Issue 23

Needle-shaped crystals of golden rutile
protrude from ocean-coloured quartz.
Its Technicolor shards tell me that my life
means nothing in the face of a mineral
that has crossed a rushing sea of time
to arrive smooth and sharp all at once
in my small, leathery hands by the foamy water
as I call to you, hoping you’ll see
the shimmering, yet painfully irregular, polygon
that rests in my hands like a
Sleeping child. What more could I want than a
strange thing in my palms
that reminds me of my woefully insignificant state
among stars hanging over me
in the freezing heat? This quartz with a rutile stake
through its heart tells me you
won’t come. I’ve called out to the sunless sea
the void that fills the space between
the grainy sand and whatever heaven we came from.
The crystals tell me I’ll never be home
and that I’ve been playing God by yelling your name
from the microscopic beige that fills the space
between my toes. But as I dip my feet into the water
and accept the stippled sea spray
and wade through the same clever colour as the shape
I hold tenderly, I thank it for its advice
and drop it into the sea. I sit down, float through debris,
and as my toes are eaten by tiny sharp-toothed fish,
tell the stars
I’ve returned home.

 

CA Russegger is a Filipino writer whose work doesn’t appear anywhere much, but who loves history, literature, and dogs.

after Aimee Nezhukumatathil
SUWANEE, GEORGIA

 

My mother harvests yard-long beans, their tails a bracelet on her wrist. I pour plasticky water into the dusty, dusty dirt & make mud pies. I am a cooking show host. I am eight & want to bike around the cul-de-sac with my neighbor-friends, but my knees are still red-cratered from the last time. I am eight, my brother is new, & we puff our faces into full moons for every picture until our mother cries no, no, no. I am eight & I belt “Heartbreak Hotel” to our Thanksgiving casseroles. I’ll be a pop sensation if the cooking show doesn’t work out. I am eight & I squeeze my mother’s pear lotion into the bath mats & scrunch my toes & dance until the silky green disappears. I never see her nose wrinkle. Sometimes I steal into the dark of her purse & find sugared mango ribbons, tough & expired, meaning a squirrel’s desperate paws, meaning a prize saved for winter. A sweet reminder of home, I think—she pokes at the determined puffing of my cheek & says, No, no, can’t you save one for me?

 

 

Noreen Ocampo (she/her) is a Filipina American writer and poet based in Atlanta. Her work appears in Taco Bell Quarterly, Hobart, and HAD, among others, and she studies at Emory University. Say hello on Twitter @maybenoreen!

 

“What we have called ‘the new abnormal’ last year…now has become an apparently enduring,
disturbing reality which things are not getting better.”

  — Robert Rosner, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

 

you tick like
ball bearings
in a Rolex
that doesn’t stop.
there are barely
minutes to midnight.
each branch is
a fortune untold.
no two nettles
the same green
all over.

you
have looked hard
enough. worry on
your wing, not
the bare branch.
each year they
turn brown for
the same answer.
says the parent
whose child will die.

instead of trusting
your instincts, you
should have known
when to make
new ones, says
any raving evangel
of the anti-Earth,
the future comes
a little faster
with every
lukewarm winter.

 

 

Jonce Marshall Palmer (they/them) is a nonbinary poet & organizer recently relocated near Denver, CO. Their first chapbook, Searching For Smoke Rings, is available from Ghost City Press. You can connect with Jonce and see more of their work on Twitter @masterofmusix or on their website https://jmpalmer.carrd.co

I break the tangy cocoa.
It starts to melt under my touch,
and paints my fingertips a rich dark brown.
My mouth aches from craving;
that silky sweet chocolate.
I drop the small shard
into my mouth.
The bite of the cocoa
coats my tongue,
as its bitterness
dissolves on to the roof of my mouth.

I glance over at the gleaming green
of the other tangy sweet-
tart apple I probably should have instead.
Then I glance at the other
chip of bitter dark chocolate
whispering my name
and smile,
already knowing what I will indulge in next.

 

Alessandra Obrist is fourteen years old, and originally from Guatemala. She’s lived in the U.S. since she was two months old. When not in school she enjoys art, music, cooking/creating healthy foods, reading and writing. She also enjoys being active, and doing things like running, yoga, exercise, and volleyball. She writes to understand reality in her own words, and hopes readers can see it through this writing.

The infinite altruist to mankind
The majestic and naked azure
The color changing trickster
The empyrean that has known the globe for the
longest
The homebody of stars
The portmanteau of solar and lunar light
The bearer of clouds’ raw wrath, rage and
tantrums
The pursuer of hope and courage
The sacred weight on the shoulders of Atlas
The ultimate beginning and end of existence
altogether.

 

Sayantika Halder is a student from Nirmala Convent School Siliguri, West Bengal, India. She likes to read poetry and literature, from the works of Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charles Bukowski, Franz Kafka, to John Green and Rupi Kaur. In her leisure time, she writes poetry.

had death afflicted me before I ever lived
you would be a Texan
I could almost picture you
young, beautiful, and stressless
without the stretch marks across your belly
driving around in your two-door
blasting R & B in the Texas heat

had you went to the surgeons to have me removed prematurely
you would have never tried to stay with him
your heart
your pelvis
would have never been scarred
in my removal from you
I was born with a bad omen
with a nuchal cord

I still wonder if you have regrerts
had you unlocked the shackles
of me at seventeen
and left me to the world
would you be happier?
but instead you kept me out of faithful love   and I dare to wonder
did you make a mistake?

 

 

Kalvin Verner is a high school junior from Kansas City, MO. As a young child up to now, he has always enjoyed reading poetry but never got into writing poetry until early 2020. Verner has previously won a Scholastic Honorable Mention for his poetry, and he plans to continue expressing himself with words.