Some Spaces

[The Continuist Presents]

SOME SPACES

Letter from the editors Oftentimes, the manifestations of real or imagined spaces help us to escape certain confines, also either real or of the imagination.

This spacious collection includes work from some friends both old and new, with topics ranging from personal strife to political unrest to tongue-in-cheek enthusiasm. Some superb work lays between these pages -we hope you enjoy.

Sincerest thanks to all those who submitted to our little publication, it has been a pleasure. We look forward to meeting you via email once more or in person.

Love always, Kristina and Daisy, Co-editors at The Continuist

The Continuist is an online and print collective based out of Ryerson University. Our mission is to provide an outlet for artists to showcase their work, whether professional or amateur. This is a passion project, run by a lovely bunch of students who are committed to making and sharing art.

Interested in submitting? Send us your work to thecontinuist@gmail.com and check our online submissions at thecontinuist.wordpress.com.

Myths Matter Poem and cover illustration

- Daniel Maluka

why do i have to choose? realms of myth or matter why can’t I have both nothing more than myth you said it really didn’t matter myths matter yet eyes pressed upon me gaze turn into a burden pressed upon me like Sisyphus, you are my burden solid stone i wanted to fix you reshape shingle to sculpture yet i don’t know how they carved stone in those old days you are a collective of cracks from your old days hard as fact is your stare hard as iron is your stare you are my burden so mighty hard to lift in the realms of myth and matter maybe it’s easier?

Happy Place He asked me to describe my happy place and at the time I just could not i wasn’t trying to be contrary I’ve had many happy thoughts but i found myself quite at a loss I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a place that I’d been in the past somewhere warm and pastoral something fragrant or floral a place where the happiness lasts i decided to picture the beach at dawn with the sky that’s pastel and serene but then i recalled getting sand in my ass and how fish make me feel so unclean i pictured the grass that’s been touched by the sun and my body caressed by its blades but then i remembered that bugs bite my bum and step over the food that i’ve made i started to worry that my critical view would stop me from being content there’s just nowhere in nature i don’t feel in danger at least no where that i’ve pitched a tent

but what about swimming, the pool in my yard in the house that my parents both owned i was only a child and with a sizeable smile i spent days doing laps all alone and then after the dip on the couch i would sit in my clothes that were warm from the wash id put on a movie something, anything but gloomy and id sit there in silence and watch and i felt calm that is my happy place i said as he sat and sipped his drink do you have a place? is it somewhere in space? so he paused and he started to think he said you’re right about the beach with the sand in the cheeks and the woods never held much for me

he said that a big comfy chair would be nice and a room that’s got books wall to wall i would sit and i’d read and there’s nothing i’d need no nothing i’d require at all there is, he said, however one thing that would make the location complete the books would be nice and the chair would great but with you there, it’s perfectly for me - Spencer Glassman

single-space sonnet In the measured space of a twin bed we orbit around each other.

On our own world but apart – same tracking, same heliacal rising.

The northern star for you is the eastern sky for me. Magnetized by the vacuum of your heat and my cold, drawn to the outline of your volcanic waist. I touch and I touch yet I don’t feel a thing.

The knowledge that I can’t reach you traps me in the reeds, on the chain-link fence of conversation – bottle-green and broken.

And the closer my body revolves around yours the more I taste the fever-white of static.

- Ken Geniza

The Green Blues A day without a j makes my heart say Owwww Love you outloud Mary, babe Mary Jane May we say amen for you Even when it's just two of us at three I'll be ready for you And when you do that thing you do Ouuuu Fill the spaces under my tongue and shield me in your fog ssssss ahhhhhhhh A day without my Jane makes my heart sigh Mary, you and I sky high And we don't gotta explain why Let me hold you in my throat Do up all the buttons on my coat when I meet you outside And all the tides that the moon pulled, as I did the same Oh, Mary say my name And exhale Sloooooooooooooooow - Chloe Kirlew-Geddes

