Poetry

The word Love

like a pebble under my tongue

It takes a second of awkward maneuvering to dislodge

and tumbles to your feet

We both stare for a moment

I turn my gaze back to your face

and bear witness to a stone of your own pressing against your cheek

You scoop it out

let it rest on your tongue

Then slowly reveal

my undoing

The word Sorry

 

 

Anna Lund is a writer and artist attending high school in northern Minnesota.

 

1. half-lit classrooms/ january sunlight/tasting new words on my tongue/ words i will later make poems, out of
2. this, this is not a love letter/i love you the way one falls in love with a painting/ across time and space, endlessly/though mythologies of longing/ letting go is a kind of slipping
3. half-finished conversations in shadowy corridors/ my claustrophobic stories like ghosts in summer heat/the tragedy in being so close..yet invisible/ even in dreams, i am colourless
4. and your voice, a cantillation and the sound of my name (something beautiful) and the bell ringing like a knell/ (all i ever wanted was a universe where time machines exist)
5. waking up in a dreamed-up world, a mythical venice or a strange arabian city stolen from postcards or ancient stories whose endings we have lost, over the centuries, so we invent new and better ones/ false alarms/ in that universe, we are not so distant, you and i
6. confession/ i never stopped to realize just how entangled i am, with vines of identifies and whims and dreams clinging onto the rusty, crumbling walls of my heart/ desperation, (i)solation, death/ i, the lonely half of a hyphenated word
7. i sometimes speak of myself in the second person, only to lose myself/ if you and i/ if you were i/ the way words lose their meanings when you repeat them enough times/doors opening into doors opening into doors you were closing all the while/ not you, i meant i
8. if i (not you) write a suicide note, it would read: i cry because i cannot make myself understood/ i who yearn to write love songs to the stars
9. autumn playgrounds/swinging to strange heavens on rusty swings or sliding down to dusty hells of fallen leaves and memories/ there is no goodbye when imaginary friends die/ does anyone mourn for burnt diaries
10. trapped in a world that no longer exists/ my loneliness is like an empty train station in the wee hours of night that waits impatiently for something, someone/ to happen;

 

 

 

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/

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My pale frame rests under a dark V-neck

Skinny some say

Yes, I suppose…

 

Guys loll in easy confidence

Gifted with lines and shadows defining them

Chiseled features, six-pack abs, sensitive yet strong

“No, no, I think I’ll keep my shirt on.”

“I’m cold,” a lie

I shiver for effect

They effortlessly roll their golden shoulders, “Whatever”

 

Perfection doesn’t care

I’ll wait an hour

Dusk will help hide my skin and bones

“It’s fixable,” I say

“I’ll work out,” a false promise

 

Ten push-ups after nine p.m.

Behind locked doors in a narrow space

Chiseled features

The ground comes up to meet me, number ten

Trembling arms pull me under sheets

 

My V-neck will never stretch to accommodate my bulk

Girls won’t giggle at my strength

When the shirt comes off, what am I?

Skinny some say

Human I say

 

Joseph Christensen will be a senior this fall at Bellevue High School in Washington. His hobbies include: pondering the perplexities of life over bowls of chocolate ice cream and pretending to be professional.