Issue Ten

The pig’s exposed organs sepulchered our only scalpel:

a rusted thing.

My fingers are covered in guts

‘cause no one else would dig in.

Abi called us “nasty”

me and the boy, laughing as we dodged

squirting juices from the bloated fetus on our black lab table.

The pig’s exposed organs sepulchered our only scalpel:

After class, the ammonia smell chased me

down the biology hallway to my

baby blue locker,

a rusted thing.

I guess, as kids, we’re almost always running

from unspoken somethings. Our class was never truly

separate- always a collective organism -until I whispered,

“my fingers are covered in guts.”

No one wants to hang out

with a twelve year old cannibal

so I was alone in my painful excavations

‘cause no one else would dig in.

 

Mackenzie Cook is a high school junior currently attending Cy Fair High School. She is head editor of the literary magazine there, Voices in Ink, and also actively participates in the WITS Houston youth advisory council as vice president. When not writing, she loves to look at birds.

You left me out

To get hard and stale

And now

I’m just crusty

You might as well bake me

Into garlic bread

So someone will appreciate me

That someone

Won’t be you

I know

 

I know that you don’t like it

You hate garlic

And that’s why

I want to cover myself in it

And make myself into

The best damn garlic bread

I can possibly be

Because I don’t need you

To be me

 

Sierra Woelfel is an author based out of Sewickley, Pennsylvania. She focuses on poetry as she works towards a law degree. She also is employed as a blind installer.

The air smells like dimes,

I have pencil shavings for pocket liners

And my jacket is covered in snow stains,

I think I am in love.

 

I have pencil shavings for pocket liners

Wrinkled fingers pull at the hem

I think I am in love.

I’ve left a trail of footprints in my wake.

 

Wrinkled fingers pull at the hem,

looking for a change

I’ve left a trail of footprints in my wake.

My knuckles don’t quite meet your door.

 

Looking for a change,

I close my eyes to better see.

My knuckles don’t quite meet your door.

Every exhale is frozen in time

 

Flurries are stirred in a whirlwind

And my jacket is covered in snow stains

Too much time has passed,

The air smells like dimes.

 

 

Morgan Almasy is a junior creative writing major at her high school. She has twice attended the creative writing summer camp at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Almasy has previously been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing awards and has been awarded Gold Keys, Silver Keys, and Honorable Mentions at the regional level. Almasy has previously been published in Moledro Magazine, Blue Marble Review, and Literary Orphans magazine. She hopes to pursue a double major in marketing and creative writing in college.

I like it when

The wind pulls at my hair

With her cold, rough hands

Through your open car window

While we fly down back roads

 

It’s dark

And your right headlight

Hasn’t even flickered

Since October

 

The windows go up,

She’s sending chills

Down your spine

 

One dim bulb

Should light the way

 

It doesn’t.

 

 

Bailey is sixteen years old and is currently a junior at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School studying in the Writing and Publishing department.

 

Blue ink upon the paper brings to mind

The things I might be writing if instead

I used an ink like green or pink or red.

For now I’ll see what things the blue might find.

 

Now easy to my pen come words of wet

With lines like: “Lonely waters seek the land,

Their foamy fingers stretching toward the sand,

‘Till they to sea return again.” and yet

 

When I attempt perhaps this time to write

A word or two concerned with summer leaves

The blades all hang discolored from the eaves

Reflecting back a sapphire kind of light.

 

Oh, often there are days I wish I knew

Why everything I write is coloured blue.

 

 

Anthony DiCarlo is a second year student at Sacramento City College, pursuing a major in Classics. In his spare time he enjoys playing the piano, listening to music, being emotionally manipulated by his dog, and writing poetry.