Issue Four

On sleepless nights, I take to envying

the Cambridge girl: the embodiment,

with her short, metropolitan hair,

striped blazers and scuffed shoes,

of all things literary

which I am not.

She has already made her peace

with the language that soothes me

but cannot sate me, buried

her shameful roots in Austen and

Keats while mine rear lustily

through each letter I write,

for I cannot twist my words

until my will has nothing more to say.

She and her studies flaunt

their joy like a ring,

she as happy in her books

as they are to have discovered

a new mistress, a rising talent

come to lift them from obscurity;

but I do not trust so openly

what I read or what I leave

in my wake, its power too great

to reckon with or claim as my own.

 

 

Alex Walsh studies Math and Literary Arts at Brown University. Her work has previously appeared in Coldnoon, Eunoia Review, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, and Catalyst, among others.

 

I

Here, this is the dentist chair. Not quite operating
table, not quite lazy boy. Here is where IV
drips honey into dreamless sleeps & where the surgeon
will teach you how to pronounce maxillofacial. I have not reached

II

the age of wisdom, but that does not mean I don’t deserve
procedure. I will swallow whole all my anxieties and digest
them into nerve & bone and REM. I’m a good boy

III

& if you say addict I’ll probably cry. I’m a good
boy & I know how to swallow gauze like a man.

 

IIII

Here, this is the straw that you may not sip
from. Dry sockets only come for boys who stain
their teeth with coffee & cigarettes & soup. I’m a timer

 

IIII

set for the hour that I can take just one more Vicodin.

 

Joseph Felkers is a junior at Catholic Central High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  His work appears or is forthcoming in SOFTBLOW, decomP magazinE, Rust + Moth, and Superstition Review among others.  He is a genre editor for Polyphony H.S., a reader and past-mentee with The Adroit Journal, and an ice cream connoisseur at his local parlor.

 

 

 

i am living the wrought iron fence american dream.

when i stroll through the neighborhood, i wave to everyone i see,

even the dog-walkers who sneak in from the main road.

i have acquiesced to the habit of asking questions

without really caring about the answer, and

i used to pick worms off the sidewalk the morning after rain

hoping to feel something, but i didn’t, so i stopped, and

the greatest bone-crushing blow to my prospects

is that i was not enthralled by a talent as exacting as mathematics,

or science; what is the formula for creating beautiful art—i don’t know—

and what has creation ever done for me?

my yard ends precisely where yours begins.

i used to pick dandelions and bring them to my mother

and when i went back outside, she threw them away;

i always thought that it was devastating, but it turns out that

it happens to everyone. it’s a hardship we all share:

the privileged tragedy of our day.

i type a careful combination of thirty-six words about myself;

it’s a foolish dance, and i am ashamed.

it all seems like a pseudointellectual lie, but

twelve years plus one of schooling has taught me

the importance of clinging to Martian formulas.

in the Well-Developed Youth Program, we read a story

about an alien race that came to earth to tell us

our numerical system was all wrong. since then,

i’ve privately held the belief that it’s true.

 

my grief counselor told me about a girl who used to dance

in front of her window at night, and i couldn’t stop thinking

about the supermarket, with the live lobsters in the glass tank.

i used to pick my favorites and want to take them all home

but now i spare them a wistful glance, careful not to tap the glass.

 

 

Anastasia Nicholas is an eighteen-year-old journalism student. She has been published in Assonance, Canvas, Glass Kite Anthology, and Inkwell, and her poetry has received statewide awards. Samuel Taylor Coleridge is her celebrity crush.