CREATIVE WRITING

Hello gentle readers,

This month, I have gathered for you a selection of poetry. I hope these poems inspire you as they have me, and that you enjoy them as one would enjoy a juicy peach; A perfectly bouncy balloon; A butterfly landing on your shoulder.

I wish you to enjoy these poems with all your simple wonder.

Your Creative Writing Editor,

LAURY CHARLAND

A Wish for Someplace Else

BEN BISAILLON Curiosities Editor

Leave your jewels in old shoes salt water makes it easy to float still drown in ocean air setting sunlight rocks watch from the shore stars see shapes from the sky they are all guardians cold is bearable in due time wrapped and wading with seventy-one percent of the Earth

Untitled

ADRIAN CERONE Contributor

distance in years between us i wave goodbye each night to the man i was when i lay down looking for sleep, desperate beckon it, pray it will come i mourn the girl alive on my walls in my mother’s heart, her mouth stuck at the back of her throat you, too, are grieving she says you’ve put distance between us now more than years i bury myself in prose, badly i’m okay with that the distance between me and my every word spoken to you is enormous now but each pool i dive into i dive into deeper pulled to the bottom, sinking and deflating my lungs, i breathe in pure gold the water is yellow with dayfall farther down i go till i fuse to its mossy bed of grass and garbage people were too scared to keep from this distance, i am little more than the ripple your finger makes tapping on your reflection, the little hearts in your eyes rushed flow of water, the cries that shake my house in my tiny room i see every speck of dust with my head crowded in the corner threatening to break through the window breathe the glass in like the kisses i’ve never received and breathe them onto your face, your glitching mouth and nose i will champion your cause and absorb all the tears you cry into me and i will revel in the way they mix with my freshwater swirling at the surface and i will savor it like the last meal you ever give to me in your presence you, my executioner

Patsy

EMMA MAJAURY Contributor

Humankind’s Features

ÉMILIE HÉBERT Contributor

Colored faces, black and white Eyes, lips, tears despite Minds torn turn upright Human nature all unite Ugly grief, naked, and bright Mothers, daughters holding tight Misery madness’s ultimate fight Human nature in delight

Forever the Both in Limbo

ALEXANDRA MERFU Contributor

where did you go sweet young child when the weather warmed, a new mild temperament shaken by a wound too big to bear and a heart too fragile to care.

where did you go young stranger looking on now in fits of anger where did your mind go where did mine? i don’t know

dissipated into the clouds of screaming hail hail hailing down hail, wrenching me out of me again, just flail, flail, flail, into the dying and burning of the doubt

pulled out by the back of my head i’m in some sort of here, in bed your voice never heard at all and too many of them around me in the walls.

please gentle god or gracious goddess pull me out again so that i might stop my despair Sometimes, I am beautiful— But only when it’s right. Because they are afraid of me, A woman with looks that bite.

Other days, I’m ugly. So gruesome, they could cry. They’d cast me out in exile, And leave me there to die.

At times, I’m simply radiant. No words could make me ill. It all would bounce right back at them. These looks could really kill.

Most often, I am in-between. My beauty, a weapon concealed. And when the moment comes along, My true self is revealed.

Creative Writing curated by

LAURY CHARLAND Creative Writing Editor

Doodles by

PIPA JONES Editor-in-Chief ALESSA ORSINI Graphic Designer