N°3 // -Ology Journal

- O L O G Y

Qu a r t er ly Ele ctronic Jo ur n al of Po et r y an d Prose

N o 3 | N ovember 2015

HU STL E

-ology: the prospective science of; a series of experiments or informalities; a possibility without ultimate solidity. journal: your thoughts in ink and tears; a gathering of certainties; a collective of personal poems and odysseys.

- O L O G Y Quarterly Electronic Journal of Poetry and Prose No 3 // November 2015 HUSTLE Executive Editor and Creative Director Avery Myers Managing Editor Paola Bennet Prose and Poetry Editors Anthea Yang Elisabeth Hewer Copy Editor Nora Hill Art and Graphic Design Director Adrien Mooney

Additional content and submission guidelines for future issues can be found at ologyjournal.com. Connect with us @_ologyjournal.

-Ology Journal is an independent publication that does not belong to any collective group or association. No part of this electronic journal may be reproduced without prior consent of the owners of the individual works contained within the journal. All copyright remains with the individual contributors.

FROM THE EDITOR It’s that feeling between your ribs when you realize you’ve grown up. The Hustle.

It’s been one year since submissions for N°1 closed. One year since our team took a deep breath, quieted our nerves, and sent those “we’d love to publish your work” letters. One year since we began to put together something for us—for you.

And one year later, we’ve grown up. All of us, in our own special ways. We bloom and we grow, and we continue to create. It’s a form of running away. Or maybe, it’s running to something.

N°3—The Hustle: to go, to know what you want. To get lost in it.

To our readers, and all of the editors, thank you for making this journal a home. You find a place in the world and you give it all of your love. That’s knowing what you want. That’s getting lost in it.

This one’s for you.

—Avery Myers Executive Editor

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CONTENTS

Letter from the Editor // Avery Myers 5 The Necessity of the Disappearing Act // A. Davida Jane 8 In the Window Across the Street // Claire August 10 Untitled // Sydney Shavalier 11 Medusa // S.A. Khanum 12 Untitled // Mallory Malhearst 14 Legacy // Paola Bennet 18 1,329 // Yin Xzi 19 Running // Anthea Yang 20 We Would Have Left // Janna Tay 22

Candles // Clara Marisol Dela Cruz 24 Highways & Other Places We Keep From Our Mothers // Emily Palermo 25 Ode to the Parking Lot Seagulls // Chelsea Scarnegie 28 Parts (To Leaving) // Yin Xzi 29 Consolation // Pauline Angeli Diego 31 Escapology // Janna Tay 32 Opus // Sydney Shavalier 33 2 A.M. Lament // Reini Lin 34 Contributors 38

THE NECESSITY OF THE DISAPPEARING ACT A. Davida Jane there are some things you can’t run away from but there are some tragedies you just can’t face, some versions of yourself you can’t look in the eye, some footsteps you can’t take because you’ve had the ring of them echoing in your head your whole life. there are some bad days that seem to live forever and you find you can’t stay under the same roof as them for very long.

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there are some people who will tell you, ‘everybody has days like that,’ but what they really mean is ‘i don’t believe you when you say it hurts to be alive right now.' there are some suitcases that must always be half-packed in case of an emergency, in case of a nightmare that becomes just a little too real, in case you need to leave in a hurry without checking all the windows are locked and turning off the lights. the pieces you leave behind will have to do that for you.

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IN THE WINDOW ACROSS THE STREET Claire August The older woman watches a movie, I think it is in Spanish I cannot tell, language is foreign always. This time there are subtitles though.

And on the show there are aching buildings and a woman sobs freely maybe she is forgetting, or perhaps remembering.

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UNTITLED Sydney Shavalier If you decide to raise a wolf, let her watch the rain pulling away from the clouds, so she’ll understand what it is to be helpless before gale forces, insensate among great feats.

When she runs to the swirling autumn leaves let her catch one, let her tear into soft flesh and stay your hand. Show her your spine and how tall it is in the morning. She will eye the bile that lines the roadsides and wonder at passing colors.

