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issue 02.

two poems: A Short History of Honey / Because I am Your Shadow by Alina Melnik

12/29/2019

 

​A Short History of Honey

for Dorianne Laux​
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Because I am Your Shadow

for the women surviving womanhood
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​Alina Melnik 

is a senior in Central Washington University’s Creative and Professional Writing Bachelor’s program. She enjoys experimenting with poetry and fiction. Her work draws inspiration from nature and women’s issues. She tutors on the side and loves windy days.   

three poems: Apparition / A Wand with Your Name / Comebacks by Stephanie Athena Valente

12/28/2019

 

Apparition

there’s an angel, but with a sword
he’s talking about the weather,
how crazy kids are these days, but we’re not so crazy after all,

he’s still standing there, in your doorway,
rambling, even more so for a dead man or a spirit,
i’m only awake because i was too afraid to drink water
too afraid not to hold your hands in prayer while i slept,
​
even the dead take up space, and too much of our time,
who really knows what ghosts sound like?
or, if they’re ghosts at all? was it real? i don’t have enough days to answer.

A Wand with Your Name

​what is something sweet? sweetheart,
tell me a life story – something overkill,
like pulpy flowers, over pollinated, sagging
petals, almost too tired to be used, something
honorable but almost forgotten.

Comebacks

​my dead boyfriend stills follow me on instagram,
what did you ever do?
*
we’re coping.
are you?
*
gemini connects in venus,
your stars are tainted.
*
you are a broken piece of glass:
useless.

Stephanie Athena Valente

 lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her published works include Hotel Ghost, waiting for the end of the world, and Little Fang (Bottlecap Press, 2015-2019). She has work included in Reality Hands, TL;DR, and Cosmonauts Avenue. She is the associate editor at Yes, Poetry. Sometimes, she feels human.

three poems: softly the light / in this space between / i have not asked for silence by Rae Rozman

12/28/2019

 
Softly the light unveils a room 
gasping for breath
quiet woman gentle
in her melancholy shivers 
against formless desire
Inhale
Hold
Hold 
Hold 
Exhale into emptiness dreams
awake and unbending
 
Tulips bloom in a vase on the mantle.
What we kill is beautiful.

​In this space between
morning and day
between darkness and
the dawning of a coral sunrise,
the need for you overtakes effortlessness.
 
I am weightless
here among the clouds,
formless
above borders and limitations of
time and space.
 
Where I am,
when I am:
it doesn’t matter.
This path leads only to you.

​I have not asked for silence
but you give it freely
 
Is this how the flowers feel
when the monarchs migrate?
Do they miss the sound of wings?

​Rae Rozman

is a middle school counselor in Austin, Texas. Her poetry often explores themes of queer love (romantic and platonic), brain injury, and education. You can find her work in the Stonewall’s Legacy poetry anthology, Nixes Mate Review, MockingHeart Review and Trouble Among the Stars (she favors small, quirky literary magazines). An INFJ,  Rae can often be found curled up with a novel to discuss with her students, or watching science fiction shows with her partner and their two rescue bunnies. You can find her on Instagram @mistress_of_mnemosyne where she talks about books, shares poems, and posts entirely too many pictures of her bunnies.

two poems: Woman or Mountain / Animal by Sofia K

12/27/2019

 

Woman or Mountain

I saw her grow
ripping the earth
wounding the height
in a wave,
solid and full.
I saw her rise
from her own insides
full of soil and blood,
of a treasure
nobody ever chased.
She rose and I saw her,
in my eyes,
her roar.
The open throat
the life at her feet.
The flowers drinking her.

Animal

I take the human out of me
now that the lights have vanished.
It’s like they knew.
Sharp ends stroke the air
in a scale of greys and reds.
The night outside like carbon paper
unfolding the old beast,
chewing glass and spiting smoke,
a solid chain of hours, 
a parade I get to see.
Foam staining the carpet,
a silent ocean starts to move,
bringing a pink nightmare
I try to reach with both hands.
A simple animal need.

