Glass Kite Anthology :: Issue 8 + 9 by Glass Kite Anthology

3#|8+9 spring 2015 | 2017

GLASS KITE GLASS KITE ANTHOLOGY ANTHOLOGY

Dubai

ISABELLA WANG

Glass Kite Anthology is a non-profit, independent literary & arts journal dedicated to the dangerous. To the uncaged. To the brutally honest that cuts through tendon and singes flesh. We want works that are on the verge of breaking, pieces that are bloated with experience, the ashes on your fingertips, the caverns between your cavities, the kneecaps bruised with jasmine tea. Tell us what it feels like when you first bite into your best friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s grief, what you do when you outgrow your childhood sandals, where your brother goes at night with his lips stained orange. Let us catch the last words he indents on your cheek, the promises that hover just above the skyline, cawing away like crows. Make us feel like we were corpses all along. Go ahead, submit. Break the glass. Let your words fly. http://www.glasskiteanthology.weebly.com | glasskiteanthology@gmail.com http://issuu.com/glasskiteanthology | https://www.facebook.com/glasskiteanthology 1

CONTENTS

WRITING Boxwood Margot Armbruster...............................................................................6 Iguala Jasmine Cui..................................................................................................7 For Those Who Address Themselves As Their Abusers Once Did Adira Bennett......................................................................................................................9 Instinct Jennifer Boyd..........................................................................................12 Seville Margot Armbruster...................................................................................13 Intelligent Design Margot Armbruster.............................................................15 Waning Sophie Gu.................................................................................................17 Fairytale Shirin Laturkar.....................................................................................19 Mama Left the Farm Nikita Bastin...................................................................20 And Other Things We Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Talk About Sophie Li.......................................21 Girls Emma Camp.................................................................................................25 Waiting For Cassie Coale....................................................................................26 Of Whales Cassie Coale........................................................................................26 In Flood, In Fire Sophie Li.................................................................................30 God Loves Apricots Felicia Lowe.......................................................................31 2 am insomnia Archita Mittra............................................................................32 Calling Cards Demi Richardson..........................................................................33 Prospective Homebuyer Jasmine Cui..............................................................36 Dreams Mia Barzilay Freund..............................................................................37 Biennial Ezra Lebovitz.........................................................................................38 Dear, Emma Kautz................................................................................................39 True Tribunals Kelsi Davis.................................................................................40 * Simon Perchik.......................................................................................................41 The David Vases Annie Fan................................................................................43 Ghost Noise Serena Lin.......................................................................................46 Pyre Aly Avecedo...................................................................................................47 Persephone, Remade Serena Lin......................................................................47 * Simon Perchik......................................................................................................48 living on the Edge Franziska Lee.......................................................................49 Craigslist Ad for Missed Connections Diana Khong....................................53 seconds, minutes Sophie Li................................................................................55 2

ART Hunting Season Isabella Wang.....................................................................cover Dubai Isabella Wang...............................................................................................1 Undecisive Fabrice Poussin...................................................................................4 Woman Woman Isabella Wang...........................................................................8 Lady Nature Betsy Jenifer....................................................................................11 Asphalt Jungle Betsy Jenifer...............................................................................15 Bee on a Twig Betsy Jenifer.................................................................................16 Broken Promise Fabrice Poussin…………......……………………………………….….…22 Intention Fabrice Poussin…………………………………………………………….………..…24 Birth Fabrice Poussin…………………………………………………………………………..…...27 Masquerade Fabrice Poussin……………………………..…………………..…………..……27 Transcendent Swing Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier………………………….…….28 Grandfather Isabella Wang……………………………………………………..………….…..29 Childhood Swing Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier.………………………….….……...32 The Man Isabella Wang…………………………………………………...………………………35 Adam’s Ale Betsy Jenifer……………………………………………………………..……….…..41 Trypophobia Isabella Wang……………………………………………………………..……..42 The Jar of Creation Fabrice Poussin………………………………………..……………...44 Rehearsal Isabella Wang.....................................................................................45 Thoughts Adrift Betsy Jenifer…………………………………………………………....……48 Space Swing Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier……………………………..………..……..51 Sewn Dews Betsy Jenifer……………………………………………….…………………...……57 Eyes Forward Isabella Wang................................................................back cover Editorial Board & Contributors…………………………………………………………………...58

Undecisive

FABRICE POUSSIN

Boxwood MARGOT ARMBRUSTER what if I planted boxwood in the front yard. what if it grew up tall and stalky, what if it pressed thick against the windows. or if it dried out in August, went brown and scattered into dust when I touched it. in Chicago the summer is harsh and wet. one evening after dusk I dug shards of pale green glass from the sand. green like the prows of ships stalking the ocean in winter, casting their baleful gaze into the night. my mother used to wear a dress that color, play jazz and whirl around the room in her stocking feet. my mother is gone. my mother who pressed pills to her lips like they would teach her how to save herself. who scraped furrows in the dirt, unfurled boxwood roots and laid them in the ground slower than remembering how to love. which is what I am trying every day to do. which is why I cannot peruse the sheaf of sepia photographs— my mother pruning boxwood with religious care, or holding the plants aloft in the blazing sunlight— without the sharp twist of pain like trowel striking rock. in the city, in my childhood home, the boxwood is spilling into the street unconstrained. my mother’s garden is a garden no more. 6

Iguala JASMINE CUI In 1970, my father pledges allegiance to a dead man. In 2001, I learn how much blood it takes to save a nation, and the answer is exactly 2,996 lives. A student wears the Mexican flag slicked against his spine pinned to his cotton jumper. Brass needles: nails; his country: a crucifix and I rip faces out of magazines, perforating the glossy covers, fingers hooked into the holes, an iconic orange, of a pair of Fiskar scissors, remembering an angry 43 branded into your left hip. Forever inflamed, forever hidden beneath the lip of your Levis. A mother saves a seat for the son who never returns. He lives with his Father inside a funeral portrait, eyes and face stolen by a sulphurous sun. Sometimes, the lost are never found and sins are never absolved and the cost of freedom is calculated in pints of blood to be exactly 387.

Woman Woman ISABELLA WANG

For those Who Address Themselves As Their Abusers Once Did ADIRA BENNETT On your way to the subway station, you hear someone say, cassette tapes are obsolete. You want to tell her she is wrong (shut your mouth). You touch the hollow he filled at the root of your skull; the click and whir of the cassette tapes looped into nooses for every neuron. A labor of his heavy love; a pet project, afternoons and nights— especially nights— spent charging reels with programmed missile magnet words that return, again and again and again: shut up worthless little slut don’t you dare say no to me. After the split— God, the split; the stripped bandage jackhammer mouth hang-up call bruised flower apology gripping your trachea for the last six months, the last six years (why can’t you let it go you fucking bitch it didn’t even hurt), he

left only onions and ketchup in the fridge. He left the play buttons rigged to every thread of light that tries to crocus through the bedrock of your brain. For every blade he kissed your chin with (so easy to fillet you like a fucking fish are you listening to me), he never cut the tapes. Your own blunt scissors bite and tug, struggling, but listen to me: we will cut our tapes. We will trim electric pulse ghosts to slivers. We will tear with our teeth, if we have to; tuck scraps into mason jars that rattle but never shatter. Let the crows make nests with their knife-wound syllables, let the cases crack, let our cassette tapes streamer and confetti; let our cassette tapes become obsolete. We will do this together, laying soft words like unfamiliar honey prayers on our tongues.

