Issue Nineteen

Spring breaks in like a shallow inhale. Where have we been all this time?
Meanwhile, I’ve learned that all change stems from pain.
Since, I’ve felt everything for you.

I collect these, between tears and laughter. “That’s okay. And this is what I don’t need.”
Each day an archaic parallel, like a glass shard held up to the sun. Like a celebration.
I really wish I were a garden. I wish you could see that in me,

all silly and deep, with my hands under your sweatshirt. pink buds sway reduced
to their essences, next morning I wish I were a garden. concrete can’t collect the rain.
and nature’s so selfish and innocent. we know even death
can awaken us, sometimes. But I’ll find some place other to meet you.

 

 

Sarah Pritchard-Smith lives and works in Vienna, Austria, where she is currently taking a gap year after finishing high school. She loves theatre and acting, reading, and spending time outdoors. For her, writing is a way to channel her experiences and emotions honestly and an attempt to make something beautiful out of any situation.

time unmade the dense of me, undressed me a
silk-spun mutable.  in another orphaned alley, i dropped
my grandmother’s vase on the jaundiced ground, so the
vendors took me for a poor child, sold me duck tongue &
bear bile for free.  said make this your own, shoved a curdled
strip into my unwashed hands, said you want to eat don’t you
hungry thing in knotted hemiola, raked of rhythm.  i affirmed the
affliction, put the cacked flesh to my lips, its pronged end
glistening porcelain, making a sentenceless host of my grainy|
skins.  hungry do not die hungry do not die i parted my mouth
like a sea — pretended to unname everything, savored the slow
flaying of my twin corpse, the strike of its slow-roast shaft.  in the bad
manners i’ve relearned i tried to whisper, my piecemeal mouth full of bones.
nothing came out.,

⽔

when i was young, mama told me that everyone had a relationship
with the ocean.  so she prayed alone in proverb, rippled abba between

soothsayer teeth, left me chewing cardboard & plastic in the living room.  waif
like an animal corpse.  so she welled marah & elim for new salvation, that i,

might take the dissonance of mopeds for birdsongs.  on rainy days like this i
smear pizza grease on yellow shirts, print the crimson splatter like a dying in

me.  drench it in saltless tears.  here lies the polyester nation, its tag carving
forgotten promise.  here i’ve learned to mechanize product, sever the hands that

made it.  when i fought with pink-faced boys, silt became my blood, heritage my
hymnal.  called it cleansing at day.  annihilation at night.  tear by tear the veiled

moon swallows stars’ almond eyes, wordless.  i foam envy for fishnets as mouths in my dinghy,
gnawing on my desecrated carbonate shell, the tides metastatic.  at home i set fire to the monolid
cancer, drain my skins of their shrapneled silence.  wordless.

⽔

this is where the boys turned red, they said.  mountain by mountain, they wove through the bony forest, choked & porous, their molotov gazes abandoning.  i stick my lips to history’s wet bosom & sour its condensed milk, splash it against my palate in an ebbless flow.  at the museum my father points to a picture of his grandfather, says he was one of them.  says it like an untaken prize.  all i can see is a boy without a home, i say.  don’t you understand china was his the nation was his belonging he pierces syllables like bayonets in monochrome montage, makes the country all a man owned.  these days he doesn’t realize that the world goes the other way around, drowning him undead unlit sunless everything wells inside him — the telephone siphons his verb & adjective, strangles consonants midair, their bounds amorphous.  but yes i silent i a good son bring honor to my family he clasps his canon m5, makes an angel of the godless soldier, & i cannot help but picture its mouths as open wounds boring bright holes

through my sticky chest.

⽔

good evening kiss.  under streetlamps boys run wide-mouthed, bend over azaleas, their stomachs rubbery & stagnant.  father lets me lead our way back to the apartment building, tells me this is home your home my home no not was it is so i try to be quiet, burrow my tongue in its wet-marketed exigencies, pocket it like a mother of pearl beneath the monotone
beating summer’s garlic breath still flutters still spits still

begets me in its bloodborne language blows its kiss raw & angular thrashes like a

latent riptide, throttles me unfleshed unspun

unfinished

— but in my butterfly cityscape the ocean
remains moonless, splits wounds out of
ochre skies, draws dust & dew from the
great gash of heaven where another warrior
brandishes his fiery sword, arrives at the nameless
hour, takes penance for poverty, poverty for hunger, calls

me his own son sunless son
red guard son temple-tethered son sick son temple dental —

& the barefoot boys still cartwheel in their baby-shadows, teething
heaven’s blameless tears like little whetstones, making mirrors of
their lanugo eyes
sea by sea
wave by wave

never knowing how to say goodbye.

