A. Calic aleks. 20. canada. a very confused university student who likes to take showers to escape their responsibilities. also spends too much time in the forests praying to the trees to accept them as one of their own in order to leave the ache of human existence behind. 1. Destroyed/Reborn? nickyhernmick.tumblr.com
DESTROYED/REBORN? “Would you like to trade secrets?” the girl whispered. “SURE,” responded the Dark. “Sometimes I feel so empty that I could be consumed by fires and not feel anything. And that scares me, the not feeling. Isn’t life supposed to be emotion?” The girl wrapped her arms around herself. “Not even the burns from trying to love the sun are enough to chase away this heavy cold that rests in my bones. I don’t know if I want to exist anymore.” She shuddered. “I LIKE TO PRETEND THAT MY PRESCENCE BEINGS COMFORT…INSTEAD OF FEAR.” “There’s no need to pretend. You comfort me.” “HOW SO?” “You know.” “YES...I UNDERSTAND NOW,” the Dark replied as it gently devoured her whole. “Thank you.” “NO, THANK YOU,” the Dark softened, “MAY YOU FIND WARMTH IN MY INFINITIES.”
Allison Mitchell Allison Mitchell is an aspiring writer and poet from Atlanta, Georgia. She has a BA in creative writing and is currently finishing a collection of short stories. She lives with her husband, three children, and a small demon cat. 1. Shadows ourmidnightneverland.tumblr.com
Shadows By Allison Mitchell
The sun was our first measurement of time. This is what they tell us. This is what they point out in the star charts in third grade, when we all dressed up like multi-colored beach balls to orbit around the ball in the center. In time, the teacher would say, as if it were a musical, as if the sherbet-hued yoga ball were the metronome to our lives. And later, when we would study the Egyptian pyramids, we would analyze the sundials and trace thin shadows onto sidewalks. We would trace our lives away in shadows, watch them lengthen into skeletons. Every moment grows longer, the teacher would say. Over time, we learned to hate those shadows. We learned to walk quickly to the car in the morning, never looking over our shoulders, never looking behind us. We learned never to look down while crossing the street. We learned to shield our eyes against the sun. Sometimes, you can’t help looking down though, if only to glance at the glass laced through the pavement or to tie a shoelace. Then the shadow will reach out to you. The vaguely shaped fingers that still seem a part of you, that demand to join at the fingertips. And those fingers will lengthen when you pull back—stretched with time, stretched by mistakes. You watch your children stroll past the shadows, oblivious. But you shrink from even their shadows. You wish you hated them, their innocence like stardust in their eyes, because you know that it will fade. You know that the world will crack them open and their shadows will stretch just as yours, their mistakes just as full. And when you tell them to be mindful of all the awful things out there, it's your eyes that stare back at you, framed in their brown. It's your smile that they don't forget.
Esther Liv Esther Liv is a lesbian poet from Denmark desperately in love with the moon. She likes dark chocolate and staying in bed. 1. But What R Gods 2 a Monster estherliv.tumblr.com
BUT WHAT R GODS 2 A MONSTER friday night at 3am when i’m drunk out of my mind & i call up the gods but they don’t pick up so it goes straight 2 voicemail and there’s athena like LEAVE A MESSAGE AFTER THE TONE and hera like IF I DON’T PICK UP IT’S PROBABLY BC ZEUS FUCKED UP AGAIN AND I’M HUNTING HIS ASS DOWN and ares is like THERE’S A WAR GOING ON I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR PHONE CALLS & i spit insults at all of them & i’m all glitter sweat and vodka u know me girl i’m all glitter sweat and vodka i’m all MONSTER GIRL all DEMON GRRL all 2 FAR GONE 4 REDEMPTION NOTADAMNGIRL and all the gods ignored me so i decided 2 ignore them back so next morning when i’m throwing up i don’t say FUCK YOU DIONYSUS i just say fuck you monster girl but, like, in an ok way, u know? like, i’m ok w/ being monster girl and 2 far gone 4 redemption and i mean i know JESUS IS ALL ABOUT SALVATION BABYGIRL but i’m so fucking tired of being babygirl and i’m so fucking tired of being drunk out of my mind too and i am so fucking tired full stop so it’s like whatever, you know? it’s like, whatever, man, i think i was a girl once but then ENTER: A MONSTER and there was battle for dominance totally like tongues in a bad fanfic and the monster won so