Lady Nature

BETSY JENIFER

Instinct JENNIFER BOYD We were foreigners mulling over the severity of each blistering cliff, each cypress bough protruding from velvety smog. An unfamiliar stretch of tinder, every flame a pursed oasis. Rendered in sable I helped you put on your own coat. Flippant trail marks polluted the duskâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s maidenly purity, a harrowing monsoon shot into spindly veins. Not once did we see black looming like prawns shivering in the watery breadth.

SEVILLE MARGOT ARMBRUSTER in Seville the summer oranges hang heavy along the road, swell bulbous and suffuse the air with the scent of their inexorable rotting. the year before you killed yourself we wandered every dirty alley together, shook down fruit in the shattered pavilions. my hands were stained with zest, you pried away peel from the mottled spheres, juice spilled from your hands into the street.

Medusa

ALBERT LENG

Asphalt Jungle

BETSY JENIFER

Intelligent Design MARGOT ARMBRUSTER i. my father snares fish like a cat, knife-blade fingers leaping to tug flesh from hook, pry scale from translucent skin, or to rinse chalky bone in the river flowing by, water cold as forgetting. ii. the pews hold no trace of him. instead, he wanders the gashes notched by glaciers into forest loam, picks at carp corpses as he muses on intelligent designâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;groundwater seeping out from a damp swatch of moss, slender ribs knitting together to cradle the tremulous fish-heart. sacred skeleton.

iii. lungs corroded, stinging with smoke. that low, walnut-oil voice reduced to a rasp, sandpapered into wracking coughs. still, he whispers sickbed sermons, pressing my hand: the woods, he murmurs, they slit you open like shrapnel. iv. deep-throated cathedral trees, sap dripping like ichor. silt spins in the river. palm-smooth shale, penumbra creeping over the ground. the wind is blowing high and cold into the night. I fish the river dry and wait for daybreak.

Bee on a Twig

BETSY JENIFER 16

Waning SOPHIE GU My mother and father slept in separate bedrooms unless it was the first or third Saturday of the month. Otherwise my father slept on his belly, slung diagonally across the mattress in the master bedroom, spittle collecting in his sandy beard. My mother resigned herself to the blue sleeping bag that smelled of curdled milk that I keep rolled away in my closet. On those days I would drape my hand over the side of my bed and search for her in the dark, soft pink fingers seeking the protection of the shiny plates of her palm. And she would tell me, over and over, about the white paper lanterns that illuminated the lovely pearl complexion of the moon goddess, Chang’e, and many years later chemistry class would tell me that it was not magic but a simple reaction between air and flame. When dusk fell on those days that I had my room to myself, my mother would sit herself in front of the mirror of my half-bathroom and I would help her become Chang’e. She closed her eyes and leaned her head over the back of the folding chair. And I would shampoo the smell of pork fat and bouillon cubes from her scalp, standing entirely outside the bathroom save for my toes, which rested upon the raised threshold and caught frothy drips of ivory soap lather. While I waited for her hair to dry I framed her eyes with kohl and burned her lips a cheap drugstore vermillion. When she opened eyes again they had been clouded with a phony shellac of desire and on those nights my bedside radio sang Whitesnake and Boston extra-loud into the tarry air. Come dinnertime my classmates streamed in and out of my house like vagabonds through an art museum. They thought it was curious how my family was the only one that ate things other than medium-rare cuts of ungulates. I was happy to show them the whole fish glaring from their plates as their snowy flesh slid off their bones, and I taught my friends to suck the savory jelly off the hard white spheres of the eyeballs. Once for Thanksgiving my mother hung a raw plucked duck in front of our electric fan for hours and then spitroasted the thing by stringing it up in our oven with reshaped wire coat hangers. The kitchen grew hot and humid and my father sidled into the room as she removed articles of clothing, one by one. His hands were restless on the countertop but they did nothing to assist with the cooking. And that day I realized that my father and I saw my mother’s tracks of sweat quite differently, and practicality in my language sounded different on the American tongue. 17

The skin of the duck had been crispy and the fat dripped down my father’s chin. But that night I heard pained noises over the radio static and after that Thanksgiving my mother never made roast duck again, nor did she take off her blouse outside the bedroom. When she had to go out for groceries she taught me how to use a green makeup palette to neutralize the pink and purple patches across her cheekbones. And my classmates turned on me, anyway. Someone had told them that our food was unsanitary and now they were happy with their blue-blooded steak and potatoes. Someone had told them that I, too, was dirty, half-mutt daughter of a half-price gook whose jaundiced skin was rank with the fragrance of sesame oil. My mother saw me in my forlorn solitude and offered me, with the same surreptitiousness of the medieval midwife offering a young woman a tincture of worm fern, the colorful potions which deified twice a month. But in my mind’s eye was the fat dripping off my father’s chin and I turned away and promised to prove her wrong. Luke would do. After twelve long years of quarantine, Luke would do. He looms over me, storm cloud; and he peers at me with two fat golden coins sunken into his face, spinning indefinitely at a tempo at odds with the wump of the music shaking the floor below. The crook of his neck smells of Tide detergent and wood fires and raw boy. The knotted sinews shift beneath his skin like the back of a pit bull straining against his leash. And I am no longer one half of a Siamese twin in a sideshow, no longer a rat in the refuse heap on a dock. He says I am obsidian blade, saffron silk. He says I taste of rice wine. He says I am his pearl. My mother applies pressed powder to her puffy cheek and my father uses the back of his hand to wipe the grease off his lips. Luke’s willowy figure is deceiving and he interprets my efforts as enthusiasm. I never knew until now the indignity of being lost in translation. Chang’e smiles at me wanly through the haze of sheer curtains and winks an Itold-you-so with her blind cataract eye. Luke’s weight evaporates from my breasts and the sweaty sheets of the stranger’s bed dissolves beneath my shoulders. Windows and streetlamps flicker weakly below me and I am borne naked and goosepimple-y before my patron saint. The callouses of her hand are a familiar terrain and she drapes a white shroud over my shoulders to bury my shame. She smells of curdled milk and tells me, over and over, that none of it was magic—that it was a simple and inevitable reaction between air and flame.

Fairytale SHIRIN LATURKAR n. something resembling a fairy story in being magical, idealized, or extremely happy. A King and a Queen had a bouncing baby boy once, and the kingdom rejoiced. The boy got all the presents he could dream of – even three fairies came to visit, and they gifted him with many great abilities. “No one shall threaten him,” said the first fairy. “For fear is weakness.” “He will have whatever he finds beautiful,” gifted the second fairy. “For beauty is joy.” “He will be strong,” said the third. “For strength is power.” Far away, a little girl came into this world. She was greeted with a slap from her father, that her mother accepted instead. She was gifted with many things – bruises as red as blood, skin as white as fear, hair as black as pain. Over time, she built herself a gift. She gave herself callouses, and skin as strong as armour. She stopped accepting her father’s gifts. The King and the Queen watched their beautiful son grow up. He was so intelligent, so Kingly. He showed the world the silhouette of what he called beauty, and a dozen women cut their sides, their ankles, their heels to fit into that beautiful shape. He walked the streets at night, searching for a silhouette, and when he found it, he used his strength to never take no for an answer. Once upon a time, the girl was in a dark alley, eating the baker’s scraps. And when the Prince saw her silhouette…well, a Prince wants for nothing. But he felt her armour, her skin so strong, she felt nothing. And he was so stunned that he ran back to his castle, feet thudding on the cobbled street. So filled with terror was he, of a strength stronger than his. The memory of skin as rough as stone was etched into his mind, unfading, ever grating. So when his mother asked him what he wanted for a wife, he told her to choose anyone with skin as soft and thin as petals. Skin that could feel a pea through a thousand layers. How beautifully it would bruise under his strength.

