passionfru it A LABOUR OF LOVE
CONTENTS Letter from the Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.7 Balcony Garden, Sylvia Morris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.8 Album Reviews with Ian Krieger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.9 Flowers For Freda, Brechin Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.10 A small study, Ordjan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.12 Sonder playlist, Kaelvas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.13 Untitled, Tom Reed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.14 Moon Sky Sea Me You, lonelypond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.15 A short poem, Gisele Skieie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.16 Untitled, Hanna Ojala . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.17 Fate, albertcamusing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.18 Stamps, Jess Tahoe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.19 Let Us Be Gentle, Karin Henjes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.20 Bombadil, TBC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.21 Chinese Lantern Festival, midnite-ride . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.22 Smallness, growing out of, Shirin Choudhary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.25 Liberosis, Smriti R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.26 Jocelyn’s diaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.27 Canvas, Hanna Ojala . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.35 Saturday poem, enterprisecaptainoikawa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.37 Screens, seis-eitar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.38 The staircase, Saviya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.41 Bloom, Konstanze Schnetzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.42 Asimilation, rhapsodyinblue45 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.43 In the Ashes, Kevin J O’Conner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.44 Nobody ever wrote a decent poem on antidepressants, Sydney Eliw . . . . . . . p.45 What’s your story?,, Nazaal Shiyam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.46 Excerpt from Letters for Lucifer, Patrice Camille Antony . . . . . . . . . . p.49 Forger’s Lament, Sean Green . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.50 Snippets, Inés Van Berkel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.51 Out of my comfort zone, insertarnombreaqui . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.53 Heartbeat, Luke Murphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.55 Love finds a way, Dairrien Mccalll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.56 The woodlot, PoetTex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.58 A captured moment, Brandon Lewis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.59
Thanks to Cheegleflight Sylvia Morris Ishani Jasmin Ian Krieger Brechin Frost Ordjan Kaelvas Tom Reed lonelypond Gisele Skeie Hanna Ojala albertcamusing Jess Tahoe Karin Henjes TBC midnite-ride enterprisecaptainoikawa Shirin Choudhary Smriti R. Jocelyn seis-eitar Saviya Konstanze Schnetzer rhapsodyinblue45 Kevin J. O’Conner Sydney Elik Nazaal Shiyan Patrice Camille Antony Sean Green InÊs Van Berke insertarnombreaqui Brandon Lewis
lonelypond
Letter from the Editor
In case you’ve never noticed before, I never go back on these letters. I write them and then I leave them as they are, unedited (ironic for an editor, perhaps). I’ve been thinking about this issue for a long time in passing, but a short time in execution — I verbally committed to it to a friend last week, and then decided to collect all of the submissions in under eight days, which might not have been super wise. Ah, friends, I’ve not been in a good place at all. I’m in over my head. I think about where I am a lot. I’m a little worried, to be honest. The last time I was in this place I ended up in hospital. Pre-emptively checking yourself into hospital on the grounds of maybe doing something drastic is a remarkably adult thing to do, and I think I might be doing it this week for the first time ever. Sorry to be morbid like that, but I guess it’s better than attempting, right? With this issue, I wanted to prove to myself that something small could still work. I can still make things, even with the help of everyone who submitted (thank you so much. You have no idea what you’re doing for me). I thought small and beautiful would work. Little things that touch your heart. That’s why the famous Simpsons scene is on the cover, by the way, it’s the smallest and most beautiful thing I could think of. I thought about putting a starry sky on the cover, or something, but honestly, nothing does it like ‘do it for her’. Do it for your baby, Homer. It makes me think: who am I doing things for? Why do I go on? Do I really love myself so much that I put myself out time and time again? I must, right? That thought might be a promising one. I’m not even sure yet. I’m just a small and very sad and quite inconsequential ball of fluff and everything is somehow going to work out for me the way it does for everyone else, or whatever, or something, or nothing. I sometimes worry about being this honest in a public space. I don’t think it IS incriminating to be like ‘Hey, man, I’m kind of suicidal right now.’And that’s pretty much the most incriminating thing I’ve ever said online. But I worry sometimes. This has been a mess of a letter, but if I edited it, I would probably be someone else. I have to go on for another month, and I don’t know how to do it like this. I send you love. Every time I think about these submissions, I think about the people who submit them, and that they send me these pieces they care about and little things that they love and that’s enough to make me well up. There is so much love in the world, and some of it is for me, and that is so, so humbling.
