Spring 2024 Issue

Syracuse University

Perception is a free arts and literary magazine published once each semester by undergraduate students at Syracuse University.

We are now accepting submissions for the Spring 2024 issue. We accept submissions from undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff. We ask that submitters send no more than five art and five writing pieces. Our writing page limit is four pages, and we accept submissions in any language with an English translation.

Any questions and comments can be sent to perceptionmagsu@gmail.com.

Want to stay connected? Follow us on Instagram @perception_su

The opinions expressed herein are not those of Syracuse University, the Office of Student Activities, the Student Association, and the Student Body.

Many thanks to:

Sarah Harwell

Alicia Kavon

JoAnn Rhoads Student Association

Cover

Abigail Shim – Murky Waters (Digital)

Front Cover

Pippa Berry – swimming pool (drank) (Acrylic)

Back Cover Center Spread 1

Spread 2

Having been a part of Perception since Fall 2020, I have had the absolute privilege of watching the organization grow from chats about poetry over Zoom to joyful launch parties that fill my heart with so much pride and appreciation for the caliber of creative work at Syracuse. The goal of every issue I have played a role in curating is not only to reflect the current state of our student body, but also to provide readers with the distinct feeling of seeing oneself within a work of art or writing. This publication would never exist without our exceptional contributors providing us with a little piece of their soul, and I thank you for entrusting us with your work.

In this final letter, I want to express my gratitude for three departing staff members and their endless contributions to this magazine. Thank you so much to my Head Editor Yasmin Nayrouz, for constantly taking initiative and keeping spirits high, to Head Designer Kate Eisinger for pushing the creativity of Perception to its full potential, and to Managing Editor Maya Fuller for your unwavering support and incredible intuition. It has been so inspiring working with individuals with so much talent and passion for literary arts, and I am so excited to see what comes next for you all.

I am thrilled to pass the magazine on to the brilliant Brenna Phelan and Katherine Nikolau, who I know will provide it with the level of care and dedication it deserves. I cannot wait to witness the heights Perception will continue to soar to, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to have been your Editor-in-Chief.

With all my love,

Madeline Sloyer – drew this to feel different (Ink)

Soup Russell – Pals Having Fun (Acrylic)

Brenna Phelan – Purple O'Keefe, Green O'Keefe (Liquid Ink) Center Spreads Cover Art

Spread 3

Malana Rain Giustina – The Hive (Traditional Art)

Noor Zamamiri Editor-in-Chief

The Eyes and Ears

Managers

Noor Zamamiri Editor In Chief

Maya Fuller Managing Editor

Brenna Phalen Assistant Editor In Chief

Katherine Nikolau Assistant Managing Editor

Editors

Yasmin Nayrouz Head Editor

Hannah Murphy Assistant Editor

Gianna Voce Assistant Editor

Jackie Arbogast Assistant Editor

Designers

Kate Eisinger Head Designer

Charlie Gebbia Assistant Head Designer

Lindsey Wilson Assistant Designer

Reviewers & Copy Editors

Head Reviewers Copy Editors

Irene Lekakis

Maya Lewis

Claire McConnell

Ross Sammons

Sofiya “Sonja” Ivanova

Sofiya “Sonja” Ivanova

Grace Ripperger

Reviewers

Pippa Berry

Mimi Birnbaum

Erykah Pasha

Emily Lemberger

Alex Manseau

Ross Sammons

Flynn Ledoux

Mervin McDougall

Soup Russell

Maya Lewis

Jess Yenawine

James Harman

Julia Pryor F. Morris Gelbart

Lilac Zhang

Grace Ripperger

Kaitlin LaRosa

Sofiya “Sonja” Ivanova

Vanessa Walker

Writing

Rebirth of Venus Valerie May Goldstein

i know he loves me Jackie Arbogast

Wrath's Bitch Vanessa Walker

house party D. H. Lane

Malboro Alexandra Milchovich

tedium Katherine "Katya" Nikolau

you're only twenty once Gray Reed

Trans Mind Poe Porter

Why I Didn't Go to My Mother's Funeral Kai Scott

My Claddagh Ring Grace Ripperger

Diaspora of Stones E.R. Sammons

Fatally Vibrant Vanessa Walker

I'm not religious but i must agree that Katherine "Katya" Nikolau

Hunt Vanessa Walker

Where Do You Sleep? Jessica Yenawine

i wish you never told me you cried to phoebe bridgers

sidelines while thinking of me Madalan Quinn

The Great Ratsby Eva Greene

Claire means clear in French Alexandra Milchovich

The Currency of Time Liv Curreri

have you always been like this? Katherine "Katya" Nikolau

Change of Season, Change of Skin (Something about moving on)

E.R. Sammons

before i breathe Lilac Zhang

sleep walking in central new york Gianna Voce

The W New York, Times Square Malana Rain Giustina hablé en español para que no me entendiera

Jackie Arbogast

give me your hand, if we be friends Olivia Rodriguez

hums Katherine "Katya" Nikolau

Memory Serves Malana Rain Giustina

Red Seeds Angie (AJ) Jaramillo

Thoughts on Blow Job(s), Warhol ‘64 Mae Brooks

Letter From a Llama To a Horse Eva Greene

Crumpled Money Hell Ana Wittung

A Dinner Guest Carly Elliott

Chorus Kai Scott

Rainbows are Visions (Only Allusions) Pippa Berry

Sidewalk in December Renata Lee

Flowers in the Passing Grace Fong

"Stream of Consciousness" Roslyn Lydick

Fever, Baby Jessica Yenawine

The Ferrywoman Sofiya "Sonja" Ivanova

no words Katherine "Katya" Nikolau

limited edition Gray Reed

Rerun Carly Elliott

Sisterhood Shooting Ranges Kaitlin LaRosa

Pigtails Valerie May Goldstein

The First and Last Angie (AJ) Jaramillo

The House’s History Claire Peretta

Seaside Cliff Vanessa Walker

reconfiguration Lilac Zhang

Your Hands Are My Heaven But I Am Not Baptized Madalan Quinn

Wheel Jiaying Wang if only it were simple Lilac Zhang

Ruderal Kaitlin LaRosa

The In-Between Yasmin Nayrouz

Afro-and Sofia Rodriguez

Copy Cat Brenna Phelan

Two Twins on a Queen-Sized Bed Abigail Shim

Bad Fruit Emma Schwartz

Environment Hannah Landon

Ashtray Spot Hannah Landon

Café Brooke Beydoun

Warmth Flynn Ledoux

Silenced Sequence Taisiya Aristakesyan

Portrait 3: we're alll american bby!! F. Morris Gelbart

Spaced in Oddity Mimi Birnbaum

I'm Your Cowgirl Emma Schwartz

Crow Fairy Flynn Ledoux

feelings Lee Auringer

My Lair Madeline Sloyer

Pink Peeps Poe Porter

Self Portrait Hannah Landon

"out of body" Claire McConnell

Walls Are Meant For Climbing Emily Lemberger

Perspicacious Solange Jain

Untitled Olivia Smith

Untitled Olivia Smith

Koi Maya Kleinberg

Swan Lake Maya Kleinberg

the only sunny day so far Madeline Sloyer

The Lair Flynn LeDoux

Golden Hour Riehen Walsh

Devil Tree Brenna Phelan

Up we Go Bella Andrade

The Pier Flynn LeDoux

Swan Lake Maya Kleinberg

Sangre, Sudor y Lágrimas Malana Rain Giustina

Double duality Bella Andrade

Scent of a Woman Taisiya Aristakesyan

Moon Spot Hannah Landon

Will You Meet Us Here? Emma Schwartz

¿Homeland? Malana Rain Giustina

Pinkbear Brenna Phelan

Waitsfield Cottage Emily Lemberger

Aruba Maya Kleinberg

INFERNO River Taylor

Star Gazed Jessica Yenawine

Balanced Self Taisiya Aristakesyan

Action River Taylor

"Ascending Nature" (Armenia, Countryside, 2022)

Taisiya Aristakesyan

Water Waste Bella Andrade

Free Palestine Flynn Ledoux

Rebirth of Venus

Valerie May Goldstein

Do you think that if Venus was reborn today, She would still look the same-

Standing tall on her clamshell

Carried gently on the swell of a wave With nothing in front of her but her modesty?

Do you think she was born from the sea With her hands placed just right, Rising out of the ocean with the notion of covering up Already ingrained in her body? Is shame something we are taught?

Already, someone comes to cover her with a cape Soon to be fastened at the nape of her neck like a nooseWell, maybe it is a bit looser, but it still feels much heavier Than the soft kiss of the salty air on her bare skin, Flowers floating on the wind as an offering to herShe who must hide her body away, The very body we supposedly celebrate. But only in paint.

The soft curve of her stomach is just fit for a gallery

Don’t fall for the fallacy that bodies like that Can exist with the same reverence in the real world-

Or at least, that’s what I think when I see one In the mirror every morning.

But if the goddess of love, the epitome of beauty Was painted with a tummy, and she Is still a work of art to this day,

Then maybe that body Is still something to celebrate.

After all, Venus is also the goddess of victory, So maybe she’s covering up because we’d all be blinded By her unobstructed beauty, And the cape is actually a royal mantle Because mortal kings’ regality can’t hold a candle To her divinity.

And the violets at her feet could be a symbol of modesty, But they are also used for love potions, Giving her the agency to take her love

Her life, And her body Into her own hands, so she, Standing in the Uffizi Gallery, is not shy, But defiant.

So I think, If Venus was reborn today, She would still look the same, Transcending any beauty standards of the timeShe’d be standing proudly on her clamshell With a body like mine.

i know he loves me

Jackie Arbogast

my nose is bruised the septum farther right five weeks later it hasn’t felt the same since i stood, looking at myself blood streaming down my face in a pattern it’s never done before brown, thin paper towels scratching the tips of my fingers and i couldn’t bring myself to clean it, couldn’t touch my nose without screaming a roaring in my ears, a silence from outside a knock on the door from someone who shouldn’t know but i feel better, my x-rays showed nothing i ditched going to my CAT scans

Vanessa Walker

You ask me what monster you’ve been becoming, Why you seem to resemble me more every day. Taking offense is tempting, why petition me for the answer? Am I so depraved in your sight that you think I would know?

