Issue 24

Wake Up

By Ally Chen

Through depicting myself in the side view mirror- watching, horrified, as the trash floats toward the car- I hope to bring awareness to the effects of global warming and pollution. The words “current pollution levels are more damaging than they appear” and the murky city skyline represent the foreseeable state of our world. While the car drives away from the pollution, it enters the untouched Antarctic realm, symbolizing life and growth. My piece highlights the deprecating impacts of climate damage and initiating change.

Ally Chen is an ambitious sophomore student attending a high school in Northern Virginia. She has long been interested in art and has been actively creating pieces since around age five. Although it fluctuates, Ally’s most preferred style is realism! Her passion for art grew throughout the years, especially during the quarantine period of 2020, where she found an abundance of time to take advantage of. During quarantine, she used art as a way to entertain herself and relieve mental stress. She now uses it to help children in healthcare centers through a youth-led nonprofit organization. Aside from art, Ally also enjoys travelling and spending time with family!

Turtle Girl

By Patricia Donato

There was a girl at my school who never spoke a word. She had turquoise hair, a septum piercing, and she wore a green hoodie like a shell. We all called her Turtle Girl.

I don’t know why I called her that and laughed with the other kids. You see, I was unpopular like Turtle Girl. The only difference was that I talked, and she didn’t.

One day, some bullies hit me at recess. I wasn’t much of a fighter, so I took it for fear of worse. The other kids watched from a distance, some trying to defend me but most doing nothing. Turtle Girl sat on her own, away from me, the bullies, and the other kids. She chewed her sandwich and looked bored, until suddenly, she wasn’t. She stood up, walked over to the biggest bully hitting me, and she left her shell just like that. She rolled up the sleeves of her green hoodie and hit the bully.

When the bullies retreated, Turtle Girl left the scene. She didn’t say a word, just walked away. While the other kids talked, I followed her, spewing thanks and wonder. Turtle Girl remained silent.

Eventually, frustrated by her silence, I asked her, “Why did you help me?”

Turtle Girl blinked at me. “You looked like a turtle going into its shell,” she said, rolling back down her green sleeves. “I thought I’d help you, because you don’t have a shell.”

And just like that, she returned to her shell and resumed her lunch.

I never called her Turtle Girl again.

Patricia Jane Donato is the aspiring author of short stories, novels, poems, and maybe even graphic novels. When she’s not writing, she’s reading, walking in the woods, drawing manga, or chatting with her friends. Patricia’s work also appears in The WEIGHT Journal and Cathartic Literary Magazine.

The Window

By Jack Arnold

The window saw. It saw people come and go. It saw happiness, anger, pain. If you were to look through the window, you could see just about anything.

The window was a gateway. It saw worlds crushed, and worlds built back up. Life, death and destruction. Sometimes it showed things that it was supposed to, like the weed-strewn sidewalk in front of it.

Other times, it showed empty space, sprinkled with stars. A flooded world. A futuristic pet shop. An elephant, silently trumpeting as its herd migrated. A necromancer, bent on power, sending his skeletal armies to conquer anything they could find.

But today, for the first time since its creation, the window showed nothing. An expanse of white, devoid of anything. Passersby wondered at its inherent emptiness. Some fretted, worrying about what the blankness could mean. Children came by to watch the goings on within the window, but quickly became bored.

None owned the window, for it stood free of any barriers or walls. None knew where the window came from, or how it was built. They knew only that one day, it appeared in front of a vacant lot, bolted to a three-legged wooden table. That was all.

Presently, within the white, a dot appeared. It grew closer, becoming less blurry and more pronounced with each step, until it was discernible as a humanoid. It appeared to be calling something undecipherable. Sound does not travel through the window.

The humanoid’s movements became more frantic, panicked, as it searched for something unseeable.

A frequent visitor of the window, bored and requiring entertainment, brought a lawn chair and sat facing the window, watching the humanoid scrabble around. The frequenter was joined by two others, all dissatisfied by their current state of boredom. One coughed.

The humanoid’s head jerked up, and it glanced around. One of the other frequenters laughed. “It heard you.” The person said, jokingly.

The humanoid stood up straight, bones snapping audibly, despite the constant silence of the window and the distance of the humanoid.

One of the frequenters looked at the window oddly. “It’s never made noise before.”

“Yeah, that’s weird.”

The humanoid walked closer to the window, and its features became distinct. It appeared to be a male human, with a sweeping cloak around his shoulders. His eyes were without white, an empty endless black.

He got closer, and closer, still very slowly. The frequenter who had coughed shuffled nervously. “I don’t like this. I’m headed home.”

The frequenter left.

The man in the window did not. He kept walking until his face was directly in front of the glass.

