|
by Skyla Allen I often wonder how I look inside down beneath the skin perhaps a surging, sinuous storm blood, red, well fed lungs, heart, brain well-read sweltering in the heat of my own heart an ecosystem of emotions each one its own all four seasons of change expected as a natural disaster breaks through embrace for it may be the last before the past is swept away underneath the current eventually I’ll surface cleansed with wind, fire rain and the Earth herself Skyla Allen (they/she) is an artist and writer based in southern Indiana. Their passions lie in the in-between spaces of genres and are often explored in her writing. They have recently graduated with their M.A. in creative writing and have had their work published in Allusions magazine.
0 Comments
by Lola Anaya i still remember the tender sunshine across your face and those blue glasses i always thought we could have changed our world although, we did change each other your hands were so much bigger than mine there were drawings of animals on your walls you were always an artist and you drew an impression on me we are reduced to one awkward text exchange from a few weeks ago and i can live with that because you were just a portal into who i am now; proud and maybe i am okay too i still remember: hair tangled in mine we were only fifteen but that was fine i made many mistakes you were rightfully hurt the sun set on us these words release the two girls having fun ditching their friends to see each other those days are gone i choose to let go but i still remember and i am grateful Lola Anaya is a Puerto Rican student from New York City attending Smith College who loves to write about a variety of subjects. You can find their work in The Sophian, which is Smith’s newspaper, and Citrus, Smith’s fashion magazine. She loves to read as well, and currently loves memoirs like Broken by Jenny Lawson and Hunger by Roxane Gay. They are passionate about art history too, and are pursuing a bachelor’s degree double majoring in english and art history. Someday they want to publish their own book and you can always find them wandering around a museum in the city.
by JOYCE ALEXANDER  I'm Joyce Alexander, an 18-year old artist from Dallas, Texas. I love everything about human connection, and being able to deepen that in any way I can makes all the difference. Moreover, I know first-hand that representation has an enormous role in how we view ourselves and others, so I strive to bring light to marginalized peoples and their correlating issues. You can find me at @byjoycealexander on Instagram!
by Elizabeth Gibson That cold Saturday, I was done with all your bullying, so I ate my box of chocolates from work, that I earned. I watched my Studio Ghibli DVDS, one after the other, When Marnie Was There, then From Up on Poppy Hill. I watched trash telly, discussed it in depth with my Mam. I savoured chunks of halloumi and fat, oily tomatoes, then dusted off my forbidden caramel granola for supper. I read and read: hopped shamelessly between all the poetry and graphic novels I had told myself I had no time for. I stayed in pyjama bottoms, started to remember the smell and shape and texture of me, tucked into my round chair. I did no laundry or ironing, washed neither hair nor dishes. I weighed myself before bed and I was exactly the same, and I knew your spell had broken, and it was like Christmas. Elizabeth Gibson is a poet, performer and tutor in Manchester, UK. Her writing is inspired by city life, self-love, the queer community, mental health, body image, and the environment. In 2020, she was chosen to represent Manchester City of Literature in the Tartu Bus Poetry Project, with her poem “Arrival”, about migration and belonging, translated and shared on bus windows in Tartu, Estonia. In 2021, Elizabeth was awarded a significant DYCP grant from Arts Council England, to allow her to focus on further exploring and owning her queerness through poetry. She edits Foxglove Journal, and tweets and Instagrams as @Grizonne.
by Elizabeth Sallow blue lights and a ghostly haze; sirens echo like a pulsing heart. the world shuts off, away from us and we should be ashamed. i’m thinking of you: peach coloured dreams, adolescence in a glowing blur. softened pastels as the sun sets, as it rises again. i’m trying to love you in a way i understand in a way that doesn’t taste like a sin, in a way that doesn’t taste sour. you try to suck the venom out, warm lips, summer fireworks under the stars - i’m drunk on you, your kiss, your neck. the sirens are coming closer. i’ve never been good with the truth, but you make me want to be. it’s explosive, young nights, young hearts: a dark guarantee, and then your father finds us, interwoven in the doorway. it’s judgement day, time’s up, hammer falls. he’s holy, standing in the hallway. i think we’re in purgatory, i think he’s deciding our sentence. frozen in time: those late nights, thunder cracks, when we were infinite, when we were innocent. i never told you that i loved you, that you tasted like strawberries. regret gets hung on the moon in the lowlight of the summer: late nights, lazy eyes. the days felt endless: on the run, hearts in our mouths, sick to our stomach. the sirens were coming for us, our sins. they were so hungry, they were so loud. love-drunk under warm skies; i felt dirty, i felt criminal. we got caught, we went to church and the priest told me to confess. blue lights, the siren echoes: addictive, adrenaline. love tasted sour, but you made it so sweet. Elizabeth Sallow (she/her) is a queer nineteen year old who lives in a small village in the UK. She believes in the universal and connective power of literature and hopes that she can make people feel understood in a way that she did growing up with her head in a book. Her work has been published in interstellar magazine, dust poetry, and paracosm lit amongst others. You can find her on Instagram @elizabeth.sallow or Twitter @lizabeth_sallow
by Elizabeth Gibson Everyone seems to want zodiac tattoos, and hey, maybe I could be brave, too, and sketch a pattern of stars onto my leg, Pisces in careful dots upon baby blue. Or, the fish could be fleshy creatures, fat and off-silver, leaping cold rivers, proud to have cut free, live untethered. But it could also be umbilical, that cord joining the fish at their protesting tails, both new and old blood feeding them, painting pink each scale and whispering: you know, you could always swim home. It seems as far and as ancient as Pisces, but it is less than an hour on the train. Feel the needle like salt, ink like water, imagine you are cracking through an egg, ready to reaccept yourself as multiple. Fish of home-warmth and city-hunger, soft cat, disco flat, book babe, guitar gay. Tails looped not in twine but in stardust, a path they choose, back to one another. Elizabeth Gibson is a poet, performer and tutor in Manchester, UK. Her writing is inspired by city life, self-love, the queer community, mental health, body image, and the environment. In 2020, she was chosen to represent Manchester City of Literature in the Tartu Bus Poetry Project, with her poem “Arrival”, about migration and belonging, translated and shared on bus windows in Tartu, Estonia. In 2021, Elizabeth was awarded a significant DYCP grant from Arts Council England, to allow her to focus on further exploring and owning her queerness through poetry. She edits Foxglove Journal, and tweets and Instagrams as @Grizonne.
