ROW HOME LIT VOLUME TWO
an alt lit magazine for Baltimoreans at heart
OUR CONTRIBUTORS: Josh Sinn (Cover Art) Shantall Gallareta Katya Sandino Christian Reese Stephanie Spring Antonia Perdu Jacob Decoursey Aurora Engle Pratt Audrey Gatewood Katie Griffin Shannon Khoury Caressa Valdueza Shelsea Dodd
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A special thank you to all who submitted, our selected contributors, and you the readers. This project wouldn’t be possible without you. Much love.
Š 2014 Baltimore, MD Curated, Edited, and Produced by Arianna Valle iii
Brooklyn, April 7th
You met me at 33rd and 11th Back in Brooklyn I paid for your dinner, our drinks
 Then to your apartment Your small room, your bed Your vaporizer Brooklyn Lager Baseball documentary Your grey hair Washed, clean Your blue pillow chair Our silence Three beers later Two bags later It's 10:00 I should be getting back Cab ride: eight minutes I over tipped the driver -Shantall Gallareta
that was the last winter you were cold you walked upon the frozen water barefooted; toes turning a deeper sapphire than the lake. between inhales, within the white, vodka flavored mist exuding from your lips, held the warmth of two hearts: beating, pushing, impaling your chest and mine. you opened your mouth wide trying to invert temperature and color. i collided my lips with yours and breathed in your exhaust: coughing, heaving, choking my throat and yours. you’ve tried this before. I took the heavy, metal gateway from your hands, trying to remind you heaven is here too. you closed your mouth, eyes, opened your clenched fistsletting the blue veins run and defrost; letting yourself take in and warm the air. - Katya Sandino
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Water Clock
Today the air was
Seconds cinder,
This summer heave
flowstone.
passers-by sprout
is a cave wall painted
Lascaux hooves,
with ancient fruits,
The brownstones
afternoon
horsemen passing
are cave walls excavated
white, chipped, ancient pig-
on the kill,
in air dayless, endless, faceless
ments
cave dwellers
as hollows
flake, wait
warming their palms
uneyed.
for the tune
at taillight in
of the tale
the scar of night,
Bricks beneath
& the old old ways
dreaming daylight,
the flicker-play
of telling why these walls
cracking
of sun, of shadow, of human
might still stand
our tomb.
shadow.
to be unearthed. - Christian Reese
This city eats
Gradients of ripeness
flint, rotting fruit,
in the shades
small bones in
of brick: cabs galloping,
the husks of hearth-fires.
cops, students, scavengers, kin crowding to etch a time-scented scene.
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Morning Coffee - Stephanie Spring
Let me take you back to where we were created from that Supernova Burst of radiation. One whole split into two halves. We are matter. We are mass. Radiation that outshines the entire galaxy but here's where they were wrong. We don't fade away in a span of weeks or months. Even though you died looking for me and I was born looking for you. We surpass the high mass stars. We danced with Martians on Mars. Infinite energy. - Excerpt from Antonia Perdu’s poem titled "42" inspired by "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy�
A Light Fantastic
If up exists, we’re looking at it, you and I, like sparks birthed from the same graceful ball of fire still tripping a light fantastic through epochs blurred by invisible algebra, swimming past jellyfish stars through that deep and inky ocean over top our heads. So don’t cry; don’t cry— one day, I promise, you and I and everyone you love will return to these stars and dance again among constellations: fiery pinpricks in the denim sky. - Jacob Decoursey
viii
- Arianna Valle
Confessional sometimes removing the stickers
just occasionally evasive
from bananas just because
fond
it looks better sometimes leaving bed too late
vain
in the morning often
impatiently awaiting
talking too softly
a future more
often coming on
changeless than
too strong sometimes
the present day
like a holy terror
often spending too long at the mirror
sometimes ignoring the ants on the floor sometimes like an empty jar
sometimes shiftless
where there were once
often singing
three notes
off key
on rough paper but now
and thoughtless
there are none
not a liar
not a culprit
just poorly adjusted to reality
but culpable
not sane
not a sinner
but no stranger
but one who has sinned
than a long day in spring no odder or softer than a ball of twine no worse than a house with the roof caved in not forgetful
- Aurora Engle Pratt
- Audrey Gatewood
xi
Blue
You're worn and wistful. Until blue is a whisper, Let it bring you to wonder Of an unknown ocean you've met before, Of a venture's summation with clouds' cessation. Let it bring you to wander As a ripple in your river, As your tree celestially ascending. Discover blue's disclosure. - Katie Griffin
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I have walked these streets for years through shattered glass strewn and glittering in the hot August sun; where a tree tears through its concrete veins and black bags drift in the wind like ghosts along a stretch of flowering weeds. Â
There are times when I can hold the warmth of the day in my hands as the wind crashes in soft waves through leaves like flashes of light and a something else runs through my body like hot-wrought iron because I know that in this place. - Shannon Khoury
- Caressa Valdueza
xiii
A Travesty How mirror-like to the pitch of the new moon night is the ink of irises seeping softly into your pupils like pools of coffee hold the cream and How beneficent is the great Pannist who sends the staccato flourish of rain to rap the tinny panes and rival the Requiem protesting from within and Oh! How the wind does worry the boughs! into a reminiscence of the terrible end: in their throes they threaten the velvet vault of heaven and How, I wonder, would the stars come spilling hither? By ones and twos I fancy they’d fall, cascading, raining, a great and brilliant wall of light and How the morning has brought with it slick licorice tree limbs, those dripping chandeliers which craze across the dawn like a glaze too small to fit its pot, or a thawing pond, and How akin the beads of dew perched on every twig-tip are to the jewels of perspiration which adorned your fragrant bark while my pale fingers tasted your sand-christened flesh and How curious it is now, in the cloud-clogged morn, to see my naked sallow stark against your saffron-perfumed swarthiness, while slowly, outside, the waterlogged winter-bare branches, How slowly do they pry open the sky. - Shelsea Dodd
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- Stephanie Spring
until next time... keep creating