Let her strain the leash but keep your hands tightly fisted upon it.

If you decide to raise a wolf, hang your heart from your sleeve and see if she bites at it, little pendulum swinging.

Yell until the hills are afraid of you and porcelain crumbles like soft mountains and the shoreline and if she comes running, feed her wolf heart well.

If you bruise the eggs until their tongues hit the floor and she cries, you have raised a lamb.

If you decide to raise a wolf and her eyes crest over the dark waves and her nascent hands are steady, then she has bested you.

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MEDUSA S.A. Khanum I wish you had met me when I was younger.

When my hair was still longer.

When I hadn’t cut it all off.

When it was still thicker.

When every road was endless.

And running was always an option.

When reaching out was easy.

And every wall wasn’t a hindrance.

I wish you had met me when all the frames weren’t empty.

When colour wasn’t something to be bleached.

And brightness wasn’t blinding.

And I still painted.

I still painted.

I still painted.

I wish you had met me when these hands weren’t chipped.

When cupping water still had this sense of holy.

And gentle was more than a word.

And laughter was strained with bitter longing.

I wish you had met me when bitterness was as simple as a teaspoon of sugar.

And every hurt could be kissed better.

When tiredness was natural.

And every floor was a surface to rest on.

And the ceiling was just something to walk on.

I wish you had met me when I was younger.

When my hair was still longer.

When I hadn’t cut it all off just to spite myself.

I think you would’ve been in awe of me then.

I think you would’ve liked me then.

I think you could’ve loved me then.

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the faint spark of forgiveness in your eyes Photo by Christine Florence

UNTITLED Mallory Malhearst i.

Your name is forgotten, because no one dares speak it. They’re afraid you might be summoned, on your haunches like an animal, but you know that it was three syllables and you couldn’t care less. It’s written in stone somewhere and no longer the reason you run. ii.

When you enter a café, you try not to think of the unsavory undertone of rot and modern decay, when you fill the tank, it is the blink of an eye in the history of the road you’re taking.

They are not picture perfects and you don’t collect the moments; they’re single-serving wasteaways, places of convenience rather than aesthetic. iii.

The road is a lesson in overindulgence: you dodge in and out of bars, reading cheap, peestained poetry off bathroom stalls, switching books you’ve already read for books you’ve never heard of, like a thief with a heart— (your mission is to give and take and breathe in the city with wasteful pieces of paper-thin tree lines, the words of someone else pulsating inside your skull as you snatch out a cigarette and decide to pass the wisdom on) —in the next town, you’ll realize there was a reason you hadn’t and snatch another in return for your latest paperback, tattered pages unfolded on the backseat. When someone sees you, you’ll seek quick cover in the car and ride away in the blinding haze of the summer sun, laughing at your own mistakes because your moral is exquisitely extinct. iv.

You run away one summer because road trips aren’t meant for winter.

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v.

Sometimes you consider fragments—twilit memories of your old life—with finality. There are figments, cornflakes shuffled into sated mouths on rainy days because routines, and the slow decline, the fatigue in going to cheap back seats of school sports you don’t care about. There are dirty tea cups on stacks of books, coffee stains on notebooks because you never could make up your mind, poetry hung on whitewashed wooden walls without insulation. Perhaps it’s all a mask, and all you want to do is go to the sea and throw it in the ocean. vi.

You lie at parties, not knowing why; no one challenges you on them. vii.

(The sun hits the rear way mirror, but you promised not to look back.) viii.

If you forget to eat, there’s no alarm. ix.

They never asked anything from you but your presence and as you get out a day in October, feeling the dream turn to frost on your harrowed deadline, you see the ruined stone walling in the trees and you jump them. As the car speeds away, you no longer care if they remember you. x.

You were so concerned with finding yourself, but the graveyard was destroyed years ago.

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Photo by Charlotte Shih

LEGACY Paola Bennet My friend is fingering Eiffel keychains when the vendor tries for flattery.