Mama Left the Farm NIKITA BASTIN In a kingdom of bluegrass she filled my hands with dead seeds, called them the strange hearts of young girls, then forced them into the dirt and said it was heaven. The voices of decay hooked my fingers like roots and grass blades cleaved into my threadbare jeans. Something in the sky glinted off her smile and I felt my lips trying to translate it, but suddenly she was gone and between our mouths was a great flatland. What was lost became the darkness getting darker as the wind ran over it, netted with pollen and tobacco smoke born on the tongue of the farmerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s son. I have watched the dust collect over our farm, spiraling, slowly burying the strange heart she had borne in me. I stand, waiting to feel her palm brush it away. 20

And Other Things We Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Talk About SOPHIE LI Wild geese know when it is time to fly south. By some scientific trade secret or biological clock, they curl their feet and collect their young and make their way across settling skies in the slow autumn days when light is busy returning to itself. Winter comes and finds only empty lakes dotted with thin brown leaves and loose goose down, as the birds make their journeys towards warmer places. This is the first way by which we understand our position in the universe: that the wild things are the ones who know the world best, that the world makes little sense to the rest of us, deaf mute humans in the darkness. Another: the relativity of time. All children know this, watching the clock hands bend and break into infinity, counting the seconds that last forever behind classroom desks but blink quickly into nothingness on the water slide, between the chains of swings. This is to say that there was a moment on a slumbering October afternoon when time froze, clocks stopped, the universe held its breath, millions of basketballs paused just over the rim of the hoop, rain was suspended in mid-air, everything paused in waiting for what was to happen, several lifetimes passed, a leaf from the oak tree curled up and fell, a cricket landed lightly on the windowsill. When time began again with a great and noisy exhale, everything looked the same, and it was true that not everything had changed. Only this: my sister stopped leaving the house. u She has never seen so many casseroles in her life, Tupperware upon Tupperware upon the glass-topped coffee table, slowly sprouting their own individual eco-systems, surely and calmly making their way to the kingdom above. She spills a glass of milk, snowflake magnified a hundred times, Rorschach test in white, and the liquid cuts around or under their transparent bottoms, the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s smallest waterfall drip-dripdropping onto the carpet. She wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t looking, or she spilled it deliberately and then forgot, or the Earth shifted a crucial inch and everything began off-kilter, the milk arching out from the cup. 21

One day she started shrinking and after it started it never slowed. In the manner of exponential decay, like the smooth, sloping curve of a stone launched off a hill, she woke up one morning and couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see over the top of the sink anymore, even though the day before she could still find half a face in the mirror, and the day before that had only really needed to tip toe. Slowly and steadily her clothes no longer fit, sleeves slipping off shoulders and blouses onto the floor, pants already a long lost cause. Was this the result of poor nourishment, or of being a live ghost in a house that the dead were reclaiming for themselves? She wondered if she would just go on diminishing in stature forever until she was eye-level with the ants, and if she could live in relative peace inside their subterranean tunnels that turned and twisted in the levels below ground, far more intricate than anything humans could fashion. She wondered if they would let her. If she showed up with honey in her hands and apologies. Sorry about accidentally squashing some of your relatives here and there. Sorry about that time I had the entire house fumigated. Shrinking, she began to develop a much more wistful fascination with corners of the house she had never before paid attention to. Part of this was purely practical â&#x20AC;&#x201D; these

Broken Promise22 FABRICE POUSSIN

were spaces behind bookshelves all previously inaccessible, too narrow to be properly examined before the arrival of these new matchstick arms and a waistline that could now realistically be measured in millimetres â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and part of it all self-defence, the timehonoured tradition of avidly and stubbornly denying the past, a mind predisposed towards keeping certain things dropped permanently in the dust, behind claw-footed drawers and tarnished silver armoires it would take three strongmen to move, for example: a torn photograph, a baby rattle, once shared. All the way before the world ended. Luckily it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take, and she never told anyone about it. With the locked door and radio silence she steadily maintained, there was no one to enter the house and find her half her usual size, climbing a wobbling stack of stools to be able to reach the kitchen sink, a now-oversized T-shirt wrapped around the shoulders like a shroud. Just as suddenly as it had all begun, she woke up one morning in clothes that once again fit. It could be a sign of something. It could be a sign of nothing. She makes herself breakfast in bed: orange juice, an English muffin, bacon and lightly seasoned eggs. u You have to understand that we did try, constantly calling until she unplugged the home phone and smashed her mobile, showing up at the doorstep to a double-locked door and shattering glass when we tried going for the windows, we resorted to emailing: how are you today, please talk to us, we want to help you. Go for a walk. Go outside. Please be kind to yourself. But still the radio silence. Still the front door closed. u In dreams, she is something other than herself. She makes things out of nothing: first the small things, plastic toys and wooden trinkets that could be bought for under a dollar for souvenirs at roadside truck stops. Objects of no value. She knows these things. Played with them. Then, those that lived began crawling out. They are all real or they arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. The first grey-eared rabbit died within days, small and curled into itself. The next one lasted longer. The third longer still. She cries and cries and cries and buries them in the soil of the garden, in the quiet hours of the night when she is alone with the moon. Skin dripping with sweat, she dreams entire zoos into being, animals that have not walked the earth for thousands of years, or ever, dodo birds and 23

diplodocus, tigers the size of mice, birds with stripes like zebras, strange, golden-eyed geese. She curls a hand over the back of a giant armadillo, its scales shining like sunlight through the leaves. Mirrors are no longer friendly, showing her a pale-faced dark-eyed rumpled version of herself. A mouth opens, a fist clenches and loosens. Hey. You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop now. u When the sun has risen and the hands washed clean of blood, when the ugly dust has settled, she will wonder if she could have seen it coming: if there had been a sign, some shifting of tectonic plates that could warn of future ruin, some liminal sunlight bleeding through the boundaries between this world, today, and the new order of tomorrow, and like those animals in cartoons chasing something all the way over the edge of a cliff â&#x20AC;&#x201D; open your eyes, look down, look down, look down, look down, look down, look down, she remembered the ocean on her lips. She remembered the thin fingernail of the moon being the only thing she could see in the darkness. Her second self is watching through the trees, ready to claim her from herself. u

Intention

She woke up. She woke up. She woke up.

FABRICE POUSSIN

Girls EMMA CAMP A hand passes over my mouth. Skin fluttering, something rustles. Like a bee. Like a girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s skirt. I must imagine her with skin peeling. Body curled into gunshot. Caressed like a jackknife. I must remember all the times men have slipped their hand around my waist palm pressing into ribs. How soon before a glance becomes blood. Lips part just to choke out seafoam, mouth seizing over screams. A hand passes over my mouth. Red that soaks into blonde, little by little. Rippling like the open part of wound.