Ishani x
um hi
A REVIEW BY IAN KRIEGER
“um hi” by Fox Academy is a beautiful album. The simplicity of the two songs disguises the deep feelings you get from it. It is short and sweet. You get the feeling of listening to a full album from just two songs. The first is called “Im sorry about yesterday” and evokes the feel of sleeping in on a snow day, and spending all day in your pajamas with your best friends. The second song, “and also im really scared” makes you think of having adventures with your friends during the summer. It isn’t too hot and time stands still. This is one of Fox Academy’s earlier releases, and is my personal favorite. However, all of their other work is exceptionally good. Check out their Bandcamp at foxacademy.bandcamp.com.
Flowers for Freda by Brechin Frost I. I loved once, too much to endure a second attempt; all I could offer you was friendship for your mind and admiration for your beauty, and this suited you well—you’ve always worn unrequitedness with such grace and allure. I was mistaken. Love isn’t to be ignored or denied, and falling in love does not ask permission before inhabiting the empty places in our hearts; denial does not make love less true nor does ignoring it render love absent, but rather I loved you with a raging passion, adoring you while harbouring anger towards my foolish heart, incapable of all things but affection and fear that this love like that before would decay and grey to a numb routine of anemic mimicry of once vibrant romance reduced to an agonizing memory, intimacy to a rehearsed scene, and us, two actors accomplished on the stage but stagnant in our roles. II. I brought you flowers, your favourite, Tiger Lilies; I remembered you liked them best because they reminded you of the week we spent at your cousin’s cottage two summers ago when the sun perched on the horizon and set the sky ablaze in a deep and violent orange. They accented the teal blue of your eyes, you said; I’ve held onto everything there is to know of you and cherished it, always, even when you could not. I regret every minute wasted without you; when I consider the years between meeting you and loving you, it makes me cry, because it took too long to fall in love and to accept it and longer still before I told you. I hate that I waited. I was an idiot, too afraid of falling in love to realize I had, so
III. You told me you loved me when I didn’t know how to be loved or how to love in return. All I knew of love was the lie it told convincingly, the destruction it wrought, and the empty gnaw of its absence; on the other side of love was not sadness alone nor fury nor hatred; its opposite is a kind of starvation, a famine of the soul. You cried when I professed my love, arriving at your door; my feelings for you hung off me in a blissful despair, crazed on the edge of a madness that befalls love-stricken fools, passion-wild, a writhing chaotic desire dancing within. I kissed you for the first time, and you blushed, and what I knew of you was insufficient compared to all I wanted to know. You cried, and I didn’t understand. But I do now, and if it’s the only lesson I ever learn, it will have been enough. Love is infinite, life is not, so love infinitely, and live while you can. IV. The sky is dusted in lilac now, the grass beneath my feet is wet from yesterday’s rain; it’s quiet here but for the breeze whispering through the trees, giving it a haunted atmosphere as the sun sets. Love is indifferent to circumstances, Freda; love is hopelessly hopeful in the face of horrible situations; it is a comfort and a crutch but not a cure to sickness; to have and to give love does not spare one from pain, neither does love ensure pain, but the love we shared provides now joyful reprieves of memory from present pain. Misery such as this. I lay the flowers down, resting them against the polished grey stone, and with my fingers, I trace your name engraved on it. Next time, I’ll bring your favourite book and read it to you. Next time, I’ll sit and stay if the ground is dry. I’ll make up for all the minutes that I wasted without you.
