The Ash Tree Journal: Issue One by Ash Tree Journal

The Ash Tree Journal Issue 01 â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Becoming Poetryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Winter 2013-14 The Alt-Lit Literary Magazine Founders and Editors-in-Chief Marly Saunders and Annabelle Goll Poetry & Prose Editors Annabelle Goll, Marly Saunders, and Jordi Klein Other Staff Mirissa Leja Find us at ashtreejournal.tumblr.com and @ashtreejournal and contact us at ashtreejournal@gmail.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS Relationship Advice…………………………………………………………Amie Norman……………………………………6 White Noise………………………………………………………………………………Rebecca Upton………………………………6 i love you…………………………………………………………………………………Rachel Altvater…………………………7 Snitches/Stiches…………………………………………………………………Lucy Berkowitz………………………….7 9/3/13 12:17AM (an ending to a series of chance encounters) ………………………………………………………………………………Matt Chevalier………………………….8 PORCH RAT……………………………………………………………………………………Sharaya Baldwin………………………11 ESPN…………………………………………………………………………………………………Arctic Fox……………………………………11 vague thoughts………………………………………………………………………Sharaya Baldwin………………………12 EXERCISE IN PERSPECTIVE SHIFT OR W/E……………Manuel Arturo Abreu……………13 fauna's living(with the dreaming body)………C.P. Harrison……………………………14 The name "untitled entry" makes this a titled entry………………………………………………………………………………………………Andrew Hofmann…………………………14 Feeling Lucky…………………………………………………………………………Valérie Prýová…………………………15 Untitled………………………………………………………………………………………Jesse Wakesiah…………………………15 sometimes i think plants have a lot more to teach us than we give them credit for……………………………………………………………………death sloths………………………………16 October 7, 2:29 AM……………………………………………………………Cam Horvath…………………………………17 nayru………………………………………………………………………………………………Cam Horvath…………………………………17 Portrait of a Rabid Conscience……………………………Xavier Lee……………………………………18 the phone call………………………………………………………………………C.P. Harrison……………………………19 10/22/13 3:28PM……………………………………………………………………Matt Chevalier…………………………20 night terrors/bath……………………………………………………………Milo L………………………………………………21

i identify as the drain………………………………………………Nolan Allan…………………………………22 Never………………………………………………………………………………………………Erin Dorney…………………………………23 Untitled………………………………………………………………………………………C.M. Patison………………………………24 image5……………………………………………………………………………………………Antonia Nagle……………………………25 Alzheimer's………………………………………………………………………………Emm Roy……………………………………………25 <<…………………………………………………………………………………………………….Cam Horvath…………………………………26 About the Poets & Writers…………………………….…………………………………………………………………………27 Dedication & Copyright ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………29

Relationship Advice Amie Norman I met your mother and determined her skin nostalgia. I met your father and forgot terms describing messy. Embracing is together erasing spaced lies on living. Empty my pockets on their kitchen table for show. Little scraps pulled apart decorating fast food receipts. Eating is depression and they are recycling meat. Take your shoes off child was near to all they spoke. I forgot the napkin and wiped face on my jeans. Genes were weaving patterns on their face’s after thoughts. Explain to me reason as we peel apart lips forming word habits. I met your mother. I met your father. Tables spun around and around as eyes met struggle. You are your mother. You are your father. I am the addition that rotates your up bringing on a dinner platter.

white noise Rebecca Upton I didn’t like the color of the music on the radio, so I changed the station to white noise. I see the number seven on the clock and it feels like velvet, an hour ago I felt the leather of six. Most people don’t realize that Monday and Thursday are on different continents. I’m the only one concerned with the feelings of letters, and I’ve gotten to know the distinct personalities of the clothing at shopping malls. I feel sorry for anyone who can’t taste the color red.