I whisper something 
and something whispers back.
The ceiling watches,
a white serpent raining on me,
mending me.
My eyes roll back and dance.
The night shakes.

My vision has gone blurred
and it softens the shapes;
they become part of me.

I was something now I’m not.
My nature lays spread open.
A simple animal need.

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Sofia K ​

was born in Buenos Aires but spent most of her life as an immigrant in Europe. Her first poetry book ‘Aire Sucio’ (Dirty Air) was published in 2015 by Editorial Argonautas (Madrid, 2015). Her poetry focuses on the human experience through a personal lens, using sensorial and surreal resources combined with the rawness of reality to explore sexuality, mental health, love, loss and the inevitable scars of being far away.

PRIMITIVE MYSTERIES, I, II, III by Jean Colonomos

12/25/2019

 
​The following poems refer to my life as a dancer. Martha Graham’s masterpiece,
PRIMITIVE MYSTERIES, a dance in three sections, was the first piece I performed of
Graham’s in 1964 which was a revival. The work debuted in 1931 and is based on an all
female, Native American interpretation of the Crucifixion seen through the Virgin Mary’s
eyes. This was the dance that placed Martha Graham on the innovator’s map with Pablo
Picasso, Igor Stravinsky and Frank Lloyd Wright.

PRIMITIVE MYSTERIES, I – HYMN TO THE VIRGIN

HELLO step-heel-toe, snap-other-foot-to-ankle in Martha Graham’s Primitive Mysteries,
this solemn, ritual walk, its heel-pounding sound bracketing the entrances and exits in
this three-part masterpiece.

HELLO first section titled Hymn to the Virgin where we, the chorus, frame the Virgin
Mary in primitive, stick figure friezes. Four of us hold Her as She splays against our
string-taut bodies. Another four cradle-rock their arms to herald the Holy One within.

HELLO to each frieze that effects a collective love song.

THANK YOU Martha Graham onstage in twelve devotees following her like we follow
the Virgin, circling our Mary in countless repetitions of step, step, turn, step, step, add a
hiccup jump, accelerating to breakneck speed. Inside this rumpus Mary squats to birth the
little one, her pose mirroring da Vinci’s Pieta.

THANK YOU Mary who, in a billowing white gown, floats between an aisle of four
kneeling dancers on either side. Our hands in prayer, She exchanges blessings with each
acolyte in an arm reach soft as baby’s breath.

THANK YOU Yuriko who plays Mary. When she blesses me, the last girl, our eyes
embrace linking our souls; we are one.

GOODBYE to dancers who starve to look like a long drink of water. We’re not the
wide-hipped women on whom Martha created this dance in 1931 after she came back
from the Southwest where she traveled with composer Louis Horst, to study movement
and sound in Native American tribes on Guggenheim grants.

GOODBYE months of work to bring life to this 1964 revival, months of prayer at the
Temple of Ritual Walk to give step-heel-toe snap-other-foot-to-ankle more weight.

GOODBYE to Martha’s hatred of revivals. Quoting Negro League pitcher, Satchel
Paige, she’d declare, Never look back, they may be gaining on you.

GOODBYE to dreams where I’m performing, wake drenched in anxiety, What’s next?

GOODBYE to being drawn to the impossible; how desperate we are for the petroglyphic
style to become skin; one girl snaps her meniscus.

GOODBYE and THANK YOU for our after-performance satisfaction, a foot-stamping,
standing ovation.

PRIMITIVE MYSTERIES, II - CRUCIFIXUS

How the movement in Crucifixus purposefully imprisons our bodies.

How we ten acolytes, in two groups of three and one of four dancers, trudge shoulder to
shoulder along the floor as one grieving body.

How our elbows touch each other in a V-shape, which Martha adds because we need to
look more constrained.

How my C-curved, hunched spine is nailed to its own cross.

