Sirens Zine Issue #2

Sirens Zine a zine

by POC/ LGBTQ+ creatives

Cover Art

by JAZZ

Contents p 3 Greta Radzeviciute p 4-9 Caitlyn Pierre p 10-11 Kaylianne Chaffee p 12-13 Isabelle Ryan p 14-17 ByReenaRae p 18-19 Emma Lun p 20-23 * VINNIE * p 24-25 Kim Morales/JAZZ Graphics p 26 Meilani Mandery/Lexi Colmenero p 27 ByReenaRae p 28-29 Cilola Magdalena/Lemeeze Davids p 30-31 Joyce Padua/Lemeeze p 32-33 Kim Morales/Lemeeze

V

y t i n a

ta te e r G by zeviciu Rad

My work is based on a pointing from the painting Vanity by Hans Memling. It is an exemplary painting which shows how much influence men have over the image of the female body in art. For centuries men artists have stripped women's bodies naked to please the male gaze but then put the blame on the subject. For example, Memling squeezed a mirror in the woman's hands and called the work Vanity.

The female body and mind is just a puppet. With my submission I wanted to draw a work based on the original vanity but change the roles.

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For my project I wanted to express color very boldly with my subject so show beautiful tones. I also wanted to express the fragility that men can posses against the stereotype that they normally don’t.

Caitlyn Pierre www.caitlynpierre.com @caitlynpierre

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This Poem Is Imperfect But That’s The Only Way to Make it Real

by Kaylianne Chaffee

Brush off that back-and-forth darkness Listening sometimes pulls that shadow close And on the edge facing forwards, there’s no place for falling; Change is imminent and There are only wings; That oil Stopping progress is self-containable, Work it through, Error is available and progress is attainable, no perfect answers ailing the aching mind’s turrets, Drop the chaos, it’s always imperfect let it be.

Kaylianne Chaffee

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“I wanted to express the y often shunned

Isabelle

youth power/voice that is d in society.�

e Ryan

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Mosaic/Collage artist ByReenaRae has recently exhibited in the largest Kanye Collection in the world for Kanye’s recently halted Life of Pablo Tour. With collaborations with Vans shoes and work for former MadTv star Bobby Lee for his podcast Tigerbelly, Reena has opened her work for custom orders and commissions to art lovers around the world!

Tiny squares cut from various magazines, and glued to canvas form the works of ByReenaRae.

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Cass

ByReenaRae

Willow Smith

ByReenaRae

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BLUE

My existence was born from blue, From the sea that the earth rose up from, from the shadowy depths where glimmering sea creatures swirled and twisted their sinuous bodies.

The cruel blue spat me out, hoping that I would not return.

Hoping that the urgency of its crashing waves would distract and turn me about, that the blue would be far too immense and too bright in the eyes.

I grew up far from a true blue, it was a man made blue, filled with sunken ships and churning splashes from rich rich boats.

My home is near a true blue now, I can’t bear to look at it sometimes.

This blue is too large and my cupped hands are too small.

If I scoop it up, the blue will always fall and slither back to the beginning.

I live in blue despite my proximity and reluctance to view it.

Sometimes it is a dark blue, fit for the immeasurable quantity of that true blue Sometimes it is a light blue, suitable for a cloudless sky and sometimes it is a blue so dark, it seems unbearable to raise a hand to the waves above and look up from inside the blue.

Blue is harsh.

It keeps one in its grasp as it fiddles with both storms and the smallest drop falling from the heavens It flows and moves, never staying in a single place.

But blue is beautiful, If I told you that your eyes were blue, would you believe me?

If you could see what I see, you’d know that blue is the most wild of colors.

Red, Green, Yellow are all forces of nature and will wheedle their way into your heart, But Blue.

Blue is the beginning, the end, and a voyage.

Have you ever heard someone say that they want to traverse the great blue?

It is adventure wrapped in sadness and a start to something.

We don’t know what something is, but at least I know that I was born from blue.