Are you so proud that you think you’re worthy to? That absence of caution will be your undoing, A life sentence to a hellfire of your own nurturing. But then again you may already be there.

You cope with violent rage by screaming and cursing in secret. You figure fury in strings of words as if the page gives it a body. You pretend the blood of your own bitten tongue can substitute for theirs, Knowing that you’d relish in its taste as it leaks from their flesh.

Knowledge changes nothing. Your wrath has already shackled you at my feet, Too leaden for you to shake yourself loose. You couldn’t even if you tried.

Abigail Shim | Prismacolor on Bristol Paper

Two Twins on a Queen-Sized Bed

house party

D. H. Lane

i’m ready to go now. house key under the mat. on to the house down the street, in my friend’s dirty car a six-pack of fruity seltzers tucked under the seat scuffed by my high-heeled boots. i have a massive thirst to be tall. to be just another sweaty body in a room full of hungry hearts. to have sex in a bedroom that isn’t mine. it’s not the alcohol or the music, just the affliction of being a twenty-year-old teenager. to be driven crazy, to run away from sirens, climbing over a chain link fence with nicotine lips. if i had a car myself, i’d sit on the hood, a pretty thing in need of coveting. if you let me, i’d attend your weekend party, i’d make a nest of your dad’s recliner. put my favorite snacks in your food cabinet, swim naked in your pool. i want the carefree, teenage tomfoolery i used to disdain more than i want the two jobs and childish shame clinging to me now. i got diagnosed with asthma at nineteen; did you know? all this time i thought i was just too scared to breathe, but it was real all along. i digress. we’re in my friend’s shitty beat-down car sharing the peachy seltzer taste between us. you hold out the roach and it’s like an offering for me to stay like this forever. maybe the fountain of youth is another house party, and maybe i can breathe like this, in the exceptional dysfunction of a mistake that’ll make my adolescence blissfully and painfully unforgettable.

Malboro

Alexandra Milchovich

Environment

Your heart is a titanium engine crushing seedy motels and hunting the high of structure– howling of systems to be discovered; there are robots strumming acoustic guitars, and they are speaking our names and pumping blood throughout your veins.

My heart is a patched-up piece of fabric dancing barefoot on shattered glass, immortalizing spontaneous vulgarities on scrunched up paper. There’s the ashes of flaky skin, lavender incense (to hide the stench of the rot), and a pot of burnt coffee.

I stagger through my impulse to find something Godlike in the dirt.

We are subliminal messages exciting busted brains. We are earrings on nightstands, narratives of raptures.

Hannah Landon | Pen/ Colored Pencil/ Goauche

There were blood stains on clean sheets, echoes of cruel rain, and rooftops with makeshift ashtrays.

Tobacco leaves crash into our yellow teeth. We hear rusted hymns of cracked connection.

The clouds we stared at brush the insides of borrowed sweaters’ sleeves; creaky promises of the sky.

Beaten down by claws on my sides, your lack wilts my arms; your ears ignore my library of recorded explosions and seismic shifts.

Your kisses are calculated shots, bullets glittering in the heat of it. Hold my hand again?

Oil floats on top of the water, and our image is distorted. You are a sunburnt delusion. I am a frothing blister; I crave the heavenly, I hunger for the angelic and the guttural scream.

There’s fever in our daze,

flies drunk on rotting grapes in the trash. We return, praying for freshness.

Ripe fruit in bruised hands. Rub them together for warmth. Start a fire with stick legs.

Ashtray Spot

Hannah Landon | Grease Marker, Sharpie, Digital

Katherine "Katya" Nikolau

a murmur. an argument. a lingering silence. a pulsing song that i didn’t like. a sticky purple fig. the sign that said no smoking. your hands, lighting a cigarette. i let the sand slip through my fingers, feeling each grain. then there was a movie, a lunch, a sharp glance, an exhaustion. it was the summer of falling stars and choked farewells to girlhood. things got lost in translation as the river tried to explain itself to the boulder. the fact is, true erosion takes ages, and by then the stars would have tired themselves out, dropping from the sky and splattering silver on the suburbia pavement. my patience curdled after its three-month expiration date, leaving you wordless, with an angry, parched tongue. i was galatea before transformation, trapped in an ivory showcase, the drumming of rage slowly warming me into sentience. there is a way to tell this story without metaphor, of course, but it comes out dull and dreary as a hotel painting.

Café

Brooke Beydoun | Acrylic

you're only twenty once

Gray Reed

you’re only twenty once

and we will never be twenty again.

you leaned out the window, smoking grass; tobacco. i sat atop wooden panels, drinking wine; too sour. embracing collective silence its sense of comfort, a gift.

and we will never be twenty again.

your head in the clouds, my feet soaked in rain. the music of your youth now filling the air, gifts us memories from a place i’ll never truly know perhaps it’s for the better, la fin.

Trans Mind

Poe Porter

Walking to gym from the nurse’s office

Why can’t I just use the locker room

I get special treatment but I don’t want it

I want to be seen

As one of the boys but My body doesn’t agree I look in the mirror

My knuckles are white

Then they turn red

Glass is spread across the floor

The scissors are right there on the counter

I can do it and make them see me but

The bump will still be there

Laying in bed looking at photos

Hoping I’ll look like them

And maybe I will

Someday I’ll move out

Start my own family

Never hear that name again

Never see that bump again

It will flat

I will be flat

No more hearing ladies or Ma'am

I’ll hear sir and young man

I’ll look in the mirror

See how I feel myself being

But I blinked 3 times

And now

I go to gym from the nurses office

Why I Didn't Go to My Mother's Funeral

Kai Scott

The first time I met my mother she shimmered a ghostly translucent beneath the lights of the parlor. I would have been about four years old, aged enough to talk and walk but not enough to do either particularly well. I’ve always had insomnia, even as a kid, and had been chasing my shadow all throughout our ancestral home to entertain myself during the twilight hours.

Out of breath, I remember falling to the floor and giggling to myself, dizzy with glee and the childhood secrecy of being up past my bedtime. Now, if my mother had followed the rules of every horror film ever, you would have expected the lights to suddenly whoosh! out and for a dark coldness to creep into my very bones. That is not what happened. The change was subtle at first. It was not as though she was dust one second and simply there the next, no. It started as a brush through my tangled hair, a giggle against the shell of my ear, a tingling against my forehead. I was pulled to sit up, and every so slowly saw her dance emerge.

Everything about her was silver, her sundress, her hair, even her skin and her smile. There wasn’t any music, but there beneath the chandelier she inevitably twirled. For years I wouldn’t realize that she had been my mother, since she’d only appeared to be a few years older than me at the time.

From that point onwards, she would visit me, a little older each time, and seemed to try to guide me in her own flawed ways. When I was six, she led me to a field of flowers dappled with marigold and lavender. I tried to climb a nearby tree to see how far the flowers stretched, but I ended up

getting stung by a wasp and Dad got mad at me for running off alone. The beauty was worth it.

When I was ten, I decided to try to cook dinner for my dad before he got home from work as a treat. She helped me find all the right ingredients for a stew but insisted on far too much salt, which Dad and I both laughed about as we grimaced in between each bite. When I was fourteen, she advised me to write a love letter to one of the boys in my class.

The worst thing he could say is no, she had rasped, pale emaciated hands applying lip gloss to herself in my vanity mirror. She had been wrong, of course, and the teasing about my obsessive boy-crazy tendencies followed me for years.

We grew apart after I went off to college. I was eighteen and she was twenty-one, we had different things going on, different interests. I’d call out to her one night crying for some reason or another: I was lonely, I was scared, I didn’t know who I was supposed to be. Her spirit would wobble and waver if it ever did show up, edges hazy with inebriation. She was seeing this guy, Jacob or something, and he was all she could ever bring up.

He makes me feel alive again sweetie, you’ll understand when you’re older, she had slurred, keeling over my kitchen table and staring at the marbles in a vase I had bought from the flea market the semester before.

I stopped really putting in an effort with her after that. She wasn’t alive the way I was, and there was no room for her to actually change or grow as a person at this point. I got my degree and got away. It hurt, having her so close but totally and entirely beyond my reach. But I moved past it, that was all there was to do.

I live in the city now, surrounded by noise and light. I love the possibility of it all. If a knock sounds at my door, I wonder first if it’s the cute neighbor from down the hall coming to ask for some sugar. When something crashes above my head, I wonder first what the upstairs neighbors are up to. There is no fear of dirt-encrusted nails and wretched locks of hair. She can’t crawl her way back to me now. She’s dead.

Silenced Sequence

Taisiya Aristakesyan | Graphite

My Claddagh Ring

Grace Ripperger

Before I look through the window, I look at myself, an exercise in shame. Here, I command my reflection. From here. But it is early in the afternoon and easy to look past myself—to look through myself, at the countryside. Our bus driver tells another joke involving a drunken Irishman over the loudspeaker. We laugh, the self only an imitation of others. I like our bus driver, although I sometimes shrink at his gregarious, middle-aged voice and am unable to meet his eyes when he pulls the bus over at a ruined castle whose name I cannot remember and we all shuffle past him through the accordion doors. Outside, the humid air sponges the hostel smell from my clothes and hair. Before me: sheep, folded in an easy sleep on the green beside the road. A nearby cluster of cows, banded around their bellies with black, seem to keep watch. A gentle rain starts, and I tilt my chin up to receive it. Perhaps unconsciously, I twist the silver Claddagh ring on my finger. I envy myself, my sense of belonging, blood-deep.

