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Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

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Issue Seven

New York City

By Megan Loreto

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.

Ship Down

By Akua Owusu

Skin sinking in goosebumps,

I reach out for you:

asylum from the dark blue

lashing out to lap me up.

Pulling my head onto your shoulder,

you whisper to me,

and I bask in the brush

of your breath on my cheeks.

Resting on my raft,

I watch the spirals

traipse away from your legs

as you propel them back and forth.

Praying for a miracle

to sweep us back to land,

you succumb to the tremors —

I don’t let go.

 

Akua Owusu is a junior at Milton Academy who spends most of her time in her dorm room stressing about extracurriculars. In her short life, Akua has moved back and forth between Accra, Ghana and New England suburbs. Akua’s unique experience of the world is the main motivating factor behind her writing.

 

Waiting in Vain

By Claire S. Lee

I’d like to sightsee God

one day, but I don’t know

where to go. My mother

sees him on the road

leading up to our home,

his invisible shadow

hot over her shoulders,

his visage reflected in my

dark-swept pupils. I

imagine God beckoning

to my mother, her nodding

chin hooked by his finger-

wick. Her eyes, eclipsed. Mine,

still searching.

 

 

Claire S. Lee is a student at Canyon Crest Academy. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and appears or is forthcoming in *82 Review, Rising Phoenix Review, and Eunoia Review, among others. She works as an editor for COUNTERCLOCK and as an editorial intern for The Blueshift Journal. Though she loves poetry and nonfiction, her favorite genre is historical fiction.

Overpass, West Valley Freeway

By Elijah Laker

Overpass, West Valley Freeway

 

 Every day over the summer, I walked across an overpass to the bus stop for my summer classes. During the last week of the class, I was walking back towards my house and I just thought the view was aesthetically pleasing, so I stopped to take a picture. Honestly, it doesn’t hold any deeper meaning other than the fact that it’s beautiful. The title itself is just the slightly altered name of an overpass sharing the same street name as the one pictured. Maybe you wanted a more poetic meaning behind the image, but that’s all there is to it. I like taking pretty pictures. 

Elijah Laker is a freshman in high school. He enjoys baking, drawing, and working on multimedia projects. This is his first published work.

Potkop

By Ana M. Finzgar

Potkop

The photo was taken in an abandoned hidden military dock. It is now in ruins, but it once served the purpose of hiding – a shelter for boats and the people. The local name for it is “potkop”, a Montenegrin word that does not have an exact synonym in English, but could mean “something in the ground”. The tunnels are eerie and dark, intertwined and they sometimes seem infinite, but you always end up in the area where the ships were stored. There, the sun reflects on the tips of waves, and shadows fall on the walls wounded by graffiti. In the past twenty years, it has become a junkyard, with empty cans and broken glass, plastic bags and shattered rocks everywhere. Once again it is at war, not for the people, but with them. I’ve explored potkop since I was a toddler, and because of it, I fell in love with ruins; history and beauty hidden in the cracks.

 

ana m. finzgar is a teenager from the mediterranean. she loves music, movies and exploring.

Media Made

By Shannon Muller

Media Made

My passion is painting, I have been painting since I was five years old (I’m now 20). I’ve recently found out my love for painting landscapes, the peacefulness it resonates in me is addictive! But I also love illustrating, I would always create fantasy characters before I learnt how to draw properly. I think what helps me in my journey and process of art is nature. Nature for me is art and art to me is spirit and exposure of the soul. 

The acrylic mountains is a piece I did of a Drakensberg scenery, simply titled “Drakensberg” and the collage one is a recent piece I did titled “Media made”, focusing on the style surrealism with the theme of stereotypes and social media. Women are constantly being brushed to conform to societies appeal for “perfection” and roles a women should be actively participating in. In means of bodily perfection. I used magazine bits and the newspaper to identify the media, they have a role in how people act. Her face is unidentifiable since it’s not speaking to one person but rather a community of women being suppressed and undermined of our abilities. The flowers in her clothes are real dried flowers and represent our femininity. 

 

Shannon Muller is from Durban South Africa, currently studying a bachelor of Fine Art and taking psychology as a subject at Rhodes University in Grahamstown Eastern Cape. She loves to read, paint landscapes in her free time and sit in coffee shops. She aspires to be an illustrator and is currently working on selling hand painted cards in local coffee shops. In the time she’s not studying she enjoys spending quality time with her family and her fiancé, this includes running and exploring her beautiful country.

 

 

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