Waiting For CASSIE COALE The weatherman predicts many things will happen. And of course things happen, like terror plots. How even the crook of a finger as it bends to scratch a thigh is a thing. How even a kiss that does not occur. It is easy to feel sorry for the whales and for the Amazon rainforest. Dead people. Superstars. The little boy who was almost eaten by Japanese bears. I have learned to let others decide what time it is. To watch and watch the news.

Of Whales CASSIE COALE The British royal family doesn’t have a last name. They are just: “of Wales.” At seven, we found this tragic. In a photograph of Diana’s funeral, for example. The five men in their illegible black suits. It took eons after To learn the swiftness of our own silent letters. In other words, Prince Harry Where whales are. The water worldspace an eyelid around him.

Birth [top]

FABRICE POUSSIN

Masquerade [bottom]

FABRICE POUSSIN

Transcendent Swing KAREN BOISSONNEAULTGAUTHIER

Grandfather ISABELLA WANG

In Flood, In Fire SOPHIE LI How quickly he became the loneliest man in the world for some god with cruel hands and in all that mud, how small redemption looked in the crook of deathâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arm â&#x20AC;&#x201D; how hard the world would be now, thankless and unforgiving. Noah took a gulp of air like air devouring itself, learned that this is how change comes: brutal and uninvited. Tonight no soft thing is left alive. Chill of absolution on the tongue as what there was to be said about playing emperor above all your kingdoms of silence, God, was said, laid bare and devoured. To be soldiered into grief, tongues waiting for water to divorce itself from meaning. Drowned as they were in the quagmire of themselves Noah found comfort in circular things, in rings that end as they begin. A slow pomegranate ripening on a thin branch watching the day birth itself into the slim arms of the night, the sky opens up. The world is here now to stay. Like so much light come home to itself, suddenly all this rain.

God Loves Apricots FELICIA LOWE Wear enough white to convince God, you do not like the feel of tongue. That pureness is another man's treasure, honor his wrinkles They like it when you smile while you pray. Pray harder, get a gold star from Jesus, you might get your wings early. Pretend with me. Pretend that praying to pictures of a man we have never seen fills what we are missing. Drink splinter blood from a religion you can’t have. I cracked open my brain, spilled apricots that we Eat out of boredom, apricots that will never want to be seen On my table, apricots you can’t have enough of . Honor his wrinkles. I know you’ve played house for four years but plastic will always be plastic, plastic doesn’t want to play with you. But I play along. I’ll pretend to be the girl you can love, I know I’m on your grocery list but I’m number 19, on sale everyone is allergic to pity in church. They like it when you smile while you shop For a body that he hasn’t given you yet.

2 am insomnia ARCHITA MITTRA some nights are longer/ they come tinselhaired, weaving spidersong to the dark cupboards of your heart/ stars scatter & swirl/ the grey cartographers dream in ghosts of yesterday, in faded silkmaps write themselves out of history into myth, a childhood forged in tomorrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bittersweet sky/ you live in metaphor now, manic-eyed/ ghost birds sing in a medieval forest/ you&i, laugh across the painted river drowning in our dirty reflections, bloodstained fingers weaving tapestries out of sorrow or something else/ some nights are so endless, the pain of warping memory/ cracking apart porcelain/ shard by shard/ is astronomical;

Childhood Swing KAREN BOISSONNEAULTGAUTHIER

Calling Cards DEMI RICHARDSON Do you believe in prophesies? We could move in reverse. We could wind things back, shoot on new film. We could move in reverse. I show her film A. In this film there are six months between us and Philly has never been my favorite city, but I'd live here, in this studio apartment. I'd make the drive every week. In this film, I would do what you asked of me. In this film, mothers are buying shoes for their three-year-olds, I'm finding them in Dollar Stores on rainy nights which makes me cry all the way home, and you don't understand - you don't understand me slamming doors in this film. In this film there is you, making breakfast for dinner and you putting on old records, turning off the lights and reaching for me in the dark. In this film we are dancing. We've never stopped. There is you with open palms, not hurting, just giving, in this film, and the only thing keeping the rain outside is 33

the way you rest your head in the crook of my neck. I show her film B. In this film, my mother never got sick. In this film, I am not thinking of love at sixteen, and you are not making me want to stay. In this film, I am not getting everything that I want. In this film, California is not sliding, we are not riding trolleys in the Bay, and there is no such thing as New Orleans or glass or ghosts. In this film there is no God to protect me, there are only tigers and small house cats. In this film the Pacific goes by another name and in this film your mother is forgiving you and me and all of our mistakes. In this film you've picked up a calling card, you've dialed my number and I am Ohio-bound. In this film, I did not miss your call.

The Man

ISABELLA WANG

Prospective Homebuyer

JASMINE CUI

Her name marks the wooden beam in twelve places. “Emily” grows in gasps: a foot, two feet and an inch, four feet. Five rosebushes devour a shrinking veranda. That couch is where she was conceived, a distended stomach propped against the counter. “The husband is gone if that’s what you’re asking.” The grooves on the windowsill are man-made tributaries, left in the places where her nails dug in deep as he clung to her ankles, she clung to the wooden frame in desperation. Their two children live in California, but left behind a shattered television and plastic tulips that shine like Vaseline. “The wife is the only one left and she wants to leave. I’m sure she will negotiate.” Calla lilies have consumed the yard. Lilies are funeral flowers. A tree grows around a forgotten bottle. The green glass gashes its oaken trunk. And the ticking of a clock—a reminder that everything is finite. Ninevah He is the whale: wet and cave-like. I am Jonah entering through the mouth. Lighting signal fires inside him, his belly. A vessel of sin, hollow and salt swollen. This body of whale fat and calcified bone is a tabernacle. What I am looking for is God in the signal fires and cigarette smoke that live in him, his stomach. A vessel of salvation. A sloshing sea sings the song of absolution. He teaches me how to light wet cigarettes. Teasing out their cave-like glow: large and hollow. It radiates like laughter. I am looking for smoke and whalesong in God’s stomach, but Ninevah is full of fire and I am Jonah and he is the whale. 36

Dreams MIA BARZILAY FREUND

If Faulkner wrote as an aid to love-making, do I write because I love making a fool of myself? Is it denial when there’s nothing for me to confront? Funny how my dreams hinge on red brick and dappled quadrangles, while impossibilities make my throat grow narrow. To have known her, was to have loved her, I hope they’ll say of me one day, and I often chide myself for thinking I deserve this much. The fateful morning my alarm clock failed to ring, I was dreaming that my mother had birthed another child, hairless not because he was an infant, but from some malign sickness that would haunt him through babyhood, press against him in the cradle, luxuriate beside him in his warm, little bath, then turn on him, just as he was taking his third-ever step. Because it was a dream, I was allowed to know this––how soon he would die––and should have been prepared not to mind when the day came. But as I watched my mother nurse him, joy coloring her face, he, a few hours old, I mourned it all: the vast living room, the faltering steps, the sweet, cold body. What could it have meant?

Biennial EZRA LEBOVITZ Back then, we ate lazy. Tearing open raspberries, Letting bloody pulp take the place of fingertips, Swallowing teeth over flesh. For us, there was always another feast and sweeter juice for staining. Her father told us To mind ourselves. Grizzled old man, he'd seen bacchanal and famine And he told us to eat like we would never know this hunger again. Savor it. Drink down the sugar while you can. We ate with mouths gaping—even now, I can see those tongues, Those pitted seeds. Pretending another tree would grow from our soil-drawn Feet. So maybe we got lazy with hellos and talked too slow. Who can blame us? We were children. We wanted, so we drank— But here: how I swallowed too fast. How she choked. Here: The girl who gave up berries for dust. Her hands, still red When the fruit has gone to rot— Her hands, still seizing when the breeze has Given up on breath and settled for peat. Here: the way I give up on trying to devour.

