Poetry

Synecdoche

By Sophie Panzer

They say the painter Van Gogh

cut off his ear in a fit of tortured

madness and presented it to a prostitute

he might have loved, as if to say,

take this, make of me what you will,

derive my essence from this fragment

of flesh. Again and again we see

the blurred divide between madness

and genius. Think: what if, rather than

relying on endless testing and paperwork

colleges asked applicants for a single sliver

of belly or buttock or breast

mailed overnight in a cooler

and then, along with thousands

of others, fed through

a machine that could distill from it

every drip of ambition

every particle of desire

every tremor of weakness

as if the number of times you decided

to watch Netflix and eat ice cream

rather than study for AP Calculus

was configured deep in your tissues, mapped

in the intricate alignment of your cells.

Sophie Panzer is a history major at McGill University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in carte blanche, GERM Magazine, Inklette, The Veg, Yiara, Teen Ink, and YARN (Young Adult Review Network). She enjoys musicals, long hikes, and friendly arguments.

An Imagined Conversation, or Why Couples Should Just Listen to Happy Music

By Bailey Share Aizic

Perched on the edge

of your bed, I listen to the

lyrics of a song I’ve

heard a million times.

“I’ll never be the comfort

you lost when you were

nine,” the singer belts,

and I look at you. “Don’t

give me that face,” you say,

“this song is about quitting

smoking.” I want to say

something clever in return,

like, “same difference,”

but you’re smarter than

me, so I just keep staring.

Wistful. I know you want

me to go home, or anywhere

other than your room. I will,

in a moment. For now,

let me count your freckles

and imagine a future in

which you love me.

Bailey Share Aizic is a poet, student, and Oxford comma enthusiast based in Los Angeles. She works on the editorial team of Wizards in Space Magazine, a litmag by and for nerdy writers, and performs improv comedy in her (scant) spare time. Read her recent work in Noctua, Rogue Agent, Right Hand Pointing, and Calamus, and read her mind @sortabailey.

National Day

By Kathleen Madigan

My classmates compete

to see who can bring the most camels.

Some of the older kids bring

falcons, and let them fly through the

crowd of people on the field.

During lunch,

old women sit on the ground

with a small electric stove

in front of them, making fried balls of dough

covered in honey and sesame seeds. We

watch a performance in the gym, of girls

doing the hair dance, whipping knee-length

locks from side to side. Of boys

twirling guns in time to the

music. The songs performed in a foreign tongue.

They give us flags of

a country I don’t yet know

but will become my home.

Kathleen Madigan spent four years living in the Middle East, where she learned many new traditions. Her favorite was National Day, a time at school to appreciate the culture of the United Arab Emirates by seeing native animals and eating traditional food.

An Impossible Rupture

By Maya Rabinowitz

The day after things changed

It rained buckets

Bubbles floating across mirrored puddles

I woke in grey violet

And left my dreams in a hurry

A flurry of heartbeats

Racking the dreary room

I took a drag through the rain

To count my words

To spread

Water from the

Crease of my cheek

The bridge of my nose

A silent story of sorrow

I warmed a can of

Salty metal soup

Til it hissed at the corners and

Overflowed the bowl

Cloudy liquid growing cold

As it clung to my throat

I could not stand

Inside my skin

I could not stand my head

Through years

Of shifting loss

The same prayer flags still

Drip from my doorframe

Still tangle on the synapses

That lie between wake and dream

May I never settle

May I always have a song to sing

Maya Rabinowitz is a sixteen-year-old lover of music and avid reader of anything poetic. She lives in Philadelphia, PA, in a quiet neighborhood with her two moms and her dog Ollie. She spends much of her free time writing, and her work has also been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

A Thought

By Melody Xiao

After I die,

I will wander the world

the way I’ve always wanted to,

see the cherry blossoms in DC

and the broken ground of the Berlin Wall

and the barren earth of the DMZ

where the voices but not the souls of the others gone

linger.

And eventually

I will tire of the earthly things

that tower but do not speak.

Somehow I’ll find my way back home,

where I’m sure my grandmother will be waiting

sunlight warming the joints that no longer ache

watering her aloe plants

and a bowl of my favorite fried rice on the table.

Melody (Mel) is a high school junior from New Jersey. She has been writing poetry for about two years and has won a number of awards, including bronze in the NJCTE competition and a gold key in Scholastic Art and Writing. When not procrastinating and worrying about her upcoming exam, Mel reads, sings, and volunteers in and with her school (PS: her favorite ice cream flavor is Ben and Jerry’s “The Tonight Dough with Jimmy Fallon).

A Note to my Collarbone Loving Sixteen-Year-Old Self

By Emily Wolst

How pathetic is it

I think over black coffee taken alone

That I belong to perhaps the only sub-culture

Of the Homo Sapiens species

That begins to cry when I catch a glimpse of my sun-tanned chest in the car mirror

Because my collarbones no longer protrude like some injured wing of a broken songbird

But are now hidden, more soft, the angularity more subtle under a layer of cushy flesh

Why is it that I find magnificence in the sharp lines of the combination of collagen and calcium

Which very protrusion I find sickening on the stray mutts that wander the street

How repulsive is it

That I find strength in what nature intends as a symbol of human weakness

Emily Wolst is an undergraduate English student at Lakehead University in Orillia, Ontario. She enjoys writing poetry and short creative fiction pieces. Her work has appeared in several local newspapers. She works part-time in a public library and spends her spare time reading both fiction and non-fiction and drinking hot coffee.