Apostasy - by Tony Li

I'll be good

by Chloe Cheng

I sit in my room On the rug I got just before I left I write a song to you And let it burn a hole in my head I’m not the type to let The full-length mirror face my bed I’m wearing baggy jeans Because I can’t stand the sight of my legs

Don’t leave me alone Never let me be alone With you and roommates Overzealously, I passed out drunk Making love with my scarred body I just wanted to fuck

Celibate, I lie On the bed I used to bleed in Stomach full and cheeks flush My eyelids hover And then fall

I scribbled on my thighs For countless nights In bathrooms I shared I’ll be good, I’ll be good I’m eating breakfast like I should I’ll be good, I’ll be good

art | Maggie Brosnan

isis the mother

by Ella Irvine

screaming with bare feet in the blood that tastes like wine and devotion or a collapsed body convulsing in the desert or a field soaked in melted bullets and mercury and a woman telling me she gave birth to a child last night, alone

and who was she? because I saw her, her right ear tied with light pink twine to the starving, salivating earth and her fingernails stained the color of the UNDERWORLD, isis picking up the pieces of her husband

clutching a baby like it is a secret that she carved into herself– scarlet skin a whisper sharper than a scythe and solitude deeper than eternity blooming like a rose or a bouquet of leaves or a sacrifice dripping in stillness, silhouetted in smoke, wearing a shawl of salt across her shoulder blades.

is the baby even alive? I watch her as she watches me, eyes opening then closing, drowning in this silence

that floods the spaces

between all the words

we dare not say. art | Madison Red