How I fear this is beyond what I can do.

How during one rehearsal Martha shares, Christ asphyxiated on the cross, then later
mutters, This is the cruelest dance I ever made.

How Louis Horst’s mournful oboe score underlines human suffering.

And how center stage, Mary inches forward, Her face a Noh mask, Her cupped hands
below Her eyes to catch invisible tears.

And how on either side of this tormented Mother, two dancers point to an imaginary
cross; Look, look! their pointers seem to say but Her inward gaze remains.

How Mary breaks through them, Her arms a cross piece, My son is dead.

How we ten women circle our lost Mary in a marathon of fifty-eight leaps before we and
the music stop, walk off stage in our solemn step-heel-toe, snap-other-foot to ankle while
the audience has yet to breathe.

PRIMITIVE MYSTERIES, III – HOSANNA

As if we corps of twelve women could not bear it
any longer yet came back for more

as if those blood-letting hours to get the Hosannas right--
leg raised, arms splayed as the cross piece

simulating some barbaric rite to celebrate
the rise of Mary’s dead son--

as our limbs break through to announce His resurrection,
a brutal dance

wrapped in arms in a cross, jumpjump
over and over to convey

a brimming joy in the
Hosanna phrases

while center stage Mary places her hand
over an acolyte’s for support through her loss.

At one point the dancer back bends
into a hungry Mary’s arms

as if She were laying to rest Her boy’s body,
a goodbye for the many last times.

We, the chorus, are the outside world
immersed in His return

while Mary transitions from pain to acceptance
in Hosanna’s last Shiva-like image.

With a dancer hidden behind the Virgin, we see
four arms rising towards heaven

to mark Her Son’s journey
and release the sorrow within.
​
We all breathe into this silent language of the soul
and rise out of ourselves.
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Jean Colonomos

Jean Colonomos began her career in the arts as a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company.  As a playwright she’s been produced in New York City, Los Angeles, Santa Fe and Edinburgh.  Her poetry has been published in several journals namely Askew, Spillway,Third Wednesday and the American Writers Review.  She’s also shown up online at YourDailyPoem.  Most recently M. Colonomos has been writing with poet Ann Buxie.  Their new work is titled KNOCK KNOCK and they’ve been featured readers at the EP Foster Library, the Library of Thousand Oaks and Beyond Baroque.  Her chapbook is ART FARM published by Finishing Line Press.  For more go to her website.


First Grade / Weather Girl by Janelle Cordero

12/25/2019

 

First Grade

​In first grade I wore denim shorts to school every single day, even in the winter. I
was trying to prove something. My parents were divorcing, and I wanted to be
tough. So I wore my long denim shorts, hand-me-downs from my older brother, and
I wore my black Raiders jersey and a backwards baseball cap. It was a costume that
lasted a long while, a uniform that meant I wouldn’t cry or talk about my feelings.
And after a while of not talking about them my feelings went away, like gods
without any worshipers.

Weather Girl

​In high school my plan was to be a weather girl. I was pretty enough for it, or at least
my friends said so. Weather girls seemed polished and glamorous on television, and
they all spoke with such confidence about this storm or that stretch of sunshine.
Maybe wanting to be a weather girl was less about the weather and more about
wanting to know something, anything. Wanting to look up at the sky and
understand.
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​Janelle Cordero

 is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in the seventh most hipster city in the U.S. Her writing has been published in dozens of literary journals, including Harpur Palate and The Louisville Review, while her paintings have been featured in venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. Janelle's most recent poetry and art collection, Woke to Birds, was published in October of 2019 through Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. Her debut poetry collection, Two Cups of Tomatoes, was published in 2015, and her chapbook with Black Sand Press was published in April 2018. Janelle published an additional chapbook of poems and paintings with Bottle Cap Press in 2019. Stay connected with Janelle's work at her website.

three poems: After the Full Moon, an Egg Cracked Open / Self Half Seen / Between the Laundromat and the Nail Salon by Caitlin Thomson

12/24/2019

 

After the Full Moon, an Egg Cracked Open​

​Alone on the boat deck I read
the falcon cannot hear the falconer.