Emma Lun 19

* VINNIE *

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ROPA VIEJA LIKE PAN

by Kim Morales image by JΔZZ GRAPHICS

im wearing all your old clothes im wearing all his old clothes theyre wearing all theyre old clothes you are wearing all your old clothes

wear – my old feet where – all your old shoes

what am i but an amalgamation of everyone else i need around me? is that bad is that not real and what if everyone is around me always? i seek them out thru windows where time goes driven by my need for old clothes

new things to wear and lay over myself i want to lay my skin on my skin i want to feel me beside myself

naked if i have to be

more clothes

your dark cargo pants fit me right but now i have your brown belly your perfume sits wet on my neck heavy and just smells like theft your winter coat all stolen and blue is all mine along with your shoulders and the bruises they carry your t-shirts cracked slogans are cute on my breasts every time i inhale, i exhale your breath and your words are borrowed too i give them back to you with the constants torn at the corners and the spine of your lent vowels is beginning to fall apart id take your eyebrows if i knew how to draw them on right im wearing all your old clothes im wearing all his old clothes theyre wearing all theyre old clothes you are wearing all your old clothes i am you and you of me i am made up of everyone i am no such thing (originally published in Basement Babes Zine October 2015)

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Rest please. Take it second by month by year. My chest is a place for you to hide but my fingers are swollen dear.

Rest Energy

by Lexi and Meilani

Oh honey your mind so lovely has gotten you down. Sweetheart, your soul can only handle so much. Oh love, how I love you. If that were only enough.

ByReenaRae

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the vila’s mouth occupying the hollow under the thin sheet of where the moon glimmers, her pearl body peeks through the linen, flecks of wet earth glittering as she writhes. if the fabric is lifted, ever so gently, the form trembles, recoils as if a layer of oyster flesh. a stroke of soot casts across ruddy cheekbones, blackened nails dig into sodden velvet. they cloy together, swaying desperately to the familiar hum of hunger not for hot soup and milk to swell her stomach. a desire to be made electric, touched to her ribosomes. devoured, poured slowly.

Photography by Lemeeze Davids

they thought me a waif, watch me bare my teeth your savage woman, gyrating in a coat made from skinned foxes. blood from his feet bleeds into the soil, he pants, a dry acrid fragrance of pressed chrysanthemums. giselle drags her lips across his collarbone, a lashing for all the times men pulled at the strings of her bodice, dirtied her lace. a soft glow spills across her hips, his chest heaves into hers. harnessed by a foreign sensation the heady embrace of complete satisfaction. giselle throws her head back, matted curls brushing her shoulder blades, grins.

by Cilola Magdalena 29

colours/mga kulay I am tired of writing stories for myself, of sifting through crowds of white noise for a single face like mine.

I used to think the Philippines floated in the sky, my own Atlantis, my favourite children’s story.

No one else spoke a second language.

Their family trees had grown to be forests with roots plunging and pillaging the soil, the very face belonging.

Mine drifted in bits along the shore. in timber and planks.

That was all that was left of the boats we stumbled from, searching for firm ground, still fresh.

Sometimes I lay awake at night and wonder, were it not for the distant hum in my chest— the sound of rain on banana leaves and tires on barrio roads—, if home ever existed at all.

Joyce Padua

Photography by Lemeeze Davids

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You Know What This Is

by Kim Morales Photography by Lemeeze Davids

are you a maniac or just a god i didn’t know what haunches were until I was laid back waiting for you to deliver me you were golden like the calf dragged one finger from my clit our fucking is its own animal rare,too precious to hunt but hiding out in a cave with blood on the walls from previous kills

on my own to a new evil to the crack of my ass sought after ardently

you smell me like an animal like a wild dog but we return to the passionless street two loosies our tobacco, our nicotine our smoke and potential cancer wrapped tightly in thin cigarette paper we return to the passionless street two loose friends we return to the passionless street two losers getting high in your east village apartment and not loving each other right every other Friday night i used to be a quetzal, a king but not on 3rd avenue or on the corner of east 7th only a jaguar again in your cave but you saw me! my teeth never go away i scream with the owls, i eat it raw i make the bones rise

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