Diaspora of Stones

E.R. Sammons

How shall I remember you all

The stones that once cast ripples through my life

Those stones that now rest

How shall I take you with me

On all the triumphs and hardships we would’ve weathered

I miss the stories I never got to tell you

And all the new ones we never got to make

Will you come with me still

From whatever and wherever I find you

Is it okay if I find your voices in the shaking of trees

Will you forgive me if I still find your laugh in strangers on busy streets

Perhaps it’s selfish.

Is it okay if I don’t let you rest until I can join you too

Living life is lonely without the company of memories

Remembering lives is morbid without the company of spirits

Walk with me once more?

Fatally Vibrant

Vanessa Walker

I. Fleeting

Late evening morphs into early night.

Bold oranges clash brilliantly against crisp blue and gray. The sky paints over itself, light fading and flashing against air with flamboyant ease.

We stare up until our necks stiffen into place.

I almost hope you’re jealous of the way I admire its fiery dance.

II. Poison

Frogs were never so beautiful and foreboding at once. Slick amphibian skin splotched with jet black spots that warn of impending doom.

They almost shine against the bright blue and garish yellow, I almost wonder how it tastes before it finishes you.

I resent you for making me curious.

III. Ash

Kindling and molten drops of chocolate feed the bonfire. I added my own kindling when I arrived. Feverish yellow flame dulls notepaper tokens to smoky cinders as they disappear.

My stare almost does the same to you. Resentment hangs thick above our marshmallows.

IV. Resilience

Harsh huffs of snowy air rattle already-frozen trees. The seasons shifted before I could regain my footing. It was almost tragic, seeing flaming clusters rendered to windworn sticks.

One still desperately clings to its color, its faintly orange leaves encased in frost.

I watch its steady resistance and find myself less lonely.

I'm not religious but i must agree that

Katherine "Katya" Nikolau

in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. my, my, my, how the tables have turned. how the tables have turned and kept turning over with this spinning earth: this ache, those lips, our summer sweat, my coffee trembling in its cup. i cut these memories into shapes with pinking shears. the collage of my life is coming together. coming, and coming, and coming together with no time to stand back and look at it. the word was God and so i prayed to it, and then it shifted and mutated and crawled and found its way into the town square. and then we gave it breath and the word became a balloon and floated up into the atmosphere, and then it popped, and it made quite a sound. you should’ve been there. you should’ve been there to see how loud empty things are when they collapse on themselves. i’ve stopped praying. the sun goes down and i’m glad. i’m not afraid of the dark, where the damp air shifts and listens and all the wild things come out. in the morning i’ll give a tour to the aliens. they will be green and spectacled and they will be taking notes. i’ll gesture to say, welcome to this place, where we have stopped praying to soil. we are here: diseased and shiny and miserably productive and asking will you love me. will you will you will you will you Spaced

Mimi Birnbaum | Digital Collage

Hunt

Vanessa Walker

All I remember is being chased. Pretty, purple hazy light glows on the Texas horizon. Muted mauve dust clouds in dusty trails that give me away. Chainsaw buzz meets my ears, my face won’t be mine if I don’t hurry. I watch too many slashers. I’m responsible for my own subconscious. My dreams conjure tall men with blades that spin and rip, metal itching to split flesh. Of course it’s a man on my tail. Not fast enough. I’m responsible for my own fate. At least it’ll be quick. It’s worse in the waking world where my bare skin has room to breathe. Pretty, black shadows and skies absent of stars agreeing with a cavernous silence. This place is lonely, the wide road and dull lamplight leave me exposed.The only witness to my isolation whistles and leers. No blades, just calloused hands itching to leave marks. Somehow bruises prompt more terror than gaping wounds.Home is around the corner but too far to run. I’d rather be caught in Texas.

Emma Schwartz | Oil on Canvas

I'm Your Cowgirl

Where Do You Sleep?

Jessica Yenawine

how many tonight?

i wonder

i shut my eyes for a brief moment how many tonight?

i wonder i take a deep breath it hurts my stomach feels uneasy all of a sudden

i remember this feeling how many tonight?

i wonder i get up and shake it off i’m not stupid, i know this i am smart

i know what im doing how many tonight?

i wonder

i don’t know what im doing i wash my face

it feels like a kiss of death a soul lingers there as the water drips down my chin how many tonight?

i wonder

i pat my face dry with my towel you never want to rub it gives you wrinkles or so they’ve said

i put my ChapStick on rub my lips together staring at myself in the mirror how many tonight? i wonder i haven’t braided my hair in a while let’s do that how many tonight? i wonder my bangs are falling out usually it bothers me more how many tonight? i wonder i lay in my bed it’s really hot in here how many tonight? i wonder how many tonight? how many yesterday? how many that night? or the other? and the next?

how many more that aren’t me how many more that are better i wonder. all i do is wonder, why do you leave me to wonder? what did i ever do to you

Crow Fairy Flynn Ledoux | Graphite on Bristol

i wish you never told me you cried

to phoebe bridgers sidelines

while thinking of me

Madalan Quinn

i write you letters i know i will never send filling notebooks with curses pages tattooed with every emotion im too ashamed to feel

i see your eyes everytime i hear that song theres this debilitating desire an animalistic compulsion to say im sorry even though its not my fault but sometimes i wish so much that it was

i want to regain that control take back the autonomy

i minimalized myself to idolize you block letters of your name In my notebook the burning silhouette of your hand on my skin

who gave you the right to overtake my life and infiltrate my thoughts

I still picture the days with you like long forgotten fossils buried by my own hands i loved you like the air i breathe but now youre choking me

Auringer | Acrylic on Canvas

The Great Ratsby

Eva Greene

The Dumpster Diving Brigade, led by General West, suit up in latex gloves and take turns jumping in–Cannonball!

Backward Flip! Reverse! Reverse! They fill up the trunk with perfectly good candy, not-yet-expired mac and cheese (that will later bring a soldier to his knees in abdominal pain) and a couple packs of pantyhose Until the flashing light of a cop car blinds them, Stops them in their tracks.

And to the rescue, from behind the dumpster, steps out The Great Ratsby–puffing on a cigar and holding a glass of champagne. Sends the cops on their way with a wave of his hand. After glancing up solemnly at the green traffic light on the corner, he says, “Enjoy the garbage while you can. Things never seem to last.”

Madeline Sloyer | Digital My Lair

Claire means clear in French

Alexandra Milchovich

A dream of tractor beams and the cruelty of the sun, sickly sweet perfume around my neck like a noose. Yearning to be limp, swaying from the gallows raised by Bath and Body Works, danced my bitten fingers on your neon swirled acrylics, Throbbing with want in a laundromat parking lot. Capture your startling heat in paper lanterns. Seeds for lavenders on our tongues fingers laced together in a Gordon’s knot, Fluorescent spit glowing on my teeth, I can’t brush them anymore. Water drips out of my ear, praying calcite would split my head in two. The wax holding my paper wings together melted, nose-diving into matted hair, patches of rigid lines

decorating my swollen body like coke on shattered mirrors. People don’t feel like skin, they’re synthetic and rubbery With dull eyes; they don’t have your divinity. Claire, a thousand symphonies in your wake. Claire, who snorted when she laughed. Claire to me, a lamp.

Clear to me, something is rotting.

Pink Peeps Poe Porter | Photography

The Currency of Time

Liv Curreri

At 21, I am the poorest I’ll ever be, and the richest.

That’s something I think a lot about during my final year at college. My diet composed of ramen noodles and whatever is left in my pantry, I work odd jobs in between classes to save up for my new life that waits for me in mere months. But for now, I scrounge up the crumbled bills at the bottom of my purse in exchange for a weeknight drunk with in friends and laughter at my old college pub.

My roommate grabs my hand, and we weave through the crowd toward the dollar pints at the bar. I brush past my college days, faces familiar from English 101, that old situationship, travel buddies from abroad. They push past me, and slip out of my grasp.

We reach the bar's edge and my friend vies for the bartender’s attention. The patrons squawk, their cards waving, desperate for the elixir that will make them forget, make them remember. I turn and lean against the bar, surveying the scene.

The Irish pub bustles with a warm cacophony of familiarity. Old friends sit at the booths, playing cards, shuffling to see what the night may be, what the finite days may hold. Their laughter booms and they drink up their dollar pints, drunk on the moment, savoring the deep flavor of the life they built here. They greedily chug and chug, slamming the glass down on the mahogany wood table. Empty. All drunk up, the keg drips dry.

I feel a gentle squeeze on my arm and turn, my friend handing

me a dark pint. The bartender raises his eyebrow at me, coin in hand. I know the game all too well, a shameless gambling vice disguised as drinking fun. I always guessed heads, and my double-digit bank account would pray I bet on the right coin face.

The coin gleams, its sides taunting me. The bartender flicks the coin up, and I watch its faces blur together in its spin, the possibilities endless and uncertain. He catches it and covers the quarter’s outcome with his hand, looking up at me for my answer. I stare, wishing to know the end result, immobilized by choice.

Tonight, the air feels different. The briskness of winter melts away as the balmy spring gust encroaches on my skin. I breathe in the air of possibility, of opportunity. So I guess tails.

Piss poor but rich in time, I smile and sip my bittersweet pint, drinking it all in.

Katherine "Katya" Nikolau have you always been like this?

yes, always. i’ve always been like this—if this refers to this cocktail of vainness and indigo blueness, smeared like graffiti on walls that were never canvas.

the end result: a rorschach test of feminine intentions,

a consciousness splintered into bits and pieces and a gaze that levels thousands with eyes of a psychedelic dragonfly queen.

what does that mean, you’re thinking, and i say, figure it out! you know big words like sangfroid but you’ll come to find that i always win in games of incomprehensibility.

just yesterday, i wrote a letter to you and set it on fire. the fumes were awful. you know what this story means.

my world is bigger than it seems, like a tiny tent that swells with a magic palace on the inside. your world is always the biggest though—there are no tents in your town—just trees that go on endlessly. i know all their names and weave them through my incantations and poems.

the world is simply awful, i say. you disapprove, but only

because i was never afraid to open pandora’s box and you were. you were afraid.

not of me, but of what i represented—a solemn, forever-kindof-quiet where you could fix nothing, just sit still and let yourself be fixed. you disapproved.

it’s fall and all the leaves are brown.

haven’t you noticed? my love is tentacled. it weaves round and round and round.