The sound of water lapping against the boat,
the sound of memory erasing itself.

Below deck my mother cooked bacon,
my brother sung a 50-cent song to himself.

My father was silent, the dog snuggled
in his lap, a whimper away from sleep.
​
Men in white t-shirts approach us on a zodiac.
There were no falcons.
Italics From The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats.

Self Half Seen

There is a way to be alone,
that used to be a part of me.

I was made of solitude, mangos,
and wind through the hole in the eaves.

I never meant to meet my lover.

The person I was before, wild only in her late night
sleeplessness and coffee drinking ways.

That first winter was so cold, everything
we had thought about ourselves
was irrelevant to who we were becoming.

​Between the Laundromat and the Nail Salon

The stranger digs her elbow into my back. I am in pain
and paying for it, the shoulder muscles click and pop.
Unbalanced, she says, the Russian of her accent, rich.

As a child I imagined massages to be pleasurable, the kind
of luxury my mother would never reward herself with.

I only pay for one when migraines make me retch,
my shoulders roped together by invisible strings,
knotted like an abandoned necklace, my old landlord

managed to untangle while talking about advanced
mathematics. My husband tries to loosen the tightness
sometimes but he’s too attentive to my pain

to make headway. I let myself gasp with him.
With the stranger my lips are sealed, my fingernails

digging into my palm sometimes, invisible
under the blanket. A way to redirect focus.

The pain I give myself, always the most manageable.
When I first figured that out at nine, I bit
a canker sore into the side of my own mouth.
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Caitlin Thomson

 is the co-founder of The Poetry Marathon, an international writing event. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals including: The Adroit Journal, The Penn Review, Barrow Street, and Radar.  You can learn more about her writing at her website.

three poems: by a thread / hello doctor, my old friend /love notes to self, despairing - VII by Lauren Bender

12/23/2019

 

by a thread

​I go where I exist, to the dim sunken corner, your leg
wedged between my two legs,
 
single curtain to shut out the unwanted, lyrics white
on black above the bed, and I don't think
 
about the creepy man from the sandwich shop who likes
how pudgy I am, and I don't think
 
about the lamppost that flew through your window
during the hurricane, and I only think
 
off and on about our sicknesses, and I don't think
about the sad words on the walls or
 
that night the ambulance came or how I am always
crawling into your lap in inappropriate
 
places. It is four thirty in the afternoon, and I am late
for living up to my last name. I have left
 
the house to work out its own feelings, all terrible
ones like anger and jealousy and disgust,
 
and could it be that a nap with you will solve
this monumental problem, thinks
 
the busted adolescent brain. But I am so tired,
and you are so, so tired
 
that when my sister asks what's fun about going over
to a friend's house just to sleep,
 
I default to my classic response to questions from
healthy people and stare at her
 
in silence, hate pooling in my eyes. The world asks
too much to demand I explain sadness too.

hello doctor, my old friend

​I follow your legs up the stairs
 
and talk to them about my feelings;
 
this is always what I'm doing.
 
They are flawless and hairless,
and I can't stop staring.
They seem to fall out of your black skirt
announcing you – here I am, your savior,
at least the one you hired this week.
 
They keep interrupting my stories
with questions about why I love them.
 
And I tell them, I don’t know;
why does anyone love anything?
 
Maybe when they catch the light, they look like me,
my legs, if I was living another life,
your life, where I could be happy, no doubt,
 
and not fall asleep tucked in question marks.
Even though you are a presentation,
never mind seeing beneath the surface. Not now.
Playing dress-up is only the beginning
of growing up, of the transformation.
 
Can I imagine such a world,
 
where eyes find themselves at my hemline
 
and envy fogs away the self?