He pulled open the window, a feat no other being had ever accomplished, and stuck his head out. The remaining frequenters screamed.

The man looked directly at them and said seven words in an emotionless voice. “I will be taking my window back.”

He grabbed the sides of the window and pulled it inward. The window popped inside of itself and disappeared. One of the frequenters fainted.

Jack Arnold spends most of his time keeping his three younger brothers wrangled, but when he has time, he writes (or reads, whichever he prefers). Usually about characters he’s created with his brothers, who are an excellent source of inspiration.

portrait as a winter afternoon

By Norah Brady

the rink is closed, the sky is purple and full
of ice, we could say the sky is a bruise and
not talk about what might have happened
to bruise it, but it’s raining, and a flock
of dogs are pointing south through the park
where the train blurs our words together: howl,
for this is not a garden, for this is not
the garden and I drove us here for nothing

and perhaps we already left the walls and there
is no garden to return to, and maybe this fact
has nothing at all to do with us, young and trapped
as we are in the past with no place to go, beating
the ground with our feet for something to do

if today were a bear trap, I would be the spring
gauge lying tacit in the snow trying not to feel
too beat up about the neighbor’s pear tree
(they took it down with a wrecking ball)
(a wrecking ball, and I think about how I might
hurt the people I love) and how I love my eggs in a basket,
how I love the basket and its nest of perfectly timed
meetings, all my thoughts like ribbons
pinned into dinner party art, eating themselves

look, why would a tree be mine, it is not an
egg, it is not a basket, and the wrecking ball is
not a bear trap, something looking for a fight,
something transparent and lonely

look, the ice is melting anyway, the tree
has forgone all possession by becoming a
ghost, the ghost doesn’t want to talk to you
but that’s ok, you’ll both come around

and we’re not talking about any of this really,
who would, when there are so many places to
warm your feet, we’re listening to classical music
on the drive back from the rink, because
the dial’s stuck, because maybe
the world ends, because I know all the words

Norah Brady is a moon enthusiast, haunted house, and mountain poet. They were a runner-up for Youth Poet Laureate of Boston in 2020. Their poetry and short fiction can be found in Rookie Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, COUNTERCLOCK and Kissing Dynamite.

Birthright

By Mofiyinfoluwa Okupe

when they ask you why you do not whisper, tell them fear was not buried in your mouth. your mother’s blood opened your eyes, loosened your tongue, sharpened your teeth. this is your birth right. let them know you belong here. leave no room for mistaken assumptions. fill every room to bursting with your presence. never shrink. for him. for anyone. spread your abundance in every crevice. suffocate them with your light. let them look in every corner and find you. smear your blood on the temple gates; they will not pass over you. when they ask you why you do not hide, tell them that creatures of light have no kinship with the darkness. you inherited fire in your blood, if they touch you, they will burn.

Mofiyinfoluwa Okupe is a reluctant lawyer-in-training writing from Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores the complexity of human emotions, with a deeply introspective self-lens. Her work is published in Guernica, The Kalahari Review, Agbowo and forthcoming in Black Warrior Review. She tweets @fiyinskosko and publishes monthly pieces on Medium.

The Wild

By Gabrielle Beck

Our bus is stuck in traffic
and I’m late for lunch with my grandpa
because his silence makes me feel a little bit less lonely
in a world where it’s easier to forget
the deaths of old friends, the day’s list of tragedies.

I know he longs for fiction—
his home, by the bay, indestructible.
I once ran with innocence through the halls of his apartment,
but I no longer have that lens of childhood sweetness
or his escape from reality.
New York’s too cold tonight.
I shiver in the loss of naivete.

The bus lurches forward
in the city where it’s possible to be enveloped in the heat
of hundreds of apartment lights and still feel a chill
tremble through your heart.

They want me to be myself like a shark might be herself in a city aquarium
Motionless, encumbered by the glass.
I pretend like I’m told.

I am the only passenger left,
waiting to wade in the tide of unknown
undulate along the waves of my intuition,
and send ripples through the status quo,
but I am impatient.

It is now nighttime and for a fleeting moment
the chaos of the pandemic blurs into stillness.
I tell the driver what is beneath my kaleidoscopic eyes,
my truth fading into the endless cries of taxis
and the wispy strands of smoke rising from concrete.
Whether or not he listened,
I entered The Wild, glass shattered.

Gabrielle Beck is a junior attending Tenafly High School. When she is not writing or photographing, she can be found repurposing vintage denim. She is a finalist for New York Times “Coming of Age in 2020: A Special Multimedia Contest for Teenagers,” and recognized by the National Council of Teachers of English. Her writing and photography has been featured in Kalopsia Literary Journal, Cathartic Literary Magazine, Young Writers Project, and Written by the Youth.