Summer 2025

Forgive the casual visitor for extrapolating a square kilometre
of glass coffins, cracked concrete, and cars and cars and cars
North, East and West as far as their eyes and hearts can pity.
Forgive the fresh-faced 28 y.o. transplants crawling back and forth
from blank condos to carpeted offices to $16-a-drink theme bars.
They will never know Christie Pits Park–they might see it, once,
if they cut short a first date at that Korean restaurant on the corner.
They might glance down from the road at the men on the largest,
fenced-in, swept-and-mowed baseball field and decide to stumble
down the hill for a closer look, but the smell of sewage scares them
back to their attendant Uber (forgive them, for they do not know
the bus stops a block away, and the subway a block further.)
They will never know the two other ancient living diamonds:

one for the boys with thick glasses, XS jerseys down to their ankles,
picking bugs out of the clover and throwing them at the squirrels
while their fathers on the sidelines beg them to pay attention;
the second a little larger, more dust-and-gravel and less greenery,
for the kids who swear they’re teenagers, basically who recently
grew big enough fingers to throw a ball straight-ish almost-far-enough
and begged their parents for a real leather glove, one that fits,
so that they wouldn’t have to borrow one from the storeroom
and pretend not to notice their sweat dissolving it to grey flakes.
And speaking of the storeroom, they will never know the smell
of the metal racks, the vinyl bags stuffed with equipment stacked high,
and the maple, the ash, the birch baseball bats lining the walls
all mingled with the stench of the late-teenage workers’ dirty clothes.

Oh, the joy of being a 19-year-old-umpire in the midst of a first love.
Pulling the bases out of the ground late at night and dragging them
over half a kilometre of grass and gravel back to the storeroom,
running to the back corner to grab your good courderoys and
dress haphazardly so you can go find her behind home plate.
And when she pretends to forget she ever knew you, the clover or the
gravel will soak up your tears, and best of all, the mothers will keep
pushing their strollers through the grass, the dogs will keep sniffing
the lampposts, the music students with nowhere else to practice
will keep blaring their trumpets, the old men in turbans will keep
smoking, the food trucks will keep frying samosas, and you will
realize your little spot with her by the second baseball diamond
was never the centre of the park.

 

Jaleelah Ammar is a Palestinian-Canadian-American poet living in Ottawa, Ontario. Born in Dallas and raised in Toronto, they moved to Ottawa to pursue a degree in computer science. Jaleelah’s work has been published digitally by Common House Magazine and CBC books.

Whale bones. Butterfly displays.
Jellyfish in greenish jars. Crickets.
Deer legs. Fish on racks. Fins on racks,
drawers and drawers, row after row.
Mice and rats in thin cardboard boxes.
Fish, unmoving in still, green water.
Do they think they’re in the ocean?
Does this place smell like home?
Rabbit fur. Rabbit paws. Rabbit ears.
Rabbit bones. Bird bones. Whole birds.
Frozen in time. On branches.
Spreading their wings in glass boxes.
Are their windows as clear as the sky?
Do they remember life out there?

The natural history of this age old land is
stowed in a wooden and white
plastered room. Fossils imprinted where
a shell used to be. Bones with carbon dating.
Bones I touch while putting away boxes.
My handprint on their arms. The natural
history of everything that has walked here.
There is something beautiful in the basement.
There is something beautiful being stored at 65 degrees.
Everyone is here. Their arms. My handprint on their arms.
It’s beautiful. Everyone is here, just below the ground.

 

Marley Hollen is a writer from Massachusetts and an undergraduate student at Mount Holyoke College. Her work has appeared in the Eunoia Review and TeenINK Magazine.

Golden shovel after Ocean Vuong

forget what it is to mourn: forget what it is to savor your
roots, to love delicate ripping things. in this light my father
bleeds golden brown. breathes air tinged by flour dust. to him home is
across oceans, something that shatters only
when touched. iran does not want baba, baba says it is best to lie through your
teeth, grow incisors from your heart. baba says don’t call me baba, call me father.
dad. from birth i smooth worlds into american consonants until
the warmth of baba’s childhood cools at the waste bin’s end. just one
other faceless foreign thing. baba, remember how i once dreamed of
your eyes, baking them into the lids of my own. how now i can only find you
in crumbs, remnants, love soft-rotted — this is how time forgets.

