Poetry

Dismantled

By Rachana Hegde

I am whittled down to eight years old: all shaky hands and

fingers stunned numb. There’s a muted street & a house

hiding behind a lamp. The gutter overflows with pre-dawn light and

the manhole is a wound cauterized, awful in the way it droops.

A bedroom lies dismantled. I rest a hand against its underbelly,

learning how a house moulders. My parents are cluttered, scuttling

around an orphaned home. This place looks like the still life of a fruit

covered in soot, hijacked & rotting in the palms of our hands.

A year passes. And still, there is an awful light in my

mother’s eyes when she looks at the sky. It is different.

I know her fears intimately: contorted & swarming.

Ten years later, a pheasant couches me, in a bland sketch of

sakura trees. Cherry blossoms scale the mountains of my childhood.

I am looking through a window & seeing my parents dappled

with moonlight. Distance is coiled in the strands of our hair.

I reverberate with antiquity;

& each place is a second chance I will not miss.

Rachana Hegde collects words and other oddities. Her poetry has been published in Alexandria Quarterly, Moonsick Magazine, and Hypertrophic Literary. You can find her reading, drowsy-eyed, or at www.rachanahegde.weebly.com.

Spring in the Orchards

By N. C. Krueger

Oh, nothing,

Only the sun trickling through

The scent of

Cherry blossoms drifting through

The intertwining branches;

Only the cherry blossoms,

And the apple blossoms,

And the white wedding blossoms.

And the blossoms twined through

Sun-touched hair.

Oh, nothing,

Only this.

N. C. Krueger is a student who lives in the Twin Cities area. She is currently engaged in converting her flights of fancy into stories, poems, and comics.

Winter’s Cold Touch

By Talia Botelho

It is December
The frigid wind cuts my cheeks
Sadness creeps up behind me like a lion stalking its prey
It’s January
The snow is pressed against the door
I do not want to leave the house anyway
Because the sadness has caught up to me
It’s February
Then it’s March
Months pass like clockwork
The sadness has morphed from a small pest to a horrific monster
The cold seems to be endless
However one late March day
The grass seems greener
I noticed a tulip poking it’s head through the dirt
The sun is warm on my skin
The air smells of summer and ice cream and the beach
It is April
And I am happy

Talia Botelho is seventeen years old and loves writing and reading. She also dances and plays the flute in her free time.

Cloud

By Alena Zhang

after Stone by Charles Simic

Looking from the earth, the cloud is humdrum:
the weathermen know how to answer it.
But within, it must be electric and stirring
because Lake Erie pulls on it full weight,
because the oaks lust for a touch, a drink;
the cloud floats, swift, battle-ready
to heaven’s alcove
where the redwoods come to brush on it
and whisper.

I see sparks bolt and branch
when two clouds converge
But a zephyr often waits
over there—just behind that hill
to blow out the cotton-ball candle
flames, burning fervent yet
ever so brief.

Go above a cloud
that would be my way.

Alena Zhang is currently a junior at Newark Academy in NJ. She has been published in Cicada, and her work has been nationally recognized in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her hobbies include overthinking and spending time doing things other than homework.

Life of a Second Thought

By Mehar Haleem

I was never meant to exist; the carnival of grotesque, which I am.

And yet I contaminate the contents of my host, adjusting my bulges into her white framed skull.

She sits there now.

Pregnant. With fears.

I’ve always known how to make an entry.

I’ll crouch in, shrouded as a logical deduction.

A mathematical certainty.

But beneath the pathetic veil of it all, a mere byproduct of my host’s suspicions; a mental manifestation of her insecurities.

Some days we get along, and some days we act like strangers, while she plays hopscotch with her gut feelings.

That’s all the relationship I’ve ever had; a parasitic existence.

Always the runner up.

The two in a world of ones.

A leftover, scavenging for the spotlight.

The aftermath of her calculations.

Silently seeing how comfortable she becomes with the temporary.

How answers are most valued at the time of their respective questions. And how I’m needed only when those answers can’t make it.

I can hear the colours she’s seeing. Obnoxious reds with screaming oranges.

I’ve seen contentment, and it bored me.

But before I start the chaos, I must honour the peace.

It’s only polite .

Mehar Haleem is a seventeen-year-old student who writes for the editorial board of her school. She has previously won several creative writing competitions and her works have been published/ are going to be published in the forthcoming issues of Alexandria Quarterly, The Noisy Island, Sprout and Inklette. She currently lives in New Delhi , India.

In The Next Few Months

By Georgia Eugenides

One month from now I’ll
be rushing towards the lake at 5am and riding
in cars with windows rolled down and falling in love
(and consequentially waking up alone.) After the sun
crawls behind the mountaintops like an old woman reaching for death, I’ll be sitting in the parking lot across from the alpenglow and mourning the past the same way that
butterflies secretly mourn for their cocoons.

Two months from now you’ll
be sitting at your desk and studying the Punic Wars;
the detailed battle plans distract you from the fact that your cellphone doesn’t light up with my name anymore. After
you’ve picked a side, (Carthage or Rome,) you’ll lie on your back and convince yourself that
knowledge is more meaningful than love.

Can you picture me when you close your eyes?
Or do my features blur with those belonging to every girl you’ve ever kissed goodnight?

Three months from now I’ll
be working at my first job and sneaking into
cheap concerts on weeknights and worrying
that I’ll never live up to my parents’ expectations. After my mother falls asleep on the couch, I’ll sit with a notebook in my lap—thanking you for the heartbreak—
because I wasn’t able to write about our relationship
until you crushed it under the toe of your
yellow Doc Martins.

Four months from now you’ll
be living out your dreams and
chasing after girls with azul irises and spitting the meaning of life out on the bathroom floor like the seeds of a bitter fruit.

I have dark eyes, dark hair, and freckles scattered across the bridge of my nose.

Five months from now I’ll
be searching for you on the pages of novels
assigned in English class and wondering what it would
feel like to be the most powerful wave on the electromagnetic spectrum. After realizing that life is not a mathematical equation, I’ll understand why
I allowed you to watch me undress in the mid-morning glow,
but pulled your hands back violently
as they reached for my poems.

Georgia Eugenides is an eighteen-year-old poet who grew up in Berlin, Germany; Chicago, IL and Princeton, NJ. Her first poem was published when she was nine years old. After spending the previous summer interning at The Paris Review, she decided to submit some of her own work to various publications.