Poetry

In Our Traveling Bathtub

By Jenna Mather

Sometimes I think about how
I love you even in my dreams.
One night, I imagined we were
spies, traveling to a mansion in
a bathtub instead of car, and you
pressed my back against the cold
tile when you kissed me. But, a
different night, the train you rode
slewed off its tracks into a ravine
while I watched through the glass
windows of a diner. I will never
forget how I chewed my tongue
while I looked for your body in the
rocks and twisted metal. For hours
I convinced myself you were alive;
only when I woke up were you dead.
Those four minutes—when writing
your eulogy was more impossible
than any traveling bathtub and my
bedsheets were a concrete casket—
that was the nightmare. But then you
told me good morning, and I was
back in my dreams. Funny how my
mind taught me what losing you feels
like, so I will never let myself wake up
against anything but our cold tiles.

Jenna Mather is a graduate of the University of Iowa, where she studied English and creative writing. With her poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction, she tries to untangle the complexities of love, womanhood, and the writing life. On any given day, you can find her in a coffee shop—or online at @_jennamather and jennamather.com.

Plummeting Bird

By Samantha Szumloz

It has been the year of tests,
the year of my soul’s partial death,
the year that my guardian angel decided
to let go of my hand.

I ripped through the atmosphere for months,
trying to grab the clouds and planes above.
Each time I’d try to save myself, though,
they’d slip from my grasp.

So I continued to fall
like the first raindrop of a downpour,
crying for a parachute, screaming for someone to save me
from the cold pavement below.

No one heard me scream except the air.
No one heard me weep except me.

All I could do was brace for impact,
and pray to God that I would learn to fly
before I hit the ground.

I learned.
I scraped my feathers against the pavement,

but I learned.

Samantha Szumloz is a junior Writing Arts major minoring in creative writing at Rowan University. Her work has been featured in publications such as Moria, Woodbury University’s national literary magazine, and R U Joking?, Rowan’s comedy publication. She is from Hamilton Township, New Jersey.

Spotify

By Tane Kim

It wouldn’t have been a thing if people didn’t need
to drown out the sound of their own
breath.
Please, tell me how I may
turn my life into a playlist of sunkissed
tracks, let it thump as I
become lost in the
grayness
of this dusty subway
pole juxtaposed with R&B blankness.

II.

There is a man on this train who is singing
gospel.He has his boy shaking a cup,
violent.
The boy is forcing eyecontact with everyone
standing. A woman inserts her airpod
into her ear. Imagineshe is bleeding out
apathy on glassy white pavement,so she needs
music like sirens to mask the red.
Imagine
her blood trickling down concrete
avenues as she closes her eyes, lies still, lets it thump.

Tane is a poet from Irvington, New York whose mission is to spread the art of writing to those around him. As the editor-in-chief of The Incandescent Review and The Stirling Review, he believes in the power of creative expression to spark genuine happiness in those who practice it. His work has been recognized by The Poetry Society, Scholastic Art and Writing, The National Poetry Quarterly, and The New York Times.

Awful Growing Up

By Klaryssa Dunwoody

I want a peanut butter
And jelly sandwich
Shaped like a dinosaur
With the crusts cut off.
Instead, I’m eating
A salad with tomatoes.
This awful growing up.
I used to take baths
With duckies and cups,
The towel was so big
It engulfed me like a blanket.
Now I take a quick shower
And fall into bed, exhausted.
This awful growing up.
I want to sit on
My dad’s lap
And watch cartoons.
But cartoons turned
To dramas and comedy.
This awful growing up.
My mother used to hum
And rub my back
To help me fall asleep.
Now I lay awake every night,
Overthinking anything
I can manage to think of.
This awful growing up.
I want to play princess
And catch frogs with my brother.
But I’m stuck in a classroom
Learning things I won’t remember
In twenty years.
This awful growing up.
I don’t remember the last time
I was tucked in,
Mac n cheese no longer counts
As a meal,
And my future begins
In eighteen months.
This
Awful
Growing
Up.

Klaryssa loves reading, writing, painting, and music. She plans to pursue a career in law but continue writing on the side. She would like to eventually publish her own novel.

Apricity

By Janice Lee

Apricity: The warmth of the sun in winter.

A touch so delicate,
almost indiscernible in presence.
Apricity’s soft breaths bloom of
incandescence.

Playful mischief of the breeze unveils
her wide, gauzy strokes
as gray-tinted translucence
bleeds an amber hoax.

Through tenderly clasped wings,
blight dissipates out of sight.
Remnant trails of radiance set
the bleak world alight.

But foreign echos howl across the distance
as gusts and gales blow in their native tongue.
Her warm caress rescinds;
whispers remain unsung.

Beneath the familiar comfort of a
cumulonimbus cloud,
she retreats into bleak shadows
concealed by a wispy shroud.

The path of Apricity in
intrinsic simplicity
commands no less
than pure eccentricity.

Janice Lee is a poet from Southern California. In her free time, you can find her playing tennis or spending time with friends and family.

my mother’s breath

By Leissa Romulus

how she has shared it with me for all of my existence
I used to think when she sighed in exasperation
I inhaled her frustration, and blew it out as stubbornness
for her to repurpose and the cycle would continue when we were apart

I thought about all places she breathed, wondered
if her happiness or concern could reach me
maybe all breath trickled into the atmosphere
the same way all water pooled into oceans,
and every breeze was a wave intermingled with human emotion

I hoped my mother’s breath traveled far
so I could know about all the places she sighed in secret
because of some burden she refused to share,
I could comfort her the way she desperately
needed by simply exhaling

I used to lay my head on her rising and falling stomach
to feel the warmth of her, hear her blood churning, her heart pumping
when I remember those moments, I feel fear,
like sitting under a tree on a silent, sunny day,
breathing in what their leaves exhaled apathetically

I now take into consideration how the plants process
all our carbon dioxide, they refine our jagged sentiments
in their own cycle only incidentally related to ours

the world will continue to breathe without humans,
without my mother and me and our anger and love colliding
when we’re apart nothing is connecting or comforting us
we have nothing but our thoughts and the hurt we inflicted
throbbing like fresh bruises.

Leïssa Romulus was born in Haiti and immigrated to the U.S .at six years old. She is a senior at Emerson College studying Writing, Literature and Publishing, a poetry editor for The Emerson Review, and an aspiring poet.