Poetry

Dying Remembrance

By Archita Mittra

it’s been a year or a yesterday, since i gave you up
and stalked our memories, rewinding, over

and over, the tape recorder of my past
till the faded songs, stutter and hiss

(their or our) words drowning in themselves
like a strange, surreal painting

where ancient rooms metamorphose
into real, liquid nightmares, contorting-

and i wish so desperately
to be worthy (lucky) enough

to remember the details,
the smoky ends of half-finished conversations

that never went the way i imagined
but still magical enough, to tuck away

like a secret special present
from someone never meant to be;

the line from a poem, or song
that could uncover the invisible scars

tattooed across my soul and skin
once soaked in the moonshine of forevers

from the padlocked universe(i was exiled from)
spiralling farther and farther away

each time a song/painting/conversation/poem
dies

and the phantom limb of love
stutters, breathless
in limbo.
Archita Mittra is a wordsmith and visual artist with a love for all things vintage and darkly fantastical. A student of English Literature at Jadavpur University, she is also pursuing a Diploma in Multimedia and Animation from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. She has won several writing contests and her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications including Quail Bell Magazine, eFiction India, Life In 10 Minutes, Teenage Wasteland Review and Tuck Magazine, among others. She occasionally practises as a tarot card reader.

You can read more of her work on https://thepolyphonicphoenix.wordpress.com/

If You Give…

By Jezebelle Rocha

If you give Abraham his ipad….

Chances are he’ll watch youtube videos for the rest of the day.

If he watches youtube videos for the rest of the day chances are he’ll ask for the charger for his ipad.

Chances are he won’t get up to get it for himself so he’ll ask for someone to go get it for him.

If nobody wants to get him the charger, he’ll complain about getting up to go get it.

When he gets up to go get the charger from the living room he’ll realize he wants a cup for water.

If he wants a cup of water chances are he’ll look around the kitchen and ask for a snack.

When he asks for a snack he’ll ask for a cookie.

If he asks for a cookie, chances are he’ll ask for a cup of milk.

If there is nobody in the kitchen to serve him a cup of milk, he’ll come to my room and ask me to serve him a cup of milk.

Chances are, knowing Abraham, he would have eaten half the cookie before getting the cup of milk.

If you give Abraham a big cup of milk…

Chances are he’ll ask for another cookie so he can finish off his milk.

He’ll sit at the counter and play on his ipad some more knowing that his ipad is plugged in.

Forgetting that he left his cup of water on the edge of the counter

He’ll probably knock down the cup of water by pulling on the charger.

When he knocks over the cup of water he probably won’t tell anybody about it.

He’ll unplug the charger and take it with him to the living room so that it doesn’t seem like he dropped the cup of water.

If he doesn’t clean up the water..

Chances are either my sister or I will end up stepping in it when we only have our socks on.

Knowing that we will try to figure out who spilled the water, he’ll skip away laughing.

When we tell him to clean it he’ll say “No not doing it.”

Chances are he really won’t clean up the mess

If you give Abraham his ipad he’ll make a mess.

Jezebelle Rocha is just a normal creative writer who never enjoyed writing anything in English or in other classes. As a senior she began to enjoy her Creative Writing class when she was able to write freely. She was first published in her school’s Literary Journal and also performed at her high school’s open mic night.

Promise Me

By Kara Peter

The crabapple trees, arthritic spinsters in the winter

have reprised their roles as brides

plump and delicate in ivory/ fuchsia/ coral.

The wind whispers subtleties

and spring considers summer

the way a child leans over the sidewalk’s warm breath

and ponders anthills:

very intensely

and then not at all.

Kara Peter is an 11th grade student who is inspired by thunderstorms, mountains and good books. She lives within her imagination.

Storytelling

By Vivian Tsai

We hunt for treasure chests; we chase

the tails of Flopsy, Mopsy; race

through sprinklers tipsy-topsy-tall

till bedtime falls upon it all.