"out of body" Claire McConnell | repurposed denim, chiffon, and embroidery floss

Change of Season, Change of Skin (Something about moving on)

E.R. Sammons

They’re tearing down all my old places They’re tearing them down because I’m leaving and this time that means something They won’t fit in the bags I’m taking but they can’t be left behind They’re making sure they won’t be

They won’t tell me why they’ve done it just that it has something to do with moving on

But I know one of us would’ve done it eventually something about moving on

If a tree falls alone in a forest who’s left to remember the tire swing Or is the tree ever alone after those days in the sun

I ran there once with friends whose names and faces have slipped into the sand I played there once my imagination spinning the dirt and trees until stories of every sort flooded the ground

We bury things we bury them and forget

Sometimes that’s why we do it Sometimes we wake up and realize the place

where we buried things long forgotten is no longer there

Desecration is one last wake for the dead

Perhaps it’s because their excavators have brought it to the surface right as I’m parting ways

But I remember now how that patch of dirt dripped with legends

How the roots of those trees fed on the whispers of our heroes

Change of season

Change of skin

Another time to say goodbye again

Walls Are Meant For Climbing

Emily Lemberger | Marker

before i breathe

Lilac Zhang

black strands of hair surrounding me, everything feels like it could stop right there and i’d fall apart just like a vase shattering on the floor, like our lives, and i don’t mean just this one, were really bound to have crossed in another plane of existence, even if i had never met her in this one. i have known for a long time that she has it all the leverage, as if i was in front of you, rising to the occasions of misintended communications. yesterday was a strange day where i had felt the deja vu of holding her hand, it had me roaring outside the curtains of my skin for the first time in a while. blistering arms against calloused hands. reminiscence of a simpler time, where feelings, and every little thing in between, were minute, if only for a minute. and it’ll never matter that i am an indecision to her, i could be the first one to make a difference. but in the “only heaven knows” kind of spirit, i am doubtful of us. even if this was something special, how would this end? a finger traced along her bottom lip, telling of silences as i stare into her hedonistic eyes. we seem to share gazes, stolen glances; every tiny little detail i try to read on her face. kisses thieved from borrowed time, in a borrowed life. i hope that i’m not hungering for a meal that will never be served; it tells me that i’m lingering on a trivial remark. so let it be that i will indefinitely sink into her arms, her bedsheets.

sleep walking in central new york

Gianna Voce

I am watching the traffic lights blur with the groaning fog // staring as the icy sludge on the sidewalk bleeds out & whispers strangers’ secrets // it’s a wasted last breath // I am calculating the miles from home // counting the blocks to the address on the back of my hand // should have it memorized by now // wondering if this is home // what makes a city a home? the same thing that makes a body a home? // the inescapability // I am thinking how this place is a whirlpool that sucks everyone in and twists their lives around and around and around // I am asking the cockroaches why my parents escaped and then happily ran back into its mouth // I am waiting for the green man to cross the street // I never do that in Boston, there’s no time // all there is here is time // I am holding my palm out like “stop” to the empty street // my college boyfriend read my palm once and told me my life would be circular and never remarkable // this is proving him right // I am making remarks on Lamarckian theory inside my head, no way the teeth of this city tore into my genetics // am I sewn together from dirty Kmart bags and my nonna’s molding curtains? // the burnt-out neon sign on the drug store says, of course, what else would you be // I am rotting my teeth on the sugar of these streets and in stale biscotti // eating away at the edge of my Yankees hat until it falls apart // I kick a bag of rotting oranges like a soccer ball down the street and laugh as they implode on impact and one by one ooze their pulp into the sewer grate // I am Maradona in the middle of post-industrial misery // I know now why no one makes it out of these shadows to stardom // my mom would disagree, say we’re plenty stars // what about making it out // I am not surprised

when the abandoned building across the street grows teeth and swallows me whole // my pearly white bone dust is perfect for mixing concrete // there’s saltwater dripping into my nose for no good reason and the clouds are resting on my shoulders // concrete or cumulonimbus? // the sky is slate gray and this city has never seen the light of day and I’m walking blocks in circles and they are biting me at the ankles and sinking my feet in concrete and [is] this // [is] why people never leave.

Olivia Smith | Pen Ink

The W New York, Times Square

Malana Rain Giustina

I’m at the W.

You have enacted another implantation here.

There is no time to open a distraught mind into existence. You’re too profound.

A memory of you and me is simmering on the walls, dripping onto the sheets, I’m scared to be here because you never leave. Constant stagnation produced by my betrayal. A self betrayal at that!

Not just here...But mostly here and in this moment.

The walls are membranes with a thin sheen. Breathing. You make dead things come alive. You build dexterity. I see you move behind form fitting glass, blurred but alive. Don’t be shy, you know I want you.

Don’t drink that wine!

The ticket of admission is your mind. Transaction made: you fall to the floor. The drunken beast eats the plate of fries off the floor. I giggle. Laughter is scarce these days. Fond memories...

Oh how we look to them for embracement!

And now, to the lobby!

Here is where enticement occurs through golden liquor, A room of occurrent, of laughs, of waiting...

But knowing me, I might go too far with it.

Still, I want to sit with you at the bar with the companionship of

my sobriety. I want so badly.

It’s there everyday, picking at my skin and drawing blood from the burn.

Bloodied fingernails fill with flesh, They overflow and leave tracks on the floor: Paths of flesh. Let me ask you something, something I’ll only do with you: Please order bourbon from the bar, Look me in the eyes when you take the first sip.

Yes! Only sips!

You should feel the pleasure of this burn. I dream of it nightly. I want to feel this.

I want to see how you feel, what I have been wanting to feel and what has been felt.

My mouth is already salivating. Please, I can only do this with you.

I go to the button store now: 71 W 38th St, New York, NY 10018 Your remains tangle threads on the path I follow.

Orange threads from the button you sewed into the missing piece.

You’re building into the trinkets of lost things.

You know I’m a collector, right?

I’m pinning my skin to the clouds with faux gucci bee buttons. It’s because I keep falling.

I’m dropping sangre, sudor y lágrimas.

The clouds don’t mind the fallen. They walk me through the city on a tight leash.

And the bees...

The bees adorn me because I insisted!

I insert their stingers because they remind me of you.

Bees, ma, you, buttons.

What an assembly!

I want to stand between the two of you again. The bees will take me.

Our destination: 1567 Broadway, New York, NY 10036

I am here in enclaves of brimming shells. This place is filled with too much. I’m afraid of what it's growing into.

The worst spots are the beds because that is where we molded together.

Remember? Like puzzle pieces. I don’t know if I can be here.

I wonder if I’ll ever come back again.

Untitled

Olivia Smith | Mixed Media Collage

hablé en español para que no me entendiera

Jackie Arbogast

march, rainy, 10:35 a.m., friday lo vi una vez y solo pensé en él desde entonces a corner’s nook, may, 2pm having only seen it once, my body sticks to the pillar puedo recordarlo solo con el tacto aborrezco la belleza del halo de su cabeza de su luz, sé que las chicas lo han visto como yo nunca lo haré limping on a hurt ankle, the chill of a backside terrace, march, 9pm he looks at me, i feel my mistake el borracho de la intimidad, se detiene en mi cadera "atado al alma" a otro, no me tenía en cuenta a blank stare at a blank page, may, 1p.m. cerebro envuelto en llamas; cuál fue el único momento? sitting upright in a backseat, may, 12 a.m. bailó conmigo, bailó conmigo a sickness, a realization, may, 11 a.m. cada vez que lo escuchaba hablar de ella casi vomitaba a photo of white shirts, april, 9pm fueron presionados juntos no hablé con nadie strobe lights, cigarette smoke, a sliced finger, february, 11 p.m. sabía que lo extrañaba en los videos borrachos que enviaba sitting on a bathroom floor, he found a hairtie le dije.

Maya Kleinberg | Gouache Koi

give me your hand, if we be friends

Olivia Rodriguez

This is dedicated to you

My dearest and most true love

I’ll sit outside your window and deliver the soliloquy you deserve

May Shakespeare’s pen run dry

I’ll inscribe your dreams inside my heart and cut them into my soul

I see you in every Coma Berenices

Threading our two lives together from across the world

I’ll rip my hair from my head as a sacrifice for Aphrodite

So long as her seafoam fails to wash away your touch in the sand

We breathe the same desert air

For dust we are

And to dust I shall return to you

We settle, make roots, create a home

It’s etched in sidewalk chalk on the street of our childhood

My shoes line the doorway entrance

Your voice fills the still air

A songbird

The only one I do not fear

If I squeeze your hand twice will you promise to hold mine tight?

I’ve given you every reason to leave

Who amongst us is deserving?

But you hold my gaze

You bathe my feet in the holy water

The pedestal I’ve placed you on has adorned you with a crown

of thorns

Can you ever forgive me?