“You look American. You speak perfectly.”

She clips my inheritance, gleaming, to her purse. “What’d he say?”

I mistranslate deliberately.

That night, I think about taking a knife to the squareness in my cheeks.

I want to bottle my blond and give it away, this olive-flecked name my mother picked off her father’s tree tastes like thievery.

I looked over my shoulder at the border; lavender will never smell sweeter than guilt.

Désolée, Maman. I cannot swallow salt any longer. I cannot break any more than I am a pawnshop compass that only points northeast, southwest.

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1,329 Yin Xzi i count when i run - the number of steps i take [934] and the number of blocks [4]. sometimes it’s the number of tiny, delicate flowers i see pushing their way out of the cracks in the city [13]. i count when i run - the number of dogs flying past me [7] and the number of ‘excuse-me’s doled out [21] especially during the traffic hours. the number of traffic lights i spot [5] and the number of starfish fingers i pass in baby strollers [2]. i count when i run - the number of times i think about going, anywhere [78] or the number of times i get a squeezing in my collarbone [63] and always, always the number of times the familiar ache in my jaw appears, from all the clenching [20]. i count when i run - with numbers in a jumble alongside my irregular heart. the number of cars that pass me [94] the number of missed phone calls [16] the number of ‘i-love-you’s [5] the number of hours he hugs me when i return, every time [1] the number of days i was running, each time [2/5/¼/9/1] the number of times i think about running now, every day [26/17/21] the number of times i need to run [0]

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RUNNING Anthea Yang 1. i am trying to figure out why i am the way i am. why i am made of three-parts running and one-part fighting so hard to stay.

2. there is a bad habit that lives inside of me; one that searches for exit signs, unlocked doors and cracked windows every time i step into a new space.

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3. my exit strategy is flawed but it’s the only thing i know how to do: leave before you become the one on their knees, before you become the one who keeps looking for answers inside of all the wrong ghosts.

4. nobody asks me to stay anymore. instead they ask: do you ever get tired? where are you going? were you ever going to say goodbye?

5. all my dreams are about a world where i don’t run. a world where i stay long enough for someone to remember who i am. i unpack my bags, i stop looking for a way out, i come home. this is the world i want to live in.

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WE WOULD HAVE LEFT Janna Tay but for the familiar off-key hum of a battered guitar as a thumb snags the strings you can always feel dying with the light by your neck behind back teeth like coming home the San Diego sound of a boy who finds it hard to get up most mornings from beds from floors and a love too pure to comprehend but we are getting better now and the translations slowly improve now the sun lingers a little longer as we turn front-garden corners blind but still seeing from years before and episodic memory thicker than our wrists a salvation this bend here and mind the letterbox I know I know now we step into a mother’s kitchen and we’re almost doing fine once again once more, once more

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Photo by Charlotte Shih

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CANDLES

Clara Marisol Dela Cruz 1. in this photograph, our legs are dangling from the edge of a rooftop and we’re looking at the trains instead of the sky. grab your backpack. hurry, climb the ladder while the rails aren’t clattering. hold this photograph against your chest. it’s my heart. don’t let the world see it. they say sitting on rooftops is dangerous living.

2. in this photograph, your sister’s head is thrown back, and she’s laughing. june twenty-three. it’s your birthday. your father couldn’t afford to buy sixteen candles, so he lights up the one your mother keeps in the kitchen with his cigarette. we sing loudly, terribly, and you make a point of heaving out a big breath as soon as the final note hits the air. for a moment, we’re in complete darkness. we can hear your sister laughing on the rooftop above us.

3. in this photograph, we’re dragging our bags across an empty parking lot—no, an airport. this time, we’re inside an airport and we’re not here to sit around and eat chips we bought from the vending machines. this time, they’re the ones watching us leave.

4. in this photograph, someone’s turning off the lights before we can smile at the camera. a door is being closed gently, carefully. muffled footsteps. a candle slowly melting into warmth. light flickers from the street lamps. hurry, before they catch up. the trains are picking up speed. grab the ladder before it falls off, and don’t you dare look back.