welcome_to_spaces the space bar_where my thumb lives but doesn’t make a living _that space in my bed that belongs to neither of us_ unknown_times of the nightTM make for a scene i go to when dreams fail to do what they do best _the 6am alarm brings me an antagonizing thought_a warm body in the october air_the fix is coffee and the hazelnut swirl in your eyes_ sometimes a space is forgetting everyday life _but isn’t it funny that sadness occupies the space between memory and forgetfulness that dreams usually jumps in between_ - _kim_rashidi_

a garden of neuroses a garden of neuroses is a wish fulfillmeant to purchase your boucases of alcohall ways never endingaÄ? and pleasure I'll step inside of the garage is just a numbirth is the gatewait for death in a garden of neuroseasoning seeds for baking of the cata strophe becaused your mourningesting your wine into your earthy kitchending with -i-ngenomes are the makeup of you measured in inchestnuts cooking in a fireplacing our soil atop the ground coffeasts we celebrateducated and mindfulnested between us on

a garden of new roses.

- cameron macdonald

Planter’s Square

- Dylan Mitro

the image of you it can be buried underneath the unravelling waters the River’s sensuality appears so clearly and I am engulfed wholly in the densely bodied stream she is now blurred Peripheral the Sun implodes over all shadows seeping a new heat through the atmosphere but the naked essence of peacefulness refuses to evaporate to evade let it be so River and Sun and Sensuous we dissipate the now is only a drift of memory lying free of human specifics let it be just River and Sun and Sensuous simple and present in this sheltered moment - MJ Wright

A Case of Space (Ode to a Lost Love) Depressive, blue eyed, stubborn minded, creative energy, perfectionist tendencies producing annoyingly accurate predictions of his impending doom.

Teeth that just don’t quit, dawning eye liner circa Amy Winehouse 2007, a touch of interior design, a taste for the finer things sipping on tea leaves of unacknowledged pain.

Coming together as two extreme versions of themselves, igniting passion and medicating each other with scratch marks and hiding their destructive tendencies so as to ignore the uncertainty hanging in the thick air.

For once in his life, he can’t be all he can be, especially not for thee. He makes a case of space which means deserting everyone without a trace. Time alone means time to heal, despite how him and her may feel.

Maybe he’s denying himself love and pleasure because love and pleasure is not enough for him. And she knows all his sins and still he can’t help but snuggle up in his isolation. People suffer and he is there to pick up every shard of glass, afraid that every night will be his last.

She may want them to suffer together, but will it make anything better?

Three minutes away from each other. That’s close enough. Maybe they’ve come down with a case of space. Someone fill them out a prescription.

- Quentin Stuckey

Ten (excerpt) She was twenty-three years old and home for the first time in almost ten months. Home was home because she was born here, because over there was where she had her first kiss and because she could still remember all the names of her elementary school teachers; it could not be home anymore because she had to make herself small again to fit back here, because three hours away in an apartment that her mother would have called “deplorably small” was her girlfriend and their cat, a string of Christmas lights and a wall papered with lists of things that the two of them were going to do together one day. “Find a recipe for really good Béarnaise sauce.” Visit that ice hotel in Amsterdam. Make something that has never existed before.”

She had made it as far as driving to her house and she could see the tree in the living room. For a moment, she remembered Christmas mornings past that all sort of blended together into a warm blur- wrapping paper strewn across the carpet, and mugs of powdery hot chocolate and the flimsy paper crowns they wore at the dinner table.

She could still feel her mitted hand clasped in her father’s gloved one as he led her up the icy steps of the church. She and her family were at service every Sunday and she was always surprised by how many more people came for Christmas Eve mass. “These people are not true followers of God, Katherine,” her dad would whisper in her ear as she sat perched on his knee, in the pew right at the front that was theirs every week. “Yes, Daddy,” she would try and steady her heart against these bad people. When she was very young, she loved to watch her father’s sermons. She loved the way everybody listened to him. She loved that sometimes, if he was in the right mood, she could catch his eye and he would wink at her.

Once after service she had asked her father if he was God. For a moment, anger flashed across his face, and then he laughed and laughed.

