Poetry

mad adam east of eden
makes up his own rules
to a game he does not play.
he will make her the burnished
sandalwood
tree of life and
she will take the apple
she will take the fruit
the snake decides
swallow the body the blood
of the etz chayim the
mates for life

back alley blackwater lilith.
a hot black tar
tangerine jumpsuit and
smiles–no
grins–no
sneers at
the pavement melting between her teeth.
the concrete forest
the polluted cosmopolitan politico
cold, calculated,
chaotic greens and greys
reflected in her eight-ball eyes.

her mother was a forest fire:
ardent, searing.
her father a gutter song
of half-spent cigarettes and
sweltering workday’s grime
waiting to be burned

lilith:
cuts her teeth on a road just laid down
hot black tar between molars
grinding his pavement punches down through the
atmospheric smog splinter infested sidewalk rollerblading from
his lips sits a cigarette rolled from the very jet black she walks on

and she: like her mother
will not submit.

mad adam makes up his own rules
to a game he does not play.

in kind:
she will tear herself out of him
stop the traffic in his heartbeat
cause a collision
and slip away

lilith will play his game
play him like the devil’s fiddle
twirl him around her little finger
like a snake around an apple tree
lilith: coffee-candied lips and a
sweet as saffron smile
she will not play she will win
bring eden to its winter
she will not merely survive his game
lilith: the screech-owl
the night-hag
the monster
the black tarred and feathered abomination
she will not merely survive his game
she will tear it to pieces and kill it with her beak
she is everything he cannot be and more
she: like he mother
will not submit.

she will burn every inch of eden until he knows
until they know
she will not be a pawn to push towards a sea of grey

she will leave the apple trees to rot
and burn the bridges she comes to
whatever she may be:
night hag,
night monster,
night witch

will be better than a slave.

 

Rebecca Flieder is a Creative Writing major from New Hampshire whose works often focus on love and nature as they relate to the modern world. When not writing, she loves to wander the woods behind her home and pretend she’s not the one that ate all the chocolate chip cookies.

Stowie holds her grandfather’s tobacco pipe.

She blows silvery wispy clouds into the sky

And makes plans to find Alaska,

wanting the gentle love of cubs and bears.

I turn to the armoire and reach for my shawl,

pulling the loose strings of fading lavender.

 

In the kitchen hangs the drying lavender

Which she sometimes lights in her pipe.

We sit by the open door and I pull my shawl

Closer around my shoulders. She looks at the sky,

And she says that the clouds look like bears

And that today feels like Alaska.

 

I ask her if she knows that in Alaska

The sky is always a color like lavender,

is always crying, for the weight is too much to bear.

She looks down and rolls the smooth old pipe

Between her fingers, and says that the sky

In Alaska is fine with its cloudy shawl.

 

I trace the cracks in the veneer with my shawl

Covering the tip of my finger like Alaska

Covers Stowie’s thoughts. She says that the sky

Here is too big for her and a piece of lavender

Falls from its clothespin. She puts down the pipe

And she says she wishes she were a bear.

 

Her father walks into the kitchen, bearing

A basket. Re-hanging the lavender, my shawl

Falls and her father mumbles about a broken pipe.

He tells her not to go to Alaska

And in his basket lies something lavender

That he made small for her— it is the sky.

 

The armoire now holds the tiny sky.

Its finely cracking veneer bears

the weight. I’m going to paint it lavender

I think, the same as the color of my shawl.

Stowie asks if I’ve ever been to Alaska

And then says something about pipe

 

Dreams. We watch the sky put on its starry shawl

As celestial bears dance somewhere above Alaska,

And with lavender paint we patch the broken pipe.

 

Allison Gish is a lover of all things natural hailing from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Young Ravens Literary Review and Foxcroft Chimera Literature and Arts Magazine.

Pills line my dresser

Like tallies in a prison cell

Plastered on the walls

Counting down the days until liberation.

I organize my pills into neat rows and columns

Just another one of my OCD perks

Except the only one that is cute is my cleanliness

You said

Apparently my disorder can be picked apart by Notes and Retweets-

You clicked the share button.

 

I shake up each bottle

A melancholy melody to accompany my broken-record thoughts

I wash my hands over and over in the fiery breath of scorching water at the thought of you

As red skin peels off

Like my clothes did that time in your bed

I guess I was too much to handle for more than one night.

 

My favorite pill is the one that looks like an atomic bomb

But whose name still sounds less foreign than yours when it rolls off my tongue.

 

My raw hands glide across the wondrous curves of the child lock cap I twist

Would you appreciate my body as much as this?

My hand fits better with the pill bottle than it did with yours.

 

Saliva embraces the pill as I gently slide it in the back of my throat

A euphoric reunion

How nice it is to be this close to something that will not push me away

That will not slam doors in my face or treat me like an experiment.

 

My fingers gingerly caress each tiny body

As I dump the remaining pills in my hand

They dance across the crosshatches of my palms and scars on my wrists

Softer than any kiss I’ve ever received.

 

A smile warped with incredible pain and a feeling I cannot yet detect

Crawls across my face

When I realize that

This is the most intimate experience

I’ve ever had.

 

Linzy is a junior at Westfield High School in New Jersey. When she isn’t reading or writing, she enjoys embracing her inner nerd by reciting over a hundred digits of pi to anyone willing (and even unwilling) to listen. She is an active member of her school’s all female FIRST robotics team and a fierce environmental advocate. Armed with an ardent pen and the power of caffeine, she knows she can take on the world.

The sky is the color of a rusty

crayon, the house a black box

with a triangle on top. In the attic,

a boy sleeps on a bed of broken

sheets, a bar of light across his body.

The dark in his room is friendly

as erasers. Grinning pencils

are leaning in the closet,

the shadow of a stuffed monkey

claps his hands. The laundry basket

rolls around laughing. And the room

simplifies. A wall becomes a line,

a chair a friendship. A belt buckle

disappears. Above him is a shadow

of a giant pair of hands, tousling

his feather hair, and the boy’s stick arms

are crooked, elbows bent, as if he is cradling

a bird.

 

Hanna Iruka Hall is eighteen years old and loves to read and write. Her work is forthcoming in Eunoia Review and has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She is fascinated by Medusa from Greek mythology, and would like to conduct a slime-mold experiment in her free time.