September 2023

It’s brisk

And smells like the stars are thinking of snow on my way home from ballet class.

I have leather soled shoes that make me sound like a horse on the sidewalk
And am still sweating under my trench coat. I am running late
To bake with my neighbor. We do this every week.

Tonight is lemon meringue pie,
Which comes out runny and yolk yellow, smelling like marshmallow and citrus.
We cut it before it’s cool and eat with spoons,
Standing quietly over the kitchen counter.

Outside the sky stretches thin and gray
And the sidewalks flex in anticipation of winter.

Inside, my apartment shimmers lemon yellow
And the warm scent of sugar glows,
Diffuse and golden, against the cold.

 

 

Cecilia Januszewski is a senior at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where she studies linguistic anthropology. She is currently editing the manuscript of her first novel and has been previously published in Manuscripts, Quibble, and Quabbin Quills, where she is now an editorial board member.

 

 

 

Hours of therapy, weeks late payment from my parent’s coat pockets.
Don’t see the nutritionist anymore but she loved to talk about a copay.
I used my gift card to buy a journal & now it sits next to my bed, empty

threat. How do I account for the time between meals? I missed the bus
on purpose, wanted a longer walk. Don’t think Mom trusts me anymore
but we both pretend. In the waiting room, I step backward onto the scale,

ask the nurse to give nothing away. Does the doctor remember me bone-light
at 16? After three hours on hold I give up. Buy every book about the body.
When I can’t fall asleep anxiety presses the blanket tighter, I count breaths

and resist praying, resist resisting. On the worst mornings, sweatshirts
don’t even feel right. In my car, garbage bags of jeans, tank tops, bras
that don’t fit & the reason I’ve kept them so long is embarrassing.

buzzing, the new therapist takes payment over Venmo.

Here’s to everything insurance doesn’t cover.

 

 

 

Kayla Simon is a May 2023 graduate from the University of Connecticut, where she majored in English with a concentration in creative writing and double minored in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Communication. Her work has previously been published in New Square, Grub Street, Long River Review, and Red Cedar Review. When she isn’t writing or reading, you can find her taking photos for her photography business or looking at the stars.

 

 

Thread work of gold,
Depicting mythologies of old.
It translates to “a strip of cloth”,
But hides a multitude of secrets.
Bearing south asian uniqueness,
Combatting stereotypes of female weakness.
In a world where women were beautiful figurines,
The sari gave them a role much more obscene.
The 5 yards taught me,
The importance of lucidity.
They showed me,
The power of elegance hidden ever so cryptically.

5 yards of subjectivity,
Embrace 5 eons of historically embedded complexity .
Accordion-like folds tucked in the front,
The silk is ironed so that not a single fold is blunt.
A systematic procedure,
The 5 yards teach us of a rule-lined ether.
One hundred and eight ways,
To wear a fabric worthy of much praise.
The 5 yards taught me
The strength of adaptation and resourcefulness.
They showed me my
Heritage of artfulness.

5 yards of inclusivity,
disregard 5 centuries of selectivity.
A size that fits all,
Unlike the glass slipper Cinderella wore to her ball.
A sign of coming-of-age,
A trust in maturity,
And not running away.
The symbol of a woman,
And an act of feminine insurance.
The cloth that is pleated
And tucked in the front,
Creates the figure of a woman who is completed
And safe from the hunt.
The 5 yards taught me
The revolution that lies in history.
They showed me,
How moving forward in social norms
Could only be done by reassessing ancient mystery.

 

 

 

Sriya (she/ her) is a high school senior living in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She was born in Kolkata, India, and carries her Bengali heritage with her while traversing into unknown cultures. Her poems have been published with The Weight Journal, Teen Ink, KidSpirit, Elan Magazine, The Rolling Stone, and Footprints on Jupiter. Her poetry is inspired by the small details in her daily life, but speaks to larger ideas of personal growth. As an author, she has progressed from writing solely about external events, to internal revelations.