Rachel Altvater

Snitches/Stitches Lucy Berkowitz denture distill a flock in gums

daemons dead omens of ticks accepting

I suffer steam-burns and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t learn a thing

9/3/13 12:17AM (an ending to a series of chance encounters) Matt Chevalier 'i go on rants a lot' i say sipping coffee. ‘i lose track of my feelings way too often and the end result is just messy oh shit oh shit im doing it now im so sorry im so sorry’. you did not seem all too fazed by my outbreak. in fact, you are an impossibly immovable object, whilst i, the impossibly unstoppable force, throw myself, both mentally and, in some cases, physically, against your stone skin (or, at least, i always pictured the immovable object in the age-old counterfactual as a stone of some sorts. you could be made of something else, or prefer i think of you as someone not made of stone, but i know you will never tell me.). you sip some more coffee and there is silence for a time. 'you act as if youre all alone.', you say, looking up, 'like, youre floating through space and trying to grab onto each planetary body you pass by. i know life seems like a tragic cycle sometimes, but you have believe me when i say it's not. youre not hopless.' i want to stand up and jokingly say 'youre damn right i am.' but i refrain from the standing and simply sip more coffee and jokingly breathe 'youre damn right i am.' into the porcelain cup. the echo travels from my mouth to my mug to my mouth, and what little sound escapes the rim of the cup only briefly brushes the tip of your nose. you decide you do not want to ask me what i just said, nor do you have any other words to say on the matter, so you smile and sit back, waiting for some other conversation piece to fall in your lap. i realize my social blunder a bit too late, and there is more semi-silence. outside, a bird or two are attempting to get laid, and the neighbor’s dog is rolling in the backyard. i remember you make this slurping sound whenever you drink coffee. i know you dont mean to do it, i know you find it embarrassing, and i know we have a silent pact to never mention it, but i love the way you have made such a simple sound something you own. i dont know if you know i have admired your coffee-drinking-sounds; i just want to lean across the table and wear a british-style curled wig and mumble things like ‘how interesting’ or ‘remarkable’ in a fake accent. i wonder if you would jokingly hit me in response. i should try, sometime. 8

our silence is a tangible thing, a thing that is the absence of things, of ideas and words, of kisses and riot police, of emotion and alcohol. i suddenly want you and i and your kitchen and everything in it to be the only things that exist. i want to look out the window and know the full extent of nothing, and, by the process of conceptually inverting what i just experienced, the full extent of infinity, but i know ill want to lean out as far as i can and probably fall out. i think you were thinking the same thing. as the minutes drag along, i hope you know more words than i do, because i believe i have used all ive ever learned in the hour or two we’ve spent together today. i never could figure out how to make words seem like their twisting around each other, making beautiful works of art out of their letter-bodies. i dont understand art. you do, or at least i think you do. ever since i met you, you have understood these types of things better than i ever could, and i always feel so stupid around you, though ill never tell you. this summer i learned that this feeling of inferiority may have been due to the fact that i am introverted, that i naturally have to think things through more. nevertheless, according to the standard iq test, i would still be so much less intelligent than you. ill never know, i guess, but neither will you, as we both swore in the third grade to never try to out-do each other. ‘damn’, i think to myself, ‘in that case, ive been lying to myself for at least eleven years now.’. you want to say something really badly, i can see it. the scrunch lines on your face have grown very profound, and the sounds of birds fricking and dogs dog-ing provides tension to this movie-moment of ours. i watch you make up your mind and i watch the thought fade away. the birds chirp loudly as your stray thought interrupts their sexual embrace. your true face returns, replacing the thoughtful mask you wore. i dont know which face i miss more. i am not aware as to where this wall between us came from; i guess i was visiting your apartment, and it sprouted through your kitchen floor, as if, over the course of a day, my thoughts and yours shook hands and went their separate ways. i want to believe we complete each other, but i feel that, with each passing second, i become less unstoppable and you become less immovable. we’re starting to push against each other, and someone has to give out sometime. i have friends just like you but theyre not you which makes them appear different, like their aura or whatever is an off-color of yours. you start talking about some bad pictures of you your friend put up on facebook. i am stirred aware and assure you she had only the best intentions in mind. you laugh and do not believe me. 9

