Poetry

Until then let the sun in his smug brilliance kiss our honey drenched lips

Our arms dangling, our legs splayed out or wound together tightly

 

Our rampages and our silence. Our prayers scattered

To the wind or repeated over and over in the mirror

Until they lose all magic. Let us wear crucifixes ‘round our necks

And use them to break our backs and pin our guilt

And nail our morality into. Let us have superstition

 

And thawed ground under slate grey sky. Frost bitten fingers and toes

To count our blessings and rub our relics, our rosaries between. Our strength no

Mightier than a drunken bumblebee’s. Let us have meaning

 

And a crusade. A prophet dead with more volumes to write.

Nothing to dance for us other than a plastic bag in the wind.

 

If none of this will be immortalized, then let us keep creating

With hands more worn than

A beggar’s winter coat. For this is existence. To take

 

Up threads and intertwine them for meaning

And when they are worn down to nothing

 

To keep weaving regardless. For this is our sanity.

Let us forget our sanity. For this is existence.

Let us forget our existence. Our ribcage

 

Where empty promises stick and snare us. Our lungs

That exhale phrases that leave another breathless.

 

And what if this is oblivion?

Our saints and confessions? Our sunk Lusitania?

Then let it. Let it coil around us and pull us under

 

And make us forget we are made of ashes and dust,

That there is meaning in the touch of a shoulder or caress of the waist.

 

 

Morgan LaRocca is a sophomore at Towson University and is pursuing a major in English with a concentration in writing. She is an active member in her campus community, serving as the honors college student director as well as writing center tutor. In her free time she enjoys hiking and travelling. She has been published once before in Sequel Literary Magazine.

 

 

 

 

 

One girl, a tiara atop her head, sits crisscross in chicken poop all summer, a single dozing rooster nestled in her arms. One girl who stole the other’s tea-set, stashes its shattered pieces in her palm. One girl, a bucket as her hat, awakens in a tree to watch a skyline drip with watercolor. One girl, her lungs scabby with expletives, bites another and goes home to shriek into a pillow as her parents fight upstairs. One girl whispers, “We hate you” into another girl’s unsuspecting ears. One girl sinks her teeth into another’s arm and curls up in her closet to hide from words all weekend. One girl jostles the branch outside her window, her mind set to judge the velocity of a plummeting bird. One girl locks herself in the bathroom to escape birthday cake. One girl watches her pigtails skip like rocks on water’s surface tension, not noticing that her brother’s raft has tipped over. One girl has a burial service for an earthworm she just met. One girl cannot comprehend the vestiges of another outgrown friendship, and crawls under her bed to piece them together, one page at a time. One girl throws petals as her best friend gets married at recess then slams a boy’s head into the snow. One girl sneaks out at eleven with her bow and arrow pointed at the stars. One girl, who never owned her own toys, awakens in another world playing with thousands, while her limp body lies still on a sewer cap. One girl (she told you all of this) spots your curious shadow in her eyes, and leaves you wondering why she has begun to cry.

 

 

Riley Grace Borden is a high school junior from Whidbey Island, Washington who is passionate about all things literary. Her writing has been published by Sprout Magazine, Teen Ink Magazine, Five-2-One Magazine, Moledro Magazine, Eunoia Review, and the Mercer Island Reporter. In her free time, she edits her writing peers’ work, blogs, reads, and goes for long runs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“This is our new home,” Mother says.

This home: scratched floors and chipping paint. I sleep with Sister on a bed with no frame. Two rooms, one bathroom.

New boyfriend, new home.

This home: smaller but cleaner. I make new friends. They tease me. “My dollhouse is bigger,” they jeer. Sister gets angry. I cry. Mother demands to never be ashamed of our home.

Goodbye boyfriend, new home.

This home: one bedroom, and I sleep on the couch; Sister with Mother. I weep often. Only Sister sees. When Mother does, she hurts me. Sister yells.

No job, new home.

This home: not mine.

 

 

Marina (Mari) Toplyn is a sixteen-year-old junior in high school from southern New Jersey. She is a reader and creator of all things imaginative. She writes every available second and when the notebook is tucked away, she’s creating her thoughts into pictures inside her sketchbook—which usually ends up getting stained with coffee or tea.

They say the painter Van Gogh

cut off his ear in a fit of tortured

 

madness and presented it to a prostitute

he might have loved, as if to say,

 

take this, make of me what you will,

derive my essence from this fragment

 

of flesh. Again and again we see

the blurred divide between madness

 

and genius. Think: what if, rather than

relying on endless testing and paperwork

 

colleges asked applicants for a single sliver

of belly or buttock or breast

 

mailed overnight in a cooler

and then, along with thousands

 

of others, fed through

a machine that could distill from it

 

every drip of ambition

every particle of desire

 

every tremor of weakness

as if the number of times you decided

 

to watch Netflix and eat ice cream

rather than study for AP Calculus

 

was configured deep in your tissues, mapped

in the intricate alignment of your cells.

 

 

Sophie Panzer is a history major at McGill University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in carte blanche, GERM Magazine, Inklette, The Veg, Yiara, Teen Ink, and YARN (Young Adult Review Network). She enjoys musicals, long hikes, and friendly arguments.

Perched on the edge

of your bed, I listen to the

lyrics of a song I’ve

heard a million times.

“I’ll never be the comfort

you lost when you were

nine,” the singer belts,

and I look at you. “Don’t

give me that face,” you say,

“this song is about quitting

smoking.” I want to say

something clever in return,

like, “same difference,”

but you’re smarter than

me, so I just keep staring.

Wistful. I know you want

me to go home, or anywhere

other than your room. I will,

in a moment. For now,

let me count your freckles

and imagine a future in

which you love me.

 

 

Bailey Share Aizic is a poet, student, and Oxford comma enthusiast based in Los Angeles. She works on the editorial team of Wizards in Space Magazine, a litmag by and for nerdy writers, and performs improv comedy in her (scant) spare time. Read her recent work in Noctua, Rogue Agent, Right Hand Pointing, and Calamus, and read her mind @sortabailey.

 

 

 

My classmates compete

to see who can bring the most camels.

Some of the older kids bring

falcons, and let them fly through the

crowd of people on the field.

During lunch,

old women sit on the ground

with a small electric stove

in front of them, making fried balls of dough

covered in honey and sesame seeds. We

watch a performance in the gym, of girls

doing the hair dance, whipping knee-length

locks from side to side. Of boys

twirling guns in time to the

music. The songs performed in a foreign tongue.

They give us flags of

a country I don’t yet know

but will become my home.

 

Kathleen Madigan spent four years living in the Middle East, where she learned  many new traditions. Her favorite was National Day, a time at school to appreciate the culture of the United Arab Emirates by seeing native animals and eating traditional food.