Katherine had turned the radio off in the car and she watched as her mother plugged in the lights of the tree and fiddled with the cards strung up on the wall. She couldn’t go in, not yet anyway, and so instead she was in line at a coffee shop. It was the same one she went to every day in high school; by the time she was a sophomore, the baristas all knew her by name. “It’s Katherine,” they would say with a smile, and often they’d have her drink ready before she’d even ordered it. Now she didn’t recognize anybody there and nobody recognized her. She couldn’t decide if the anonymity was delicious or depressing.

The girl behind the counter called out, “Next” and it took Katherine a moment to realize she was speaking to her. The girl was probably sixteen, wearing purple eyeshadow and a thick gold necklace. “Do you know what you want?” she asked pointedly.

“Um.” The girl looked at Katherine expectantly. “I’ll just get a medium latte.” She called out “Next” before Katherine had finished paying.

Katherine moved to the end of the bar and watched as a middleaged woman steamed a little pitcher of milk. The woman wiped the steam wand off with a green cloth, poured the milk into a mug and then began steaming another pitcher. Katherine felt something move beside her and looked down to see a boy, no older than three. His hair was blonde and he was resting his chin on top of the counter. “Woah,” he said every time the woman restarted the process of steaming the milk.

The woman handed Katherine her latte. Though she ordered it to go, she went to a chair by the front window and sat down. The paper cup was warm against her hands and she held it until just before the moment when it would begin to hurt. She sat it down, cooled her hands on the leather of the chair, then picked it up again.

She remembered being seventeen, sitting on the back deck with

her mother, Abigail. It was early June, a few days after her high school graduation. Katherine was digging her fingernails into the jean material of her shorts and promising herself that by the time she counted to ten she would release her fingernails and be honest with her mother.

“Patricia called this morning, sweetheart. She wants to know if you’re planning on going back to camp.”

Ten. “Um. I don’t know, Mom. I thought you said I could be done after last summer?”

“You know how much it means to your dad.” Her church, her father’s church, had been running its summer camp since Katherine was three. She’d been going every season since, as a camper for ten years and a counsellor for four more. At some point between those fourteen summers, church camp became another bullet point on the list of things Katherine was bad at. They played capture the flag and decorated flowerpots with paper crosses and doves. At the end of each session, they had a service with all the campers. For these services, her father wore jeans and a shirt with the camp logo on it and a baseball cap. He said things like, “Jesus is actually not that different from you guys!” and, “The coolest thing about God is how much He loves us.” Katherine was thirteen and painting a mural on the side of the church garage the first time she heard the word “dyke”, muttered under the breath of some boy who was cleaning his paintbrush beside her. At home that night, Katherine and her father ate ham sandwiches on the picnic table where she and Abigail now sat. She remembered the sun was warm on her bare legs and her father let her have two bowls of mint chocolate chip ice cream after supper. “Today was so great, Katie Cat.” Nine. Eight. She closed her eyes; she was eleven years old, sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor with her best friend Valerie, their lips pressed together. She was fifteen and in the cafeteria with her friends, scrambling to make up the names of boys she knew she was meant to like; she opened her eyes.

Seven. Her mother nudged Katherine in a way that was meant to be playful. “Patricia said they’ve had a lot of boys sign up. Maybe a little summer romance before you go to school?” Abigail’s eyes were equal parts bright with the joyous prospect of her only daughter finding a nice boy to fool around with for the next two months and with the deep-seated anxiety that this would never be the life her daughter would choose.

Six. Five. It always confused her how people could have so many contradictions within themselves, like a riddle her grandfather once wrote on the inside of a birthday card for her; “I went to the pictures tomorrow/I took a front seat at the back/I fell from the pit to the gallery/And broke a front bone in my back/A lady she gave me some chocolate/I ate it and gave it her back/I phoned for a taxi and walked it/And that’s why I never came back.” Her parents were the kindest people she had ever known. Four days of the week, her mother made dinner for the widowed man who lived in the apartment building at the end of their street. Her father mentored a group of foster kids after school on Tuesdays and sometimes on the weekend they’d come over and have pizza and play Katherine’s old Mario Kart games. In the front hall of the house they had a wooden plaque that read Love Lives Here. And yet they could be so hard and relentlessly unforgiving in a way that frightened her. They said cruel things but disguised them in kind words and they loved everybody, except for the people they absolutely hated.