i dont mind. i apologize for being a bore, a declaration which ive come to know as my body’s signal that it is time to leave. you laugh and say ‘no, youre just tired. youve been working too hard. im glad we could catch up though.’, even though, inside, you are slightly annoyed. i get up to leave. we say our goodbyes too early at the front door of your apartment, so the rest of the trip downstairs and out the front door of the building is spent in silence. you dont mind. i dont mind. your apartment building is old, with some crude letters carved into the handrails and mysterious stains on the carpets and plaster walls. we say another uncomfortable goodbye at the foot of the staircase and i leave. as i walk out, the air pressure growing noticeably heavier, i decide that i dont know if i want to do this anymore. i dont know if this dance is worth dancing. hell, i cant even fricking dance. i step out into what i envision to be nothingness, but is, in actuality, a block in the south side of the city. a heavy-set man is across the street, filling in concrete. i consider staying outside your apartment building for another few hours, waiting for him to leave, listening to birds making love in the trees lining the block. i want to step into the new concrete square across the street and know what it feels like to truly sink. im wishing the concrete would swirl around my feet, that it would defy its inherent nature and instantly harden, leaving me forever frozen in place outside your apartment. i walk over to the heavy-set man. i watch him work for a while. he looks up at me. ‘real scorcher outside today, aint it?’ he says. i look up to see if you are watching me from your apartment. you are not there. i turn back to the heavy-set man. ‘sure is’ i say. i nod at him and start walking down the street. i will save slowly sinking into city infrastructure for another day. i find my bicycle, still chained up to the public bicycle rack, still next to the bike with two missing tires. i start pedaling home. i try to decide whether or not i should feel sad. i dont think i will.

PORCH RAT Sharaya Baldwin I HAVE BEEN OUT ON YOUR FRONT PORCH FOR 3 WHOLE MONTHS. IT IS JANUARY IT IS FEBRUARY IT IS MARCH. IT IS APRIL AND I AM STILL HERE AND NOW I AM ROTTING. ONE TIME I GOT SO HIGH THAT MY BODY PROBABLY SYNCED WITH SOME BIG ASS WHALE SOMEWHERE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN. CATCH ME TRYING NOT TO THINK ABOUT THIS WHALE. YOU CAN'T I'M ALWAYS THINKING ABOUT IT. KISS ME IN A WAY THAT PROMPTS THE OCEAN TO TURN UPSIDE DOWN AND EMPTY ITSELF RIGHT ONTO MY STUPID FUCKING FACE. KISS ME IN BETWEEN THE SOUNDS THAT I MAKE WHEN I AM TRYING TO BE VERY STILL AND VERY QUIET AND VERY VERY SMALL. TODAY I STOOD IN THE SAME PLACE FOR 2 HOURS STRAIGHT. CATCH ME TRYING NOT TO THINK ABOUT THIS. YOU CAN'T I'M ALWAYS THINKING ABOUT THIS.

ESPN Arctic Fox An announcer yellls abt my life: “This Kid just ISN”T Making a difference!” He’s reallly excited. He’s saying it like I’ve just intercepted the ball, like it was handed right to me, and I’m running it all the way back to my side of the field. No one is really worried about me making the touchdown, because they’ve seen it happen so much, so no one is really trying to tackle me. ATM I think that’s mad swag. ATM when I first hold the ball. I feel like a hero. The further i get, the more i feel self-conscious about how no one is trying to tackle me. I start to think that maybe making the touchdown is not what i want to do. 11

Vague Thoughts Sharaya Baldwin vague thought of disembowling someone and finding strings of christmas lights curled up very small in their body cavity. vague thought of you possessing two mouths. one feels like 'please please please' kiss me with the one that feels like 'this is all too much' vague thought of opening a tea bag and a ghost spilling out and you offering him tea and him saying yes but you open another and a second ghost comes out and you keep repeating this process until you run out of tea and you apologize to the ghosts for being such a bad host. vague thought of human bodies as wooden frames. vague thought of human bodies as splintering ladders. vague thought of everyone carrying rulers to measure the negative space inside of each other. they are taking data and recording averages. so far, the average amount of empty space is 'quite a lot' vague thought of opening a tea bag and you spilling out vague thought of a self produced documentary where we kiss endlessly and that is the climax and that is the only important thing that happens.

EXERCISE IN PERSPECTIVE SHIFT OR W/E Manuel Arturo Abreu 1. my dad used to disconnect our router at 11pm every night b/c the light bothered him & he didn't want us up late i was 'in cahoots' w/ my mom who would reconnect it after my dad fell asleep brb need to google the etymology of 'cahoots' my mom forgot to reconnect it sometimes i'd get bitchy & say things like 'dad makes better chicken than you' i said his pollo was more campesino than hers this would upset her sometimes my mom would run into my room say 'i have a surprise' then fart & run out 2. actually i started writing b/c i'd be up late w/ no internet i made my own virtuality now i've spent the years since trying to dismantle it and enter the virtuality everyone else is in imagine inverted panoramas

faunaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s living (with the dreaming body) C.P. Harrison whispered against a nervous cheek while asleep (not dead) surprisingly the worst curse you said on your deathbed holds up fairly well

