fall.
fall sure brings a lot of emotions. these months are filled with ups and downs, as well as light and dark. though the day ends early, we have to remember it starts earlier too. as much as there’s a lot to say about the world these days, i’d rather we take a moment to flip through these pages and escape into the art for a few minutes. if you’re in a creative rut, let these images and words be your push to get back into the groove of making something. i hope this zine provides a moment to ground you and temporarily escape whatever it is that’s on your mind. focus on the art and focus on yourself. xox, sophie
Cover By Melissa Rose Miller / Long Beach Background Photo By Elizabeth Cowan / Atlanta
Photography: Matt Martinez Makeup & Hair: Cassidy Stucki Stylist: Isabella Martinez Model: Bailey Rebekah
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Process of Reinvention That first moment of autumn, the world seems to stand still for just a second before the trees undress their lush green finery and bare themselves to the forest. Leaves coil like the slow roll of parchment in flames as their colour fades and the branches release them so they can join the crisp blanket upon the woodland’s floor. It quietens, the wildlife curled up underground- as close to the heart of mother nature as they can get- while the world begins its process of reinvention. - Holly Berry / Essex
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Karen Beaches By Goldie Swans Productions / Venice Beach
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Courtlyn Collins / Gasden
Mikai Johnson Harris By Erin Flynn / Brooklyn
Outside "I wish to know that which cannot be gleaned From being alive. I hope to someday know what it is to be shown The rays of the sun. I yearn to know, truly, what that sort of warmth is. My wish is to feel fire along my cheek, To feel it erode like the baked red rocks of the Mesas. My hope is to bloom like a well-yeasted loaf, Bursting and teeming with life anew; My yearning, truly, is to feel that kind of alive. My fear is that I will forget My wish, my hope, my yearning. My fear is to live full of complacency, To fall victim to my own instincts to survive. My fear is that I will know my Father, And never my Mother." - Jonathan Leicht / Lancaster
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Sweet Suezy / Cowtown
Kate Anderson / Oakland
Lex Dorsey By Jonathan Roensch / Portland
Anna Warner / Nashville
SINKING If I write one more poem about love will you forget every word I’ve ever spoken of sadness? Would it make you more comfortable to hear about the last time I made love so passionate, I cried before I tell you my thoughts on life, and how sometimes I don’t even really want to be on This Earth at all? I’ll do it for you. Last time I saw you we drove forty minutes down the coast in the evening Because we had nothing else to do but be free On a full tank of gas Completely manic Taking ourselves wherever we wanted to go Straight shots down the Long Beach Freeway Miles and miles of vacant sand I was in love with every road because they all led to you... It is easy to talk about the good Well your eyes are clear like May and mine are hazier than Autumn Leaves are changing now, falling off of the trees And I’m sinking with them Slowly Static Red October The Cranberries on the radio Now I drive the coast alone, This is not a poem about love - Erica Gerger / Murrieta
Sanaa Bell / Atlanta
Ana Osorno / Seattle
Falling into Autumn Back into quarantine Back into myself Back to old patterns of behaviour I had assumed were long gone Dublin’s slumped down As the grey glass towers grow and multiply The streets more empty and grim than I’ve ever seen them But we can’t despair Every time the leaves fall from the trees We know Bloomsday will come again And until then it’s time to rest And heal So that when the time comes We’ll be ready to spring forward
- Cathleen Kerrigan / Dublin
Teddy Edey By Holly Elizabeth Beson-Tams / Manchester
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Jordan Payne / Atlanta
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fall during quarantine— my mind seems to blend the season together. the hands of time have either stilled too long or a spring has broken and it’s moving much too fast. there are infinite moments in a day and it feels like i don’t have enough time to create one worth holding onto. it’s getting colder, the wind is picking up and the clouds have spilled over the sky. without the clouds i don’t know if i’d be able to differentiate the way i’m supposed to feel. i should be happy—my favorite season is coming around to give me an excuse to wear the jacket that’s been dusting in my closet, but yours was always summer and for some reason i miss the heat. i wish this made sense—it’s been awhile since you left. i don’t miss you all the time, maybe it’s just because i’ve been really alone the entire year. - Charissa Love / Los Angeles
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Anna Warner / Nashville
Chloe Berry By Pedro Alejandro Hernandez
Reina Rouzaud By Pedro Alejandro Hernandez
Malik Laing
Malik Laing
Not to Be Confused With the Penrose Steps Somewhere in West Hollywood there is a house with no right angles. It's one of those new modern types where everything's made out of stone and the broken sink might be art so the general consensus among guests is to tread lightly. If you ever chance upon this house (and not one of its many imitations) you'll see what I mean by no right angles. The interior is well-maintained but the keen eye will notice a mark on the left-facing wall ascending the stairway. The unkeen eye will notice a different, second mark, then quickly produce its most nonchalant backwards glance and pray that nobody just saw a 78 degree wall get the best of it. There's something admirable about a house that demands to be noticed. It leaves no room for passivity. Only engagement or a bruised scalp. - Connor Wilson / Los Angeles
Robin Maaya / Orlando
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the devil’s in the details she said forevermore! neither of them knew forever was till morn the gods stayed above ends were yet to meet a dance for two in triple time was shut down unexpectedly there is no good in the bad as there is no bad in the good the waves carry the seasons from the shore till deep down the blue then borne a child, wild and undone soon to be visible, but soon to be gone - Indy de Vries / The Netherlands
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Jonathan E. McCormack / Columbia
Hannah Elijah / Atlanta
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Chloe Reyes / Los Angeles
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Edรถlia Stroud / Brooklyn
The baskets full Of fruit and skin and peel My doubts off, call each Golden hair kissed By the sun By my name, me By my name, too Who I am to you Summer, autumn Winter, spring, everything All the seasons, all the days You count, the apples You eat One a day Bite my red cheeks I am juicy, I am sweet I grow fresh leaves In your branches I flourish lavishly so we Can harvest all Year round, just say I am your favourite Fruit, your favourite Bloom, my name The favourite Yield engaging  Your yearning mouth - Chrischa Venus Oswald / Lisbon 52
Ella Bailey
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Mid-October A cup of coffee
“Excuse me ma’am, I believe you
Too hot to drink
forgot these.” His breath was gone.