Jeffrey Xu recently discovered his passion for creative writing. When he isn’t busily typing away on a Google Doc, he can be found playing the piano or devouring chocolate. He is the founder of The Catalitic Journal and attends Livingston High School in New Jersey. He loves exploring and promoting the interdisciplinary connection between S.T.E.M. and the humanities!

I’m digging
underneath
the crab apple tree by our old house
with only my fingers. Searching
for the shiniest signs
of my boyhood. I don’t
want to think too hard
about what would have been different.
If we were to swallow down this story
and start again.

I don’t sign any name
on the birthday card I hand
to Mom. I don’t know how
to call myself her son
and say ‘I love you’ all while
sitting across from her
in the living room.

I mean, some days I think
that maybe transphobia will be gone
in say, fifty years.
I mean,
considering the trajectory
of things. Let’s trace
the graph of then to now
in permanent marker. Let’s
soak to our knees in kiddie pool optimism.

This morning,
I say my name over
and over again
until it fits the cavern
of my mouth. Some
people speak of transition
as a sliding glass door
between two separate selves:
a boy and a girl
drawing stars with the grease
from their fingers.
I’m trying
to say that I’m not any
different now,
or that I am.

I try not to think about
my future as a man like a tree
without roots. I’m chewing
optimism to the core
until its seeds scrape
the roof of my mouth.
Let’s wash our hands
in possibility
until each finger
drowns in its own wrinkles.

Look, I’m trying
to tell a story
about the grandson
not in family photos. I’m trying
to smile against
the span of all this future
without showing any
of my teeth.

R.C. Davis is a high school junior from Oak Park, Illinois. He is a 2019 winner of the Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards and has work forthcoming in Driftwood Press Literary Magazine and 3Elements Review.

When my hands slipped from their tired grasp around my mind,
They fell into your hands
Think: dreambrain, and fish tongue.
You are not a violent nothing, or a peaceful river, or a noon past purple sleep.
You are not my everything, or my darling love, or the pinnacle of my ceramic anxiety
We met in government class, where we sat in the back folding origami cranes
You are boy, think: beautiful
Synonyms include- scaly, frightening, loveworthy, crime scene, personalized thank you card
Synonyms do not include- perfect, angel, center, whole.
You will never be my home, or my air
But I will let you hold my hand as we run under awnings through the rain
My body broke when i fractured under the pressure of holding up the sky
It did not turn me into diamonds
It left lines on my legs that are not tattoos, or constellations, or anything beautiful
You will not make me less broken, but you tend to make me laugh
I do not wish to be crystalized, or sautéed, or tangled
And I don’t want my tangled nothings to suffocate you
What do you miss?
Replacement isn’t an option, but small togethers and soft violet glances are
Remembering something fondly is not the same thing as wanting it back.
And, I know you have some hard rememberings
And, I have shoulders. And caramel cinnamon ice cream, and yellow blankets
And we can be two wholes, together
our own little anythings,
with linked pinkies and quiet plans

 

J Kincaid-Beal is a 10th grade student at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is a writer, an activist, and a baker, and has several works of poetry and journalism up on The Communicator website. She was a semi-finalist in 2019 Washtenaw County youth poetry slam.

Soon the sun-backed stars
Focus into view. My mother,

The pull of clean day,
Packed away into suitcases.

Night shuffles its shoulders
Into place and headlocks

Our city, fractured only by
Blazes and broken glass

Embedded in thoughts
Shouldering rubber bullets;

They are blurred by
Haze, my eyes windshield

Wipers clotted with
Rain. I find myself

Searching past the scornfully
Strewn media posts,

Diving down beneath
The epitaphs of sooted

Screens. Names remain
Sloshed around in

Buckets brimming with
Apologies, embracing the

Hallowed hashtag as though
Clinging to words will

Bring divine meaning.
So many expect the world

To be anointed by this
Bruised oil, for the sins

Of history to be forever
Purged– today,

These three black
Nights have shone

Their darkness on
The world, concentrated

Into slick puddles.
Their names still

Ride in with the
Rolling waves,

Flow out with the
Ebbing tide:

Arbery.

Taylor.

Floyd.

 

 

Sophia Rose Smith is the People Editor for her high school’s newspaper, The MVHS Oracle, and the Editor-in-Chief of Binsey Poplar Press. When she’s not writing, she spends her time volunteering as a docent for her local history museum, practicing calligraphy, and drinking too much earl grey tea. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, California Federation of Chaparral Poets, and Schola Cantorum’s poetry-to-music program, among others.