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HIGHWAYS & OTHER PLACES WE KEEP FROM OUR MOTHERS

Emily Palermo moon screaming through the night sky like a warning sign, like everything your mother never told you, like every god you’ve ever bruised your knees for. the city wasn’t alive when it should’ve been. we were not beautiful but we could’ve been if we weren’t so busy always trying to escape, always trying to scrape the self from the body, rip the body from the home and keep them somewhere eternal where the moon talks like a god and sounds like a mother somewhere safe from the shell-split truths we never wanted to live with— we’re all wandering down the highway to nowhere. we’re all going to a place we cannot name.

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hold me close, cause i need you to guide me to safety Photo by Christine Florence

ODE TO THE PARKING LOT SEAGULLS Chelsea Scarnegie Oh, radiant seagulls with your Tattered, white wings, and the songs That you caw outside of the mall As I wait in the car and dream of the shore.

Your squawking is music, for when I close My eyes I see the waves and the sand And the crabs scuttling on the land.

I want to give you a French fry.

I want to place it in your mighty, Musical beak.

If I had a choice, I would never leave This parking lot. I’d stay Among the barking dogs that want To chase you, and I would protect Your young as you protect My sanity.

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PARTS (TO LEAVING)

Yin Xzi pt. 1: the hum of the van as the wheels spin endlessly, eating up miles of gravel and swallowing the air of sunsets and sunrises [don’t think of staying still] pt. 2: really soft comforters, always unrealistically white piled up in the back portion of the van with heavy, colorful patchwork quilts and adorned with stuffed toys [you couldn’t bear to really leave home just yet] pt. 3: a really good playlist that will be inextricably linked to the trip, with a beat that triggers head bangs and air guitaring and dramatic lip synching [this way you forget the pain in your heart] pt. 4: hands, hands gripping the steering wheel with tanned forearms courtesy of being on the road for so long and wrists adorned with bracelets from every place that the van has covered you’re so glad they’re here with you [could you really have gone through it without them] pt.5 : the open sky streaked with darkening pink clouds or crammed with stormy clouds that tumble over one another and threaten the rain to come pouring down and surrounding the world with a special sort of white noise [it’ll drown out everything but the ones you chose to keep] pt. 6: worn out sneakers that get pulled on and off or tossed into the front of the car to avoid stinking up the sleep area and soles that are graffitied with black sharpie depicting flower doodles and question marks [maybe they’ll remember you by these if you leave for good] pt. 7: buzzing fireflies attached to concrete buildings humming with plant life and traffic lights that flicker on and off according to coffee-filled pedestrians working in tandem with bikes and the sun [you don’t feel like a part of the network] pt. 8: soft hair and twirling skirts paired with rough jeans and plain t-shirts hastily and quietly put on in the twilight darkness in the time before the sunrise, a time filled with giggles and a familiarity sooner or later [comfort found in the strangest of times] pt. 9: the roar of the sea and the pulses of the forests and the empty yawning red canyons or the mist that fills the morning to soften the harshness of life [and the reason why you left in the first place] pt. 10: leaving and returning a different person, a more weathered person, a person with a different perspective of life shaped by other people, a person who thinks of moss as plant life that seeps through the soles of their feet the way cold does, a person who thinks of road trips in parts instead of one long rumble [maybe going back won’t be as bad as you think] 29

Photo by Charlotte Shih

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CONSOLATION Pauline Angeli Diego I wake to find sunflowers blooming in my doorsteps, happiness hanging by the window pane, and a vibe that speaks of all things bright and beautiful. Outside, they wait as the waves crash.

I still stand on ground that does nothing but fluctuate.

At 12 noon I am greeted by solace who held my fidgety hand, as the pinkish hue of the sky finally settles into a shade, as dim and promising as I hoped tomorrow would be.

Yet I still feel the breeze coming from the waves; I can hear them weeping for their loss.

