Poetry

Marie’s car rolls over railroad tracks like
pit bulls slobber, gnash nails between their teeth.

Her vinyl seat clings to my sweat-slick thighs,
press fresh and scald my bright lower back—

Florida turns her ebony dash white-hot
We scream down Emerson at 1:47pm

to get pomegranate pucker-up refreshers
that make our fingers stick together. She wails

Ice Spice lyrics until her voice breaks
into citrine whines and a rose gold rasp.

It’s time to roll the windows down, now, bitch.
Humidity roars in through the sunroof,

to lift our baby hair closer to the sky
and caramelize our green apple skin.

I grab for the handle hanging above the open air,
clutch so tight my knuckles turn familiar white.

We blow through the stop sign before the bridge.

I shriek: a hubba bubba bubble popping,
oozing slimy from my chapped mouth—

The gaping maw of the St Johns River
blurs past me in a kaleidoscope of

crashing symbol waves and oily torn edges.
Pop pumps through her speakers and

Marie laughs: hand me my sunglasses,
crispy, mangled plastic frying smokey on the dash.

I relax my death grip on the handle
to snatch them up—she laughs harder as I

bop-bop-bop them, hand-to-hand, hot potato,
before she takes pity and leans across my body,

knobby elbows digging into my brittle ribs,
nothing but knees on her daisy steering wheel

as she scoops them into vanilla coconut palms;
her cheeks are a gentle perch, breeze cool.

The Camaro whips in front at warp speed.
Seatbelt digs into fragile neck folds, bruising,

her hands struggle for the wheel,
lay on the horn so hard it maracas my bones.

Rie! Please slow down- I can’t-
She slams on the brakes.

She slams on the brakes for me
so the metal groans and I lurch forward

into her hand splayed across my stomach, ready.
My chest heaves in her palm, breath wheezing,

gasping, melting into hiccup laughter
that she echoes, louder, until it mixes together

into a two-part harmony monster and
I can’t tell where my skin ends and hers begins.

 

 

 

Abbey Griffin (she/her) is a writer in Northeast Florida currently attending Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. She is super excited to be attending Sarah Lawrence College in New York this fall. What the Living Do by Marie Howe is the book that sparked her love for poetry, and inspired her to devote her life to writing. Her poems have been published in Elan Literary Magazine two years in a row. She loves duck stuffed animals, and hopes that everyone finds their own unique understanding and love of the arts.

mourning is a long morning
of everything glazed over silence.
breath smoother than water,
thoughts slower than prayer.

longing is an empty room with no ceiling,
whole shape faded over into
one name.

 

 

 

Zhao Yushan is a penultimate year Literature and Sociology double-major at the National University of Singapore. After reading one of her poems during her literature class, she was approached by fellow aspiring writers to form a little creative writing circle, with whom she shares words, whims, and waffles. She loves trees, cats, words, music, admiring large bodies of water, being hopelessly cheesy, and the short story collection “The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God” by Israeli writer Etgar Keret.

 

What do you call a first language you don’t write in?
Abandoned. Derelict. A lover in the form of a seashell swept offshore.
I am telling you I do not spit rhymes as much as I take control of
An immigrant narrative like no one else. I don’t know anyone as hungry for
A brown girl’s desire as a white man behind an editor’s desk. I don’t know
How to imagine him, other than with a pen in his front pocket &
Yet another brown girl love poem stuck between his teeth — extolling Manasi Garg
As though making himself mythic through cultural osmosis
Tenders him into a more important being. I don’t know anyone as hungry
As white men in poetry that click their tongue at each stumbled
Vowel at a slam poetry reading, only to slide a slam poetry brochure
Beneath their desks, and call it: “Opportunity, but easier.”
A white man behind an editor’s desk would not know opportunity
If it didn’t slide across his desk each week, embroidered each time with an exotic name
Of a girl whose phone calls back home are peppered with
Colloquialisms so heavy, she can no longer set down anywhere but atop
His desk. A white man doesn’t know opportunity because he bathes in it
Everyday, as he bathes in the words of every brown girl poet that
Crosses his desk. Desperate, desperate, desperate; his approval
Is all the cultural reclamation she needs.