He was reading Gandhi
“I thought my journal missed a paper or
And she was in her ink.
two. For heaven sakes, thank you John.”
What are you writing?
“My apologies, I asked the barista
He wished to ask. But
for your name” Her cheeks warmed like
voiceless he was— tongue biting
apples and her eyes shifted east of
while butterflies danced in his gut.
the forest, trailing like a hike.
Her deep-set caramel eyes were
“Really, um, thank you, I-uh, I
like honeysuckles in bloom.
Have wondered about your writing, and
Golden locks glisten as her
of you too.” A bashful smile, ever so sly
hand runs through a groom.
“I’ll share it with you tomorrow, cafe at two?”
Up she left, amidst the autumn day vanishing into the nipping breeze
“Why yes, tomorrow, I’d be delighted!”
but forgetting her papers at the cafe.
“Lovely,” she said and lovely is she
What if she really needs these?
Heels echoed in the shadows— nighted While he went back to the cafe in a
Bolting out of the cafe into the streets
joyous spree
down where sugar maples grow And where the city and forest meets
A cup of coffee
Where she went, goodness, I don't know?
Now too cold to drink.
Dashing like a spur-winged goose papers in hand, flapping as wings that grip like claws afraid to break loose of the writings that he brings.
- Melisa Rose Miller / Long Beach
Why the sky turns red when the sun goes down When I was a child, my father and I would watch the sun go down, Him, on the old white lawn chair, spider webs dangling from underneath it, Me, on the second step of our front porch, my hands blackened from a day spent imagining. I asked him, “Why does the sky turn red when the sun goes down?” He told me, “At the end of every day, the sun battles all the evils that come out at night, So everyone can sleep without worrying.” He told me that the red splotches against the sky were the blood of those monsters, Slain by the righteous final beams of the evening heat. So when I woke up that morning, And saw the sky was still red, heavy and hanging, I wondered what kind of tremendous battle the sun had taken on, And why the cypress trees, and the squirrels, and the juniper berry bushes just half a mile out were taken away with it. - Juhuhn Kim / Alameda
Isabel Dowell / Grand Rapids
Katie Park / Brooklyn
Marissa Ding / Rochester
Speezy
In the Light of the Morning Just as the sun chases things that are Dark and unseen You chase the sun and wonder why you can’t look this Feeling in the eyes. Why it crawls around your lovers neck like a String of diamonds that kaleidoscope But you might feel yourself looking into their Eyes like a deer in headlights or Children in the sun, Looking at things that pull Without question and God Will carry us with golden wings To heaven if we just hurt ourselves: A reasonable thought for beings Trapped in tar dripping with time:: That we might be able to join the realm of perfect things If we can just capture this feeling before It is gone. Before it hides in the patterns Between stars, with all the other unseen Things that are there but You might keep looking at the sun, The absolute the too good pearl that will Burn a hole in your eyes; When what you really seek is something that Breaks like a diamond On a string or a cloud or The light that breaks through them, Turning, refracting into people you love more like Constellations written with truths that Change but are real. - Maya Elimelech / Los Angeles
Lydia Akehurst / Stewartsville
Nando Espinosa
Tillman James / Atlanta
“Be of the World Without Drowning in It” – A Fall Mixtape By V. Freeman *Beats the ‘PLAY’ button on a lost mixtape* TRACK 1 We undress adrenaline in that Legacy Village parking lot, lips locking in a secret bow. Blue & a soft kiss of innocence – baking in a red, orange façade – drip from the ether becoming our disposition. Building castles We fall prey to believing were real. Built palaces from the stomped-out tar on the street Mowing them down with our declining hand-me down Nikes. TRACK 3 Faces on the clock shift, Directing us to head toward the lights @ the 50-yard line. Making the diamonds on our necks hang-glide ‘Til the yearbooks decorate our memorials. Brothas words - filling the canopy our desires were hand crafting – Slurring on the gown of Midwest suburbia. We bathed in the sidewalks’ leaves, Our casted stone shoulders hearing the cracks bark for us to go home As we were running toward a plaque of life, hidden From where the streetlights wouldn’t dare to go. TRACK 6 The sun, dipping past the crowd of evening congregating, Perfecting the Irish goodbye Leaving our car’s headlights in limbo. Shield’s swollen chords emulating Paul Revere: “Po-po is down on 5th!” There are murmurs of life dialing up on the East Side. Dropped the needle on Ocean’s sovereignty, Letting our fluorescence tune the outdoor speakers, Placing that shit on repeat. Hammered tears & Misshapen grammar spilling, finding new territory on my letterman – The only lens providing you & I a preview to the me my thoughts cling too. TRACK 10 A curtain call brings us venturing down train tracks. Seeing if we can pick a fight with the person housing our own doom. It’s 2AM, & our kingdom is in hibernation. There is no Winter in sight. No brush of cold tapping on our spines... Only flood lights causing traffic in our eyes. Beckoning us to reset the atmosphere. Rewind the tape. Our starvation hinting at another plate of yesterday’s.
*Mixtape rattles off to a close*
Will we ever be the Fall again?
Beatrice Lezzi / Berlin
Photos By Ryan Williams, Styling By Stephanie McClain / Brooklyn
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