Issue Five

/ɪnˈfəːnəʊ/

Noun

¹a very intense and uncontrolled fire ²A place or condition suggestive of hell, especially with respect to human suffering or death

 

It is the desire to be set free, from the raging fire

of emotions that confine her as she struggles to conform.

She is limited by the tether of the social expectations.

 

It is the guilt that is carried in her purse, for letting

the family friend who tried to touch her walk free.

How many charred and tainted childhoods is she responsible for?

 

It is the fear that restricts her breath, in the smoky haze

face pressed against the musty seat of the old caravan.

The road to her school, her freedom, is broken.

 

It is the sorrow that hits, when her hand lays flat

on an emptied womb carrying the embers of a female life.

Her stretch marks are the battle scars from the war she lost.

 

It is the anger that emerges when realization dawns, she is

trapped in a society that feeds on her flaws and insecurities.

They ignite the illusion that women are not worthy, the weaker sex.

 

It is the paranoia that knocks on lonely nights, searing her mind

as every blaring horn becomes a sinister laugh.

Her knuckles turn white as they grip the keys a little tighter.

 

It is the strength of the raging inferno, a reflection of

the flames that try to silence her spirit seen in her eyes.

She will burn your bones to the ashes she rises from.

 

 

Riya Yadav has just entered her junior year of high school, and has written for a few anthologies and student magazines before. Apart from writing and reading, she enjoys watching romcoms with her six-year-old German Shepherd.

 

Her hair has this grace to it

Sweet tea and big white porches

I want to tuck it behind her ear

Just to see if I’d hear rain.

 

 

Sidney Wollmuth is seventeen years old. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and she edits for Polyphony H.S.

 

 

 

your father’s wrinkled old

hands

wake you from crinkled cold hospital gown guilt dream

hospital, hands

hazardous, head

cold

but big blue bed

warm.

you try

to be good, and you read your parents

poetry, but

they think your poems are dirty and

they are

most of the time.

but sometimes,

when you write one down, you feel

so

clean.

 

Molly Rose Strugatz is an author and artist from Brooklyn, New York.  A recent graduate from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, her work has been published in Le Petite Press’ Eat/Ate, The Review Review, Troubadour, Antinomies, Pilot Press, and others. She’s appeared on Creative Converse Radio 1190 and exhibited poems at Teen Art Gallery. Visit her at mollyrosestrugatz.com.

 

 

Until then let the sun in his smug brilliance kiss our honey drenched lips

Our arms dangling, our legs splayed out or wound together tightly

 

Our rampages and our silence. Our prayers scattered

To the wind or repeated over and over in the mirror

Until they lose all magic. Let us wear crucifixes ‘round our necks

And use them to break our backs and pin our guilt

And nail our morality into. Let us have superstition

 

And thawed ground under slate grey sky. Frost bitten fingers and toes

To count our blessings and rub our relics, our rosaries between. Our strength no

Mightier than a drunken bumblebee’s. Let us have meaning

 

And a crusade. A prophet dead with more volumes to write.

Nothing to dance for us other than a plastic bag in the wind.

 

If none of this will be immortalized, then let us keep creating

With hands more worn than

A beggar’s winter coat. For this is existence. To take

 

Up threads and intertwine them for meaning

And when they are worn down to nothing

 

To keep weaving regardless. For this is our sanity.

Let us forget our sanity. For this is existence.

Let us forget our existence. Our ribcage

 

Where empty promises stick and snare us. Our lungs

That exhale phrases that leave another breathless.

 

And what if this is oblivion?

Our saints and confessions? Our sunk Lusitania?

Then let it. Let it coil around us and pull us under

 

And make us forget we are made of ashes and dust,

That there is meaning in the touch of a shoulder or caress of the waist.

 

 

Morgan LaRocca is a sophomore at Towson University and is pursuing a major in English with a concentration in writing. She is an active member in her campus community, serving as the honors college student director as well as writing center tutor. In her free time she enjoys hiking and travelling. She has been published once before in Sequel Literary Magazine.

 

 

 

 

 

One girl, a tiara atop her head, sits crisscross in chicken poop all summer, a single dozing rooster nestled in her arms. One girl who stole the other’s tea-set, stashes its shattered pieces in her palm. One girl, a bucket as her hat, awakens in a tree to watch a skyline drip with watercolor. One girl, her lungs scabby with expletives, bites another and goes home to shriek into a pillow as her parents fight upstairs. One girl whispers, “We hate you” into another girl’s unsuspecting ears. One girl sinks her teeth into another’s arm and curls up in her closet to hide from words all weekend. One girl jostles the branch outside her window, her mind set to judge the velocity of a plummeting bird. One girl locks herself in the bathroom to escape birthday cake. One girl watches her pigtails skip like rocks on water’s surface tension, not noticing that her brother’s raft has tipped over. One girl has a burial service for an earthworm she just met. One girl cannot comprehend the vestiges of another outgrown friendship, and crawls under her bed to piece them together, one page at a time. One girl throws petals as her best friend gets married at recess then slams a boy’s head into the snow. One girl sneaks out at eleven with her bow and arrow pointed at the stars. One girl, who never owned her own toys, awakens in another world playing with thousands, while her limp body lies still on a sewer cap. One girl (she told you all of this) spots your curious shadow in her eyes, and leaves you wondering why she has begun to cry.

 

 

Riley Grace Borden is a high school junior from Whidbey Island, Washington who is passionate about all things literary. Her writing has been published by Sprout Magazine, Teen Ink Magazine, Five-2-One Magazine, Moledro Magazine, Eunoia Review, and the Mercer Island Reporter. In her free time, she edits her writing peers’ work, blogs, reads, and goes for long runs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“This is our new home,” Mother says.

This home: scratched floors and chipping paint. I sleep with Sister on a bed with no frame. Two rooms, one bathroom.

New boyfriend, new home.

This home: smaller but cleaner. I make new friends. They tease me. “My dollhouse is bigger,” they jeer. Sister gets angry. I cry. Mother demands to never be ashamed of our home.

Goodbye boyfriend, new home.

This home: one bedroom, and I sleep on the couch; Sister with Mother. I weep often. Only Sister sees. When Mother does, she hurts me. Sister yells.

No job, new home.

This home: not mine.

 

 

Marina (Mari) Toplyn is a sixteen-year-old junior in high school from southern New Jersey. She is a reader and creator of all things imaginative. She writes every available second and when the notebook is tucked away, she’s creating her thoughts into pictures inside her sketchbook—which usually ends up getting stained with coffee or tea.