Somewhere there is a roof

How tall and strong it must be

Upheld by the roots of our love

Forged from the whispered secrets and dreams softly sacrificed to the night

We sit and overlook a lifetime as we sip from the Fountain of Youth

May we never change

And yet

May we look back and see people much different than now

You rest my tired head in your lap

I rub circles over your deep fading scars

You whisper one more secret into the darkness

I am going to know you forever

May our cosmic insignificance hide us from the morning sun

We etch our initials on this roof

Let it sing our song again and again and again…

hums

Katherine "Katya" Nikolau

you wished for something new, something just birthed by the cosmos. a clean, cold breath, a walk in the air after the rain to a place where your steps would feel so smooth and so certain. a soul stone to roll calm fingers over. a deep, silent lake you wouldn’t dare disturb it with. you wished for something meaningful, something that would wake you up during the witching hours and pull you to stare at the ceiling’s carousel of passing cars. in fact, you always wanted to be pulled— to become a magnet somehow, to be drawn instantly to the core of everything by a siren’s song. behind a glass physique, you hold an ancient knowing. understanding that your being hums in tune with something, something you can never name or touch.

Swan Lake

Maya Kleinberg | Colored Pencil

Memory Serves

Malana Rain Giustina

To lay under the sky is an opening. Relinquishing heart...heavily and with soul.

I can see the creation of perpetual weaving of the trail of ontology beaming: Into the stars! Beyond!

Los ojos are unwavering but halt in the presence of the broadness of: space, sky, star, of world within world.

The winds are humming in protective hovering fields, a mannerism feigning blanketed protection. Do you swell in the cycling of time, memory and space? Like the ocean?

I haven’t stopped expanding past preordained outlines. Like an insistent wind I have blown the structural fingerprint of borders into scrupling pieces.

I wish I brought you with me, On a journey past lifetimes. Our loss of stride lingers in invisible traces on our trails of overlapping footprints. Settling dust and inexorable waning.

Yet, swimming in memory is another thing entirely. A broad form. In this space we fly past the trilogy of past, present and future. I can’t remember what the stars feel like until I’m with them again. I can’t remember what it feels like to be with you and with this there is no until.

I’m caught rebuilding memory and I alter accordingly...mostly unconsciously.

I write you into moments of life and build you in a home of poems to cradle you forever. I want to shelter you now when it’s too late, You have been blown away.

I want to commit the act of gathering your lost trails in a woven basket.

I want to commence the path to weave you back together but you pull away and I can’t catch up.

All I do is remember. Memory serves. I remember waves and nakedness.

I want to remember how I was with you.

Por Dios!

Me veo en tus ojos.

Solo por un tiempo corto. Ya solo es una memoria que toco en momentos.

Your form is a pulse on the vibrancy of life. Form of perceived perfection coloring remembrance. In upheld remembrance there is no space between bodies, The flesh mirrors rawness of simplest terms, its fingers filling open spaces to close the entities as a whole.

Steadfast enclosement.

Nadamos en círculos.

No podemos hacer nada más. Ya sabes, El tiempo es un círculo.

You know we have the same brown eyes. The same yet different, Searching in opposite directions, Spreading further apart.

Red Seeds

Angie (AJ) Jaramillo

Starving, I was born starving.

The emptiness of my stomach has turned to figure 8 knots. I watch you from across the table.

You, ready to eat. With silverware and plates I’ve polished.

I serve You, A pomegranate. Ripe, tender, with flattened angles that are soft to the touch. The thinnest leathery skin.

My silky hands caress the pomegranate. And, slice it in a way that I know you like. With corners cut, the same way your mother used to make it. I hear your stomach grumble for the taste of my blood.

With little hesitation, You grab the pomegranates with your muscular hand, You press your giant thumbs against the calx of the pomegranate.

The flesh has been torn.

If only you wish to know the anatomy. But, Your mouth salivates to my red seeds and your desires want nothing to do with the learnings of the pomegranate.

I’m interrupted by the growls of appetite. I’m weakened to have the touch of pomegranate seeds engraved on my tongue.

My drool is sliding, I am ravenous, I am starving. I have been starving.

Like father like daughter, I’ve chosen to not care, And watch myself devour the pomegranate.

My hands are bloody, My face is covered in black crimson, My eyes are gutted and pitch-black.

Only to realize, my nails are digging into your chest and I’m crawling inside your guts.

I chew on your esophagus, So your critiques never spill from your fucking mouth.

I grind my teeth on your liver, so the drops of alcohol never reach your system.

I consume all of your tarty arils, And I'm left with drying pomegranate blood on my fingertips and palms.

I can’t help myself. The aroma of bright, fleshy red dragged my fingers to my mouth. Licking to the bone.

This is all I ever wanted. To be loved by you.

Thoughts on Blow Job(s), Warhol ‘64

Mae Brooks

Saw the blackout face when looking down.

Thought about passion and desire, moved to desire as a blowjob needs passion!! He stares into my camera eyes.

Thought about my delusion-filled desire days of blowjobs just out of reach,

upstairs in faraway bedrooms.

Thought about [redacted] and [redacted] moans, movements enmeshed in Mr. Headand Shoulders.

I can really pull out of the frame, see the action, know the feeling.

Making a note that I am watching in 24 frames per second, should be in 16.

Imagining Mr. Head and Shoulders' movements in an out-ofsync-pulse

we’re in a chipped wall underground composing a performance of pleasure

I could identify Mr. Head and Shoulders be him the wiggle, head turned about he stares into the camera and I stare back.

I wish I could smoke indoors post oral, what a power move: the cigarette!

Letter From a Llama To a Horse

Eva Greene

To The Gentleman In The Red Blazer,

I believe you left your phone behind in the restaurant. I was rather drunk myself, but made sure to take it with me before I went home and threw up seven times. I think I may have a barley allergy.

We come from two different cliques, you and I. You are a suitman, sipping a glass of red and talking to glamorous people on your iphone (which I have enclosed in the envelope and given to your concierge). I, myself, am a beanie-man. More than half of my friends are DJs. I’ve been a social vegan for the last five years of my life. I had no friends in my school boy days, so I’m trying to make sure my twenties are different.

If you would like, you should swing by my pastry shop. I’ve already put the address into your Google Maps. Consider changing your password, maybe. I’ll give you a cupcake on the house if you come around and show that it’s no longer “1111”.

I think we could be good friends. You can help me pick out a pocket square for my cousin’s wedding.

Take care now,

Mr. Lowe (striped shirt, beanie)

The Lair Flynn

Crumpled Money Hell

Ana Wittung

A hot summer night like the breath of a stranger down your neck. Sharp with whiskey, dusty underfoot, and a little sweaty. Whispers of music from a forgotten time. Neon lights purple, green, blue.

The amusement rides spin hypnotic, monotonous and excited. All day, all night. Distant screams, nearby laughs.

I sit behind my pretzel stand, handing greasy pieces of salt-covered dough one by one into the outstretched hands of strangers. Their money is crumpled, hard to put in the register, and a bit damp. The paper folds into surrender in my hands, never stiff for long in the oppressive heat.

My pretzel stand is wooden. Chipped and cracked. Splinter in my thumb and a rusty nail cut on my palm. Customers don’t care, never ask about the cleanliness of my bandaids and their food. They eat and they ride and they snicker and they pretend.

Faces like clowns, face paint and camouflage. A sniper in the eaves, a child in the bathroom.

Alone, alone, alone, the dark night flashes bright with the carousel, round and round and round and am I the only one who wonders what it must be like to be one of the horses?

I am the only one who watches it spin all day. The fair-goers pass, ignoring the implications, the dangers, the confusions. Oblivious. Life with crinkled bills and sweaty pits drawing dark lines like ringlets under their arms.

My hair sticks to my forehead. I have been given no fan, despite my asking, and I must suffer the inferno without the excitement of indulgence. I have no ride tickets. How could I have been damned to this? My father put me here to pay his debts and I must make this money.

A child runs from his ride and pukes down his mother’s skirt. Wailing from both.

A teenage boy kisses his lover under the ferris wheel. Fireworks set off.

An old man sits alone, stuffing a hotdog down his throat. His waistband expands.

The rides keep going round and round and round and the front entrance is not an entrance, it’s a spinning door; But the people don’t seem to care. More fun, more food, more heat.

And so the night will wear on and the sun will rise tomorrow morning and fry us all and I will watch the skin drip from the faces of the children as they run and scream and plead for more ride tickets. I will hand out the soggy dough and watch the carousel go round and hope and pray that I do not cut myself on the chipped wood of my pretzel stand.

Golden Hour Riehen Walsh | Digital Photography

A Dinner Guest

Carly Elliott

I invite the Devil into my parlor, fork in hand. He asks me for slices.

Morsels, bones. Red wine if you have it. I tell him I don’t have any, and he laughs, standing up. That’s alright, he tells me. Other people have plenty.

I dust off my fine china and wait for him all night.

He makes us a feast from the neighbors. His plate overflows with slices—tartare and pomegranates and mortadella.

My flank steak is all gristle and bone. The knife screeches across the plate.

I gnaw on the bone as he eyes the house across the street. The carving knife jumps away from my grasp.

I run out of neighbors. He breaks my plates, sharpens my knives.

He devours my books, spines unseamed, margins blackened. I hunger, but my cupboards are empty. My doors are locked. You’ve been a great host, he tells me. A delectable addition to the table.

I don’t bother running. I stew in the parlor, looking for crumbs.

Chorus

Kai Scott

“Find your windows!”

The shifting of dresses and shoes and arms. Our mass of instrument moves as a hive, rehearsed and perfect. The show has not technically begun yet, but we all know it has. One inch off or one flick of the hair over the shoulder and our knees will lock and we will not become all that we could.

A baton-wielded hand rises and all grows still. Each of us sees solely the conductor, shining in the lights of the stage above the black sea audience. The piano begins to play, and the voices of the spritely Sopranos dance between us. Tenors join as the notes stretch and shrink. And then it is all of us, one organism bringing to life the notations on a page.

As our song swells, a scream rings out from the sea and the dancing light of a flame enters our peripherals. Some waver, but the baton and our windows bring us back, now singing even louder in defiance of the interruption. Heat grows around us and the beast begins to sweat. I feel the hesitation of my limbs, but I can do nothing but remain strong for all of us.

