July 2021

the second boy i’ve kissed here with tongue has thinner lips
than the movie tickets i had cut my fingers on to watch

a coming of age flick rated 4.7 stars out of 10. maybe practice
makes perfect but the sessions sure aren’t. i duck into a

corner and hide from sharp eyes who know that showing up
uninvited is only for quarterbacks with skulls crushed into

medals of sophomore-year honor, senior girls with swaying
hips they’d promised a good time yet still deposited here,

shallow apologies shackling their hands. just a little bit of
aloofness is allowed, as a treat — an appetizer only

for boys wrapped in faux leather jackets and painstaking
nonchalance; meanwhile, being present at all makes

people recoil if you’re a negative space in the walls: a
ravenous phantom here to struggle — to sample a

rendezvous that you cannot pronounce, to taste mandated
teenage rebellion and sirens on a school night. and

no, you cannot just take two bites and leave. it’s rude to
the hosts who left before you. so tonight, while i find

crumbling convenience store lipstick to be the only thing
that tastes bearable with stolen alcohol in red plastic,

it kills me to ignore hospitality. i gorge on the tongue of a
third boy and call it an act of grace. serve him dessert

by leaving a crimson lip on his empty beer can. after all,
i can tell he’s starving just from the way he’s here.

 

Grace Liang is a teen writer from Toronto. She enjoys reading fan fiction, watching video essays, sleeping, and playing piano. Find her on Instagram at @yf.grace.

Steps to becoming a real writer:
Pull apart your ribcage in the
heavy turns of night, when time
teeters on a cold cut-throat cliff.
Dig your uncut nails into your
vibrating heart. Let the crimson
stain your fingertips, and let the
blood vessels snag your nails.
Breathe in the warm beating
of your heart and ask yourself
who the hell you are. Why the
hell are you holding a pen and
what makes you think you have
the right to finger a piece of paper?
Bite your lip hard and draw more
blood and let it drop into your ink
bottle, creating swirls of bubbles.
Then do whatever helps you hyper-
inflate with chemicals/emotions.
Drown yourself in music, or more
words — whatever. Make sure you
ache unbearably but keep your screams
bitten tight behind your teeth, then grab
that paper, watch your fingers quiver
and spew everything on the page.
Remember, don’t even imagine
showing these words to anyone.
Remember, this is for your eyes,
only. Remember, in a writer’s strength
lies vulnerability. And when you wake
up with the golden sun, honey, you can
make it all striking and pretty for the
world to see.

(I don’t know if I qualify as a real writer.)

 

Tejal Doshi is a high school student living in India whose work has been published in The WEIGHT Journal, Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine, Voice Club, and elsewhere. She is a member of MIST (Mental Illness Support for Teens). She also fails to understand why nobody laughs at her brilliant jokes.

after Tiana Clark

 

“I”?

I founder.

I fall from the sky of dream. I grab

bedsheets like they are

parachutes. I gasp. I gasp nightmare

into dawn. I thrash about in blue dark,

scramble for my phone. I can’t write

on paper. I write what I remember

on a notebook app — most times, I remember

nothing. For a long time, I close my eyes &

hope for memory. For a long time,

time passes.

In a next room, my

mother is yelling at God

in her sleep. I close my ears & open

my eyes to light feeding the curtains.

I open my mind to the moment &

the movement of myself.

I wrestle between being broken & being

torn. I turn off airplane mode &

messages pour. Angry

WhatsApp messages. Preaching WhatsApp messages.

E-mails. I skip the

unfortunatelys. I read. I read.

I highlight Tranströmer: I’m awake and don’t know where I am.

I envy that [his] life finally returns, envy

any name that appears like an

angel. I sprawl. I spread

into a pool & ponder. I ponder.

I wonder why some hands can hold hope

when some cannot even hold themselves. I curse

inward.

I write sgshjsnsnshdhdbbd.

I cross out sgshjsnsnshdhdbbd.

Bach. The Art of Fugue. I lie

on the bed, I sup the song.

I haven’t spoken yet, can go

a whole month without a mouth.

In the bathroom, I sing.

Hymn until lather fills my mouth. Here, I mourn

the morning before the bird. I know this morning like

I have known all mornings. I, too, like

how they look like hope. But God,

I hoard too much night.

 

 

Mayowa Oyewale writes poetry from Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where he currently studies Literature-in-English at Obafemi Awolowo University. A poetry reader at Chestnut Review, he Instagrams @mayowaoyewale__

God has a photograph of this:
We survive years of wilderness.

A man from the neighbourhood
Keeps us acquaintance,
With guns at [both] hands—
Aimed at the tunnels of our nostrils.

Silence is our new language,
Our weeps fly as idioms and phrases
Round the deafened ears of the world—
In shape of teardrops
While mother nature laughs at us

Coughing up the dust in her mouth;
Another multi-coloured wind sweeps in.

 

 

Najeeb Yusuf Ubandiya is a young poet from Nigeria. He is a loner who writes to find out what he thinks and feels—about himself and the world around him—and to keep his purpose awake and breathing.His works have appeared in Ngiga Review and Blue Marble Review.

 

 

Red thoughts thick with a steamghost sizzle
Prego bubble bursts in time
with stovetop midnights. We stuck
our heads & hands in drive
-through holes in hopes
in gas-stove smoke alight
in summer-houses, made of helium
we are laughter over flame. Melt
into sand between her sofa-cracks
a cherry bowl amid our legs.
Return to red, or so it seems: one single bowl
of suckled pits.

 

 

Sarah Cavar is a PhD student, writer, and critically Mad transgender-about-town, and serves as Managing Editor at Stone of Madness Press. Author of two chapbooks, A HOLE WALKED IN (Sword & Kettle Press) and THE DREAM JOURNALS (giallo lit), they have also had work in Bitch Magazine, Electric Literature, The Offing, Luna Luna Magazine, Superstition Review, and elsewhere. Cavar navel-gazes at cavar.club and tweets @cavarsarah.

it’s so easy to say
i’m so lost

the phrase slips out when i’m alone
in waiting rooms or by the lake,

i don’t understand the reflection of my face
in the reception window or in the water,

i’m so lost
is not the same as
              i don’t know where i am

 i know i sit in a blue chair or on green grass,
i know the bend of my legs,
i know each inescapable breath of this little body, but

the receptionist pops out to say
go through

and i’ve already gone without knowing,
i’m by the lake in waiting rooms,

staring at my own face and wondering

              i’m so lost,
is not the same as
this can’t be real

but it’s close

the door of the doctor’s room
holds a name I don’t know, and

there’s no pill that says
                 i know you
                 and you’re found

 

Amy Wolstenholme is a scientist by day and a poet by night, originally from the beautiful Jurassic Coast. Whether slicing up a genome or carving out a stanza, her work comes from a place of awe and love for the natural world. Her recent works can also be found in Visual Verse, Crow & Cross Keys and in several places on the Young Poets Network. She can be found at @AmyWolstenholm3 on Twitter.