 

 

Ayanna Uppal (she/her) is a Punjabi poet and a junior at Germantown Friends School. From Philadelphia, she is a graduate of UVA Young Writers and Kenyon Young Writers Workshop. She is a co-president of her school’s poetry club and, in her spare time, enjoys translating and reading Punjabi works.

we sat in the chairs
capes on our shoulders
looking older than we ever have

my stylist
robyn
sprays down my flyaways
with a bottle of conditioner and water

she smells like cigarettes and rain
I close my eyes and she parts my hair
“my last day is sunday,”
she says

she will go to the next town over
to cut hair for 11.75
plus tips

“what are we doing today?”
she asks

in 5 months I’ll graduate
ceili will transfer
and cole will go back to south hills

but today
we are doing long layers

the scissors float around my head
and clipped hairs fall on my face

behind me
cole has taken off his glasses
there’s an indent on either side of his nose

ceili’s stylist is holding her hair
to simulate curtain bangs
our eyes meet in the mirror
and she nods

when we are done
we pay
and leave big tips

we are both young
and old

both rich
and poor

we are alive
and we are friends
and we have new haircuts

 

 

 

Winner of the Gerald Stern poetry prize and the Joan Didion nonfiction award, Caitlin Cruser lives and writes in Western Pennsylvania.

After the discoloration of the Russian Iskitimka River — January 11th, 2024

 

I once wrote about rivers of blood.
I didn’t think they’d be real.

When I walked along her bank today, she
weeped to me silently and
whispered: when will it end?
I touch her shaking hand and the world
stops for a moment. The snowflakes
turn into shards of glass
momentarily, reflecting the flashing
cameras and unblinking eyes.
Then it moves on; fickle and unbending.

God is apparently real.
And he is unfortunately angry.

Beetroot red poison dissolves into
flesh and eats away at the thread-like delicacy.
She asks me why she sees
so many
reflections of her crimson pain, but no
promise of a tomorrow. This
is what we make of a permanent scar
on delicate, porcelain skin.

Once, she had tattoos of ducks:
their necks curved like the unshapely form
of her graceful descent. Below
the surface, she held life more fragile
than I could imagine.

Today, she is not Iskitimka.

She is discolored/a memory/polluted/dis-
turbing/a mystery/poisonous/
She is naked, smearing her intricate duck tattoos
with a bloodied palm.

But, she is not Iskitimka.

She is wounding; crane feathers soaked
With scarlet tar; a velvet scarf that strangles me;
liquid toxicity held in vials smashing on the
white floor.

She is not Iskitimka.

 

 

 

Sarah (she/her) is an eighteen-year-old poet who is completing her senior year of high school. She is an alumni of Yale Young Writers and Kenyon Young Writers Workshops. Sarah enjoys soft sunsets on the ocean and baking cinnamon rolls.

the snow has stopped; frost begins
to thaw. just in time—we bite
into a kouign-amann and call it home.
the glory is in the crunch, the soft light
buttery sweetness, richness folded
in layers. moments are fleeting and
this is one. light unravels as the day ages—
walking home, light footfall, heavy rain.
has our feast warmed the weather too?
i watch the sun set as i reach my door.
i, content, satisfied beyond my means
of description. language unravels beyond
our tongues, but sweetness transcends.
loving hands come together to build a home.

 

 

Louise Kim is an undergraduate student at Harvard University. Their Pushcart Prize- and Best of the Net-nominated writing has been published in a number of publications, including Frontier Poetry, Chautauqua Journal, and Panoply Zine. Her debut poetry collection, Wonder is the Word, was published in May 2023. You can find them on Instagram at @loukim0107.