Four. “Mom, I-” “You could go on a few dates, at least. It doesn’t have to be anything serious and that way you’ll know what to expect at college… you won’t end up making any mistakes. You’re a good girl.” Abigail smiled.

-Cree Toner ** The remainder of this short story can be found on our blog

Dead Phones In the back left booth of the bar the sole white light burns the walls, Burns the skin on her hands The flames reverberate through tears in his eyes The bubbling gold poured out on the table Sloshes with muted yellow light She is talking of her dead mother Of “the only one who liked hugs just as much as I do.”

He keeps trying to flip the table It’s bolted to a Hell made Not of that molten something, bruises and demons But of the grey space splitting her in two Where moving forward is more like falling He keeps trying to flip the table between them Cheap, the exact as same as every other He slides his hand to hers, he clutches his dead phone The absence is scariest when she remembers Saying goodbye forever to the broken Thing Bolted to a Hell made of her daughters’ lonely faces And Mother wrapped around the air above her Mother played with her hair She looks sideways at the table and calls up an ocean He’s never had to open his eyes so wide Through every foot of the unrelenting acrid stuff She wonders if the damned things got a floor

He pours down the bubbling gold He sucks back the acrid stuff But how do you drain it away, How do you close the space When in it lies her mother Mother is playing with her hair Mother likes hugs just as much as she does He clutches his dead phone Broken thing Cracked along the lower third It keeps freezing so he’ll discard it The dead phone Cheap plastic thing, the same as every other He’ll buy a new one And she’ll never feel the soft ember of her mother’s eyes Just as easily, just as randomly, Mother dies Somewhere in a bookshelf she buried a hand-written letter and her heart “My only wish is for you to do what you love.”

The result of a ticking clock and a hospital bed, a funeral home or A bare bedroom She could no longer tell the difference

Mother was hugging her, playing with her hair, Wrapped in the air above her -John Connolly

to arms – hold me hard when You want.

Not so much anymore I define us in couches. leather black upstairs, my place. you said love in November.

Your parents’ house green sofa and piano. Lost space will widen until I could collapse in

His arms.

Third: living room sectional therapy session beyond wall, before breathing.

Why Arms?

They are rough elbows, deny like a liar, submit blue moon – regardless they are Your arms. please don’t loosen your touch.

Apply all pressure and I will stay standing.

-Breanna Vicencio

Suffocation Every time I come back I’m lost in the unknown Like I don’t know The face that’s staring back at me Through the mirror Even though she has the same hair And the same eyes Yet there is so much distance Between us And that unfamiliarity Wraps around my throat like Something carnivorous That hasn’t eaten in days Waiting to devour me And pull me under While I’m struggling to breathe -Zuha Ziaee

Drifting i am drifting off forever into that precocious dreamland that i find myself in once again an inky blue space glittering with the membrane of memory this seemingly sparkling sanctuary and in this i find a small sense of solace this cosmic cataclysmic chorus within a landscape of the darkest blue a soft hush, a whisper from a thousand symphonies long ago reminding me your anger will bear great art god i can only hope so -Lisa Tower

Solitude The base was a prism of activity.

Blue bloods and sergeants walked, I served lowly but humbly from Ohio.

Green fields and calm winds rolling on the hills.

A large tree grew on the outskirts of the base, Imagine a chestnut haired, brown-eyed boy from Ohio Swinging from the tree.

Mother would call me and I would lay my head On her lap and she’d caress my hair, then she’d sing Let It Be. Sometimes I sneak out at the cold, dark night Away from the base and into the warm gentle tree I’d watch the stars and slowly sleep, Hoping that mother would take me back to Ohio.

-Tristan Calayan

Moving House (Or Solitude) When I moved to a new house, the rooms were eerily empty.

Previous occupants left behind dead-skin cells and floorboard scratches, old newspaper clippings.

They didn’t even bother cleaning it all.

My hands became raw from scrubbing and bleaching, so dry that I could start my own fire in the fireplace from the friction.

I keep scrubbing, listening to the scratch the sponge makes against the mantle.

