Issue Seven

The setting sun beckons all fiery things toward their rest

As autumn leaves fall like embers toward the dark earth.

I walk home across cinders,

And each step replies with crackling sparks.

 

 

Anthony DiCarlo is a first year student at Sacramento City College, pursuing a major in the field of history. In his spare time he enjoys attempting to play the piano, listening to music, being emotionally manipulated by his dog, and writing poetry.

Mom was a performer,

belted “Heart” lyrics,

harmonized with Ann,

played the air guitar with Nancy.

 

Her eyes were fire again,

after years of being told that no one listened

burned her down to the wick.

 

We always listened as the words grazed

against our ears like satin,

“Now wouldn’t you, Barracuda?”

 

She looked back at us

from the rear view mirror

and told us we could be whatever

we wanted.

It was a lesson worth learning.

 

Mom stopped

singing

when the tape stopped

playing.

My sister and I became

the music she wanted

to hear.

We carried the tune

on our backs when she couldn’t.

 

My sister chose to be Nancy,

I was Ann. We were together

barracudas.

 

 

Maddie Katarski is a junior at the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where she is studying Literary Arts. She hopes to someday pursue a career in writing. She is the editor-in-chief for her school’s newspaper. She has been recognized as an Honorable Mention in City Theatre’s 2017 Young Playwright’s Contest. This will be her first publication.

 

 

 

 

an addict’s hands / tremble / like a cave of bats / every thought /

tastes like relapse / i pull my veins / out of my arm / tie them /

to a kite / pray they get lost / in the storm

 

 

 

J. David is a spoken word artist from Cleveland, Ohio, and the author of  The Streetlight and The Supernova. Most days he spends driving, or dreaming of the way a slow train rolls through Georgia pines at midnight under a clear sky. His name feels heavy, so he sits under rain clouds trying to feel clean.

The clanking of efele in the sink as grandma dutifully does the dishes

Running the soiled plates through the water

The cold wet water that has latched onto her very being drawing her back to her beginning

It sends gentle ripples of an earthly peace to travel the wide, intersecting highways of a child’s mind

 

The quiet thumping of the aziza as my industrious mother sweeps away the dirt, evidence of a lively day drawing lazily to a close

It resounds throughout the chambers of my heart bringing with it the indescribable comfort they call “home”

 

The air is beautified with the low sizzling of the beloved fried plantains that bask in the slippery touch of heavy oil

Whose scent slowly snakes around the entire household, gracing my family with its delicious

aroma

 

The graceful stomping of my father’s feet as he dances around to his adored beats of music notes that reverberate throughout his entire body

He sends merry shockwaves pulsating through the wooden floor

 

My brothers and sisters create our own impromptu melody led by the free spirits of a youthful generation as we run about the happy home knocking down books and toys to and fro

As the hissing of the bubbling egusi soup rages on in that scented kitchen

 

And the hushed, whispered nighttime tales of the precious mbe and how the foolish turtle cracked his shell

Or the laughable ewu too confused to function in the complex animal kingdom of the vast savanna

 

The sounds ever ringing in my home are ringing throughout the essence of my existence

They draw the thin moving streams of my soul out to dance along with the beats of a divine inheritance

 

Oh yes, there is an aura in this abode

One of deep, rich, irreplaceable substance that traces us all back to the land where our names began

Where the bloodline was planted and its seeds watered by the sweat of strong, brave men and women

 

They call it culture

An invisible string that has sewn our stories together and set them afloat upon the gushing Nile whose mighty cataracts pushes us ever onward

I call it life

 

Chiamaka Okonkwo is an emerging writer. She is a junior in high school who spends her time composing poetry that takes snapshots of daily life. She can be found running in the park whilst pondering the words of Wordsworth, Longfellow or T.S. Elliot. She has work upcoming in various publications.

Heels dangling over the edge of the New York City skyline, she climbed 1,576 steps just to see her life and its relationship to the streetcars below. On 31st street the sudden deaths of three people she will never meet cause a traffic delay of fifteen minutes. On 72nd and Broadway a boy walks alone, dragging his shoes across the pavement, considering how easy it will be to step in front of the 5 o’clock subway train. Years later he remembers a woman holding a sack of groceries whose glance kept him from the edge of the platform. On 29th street, an advertisement for chewing gum plays on a television as a man with white hair and shaking hands checks his mailbox to find it empty. He will die in his sleep tonight, but for now the TV blares and the mailbox maintains its vacancy. Some indistinguishable figure 1,576 steps below hails a cab. It’s too late, they’ve missed their flight and he is four hours dead, but the world is spinning. These seconds, these lives, they blend together into the din: a symphony. Simultaneously, or across the span of centuries. The prelude to silence.

 

 

Megan Loreto is an eighteen-year-old writer originally from the San Francisco Bay Area who is currently studying English at Loyola Marymount University. Megan was an editor of Backroads Magazine for the year of 2017. In her spare time, she can be caught leafing through the journals of Sylvia Plath, listening to records from the 1960s, or spending time with her two cats, Janie and Bingley.