girl is all gone and monster is really into BLOOD really into BLEEDING really into GLITTER SWEAT AND VODKA so we get drunk tuesday afternoon and get rekt thursday morning and get fucked in a back alley by a guy w/ greasy hair and nasty jeans but it’s cool cause i live 4 that trauma it’s fuel for poems and girl body is fuel for fire and the gods want BLOOD and ok so i lied i’m totally not over the gods at all but whatever, it’s not like i have 2 b honest w/ u anyway, and they want blood and monster wants blood and monster is all that’s left of me so i guess i want blood too we all want blood so next saturday when it’s 2:40am and i’m drunk out of my mind & high on antipsychotics i’m gonna cut up every vein in my body and drown the world red red red
Gabrielle Domingo Gab // is an unapologetic millenial who is more than often likened to a grumbling cat. They reside in MNL, where they frequently complain about tropical heat and fuckboys. You may find them trying to salvage themselves out of their deep-seated boredom, or fast asleep. 1. Insectile 2. So what were we talking about again? 3. The taste of Dirt 4. Twelve AM citykds.tumblr.com
insectile gabrielle domingo
aching ache aching (so much aching) how can i know that my veins are not veins of oxygenated blood but wriggling centipede legs that curb and coil at the slightest probe? beneath this chest inside this cavity behold! the heart foaming at the mouth gurgling writhing sinking the centipede recoils when prodded perturbed fazed confused this is the shape of our vertebrae when our blood pounds
so what were we talking about again? gabrielle domingo people talk about things that haunt you, things that burn your calloused feet into diamond if not ashes, and they talk about the divine walking through inferno. i'm used to these scattered scars. i'm used to the scent of burning houses lingering in my throat and blocking the pathway for air. but it'd be nice if for once i could get this blood off my lips and taste milk instead.
the taste of dirt gabrielle domingo thirteen was supposed to be flight was supposed to be feathers sprouting from bones was supposed to be the year i kissed the lofty expanse of blue above me i've reached fifteen and the soil cradling my sore arms is all i taste when i am thrusted head-first into it
twelve am gabrielle domingo i let it wrap all around me. this vile air of night that seeped into my bones and poured into the milky cracks. mama says it's the old wave again; an emptiness filling the air once more and coaxing all the tears out of all the children. i say it's redemption; i say we raise our dirt-caked fingers and throttle this darkness back to the stars.
Haley Clapp Haley Clapp is a recent Indiana University-Bloomington graduate and fledgling poet who finally finished her graduate school applications. She has served on the Editorial Board of various IU publications, including LABYRINTH and The Undergraduate Scholar. She loves sad songs and horror movies and hopes to end up somewhere in the world between literature/art and academia. 1. The Witch 2. Office Gothic worldenough--andtime.tumblr.com
THE WITCH hell hath no fury— a hush among the bloodroot stirs the edge of this wood. Truth uninked in the Book but like God and Sin you know it in you. You know it in you yet silent like smoke bare your throat. You were warned my hands are warm— not mother’s hush, not holy prayer. A sigh to shudder skirts. You fool, you temperance-tied, you puritan child, this is not your father’s wood; these are not your mother's kisses. Tender-blooded hare entrapped I have you. Freeing steam through bone birch trees (too late, too young!) I have you. Scorned not by earth but by you, by the muscle that will become man, by the mind that will strike God’s fear of me in obedient children— Come! Mother-Devil, birth saint, free claws for flesh! I crawl for you and insides are as soft as shame. I am the slickly shining ivy’s welcome of three fingers. I am the low mist slither of the slow-blinking copperhead. I am the smoke's rolling rise forming sky's ensellure. I am the hollow itch, a word which sits upon tongue’s tip— Call me what I am (I am, I am) you know what I am— chest-heaving laughter, leaf-shaking terror and that marrow of truth: hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
