December 2020

Here, the world inverts itself and I wait for no car
to pass by, afraid and unafraid. A man stops

in the middle of a traffic junction and the lights turn red
but he does not run. This is still life. It starts to rain

and for a moment I imagine a foldable umbrella in
my bag, gone as I watch the ground split open, only it’s

the sky. Tell me about the new rules here: how I can
only think in backwards, how tears fall upside down,

reaching for the rooftops, how divinity lies in the bottom.
Pray to the calcified fossils in the basement, ask for

an ending instead of a beginning. When I arrive home
there is no one but the windows shatter upwards

and the attic floods first. I wonder if I am different
too: do I still have a mother, do I still write poetry

for a living, am I still in love with the moon? The trees
in the front yard grow into roots and a family enters

the closed bakery across the street. I want to belong
here. I beat prayers into the front door and I find out

that my mother died in April. There is no spring here
and I bloom last. It is harder to shrink than to grow.

There are spaces that are not meant to be filled, shadows
that swell up when they are closer to the light source.

I am opaque and transparent in the starlight, afraid
of departure. Still, I pretend not to exist as if the night

would notice. But see, the world sleeps with its eyes
open, only closing when I ask for morning to return.

 

Jessica Kim is a writer based in California. Her works appear or are forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, Longleaf Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and more. She is the Editor-in-Chief of The Lumiere Review. She loves all things historical and sour, and can be found @jessiicable on twitter and Instagram.

Wrathfully sentenced to the sky
by a constellation of envious wenches.

Withheld from my rightful throne
and condemned to forever orbit the celestial poles.

Whisked suddenly by the night air
and bound with unsightly shackles to these heavens.

Wretched inferiority has procured these seawomen
to astronomical outbursts.

When did hailing the candor of one’s beauty
become less righteous than creating a lie?

When did the love for my star-cluster of mirrors
become mistaken for deplorable vanity?

Well regardless,
wishing me away was a fool’s errand.
The night sky is divine for my complexion,
and my hair flickers by the moonlight.

With this dome of scattered light as my stage,
I am the most beloved star
for my nocturnal company.

Watch these wenches
banish me from their ocean waves.
I’ve made love to the Moon,
and guess who controls the tides.

 

Sophia Vesely is nineteen years old and a class of 2020 high school graduate from St. Petersburg, Florida. She is currently taking a gap year before her matriculation to Swarthmore College in the fall of 2021. She has work published in W-Poesis, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, and The Fiction Week Literary Review as well as a published poetry collection on Amazon.com entitled “The Road to Amour de Soi” that aims to empower young women through the notion of self-love.

That out sprouted from the branches
The brittle egg, bouquet arranged
Neat as a skeleton, perfect, twisted watchcog,
Earth’s clock, absent of a tick.
I press it to my ear and there is no sea.
I try to peel but there is no skin.
Rindless, that bone of fruit, a dragon’s seed chrysalis is
Spiraling out itself,
Mathematics in pirouette,
Bowing.

 

Seirce Mhac Conghail is a student of English and Irish at Trinity College Dublin. Their work has been published in Dodging the Rain, ODD Magazine, The Phare, and Trinity Journal of Literary Translation.

maybe it’s incongruous to part ways in a letter / but
you’ve become an extraneous integral to my identity / everything
since birth revolved around your axis: / no sun, no chlorine, no dairy / but
our priorities diverge still further apart / i like to play tennis & piano / but
you cling to my fingers, unable to let me out of your death grip / until nights
i scratch to death trying to get you off my body / i’m embarrassed when my friends
see the red marks you extrapolate onto my skin / the way you get heated
swelling out of proportion / & it didn’t use to be that way / at first we complemented
each other / you made me conscious of what i input, tossed the processed food
and sugar / taught me nourishment and self-care / warm baths ten to twenty minutes,
fragrance-free soaps / i tamed your beast of a personality / but our relationship is an
asymptote / until you approach zero i will never be at my max / & this series
has no end, no convergence / until days make it seem i have
no life / so take away your dried blood, wounds, and the smudges on my sundress.

 

 

Evy Shen is a high school junior from Statesboro, Georgia. Her writing has been recognized in an international Roundpier Poetry Contest and is published or forthcoming in Lumiere Review and Eunoia Review. She loves to travel, her favorite place in the US being Soho/Times Square in New York City, whereas her favorite place outside of the US is Suzhou, China. When she is not writing and furiously studying, she is outside with her family enjoying God’s beautiful nature.

— after “Meanwhile in America” by Christina Im

They tell me you can do anything, so I unlayer these photographs,
dig enamel into cartridge like any archaeologist.

My grandmother’s grainy smile lifting from resin, warping
into something of a frown. Her lips sewn closed. When she opens

her mouth to piece fruit between her teeth, I look for ways to bore
fossils from her lips. Unravel the stitches keeping her

wounds mute. Gouge away every splinter and sculpt it
into myth like I’ve always been told I can.

They tell me to seek history, so I sink my teeth into the dirt for scraps
of what they might call revelation. Discovery. I call it

exploitation. They tell me that every story is worth telling, pressing
rounded metal against my palm. That there are always fossils

to be excavated. Skin to be lesioned into bruises. There is no shame
in heritage, they say. Yes, there is no shame, I repeat to my grandmother,

begging for any leftovers to turn fable. Her tongue knots, and I have
scavenged every cavity empty, so now I resort to bone. My hands vising

breath into strangulation, and I brush her skeletons unspoiled
and veneer them gleaming white. I have already bleached

them of every last word I might claim heritage or history
or family and sold them smooth. All the jutting edges

sandpapered soft, everything ugly and messy buried.
My grandmother’s life claimed for my own, and I grind it

into powder to be capsuled neat and beautiful
down their throats. How convenient, their maws gaping

with hunger. There is no shame in this, I tell myself as I carve
penitence and gag on my own hypocrisy.

 

Jennifer Chiu is a writer from Memphis, TN. She has been recognized by Susquehanna University and the National Poetry Quarterly, and her prose and poetry are published or forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Sine Theta Mag, and others. When she’s not writing, she can be found admiring the sky or bullet journaling with one of her twenty-one 0.38mm black pens.

 

 

i.
Eight o’clock feels like a revolution won
leaving Seven Thirty on the ground like a ragged stuffed bear
grubby fingers grasp at a hazy moon; looks like butter, smells like wax
if only I was tall enough to pull it down by its cheeks.

ii.
Nine o’clock is dangerous territory, my father warns
but I wield excitement like a storybook sword.
I haven’t yet heard of girls who hunt dragons;
perhaps monsters are afraid of red lips and sharp nails.

iii.
I heed my father’s cautions at Ten
the stars smile sharper; their light sears my skin
I am tall enough to brush against the moon
careful not to dip too deep into his craters; they suck my fingertips
into cold shadows and horrifying emptiness.

Fear is waiting when I climb beneath my sheets
(as if they will protect me from the darkness crowding at my window)

iv.
I forget sleep, discarded like Seven Thirty in a happier house
I float in frozen space
with monsters who devour dragons and girls alike.

I climb into Eight for the smell of my blue blanket
for nothing tethers me to the ground but fleeting memories;
consciousness is a curse
and I miss my dreams.

 

Alicia Hsu is a Taiwanese-American junior at G.W. Hewlett High School on Long Island, New York. Her poetry is published and/or forthcoming in Euonia Review, Skipping Stones Magazine, Vintage (her school’s creative writing journal), and more. When she isn’t dreaming up new stories or escaping in a fantasy novel, you can find her watching nostalgic movies and taking walks with her two dogs.