The name "untitled entry" makes this a titled entry Andrew Hofmann imagine: a door. behind this door there is a room, and in this room you are sitting at your computer reading this piece of social media. imagine, you open this door, and you enter, but the you at the computer is so focused upon imagining this door, this room, this you, that they don't notice you. use this moment for a bit of introspection. you have accessed a kind of fractal mirror where you have become a 'third-person limited' narrator-use this to your advantage. the thing that english teachers should teach but don't is that the techniques used for analysis fiction are also good for analyzing your life, since our entire internal lives are series of fictions organised into a believable story by conscious and unconscious processes. the fun thing about this current introspective setup is that it's a good illustration of the issue for people who are painfully selfaware--there's a fundamental recursive disassociation from the self that's going on. please try to be understanding, you're not ignoring you out or rudeness. you're trying to conflate this into an important moment in a moment of metarecursive reverie. counterpoint: perhaps reverie is all we have. anyway, you're leaving the room now. You shut the door with a soft click. You allow yourself a moment of separation. And then: you're back at your device, consuming social media, and the earth collapses back into a singular point, this (im)pure moment when this post doesn't end in a way that doesn't make any cohesive 14

Feeling Lucky Valérie Prýová

UNTITLED Jesse Wakesiah you fed the cat and watered jade plants i told you not to pinch the leaves i read about roderick haig-brown and watched you make lemonade at around noon, i asked if you were named after the beatles’ song you said, "no. but i’ve always wanted someone to ask me that.”

sometimes i think plants have a lot more to teach us than we give them credit for Death Sloths apathy is an art avoidance is an art intentionality is an art coming to realize there is as much value inherent in the process, recognizing and internalizing deficiency owning, possessing as is in the evasion of it maybe no one suffers conventional tortures in hell but the horror happens with the complete lack of upward mobility an anti-american dream of sorts destined to stagnate, insufficient complacency trees grow as long as they live iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll reduce you, violently to your words your actions your body your lungs your cells, the energy in your electrons silently visualize the dissipation of everything i believe to be â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;til there isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t any me to talk about itself while oscillating obstinate windows give glimpses into aggressive expansion or maybe a grass-eaten gilgamesh wandering passively through abandoned intestinal tissue remember remember remember remember your roots

October 7, 2:29 AM Cam Horvath i can’t sleep and the occupational outlook handbook website won’t load for me

nayru Cam Horvath treasures buried in the hole beneath your house in a would-be horror movie let us not mean anything together because we don’t a pill bottle filled with what we both know to be placebos and a mug of cologne and a bowl of styrofoam pellets trees wrapped in packaging tape writhing a flat 7 rings off in the distance as we sit on a beach and the sun sets behind us we will never have gotten anywhere i tell my therapist you were the stones in my shoe and i thought i loved you but i was wrong but i still wear those shoes we have to get out of here

Portrait of a Rabid Conscience Xavier Lee I have been living in a flat on Lexington Avenue for three years now. I can barely pay the rent. I am living alone, and I have no one. No one but myself and the ghosts that come and go, that may or may not exist. I wake up every morning to sunlight and anxiety, to the world swimming around my vibrating skull. There is always a bottle near my bed, always a woman lurking around my flat, looking like a lost child. There is always something stuck on the bulletin board of my mind, something that I cannot ignore or deny, that demands that I look and give it the attention it deserves. Sometimes I find myself staring into the ceiling as I wake up, my body rapt by paralysis, the fairies dancing around and taunting me as I stare without the ability to look away. My legs are frozen, my arms leaden, my mind racing as the sickly things file in, talking of filthy things. And sometimes I see them when I am not paralyzed, a hallucination that is induced only by the rapids of my conscious racing towards the end-goal â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the smoky horizon.

the phone call C.P. Harrison so much ambient air noise my first name she asks if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the traditional spelling her cell sounds like she is rolling around under her favorite afghan holding the phone w/ both feet imagine everyone on the other end masturbating always I notice between us we say the word appointment like a dozen times noticing makes it hard to speak the real question should be do we have the same traditions