Dear, EMMA KAUTZ Maps have seemed dismal to me lately, everyone and everything at a distance. Before, orange lines and green flecks highlighted the places I could go to find you. Now, they show me everywhere you are not. Twelve hours would be shorter if I was driving it with you. Perhaps we are not meant to survive the pavement and minutes whirring by; the spinning rubber on asphalt or the golden streaks that shone in your hair as if the sun herself had kissed the strands. That night when our heads tipped together, a foreign, natural weight leaned against me for the first time. Your giggle billowed out, toothy yet absent of bite. Remember how I could have reached up to stroke the joy carved around your mouth? Maybe someday you will bend to meet me and I will stand on tilted toes to leap over highways because your horn-rimmed eye sockets do not frighten me any more.

True Tribunals KELSI DAVIS The Mackinaw City bus route has approximately 15 stops. They are labeled by last name. My stop is called Davis. There is an 8-year-old girl who lives up the street from me. We wait for it in the dark together. She has a rainbow bobble hat. Nobody owns a Moschino backpack. My sister has had the same backpack for 6 years. She bought it at Aeropostale. The nearest Aeropostale is two hours away. I drive a Buick from 1995. My best friend drives a truck his dad bought from Big Boy, decals still intact. Nobody smokes. Nobody is elusive. My boyfriend is a cross-country kid. As in, he runs for the team. His best time was 21 minutes and 23 seconds. He can't tell the difference between coral and king snakes. There are no art kids. There are no art classes. We all take pictures. We all dream of French film. The "children in suede and moccasin" resent that description greatly. The reservation doesn't fucking exist. The nearest one is more than an hour away. I take Calculus with one of your "serene, intuitive" children. She has coarse black hair. She hates Calculus, and she loves dogs. The Title VII guy comes once a week. He wears really cool shoes. I can tell you where it all branches out. It branches from the stoplight. Go west 6 blocks to the school. East 4 blocks to the water. North 5 blocks to my boyfriend's house. South two miles to mine. There are real people branching in this city and they are all indescribable to tourists who have not felt the nip of winter and seen the blush of it on their best friend's cheeks. My middle school ex's dad is a drunk, and he flirts with the stoic girl in the grade below me's mom, who wears too much mascara which she buys at the place Mary works. We longboard to the state dock and jump off it, we sled down The Hill, when basketball season comes we paint ourselves blue and scream our hearts out. The pretty rich women in boat shoes and maxi dresses walking around with their shopping in the summer do not live here. The girl working behind the counter at the boutique does. I've ridden the Mackinaw City high school bus all my life. You spelled it wrong.

* SIMON PERCHIK It’s a simple thing, you weep and though your eyes are silent they don’t reach—what you see is your heart covered with stones that have no mornings either except far off where all mist starts the oceans are grieving on the bottom holding down your forehead —so easy a flower could do it say in its face-up way, Leave! there will be no more kisses and from your mouth all Earth overflows, becomes lips and distances —that’s why nobody asks you lets you imagine you see her clearly knitting a blanket, a white one rusted needles in both hands, you walking by, already thorns, roots.

Adam’s Ale

BETSY JENIFER

Trypophobia ISABELLA WANG

The David Vases ANNIE FAN Told me I could be a sawbones, potter a finesse of white ash; two centuries and they still can’t work out why a great-grandmother’s remains keeps together in a body of clay, as if she’s still a charwoman working for some trading merchant’s house and maintains; hip-joint in perfect condition – this is what happened before titanium or powdered chalk, whichever is being pedaled by the doctor, charlatan. My father believes only in our past, barefoot medicine is healing from the ancestors, dust from bones to soup; we are reverse-evolving back into single cells, as that’s what it takes believing for—seeing everything is bugged, shot to hell, ground like roots in a pedestal at the healer’s place mixing my medicine with yours. Potluck. We all are eating; two years, and I’ll get better or finish my art, or pretend that the pterodactyl living like a child’s shadow within my collarbone is alive, ready to consume. Leathered wings the remains of crisp packets; breath like the aftermath of coca cola; I’m trying to gasp and paint patterns in the shape of swirls in iron oxide, fired yellow, yellow stain – royal blood from two centuries crafted into a design to be repeated. Next year I’ll sell them. Money will give them a new owner, new names, call them white vases because that’s what they are.

The Jar of Creation FABRICE POUSSIN

Rehearsal

ISABELLA WANG

Ghost Noise SERENA LIN my father’s trumpet, silver speckled creature, has moved into the attic. it prowls the length of it, keeping us up with cole porter and louis armstrong, humming to the music that lives in our walls. sometimes it’s too much for my mother, her cobwebbed weariness, her dust jacket of grief, and she comes home trailing the moon, ears stuffed with liquor so the keening of his trumpet is just faraway noise. i want to tell her, his trumpet is just as haunted by him as we are, craves his breath as we do, is trying to cope, why can’t we let it? this ghost noise isn’t music, is just silence in a different coat, just echoes of something that already left, like fossils or or nightmares or bruises. i should free his trumpet, let it live another life through lips and fingertips, but my lungs cannot inflate enough to fill a house or a hole.

Pyre ALY AVECEDO Can you burn the porcelain if it is full of water Can I toss this body in with it Can these bruises turn to burns Can the glass shards melt into something beautiful Will the trash bags full of you become the ash in the air I rescue the pictures of my dad’s wedding I save the image of when you laid my body out I rescue the porcelain bathtub Our bed feeds the fire The cold air turns to smoke The doors you slammed dance in flames The bathtub is black and empty And you never held me again

Persephone, remade SERENA LIN I forget how to say your name. I remember it tasted like the glue on envelopes and coffee with too much milk, honeycomb and pomegranate licked off your bottom lip. I think it’s my throat. It doesn’t want to be redyed by the colors of your syllables. I forget how to say your name so I say barefoot. I say unsteadiness. I say electric. Autumn from your lips on my forehead, I scatter lies like cherry blossoms. They never hold up under rainwater. My toes are dangling over a cliff edge crumbling from all the times we drove until city lights were purple and muted above the trees, you watching me wish on fireflies like birthday candles. When you fall asleep in the car, how does your body know to wake up just before we pull in the driveway? I’ve been awake for so long now. I want to come home. Even if you unstarred the night sky, it wouldn’t be enough to scare me away from the dark. I’ll prick my own constellations with moonlight and saliva. I’ll still try to swallow your shadow whole. 47