We conquer garden gnome by gnome

and crown the carrot patches Rome.

I was the sidekick, you the sage

to fairly rule our Golden Age.

And then, in autumn, comes the bus

concocting fumes with spit and fuss.

You shift your backpack, say goodbye;

I sit along the curb and sigh.

I count sheep while I wait, then roam,

then skip rope till the cows come home;

I wander through our garden-realm

and wonder how to take the helm—

then stumble, see a gnome or three,

our pinkie-sworn-off enemy,

but still I sit, begin to talk

and tell our old jokes, knock by knock.

And soon these knocks evolve to tales

of ventures new, with ships and sails,

Venetian boats: vessels to tell

the loneliness I now know well.

And as you vanish, day by day

I learn to spin the sad away.

See, here’s the thing: when you took flight

I first began to learn to write.

Vivian Tsai currently studies computer science and applied math at Johns Hopkins University. She spends her free time doodling, writing letters, and playing tennis with friends.

Fishing on the White River

By Emily Dorffer

We could see the eddies carrying algae

downstream where some fly fishermen

had recently gone to whip their rods.

She said, “I’ll catch a brook trout this time.

It’ll be a lunker. You’ll see.”

I said, “Of course you will, after I do.”

My dad would be arriving soon, dangling

worms in our faces. In the amusing way

of this place, rainbow trout leapt into the fog

before splashing down to tempt us to travel to

the end of the rainbow with almonds and parsley.

“Powerbait,” she said, “is the best way

to get a few nibbles.” I said,

“Which color works best: pink, yellow, or orange?”

We had known each other for ages

so my love for her, like a patchwork quilt

draped across me, reflected my experiences

in a simplified way as if they were viewed

through fragments of stained glass

collected from a church’s floor and whose edges

had been sanded into smoothness. “Your luck,”

she whispered, “your skill, your instinct

will lead the way.” Her forehead glistened

with diamonds of sweat. “You’re the expert,”

I said, but I pointed to the jar with the

highlighter yellow balls. The raindrops

were drumbeats. “You’ve got this,”

she muttered, “I’ll bet there’s a hungry fella

eyeing your bait.” Trolling is the process

by which one trails a baited line

behind a boat but how, how?

With the current’s help. I know that now,

as long as the line doesn’t snag, anyhow.

Emily Dorffer is a current undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. She has previously had a short story published in Breath & Shadow.

Study of the Back Door

By Imani Davis

I am sick of courage. I grit my teeth into diamonds. You a good father, making me spit sawdust like a working thing and all/ feminism of the plow and sweat. I erode my eyes against your absence of mercy. You raised your girl right. Granite enough to chisel into like renewable resource. I ain’t never runnin out on you, Pops. The same way every Cadillac gon have gas till the end of time. Whatever I gotta tell you to get your eyes to flutter somewhere Georgia summer soft, sometime before you forged your God into an unlocked handcuff dangling at your wrist like the trust of a girlchild. I’m the youngest of your mistakes. Which is to say I have not had time to heal away my being. I am a scar ready to peel off the mystery of its face. I’m erasing my body until all that is left is a handful of chipped teeth. I invent a new word for gone every time we lock eyes. Teach me the ease of cowardice. I do not know if the grass is greener on the other side, but I know the ground here is tired of conjuring fruit from barren blood. This is the story I guess: a man the shade of lumbered and labored oak claims the night as his overcoat. Every star implodes in his synapses. Cuz back in the day, children used to respect they parent’s trauma. They was seen and not swallowed. And they knew better than to come home after certain darks.

Imani Davis is a student of many things, most often her Blackness. She’s currently studying at the University of Pennsylvania. Her poetry has settled down with Rookie Magazine, Brain Mill Press, and other homes. She was also awarded a Silver National Medal from the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. She is a member of Urban Word NYC’s Slam Team. Her life is grounded in “despite” and New York. She can be reached at imanid@sas.upenn.edu.