OFFICE GOTHIC You maneuver between a maze of stopped vehicles during your morning commute. You peer in the windows as you pass. The drivers, hands ten-and-two, stare blankly ahead. Blue and red lights mist the distance. You've been listening to hold music for centuries. The melody began innocuously but you noticed when it climbed the chromatic scale, calcified into augmented chords. The irradiated skin on your fingers has begun to grow around the plastic. The saccharine voice on the line thanks you for your patience. The man you always pass without a word walks towards you. His lips pull back to show eyeteeth saturated red. He palms you a business card blank except for a curious symbol. The door he disappears into wasn't there a second ago. The second bathroom stall is out of service. It has always been out of service. The decades-old handmade sign in its original sharpied lettering is buried under pseudo-cyrillic graffiti. You ignore the hollow gurgling laughter from the porcelain as you wash your hands. The books and binders pack the shelves and lean together like war veterans. They are age old, yellowed, worn down, moth eaten, skin bound, dog eared. Some books have text so densely packed the pages appear to be wholly black. Some books are completely blank. The dates on the calendar pass without chronological order. Yesterday it was the 18th, today it is the 7th, tomorrow it will be the 1st. Your deadlines are still all perfectly scheduled. The conference room is a time machine. You step foot in and the door closes behind you. The chairs are black, the walls are beige, the clocks don't work. You sit in a chair. You stare at the wall. The clocks tick without moving hands. You blink. You leave the room to find your skin is paper—time has passed without you.
I.M. 1. We Were Written in the Stars 2. A Gothic Death is a Polite One withalittlechaos.tumblr.com
by i.m
we were from the same womb. that does not mean anything. we are unwanted, and bit by bit our insides spill outside. the sun burns us, the supernova blinds and the ocean takes us in like little lost sheep, somewhere between our names and lipbitten prayers. run and hide, tonight. WE WERE WRITTEN IN T HE STARS BY I.M
by i.m
claw your way out of your womb and use that empty space for something else. there is a cute boy in a car down the street with a hole in his head and there is a lovely girl, his lovely sister, sitting next to you in maths, sliding you a small bag. you should leave the boy and run away with me, she whispers to you one night. one of us should get an ending, even when your parents pick up their intestines and begin moving again. she makes sure her hands are not in your sight line when she talks about your family, now. there are russian lullabies carved into the gate of the house next door, тили тили бом painted in white paint over all the rest. vines fight the appeal and write their own when they curl across the road, all the way from the other side of the street. poison ivy and wolfsbane bide their time in the front garden. in front of that home - this is in front of the lullaby mansion too, giving it a front row seat - is an altar, your altar. the bitumen underfoot is rough and the sun only comes out to play occasionally. you are more likely to be hugged by mist than burnt by sun, even in the middle of january. or december. or --what month does the sun come out, again? this town is built on sacrificial lambs. this town was founded on a nameless, unspeakable -ache. this cul-de-sac doesn't include the bridge over the river on the other side of the town. cars with broken windows and cracked windshields, cards with names crossed out. the ink is flaking off, and there is little to be done about that. time passes, and the girls skirts grow shorter, their smiles sharper. the men are divulged of their soft clothing and tender flesh in time for the sun to rise --- ANOTHER ATTACK ON A FULL MOON NIGHT --- and if the throat of a hockey player is slit in the gym, who cares if a new family moved into town the week before? (the world hugs itself tight when the town creates itself, and now it rests, anarchy and acceptance, behind a WELCOME HOME sign)
Lauren Shaw Lauren Shaw is an English poet who spends most of her time thinking about mythology, space or video games. 1. This Monster is Mine 2. I had to Learn how to be a Monster poemsforpersephone.tumblr.com
THIS MONSTER IS MINE by Lauren Shaw there is a m o n s t e r in my mirror, her fingers are talons and sometimes they reach for my hand. is she lonely? or does she just want a grip with which to pull me inside? there is a m o n s t e r in my mirror and maybe i should worry, but when we stand nose to nose i see in her eyes the same void that's in mine, and it is only then that i notice there is a m o n s t e r in my mirror and that m o n s t e r is me.
