Poetry

I made you laugh

And something exploded,

Flew out the window

And did doughnuts in the parking lot

Before coming back in and doing it again.

 

You ask me how I am,

And I say “great,” and I mean it,

Not in the standard-American-answer way,

But I mean:

Your question follows me around,

Follows me home and

Dances a waltz around my head

To the best kind of music.

 

 

Max Saltman is an editor for his school’s newspaper, and does stand-up comedy and writes in his free time. He hopes to continue both in college. His favorite poets are Robert Burns and Wallace Stevens, and favorite comedians are Louis CK and Sam Hyde.

 

 

 

 

Marble curls clench, blown by an ancient wind

while blind, white eyes search skies

I’ve never seen.

Even in the stillness, he is beautiful.

It may be something in the noble cast of his nose,

the grace of his cheeks or the gape of his lips,

and by being just a head he is perhaps

lovelier than in life, and wiser, too, having won

empires, hearing his son called “great,”

knowing what it is to plumb time,

to die to motion, to witness five hundred

million moments and to be

only one of them.

 

 

Arah Ko is an English Major in the Chicago area. When not writing, she can be found frequenting open mic nights, explaining her name pronunciation to coffee shop baristas, and contemplating the meaning of life, other than 42.

 

this time            I do not own
a pair       of yellow shoes
so I walk   up the stairs
with bare feet

gardener says    to look for love
on higher ground
but there is no messiah
waiting
I made                a mistake and
kissed                 a snake

I made
a mistake
and kissed
a snake
who had            no apple to offer me

exchanged my name            for a handful
of dried flowers                     and
wistfulness
this is not            the first time

 

have I become
a body of           antibodies?
how many doctors
or                  cherubim
are        available
and is it still                    cliche’
if I am not wearing
yellow
or anything at all?

 

I do not know           what I need
but I know           that this kind of thing
should not happen                        so often

 

 

Logan February is a happy-ish Nigerian owl who likes pizza & typewriters & memes. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vagabond City, Glass, Figroot, and more. His book, Yellow Soul (April Gloaming Publishing) & a currently untitled chapbook (Indolent Books) are forthcoming in 2017. Say hello on Instagram & Twitter @loganfebruary.

You were;

An unorthodox tree of life

birthed dimly before the blizzards borne by winter

fully flourished by the first blush of spring,

the rings on your rutted stump encircling the core of heritage

 

You were;

 

A maze of the universe’s deepest ambiguities

contained within the blues of your windows,

with piercing inner onyxes that mirrored the bleakest

shells of humanity raining from perdition overturned

 

You were;

 

A perfectly marred canvas of the ages

an adroit architect who’d carefully crafted,

an intrinsic labyrinth of peregrinations on your palms

which hold a century’s worth of the wars of our past

 

You were;

 

A voluminous library yearning to divulge the world’s secrets

yet inaccessibly barred by the barriers bred by my tongue,

failed by memory and hardened by circumstance

now a forgotten dialect left bereft and unsung

 

But in spirit

 

You are;

 

A fierce warrior hound braving the fleeting seasons,

ceaselessly straddling the fragile line between

impermanence and

 

Eternity.

 

*”Ahma” is Hokkien (Chinese dialect) for “grandmother”.

 

 

Ashley hails from a small sunny island proudly known as the Little Red Dot and holds an uncanny penchant for all-things pink. One day, she hopes to dominate the world in a princess dress and sparkly tiara – because who ever forbade warriors from dressing in style too?

 

 

Once I read online

that poetry is becoming more popular

to tweet

even if you must write

in txt spk

this stanza shows you 140 characters

(it doesn’t get you very far)

the internet is bad, boys & girls

always giving you something to compare yourself to

or reminding you of what you had

or someone you wish you had back

but what seems to drive people craziest is

messenger

Seen 12.23pm

k…

idc

my friend said once that one of the toughest things

about her breakup was

having to log out of her ex-boyfriend’s

Netflix account

lucky her.

thanks for sharing.

sometimes Google writes poems for me

if I type in the first few words

I wonder if

we smile in our coffins

I wonder if

anyone misses me

I wonder if

I’m wasting my time

 

 

Laura Enright is a twenty-one- year-old writer from Limerick, Ireland studying BA Creative Writing with English & Irish in NUI Galway, specialising in poetry. She was one of the first people in Ireland to receive an arts fellowship for her writing. She has won numerous national awards for her poetry. So far in 2017, her poetry has been published by Picaroon Poetry, Hidden Channel zine and The Galway Review.

 

it is best to practice in front of a mirror
do not clear your throat or wipe your eyes
maintain the tremor in your voice
when you say

I am here to create the ocean for you

it is best if you do not say your name
because no one will remember it
there is no use in wasting your allotted time
they came to see you crash like a wave

it is best if you crash like a wave

it is best if you refuse medicine
maintain the tremor in your voice
when you say

I came here to show you how I play
the swallowed thing

it is best if your audition is not about you
make it about borders or whales or climate change
anything but heartache is fine
it is best if you are fine

if you pretend to be fine
this is show business so let it all go
don’t take it so personally

it is best if someone else deserves you
after you learn to part your own seas

 

Logan February is a happy-ish Nigerian owl who likes pizza & typewriters & memes. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Vagabond City, Glass, Figroot, and more. His book, Yellow Soul (April Gloaming Publishing) & a currently untitled chapbook (Indolent Books) are forthcoming in 2017. Say hello on Instagram & Twitter @loganfebruary.