|
by Elizabeth Sallow peaches and cream, berry-blush: it’s summer and i’m tired. it’s summer and it’s getting late. it’s summer and i love you a bit too much. you’re wearing a tennis skirt, pretty pink with crimson cheeks. how about you come back to mine, i’ll make us a drink, you can tell me with red wine lips about what happens when it turns september. when it starts to turn cold. wide-eyes, you’re glowing like you’ve never heard of the night sky, living only under the blush of the sun, under the bird’s applause. i think you’ve started to realise how i feel: my heart is a petrol pump, and everything’s a fire hazard. i think you’re a match. you’re going to ruin me, someday. i tell you this with grass stains on my palms and you smile, like i’m fireproof, like i’m never going to burn. it’s your birthday in july, and it all seems to go wrong: lavender haze in the fields, the sun’s starting to set and you’re in a ballgown. you go home with a boy that looks a little like God, and i stay under the willow until the moon keeps me company. there is nothing else to do. there is nothing else to be said. you leave eventually, spotlights and starlights, you’re going to massachusetts; you’re going to be a film star. it’s summer and i’m losing you, it’s summer and i can’t say i’m surprised. it’s summer and i’m in love. you struck the match to the box before you left and you lit me up. burning hands, there’s ash in my lungs. berry blush, cigarette smoke. i’m in love with an arsonist, i’m in love with a ghost. 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
0 Comments
by Caitlin McKenzie A Lisa Frank plastic folder sticking to my thighs At the middle school Latin ballroom class Leaving wet footmarks on springed floors Couldn’t help leaking shadows of guilt and desire Palms soaked the beautiful dance teacher’s waist As she taught a beginners Paso Doble Red skirts fanned a steam sauna Later I sat with Buffy the Vampire Slayer Avoided looking at Willow for too long Sitting in the air-conditioned dark didn’t stop The sweat stains circling the drain of pretending Two reservoirs of longing For red heads and red skirts and feminine touch Falling in love with women Was always baby powder scented and clinical strength Caitlin McKenzie (she/they) is a queer neurodivergant poet and collage artist based out of Barrie, ON. Her work can be seen in publications such as Pink Plastic House Magazine, The Northern Appeal, Aurora Mag, and Acta Victoriana. You can find more of her work at her own tiny Instagram zine @therememberingroom.
by Maxwell Suzuki 1. You must be dirty first. // watch the stink & sweat swirl at the drain’s event horizon. purge the body for hours, until there is nothing left. 2. Let water run until it is scalding. // One summer, you had collected firewood for a washroom stove on the cusp of a river. The Canadian soil had wedged itself so deep below your fingernails, you were wary if it would ever go away. This was the first time you were alone and naked and curious in a room with the scent of humid cedar burning its arousal onto your palms. 3. Remove all your clothing. Yes, even your underwear. // remember what it feels like to shiver under the rattle of the bathroom fan. this will not be the last time 4. Step under the showerhead and make sure to drown every inch of your body. // You squirmed when he had touched your bare stomach. You wished you had told him it was because no one had ever felt you in that way. It was then that you began to wonder if he was cleaning dirt off or marking you with more mud. 5. Scrub with harsh soap until your skin turns salmon pink. // shower after runs, before pancakes and oatmeal, to cover up tears, and for nights where alcohol lubricates the joints. so, why is it then you do not shower immediately after you cum? 6. Pat yourself dry before your skin reacts to the cold. // You had a roommate once whose drunkenness had given him the permission to ask if he was bi. Luckily, the dusk had let you disguise your pity. And when it was time for him to leave, he had forgotten his damp towel hanging on the rack. 7. Change into a new pair of clothes because the old pair is too stale for your liking. // observe the silt of the yukon settling within the ridges of your fingerprints. maybe this is because you feel the dirtiest when you are alone. 8. Repeat steps 1 through 7 until you realize it was never dirt that you were scrubbing away. // He lathered your hair with invisible soap when he came inside your mouth. You remember the rhythm of the midnight shore had matched the grasp of his hand to yours. And as you left, you had observed the confident clumsiness of your tongue and the faint pull of the crescent moon on your lips. You didn’t need take a shower that night. Maxwell Suzuki is a Japanese American writer who recently graduated from USC and lives in Los Angeles. Maxwell's work has appeared or is forthcoming in 805 Lit, The Racket Journal, Abandon Journal, and his personal website www.lindenandbuckskin.com. He is currently writing a novel on the generational disconnect of Japanese American immigrants and their children.