I HAD TO LEARN HOW TO BE A MONSTER By Lauren Shaw I had to learn how to be a monster and I taught every lesson myself. My claws were just nails before I dug them deep into earth and they emerged as sharp branches. My teeth were just teeth, blunt with river rock polished edges, until I broke them on the forest floor, chewed flint like fudge and spat out the last softness that sheltered on my tongue. I took the human being I had been and shaped her into a shadow, a demon, a being of power. My hands forgot to be anything but fists, holding only strength and resolve, my mouth forgot what it was to smile, forgot kindness, but it learned how to bite, it learned how to bare teeth like knives. My heart was the hardest part, still weak with each beat, because even monsters can learn how to love but you don’t need to hold hands when you can hold the world at your feet. I had to learn how to be a monster. Why? Because the world wanted me weak, and afraid and ashamed. It wanted me docile. And I wanted to prove I was more. So when even our heroes were bowing to pressure, I remade myself iron.
Louise Platter Louise Platter is a freshman at Converse College. She is a double English and Philosophy major. Her main writing interests are poetry with focuses on gender and mythology. 1. Cult of Persephone 2. Love Lessons from Honeybees perimele.tumblr.com
Cult of Persephone By Louise Platter
i. DESCENT Hell? With you? I’d have to be crazy to turn that down. It will break my mother’s heart. Nice girls like me don’t belong in the pit, but Darling, I’ll follow you anywhere. ii. SEARCH The girl I used to be is hiding. She’s scared of the dark, scared of the monsters, scared of the way you kiss me and we set the whole planet on fire. I don’t bother looking (she’s a virgin with a superiority complex), But in searching for her my family unearths every grave in the cemetery iii. ASCENT In the summer I wake up with blood on my hands. All the catacombs are empty and my mother tells me she forgives me for the things I did in the dark. When I tell her I’m going back she almost slaps me. She says that I am cruel. I tell her you don’t get to be Queen of Hell by playing nice.
Love Lessons from Honeybees By Louise Platter
This is not a love poem. This is a poem about how a bee stings its enemy even though it knows it’s going to die. This is not a love poem. This poem is about butterflies that drink poison so predators won’t touch them. This is not a love poem. It’s about rats eating their own babies, it’s about a trapped fox chewing off its leg, this is not a love poem. This poem is about the Donner Party in December. It’s about possums faking their own deaths. This is not a love poem, it’s the kind of cure that puts you in a coma. This poem is the amputation of a limb you cannot move, the abortion of a child you cannot feed. This is not a love poem. This poem is killing yourself just to stay alive.
Lydia Eileen Lydia Eileen is an American born poet, currently engaged in her Junior year of high school. She lives in Michigan, where she enjoys spending time with her two dogs, collecting plant specimens for pressing, and listening to Drake on shuffle. As you can see, she is only half of a part-time artist. 1. Ouroboros 2. Ankh 3. Richard/Louis 4. Wishbone 5. Sun 6. 2012 pt. 2 7. 2012 8. Carmen 9. Scorpio lesbiqns.tumblr.com
Noah Mendez Noah is a short aspiring hobbit who eats way too much fruit and likes to write about the past. 1. Bleed For emergincy.tumblr.com
i bleed black i bleed boy i bleed black boy who promised to love me and then went home to look up what it meant to love boy who never got to be boy grew up in two days and four nights does not realize love is not obsessive boy makes himself a man when he tells me the only man in my life has to be him boy calls himself a man because he is told it is good to want even when you’re not supposed to take
i bleed hispanic i bleed girl i bleed hispanic girl who actually bled for boy with her bones gaping and exposed who made love to a razor before her boyfriend ever got a chance
girl who opened her throat wide to be fed by papa bird and his meat found herself crying the whole time girl makes herself into a woman girl makes herself into giving tree and pretends she is happy and not always bleeding girl is told this makes her stronger but she feels so weak she bleeds and bleeds and bleeds out
Pauline Albanese Pauline is a French writer and translator with a knack for procrastination. She's working steadily towards self-growth and financial ruin through compulsive book-buying; in 2015, she has published a myth-inspired play, The Closed Doors. 1. Ἔρως antigonick.tumblr.com
Ἔρως Anger, deep. How dared he how dared he think of me as he thinks of others think of me with his eyes with his lips with his sex and his hands with lust how dared he defile the power of my presence the power of my existence with fantasies of possession? Breathless. How dared he think of me in flesh and sighs and mortality think of me stripped think of me bare think of me fragile mouth locked gazes entwined fingers gripped how dared he think of me me me human? Voiceless. A silence. Soft now. Beloved. Beloved. Beloved. How dared you give my soul a skin, a face, a voice and let it set your tongue ablaze and let it scald your belly and let it burn your nights and let it taint me.