​love notes to self, despairing - VII

Parts I-VI
Part VII
​hi baby
 
     can you keep your eyes open
 
you set your phone's alarm for half an hour later     curl on the couch     hold it in your hands     pressed against your chest     like a stuffed animal that sings and purrs out of nowhere     and makes your ❤ pound so hard
 
(and you can't remember if having a ❤ was like this before     if this is just what a normal ❤ feels like)
 
     sweet❤ she has to cancel
 
you say no problem     fine     whatever     I'll therapist myself?     surely I've clocked enough hours to get the job done
 
check your phone     and it     (you)     says     calm down     your life is not ruined     calm down calm down calm down     life is always a mess     and loud     and you     can be such a good little self-soother     when you bother to try
 
     right baby
 
you slam your fist against     anything not working     keep hitting     hard     and the more you hit things     the more you want to hit things     things that would shatter     things that would say stop     you're ridiculous
 
and     well     I'm a little worried about your ❤     with this     have you been trying to--
 
hi baby
 
     you're not listening to a word I say are you

Lauren Bender

lives in Burlington, VT. Her work has appeared in IDK Magazine, The Collapsar, Gyroscope Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Yes Poetry, and others. You can find her on twitter @benderpoet.

two poems: Hand Over Heart / The Frogfish by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

12/23/2019

 

Hand Over Heart

When I wake I am flat on my back. Paddle my legs
to get up. Black hairs all through the bed. To tell
the truth, some little stains. I am so ashamed. I
rake up the linen, ball it in the corner of the room.
I hide under the bed then I am hungry. Breakfast.
 I must have it. A boiled egg explodes hot in my
mouth like a bladder. My tongue is burnt.
Rubbery stump. I try not to show it. Ashamed.
Today, no one wants to touch me. Black hair on
the back of my neck. I meant to take a shower.
The train is exciting when it arrives. Inside, I am
sleepy. I lean against a woman, carefully. When
she gets up she pushes off from me with a hard
swing of her hipbone, nudge to say, Back in your
 place. Someone else sits down. Doggedly, I
follow my nose to my classroom. I put my hand
over my heart when I feel love. I kiss my students
ecstatically as they come in. I try to calm down. I
pretend to fall over. Let’s go out to the field and
play. I can’t help myself in the game. A frenzy
comes upon me. When I am finished with the ball
I have ruined it. The children stand in little packs
snuffling. In recess they tell their secrets to the
door-ajar teacher. She reports to the top.
Escalated to formal complaint. Ashamed. I find a
can of tuna in the staff room cupboard. I have
always hated olives. The children are sleepy in
the classroom. I know every face and name. I take
them to the pool. We hold our hands over our
hearts, and howl. Tune-free. We feel our pulses.
We hunt for bugs. Those who don’t have their
bathers are allowed to swim naked. Then
everyone wants to. Everyone does. The pepper
tree is dropping spicy leaves, peppering the deep
end with shade. Where the light bites the
shadows, the dragonflies skate. I am hungry. I
herd the children back in to their clothes before
the bell. There is a pool of water underneath me
on the train. The wrong kind of clean. I shake.
People move away. Cold breath of the freezer
strays the hairs on my neck. Ashamed. Sleep. Eat.
The TV. At night someone lies next to me. Smells
spayed. I feel fixed. You can hardly hear her
breathing: how she shows me she’s awake. She
holds my hand and puts her face to my face. I
have never been so happy. Then the midnight
crack of the gate. I make a formal complaint.
Hungry. Chocolate I hid away. She comes out
crumpled. I am on my haunches, wrapper
wagging on my tongue. Her seeing eye fixed on
mine. Ashamed. For the first time, I have the
thought: I can’t die today.

