Issue 25

a week after you died i dreamed
that you and grandpa were
having a
tea party in heaven. sitting
sanctimoniously on a rose-pink cloud,
you gossiped
about those mundane affairs you witnessed
from up in your living room in the sky.
your masculine pinkies were lifted in the
air, making
a funny juxtaposition with your dainty blue china cups.

i wrote an email to you about it.
i detailed the precise economy of my dream because i
wanted to preserve your flesh. i wanted you indelibly
material, just far away. i know you thought you
were going to purgatory, but of course i hated
that notion. i used to imagine you were off
on a business trip instead. maybe your flight was delayed.
i was never good at math but it comforted me to quantify
you, ten fingers, ten toes. to believe you existed in
the same form. that you could hear me talking to
you. i had only to speak louder, toss my words up
and watch their contrails trace the space
between us.

then the negative space
of your absence was replaced by the
positive space occupied by violets
growing out of
your ten fingers, ten toes. decomposing, you
spread under the earth, transmogrifying into the
stuff of everything that is, yet you disappeared
so neatly. (poof).
i wanted to dig you up, prop your slender
frame in the passenger seat of the minivan.
sit you at
the head of the dining room table or on the
yellow couch, tenderly place kierkegaard or kant
in your lap. how our world contracted when you
left. an empty chair. a too-big king bed.

did you die because you were
too unadulterated a self to stay?
whether or not you remain,
it must be heaven where you
are. the purgatory is in the empty space
that throbs in the ellipses
of each inadequate clause i
write to you in emails you’ll
never read.

 

 

Frances Brogan is a junior in high school and an avid writer. She’s passionate about literature, arguing, and social justice.

I need a smoke, I say,
in my pajama pants,
gray zombie flesh exposed
by a hole in the inner thigh.
With bone-crackling fingers
I slip on my fleece-lined winter boots,
let untied laces writhe against my movement,
host-less horsehair worms eager to bore through exoskeleton,
for knot-tying and mind control. My body passes
through the front door, like vapor, like smog,
I fold my knees over a front-stoop step.
The wind bites blood back into my cheeks. I check my pulse,
a muted shiver under onionskin. I reach for a lighter and a pack
but when my hand hits the silk of an empty pocket,
I remember,
with a flickering bedsheet shock,
that I’ve never smoked a cigarette,
never, not once in my life.
A red light turns green and with a rush of traffic
I decide to press on anyway,
cigarette-less.
I hold the gap between my first and middle finger,
press the negative space to lava-rock lips,
long drag.
Black soot burns down my throat, drips
into my lungs like candle wax, they bloat three sizes with heat.
I blow my clouds at passersby,
but they are busy blowing their own, dodging the acid rain.
The nicotine burrows into the pink-meat folds of my brain,
sends a rosy glow through my body like a pulsing cartoon heart.
I flash back and forth between
monster and human-again.
I sit and smoke until the sky breaks open and bleeds,
until my last neighbor tumbles over,
the last car sinks into the concrete,
the last building crumbles into ash,
rejoins the dead night mist.
I grind the remains
of my ghost-cigarette into the sidewalk
with a twisted ballerina toe
before turning inside,
half-satisfied,
half-human,
only half-pretending.

 

Emma Lagno is a writer from upstate New York. She currently studies the literature and religions of the ancient Mediterranean at Harvard Divinity School.

 

(who braved the brunt
for the both of us)
(who, stilted or stunted,
is still alive at twenty-five)
(who came out cord-caught
& kicking, miracle boy,
who came out singing Sinatra,
came out singing
Came Out Swinging,
who came out
tender as a bruise,
who bruises so easily,
like seriously, my tender-blooded
Von Willebrand brother,
King of the Block-
buster summer)
(who, in second grade, was shamed
for having nails painted flame—
who instead of going home,
& bathing in acetone,
inspired boys to do the same,
to steal their mother’s polish
& paint, a protest in each shade
of pink, gold, green, blue)
(you, who protected me
from the torment of elementary,
who found me sobbing by the swing sets
& said, half-threat,
you’d hit the heels of
my bully with the sharp edge
of your Razor scooter, you,
who taught me tough skin,
never tormented again,
you, who still holds my hiccups with
the softest snarl, you)
(big brother, who cries beside me
at the Tigers Jaw concert, whole
decade later, whose life
was saved by songs
shouted in the shower,
shouted shrouded
in sweat, shouted silent
in the tourmaline night,
big brother, who gave me lyrics
like heirlooms for when the hurt hums
like heartbeats, like blue prints
of an architectured ocean
you tread & survived
—so do it,
I dare you,
I triple dog dare
you, swim up straight
& admit that you’re special.