BETSY JENIFER

Thoughts Adrift

Living on the Edge FRANZISKA LEE You are twelve years old and your sister is ten and your parents are dead. You decide that the two of you will not eat them, although you are hungry. There are enough cans of beans and formaldehyde jars in the cupboards to last you for a very long time. If you are careful. You haul the carcasses in your sister’s brick red wagon past the city limits. She tugs a gallon of gasoline behind you; nobody uses it anymore, so it’s rendered worthless. Except for this purpose. When you get to the Edge, your skin is slick and you’re breathing like a dog. Your parents are a crumpled knot of rigid limbs, and you drizzle gasoline over them like salad dressing. You tell your sister to stay behind the rusty barrier, haphazard rails leaning drunkenly against one another. She follows you, silently, to the very brink, and you aren’t her mother or her father, so you don’t say anything. The match doesn’t light. Your vision is warped and shiny, as if your eyes are covered in bubble wrap. You’re too disoriented to realize you’re crying until the heated dewiness of the tear crawls stickily down your cheek. Your sister's hands are cold and steady as she takes the match from you. You don’t look at her face as she strikes it in one swift movement of her wrist. There’s a shooting star sparking from the red tip, and then hungry flame claws at the air. You look tired and she looks...you can’t read her expression. It is hidden in the flame, or perhaps the flame is hidden in it. Your parents look dead. Your sister drops the match into the wagon as you kick it over the Edge. You glue your eyes to the sinking burst of brightness, forcing yourself to watch. There are three shapes engulfed in fire now; gravity’s greedy grasp has wrenched the cadavers from the wagon, from the embrace of each other, in their plummet. Your sister looks at the emerald velvet of the sky and laughs her sweet little girl laugh, the sound a knife through the jello of the air. Of your brain. u At night you wind your bodies together like kittens or sardines or dead bodies in a red wagon. In her sleep, your sister’s eyes flicker and her bow of a mouth curls into a 49

smile. The nape of her neck smells like roasted chestnuts and her hair is a dense thicket for your hands to get lost in up to your wrists. You tell her you love her while she is lost in dream. The only time you have seen your little sister cry is in her sleep. u You are at the mayoral inauguration when a crack opens up in City Hall and swallows a dozen white folding chairs and nine civilians and three camera people, plus equipment, with a creaky belch. You are sixteen and she is fourteen and you pull her away into your chest and feel her ribs vibrate beneath your fingers. She laughs and laughs as you pick shards of glass out of her palms with jagged yellow fingernails, and the Mayor gives her his crown of daisies. “I resign,” he says, and then he shoots himself in the head. Your sister wipes his cerebral cortex off her flats with a fistful of daisy petals. u You go to the former Mayor’s funeral because no one else will. You are stronger and taller now, and you drag him by the armpits and try not to get too many grass stains on his suit. When you have reached the lip of the Edge, your sister pours the gasoline down his crisp white collar. It pools in the hollow of his throat, in the trenches of his collarbones. u You hurl the would-be-mayor’s pyre into oblivion and your sister—the new mayor, you suppose—dances on the end of the world in the sudden, scalding rain. Your skin crackles in harmony with hers. The daisies hide their blushing faces and disintegrate timidly into ichor and ashes, and the song of incineration is a sweeter tune than cherry Kool-Aid and victory. u

Space Swing

KAREN BOISSONEAULTGAUTHIER 51

Your sister sits on the crumbling roof of an apartment building, watching the herd of elephants flying against the sunlit sky. “How are you so happy?” you ask in a sandpaper voice, because you’ve given up on pretending, because she’s not so little anymore. She giggles and cups your chin in her plump brown hands. “I’m not any happier than you,” she whispers. (Do you believe her? Do you? No, no, no, you can’t because you need to believe her haze of terrible uncaring joy protects her. You need to believe that in her monstrosity she does not need you.) u Your sister’s toes curl around the gentle line where the yellow crabgrass drops off into infinity. “What are you doing,” you hiss, catching her shoulder and spinning her around to face you. But someone has stolen her face and all that is left is the sickle moon of her mouth and a blank static smear where the rest of her features should be. You cry for her hollow cloudy eyes while she laughs like daggers. “I was looking for Momma and Poppa.” The elephants are howling in the distance. u When you are eighteen you find your sister doubled over in fits in the building with the big windows and swirling dust motes and too many books to read in a dozen lifetimes. She’s cross-legged on the mildewed carpet, and a thick tome is on her knees. “Look,” she calls to you, her voice hysterical. She has the book open to a page with a big blue sphere and where words should be there are raised dots instead. “They say,” she chokes out between giggles, “they said the world was round.” The woman with cobwebs in her hair at the CIRCULATION DESK tells you to be quiet. u You have never considered the fact that she might jump, but maybe you have always known. You thought you kept her safe—or rather, you thought she didn’t need safety and maybe she still doesn’t. She is a stranger and you hate her and you care 52

about her more than anything in the world; she is your world; your world is flat and falling apart at the seams, a meaningless metaphor; and you cannot say the words I love you to her for that would be a lie most foul. You take your sister by the wrist and look her dead in the eye. But wait, you’ve forgotten. She doesn’t have eyes. Someone took them. You try to look at her at her the same way you tried to look at your parents as they spiraled down into oblivion in that wagon. Something is poking into your throat, and you spit it out. It is sticky and stinking and black, made of tarry feathers and it takes you a moment to realize that it is your heart. Your sister swallows it whole. “I’m sorry,” you say, because it is the only true thing you can think of. But you don’t know what the words mean besides nothing. “I have been watching,” she tells you (though she does not have eyes to watch with). “The elephants have gone. I am going to follow the elephants. I am going to a place where the world is still round.” You don’t think that place exists (you don’t think it matters). She jumps, or maybe she trips, or maybe you push her. You watch her laughter fade away as she falls. You are shaking. You slide a hand into your pocket and pull something out. It is a face without a mouth, and it is looking at you. There is nothing beating in your chest. Nothing at all.

Craigslist ad for missed Connections DIANA KHONG in the next life, there won’t be violet coffins. i won't be spilling runny into your palms anymore. i learn to tie my hair back with both hands, learn to call a dog by its maiden name. 53

you asked for symphony, open sun roofs, euphoria laid out on linen with my heart dipping into the river water. i was difficult. so you skewered the sun for me. i remember blood lapping the surface of the next tide while you poured amber into my mouth, let the light fracture inside me. we called this belonging. i rinsed my teeth with off-brand listerine. you counted how many dead versions of my mother you could fit inside of me. one after the other— again, again; again. i wish i was better. i promise next time you’ll know me as more than past tense. you’ll know my palms.

Seconds, minutes SOPHIE LI A body outside the body. The deer stepping through the silent arms of trees. Here, a third hand to strip the ribcage bare, too used to embracing the sea, where the bones are familiar and unclean, and the moon is kind as I take the breeze out from the skin of my back, where a secret tree is growing along the spine, veined by entire oceansâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Bring me something strange: the bottom of the sea

cleaved open, home to a forest of trembling trees, where love is more fragmented and illusionary. The heart is ripe and full of flesh. My mother speaks like rain happening between the shutters. For her I would stretch the kingdom of hands. For all of them the sleepless dust, the meat hook through the lungs, lookâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;how soft the silence.

Sewn Dews BETSY JENIFER 57

EDITORIAL BOARD

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & CO-FOUNDER Margaret Zhang used to go by Mar-gar-gar. She is a three-time Foyle Young Poet and has attended writing workshops at the Iowa Young Writersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Studio and the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, among others. Read her work in DIALOGIST, Gigantic Sequins, Words Dance, and other journals. Next year, she plans to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where she will continue to appreciate memes.

POETRY EDITOR Elysia Utech is a senior from the Twin Cities area of Minnesota and an alumna of the 2015 Iowa Young Writers' Studio. Elysia's work has been commended with multiple honors, including the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and has appeared or is forthcoming in Parallel Ink and Teen Ink. When she's not experimenting with her writing, you can find her reading, dancing, going on adventures, or playing with her beloved puppy.