The Frogfish

​So I said, That was the very best, sweet-
heart, that I have ever had. It wasn’t the last 

time, but close to it. Should 
have been closer. Mine

was a complex lie, designed to hurt 
in the short term, me, soothe

you, but ultimately
get me back the stage. Me, the liar,

me the self-abaser, me the praiser,
me the bottom feeder, grouper and star-

gazer, lying low 
with my legs and my mouth splayed,

waiting for you 
to fuck up again. 

You replied—with something
I won’t repeat. Not that it was so painful.

You were as cruel as you could be 
but by then you had slipped me 

so many cruelties 
that I had grown huge, 

hairy and insatiable, a frogfish.
My hidden lips sucked up

punishments twice my size, and I
begged for more, just to see

what you in your disgust could say.
I never moved from my deep place 

underfoot—biologists call it 
both bed and floor, and both 

were mine—I took 
and took, but even the frogfish may betray 

a gleam in her golf-ball eyes. I had the look
a misplaced home surveillance system

blinking with an urgency dismissed 
as habitual, the better to be ignored. 

Well you did that, you could kick 
without looking but it meant you never saw

that you only gave me pause
when I chose which response to feign--

delight or pain?
One long breath—I learnt from you--

will buy the weeper 
time for either.

I got used to you. And yet I lived
on tenterhooks, swam 

like I sensed a lightning rod in the water. 
I expected the sting, I watched for it--

but watching mortifies 
the frogfish. Drifting round corners, her eyes 

on stalks, the frogfish cannot believe 
her wobbling face is met with laughter 

when it’s obviously the disguise 
of the predator vigilant, 

creeping, unseen. Then I knew.
The sting was me.

I stuck with you, even though you 
were so stupid as to believe 

that I was true to you, and not 
merely waiting for my moment--

not in the sun but spot-lit 
by the private luminescence we deep-

sea divers specialize in.
I lay with my mouth open, all

lit up by my organs, waiting 
for the moment in which

I would swallow you whole, 
without a scene.

​Evangeline Riddiford Graham

is an artist and writer from Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Ginesthoi (hard press, 2017), and her writing has been published in journals including Min-A-Rets, Sport, un magazine, and takahē. Evangeline’s recent exhibitions include solo shows La belle dame avec les mains vertes (Rm Gallery, 2018) and Look Out, Fred! (Enjoy Public Art Gallery, 2017). She currently lives in New York City, where she is pursuing an MFA at The New School.

two poems: i promised i'd dance on your grave / faith by Zoé Grangier

12/23/2019

 
Oh the furious women
Discheveled
Bloodied
Broken
I'd let my lungs crawl out
If it meant you'd give me back my voice
Oh how many times
Did you decided
Your heartbeat would engulf mine
Choking the blood out of my brain
Who are you
You injurious monster
You quiet beast
So ready to tear out
Craddling my cheeks
Sending shots of pain
Through my panicked eyes
I would've bitten you
I would've fought with every last bit of desperate energy
My wretched and weak body could hold inside
I would've yelled
I would've dismembered my shoulders
To escape your merciless hands
Oh i am inhabited
By something bigger
Something larger than my anger
Something even you couldn't bleed the life out
Oh don't think i'll forget so easily
I've built myself on bruises and memories
Every inch of skin raw and scarred
Don't you think i know
From which caves of my mind
These scabs emerged from
Oh i may be monstrous and wounded
You're not done hearing my screams
Oh i hope i'll haunt you
Oh i hope you'll remember
The edge of my teeth
And how it felt
When i finally gut your heart out of your mouth
​
-i promised i'd dance on your grave
It seems wrong for me
To write about this dangerous word
Do I know faith
Is it the kind of thing
You get taught
Is it a thing that people
Plaster their own meaning on
Before handing it to you
Or is it how you name
What you feel
When you leaf through
The book that helped you
Through all those years
Or when you wander through
A forest bathed in sunrise
And it feels like the word morning
Was only meant for you
The universe is big
And vast
And complicated
Unconceivable for our
Little eyes
And yet
We still stare in awe
At autumn leaves
And far away planets
As a wave drip on our
Amazed hands
Maybe one day I'll let
Myself put on that tide
A title that'll say
I do not know
The proper words and
The correct vocabulary of
Your meaning
But this absence explains
Why I need you