 

Mila Cuda is the former Youth Poet Laureate of the West Coast. Her work has been featured on Button Poetry, Teen Vogue, Rookie, and PBS. She is the lead poetry editor of the feature film Summertime (dir. Carlos Lopez Estrada), which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Mila is a caffeine-sensitive lesbian from Los Angeles with a sheer enthusiasm for spiders.

I am a child,
Writing through eyes of
Innocent gleam.
This vast world— we sleep
At its heart, where the steady pulse and thrum
Of a billion dream-filled gaits
Cocoon our infant race.
We are swathed in our youth and beginnings,
And from the first cries
We carve our stories in tender stone.

I am a daughter,
Writing through eyes of
Hopeful truth.
This golden world— we fall
At its spine, where a waterfall of opportunity
Cascades down its diamond back.
Like light through a prism,
We sweep through the rapids and burst
At the foam pool, iridescent
In our shrewd purity.

I am a mother,
Writing through eyes of
Healing scars.
This scaffolded world— we devour
At its stomach, where the iron bars of its rib cage
Crack beneath our beating.
Our young race, growing, when we cannot tell
If the fingers come from the same body;
Painting this pallid shell crimson, when
One eye turns against the other.

I am a grandmother,
Writing through eyes of
Hungry surrender.
This caving world— we stand
At its feet, where an ocean of abomination
Weigh down these cruel, waxy-blue toes.
Take your aim, emerge the victor,
We have diverged into strangers;
Firing at one another, we are
Firing at ourselves.

I am a human,
Writing through eyes that
Long to heal.
This story-teller world— we stand
At its hands, where each pen stroke
Patches another inward wound.
The pages will not end, ink will not still,
Until every last shadow of hurt
Is stitched and blackened. Until these thousand cuts
Have been written away.

——

I am a skeleton,
Bones creaking,
Bleeding bandages of words
Even when the flesh
Has long since left.

 

 

 

Sarah Sun is a writer, musician, and high school freshman from New York. Her poetry has been featured in the Fall (Top 10 Winner) and Spring Editions of Creative Communication’s “A Celebration of Poets”, and her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing awards, L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, and Up North Lit magazine, among others. In her free time, she enjoys playing saxophone, piano, and reading.

 

In a dream I’ve seen in the up, up, and away sectors of my mind, collector of the sublime, a vision so dear and of fear that wouldn’t stay. I hold this old story once told by my brain to me and now to the world.

Houses, houses, houses. All the houses. Each the same as I slugged through the neverending lane. All sized and high and black and white. No matter where I pattered, former or latter.

The only sounds produced from the friends I found. They as lost as I, we try and we cry. Creating dissonance as we walk the neighborhood infinite.

We longed to refresh, lest we collapsed to piled flesh, we trailed left. Shooed in and shut in, we go in, the house just another twin. More did my mind’s eye see than you would ever believe: eight crumbs of my brother on a plate. His wife had just ate.

Hysterical, I left the unbearable sight of her bite. If you could believe, I was relieved to heave once more through the cement, limitless time spent with a lament for the kin skinned and binned to satisfy a woman thinned.

Walk on, walk on, walk on. Drowned in similarity, parched of rarity, faced with an unwanted verity. More steps, more reps, less hope, less scope. I withered as I weathered the dithered scene. Until at last, I collapsed. A walker lapsed. With a last breath, I slipped into my death.

Free from the neighborhood infinite, I found my perception had been all a conception. My heart persisted, my blankets twisted, I grasped the dream hardfisted. Scribbled on a rippled page, the memory trickled from my brain to my feet to the blank sheet. The dream’s story, I molded and I folded, and now to you, I’ve told it.

 

 

Ryan is an aspiring writer from North Carolina. She hopes her writing will serve as the sign someone is looking for.

The shadows swam like fish,
Brushing smooth and bone white
Against the sprinkled red darkness of this
Wailing night. My vision blurs,
Shimmering like scales that scratch
Upon my scars, making the roaring
History that haunts me a glittering
Pearl of wonder that tempts me into
Drowning once more in the rigged waters.
It sings to me, coiling a sea breeze in my blood,
The tingles swirling like a whirlpool in my stomach,
As the mirror reflects in the shadows.
Enchanting, beautiful, it lures me in.
The last thing I saw was a flurry of
Red fish that swarm around me till

Darkness.

Not of ink or the depths of deep sea green,
But of blood and shadows, trying to be
Beautiful as light, even though it chills
Me each lingering night. Each lingering
Night I am alive, but not survived.

 

Isla Walker is a young writer from southern California. Though she has been told that they were born on Earth, Isla is sure that she’s actually from a moon in a different planetary system. They love to write sci-fi, comedy, and psychological, and really love flower imagery.