POETRY READERS Hannah Miao is a student in Arizona. Her work has been published in Burningword Literary Journal and Aerie International and has also been recognized by Princeton University, Gannon University, and Notre Dame-Maryland. She is currently the editor-in-chief of Phosphene Literary Journal. She is interested in the intersection between poetry and science. Richa Gupta is a seventeen-year-old from Bangalore, India. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Moledro Magazine, and a poetry editor with Phosphene. With an avid interest in writing and journalism, Richa is currently a blog contributor with The Huffington Post, Voices of Youth (a UNICEF-based platform), and Youth Ki Awaaz. Apart from these, she is the editor-in-chief of her schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s newspaper, and is a communications prefect in the student council. She has been published in several literary magazines, such as New Plains Review, Yellow Chair Review, Foliate Oak, Poetry Quarterly, Apeiron Review, and After the Pause, among others. When not writing or reading, Richa can be seen playing the piano or day-dreaming. Emma Bleker is a 20 year old writer pursuing her English degree in Virginia, and a friend to all gentle things. She has been published, or is forthcoming, in Persephone's Daughters, Skylark Review, Electric Cereal, Yellow Chair Review, and Cahoodaloodaling. Additionally, she released her first collection of poetry, Here's Hoping You Never See This, in November of 2015. She also really likes videos of cute animals doing literally anything. 58

Shereen Lee is a freshman in high school living in Taiwan. Her work is published or forthcoming in Alexandria Quarterly, The Window, and other magazines, and has been recognized by Laura Thomas Communications and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Natalie Kawam is a sophomore poet at Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, PA. Though she has been writing creatively since she was young, she began writing poetry in her senior year of high school. After studying under poets Dilruba Ahmed and J.C. Todd, she received the Academy of American Poets Prize in May, and will be published through the Academy in the fall. Jacqueline He is a rising junior from the Harker School who has too many things to do and too little time to spare. She runs a study blog on Tumblr under the handle @appblrina and spends her free time binge-watching Dance Moms. Jacqueline is also the founder and Editor in Chief of the Icarus Anthology, as well as a staff member of her school's scientific research publication. Erin Jin Mei O'Malley is a 17-year-old writer from York, PA. She has attended writing workshops in Virginia and Ohio. Her work has been recognized by Hollins University, Columbia College Chicago, Literature Wales, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and others. She will study abroad in Germany as a Speedwell Scholar this fall and eventually blog about it at www.explorationsoferin.com. Cindy Song is a high school junior living in Rockville, Maryland. She has loved creative writing and journalism from a young age, and hopes to use words to bring out the simple beauties in life. Her writing has been published or forthcoming in the National Poetry Quarterly, TeenInk, and Tunnel Magazine. When she's not writing, Cindy can often be found playing the viola, going for a walk, or catching up on her favorite shows. Rachana Hegde is a high school junior who enjoys writing and reading. Her poetry has been published in Alexandria Quarterly, Moonsick Magazine, and Hypertrophic Literary. You can find her blogging at http://rachanahblog.wordpress.com. Sarah Patafio is a student at Barnard College and is an American Studies major. Her poetry has appeared in the online literary magazines Phosphene and Canvas; she looks forward to more publications in the future as her writing grows and flowers. In her free time, she reads, writes, takes pictures of her cats, knits, drinks tea, and goes on walks in dog parks with the lovely MTD. Isabelle Jia is a sixteen-year old poet whose work has appeared, or is forthcoming in Glass Kite Anthology, Phosphene Literary Journal, Track Four, Sooth Swarm Journal, and Polyphony H.S. Jia has attended the Iowa Young Writerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Studio and the California State Summer School of the Arts; she is also a California Arts Scholar, the finalist for the Walt Whitman Poetry Contest, and a recipient of numerous awards from Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. When she is not writing, she's either developing multiple cavities or singing crazily to her boyfriend. She currently resides in San Francisco Bay Area, CA.

PROSE EDITOR Haley Chung is a sophomore from the non-snowy part of Canada. Currently, her writing projects include co-founding her school's first literary magazine and finishing a manuscript about sinophone teens learning to love their own culture. Besides writing, Haley has an obsession for French culture/history, Sylvia Plath, and gingerbread cookies.

PROSE READERS Nicholas Sum is a 11th grader currently attending Saratoga High School. He enjoys writing and editing other written works, but sadly, he doesn’t finish most things he starts to write. When he is not writing or editing, he usually spends his time listening to or playing music on the piano or violin (or even badly singing along, if no one else is at home), doing homework, playing video games, reading, watching videos, running, or doing whatever else normal 11th graders do. Nicholas currently resides in Saratoga, CA. William Higgins is a young writer from Southern California, and a senior in high school. He has worked on his school's magazine, Tideline, for three years, where he is currently editor-in-chief. He has also been working for over a year as a photographer, writer, and editor for N2 Publishing. His work has been recognized with a number of honors, including the Scholastic Art and Writing awards. This summer he attended the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. In his spare time, William enjoys spending time with his dogs, playing sudoku (obsessively), and listening to music. Polina Solovyeva is originally from Moscow, Russia, but is currently a freshman at the New York University in New York City. She attended the New England Young Writers’ Conference at Breadloaf and Iowa Young Writers’ Studio in Iowa City. She was named a 2016 Finalist in Writing by the National YoungArts Foundation in the Short Story category and received a Gold Key for Poetry from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She was recently nominated as an Honorable Mention for the Adroit Prizes by the Adroit Journal for her short story "Mokita". Katherine Sun is a sixteen-year-old at Saratoga High School who loves both writing and STEM. She obsessively reads publications like The New York Times and enjoys writing for her school newspaper, The Falcon. Often she writes stories with no endings, sings along to Spotify with her dad, or spends time with her family outdoors. Sophie Govert is a poet and essayist whose inspiration lies in trees, Rick Riordan, and uplifting sports movies. She likes eating nachos with her parents and making spreadsheets, as well as occasionally lying on the ground and listening to the Good Omens audiobook. Follow her on Twitter @sophgov. Jasper Fu is currently a senior in Menlo-Atherton High School, all the way in sunny California. In his spare time he reads, writes, and plays far too many video games. He also fences competitively, though not necessarily well, and spends most of the rest of his time asleep. He's also very good at getting lost, in anywhere from his own neighborhood to a plane. He lives in Atherton, CA. 60

Masfi Khan is a student and writer living in Queens, New York. She is a lover of books, nature, and cats. In her spare time, she bakes cupcakes and doodles pictures of the sky. Surabhi Iyer is a senior at Lincoln School in Providence, Rhode Island. She loves to writeâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;she attended the 2015 Bread Loaf Young Writers' Conferenceâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;debate politics, learn about biology, act, and experiment in the kitchen. You can find her wherever there are good books (she's a sucker for quality science writing) and endless coffee. Sandra Chen is a California sophomore (and yes California girls are unforgettable). She loves the obscure things in life, from pens that flow nicely and cost too much to fantasy gymnastics, which she promises is actually a thing. A dreamy-eyed realist, she is unapologetically made of oxymorons. When she is not writing or staring at a blank page in a pathetic attempt at writing, she enjoys ranting, procrastinating, and Tumblring. Amelia Henry attends Piedmont High School in California. She fills the time she's not reading with writing, roller skating, and playing bass in her band. Amelia also writes for Inqueery, Shameless Magazine, and her school paper, The Piedmont Highlander. Isabella Li is a high school student from North Carolina. She has been honored nationally by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and has been published in Canvas Literary Journal and Teen Ink Print. When not reading or writing, she enjoys chemistry and biology and Game of Thrones. Ujwal Rajaputhra is senior at Montgomery High School in Skillman, NJ. He occasionally sneaks out the house just to stargaze, and is a chronic daydreamer. Normalcy is his greatest fear.

