyn Manga is an Atlanta-based author and poet with a preference for writing historical fiction pieces about queer youth, overcoming trauma, love, and nature. Though she has never been published before, Brooklyn has written two books, many short stories, an abundance of poetry, and is currently in the process of completing her third and longest novel yet. She has been an avid reader and logophile for as long as she can remember.

Burn

By Nandita Naik

At eleven, the burn left a dappled sea

across my legs. Picture body as terrain: swordfish threading

through reefs, divers rubbing their eyes in sleepless wonder.

Nurse told me to hold still. I couldn’t.

Mako sharks were circling their prey;

how they laced my thighs like silvered scabs.

There is coral under my fingernails

from kneading burn cream into the reefs.

These hands of mine raised tsunamis, banished

the anglerfish to its cave. Tell

the electric eel it is no longer safe. Tell

the skin-bubbles that Nurse’s needle

is baying for their blood.

(Like any good shark, it could taste fear.)

Five years later I pour green tea, unscathed.

A fly drowns in my cup. White hospital walls

dissolve with the tea leaves. Still I am afraid

of fish markets. Still it is not easy

to walk by rows of gutted eels and think:

Look at you, brother. They’ve got you now.

Every time I look at the sea, it muscles

into something colder. Seabirds are sent to pick apart my thighs, dark burn-spots

evaporating, smoothening.

The pebbled waves wouldn’t know me now,

the way any good shark would call me alien

even though, I swear, I was animal once.

My skin wore bubbles like scales.

When I stole my body back from the tides,

I shook out the crabs from its pockets, listened to its pulse

the way fanged things fall in love with the night.

Nandita Naik is a junior at Proof School. She is published/forthcoming in the Rising Phoenix Review, Canvas Literary Journal, and Polyphony HS.

erasure is

By Stephanie Chang

erasure is

conviction boiling / at the line of screams

over autumn bruises / our faces

caged in river / this is where i weave ruses

& tell you how i collect rust in the barrel

of my throat / when i look you are de-aging

/ permafrost on lips / pretend that

only the earth is chapped & we are not

full of fangs / bottle-glass for teeth while

you mourn our bodies long buried

in a windowless room / a pool of slaughter

tugs at my ankles / garden snakes coil ‘round calves

/ i lose step & watch

the whining of wings: blue jays bleed open

egg shells & fall out of the sky

/ what kind of death omen / tastes like apple cider?

requiems have no place here:

remember softness / tell me how you

fractured your arm singing from

the cliffside / did you taste the spill

of ocean like

grandiose rainfall or

did you drown in its yolk? / i ask

what you found on the hillside

& you lie / saying / nothing.

Stephanie Chang is a fifteen-year-old high school student from Vancouver, BC. Her work has appeared in The Penn Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Horn & Ivory zine. When not writing, she enjoys competing in debate tournaments.