The Savannahian Zine, Vol. 2

ZINE

with contributions from Local artists, wRITERS and human beings

welcome back

it's so good to see you again...

editor's note

It's been a strange summer, to say the least. To be honest, I don't think there has been a time longer than a day or maybe a week that I haven't thought, "This is like how it used to be." In fact, it's only been fleeting moments. When the breeze makes the Savannah heat not so crushing and you can actually sit outside, or a stranger walks by wearing the same perfume your kindergarten teacher from 1994 used to wear, suddenly you're just a kid again and if you pretend to fall asleep, someone will pick you up and take you where you need to be.

But, we're awake now. Around us are strikes, a boiling planet, and new problems everyday. Are these symptoms of a sick world? Perhaps. But isn't a fever the sign of a body fighting an illness? These are signs of a fight for a healthier world. The only reason that analogy doesn't quite make sense is some would have you believe this is an us vs. them scenario with us being those striking and wanting to protect the Earth (so, like, not the one percent) being the human body and our efforts being the fever and the "them" being the virus. This sort of makes sense, but it benefits no one to think this way because it ironically abandons the idea that we are a single being experiencing the past, present, and future as one. So maybe it's more of an autoimmune disorder. But, we're awake now. And we will pick ourselves up and take us where we want to go. What a rebellious symptom of unrest- with our strained empathy and our time, already deemed so inexpensive, but so precious to us that we would still spend it making art. Feeling and making others feel... not good, but everything. Feel human. Feel alive.

So, welcome back, and thank you for being here.

Rosie Kiely Editor

artwork by Ashley Rainge-Shields @cha0tic collage

Don’t you know that just existing is an act of revolution

We are so much more than this flesh

How freeing to be stripped of these material suits

Yet exhilarating to be trapped in these rainbow prisms of existence

Glimmers of brilliance blown about the closet

Open the window

Let the restlessness out

Spring forward darling

Let the life catapult from your pores

From your light

Bask in your radiance dear one

Treasure your love and light and protection

I know all the seeds will bear good fruit of love and tenderness

Make my heart soft in this cruel world

Hold me close sweet hope

I feel your warmth in the coldest of nights

May the words be transmuted through this flesh prison

Words of encouragement and upliftment

Of love and understanding

Compassion lights my way

What lights your way?

These are my rainbow space travelers

We go thru time and space to be interlaced into cosmic goo

How relaxing and freeing it is to let go

And let live

Breathe out the winter

Let in the summer

In our hearts minds and the patterns

So breathe in and out

Let it be

by Valore @ladyvalore

Indie Christianity

Among the conifer trees that populate the six-digit zip codes there is a place of worship. They distribute homilies on cassette, the priests cuff their robes, the altar boys speak in riddles in the cloisters, the wine tastes like a translation of Kool-Aid, the eucharist achieves a smoky flavor.

I dismounted my sarcastic horse and saw the ruins. The tapes of hymns curling in the breeze, the forest a sunbaked moonscape kissed by the word of whatever we should be scared of.

I stood and found no demarcation between person and structure. There were some who spoke in whispers of the New Heads who stormed the clergy, one fateful April morning when the crucifixes burned green. And there I found the New Heads in a well not far from the stone. Their bones had bleached to gray. Their eyes, their brains - cages without birds. Everyone who ever met them held the sacred honor. They heard them before they were popular.

poetry by Liam Higgins

artwork by Cece Trella @ceciliatrella

Stereopticon (panopticon)

my father stares at flickering scene beamed against a wrinkled white sheet: moments of nurture forced out of order, pressed into slices, neatly processed projected from that spinning, clacking metal contraption filled to the brim incongruent antique

within those impulses, my fragmented form waves: stuttering, ugly, disjointed, disrespectful pulled further out of focus by its co-creators mesmerized by patterns impressed, implied naturally, my father thrashes against this presence: that static collecting and dissolving along each senses ’ rich, saturated borders with every rotation of that spinning, clacking, metal contraption ever changing, never changing

as im beaten backwards, deftly dodging through the contours and back corridors of his cerebellum it becomes a bit of a dance, one ive grown quite used toand still my reply: why must one be violent towards this dissonance? a godly kind of synthesis, vilified by you felt under skin and wiry sinew my father has won his game of patriarchy cleaving to prosperity within the white fictions of his american nightmare too lucid to bend, his sweet peaks are whipped just stiff enough to break or be devoured by my eager mouth which has now learned that this is the price of inerrancy

poetry by Cat

What's Really Real?

Every day, reality hits

I have choices, plenty of them.

I could quit my job and exist on my couch. At least I'll be truly happy.

I could leave my life in the South and create another in a place unknown. I could eat whatever I wanted from the past and be back at square one with preventable long-term diseases:

Hypertension, Pre-diabetes, Extreme obesity. I could shave my head and fight to forget about what I looked like before.

I would wonder if I actually hated my natural hair. I could message people who hurt me and not spare their feelings. But feel guilty afterwards.

I could go back to the life that led me down the rabbit hole of my addiction.

I'd only hate myself even more and loathe going online. I could be my past self that didn't bite her tongue for anyone. But then feel guilty afterwards.

For once, I would feel free doing what I wanted But it would be temporary. I know it will.

Why have all of this freedom, but yet feel so limited? And empty?

Free will is more of a curse than a privilege. But such a reality was always longed for.

poetry by Ta'Mia @im.mia.holmes

blackout poetry by Rosie Kiely

comic by St. Shaffer @st.shaffer

illustration by @bubblegumvampire

Let's go to MOOD RIGHTS!

Bustling down bare boulevards

Wielding whatever weed we acquired the night before

We walked aimlessly towards the bar

Heads held high that night

Will you leap into and linger in the lovers boat with me Trinity?

But after and fortunately our fatigued feet

Rested at the rowdy rambunctious bar

Screams and shouts spread

Through the comforting careless crowd

Of intensely interested and impatient bingo players

And already delirious dazed drunks

And excitedly we embraced the eagerness

Of the night

After slurping shitty shots

And downing delicious drinks

We lazily lingered

Outside of the bar

Taking turns traveling to

The gas station

To grab generic grub

Take and eat this is my communal captain crunch given to you

Do this in reluctant reminiscence and remembrance of me

poetry by Z