Poetry

 

I have bones to pick with existence –

who forced me to be here as a vulture,

coughing up marrow of my personality’s frame?

 

Who poised my skeleton in material decay

to walk among the inhabitable

 

spaces while my hands are raised in the air

in prayer or self defense –

there’s a pale girl who isn’t sure which

 

one she should be asking more of.

There’s a bird who is picking away

 

at the scoliosis in my spine, the serotonin

(or lack thereof) in the palpable scars

 

gasping across the folds of my frontal cortex, how about

my nervous system backfiring

 

like a space shuttle that ran out of fuel.

There’s empty music from the empty room across the hall

 

that roars and reminds me.

I kick at a speck of dust

 

because it is licking at the fireplace and I watch it

burst in the heat and sink into the flames.

 

 

Audrey Lee is a current senior at The Episcopal Academy in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania and will be attending Franklin and Marshall College this coming fall. She is the winner of the 2016 DeSales University Poetry Contest and her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and Columbia College of Chicago. She has attended programs by the University of Virginia and Ithaca College, and edits her school literary magazine, The Epolitan. Her work has been featured in or is forthcoming from The Claremont Review, Rookie Magazine, YARN: The Young Adult Review Network, Canvas Literary Journal, Moledro Magazine, Blue Marble Review, Eunoia Review, Half Mystic Journal, Paper Swans Press, and Teen Vogue. This summer, Audrey will attend the University of Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and intern at Apiary Magazine. Find her at audreymorganlee.weebly.com.

 

 

 

 

 

Old scars peeling back and
big aspirations to love you
again have kept me from
blooming and sparking into
the wildfire I’ve been told I
can be
but you’re the one who told
me that you were water that
would inevitably douse my
flame and for some reason
I so desire that.

 

Jacob is a student at an arts high school in Pittsburgh PA who attends for writing all sorts of genres. His favorite, however, is poetry.

Do you know about the Dahlia flower?                         No
And how it grows back                                                     Black
In the concrete, I see it tower                                         Loud
Proving nature’s law wrong                                            Human
Only one seed                                                                    Grows
But now it starts to go                                                     Fast
Now we have to show                                                      Vast
That is has in fact                                                             Passed
Do you know about the Dahlia flower?                       Me
I’d know it if it wasn’t in me                                           You

 

 

Isabel Leonard is a student at California State University Northridge.Originally from Portland, OR she moved to California for college. She competes on the track and field team at CSUN and studies psychology. She believes the biggest asset we have is our ability to think.

I made you laugh

And something exploded,

Flew out the window

And did doughnuts in the parking lot

Before coming back in and doing it again.

 

You ask me how I am,

And I say “great,” and I mean it,

Not in the standard-American-answer way,

But I mean:

Your question follows me around,

Follows me home and

Dances a waltz around my head

To the best kind of music.

 

 

Max Saltman is an editor for his school’s newspaper, and does stand-up comedy and writes in his free time. He hopes to continue both in college. His favorite poets are Robert Burns and Wallace Stevens, and favorite comedians are Louis CK and Sam Hyde.

 

 

 

 

Marble curls clench, blown by an ancient wind

while blind, white eyes search skies

I’ve never seen.

Even in the stillness, he is beautiful.

It may be something in the noble cast of his nose,

the grace of his cheeks or the gape of his lips,

and by being just a head he is perhaps

lovelier than in life, and wiser, too, having won

empires, hearing his son called “great,”

knowing what it is to plumb time,

to die to motion, to witness five hundred

million moments and to be

only one of them.

 

 

Arah Ko is an English Major in the Chicago area. When not writing, she can be found frequenting open mic nights, explaining her name pronunciation to coffee shop baristas, and contemplating the meaning of life, other than 42.

 

this time            I do not own
a pair       of yellow shoes
so I walk   up the stairs
with bare feet

gardener says    to look for love
on higher ground
but there is no messiah
waiting
I made                a mistake and
kissed                 a snake

I made
a mistake
and kissed
a snake
who had            no apple to offer me

exchanged my name            for a handful
of dried flowers                     and
wistfulness
this is not            the first time

 

have I become
a body of           antibodies?
how many doctors
or                  cherubim
are        available
and is it still                    cliche’
if I am not wearing
yellow
or anything at all?

 

I do not know           what I need
but I know           that this kind of thing
should not happen                        so often

 

 

Logan February is a happy-ish Nigerian owl who likes pizza & typewriters & memes. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vagabond City, Glass, Figroot, and more. His book, Yellow Soul (April Gloaming Publishing) & a currently untitled chapbook (Indolent Books) are forthcoming in 2017. Say hello on Instagram & Twitter @loganfebruary.