Kaelvas’
Sonder Someone To Stay - Vancouver Sleep Clinic Cherry Wine - Hozier Anchor - Novo Amor Holocene - Bon Iver This Is Why I Need You - Jesse Ruben Dauðalogn - Sigur Rós Varðeldur - Sigur Rós Give Up - Low Roar This Town - Niall Horan Lung - Vancouver Sleep Clinic Stakes - Vancouver Sleep Clinic I’d Rather Be With You - Joshua Radin Carry You - Novo Amor I of the Storm - Of Monsters and Men We Sink - Of Monsters and Men Kettering - The Antlers Killing Me To Love You - Vancouver Sleep Clinic
lonelypond
told her I loved her. the right thing to do. also it was the truth.
lonelypond
von auĂ&#x;en ein mensch. so fest. von innen ein fedriges sein. seien wir zärtlich from outside a human so firm. from inside a feathery being. let us be gentle
bombadil
With six-slink surreptitious step said saddlebearers crept, cryptrepetitious crick neck nestling to crannies caught a craftway-breeze along. What song belongs to none of them hums among their again-trails, the unentrailing unendtailing congruent summoner's stinkeye summering. Hobbits hanging heaves, huffs, husbandry with even susurrus to cusp crinkled buttercup-sinkholes, virescent iridesses synechia 'surrected step to step to spoked steppage in paened flowerbaedd baeddage. There are twins (dissuited to spinsaging absent bonfire basin sybaritics) and a miffed mensch accompanyment (to his belief their sols decease) and all are smalled sybirak, pans and panaceas skyward-packed til a view askews, laden pony-ups dilating imbue-diffused turf iris–out clops the Un saught, enfiladed by suns set both ways and the One at coat-change flap. A four-to-one consortium affording One's informed formation, as horsed adornment or formidably future fire-fjorded – a cascade as coruscating as his equine's coarse clang-coiling or how cycled each set declension embroils. What's innumerabbles' – each rebuffing circumambulate's abrogations, crest-crest crowning reticence-arrest 'round this routing recollect. Or, perhaps, happenstanced reinspect: maybe maladroiting Bombadeill's owned cobblerode clears; recognizance by reorient suspender
relay-band 'steered, same stilteds skiff-skipper spittoon, slipshod peer-plucked shoulder-slough, bicep bifurcant adjourn awn add-journey, Beorn to Baeren to ornamended air-aen bulwark whose stalwart stone-stand, honeyed hand koans stole soaks soundly sown oak-arrogate. Well, where otherwise could all come-abouts d'well? For deem-deed desiccate seems winks-worn, worn rings springstep owners-rown, ribald regents recomposed scallywags sword-sheathed beneath breathe-be shanks, regurgitateconstitutes constituents recalcit -rant unseam-deluge; yet Bom procured no posture-portlyless, no pocks pox potent-esque, no polynominals polymorphed past polymetered mete-amongst aplomb. No pomp, no circumstance – simply circumambullitions' certain-taint, glaucoma-same bleak chromatic bandolėering. Same satisfaction favela's pass-inperspective sounds set trail retaell, mamba automasticate circinatal circutes mo'dull, roots undying landho, as ould gauzpacho gogully-gain gainstays geastapo-asterisks retrace One's soup to solid steps, idempotent pleadonasm re-notion, now-at-time retressed. Donnkyeds, dons, a parable through the West – theirs' stairwell ridge crested, Goldberry door dole-hinged, while chiral magistrates' relent addressed darks' impediments, rerun rung edict-aem-decimate, and Bomb swelt, by swansongs spell well-misted, mystery and mastery and maladies muting melody oblivate to victory or revistate, and integered his say-it: “Eldest, that's what I am...”
Smallness, Growing out of Shirin Choudhary Â
I grew up With quietude. I was always taught To hold things delicately in my hands. When I was young, my mother would make A mixture of mustard oil and gram flour To rub on our limbs. The flour to clean out the pores Of the noises this city throws at us every day, The oil to seep into them, so that I Acquired softness, over time. I grew up smelling like Shyness and mustard oil. This would be a ritual: Every weekend, in the sun. We learned To share silence, and a bowl Of mustard oil and gram flour. In the sun, We would rub softness into our bodies, In the sun, We would learn to touch ourselves with love, Not hate. I was always taught to hold things delicately In my hands.