At nightfall, the beams of sunlight and the traces of its outline are now memories from a lifetime ago.

I took a trip down memory lane, wandered through scrappy streets of old towns, planted kisses in my grave, and traded secrets with yesterday’s ghosts.

I still confuse old roads from new paths.

On nights when nostalgia leads my feet down forgotten roads, my demons draw me back to reality and lull me to sleep.

As they whisper, “Darling, there’s no place like home.”

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ESCAPOLOGY Janna Tay Gargantuan moths brood on the bulb, fizzing,

Old bars, old cars, by the silvern cast of the rose-cheeked night, stars newly

not knowing they’re dying. You keep

pinpricking the velvet. You lie in the back, resurrecting dead

waking up, trying to find reality again.

languages, palms on ribs, and mouthto-mouth, the strange beasts writhing, pouring

Eighteen and as yet unravelled.

Alice writes songs for men who

forth from lips so unassuming were one to see them on the corner

don’t know how to love her, who’ve never known how to love

of some street in evening lampshade, there would be no second glance.

what they cannot name.

You let them in. You let all of them in.

And you? You just lie in summer cots, listening to insects that seek the darkness the beyond behind the light— as if to look into darkness and to be in darkness were not two entirely separate things.

But perhaps one follows the other, like the body of a train, chains of children crossing roads, linked by arms.

This is you: a damning typo, unfixed— printed on the ripped paper coastline, like uneven lipstick jarring the mouth of this rent state. Dancing up the country, some parts terrified, other parts desirous, all parts alive.

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For you are a map, slowly being erased (not fast enough for your liking), and they are the stars you can’t decipher.

You were not ushered into existence, but woke up drifting on an ancient sea.

There are monsters, here, but there are gods, too.

And to you they are angels, every one, as if your salvation depended upon the least of these.

You fall and you keep on falling.

But maybe this one will be Polaris.

This one who shines like the sun, which you have never seen.

OPUS Sydney Shavalier The morning fog and her velveteen eyes blink at me, and mulberry steam rises hot and still in my throat, and my hands unfurl to finally carry the moon by her teabag knees. It is the omnipotence of a sweeter thing, the opus of the lemon sky—in her best dress before the sun and his ichor and his bride bury her—the purple laughter of the winds when their voices can overpower the engines and the hands and anything else that dare disturb them now— the gentle sigh, the bated breath (and release that didn’t realize its sly capture)—the tender fawn of morning and her honey naïveté, running wild beneath the mothering heavens.

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2 A.M. LAMENT Reini Lin (it starts with a whisper and ends with an echo) 2 a.m. lament, he calls me up, is this the way the ocean dries to desert? is this the way we run to black? is this the way the empty sounds? yes and no. sometimes i’m more bandages than skin, more bullet wounds than girl. the bloodstains in my dress come out with disquieting ease, and yet there’s something glorious in the wreckage, something exquisite in the unmaking, something lonely beautiful in the staircase spiraling down to fallen stars, broken hearts, things that used to shine (it starts with a melody and ends with a memory) i collect carcasses of kisses and lullabies to hold like a breath, sweet nocturnes, eyes of a ghost town

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and oh, i’ll surely miss tripping over the constellations patterned on your heart. but skin tissue grows over scars and darling

maybe you weren’t for me at all. (it starts with a light and ends with a graveyard) 2 a.m. lament, tracing patterns on the boulevard and racing past dusty, discarded promises. letting radio static fill the shape of your absence. heart set on a different eternity, because one day, i swear, i’ll find someone who’ll wish for me on airplanes masquerading as shooting stars, and (wait for me to wash ashore. please?)

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Photo by Charlotte Shih

CONTRIBUTORS A. Davida Jane A. Davida Jane is an 18-year-old poet and novelist from Wellington, New Zealand who studies English Literature and spends all of her time with words. She has previously had work published in The Rising Phoenix Review, and more of her poetry can be found at wefragilehumans.tumblr.com.