10/22/13 3:28PM Matt Chevalier you said you write as the lines between the death of winter and the time when you got poison ivy from running cross-country over train tracks are bluring, and i think i laughed because there are no such thing as lines. we are a system of doubts, i suppose. “no matters” dont matter but russell wrote we matter so i guess thats another hour spent at the library between the hours of asphyxiation and my everyday fixation. w e ar e bi rds (e) ve-r(y) knowledgable in th e name(s) an d address( es) of our hom e-town(s). i am the evolution of the automobile at least in the sense that i dont smoke as much anymore. i am the sound of the floorboards and old tiles from the nineties groaning in frustration because their poetry is no good. i am the crow feather that fell on your shoulder that you brushed off ironically as you were saying something about the negative consequences of cultural appropriation, to which i responded with both an affirmation of your argument’s strength and originality (though i had secretly read the same one online somewhere days before) and with a deafening gush of air felt only by the amoebas as my featherbody contacted them for the first time. i want to apologize for using the phrase “whispering nothings” in a song. i want you to give me a stern look and say ”okay, but dont do it again” and have our a priori conceptions of winter die right there and then. i want to go on to say poetry used to be something icouldnt fold my twigarmsaround and im praying each night to carl sagan that i wont feel that way again. i guess it was an atonement for believing in the gender binary that i was taught in high school. no matter. no matter. no matter. 20

no matter. no matter. no matter. you thought i was finished and you opened your mouth but, yeah, i stole the words and turned the undefined spotlight (or whatever you see hanging over your head when you speak) back to me. i, in actuality, said (â&#x20AC;&#x153;)nothing(â&#x20AC;&#x153;) for a while, pausing to let my growing eversion of meaning (to) sink in. you need to be told that you are loved. you need to be told that you are loved. you need to be told that you are loved and i cant stop thinking that, somewhere, my logic is backwards, probably because of the word need. i want you to tell me what you need and i want you to never tell you what you need because ill have already known somehow because that is what high school ingrained in me and im sorry, ill change.

night terrors/bath Milo L. it feels like dying if dying is sad and serene. picture your pubic hair floating in cold oily water and memories of cold sweat pricking your forehead and fear of strange circles garotting your dreams in their sleep. remember the hatred of god that pervaded your childhood luna was put down on january twelfth and you prayed to the devil to slaughter his mother/father/brother/sister/son/daughter you idiot baby i know you remember

i identify as the drain Nolan Allan i identify as the drain, clogged with your long red hairs i identify as an owl who refers to his glasses as “spectacles” instead of just calling them glasses like everyone else i identify as the perfectly preserved package of pop rocks unearthed by a confused alien archeologist i identify as the tiny paper circles you spilled across the carpet after you took my hole punch to class without asking i identify as a unique accessory for a videogame you forgot you owned i identify as the wet rocks underneath a waterfall i identify as a new world monkey i identify as the spider web caught in the folds of your smile i identify as this year’s flashy new car commercial, same as last year’s i identify as a sterile rock pool by a glass beach i identify as a scratch on your cornea i identify as the gilded sky i identify as a dream like substance you can ingest on the go i identify as the waves on a knife made from damascus steel i identify as a wreath made from dried flowers covered in my own blood i identify as your indigestion i identify as a leaky battery i identify as a daguerreotype that depicts the events leading up to your death

i identify as someone who drinks willingly from the earth’s blood i identify as the vivid moss i identify as a jar of poisoned honey i identify as the little red square you place beneath your tongue i identify as the tip of a fox’s tail i identify as the dunes i identify as the age spots on your teeth i identify as someone who stares at a small glass screen because they are afraid to be still in the long hours of the afternoon, when their mind wanders and they try to avoid imagining what death will be like

Never Erin Dorney I have never taken my socks off in a bakery or smelled a scratch ‘n sniff sticker under a streetlight. I have never mopped a rooftop or screamed into a frying pan—have never pinned my wrists to the clothesline. I have never been a circadian rhythm. I have never pressed my eyebrows against the white whiskers of an old man’s face—have never torn out enough pages of a fashion magazine to line the insides of a tub or worn enough layers to bounce to the moon or slept so hard my blood vessels burst. My knees have never splintered.

Untitled C.M. Patison 1. Tender I’ll hold onto each breath till it scolds me I should be cleaning or some other thing it is a mess around here but that don’t matter just otis redding try some damn tenderness i will feel you out and eventually I’ll find a way in i will speak so solemnly so many sentences to begin with i to believe i type for a living i want to believe in some soul for us all i wanna believe in so much my backyard is a jungle i wanna say i’m not falling into solemn bits i heard my great great grand something went into the forest to catch herself aflame and not a surprise at that we are a raucous bunch and i’ve said for years i would do just the same.