Our body begins to part with itself, hair and fingernails and feet all shedding or becoming light. The music grows quieter, until piano becomes ash and I am left at the center of the maelstrom. Every window has left, and I am a house without walls, alone.

Rainbows are Visions

(Only Allusions)

Pippa Berry

Molly and I met the week after my family moved to Ellington. She was wearing Mary Janes and a purple clip in her hair, curly like mine, but brown instead of my blonde. She left a Polly Pocket on my dresser.

I gave it back the first time I went to her house, just down the road from mine.

I learned my birthday was two weeks after hers. Molly had two twin beds and two American Girl dolls. Her mom said the second bed was for sleepovers, the ones Molly could have in a few years. We played fairies in her backyard, which opened to the woods we couldn’t be in alone.

When summer ended, Molly went to Catholic preschool and I went to Montessori, like my older sister and brother. On weekends, we would go on walks, our parents within an arm’s reach as they walked behind. Molly got sick that winter.

At first, I thought it was like when I had pneumonia, but Mummy said we could still have playdates. She said Molly wasn’t sick from germs. She was sick from her blood.

I didn’t understand but at least we could still play Calico Critters.

Molly couldn’t go on walks in the summer. We pretended to be princesses on her living room floor.

She had a plastic circle on her chest, where the medicine went through, but the collar of her Cinderella dress covered it.

We were supposed to trick-or-treat together

once the leaves had fallen but Molly couldn’t walk well anymore.

My sister helped me tape streamers to our red wagon.

She wrote a sign that said “Molly-mobile”.

Molly got to ride in it, dressed as a bunny.

Her dad pulled her to only a few houses, since Molly went to bed early.

By the time the snow began to stick she couldn’t walk at all.

I was jealous Molly didn’t have to go to school.

Mummy said I shouldn’t repeat that.

She took me to Molly’s house in the afternoons.

Molly played blocks with me in her dining room and barely said a word.

Spring was calm but quiet.

Molly couldn’t play outside anymore.

She couldn’t walk or talk or squeeze my hand when I squeezed hers.

Mummy still took me to her house,

to read her fairy tales from my big picture books. Molly spent the summer in the hospital. We prayed for her every Sunday.

I went over for the last time in September. She couldn’t move on her own, yet she grasped an elephant Calico Critter. Daddy and Mummy told me she died after making pancakes.

I wasn't allowed to go to her funeral. It was two weeks before her sixth birthday, four weeks before mine, And Mummy didn’t think I could sit through Catholic mass. She went though. She told me there were no children, and they played “Rainbow Connection”. Molly’s parents gave me her Calico Critters. They dropped off five family sets, including the elephants, in a green carry case.

I see her dad sometimes around my new neighborhood. He asks how old I am, and I tell him, even though he already knows. I still have the carry case in my closet.

On the bottom, in a five-year old’s handwriting, it says one word. “Molly”.

Sidewalk in December

Renata Lee

On the sidewalk with him I saw two deer traveling through, one descending down the hill, the other a few moments ahead.

I wanted to join them, instead of returning to his place, but he rushed me across snow-covered sidewalk grass and mud.

I have seen two quiet winters without him, and each time the same snow, makes itself known, and covers all.

If you were to touch it with gloveless hand, it would bite at your fingers, prickling like miniature firecrackers, until the sparks begin to melt. Loneliness is what it’s called: Those frozen, fidgeting fingers, reaching out into moonless night.

Flowers in the Passing Grace

Fong

When you pass by a tree blooming with flowers, you might have the urge to pick one off. Chances are, you’ll pick one closest to you because they all look the same, they all have the pretty pink petals, the dynamic green leaves. All of them; consistent; the same.

“You’re starting to look just like her.”

I never thought that would be the comment I was disturbed by at my grandmother’s funeral. I had just given the final speech dedicated to a grandmother whom I knew merely from sitting through two-hour, once-a-year extended family dinners for Chinese New Year, while the relatives’ attempts at small talk to cheer up the lingering mourning air only trapped death ricocheting through everyone’s hearts. But my face only jerked in offense at that comment.

I stared at my reflection in front of the diner’s bathroom mirror. It’s been 45 minutes since I pushed my plate aside and left the condescending competition about the colleges my cousins and I were attending in the upcoming fall. I was still in my funeral dress with the faint scent of funeral lilies following me, and the one thing that shouldn’t have bothered me at all felt like a backpack being filled one by one with rocks.

I touched my cheeks, my nose, then my ears. I felt the smooth skin of my face. I was blessed to look like her, most people would say. She had perfectly clear skin, no wrinkles at 55,

LeDoux | Acrylic on Paper

beautiful smiling sparkly eyes, a cute button nose—the same one you would see on a newborn baby.

But I could see it in her eyes, in the way that she looked at me— she saw me as a younger version. But not her own version. She grew up with natural short black hair, no makeup, and lacy outfits—always matched with lacy socks and a perfectly paired handbag. Who she saw in me was herself, but with red hair, piercings of all sorts, eyeliner, bold lipstick, a tattoo wanting, motorcycle riding, cuss word speaking free and wild self. To her, I was her, but the her that she was always scared to become. The her that she was devoted not to become.

To me, I was me. I was never the same as any of the people in my family— especially her. I felt like a vein that had been cut off and sprouted into another plant, separate from its origins. I ate whatever I wanted, I spoke whatever I thought, I laughed at any and every comment. She— poised in every instance, never ate more than a pre-diabetic child’s restriction meal plan, never spoke any opinionated thoughts, and giggled so gently and subtly that you might have mistaken it for a cough. She wore blouses and skirts, never altering her natural black hair and never ever cutting up the clothes she paid decent money for.

But I altered my hair—13 times. I cut up almost every single piece of clothing I had so that it revealed parts of my body that she and my other family members would exchange profound looks of judgment at. I had piercings in my ears that I created with a safety needle and an ice cube jabbed across my cartilage repeatedly until a hole was made. She had two singular piercings she got from her doctor that sat like a trophy in a showcase on the middle of her earlobes.

We are two of the same individual flowers. Flowers from the same species are genetically identical—same genetic structure, same color, same size, same variation. There is no difference. The way people who passed by saw us immediately knew we were two of the same flowers. Connected, intertwined, and forever associated together and forever associated as one. If people look a little closer at each flower, they would realize that although the flowers are genetically the same, the pollen that the breeze carries serendipitously onto each petal creates a million genetic differences that sprout an entirely unique and other flower. No flower can be the same. These tiny variations depend on which side of the earth you are facing, how much sunlight you receive, how the wind hits you versus the flower next to you, all to create an individual.

"Stream of Consciousness"

Roslyn Lydick

I walk along the pebble shore and think not of my mother but of the house in which she grew up, the chickens in the courtyard inhaling curls of incense slipping through a window, through the fingers of our ancestors. Someone laughs at the far end of the pier: an ocean of space and time away, shouts in the kitchen and a halting violin. Her grandmother did all of the cooking and the washing up, my mother told me once, but did not know how to make a packet of Jell-O. Instead, my mother and her cousins would lick the powder from their fingers. When I was that age she had helped me cut out wobbly red and yellow stars for preschool snack time. I was always trying to teach my classmates to say nihao and zaijian, astounded by their failure to pronounce such simple words. Farther down the shore, a child cries. Seagulls call to one another. And me? I am no Modernist, too afraid of incomprehensibility.

When we visited the old house, my mother’s grandmother had a blanket draped around her knees, and my sister and I were each told to say our best Mandarin greetings directly into her ninety-six-year-old ears. We stood the appropriate amount of time, then retreated to each other’s side. The aunties were all smiles: they wanted to call us by our English names. We were given strange red fruit, and paper for drawing. I understood when the adults said hao ke’ai; it meant they were talking about us. I would squirm in my chair, disturbed by the gulf of what was then and now unintelligible to me. Laughter, and grown-up fingers tapping at their blurry young selves in waxy photographs. Steep steps toward a faded room full of the dead, weighty in its measured creaking. Framed portraits of gently smiling women, and wistful young men in soldiers’ uniforms. The incense I am old enough to hold. The freely curling smoke, and amber sunlight peeling down the wall; that certain stillness only an absence can bring.

Swan Lake Maya Kleinberg | Colored Pencil

Fever, Baby

Jessica Yenawine

i feel feverish when i think of you the thought of your touch crawls up my back kisses my neck and races around my heart i try to itch you out sweat through the fever that is you i scratch at my wrists open wounds spill out French lace and silk ribbons you fill me with beauty with light and innocence though my insides feel velvety and sinfully decadent i need you like a glass of water in the desert i crave the essence of you to be near me i need you what fire would spread if your hand cradled mine what cities could we destroy if your lips met mine caress my soul and leave my stomach knotted and twisted i can’t fathom breathing without you but that is silly and sickness leaves soon enough drink enough water take an Advil and i see you standing there and though i am calmer the storm inside of me cracks and sizzles yearning to be the rain to your beautiful blossoms aching to be a reason you still breathe

The Ferrywoman

Sofiya "Sonja" Ivanova

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” — Lao Tzu

Among the wailing of lost souls, she reached the shore. Dropped anchor. Felt the deck below her moving. Saw Persephone embark, unhurried like a garden blooming. He had no money, but his crown of wheat was golden, and in his fingers stained with soil he held a flower— a dahlia: slender, dark, and luscious, like his lover.

The ferrywoman then weighed anchor, her sole lover, And with one passenger aboard, pushed off the shore. Meanwhile, he touched his hair like petals of a flower— so gingerly, the woman laughed at what she saw. She quipped, “Do you intend to weave a nest of golden strands? Worry not, I swear your marigold is blooming.”

The red hibiscus buds in his cheeks started blooming among his snowdrop skin, just like that of his lover. His onion snow demeanor thawed, like under golden rays. The cocooned god Charon had picked up on the shore had now emerged, unfurled his vibrant wings, she saw, and in a smile, unfurled his two lips like a flower.