Sea Sea is an 18 year old ghost girl from India who can never find words & thinks it best to write them down when/if she does. She loves languages and tea. She desperately wishes to learn to be proud of the things she writes and hopes she can one day return to the sea.. 1. Gods Without Hands ohjosten.tumblr.com
Gods Without Hands
I turn the corner, and there you are. With your terrible soft hands that tremble even as they hide inside the invisible pockets of your past. Your jeans, same thing. Didn’t you tear holes in them thinking you were creating universes? They were just holes, you ugly thing. And now your mother won’t buy you a new pair of jeans, and now you’re left with no pockets to hide your terrible hands in. You cut them off, it’s the only way. There is so much blood on them already that your own will be imperceptible anyway, trickling down – no, not on the carpet. I turn the corner, and you’re always there. Without ceremony, without a prayer, without noise. And I keep thinking that you’re wrong, that there are better ways to make your hands disappear, without making it as ugly as you did. I turn the corner, and you say hello. And I don’t know what to tell you. Midnight whiskey on my teeth, the ghost of homesickness on yours, and this is the first time I’ve seen a smile on your ugly face. It’s a crooked thing, like the memory of her lips on my newly knitted wrists, like the jagged edges of her teeth as they pulled the wool apart. You say, my hands tremble because they won’t kill you. I still turn the corner, hoping to find your hands. You say, they were never my hands.
Selena Selena is a 17 year old girl from Melbourne. She is contactable through her tumblr; nexrotic.tumblr.com, where she posts most of her poetry. She is also contactable through email: selenaatk@gmail.com, if needed. 1. Devil Dancing nexrotic.tumblr.com
I tried dancing with the devil, but he knew how to tango, I had two left feet and an overwhelming sense of naivety. He told me to go into the water, to go of inhibitions, I said, what harm could it do? You’ve fallen from higher places. And now I’m knee deep in water, and I cannot swim, I can’t tell my tears from the ocean water, and monsters lurk in the dark.
It was rather naïve of me, but with a voice like his, I was under his spell. The water looked friendly and clear. I now understand, when people say that it takes two to tango, Because now all I see is the dark shadows in the water. And all I can focus on is the beating of my heart, And the feeling of increased panic. Monsters are everywhere, and I’m in their lair.
The irony is getting to me, and I feel like laughing. Because all I can hear is the theme song to every shark movie, Like a mantra in my head. And it’s all my fault. I chose to dance with the devil, and now I’m stuck with Two left feet and a bunch of fear stuck inside my brain.
Sia Sia is a college student from India who studies Literature and Psychology. She works as a prose editor for Anteros Journal in her spare time. She likes loud music, books with diverse characters, and dogs. 1. Untitled 2. Untitled artificialmonsters.tumblr.com.