by Anthony Aguero Last night in the parking structure, You rummaged through me, emptying My pockets and mouth and ribs And the small lily taped against my ear. You took all of these things knowing The evening was cold, knowing the spare Key sat at the bottom of my shoe. You no longer wanted me is what. It was midnight and you wore yellow. It is so hard to desire things — you -- In this amount of dark but I kept on Despite the trouble and empty hands. I assumed this was moving on minus faith. The first man to love me wasn’t you. No, he wore reds and greens. Loved orchids And the sound of oncoming trains. You wear yellow and blues, you prefer The steady clanking of blinds During a late Summer breeze. We sat idly with the evening Waiting for the pitch of night to speak; To demand the next move. It never comes. It never does. You kiss me, flaccidly, Along the forehead. And disappear Into the bathhouse. Leaving A crushed lily in my shirt pocket. Anthony Aguero is a queer writer in Los Angeles, CA. His work has appeared, or will appear, in the Carve Magazine, Rhino Poetry, Cathexis Northwest Press, 14 Poems, Redivider Journal, Maudlin House, and others.
by Skyla Allen  Skyla Allen (they/she) is an artist and writer based in southern Indiana. Their passions lie in the in-between spaces of genres and are often explored in her writing. They have recently graduated with their M.A. in creative writing and have had their work published in Allusions magazine.
by Sandra Knight A small cardboard box arrived In the post yesterday My old lover sent me the contents of a junk drawer. It was her joke, one I took literal- I picked through the assorted jumble of desultory things in search of meaning I found silver paper clips in various sizes a pale rubber band Neon sticky notes put aside as useful A gum wrapper Devoid of its charge I sniffed it confirming Her affinity for cinnamon persisted. A marble, perhaps escaped from a Chinese Checkers game left to console itself with a perfectly good set of disposable chopsticks, also put aside. Then irritation bloomed like black ink leaked into the bottom of the box by a ball point pen thought to be dried up Why put upon me the responsibility of deciding What must be saved And what must go Hadn’t we done that already? But here it was a box of epithets typed in mysterious symbols a pile of hurts drawn from the drawer destined to be returned to sender Gingerly I picked through the loose bits of debris Much as I had done when deciding to stay or to leave my comedienne I plucked a familiar rectangle Worn and curled from the discordant mess Upon inspection the Bandaid was intact, still good for a small cut or scrape But not nearly ample enough To cover the opening and closing wound in my chest I put it aside anyway Bio: Born in 1960 in the Ohio heartland, Sandy’s parents replaced an old straw broom with a dime store guitar around the age of ten and she’s been playing and writing music ever since. Knight, trained as a welder, served in US Navy in the 1980's when being anything other than heterosexual was a crime. Knight holds a BS in Music Therapy from Maryville University, St Louis. She lives in the Ozark Mountains with her FTM husband, a fat tabby Zeke, and their little blonde ‘flyer’ named Amelia.
by Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius A fine element of surprise, I’ll give her that, when in sixth grade a girl dug her knee into my balls because she thought I didn’t have any. At least that’s what she said. I was too effeminate, too lispy, too into the Spice Girls to be a real boy. Too ashamed, too petrified to retaliate. How many times have I seen that inspirational poster of the stupid glacier with its mile of underbelly stretching to the ocean floor? You can only see the top 1% of someone’s success! or whatever it says. Oh, if she could see me now. If she could see the big bear of a man I married, could hear me belting Say You’ll Be There, flying down the highway. And that’s only the top 1% of me, of my success, my joy. To get deeper, she’d have to trace her finger down every ripped stitch of my arm, go into my medical files and read up on the years of psychiatric care, of the stints in detox and rehab. She’d have to know how I learned to live one day at a time, take one slow breath at a time. The real victory comes from rising out of the ash, from spewing glitter after all the years of swallowing dirt. I don’t sit around stewing in resentment anymore—for her or any one of the others like her—but I do wish she could see me now. But she can’t because I’m pretty sure she unfriended me for believing that Black Lives Matter. Oh well. I’ve still got my old friend, my tried and true beacon of light: watching the Spice World movie over and over until my stomach hurts from laughing. Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius is a writer and poet in the Midwestern US. His work has been anthologized and appears in or is forthcoming from Rust + Moth, Chiron Review, Northern New England Review, Apricity Press, and elsewhere. He tweets @jeffreyvalerius and is online at jeffreyhaskey-valerius.com
|