Issue 27

there isn’t a version of this       I can see ending
happy   even in my head      we are doomed
to spend forever       in that storage closet   yes

we are in love     but eventually     the taste
of your strawberry lip gloss    goes rancid
in my mouth     and the zipper on my dress

rusts shut and no matter     how much we try
to convince each other that our love     transcends
hunger     we starve to death    all the same no

one notices we’re gone for months    years even
but when they do          they find what’s left
of my biology notebook    seeped with just enough

acetic acid to make      my marginal drawings
of us at an altar    unrecognizable to even your mother
the morgue buries us      in the same unmarked

grave our bodies    lay rotting        unadorned
unremembered beneath      the soccer field
in death     I rest  in secret     but you rest    easy

knowing     that the evidence of our transgressions
will decay    until there is           nothing
left for the anthropologists  to find

 

Neva Ensminger-Holland (they/she) is a recent graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy, and is an incoming freshman at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. They are a YoungArts award winner, and an American Voices nominee in the Scholastic Art and Writing Competition. Their work is published or forthcoming in the Interlochen Review, One Art, The Albion Review, and the YoungArts anthology. In their free time, they enjoy wearing ripped tights in the winter, watching Gilmore Girls with their roommate, and hot-gluing the straps back on their platform Mary-Janes.

There’s a gross pink skirt in my closet.
Last worn in August,
it swings on a plastic hanger,
dangles all pale and pretty above my favorite trousers—
the wildly androgynous ones.

There’s a gross pink skirt in my closet
that left red marks on my stomach,
bunched my skin, and suffocated my kidneys.
Pale blue and yellow roses scatter the fabric
that reminds me I’m an object.

There’s a gross pink skirt in my closet.
A byproduct of the male gaze,
much like me,
it sways back and forth and tickles my forehead
as I reach for anything that will scream she-they-and-gay.

There’s a gross pink skirt in my closet
It serves as an artifact from the times
I didn’t know how to dress.
It brings back all those days I forced mysef to be femme,
suck in and smile,
cross my legs and sit straight.

There’s a gross pink skirt in my closet
that I don’t wear anymore
but can’t seem to get rid of.
Part of me knows boys would like that skirt on me.
Part of me is still convinced I need their approval.

 

Halianna Leland is a junior at the Albuquerque Academy in New Mexico. They foster a passion for writing both creatively and journalistically. A young queer woman, writer, and black belt in karate, Halie believes in telling raw stories in beautiful ways. Their work has been published locally in Other Voices Literary Magazine, The Advocate News Site, and received recognition in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

hey so
so today i saw someone thought it was you
could’ve sworn it was you they had the same jacket i guess
but how are you? no actually let’s scratch that
because i don’t really want to know how you are because
talking is weird now.
(can we acknowledge that?
can we rip the band-aid off
or is this wound not ready to rot in the sun?)
yeah talking is weird now but being without you is weirder.
i don’t want to know you now but
i wanted to know you then, or
i wanted you to know me, or
i want you to want to know me now
(something like that)
and at night i pull up your contact
i keep typing “hey do you still like me?” and then not hitting send.
i’ve been thinking about elementary school like how
we’re kinda like the tinfoil boats we would make
adding dimes till it sinks
or when you catch the teacher crying and
realize she’s human but you kinda wish she wasn’t
so i don’t know where i was going with this but i think
i think there’s still some part of you that still gets what i mean.
you know i used to daydream about you,
like imagining us in every movie i watched,
i’d be chasing after your train, you’d be watching me
out the window, or like you’d come back home
after years away and i’d be waiting for you,
and we’d be perfect,
and we’d be perfect,
but that would never happen anyway.
because there’s no one to write our story except us.
anyway what i am trying to say is
i know time is unstoppable, like
it lives in our walls, like
it’s the blindfold and the pin and the donkey,
it recedes like a tsunami and then
swings for the sucker punch,
i know we are dragged out to sea
but i think there’s still time, grab my arm,
we can go back to ourselves, we can
go back to the way things used to be.
if our past selves still live within us
(like tree rings or like nesting dolls)
let’s bring them out
let’s let them talk.