-faith

Zoé Grangier

Another to Cover Your Bones by Shan Cahill

12/22/2019

 

1

Heart with two diamonds glued to their teeth.
Heart in their bed, lilac blankets washed up on their legs like wave caps at
sunset watering the flowers that someone left wilted on their skin.
Heart drinking coffee, a drop of java cascading down their chin, so focused on
lines of charcoal they don’t notice. They smudge the brown into the paper.
Heart with me, they tell me about the ghosts that haunt their apartment and
the woods that make them feel alive and how they have always been afraid of
the dark. Freckles like fingerprints, they trace them like constellations, eyes
closed tight when they reach each one and they tell me how much they wish they
could kiss me. They don’t tell me why they can’t and I don’t ask. We just sit.
Wishing.

2

Empty the contents of your cannibal Heart. What do you see? A smile with
two diamonds on teeth. Heart is lovely. I want to know them in the dark but their
fear holds me back behind a gauzy veil. I think they are in another universe.
I promise not to touch them, “it makes it worse,” they say. Instead, I lay in bed
while they paint on my back, creating a galaxy. “Somewhere we could live,” they
said. We are my favorite color palette. And I can feel them wishing on my stars
with every pause their brush makes.

3

There’s an artist named Valeska Soares who curates books with “love” in the
title spanning over several languages such as Italian, French, Spanish, and
English. Soares researches the titles of these books and has them reprinted to
match their first edition press with the cover color corresponding to the language
they were originally printed in. These books are then displayed as a group of five
hundred over four shelves, two hundred and fifty over two shelves, or one
hundred and twenty-five on one shelf. Inside each book, the pages are blank. 
Picture

​Shan Cahill

is an award-winning paper airplane maker, recreational juggler, and a writer living and working in the Berkshires. She has a cat named Moose and she spends her days rereading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

Home: Question + Answer by Carmen Arribas

12/21/2019

 

Home: question

I find myself in daily movement:
in that second when the streetlamps are lit
in that strange shiver before the plane takes off
in the excitement of questions yet to be answered.

I dread the will you stay with me
because I do love you
—I do I do I do--
but everything with roots dies          and
I do not want to die yet.

It’s easier to write about these things in English because I cannot write about home without
writing in Spanish. Not really. What’s in a language that when using one I can deny my
homeland safely and when using another the words get stuck in my throat like hungry worms?

The word for home in Spanish is hogar. In the dictionary, there’s six definitions for hogar:
  1. Place where a fire is lit in kitchens, fireplaces, smelting furnaces, etc....
  2. House or place where one lives.
  3. Family, a group of related people living together.
  4. Shelter home.
  5. Leisure center where people who have an activity, origin or personal situation in common meet.
  6. Bonfire.
So home is
a place to live
                            family
                                        shelter
                                                     coming together
                                                                  but
                                                                  but
                                                                  but

home can also be
a place where a fire is lit
                                          a bonfire.

What does a paper girl do
with a bonfire?

Home: an answer

The truth about home is
that no matter where you are it never ceases to exist:
it’s not a jail or a chain
but a gravitational center to which one can always return.

When you think about the bonfire
think too about the background noise of the cafeteria at university
and of the sky after class on winter evenings
—sometimes like fresh spilled blood
sometimes like a week-old bruise
sometimes like a raw apricot.

Think about the flower shop down the street:
a splash of color so bright in the middle of the smoky asphalt streets of Madrid;
think about the pine trees you get to see every weekend
when you take the bus to go and hug him tight
—and yes, everything smells like a bonfire there
and there’s always some bird singing
and there’s always someone clapping you in the back.

