Summer 2024

I.

It wouldn’t have been a thing if people didn’t need
to drown out the sound of their own
breath.
Please, tell me how I may
turn my life into a playlist of sunkissed
tracks, let it thump as I
become lost in the
grayness
of this dusty subway
pole juxtaposed with R&B blankness.

II.

There is a man on this train who is singing
gospel.He has his boy shaking a cup,
violent.
The boy is forcing eyecontact with everyone
standing. A woman inserts her airpod
into her ear. Imagineshe is bleeding out
apathy on glassy white pavement,so she needs
music like sirens to mask the red.
Imagine
her blood trickling down concrete
avenues as she closes her eyes, lies still, lets it thump.

 

Tane is a poet from Irvington, New York whose mission is to spread the art of writing to those around him. As the editor-in-chief of The Incandescent Review and The Stirling Review, he believes in the power of creative expression to spark genuine happiness in those who practice it. His work has been recognized by The Poetry Society, Scholastic Art and Writing, The National Poetry Quarterly, and The New York Times.

I want a peanut butter
And jelly sandwich
Shaped like a dinosaur
With the crusts cut off.
Instead, I’m eating
A salad with tomatoes.
This awful growing up.
I used to take baths
With duckies and cups,
The towel was so big
It engulfed me like a blanket.
Now I take a quick shower
And fall into bed, exhausted.
This awful growing up.
I want to sit on
My dad’s lap
And watch cartoons.
But cartoons turned
To dramas and comedy.
This awful growing up.
My mother used to hum
And rub my back
To help me fall asleep.
Now I lay awake every night,
Overthinking anything
I can manage to think of.
This awful growing up.
I want to play princess
And catch frogs with my brother.
But I’m stuck in a classroom
Learning things I won’t remember
In twenty years.
This awful growing up.
I don’t remember the last time
I was tucked in,
Mac n cheese no longer counts
As a meal,
And my future begins
In eighteen months.
This
Awful
Growing
Up.

 

 

Apricity: The warmth of the sun in winter.

A touch so delicate,
almost indiscernible in presence.
Apricity’s soft breaths bloom of
incandescence.

Playful mischief of the breeze unveils
her wide, gauzy strokes
as gray-tinted translucence
bleeds an amber hoax.

Through tenderly clasped wings,
blight dissipates out of sight.
Remnant trails of radiance set
the bleak world alight.

But foreign echos howl across the distance
as gusts and gales blow in their native tongue.
Her warm caress rescinds;
whispers remain unsung.

Beneath the familiar comfort of a
cumulonimbus cloud,
she retreats into bleak shadows
concealed by a wispy shroud.

The path of Apricity in
intrinsic simplicity
commands no less
than pure eccentricity.

 

 

Janice Lee is a poet from Southern California. In her free time, you can find her playing tennis or spending time with friends and family.

how she has shared it with me for all of my existence
I used to think when she sighed in exasperation
I inhaled her frustration, and blew it out as stubbornness
for her to repurpose and the cycle would continue when we were apart

I thought about all places she breathed, wondered
if her happiness or concern could reach me
maybe all breath trickled into the atmosphere
the same way all water pooled into oceans,
and every breeze was a wave intermingled with human emotion

I hoped my mother’s breath traveled far
so I could know about all the places she sighed in secret
because of some burden she refused to share,
I could comfort her the way she desperately
needed by simply exhaling

I used to lay my head on her rising and falling stomach
to feel the warmth of her, hear her blood churning, her heart pumping
when I remember those moments, I feel fear,
like sitting under a tree on a silent, sunny day,
breathing in what their leaves exhaled apathetically

I now take into consideration how the plants process
all our carbon dioxide, they refine our jagged sentiments
in their own cycle only incidentally related to ours

the world will continue to breathe without humans,
without my mother and me and our anger and love colliding
when we’re apart nothing is connecting or comforting us
we have nothing but our thoughts and the hurt we inflicted
throbbing like fresh bruises.

 

 

Leïssa Romulus was born in Haiti and immigrated to the U.S .at six years old. She is a senior at Emerson College studying Writing, Literature and Publishing,  a poetry editor for The Emerson Review, and an aspiring poet.

Marie’s car rolls over railroad tracks like
pit bulls slobber, gnash nails between their teeth.

Her vinyl seat clings to my sweat-slick thighs,
press fresh and scald my bright lower back—

Florida turns her ebony dash white-hot
We scream down Emerson at 1:47pm

to get pomegranate pucker-up refreshers
that make our fingers stick together. She wails

Ice Spice lyrics until her voice breaks
into citrine whines and a rose gold rasp.

It’s time to roll the windows down, now, bitch.
Humidity roars in through the sunroof,

to lift our baby hair closer to the sky
and caramelize our green apple skin.

I grab for the handle hanging above the open air,
clutch so tight my knuckles turn familiar white.

We blow through the stop sign before the bridge.

I shriek: a hubba bubba bubble popping,
oozing slimy from my chapped mouth—

The gaping maw of the St Johns River
blurs past me in a kaleidoscope of

crashing symbol waves and oily torn edges.
Pop pumps through her speakers and

Marie laughs: hand me my sunglasses,
crispy, mangled plastic frying smokey on the dash.

I relax my death grip on the handle
to snatch them up—she laughs harder as I

bop-bop-bop them, hand-to-hand, hot potato,
before she takes pity and leans across my body,

knobby elbows digging into my brittle ribs,
nothing but knees on her daisy steering wheel

as she scoops them into vanilla coconut palms;
her cheeks are a gentle perch, breeze cool.

The Camaro whips in front at warp speed.
Seatbelt digs into fragile neck folds, bruising,

her hands struggle for the wheel,
lay on the horn so hard it maracas my bones.

Rie! Please slow down- I can’t-
She slams on the brakes.

She slams on the brakes for me
so the metal groans and I lurch forward

into her hand splayed across my stomach, ready.
My chest heaves in her palm, breath wheezing,

gasping, melting into hiccup laughter
that she echoes, louder, until it mixes together

into a two-part harmony monster and
I can’t tell where my skin ends and hers begins.

 

 

 

Abbey Griffin (she/her) is a writer in Northeast Florida currently attending Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. She is super excited to be attending Sarah Lawrence College in New York this fall. What the Living Do by Marie Howe is the book that sparked her love for poetry, and inspired her to devote her life to writing. Her poems have been published in Elan Literary Magazine two years in a row. She loves duck stuffed animals, and hopes that everyone finds their own unique understanding and love of the arts.

mourning is a long morning
of everything glazed over silence.
breath smoother than water,
thoughts slower than prayer.

longing is an empty room with no ceiling,
whole shape faded over into
one name.

 

 

 

Zhao Yushan is a penultimate year Literature and Sociology double-major at the National University of Singapore. After reading one of her poems during her literature class, she was approached by fellow aspiring writers to form a little creative writing circle, with whom she shares words, whims, and waffles. She loves trees, cats, words, music, admiring large bodies of water, being hopelessly cheesy, and the short story collection “The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God” by Israeli writer Etgar Keret.