 

 

 

to hear icarus fall would have been to listen to the sea. to
sink into a dream built of tumbling noise, of waves foaming
into each other, the erratic hollow thump of heavy water
heaving itself against bound planks. then forgetting sound
when the world darkens, when a shadow-cast ship with
sails ballooning to catch the brilliant sun brings you into its
sea-destined shade.

it passes; only the whistling sea birds extend their pinions
to break uncut light into fractured beams, their voices a
question on the bewildering limits of where earth meets
shining sea.

your life dwindling within reach of that deep, unresting
expanse – you begin to recognize a bending of distance,
know you no longer listen to the sound of each new wave.
their potency fades with the withdrawing of each tide, their
fickle voices insisting upon changing with each cry, a boy
falling into dark water is just another kind of splashing—no
different than the sound some half-forgotten sailors made
as bacchus, laughing, changed them into dolphins, then cast
them into opening green water.

echoes of that laughter – do you hear it? no… the distance
between time stretches far above this trembling prairie of
changing blue. only pale feathers drifting up from where
two legs disappear suggest an uncertainty.

but you are not wholly blinded; look and see: there stands a
languid shepherd leaning upon his twisted staff, back to
icarus, sea-gray eyes toward the skies.

perhaps he turned his head upon hearing the grieving keen
of a father.

or simply the melancholy wail of a great white bird, flying
away.

 

 

Almila Dükel is a writer and poet who currently resides in Türkiye. She has had her creative work recognized in a number of international contests. Her haiku have been published in several journals, with poems appearing in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, and The Heron’s Nest, among others.

Not a prayer, really, but something like a spell. Enough to slip to the surface of truth.
I step into the yard and the mourning doves firework into the grey.
Soften the sleet-slick bones.

Flood, or cleansing: flip the coin.

After the storm, the air hums. Pools stretch thin enough to hide an inch of depth,
or burrow between the broken ribs of the earth. Superposition, until the splash.
I’ve given up guessing.

From the window, air blurs into mosaic. I stir my coffee and fragment the cream-heart.
What we need to stay awake: throat, breath, warmth. Hook & eye,
for the world we weave with words. I have left only blue and grey.

Without thunder, the thinnest things seem intact.

Remembrance, piano, overripe pears. So many synonyms for leaving, or lingering too long.
Yeats: Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

To think: something might still be awakening.
The ache in my wrists. Achromatic afternoons. Achilles, ink-stained heel. Anchor the chaos,
or alchemize it into an orchestra. Cauterize the echo, or it burns through the rain.

The present will poison you more than the past. In time, the fray of thread withers.

Listen closely and imagination stitches together the gaps. Patches in the voices
down the street, the face beneath the red umbrella glossed with monochrome.
A snatch of meeting, undertone of a phone conversation. Gesture brushing into embrace.

I remember now:
Cyclic connectedness, that is to say Carl Jung’s collective unconscious.
Raindrops populating in the troposphere and cumulating on the concrete.
Everything falls (again / in the end).

 

 

Eva Skelding is a young writer from the Boston area. An avid poet, she loves exploring quiet and beautiful emotions through imagery and symbolism. She has previously been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and has attended several creative writing programs, including the Iowa and Kenyon workshops for young writers. When she’s not writing or reading, you can find her practicing calligraphy or curating Spotify playlists.

 

I am learning to hold a pen instead of a knife, to peel a metaphor open and find solace. To find salvation in the gospel of poetry. To hold grief like a shadow beneath the torch of imageries and carve words into therapeutic pills. I am learning to write my story in ways that defies fears. To drown in a sea of light every darkness rooted in the body. To diagnose, treat and to cure every ache. I am learning to palpate my tongue in a parenthesis of happiness and tranquility. I am learning to wear language like an hard skin, like a protective layer shielding me from the banes of existence. Here, in the realms of puns, I cull joy cradled in the follicles of consonance and assonance, and like a mother loves a child, I cuddle every confetti of diction. When I write, the bones of the dead quivers, chains splinter and bodies fall like rain into an ocean of cleansing water. With every pain written, the self is reborn, made into a being cured of wounds and scarring memories. When I write, I paint the landscape of my life and it is beautiful.

 

 

 

Adesiyan Oluwapelumi, TPC XI, is a poet/essayist from Nigeria. He was the winner of the Cheshire White Ribbon Day Creative Contest (2022) and the 1st runner up in the Fidelis Okoro Prize for Poetry (2023). His works are published in Poet Lore, Tab Journal, Poetry Wales, IHRAF, Brittle Paper and elsewhere. A 2023 Adroit Journal Summer Mentee and a 2023 Fellow of The SprinNG Writers Fellowship, he reads poetry for the Kitchen Table Quarterly and is the Assistant Editor of Lean and Loafe Poetry Journal. He is the author of Ethos (Ukiyoto Publishing). He tweets @ademindpoems.