When I moved to a new house, I only had a few boxes.

Marked clothes, office, shoes.

I sat in the middle of the bedroom and whistled.

The noise left everything untouched, undisturbed.

-Maria Bendo

Private Spaces

-Richelle Foresy

POET IN HER POEM (OR, ARTISTIC DESPERATION IN SIX ACTS) i.

at sixteen, you trade feeling for words; ask that you never run out of syllables to poeticize the pain of others, you lay yourself at an altar and sacrifice yourself to a god of your own making, you are aware this makes you a heathen in their eyes.

ii.

what good are your sacrifices, if you are a heathenistic poet, you wonder, excavating the final illness from your bones, your blood drips drips drips onto a sheet of paper, turns into poetry.

iii. your sister asks if bleeding into art makes you feel selfless, and between the sacrificing and the godlessness and digging out the pain of your foremothers from the marrow of your bones, you wonder how to tell her it is the only way to feel at all. iv. a man you have never met asks why you look so far away as though you “aren’t comfortable in your own skin”, you spit on his shoes before realizing you are not comfortable in your skin, take up a pen and write that fact down, too. v.

it becomes a truth universally acknowledged that a poet in possession of an untreated trauma turns to words instead of people, you carve out a therapists office in a blank word document.

vi. in the end, you die alone, an unfinished poem by your side, you are thirty-two, and they find ink in your blood, bury you in a dump at the end of your childhood street, and shake their heads, she used to call her poems her safe spaces, look where that landed her, we don’t even know her name.

- Mariam Vikani

these blankets have held my tears from you and the many who came before my blood from scrapes my blood from bites my blood. my sweat from nightmares my sweat from love my sweat from life. these blankets will hold me, i will heal me.

- katherine anne

I’ve never been to a funeral Or sat on a park bench And now I have People Lining up to pass.

The path leads to black.

I’ve been there before And I’ve seen the black liquor store.

I just never go in.

I have to now, The alcoholism is clinging.

- Dayna Lang

I like my knick-knacks I am a hoarder–or rather, a collector of memories and sentimental knick-knacks.

Time travel is impossible, but I can find my way back to a happier time, within a locked drawer.

Memories and sentimental knick-knacks –concert tickets, greasy napkins, coffee stained cups– back to a happier time, within a locked drawer where songs never die, nor you and I. Concert tickets, greasy napkins, coffee stained cups –my personal artifacts. A venue where songs never die, nor you and I. A café with a bottomless brew of coffee.

My personal artifacts. A venue– the audience: creased, half torn tickets tucked away in a box.

A café with a bottomless brew of coffee –cups, empty and stained. Slow dripped with dust and cobwebs.

The audience: creased, half torn tickets tucked away in a box –a museum of mosh pit tableaus.

Cups, empty and stained. Slow dripped with dust and cobwebs.

What else is on the menu?

A museum of mosh pit tableaus.

Still, lifeless–captured only in staccato snapshots.

What else is on the menu?

Espresso and biscotti with a ghost.

Still, lifeless–captured only in staccato snapshots.

A flip book agenda on ruled paper. Every evening, espresso and biscotti with a ghost.

Her currant red lipstick caked on a white paper cup.

A flip book agenda on ruled paper. Every evening, I find myself lost in its pages. Collages of Valentines, her currant red lipstick caked on a white paper cup, photographs smudged with fingerprints.

I find myself lost in its pages. Collages of Valentines, Paper winged Hallmark cherubs, armed with X’s and O’s.

Photographs smudged with fingerprints.

A portrait of her heartbeat, its pumping paused.

I never thought it was a problem. That I am a hoarder–or rather, a collector of things that will never die. I know that time travel is impossible, but I can find my way.

- Kris Dionio

HOW COULD YOU NOT REMEMBER yes: and you were there, and your brother was there. we gathered armfuls of strawberries. things stuck to us and us to them, flicking bugs from the napes in each others’ necks, shooing away the dripping balm, sweat. you wore white. and behind my back you painted yourself with the juice and fell lightly backwards in front of me, arms soft like a shakespeare dramatization. you screamed like your heart had spilled out and stained you, the phony strawberry wounds. i watched you walk away down the pews of land, watched the old painting shirt lap in the breeze, almost gallop, taking you into its huge waves. my shirt on you like a bedsheet clipped off the clothesline. from a mile away you called me. four baskets hung from your arms. a fly barreled over my head, then died mired in the wire-branches of the fruit fields. someone was singing.