YOU DON’T THINK I CAN BE A MONSTER? I CAN USE THESE BITTEN NAILS AS CLAWS. I CAN SPIT WORDS LIKE THEY ARE VENOM. I CAN TAKE THE LIGHT FROM SOMEONE’S EYES WITH A FEW CRUEL SMILES. I CAN USE YOUR SECRETS AS ARMOR. I CAN BREAK PROMISES LIKE GLASS SLIPPERS (THEY NEVER FIT ME ANYWAY). I CAN SIMPLY STOP CARING ABOUT THE MISFORTUNES OF OTHERS. I CAN CRUSH A HEART AND BLOW THE POWDER INTO THE EYES OF ANYONE WHO TRIES TO GET CLOSE TO ME. I CAN DANCE WITH YOUR NIGHTMARES AND LEAVE WITH THEM WHEN THE SUN RISES. I AM AFTER ALL, ONLY HUMAN.
they say that poets immortalize the people who break their hearts. you don’t deserve that, but i can’t stop writing about you. at least i have a choice about how people will remember you. they will remember you exactly how i remember you. i see you on your knees, crying not because you hurt me, but because people forced you to accept responsibility. how pathetic. i see the cruel smile on your face when you twist the knife in my back. after all, you will get your fairytales by any means necessary. i refuse to see you as the hero of this story. i see you as the girl who only wanted love only from people who couldn’t love her. it doesn’t make you less of a monster. you still stepped on me to get to them. darling, i’ve written you faceless, nameless, inhumane. i hope you stay that way.
Venetta Octavia Venetta Octavia is a poet from Singapore who spends far too much time eating ice cream and lying down with her dogs. Her work has been previously published in Wildness magazine and her debut collection of poetry is being published by Platypus Press. 1. Bluebeard venettaoctavia.tumblr.com
Bluebeard I eat heart. I breathe bone. How do you like it, being swathed in dark? I spit black. Hark – do you hear me approach – the jingle of my keys and the echo of my footsteps. O terror, O despair, are you petrified? Hark, do you tremble? How does it feel to kneel before a woman? Behold! the end. Behold, your reckoning. Does your breath grow stale / will your stomach cry out / are you Atlas, that you would crumble? You carry your sins & I feast. You take your suffering and cease. You were always nothing. At the end of it all, you will not be remembered.
Zeena 1. This Story is Common Enough 2. Untitled lendmeyourhandand.tumblr.com
this story is common enough So the first boy I dated Well, dating is a generous term for it. We, as hesitant fourteen year olds, held hands, once or twice. We were friends; kept being friends for the heaviest years of our lives. He is dark and petty and self centred and so, so sad. I wanted to fix him (for myself, because I am an egoist at my bare bones.) I wanted to be able to point to something in my life that (finally) I had fixed - as if people are problems to be solved. Anyways, this boy I once dated, never loved [but liked enough, I suppose], He was the first I came out to. He was safe. Not safe because I trusted him, but safe because I knew I could break him if he betrayed me. He was so fragile, so empty inside I knew I could crush him like a Coke can if need be. Other girls clearly do not share this sentiment. See I've known him five long years. His hands were always too cold, and his jokes always just a little unsettling. But I knew this boy, I told myself. His flirting is slimy but he is so fragile and, well, we all cope in different ways. I have enough venom in me to tell him to fuck off when he throws himself at my boundaries. But the other girls - the ones who inched away quietly they were not so accustomed to self defence. My point is this: this boy that I’d known so long, that I'd believed so easily broken: That boy could be put behind bars by the testimonies of a dozen girls. (And the tragedy is that I don't even have to tell you what he did, because this story is common enough.) He is five four, skinny as a weed and twice as stubborn. He sat next to me in maths and talked me out of blind rages and told me I was worth something. And now I know all the other things that he has done. (And here is the most terrifying question of all: who else have I been wrong about?)
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One day I looked up and my parents were monsters. A demon had chased my mother out of her skin and infused her with the cold anger of sacrificed dreams. A ghost had taken up residency behind my father's eyes: This one steady but stale And I stumble on the emptiness in his laugh. They were once loving gods And we lived in a little cramped flat called Eden They put the universe on my bedroom ceiling with glow in the dark stars And we ruled under flower crowns from our dining table. Paradise no longer exists. We move in shadows around each other. I too have become monstrous To hold my own.