 

 

Marlo Cowan is a young writer from the West Coast. They have a passion for linguistics and baked goods and are proud to identify as nonbinary. They were a commended poet in the 2021 Foyle Young Poets Contest.

My knife slid
like a silver
fish through
cardiac tissue

veins for
green pond scum
arteries still
pulsing, screaming
raw against their
mortality

i cut your heart,
my heart, into
slices as thin
as deli meat

slid it between
sheaves of
buttered bread

and washed it
down with
masala chai

possession is love,
my love, and
love is God

so perhaps
God is the scarlet
at my mouth’s
corner

perhaps God
is bread
and jam

 

Dia Bhojwani is a seventeen-year-old writer, editor, and activist from Mumbai, India. They’ve received awards from the Seamus Heaney Center, Lune Spark, and Wingword, and most recently, were the recipient of the 2021 Claudia Ann Seaman Prize for fiction. They’ve been published in a range of literary magazines and periodicals, including Polyphony Lit, Parallax, The Hearth, and The Punch Magazine. Their first book, the Pandemic Diaries, was published in January 2021. They enjoy Richard Siken, Hawaiian pizza and stand-up comedy.

 

 

 

 

 

Living sometimes, is skydiving between God &
home. Screw my frosty breath. I was born in the language

of summer. Brick after block mason-ed in winter’s
semantics. Leaf-green okra whitening in the refrigerator.

I do not know what it means to watch a bird
freeze to its demise in the snow. But I can imagine.

We learnt the same way how light is faster
than sound. Books before bullets. Black bird’s path bright

-ened by lightning. Before her blinding. Before thunder
set dudu feathers & bones on golden-yellow

fire scattered over grey clouds. Audience, like in this poem,
no violence is intended. If one or two hundred

million casualties result from a trial at illumination,
we sure could write that off. There’s only one

Yoruba word for fire & light—iná. In the GOT series,
The Mad King’s last words were: burn them

 all; burn them all. LOL. The story goes that on the colonizers’
arrival, my foremother & forefather stretched out

black arms to receive light, & were greeted
by bullets. Forgive light. Blame language.

 

 

Muiz Opeyemi Ajayi (Frontier XVIII) studies Law at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He’s an editor at The Nigeria Review, featuring/forthcoming on Poetry Wales, Nigerian News Direct, 20.35 Africa, San Pedro River Review, Trampset & elsewhere. He’s a 2021 ARTmosterrific Writer-in-Residence, PROFWIC Poetry Prize & BKPW Poetry Contest second runner-up.

Muggy subway steps
Reach ground level.
Babies on the loose.

Sun gleaming, beaming heat.
Anxiously stretching
Locked hamstrings, flexed calves.
Click, fanny packs strapped.

3-2-1 horn blares!
Human yarn weaving my path
Cautiously. Carefully careening.
Where is the water station?

Mile 4. Lethal cramp,
Gut knotted. Concrete quick sand.
Toes grieving, fingers numb to despair
Rounding mile 5.

9 mile split crossed.
Lemon-lime gatorade splashes
Torrid tongue, saliva shortage.
Knees near collapse.

Feet meet 10 mile finish line.
Sweat sizzles side burns,
Banana tastes of victory.
Medal dangles from my neck.

 

Shaan Udani is sixteen years old; he lives in Morris Plains, NJ.  He is a rising junior at Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange, NJ. Shaan plays the Indian drums, otherwise known as the Tabla. He also enjoys playing sports and spending time outside taking pictures of whatever he can find. Shaan likes to write nonfiction and experiment with poetry. The poem “How I Spent My Sunday Morning” is a personal account of running the Philadelphia Broad Street Run with his family.