by Elizabeth Gibson We are on our feet now, last doubts thrown aside and we dance as the windows are opened out wide. The night slowly mingles with sweetness of sweat and your hair and eyes shine as you cradle those frets. When the darkness seeps in, and the first scent of rain and our eyes are all itching for sleep, we remain and I think that I feel something enter my space, through heat and adrenaline: the truth in your face. When your voice starts to go, at the end of the song, I know that soft sound – it was you all along. You were there in those chords that I wept to for years, you told me, kid, it is all right, you belong in this world. 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 Gibson A starfish is rejected, brutally, when it first admits its strange kind of love, to a star. The starfish curls at the bottom of the ocean, wrecked. It decides its only way out is to be smaller, and stops feeding. It spikes out, changes colour, no longer knows itself. The starfish is missing every current and chance of travel. Its kin have wandered on, leaving it to burrow into quiet. One day, the starfish shuffles to a cloud of blue jellyfish. The nearest, fastest jellyfish takes a look at the spiky starfish. The jellyfish, too, has fallen, from a time of fruit and softness. It is slighter now, barely a wisp of blue smoke and electricity. The jellyfish is happy with its new form, its new life. The starfish begins to follow the jellyfish, to learn to live, to decipher how to be so pulsingly, penetratingly radiant, when so much of the creature you were has been carved away. The jellyfish tells the starfish that change is inevitable. The starfish tries to hear, but will never quite understand. Its loss is overwhelming. It dreams of its old plumpness, of knowing its every swell, each cushioned, jewelled limb, of grazing on dots of colour and light with no fear or shame. It mourns the version of itself that gazed with five eyes wide with joy and life, up, up past specks of murk, litter, layers of toxic foam, up, to see a sky so purple and close. To believe it really had a chance of speaking with Antares, the star of autumn. That maybe strange and new and gorgeous things could happen to a fat little sea star. The jellyfish goes on performing, like a turquoise balloon full of glitter. The starfish accepts its difference and trundles away. It is at a crossroads, a star, even – so many ways to walk but every direction is tired water, lapping as it always has. The starfish, for the first time in many tides, looks up. The starfish is not made of jelly, is not sweet and stinging. The starfish takes what it was born with: survival instinct, an ability to cling, clutch, clamber, weather hellish storms. The sky is light green. It looks cool and restful. No stars. The starfish thinks it has a memory from long, long ago of being scooped into a white steep well and then resting on a warm surface with five chubby points, like its own. It remembers a face like an otter’s but smoother, dryer, set with two eyes like pools, scuffed with trails of salt. It remembers an almighty bouncing, a squeak like a dolphin. It remembers knowing without doubt it had given happiness to somebody just by being found, exactly as it was. The starfish begins climbing. 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 Emily Frost the sun was setting over southern california as we stood on the top floor of a rundown parking garage. you were waiting for me to find my car and i was waiting for you to tear your gaze away from the skyline. you had spent your entire life in this city, and yet you were still shocked that you had managed to survive here for this long, it was written all over your face. from here, we could see where spotless silver buildings disappeared into the mountains, but you were all i cared to look at. our minds were both elsewhere, but i liked to think they were in orbit around the same star. i would’ve dropped you off in your student housing so your roommates would think i was the sort of person you shouldn’t be ashamed to introduce to them, that i was just a sweet chaste midwestern girl whose hand you clung to for warmth alone. but you fell asleep in the passenger seat as i drove, so i took every back road i knew until we were outside my apartment complex. i let you sleep on my couch. i stayed awake on the floor before you for longer than i would have wanted to admit, adrift in this moment of stolen peace. i stood up and set pastel coffee mugs on my kitchen counter for us for the next morning - sunny yellow for me, vernal lavender for you, the colors we agreed our souls were while waiting for the bus at two in the morning that one night after i lost my keys and my better judgement. there wasn’t much i could offer you, but i wanted to give you something to help you rise, wanted to give you something that wasn’t a place to crash in my shitty apartment or my deepest secrets. emily frost is a student and writer from the dc area. she edits with polyphony lit and the lumiere review. her work has been featured in or is forthcoming in publications such as southchild lit, the ice lolly review, brave voices, and holyflea lit. her creative endeavors are fueled by dark roast coffee and obscure historical facts.