- Dan Darrah

Stein Upon searching for Stein, the milk curdled in its cup.

The showerhead fell; someone else’s roommate and large friend with the penchant for rice noodles and half-and-half women thundered through the bathroom window.

We think very much of each other.

The stove was warm, tender to paper and thin enough to touch.

The coffee, bitter; the milk, off.

In thinking very much of you, I’ve been passing time eating the desserts on others’ plates while contemplating your fine pie, thinking, always, of meeting you along somewhere, likely the foil.

- Kristina Pantalone

Stay Gold Pony Boy Lunch Is For Wimps

Be Afraid Be Very Afraid - Rachel Tham

Homeless Spaces November, gray clouds coat a moody sky. heels clicking on the concrete, no stopping to look at all the forgotten faces that are passed by. left to bitter cold wind, like tattered clothes hung out to dry.

crumpled bodies become blurred lines, they lose their shape. they are colourless masses against the cool Toronto cityscape. the other day, I came across a collapsed man who might have needed me, and i stepped to one side in my own vanity. walking away, I did not stop to think; have i forgotten my humanity?

- Liana Mortin

Bigger on the Inside Pippin climbs to the highest mountain-peak he can find to survey his kingdom. Regally, he wraps his tail of grey—golden in his mind—around his furry hind to rest upon his front paws: soft and round sheathes hiding his eight daggers. Shoulders back, ears on swivel, he turns his kingly head right to left, resting his shining eyes on all that is his own.

He slinks his massive, little body down the couch’s rocky peak to the living-room floor plain and begins to groom with leisure, revealing his claws when our eyes meet as if to tell me You’re here because I let you be. Basking in Toronto’s sultry Saharan sun, he stretches over the carpeted savannah. The orange mane that exists within his mind waves when he shakes his head, like wind brushing tall grasses in his territory.

But his eye is caught by the sudden movements of a stationary toy; it’s inanimate life exciting within King Pippin a hunter’s instincts. Unblinking, he readies himself, daggers unsheathed. I flick my wrist, he pounces; a chaos of triumphant roars rips through the hazy air, delivered to my ears as playful meowing. He turns to me to boast his kill, his teeth sunken into the impala. I recall when I bought the mouse-toy he holds, and smile as I see the effects of the catnip inside taking hold. He trots away to enjoy his prey beneath the coffee-table cave, rolling from side to side, but keeping one eye on the curious lioness that has just appeared from the bedroom-lands, awoken from her sleep by the tumult: Queen Gabi, his older sister. Their eyes meet, both refusing to relinquish their claims on the domain of apartment 213.

He yawns, she yawns. The Kitten King and Her Majesty Housecat; the Monarchical Mousers; the Puissant Pussycats, both flop over to resume the important feline business of sleeping, their bodies much bigger on the inside than the out.

- Liam McConnell

#45th I thought was it wrong to pick on an ethnic group.

I thought was it wrong to believe the majority of immigrants are criminals.

I thought was it wrong to have racist comments in your speeches.

I thought was it wrong to base a platform on fear mongering.

I thought was it wrong to be endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan in your campaign.

I thought was it wrong to ridicule a disabled person.

I thought was it wrong to make empty promises.

I thought was it wrong to make broad generalization of the United States.

I thought was it wrong to build a wall to stop people from coming to your country.

I thought was it wrong to claim Mexico would pay for that wall.

I thought was it wrong to try to legitimize a stupid idea.

I thought was it wrong to not realize the wall is a false sense of security.

I thought was it wrong to encourage violence in your rallies.

I thought was it wrong to encourage a xenophobic environment.

I thought was it wrong to name call when you are called out for your lies.

I thought was it wrong to not have any idea about your nuclear weapons.

I thought was it wrong to get your source news from Fox News.