Inside the woman’s stomach, weeds began to flower— soaked by his April shower eyes, they started blooming, their petals reaching for the radiant god she saw. She heard his birdsong laugh and loathed his lover; she thorned and rotted, gazing toward the nearing shore,

where Hades waited, her hound’s collar glinting golden.

She memorized his cloak of spiderwebs of golden silk and his lacy mushroom collar, while that wallflower, that shrinking violet god, stepped onto Hades’ shore. As he strolled toward her, Hades’ bony face was blooming. She spread then wreathed her withered arms around her lover. A tear deformed the plain reflection Charon saw.

Six months went by before the ferryman saw him. He returned with leaves of cypress in his golden hair, frostbite kisses on his neck left by his lover, a pomegranate in his hands instead of flowers.

She knew Persephone’s love for Hades just kept blooming, while her hope wilted every time they reached the shore.

The ferrywoman’s hair was yellow, but not golden. She knew that she would never be his lover.

His garden had no room to plant her flower—she was a dandelion, not a dahlia blooming.

His back turned to her was the final thing she saw, receding as he walked along the shore.

Sangre, Sudor y Lágrimas

Malana Rain Giustina | Collage

no words

Katherine "Katya" Nikolau

there once was a cow with big black marble eyes. he felt a sadness that he knew no words for, for he knew no words at all.

the end finally arrived as a clap. sudden, crisp. over before it began. the people had not been expecting it, but somehow had known that it would occur all along. they had guessed at it for a while, with equations and riddles, and then in the midst of beauty and tyranny, the rush of Universal hands collided, producing an abrupt denouement.

it sounded somewhere across spacetime, a drumbeat humming in the darkness, lingering until it opened up into a clean, perfect silence.

for the first hour, the Earth took in a breath. for the second, she exhaled. after the third, she tried to forgive herself. it was not her fault, anyway, she knew, but it’s easy to forget things like that.

forgiveness came to her soon though, and it was loud and explicit, moss kissing over the steel wounds of cities, stretching her tree-bark limbs in ecstasy. she sprouted coral and shimmerscale gowns, a sapphire sky as décolletage.

dressing up nice, for there would be a tomorrow. parts of her were angry, yet still screaming with life.

when the dawn came, she danced, and so did the wild things, and they all danced on and on for eons, through the skies, the plains, the hills, the seas, and the mountains, in fractals and autumns and showers of petals.

soon the love of it took root, and she grew the most perfect meadow grass ever tasted in all the Universe—emerald-rich and dewdrop sweet.

the cow with the big black marble eyes chewed it slowly, sensing a music that he knew no words for.

if the people were there, they may have guessed at it with equations and riddles, calling it Eden, or Happiness, or a bracelet of chemicals, but in fact, the word was no words. no words at all.

Gray Reed honey drips, sweetness.

catch it in the palm of your hand before the arm strikes five. smear it across your fingertips; let it seep into your bloodstream. honey drips until the jar runs dry.

the corner store is out of stock.

Rerun

Carly Elliott

He stares at her again. I stare at her too. The screen buzzes, like one of those lamps that lures in bugs just to zap them. She yells something, consonants all mushed together, but the violins get louder so I know she’s scared. Something dark lurks behind her windows.

The men in the kitchen are loud. The walls stop the smoke, and the smell, but their laughs and jeers interrupt the lady on the TV. If I get closer to the screen, maybe the buzzing will drown them out. Maybe one week will be over soon. I like the evening reruns better, even in black-and-white. The morning cartoons are the same as the ones back home, that mom puts on while I eat my cereal. I have to make my own cereal now, and pour my own juice, because grampa wakes up at five a.m. and only drinks coffee.

She’s backed into a corner. The screen goes black and the music stops. It starts back up again, names flying across the screen. Doors upstairs are slamming, people are yelling. I push my head against the screen, hands gripping the corners, until the buzzing is all I can hear.

Spot

Hannah Landon | Grease Marker, Sharpie, Digital

Sisterhood Shooting Ranges

Kaitlin LaRosa

The convent has been going straight to voicemail the dial tone, the pulsing bass, pacing inhales of breath, chasing, chasing release- we’re sorry the number you have dialed is leftovers served in condolence for running out of room service. Scripture says they taste better reheated in a broth of your remnants, leave gums dripping red, molars grinding pomegranates into dressing, flossing away the losses and swallowing the proof.

When I have been a good sacristan, you will spoon-feed me your crumbs as my Sunday Meal. They will get stuck in a braced mouth wired like a chainsaw massacre, forced to fix my smile and say thank you, clean the Paten, drink the Chalice, hide the Body, hand over the ammunition.

Genuflecting before you, bruising subservient knees, punching myself again and again, doing what I always do, tapping codes into pews as a mind-reading precaution, waiting for my eyes to gleam of varnish, taking measures of thoughts seismically waved before they ever come veiled in Sacrament.

Now that I have learnt how to pace the Priest shot for shot, Sisters show the pictures framed, the famed crime scenes stained, tell me how heavy I was held in dangled suspension. They call that a confession of the one-sided seesaw, while I return the calls of sisterhood shooting ranges in one final act of contrition.

Pigtails

Valerie May Goldstein

Every day of second grade, I wore two pigtails without fail, except for one day in January when I was running late for some reason. I thought everyone would be so shocked, would they even be able to recognize me? It turns out that they really didn’t care how I wore my hair, but I kept wearing pigtails the rest of the year because I liked them, and I liked how in the morning after I brushed my teeth, I would run downstairs for my dad to do my hair, and I’d sit up real nice and tall on the stool in the kitchen so that my pigtails would look nice and even, and then, when my dad secured them with the hair ties, he’d go back to making me and my sister’s lunch. Violet was in Kindergarten but I was a big girl, so my dad would let me make my own lunch sometimes, and even sometimes my own breakfast if I was lucky.

Then, me and him and tiny Violet would walk to school, or sometimes, Violet and I would bike and my dad would scooter next to us. I loved going down the big hills fast, my two pigtails whipping behind me like streamers, and I’d get to the bottom calling over my shoulder, “Daddy, did you see how fast I went?” And he would be just catching up after staying behind with scaredy cat Violet who had to go slow, but he would always nod and say how I was so speedy, and I would smile from ear to ear or maybe even wider, from pigtail to pigtail, all the rest of the way to school.

I never learned how to do my own pigtails. Why would I, when my dad would do them for me and it was part of our routine? I was probably afraid to try because I can’t see the back of my

head, so how would I know if my hair is split down in a straight line back there? Well, I guess I don’t know if it’s straight when my dad does them for me, but I trust him more than those hair ties stretched tight, keeping my hair in place. They sometimes would break as he was twisting them around my hair, snapping against his fingers, but he didn’t even cry like baby Violet would have, he just got another one and finished the job.

In third grade I stopped wearing pigtails. I told people it was because I’m too old- I was now the reading buddy of a Kindergartener after all, but really, it was because my dad was in and out of the hospital, and our morning routine kept getting disrupted. I had to make my own lunch and breakfast, but I wasn’t excited to do it anymore. I just wanted him to be there to make it. But it was a selfish kind of want, I only saw him as my father, the one who did my hair and walked me to school, and he still did when he was home, but there was no more scootering. And if I had ridden my bike fast down the big hills, he would be too far behind, even farther than scaredy-cat Violet, to hear when I called back, “Did you see how fast I went?”

I kept thinking that I went too fast, that I didn’t savor our little routines and trips, didn’t see how much I needed them until the time had slipped out from under me and I was speeding down the hill with no breaks, my pigtail-less hair flailing out behind me.

After years of chemo and treatments and tears, we had finally gotten back into a little routine but at that point, I was much too old for pigtails. Still, sometimes, over 12 years later, I ask my dad to brush my hair, and for a moment, I’m seven years old again, appreciating the little moments this time.

The First and Last Angie

(AJ) Jaramillo

I was 16 years old and It was 4 in the morning. At that point I had been rearranging my room for a couple hours, dragging my bed near the window, to the door, near the closet, and moving my dresser next to the bathroom. I had a playlist going on my phone and the music suddenly stopped. It was my dad calling me. I didn’t know what to expect because he had never called me at this time. I answered.

“Angie…please, please help me. I don't know what happened, my car is all messed up,” he was slurring his words. “What do you mean, papi?” I said worriedly. “I was driving and I’m here… I’m here at your grandfather’s house. You know where that is right, right. Come pick me up, please hija mía, please.” Through disgust and anger, I said “Ok,” and hung up the phone.

I felt all the anger, guilt, and shame run through my body, but my face said otherwise. I was monotone to the point where I went mute. I slowly grabbed my car keys and my learner’s permit and started driving towards him. I was thinking so much that I couldn’t even pinpoint one thought. As I got there, I saw my dad’s white truck in the middle of the main road, half of his engine was popping out and his left tire was blown out. I turned to the corner of my grandpa’s house and there he was. Waiting outside like a child waiting for the bus stop. He ran to me and I rolled down my window. He started to explain how he didn’t know how this happened over and over again. I could smell the alcohol reeking from his breath.

“Okay papi, that’s enough,” I said to him. “Let’s go home, please.” He got in the car, but I couldn’t care to even look at him, I couldn’t look at him. I felt that if I did, I would just be 6-year-old me again weeping, looking for my father on nearby street corners, wishing for his safety. “Te amo, hija,” he said.

Those words, those fucking words, Jesus, all my life I wished to hear it from him, but the moment I did, I wanted to rip my heart out of my chest and make my lungs collapse. I never wanna hear those words from him. And you know what he did, he kept saying it to me. I was silent the whole night. I don't think I’ve been speechless before but man, he killed every word in me. Suffocated it before it ever had a chance to leave my stupid lungs. After that night, I didn’t let anyone take my words from me.

My dad’s first and last time he said I love you to me.