by Caitlin McKenzie Eggs Benny Can a yolk run cautiously? Maybe it can try but its sunshine enthusiasm can’t be contained, even if it’s a first meeting. It erupts and says, “My heart knows your heart! There is comfort here!” Caramelized Pork Ramen We needed to learn the lessons of simmering. Sitting together in the peeled ginger, chili paste, brown sugar, chicken broth, mushrooms, and 5 spice. Becoming fragrant. Becoming ourselves. Salmon Cakes Picking bones out of canned salmon like I picked the sorrows out of you. Place them on a commemorative plate, thin and white as paper. We name them and set them aside. I’ll add fresh dill to the flesh we can use, fry it, and call it a night. Fresh Spring Rolls When you wrap a garden in rice paper and dip it in peanut sauce is there anything else to do but laugh? Our eyes still crinkle when they are swollen from crying and the seeds we swallowed whole grow in our bellies when I leave your house. Caitlin McKenzie (she/they) is a queer neurodivergant poet and collage artist based out of Barrie, ON. Her work can be seen in publications such as Pink Plastic House Magazine, The Northern Appeal, Aurora Mag, and Acta Victoriana. You can find more of her work at her own tiny Instagram zine @therememberingroom.
by Caitlin McKenzie They touch my shoulder lightly in the kitchen, their shadow is blue and glowing. They want me to take a break from my wine soaked arguements with Dysphoria. They ask me the question I still cannot answer, but from beneath sparse eyelashes that sit like clearings in the forest. They beckon me to sit close to them. My mouth opens as if by instinct, a birth canal. I say, “My gender is body hair cultivated until there are small charming swamps all over my body. I’ll hang signs that read, “enter only with invitation and reverance.” My gender is lilac running shoes and the promise of my small feel kicking up dust in the gravel. My gender is the grit that stays on passerbys tonges. My gender is hair cut short to draw focus to my round fat face. Make me a stop sign. People see, pause, and then carry on. My gender is bright lipstick without cover up, extenuate the blood running just beneath my skin. My gender is alive. My gender is pink milk glass shattered on concrete, sharp and beautiful and glittering. My gender is grenadine and gin with lemon. My gender is dipped in mercury, reflecting the sun and the moon respectively.” What I speak leaves me heaving, sweaty, and smiling. Euphoria cradles my damp head in their hands and tells me they adore the world I’ve created. I hold the blood and gore gently in my hands, then place it in the cradle I’ve always had inside my chest. Caitlin McKenzie (she/they) is a queer neurodivergant poet and collage artist based out of Barrie, ON. Her work can be seen in publications such as Pink Plastic House Magazine, The Northern Appeal, Aurora Mag, and Acta Victoriana. You can find more of her work at her own tiny Instagram zine @therememberingroom.
by hetvi bold new world- coming to terms with a new identity. bold new world- not new; just late. a shapeshifting outsider who hangs out in deserts recently came o u t confused and afraid- a small piece of freedom testing the waters what's good can't stop crying yet the sky still hasn't fallen. ace still in the deck screaming in the void. Note: This is a found poem written solely using titles of posts at the Welcome Lounge at AVEN-Forums. Link: https://www.asexuality.org/en/forum/3-welcome-lounge/ Hetvi is an undergraduate student from India and the co-founder of hariandhetu - a zineletter. Apart from all things STEM and poetry, Hetvi loves wordplay, making art, reading, and listening, and is currently obsessed with ghazals, Leonard Cohen, and the 8-page zine fold. Hetvi's work has been featured by a few small publications, including The Narrow Road Journal and Mellom Press. To know more, please visit- cosmicbhejafry.github.io
by Jackie Domenus She was like sucking the blood from a strawberry when there’s no more juice left in the fridge, like crying in the middle of the movie instead of at the end. The bend in her back a new place to sleep when home didn’t quite feel like home anymore. She was the sound of kissing, same as the sound of rain—the night sky thirsty like me. She was cracking knuckles, fighting air, can’t look, but can’t look away. Every queer character in literature, “worth the whole damn bunch put together.” Shakespeare never wrote a queen quite as beautiful, a damsel quite as distressed. Her body—a test of my willpower and I am failing, limbs flailing to touch her as they drag me away. Who guards the dungeon anyway? Who gets to decide the forbidden fruit and who’s to say it ain’t just rotten? She was a thousand bullets, or just one melted in a silver spoon over an open fire and re-shaped into a ring. She was somewhere on a beach, somewhere the water doesn’t make waves, the sky purple and black fresh like a bruise, like it was angry at the cold, like a fist fight had just ended, the adrenaline still raw. She was what it meant to be free, the fireworks scene inside a home begging to be collapsed. Jackie Domenus (she/her) is a queer writer and educator from New Jersey. A graduate of the 2021 Tin House Winter Workshop, her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Entropy, Watershed Review, Philadelphia Stories, and HerStry. She recently earned her MA in Writing at Rowan University. You can find her on Twitter @jackiedwrites.
|