INTERNSHIP + BLOG MANAGER & CO-FOUNDER Noel Peng is a writer and musician from the Bay Area. A National Scholastic Medalist and California Arts Scholar, her works have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cadaverine, and Best Teen Writing of 2016, among others. She is 18 years old.

INTERNS Abigail Pearson is a 20-year-old writer of novels and poetry. She has two black cats that she loves to cuddle with while she drinks tea and reads Dostoevsky. She blogs at https://whimsywriter3.wordpress.com. Wabil Asjad is a student at McNair Academic High School in New Jersey. Although slightly new to writing outside of academics, she has always loved reading. In middle school, Wabil worked at her school's newspaper. In high school, she volunteers at the local Boys and Girls Club and works with elementary school students on their writing. At GKA, Wabil hopes to help improve the magazine and 61

work on her own writing skills. Valerie Wu is a student at Presentation High School in San Jose, California. She has previously studied writing at Stanford University's pre-collegiate program and Interlochen Center for the Arts, as well as conducted research for Questioz: The International Journal for High School Research. Her work has been featured and/or recognized by Susan Cain's Quiet Revolution, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the Huffington Post, Teen Ink, and various local publications. Outside of school, you can find her either watching TED videos or correcting someone's grammar.

CONTRIBUTORS Jennifer Boyd is a junior at Notre Dame Academy in Hingham, Massachusetts. She has been published on Life in 10 Minutes and has work forthcoming in Moledro Magazine. When she isn't writing poetry or nonfiction, she sings and plays piano, though not simultaneously. Cassidy Black (pen name of E.K.) is a 19-year-old independent writer/artist based in New York City. She has performed poetry at locations such as Urbana Poetry Slam and Nuyorican Poets CafĂŠ. She adores her Boston Terrier puppy, Ziggy, and is passionate about storytelling, education, sexual trauma survivor advocacy, mental health awareness, and LGBTQIA+ rights. Margot Armbruster is a high school student from Wisconsin. She has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and participated in the 2016 Adroit Summer Mentorship Program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Eunoia Review, Canvas Literary Journal, The Noisy Island, Polyphony H.S., and Best Teen Writing, among others. Nikita Bastin is a 16-year-old poet from San Francisco, currently attending Saint Francis High School. She has been published in Eunoia Reviewand National Poetry Journal. She has attended the Iowa Young Writerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Studio and has received distinction in the 2016 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She reads for Polyphony H.S. Emma Camp is a High School Junior from Birmingham, Alabama whose work has been featured in Canvas, Blue Marble Review, The Interlochen Review, SugarRascals, Girlspring, Cicada, and PolyPhonyHs. Her work has also been awarded two gold medals in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In her small amount of free time, Emma can be found performing Shakespeare and making gratuitous Hamlet puns. Cassie Coale is a junior at Germantown Friends School. She writes. Sophie Li is a student at Chinese International School in Hong Kong. She spends her time lost in thoughts, lost in books, and lost somewhere in the city, one of which is less voluntary than the others. 62

Felicia Lowe is a victim of introspection who is proud to have the same horoscope as Eileen Myles. She currently resides in a small town in Massachusetts, where cow tipping is unfortunately referred to as liberating. When she is not writing her own paradoxes and daydreaming of owning a cat, she is on button poetry admiring muses. Archita Mittra is a wordsmith and visual artist with a love for all things vintage and darkly fantastical. She occasionally practices as a tarot card reader. Twitter: https://twitter.com/archita_mittra Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/camelot_queen1996/ Website: https://thepolyphonicphoenix.wordpress.com/ Demi Richardson studies writing at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been featured in draft literary magazine, The Rising Phoenix Review, and the New Growth Arts Review. Ezra Lebovitz is a writer and student who is passionate about literature, history, music, and human rights. He attended the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio this past summer, has received awards from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and the New Jersey Council of English Teachers, and works as an editorial intern for the Blueshift Journal. In his spare time, he enjoys making bad puns and trying too hard. Emma Kautz is a seventeen year old writer from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She placed first in the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group 2015 short story contest and is a writer and editor for the Girls Learn International blog, The Feminist Focus. Emma is passionate about human rights, and enjoys combining activism with imagination to create short stories and the occasional poem. Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The B Poems published by Poets Wear Prada, 2016. For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. Aly Acevedo is a sophomore at the University of Kansas. She is an aspiring poet who has performed at many poetry slams ranging from Kansas City area to Puerto Rico. Serena Lin is fifteen years old and lives in New Jersey with her family and dog. She has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and was a finalist for the New York Times 2016 Student Editorial Contest. This is her first time being published. Mia Freund is a high school sophomore living in New York City. Her poems and short stories have been awarded Gold Keys in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and her work is forthcoming in Lip Magazine Diana Khong is a poet and artist of color from Massachusetts. She is currently on the five-woman of color team curating the small zine, Ascend. Her work takes on modern colonization, life post-diaspora, and what it feels like to be a Vietnamese woman in a white man’s America. She is 16. 63

Franziska Lee is a sophomore at the ACES Educational Center for the Arts. She enjoys sleep and rice pudding. A Foyle Young Poet in 2015, Annie Fan attends Rugby High School in Warwickshire, England. Their work appears in Ambit, Powder Keg and CALLISTO, among others, and has been recognized by Christ Church and Corpus Christi Colleges, as well as Hollins and Lancaster Universities. They are a prose editor at TRACK//FOUR. Sophie Li is a student at Chinese International School in Hong Kong. She spends her time lost in thoughts, lost in books, and lost somewhere in the city, one of which is less voluntary than the others. Shirin Laturkar is a full time student and part time pianist with an extreme love for chocolate, caramel popcorn and stories. She lives in Bangalore, India, and can be found on simplyreminiscent.worpress.com. Sophie Gu is still figuring everything out but knows for sure writing is somehow involved. She is a California Arts Scholar and has been recognized by the California High School Speech Association for her work in Original Prose and Poetry. Check out more of her writing at swgwriting.wordpress.com. Kelsi Davis is joyously alive and has questionable motives for being so. She is a dare, a brat, dissonance and the teeth of hounds. She is total chaos covered in freckles. Isabella Wang is 17 years old. She likes Jolly Ranchers, Cheetos, and painting. Betsy Jenifer is seventeen years old and from India. She is rather tall, lanky and very obsessive. She loves music, art and literature. Her work has been published in Teen Ink magazine while more of her art and writing have been chosen to appear in Moledro magazine, Polyphony H.S and Quail bell magazine, among others. Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier is an internationally published writer, poet and visual artist. She has been a 'Vine Leaves Literary Journal' cover artist and featured in New York's 'Calliope Magazine' and 'WebSafe2k16', Toronto's 'The Scarborough Big Arts Book', New South Wales' 'Long Exposure Magazine' and she designs for San Francisco's VIDA, supporting 'Literacy for Life'. See more on her website http://www.kcbgphoto.com/ and follow @KBG_Tweets. Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University, Rome, Georgia. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and more than two dozens of other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review and more than one hundred other publications.