cheegleflight
Smriti R presents:
Liberosis
Gibraltar - Beirut Thunder Clatter - Wild Cub Flaws - Bastille Dancing on Glass - St Lucia Home - Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros Affection - Cigarettes After Sex Lonely Cities - Tigertown Home - Islands Shine - Years & Years Kusanagi - ODESZA Sunset Lover - Petit Biscuit Flames - Cider Sky It Ain’t Wrong Loving You - HONNE
Jocelyn’s Diaries
Saturday Poem why are you crying when the weather’s good the sun’s a warm sheet on your shoulders and nothing is wrong? why are you crying with quarters in your pockets and a film playing saturday night?
seis-eitar
The Staircase Saviya The staircase to my therapists apartment is just one story up. I go up once a week just to go down again. Maybe my week starts on Tuesdays because some days the staircase looks so threateningly tall whilst some days I don’t even realize I’ve been going up until I’m there. Does a circle even have a starting point to begin with? Sometimes it seems to hiss at me with its sharp edges and dark shadows lurking in the corners. But I go up either way. It feels like the equivalent of the fear I have have facing my own shadows.
bloom KONSTANZE SCHNETZER
Assimilation rhapsodyinblue45 Our souls– a configuration of misshapen truths constructed on searing sands, absorbing pain as succulents adaptive to our thirst, sinewy spines spawned from fleshy roots; we train our hearts to flourish within this arid soil. And thus, beauty spawned from discord, protection from insurrection. Experience’s dewy luster from the frail pallor of tears. And in the end we flower.
in the ashes an unlit match Nazaal Shiyam
nobody ever wrote a decent poem on antidepressants
that my demons had found me and turned star dust into mud and if I could ask you if I could be loved I wonder if you would be silent.
The whole world got stuck on the first two letters of the alphabet, as if anything past “See here, there’s more to life than the heart yours stitches itself to” was irrelevant. Was it God who called herself Alpha and Omega? Or did the letters of an ancient alphabet mean more to humanity than their deities and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that yours is the first name to be synonymous to “home” I don’t think it will be an accident if it’s the last thing you give to me.
If I called my demons by name would you answer me? Knowing I would jump, waiting for your grace to catch me. I was never afraid of great heights only the solidarity of the skies, and fear would follow me past the borders of mind, into the places I wanted to be beautiful in, I fear most that I am trapped in my own malfunctions, that I will always be in the wrong city at the wrong time.
And lately I’ve been trying to find my words in chemical formulas that my brain cannot read right and my tongue is left only with “I’m sorry’s” and “I’m scared"s and the aftertaste of melted popsicles. If I could ask you what colors you saw my heart in I wonder if you would say it was the color of the bottom of the ocean,
Fear is the heart of everything, and if this disease had a heart of its own it wouldn’t ever beat, it would only tap its foot and wait for my knees to give way to lesser feelings and fewer dreams. Could you be love? And be loved more than your entropy? Could you be more than your own chaos and poorly chosen words?
Forger’s Lament Sean Green In the space of small mere inches wide lay beauty’s face in portrait’s space with likeness true copy imbued with love’s imprint last image’s grief diminutive the final likeness not my love forger’s lament
Heartbeat Luke Murphy If we had gotten farther, would I have known our everything The tone and tenor of a song I never got to sing? Didn’t look so good on paper ‘til I heard the first triumphant string cut staccato-short but within a chord was echoing. The ground shakes not and yet this shakes me. A clod off Europe, this note cut off from a symphony. I watch the mouths, the song’s a round— a boundless foundling’s soft heat. Deaf and dead, but I hear the sound of my own heartbeat.
In the woodlot I thought was a forest when I was a kid: PoeTrex by the milkweed where the monarch fluttered— some angle of incidence only prevented this hill leading to heaven— where the steeple competed with a Dunkin’ Donuts; where the stationery store is now a restaurant. The slope deflects. The hi-rise grows a parking lot. I still remember some binocular rivalry of monoculture— where the monarch comes no more. The bumblebees bounce back; the elms have died, but I am comforted by oak leaf—where the willow yet weeps; where the maple seed—in the woodlot I thought was a forest when I was a kid.
there we were under the lights as the walls collapsed and wings sprouted from our backs rooftops melting away into smoke there we stood gazing up at newborn stars freedom found in ages of space away into night dark we soared