Home does not exist to hold you back,
but to hold you when you need it.
Picture

Carmen Arribas 

is an undergraduate Translation and Interpreting student in Madrid, and
has just had her first poetry book, Las palabras nunca dichas, published. Her second
poetry book, Conversaciones con Eco, also in Spanish, will be published during the
oncoming year.

two poems: what sad girls talk about when they’re not sad / for us to gain much more than just bread by S​ol Camarena Medina

12/20/2019

 

​what sad girls talk about when they’re not sad

​tw: depression + sex mention
​Sad girls, when they’re not sad –
they talk about love,
and war. Their own unfinished poems,
and mostly, mostly
bacchanals for joy.

Sad girls, when they’re not sad – they talk about washing their hands before
touching their own wounds. They list
each and every function for laughing
hold parties, and throw pillows at each other –
nobody ever mentions
the way tears are now engraved on sheets, and so to sleep is now an adventure
meant for sagacious lady sailors.

Sad girls, when they’re not sad – they write less,
and they dance more. They do so with no need for drunkenness –
just like putting on pajamas
right before going to bed. Sad girls, when they’re not sad – they talk
about washing their own panties on time
so they aren’t left with none.

Sad girls, when they’re not sad – they don’t ever forget
about sadness. They put together a small nest for her, with what’s left of ex girlfriends’
bouquets of flowers, and a canopy for her bed which they embroider
with beautiful words. They care for their own sadness
they breastfeed her – their chests cold
they play being Mom and Dad
even though they’re still scared
of being able to have daughters themselves.

Sad girls, when they’re not sad – they hoist less flags but that’s because, for once, they
remember
to read manifestos preceding them. They’ve got time left
for something other than due soup,
or worn out dreams.

Sad girls, when they’re not sad – they fuck less
they love less
but they do it all
a lot better. They moan at more sympathetic volumes
for the sake of their neighbors’ work hours. They masturbate
for some other reason than just inertia,
or taught-damage.

Sad girls, ultimately, are
a lot more than just sad girls
a lot less than healthy women
but they’re forever
going to remember
themselves. That’s
something nobody can take away from them.

​for us to gain much more than just bread

(for friends at ASIEM,  a mental heath org meeting I was invited to at my city; they're doing some wonderful work for mentally ill & mad people like me here at Valencia, so I wrote it for them all as an expression of gratitude for their invitation!)
We basted loss on a worn-out cloth,
and we tore the embroidery in order to find the needle
we misplaced years ago. It’s no haystack
but it’s close.

We’re lord & lady knights for withered roses,
and underground carnations,
and bleeding poppies,
and devoid-of-petals
daisies.

And
we’re here, despite it all. Kissing life’s wrists,
and finding tiny lights within the night,
and embracing that which is dark out of our own insides,
and making a home out of the edge of the wind.

We crumbled prejudices within gazes,
and we unleashed litters, and we took down
spikes. There’s no prison left for this dream
for getting better which we promised.

For laughter’s our own sail within this ship –
and tears are joy’s loyal companions. For hope’s
squeezing our own hands with her caress,
and to resist –
that’s no longer
the only thing we’re doing.

Now –
we’re also doing the living.
Picture
photo by Sara Montañés / Aras Nom Photos, @arasnomphotos via IG

S​ol Camarena Medina

is a mad lesbian poet from Valencia, Spain who's also a loud laugher and lover. she was born in 1997 and she’s self-published three poetry books in Spanish – pétalos y espinas + ya lo escribieron ellas + estival + her poems are featured in diverse publications & anthologies both in English & in Spanish. She’s also written
on mental health & feminism for Spanish magazines + she runs an online platform for
contemporary women artists, @artebruja + she’s co-editor for Spanish feminist
magazine La Gorgona. She has open commissions for poems all year round.

    Cover photograph by Keith Moul
    Here you will find dancers. Wild women. Mad women. Girls who are sad no longer. Doctors and texts and broken glass. Pieces of us. Parts of you. Welcome in.

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