I thought was it wrong to scam people into going to your university.

I thought was it wrong to use Breitbart as a credible source.

I thought was it wrong to think Info Wars are another credible source.

I thought was it wrong to think alternative facts are facts.

I thought was it wrong to not fact check anything you say.

I thought was it wrong to make information without any sources.

I thought was it wrong to lead the birther movement.

I thought was it wrong to delegitimize media because they disagree with you.

I thought was it wrong to make outrageous claims to gain more media attention.

I thought was it wrong to sexually abuse women.

I thought was it wrong to think about them as objects.

I thought was it wrong to claim false wiretapping.

I thought was it wrong to tell people to stop investigating your ties with Russia.

I thought was it wrong to use your power to impose xenophobic laws.

I thought was it wrong to name-call as a form of diplomacy.

I thought was it wrong to not care about the environment.

I thought was it wrong to take too many vacations.

I thought was it wrong to ignore the Nazism in Charlottesville.

I thought was it wrong to absolve yourself from being blamed for anything.

I thought was it wrong to take a vacation when there is a crisis in your country.

I thought was it wrong to attack people’s freedom of speech.

I thought was it wrong to attack those same people by calling them a son of a bitch.

I thought was it wrong to blame the mayor of Puerto Rico for your incompetence.

I thought was it wrong to throw supplies like a basketball to victims.

I thought was it wrong to blame other people for your incompetence.

I thought was it wrong to claim victories from underwhelming failures.

I thought was it wrong for you be in charge.

Looks like I thought wrong...

- Abdullah Barez

Playhouse Deep in the lobby, I’m trying to focus on someone’s words, but the syllables seem slippery as if oiled and loosened to evade my grasp and leap, prancing out over sound waves, free to become echoes and then nothing; meanwhile, I hope idly that that arrogant silver tinkle goes unheard: the soft stirring of my spurs Between the stage and the seats there’s an unlit line leading back into itself, dividing play and people, processors and procession; reality and representation; onstage a woman pronounces a truth, clear and hard like black ice, to be walked out onto and upon discovery, collapsed atop; at the other end of the pole, an eternity away, there is me, my presence in the playhouse a lie of its own The play will end, curtains closing like my lungs coming down on the tail end of a slow sigh, and we will spill back into the unsure depths of the foyer, on red and white carpet where fabrication and fact mix again like meeting seas, and I am once more able to blend in, the jangle of my heels disguised by the thundering of all our fearful hearts.

- Benson McDaniel

Claddagh I cracked the bones along my temples Notches in the cortex, wistfulness in misty air, Blood-letting all the roseate places.

My body calls me empty and my mind is an unstable idea But, in someways, I am still here, If you look at it right side up.

I stuffed myself with limestone, the scent of marsh orchids.

I have the knowledge of every rock native to Ballyvaughan.

Drinking the breeze, but these cliffs do not tame me. (polar opposites, me and the breeze).

I stuff my mouth with the mother tongue and feel weightless, bone free.

Is ait an mac an saol.

From most perspectives, I survived June Even though it didn’t survive me.

Photographs and poem

- Jordan Donovan

Expansion Do you ever think; what if Every thought you’ve ever thought Was not for you to think about?

Do you ever stop and realize, Just how free you are Within the confines of your mind?

How completely yourself Your thoughts are.

And if we were Called to judge, How harshly we would judge ourselves On our own thoughts.

But we do not think this way, The space of our mind is ours Thankfully protected, until we say Words that confirm thoughts.

Words like wild horses roam Over fields of conversation.

Words like a curse betray The essence of our existence In the space of our minds.

Words like molten lava Flow over multitudes of pages Preserving stories then and now

Words, unstoppable.

Translating feelings into The realm of tangibility.

Words like an escape, And an entrapment bounded together As their very nature.

Words that encompass minds, Embody thoughts, And clearly convey feelings.

Words with the power to Withhold information While appearing to do the opposite.

Words that can cause the Fate of a nation to Sink or swim.

Words that create And destroy And harm And heal.

Words, that provide a way To expand the space of our minds To a page.

- Roxanne Frazer