 

Zoe Younessian is a student of Iranian and Chinese descent. She is grateful for apples, ampersands, and prose poetry. You can find her work in the Eunoia Review.

4 am hollowed-eyed
mom. Double shifted
mom. Mom of 牛肉湯
Mcdonalds & takeout pizza
every time we wanted to feel
more American. Mom, whose hands
held me when I got my first period,
who followed my tear streaked cheeks
how to whittle my knobby story
into something extraordinary.
The double mastectomies,
the chemo, the chemo,
the chemo. Silent drives
on the way back from the hospital.
The slow mourning.
I already knew.
Mom of gnarled syntaxes,
ESL classes, a vibrato
of a tongue lost in translation.
Mom who let Dad kiss her
with his anger, because
this is how a man should love
because
he was drunk, honey.
his fists arcing like whiplash
against her cheeks.
don’t ever become like me.
She was the tear streaked
comet & I’m her tail — boundless
grief, full of ashes, dust &
hatred of the city and its
messy glory. The fleeting
light. Mom,
whom I love.
Or loved.

 

Sophia Wong is a high school sophomore in Los Angeles, California. She is a multi-disciplinary artist and always enjoys expressing herself, whether through photography, poetry, or film. She has been recognized on a national and international level by Scholastic Arts and Writing, YoungArts, and Women’s Founder’s Network. In her free time, she enjoys going on long runs, obsessively learning about astronomy, and listening to the newest gay pop.

For the seventeen years of my existence, I’ve counted fireflies like
Lines on my fingers. Waded in the marsh.
Sat below the dogwood, bed of grass, teeth crushing a Cut
of honeysuckle, fingers sticky-pink from the sap
Sat on that bed of grass, I peered out past the thick weeds.
Beyond the bayou, beyond the bridge,
I snuck a glance at it—that white-sand kingdom.
Sand-people with sand-hair, and
Pillars of blood-and-blue stitched flags,
Worshiping nighttime bursts of fae lightning—ruby, beetle-indigo.
There, I waded the stream, fingers blistered green by ivies.
Toes nibbled by the brownback minnow.
When I looked out, past the bridge, past the bayou,
My teeth curled. Wanting.

Peach-palm girls with bleached hair and jaguars,
Sunkissed skin, denim blessings, Daddy’s money.
Golden-haired boys, summer shorts, pin-needle hair.
Whataburger after football games, confetti-blessings at homecoming.

My fingers sticky from marsh-melon sap, yours
Sticky from patty-melts, gooey cheese dripping down your chin,
Coke in one hand, burger in the other.

 

Kyra Ezikeuzor is a high school senior from Texas. For her poetry, she has been awarded the National American Voices Medal from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She has been recognized by Princeton University’s Creative Writing Department, published in the America Library of Poetry, and honored with the National Creative Writing Book Award from Hollins University. Inspired by her heritage, and her favorite poets Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Chinua Achebe, and Wole Soyinka, Kyra enjoys writing poetry and short stories about nature, culture, and memory. Besides writing, she loves dancing, taking morning walks, and journaling.

I
remember the day Spelman 47 was
boxed up. We only became ready
by remembering that all you need to
eat a box of pasta is four friends. Kick
the habit of walking over. From my
place to yours is seven million feet
now, or nine. I will bring extra shoes with
me. I will hand deliver letters. A joy
is returning Sully’s stolen book while
a shared custody ring goes back to you,
and know this: however hard I tried
to get out of bed then is nothing compared to
now. Everyone is too far. You figure
one day soon we will make it back out
of this phone trap. I’m not sure in what
direction: Brownsville south or Tommy north
or the green west. Maybe June’s name will be Dakota
by then. Of course there’s New York and
D.C. and, on the condition of forgiveness, Oregon.
Won’t it be special to have had
these whisperings out loud again in
a room which is small, but common?

 

Mollika Jai Singh is a poet from San Diego and MoCo and an MFA candidate in Bloomington, Indiana. They write with an impulse to commit to a few words and write between the lines. Mollika studies the (self-)representation of people of color in popular culture, gendered and racial performance, carework, and love and desire across differences. Find her on Twitter @mollikajaisingh.