Alzheimer's Emm Roy This is another nightmare about flying and falling, losing all your teeth, showing up naked to school even though you graduated years ago. It’s the one where your grandma is alive again, but she doesn’t recognize you. It’s the one where the Alzheimer’s looks like a pet you had when you were younger. It’s the one where you’re the grandma. You’re the pet. You’re the disease. Look, your teeth are falling again.

Antonia Nagle

<< Cam Horvath i still can’t answer the question “why did you come here” or “where are you going” or “what the hell do you think you’re doing” i’m just being passive waiting for the species to die out because then i’ll have nothing to worry about anymore i am disappearing slowly like in back to the future except i’m the only one noticing my transparency i am daydreaming about being on an asteroid the real big sky country where the darker it is the more you can see and not having to eat or worry about keeping myself alive i don’t need oxygen i just need a view or motivation or the ability to manipulate time or my experience of it (life as a vcr) mobility is a problem trees will always have their friends why did i leave why did i leave why did time make me leave this isn’t about me it’s about the backseat of a lincoln town car watching the housetops and streetlights through the window as my friends smoke in the front on a cold fall evening last year and i still have everything i was wearing that night but if i put it all on i’ll still be here i’m daydreaming about everybody always being in the same places

About the Poets & Writers In order of Appearance

Amie Norman is aspiring energy and developing position, graduated from poor decision-making, and winds her way through words inspired by the great voids in life. More of her work can be found at mewiththenight.tumblr.com Rebecca Upton is a college student who can also be found on Twitter (@softgrungedog). More of her work can be found at kielbasanova.tumblr.com Rachel Altvater is half teacher and half freelance writer, with a degree that's half creative writing and half disaster studies. More of her work can be found at raltvater.tumblr.com Matt Chevalier is a harried and confused twenty-something currently living in Philadelphia. More of his work can be found at iamthemotive.tumblr.com Lucy Berkowitz is a transgender writer from Spokane Washington, she aims to be someone someday. More of her work can be found at lucywithanumlaut.tumblr.com Sharaya Baldwin lives in Washington State and cares about most things. More of her work can be found at trashhands.tumblr.com and @swingsheet on twitter. Arctic Fox may be the irrelevant expression. More of their work can be found at athirdoption.tumblr.com Manuel Arturo Abreu is a writer based in the Bronx and Portland. More of their work can be found at twigtech.tumblr.com C.P.Harrison is a poet living in Austin, Texas and tumbling at flarfku.tumblr.com Andrew Hofmann is fairly confident he is a human being (a "College Student", allegedly) living somewhere in Ohio, but he's not going to jump to any conclusions just yet. More of his work can be found on his facebook page, at Andrew.hofman.90 Valérie Prýová knows Latin and likes to write a lot of science fiction and can be found at urbsantiquafuit.tumblr.com Jesse Wakesiah was born April 7th 1985 on Vancouver Island. More of his work can be found at jesserwake.tumblr.com 27

Death Sloths is entranced, incorporeal -- the flow of oxygen within a universal system. More of their work can be found at deathsloths.tumblr.com Cam Horvath couldn't be bothered to do this exercise but one of his friends described him as having "self-diagnosed dysthymia" and he thought that was good enough. More of his work can be found at enjoyyourshoes.tumblr.com Xavier Gerard Lee is an emerging writer and undergraduate student from New Jersey. More of his work can be found at ecksell.tumblr.com Milo L. is sixteen and lives in a stone bathtub full of milk. More of his work can be found at milophenidate.tumblr.com C.M. Patison is a 24 year old student from Washington State. More of their work can be found at pithypoet.tumblr.com Nolan Allan is a writer from North Carolina and can be found on twitter @nolanallan. Erin Dorney can be found in Lancaster, PA and on Twitter at @edorney. More of her work can be found at nicejacketwierdcuffs.tumblr.com Antonia Nagle enjoys sleeping and did not die of skin rash or any affiliated affliction. More of their work can be found at escapedfrommymind.tumblr.com Emm Roy is a Canadian illustrator who likes poems as much as the internet likes cute pictures of cats. More of her work can be found at motsmaudits.tumblr.com

dedicated to Kenji Khozoei, Steve Roggenbuck, and Jordi Klein for showing us what writing can be

ygg d r a s i l what miracle is this? this giant tree. it stands ten thousand feet high but doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t reach the ground. still it stands. its roots must hold the sky O

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