Anthea Yang Anthea Yang is an aspiring poet from Perth, Western Australia. She is a silver-lining optimist and a lover of open fields. Her work has been published in –Ology, Hypertrophic Literary, The Rising Phoenix Poetry Review, and Avenoir Magazine. Apart from collecting poems, she also enjoys driving with the windows down and conversations about outer space.

Charlotte Shih Charlotte Shih is a graphic and web designer from Los Angeles, CA who also enjoys dabbling in photography from time to time. She graduated from Boston College with a degree in art history and is currently pursuing an advanced certification in web design at UCLA, but her true passion is speeding down open roads to soak up the desert sun.

Chelsea Scarnegie Chelsea Scarnegie is an aspiring writer from Carpentersville, Illinois. She is currently freelancing for the beautiful Thistle Magazine as well as the insightful Epoch Times. She plants peas in the springtime and adores gentle-hearted folk.

Christine Florence Christine Florence is a twenty-something content creator with a knack for anything visual and sometimes written. She recently graduated from university and now spends most of her time cuddling with her dog and figuring out new ways to wear all black.

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Claire August Claire August is a writer, student, and artist based in Boston, MA. She has also written for ACURE Mag, Inky Writers Mag, Crybaby Zine, and her personal blog. One time, she won $5 on a scratch ticket.

Clara Marisol Dela Cruz Marisol is a fifteen-year-old soul who is clumsy with words and hauling tables but is graceful at carrying multiple chairs at once. She finds pieces of her heart in the laughter that bounces off the walls of her youth group's meeting place and in quiet conversations with the warmth of people talking loudly over one another in the background. These pieces are put back together whenever she's eating dinner with her family and serving at her church. Marisol also loves running up and down stairs and writing letters to people.

Emily Palermo Emily Palermo is a nineteen-year-old aspiring writer and enthusiastic dog-lover from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she’s currently studying (and crying about) English Literature. Her work has been published in The Rising Phoenix Review. At any given moment, she’s probably sitting in a coffee shop, wondering how she can possibly write the moon into her next poem.

Mallory Malhearst Mallory Malhearst is a 24-year-old liquorice fan with constantly changing sleep schemes from Denmark. A recent History major from Aarhus University, she spends most of her time rooting for autumn to make an early appearance and trying to write flattering pieces on summer. She is currently failing at the latter.

Paola Bennet Paola Bennet is a nomad born in New England, blooded in the south of France, and taken under Manhattan’s wing. She spins stories in forms musical, prosaic, and photographic. Her work has been published by Passion Passport, -Ology (N°1), and school literary magazines.

She is always looking for the next café to harbor her black-notebook scribblings.

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Pauline Angeli Diego Pauline Angeli Diego is a seventeen year old student from Manila, Philippines, who finds beauty in both art and poetry. Her predominant interests include mystery, sci-fi, tragedy, history, and pop culture. She is inspired by the works of Sylvia Plath and Charles Bukowski.

Reini Lin Reini Lin is a sixteen-year-old wordsmith, poetry scribbler, voracious reader, and aspiring novelist from San Ramon, California. Her work is published or forthcoming in Polyphony HS, Dull Pencil Anthology, Silvae Magazine, and Half Mystic Journal. She holds positions on the editorial staff of Fragments of Chiaroscuro and the Glass Kite Anthology.

S.A. Khanum S.A. Khanum is a writer from the UK. Sydney Shavalier Sydney. 20. Hails from Michigan and still calls it home. Biochemistry major at Grand Valley State University. Enjoys classical music and quiet nights.

Yin Xzi Yin Xzi is a sixteen year old girl living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who takes solace in stringing words together on days where the sky expresses feelings and the earth does not feel like settling. She grew up in China where she nourished a love for writing, photography, and film. She enjoys propagating succulents and petting her cats who love sitting on couches and purring.

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- O L O G Y Quarterly Electronic Journal of Poetry and Prose No 3 // November 2015 HUSTLE