Issue Three/Fall

One night I lay in want of sleep,

but fair Adventure, dark and deep,

was resting, waiting, captivating

every thought my mind could keep.

 

And so I stole across my room,

drawn by the Fates’ incessant loom,

for whispers, swift and promising,

were luring me into the gloom.

 

I balanced on the windowsill,

undaunted by the creeping chill

of night, for brightly overhead

the watchful Moon hung soft and still.

 

Then swiftly, as if by a prayer,

a Nighthawk, slicing through the air,

appeared to rest abreast my lonely

figure, as I waited there.

 

She peered at me through ebon eyes

that sung of shadows, old and wise,

and as she loosed her beak to speak

I listened raptly, hypnotized.

 

“O Raven-girl, your time is near!

Why must you wither, crouched in dreary,

pallid light? The ballad of your life

is raging! Fly from here!”

 

I quickly rose, enraptured by

this dark messiah, knowing I

could never flee my bruised and bloodied land

until I learned to fly.

 

So I, held captive by her claims,

entranced by she who called my name

so boldly, whispered “mold me as you will

and make us both the same.”

 

Within a moment, I was changed

and all my features rearranged,

eclipsed by feathers, weathered claws,

and eyes that saw myself estranged.

 

At this, although the light was dim,

I saw the Nighthawk, old and grim,

take to the skies; within her cries

I heard her final crooning hymn:

 

“Behold the waxing Moon, and then

look closely as it starts to wane.

Like ragged Ships and rugged Men,

here and there, then gone again.”

 

And just like that, she disappeared,

elusive as the Sisters, weird

and wild; the night once more was mild

and wretched dark no longer feared.

 

I soared on borrowed wings that night;

bathed in the strange and spectral light

that washed the world, I twirled and balanced,

wraithlike, on the winds of flight.

 

I skimmed and sailed the velvet sea

that roiled and tossed and cradled me

between the hats and crooked backs

and shadows strewn about the streets.

 

But Dawn, the Ever-present, curled

her back, and gilded wings unfurled

to usher in the rush of din

that ripped me from my Netherworld.

 

I woke, as I am wont to do

When Night concedes her glory to

the crystal-patterned mists of Morning’s

journey into swirling blue.

 

And through my window, fading fast,

my loyal Guard did set at last,

obscured and blurred by wishful clouds

that shimmered like a lake of glass.

 

A lake with waves much stronger then,

or dreams that fade beyond my ken.

Like ragged Ships and rugged Men,

here and there, then gone again.

 

 

Jenna Kurtzweil is 19 years old and hails from Palatine, IL.  Along with her responsibilities as a student at the University of Illinois, Jenna is always looking for new opportunities to experience life through travel, literature, music, and all forms of storytelling.  Jenna has also been published in The Noisy Island.  

 

“Thus it is on the one side a study of wealth; and on the other, and more important side, a part of the study of man.”

—Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics

 

 

Dad blurs his days by clipping moments into IVs

and transfusing them into strangers. Meanwhile,

I’m waiting in the E.R., telemetry flattening,

eyes bloodshot from incisions ten years old—

1 to 10 how much does it hurt, well, I’ll say 9

and save the 10 and the morphine for the day he

might forget to measure the seconds and attach his own IV.

(“Now see, love,” he’d say, “forgetfulness signifies a great mind—

if you juggle so many difficult things,

it’s natural if you accidentally drop a few of them”)

it’s hard to treat a patient 2000 miles away.

Dad used to scrape dishes with bitter detergent suds,

cracked fingers and a sliver of blood because that’s

what creates the sheen on the brims of our creaking railroads

and chipped jade. at home was he misty-eyed, lauded, an art professor,

underpaid, just an art professor. In the west, then,

was he christened Chinese piece of crap;

to that he lowered his eyes and just thought

about mom and my brother across the pacific.

He changed his name eventually to Employee of the Month

and now he thumbs the American middle-class dream with one hand

while pinching nickels with the other to save them for me.

shortly after he stopped answering when mom asked

when we’ll have enough money for him to be satisfied

and come home, I injected my last vial

of saline to disinfect the dehiscence every time he left

on the cheaper 6am flight back to los angeles.

 

Lillian is a seventeen-year-old gal with chronic vagabond symptoms, but her heart’s more or less obliged to smelly onion roots, so Chicago’s lucky enough in that sense. Her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, New Voices Young Writers, and Sierra Nevada College.

 

 

The two of them wore white to prom,

her thin layers of chiffon flared like pixie wings poised

and we knew it was something magical

if only because the red strings of fate sang

and moonlight glowed where he kissed her.

When wine spilled on her bodice,

she laughed, drunk off the night already anyway,

washed away the truth with bridges from the past,

glanced up once at cesspool skylights

and declared she’d love him for better, for worse,

even after death or college did them part.

(If you have endless quantities of a resource,

does that drive its demand down to zero?)

But distance, it pulls too taut, then plays melodies

on Atropos’ lyre until the lines

snap, leaving in the air a diminished seventh, dissonant

but finished. And it was only after the crashes, depressions,

the inflation, consulting, tallies on their palms, debts, cycles

of arpeggios ebbing and flowing and slamming against doors, when finally

they realized the more interest, dopamine rushes,

genuine apologies they wanted from each other,

the less they had to give.

 

 

Lillian is a 17-year-old gal with chronic vagabond symptoms, but her heart’s more or less obliged to smelly onion roots, so Chicago’s lucky enough in that sense. Her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, New Voices Young Writers, and Sierra Nevada College.

 

 

I told her she was a coagulation of serotonin

and rooftop kisses in 3AM thunderstorms.

She stuck out her tongue, turned,

ignited another fire with the sparkly onyx nail

her mother doesn’t like her painting, and

shrieked. Her fingertips are calloused

by vivace Mozart and burns. A smile nudged my lips,

so I bent to sweep up the ashes. Later,

in the brick cobweb doorway,

her tears sank into my collar like candlelight,

warm and heavy with the musk of familiarity,

because she was sick of searching for x

and finding B’s instead, so

I let her simmer in my arms,

wished she knew how grossly

more valuable the timbre of her laughter

and degree of her social skills (^6—my theory?

she can bridge any separation in the world)

are than the Scantrons and transcripts on which w

plot polar coordinates that only lead us in circles

to the integers we let define us. She shrugged,

lips pressed. y = zero.

(I asked her what was more important:

lighting your own matches

or watching, calculating

the rate at which we burn.)

 

Lillian is a 17-year-old gal with chronic vagabond symptoms, but her heart’s more or less obliged to smelly onion roots, so Chicago’s lucky enough in that sense. Her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, New Voices Young Writers, and Sierra Nevada College.

the taste of cinnamon in my mouth

burned

my tongue raw

(reminded me of christmas cookies)

 

the couch we all sat on every day

watching television to ungodly hours of the morning

made me want to destroy the world

(bad dad-jokes never seemed so good)

 

melancholy never felt more like a harmful illness

and neither did loneliness

partialness has became a routine

 

it all started with a separation

and ended with being stretched over

two continents to the point of breaking

 

Ana M. Finžgar is a fifteen-year-old from the Mediterranean. This was her first serious attempt at poetry.”