Pinkbear

Brenna Phelan | Pen and Ink

The House’s History

Claire Peretta

Past the fence of built-up stone Sits a house on brittle bones.

It’s weathered and weary, forgotten and overgrown, But listen closely and hear it sing in creaks and groans.

It will lure you over and have you wade through unkempt grass, But in doing so, layered within it, you’ll find remnants of a family's past.

It will tell you the story of the rusted bike that was ridden too far and too fast

And the one of the tiny sailor’s ship sunk by a “storm” that broke its mast.

It will lead you inside, where all around you’ll find that dust has clung,

But under it all, you’ll notice the wall where the family’s memories hung.

The father was a butcher, the mother was a chef, and the children in the frame were still young, But as the years progressed and the photos appeared less, the house’s history had been sung.

The parents got older, the children grew farther, and soon the house was deserted.

But the house, feeling lonely, wanted back company, so for visitors, it called on and thirsted.

Waitsfield

Seaside Cliff

Vanessa Walker

You were always drawn to water. Each time the light catches that silver hook around your neck, I’m reminded that I never stood a chance. That no promise my falsely- steady voice could make would ever compare to the languid song that calls you back to her side at a moment’s notice.

Each time I hear her name I’m reminded of the night my hands trembled with heartbreak as I watched you launch yourself off that seaside cliff, carelessly setting yourself adrift and taking my trust with you.

It almost makes too much sense. After all, your eyes are just as brown as mine, and nothing grows without the rain or rivers or lakes or everything I could never be.

I wonder sometimes how soothing the waves sounded as they beat against those cliffside walls, what serenade you heard amid the erosion that made you so eager to abandon the crater in my chest, so lovingly hollowed that I hoped you’d call home.

I ask myself what makes drowning more attractive than burial, imagining the way her embrace heals and revives, while I could only suffocate you.

I think of how grateful you are to her, what a relief it must be for her to cleanse you of every affectionate smudge I left you with, how gracefully she expels the dust I breathed into you, weighing down your breaths with empty praises spoken to calm my anxious tremors, and I can only laugh.

Maya Kleinberg | Gouache

reconfiguration

Lilac Zhang

you like to avoid me in certain ways where i’d poke you and you’d hide in your blankets where i sometimes lay; only sometimes, we are strangers who have not once locked eyes, not once see each other past our veils, silken and sheer, yet deadly. we drape them over ourselves as necessary as the clothes we wear, yet you never seem to wear my sweater as much as i sport your hoodie.

i see your name written everywhere like it was a mantra repeated by the universe to make me lose my composure. its letters stringed together like little daggers in the pins and needles of our hearts. it’s not written in stars, but you’re an ecstatic expression of my soul, in the way that i want to know more of you, deeper and truer like setting mystery novels aflame. we know the truth in stupid, unknown ways. you’re by my side again, and you poke my leg with your foot.

you are both surprising and not, nevering surprising me in the ways i expect, yet you turn it over all again. reconfiguring my feelings like mismatched socks, tied together in knots of wishing for something to change.

Your Hands Are My Heaven But I Am Not Baptized

Madalan Quinn

Let me surrender my lungs to your lips, Breathe me to life.

Indoctrinate my body and soul

To your religion, So I can confess my love

Set my heart aflame

And watch the blaze take hold— I would gladly burn

For only an ash of your affection

Your eyes are my favorite color, A cinnamon roasted Dark honey tea; The fallen leaves in autumn wind only the remnants of forever evergreen Behind the mass of wooden cathedrals

In which I worship.

A cacophony of false emotions

Floods through cracks

In the floorboards

Of my mind.

The soft lull Of thoughtless desires

I yearn for you

Sculpting wings of the wax

From the candle I burn

In your honor

I pray to a god

I do not believe in

For you to see me

Do you see me?

Star Gazed

Jessica

Yenawine | Charcoal on Paper

Wheel

Jiaying Wang

Unravel me—

Open me up for all your friends to see. Take claws to brown paper packaging; Unwrap me, break me, rip me apart. Stand back and laugh: “What a sorrowful excuse Of a living, breathing, feeling, Flesh-and-bone, emotionally vulnerable, Emotionally exhausting, only-human, Not-human-enough human being!”

Grind me up—

Feelings to ashes, skin to dust.

Let nature’s warm breath carry The fine dustings of my consciousness Through swaying leaves and branches, Yet-to-bloom flowers, fluffy nesting birds. Find me settled in the riverbed, Daylilies sprouting under moist tears.

Then, when you’ve had your fun—

When fat lions grow tired of feeding And bleeding antelopes stop their twitching, When fatigued muscles finally, Finally relax into the welcoming arms Of mushrooms, ants, and bacteria—

Of the soothing emptiness

Of rebirth, rehabilitation, and death,

Piece me together—

Fold me into false, glossy skin. Fit your hands around my neck, Curl fingers around my esophagus and take me, Show me off like a project to be appraised. Take credit for your artistry, your steady hand, your creative genius, your intensive labor— Do to them what you did to me.

Paint glittering gold along my cracks; Glue ancient, crumbling limbs into place, A bold mockery of arteries you cut—

A Brutus bandaging wounds on cold skin; A lion sending flowers to slaughtered doe; A hand willing mere fragments together

To stay, stay, please stay!—!

Then, with a sweep of your arm, Bring me to the ground And shatter me all over again.

if only it were simple

Lilac Zhang

your gaze is infectious in the way that longing is. simple as your mismatched socks, the ones you wore before i bought you a new pack of them.

when you send me your thoughts, for which i would pay a fortune, i am nothing if not captivated by your waves, capsizing me, a stitch away from believing i was capable.

we’re painters, and i’m fleshing out a world in which you are everything and nothing, yet something that makes me feel like i will be myself again.

you’re a gold mine and a landmine: and i’m waiting for the day where i may or may not want. you to be mine / or not. you’re an anomaly, and if you let me explore, if only for just a day, perhaps i’d find the only method in which we might understand what exactly we are.

Ruderal

Kaitlin LaRosa

Long reign the rude girl that rummages through ruins she shouldn’t—

it’s a high in itself to fall in and out of these ruts. Rudimentary life guidance given through her self-soothing ministrations, winter-cracked knuckles knotting hair and a blank stare as she thinks in place, in cycle, godless, directionless, and the rock.

Rude girl serves sedentary, spending days stuck under covers like sediment cemented in place.

But under the mantel, her bed in the first place, she is bursting with fantasies of festering conclusions.

Faltering on fault lines and run-throughs of routine thoughts, churning with molten meaning where it once was lost. A rock record, really could have been her father’s or the Foo Fighters, is the new age stratigraphy unfolding layers of crust.

This the teenage journey to the center of the earth rather than self, could call that a cry for help or a hum that becomes worn like a swaddled blanket, or let’s face it, a cocoon.

It’s all fabricated, fascinated with woven threads of disbelief like she couldn’t believe she wasn’t asleep, could tell it in the way she expressed herself like a likeness set in stone.

Rude girl ruderal, after all, parents and their daughters

are one radioactive isotope away from primordial decay, desperate to delay Earth’s extinction, desperate for something green to grow from this.

Kids kicking pebbles know just how to kickstart physics into action, accumulating particles until they’re nuclear reactions, these rude girl antics, a teenage angst that angers a misfortunate few.

They call them the next generation of punk rock, writing records of female rage, sawing away at the roots of the hemlock.

"Ascending Nature" (Armenia, Countryside, 2022)

Taisiya Aristakesyan | Film Photography

The In-Between

Yasmin Nayrouz

In English,

I would say you shine like the sun

To describe the joy, warmth, and beauty you radiate. In Arabic,

I would say you are like the moon

To describe the peace, preciousness, and beauty you possess.

In my mind, beauty is bilingual. It could be bold or calm; It could rise and set in varying shades; It could have phases.

So when I say you are beautiful, It means all those feelings to me, Yet to you it may only mean one.

My feelings become lost in translation—

Lost in the simplicity of a singular language—

As I am constrained within the confines of twenty-six letters

Because you live in two worlds for me

Because you live in the in-between

Like the moon during the day

You are beautiful to me in so many ways.

Afro-and

Sofia Rodriguez

No one talks about how the Yoruba runs through my veins

My father's second language after we were colonized by Spain

La mano de Orula on my left hand because it is where the veins to my heart remain No worries, this is not a mixed kid rant like the one Logic goes on eager to use nigga in every phrase

This is for the Afro-and kids in the diaspora, the ones whose ancestors also came from the motherland

Like yeah, I’m Black and, I’m Black and, I’m Black and I had to repeat it to you

That what you see up here is a reflection of all of those who came before me The women who birthed legends who had dreams

Like MLK, who sure as hell would be praying for those who nourished the grounds you walk on Shouting Free Palestine and Black Lives Have Always Mattered

To be Black is to be Black, to be in community with those who know that to be human is to be shared

The passive smiles given to other Black women in the space

The passing of a pen used to mark down your attendance at an event

The passion assigned to us in class when we sit next to each other

To be human is to be shared and to be Black is to share, by choice or not

They wear our style, They vibe to our music, They want to be us

But they’re not hearing us

The rhyming of our words to how our culture is being stripped away

Adding the American to every part of our identity as if we had

a chance to stray far away Nigga, I am not fucking American, fuck that, and fuck you

De donde tu cree que voy hacer de la yuma?

Sera que tu no me escucha

El flow que tiene mi voz cuando hablo contigo

Super sensual, me prestas atención porque piensas que te estoy diciendo palabras llenas de amor Pero en realidad te cuento el dolor en mis venas, como quiero que me veas Cada

parte de mi cuerpo, mi piel diciendo la historias de toda la familia Rodriguez Mi pelo lleno de todo lo que soy y de lo que es y de lo que viene

Te estoy pidiendo ayuda, que me veas como única

Mulatica porcelana, Cubana Americana, Negra o Urbana

To be human is to be shared and to be Black is to be human.