Poetry

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

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.

On sleepless nights, I take to envying

the Cambridge girl: the embodiment,

with her short, metropolitan hair,

striped blazers and scuffed shoes,

of all things literary

which I am not.

She has already made her peace

with the language that soothes me

but cannot sate me, buried

her shameful roots in Austen and

Keats while mine rear lustily

through each letter I write,

for I cannot twist my words

until my will has nothing more to say.

She and her studies flaunt

their joy like a ring,

she as happy in her books

as they are to have discovered

a new mistress, a rising talent

come to lift them from obscurity;

but I do not trust so openly

what I read or what I leave

in my wake, its power too great

to reckon with or claim as my own.

 

 

Alex Walsh studies Math and Literary Arts at Brown University. Her work has previously appeared in Coldnoon, Eunoia Review, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, and Catalyst, among others.

 

I

Here, this is the dentist chair. Not quite operating
table, not quite lazy boy. Here is where IV
drips honey into dreamless sleeps & where the surgeon
will teach you how to pronounce maxillofacial. I have not reached

II

the age of wisdom, but that does not mean I don’t deserve
procedure. I will swallow whole all my anxieties and digest
them into nerve & bone and REM. I’m a good boy

III

& if you say addict I’ll probably cry. I’m a good
boy & I know how to swallow gauze like a man.

 

IIII

Here, this is the straw that you may not sip
from. Dry sockets only come for boys who stain
their teeth with coffee & cigarettes & soup. I’m a timer

 

IIII

set for the hour that I can take just one more Vicodin.

 

Joseph Felkers is a junior at Catholic Central High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  His work appears or is forthcoming in SOFTBLOW, decomP magazinE, Rust + Moth, and Superstition Review among others.  He is a genre editor for Polyphony H.S., a reader and past-mentee with The Adroit Journal, and an ice cream connoisseur at his local parlor.

 

 

 

i am living the wrought iron fence american dream.

when i stroll through the neighborhood, i wave to everyone i see,

even the dog-walkers who sneak in from the main road.

i have acquiesced to the habit of asking questions

without really caring about the answer, and

i used to pick worms off the sidewalk the morning after rain

hoping to feel something, but i didn’t, so i stopped, and

the greatest bone-crushing blow to my prospects

is that i was not enthralled by a talent as exacting as mathematics,

or science; what is the formula for creating beautiful art—i don’t know—

and what has creation ever done for me?

my yard ends precisely where yours begins.

i used to pick dandelions and bring them to my mother

and when i went back outside, she threw them away;

i always thought that it was devastating, but it turns out that

it happens to everyone. it’s a hardship we all share:

the privileged tragedy of our day.

i type a careful combination of thirty-six words about myself;

it’s a foolish dance, and i am ashamed.

it all seems like a pseudointellectual lie, but

twelve years plus one of schooling has taught me

the importance of clinging to Martian formulas.

in the Well-Developed Youth Program, we read a story

about an alien race that came to earth to tell us

our numerical system was all wrong. since then,

i’ve privately held the belief that it’s true.

 

my grief counselor told me about a girl who used to dance

in front of her window at night, and i couldn’t stop thinking

about the supermarket, with the live lobsters in the glass tank.

i used to pick my favorites and want to take them all home

but now i spare them a wistful glance, careful not to tap the glass.

 

 

Anastasia Nicholas is an eighteen-year-old journalism student. She has been published in Assonance, Canvas, Glass Kite Anthology, and Inkwell, and her poetry has received statewide awards. Samuel Taylor Coleridge is her celebrity crush.