On my wrist
is a bracelet
Of the deepest shade of red
Fluid and straight
It stains my skin
And cuts deep into my flesh
Handcrafted with loneliness
And embellished with hate
It glimmers in the darkness
And is masked in the day
A gift
Sent from the boy
Who made my sheets reek
Of black love ...
On Your Wrist
TBD
On my wrist
is a bracelet
Of the deepest shade of red
Fluid and straight
It stains my skin
And cuts deep into my flesh
Handcrafted with loneliness
And embellished with hate
It glimmers in the darkness
And is masked in the day
A gift
Sent from the boy
Who made my sheets reek
Of black love ...
On Your Wrist
TBD
TITLE
NAME
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The Contents of a cabinet
Renee Ferguson
Someone I love so much keeps me up at night. With the banging of cupboards and drawers and the opening and closing of the fridge, with quiet footsteps on carpeted stairs and the sharp squeak of the third stair from the bottom floor. I heard her last Thursday and then I slept out on Saturday but she’s fumbled down the stairs every night this week, too petrified to turn on a light. ..
The Contents of a cabinet
Renee Ferguson
Someone I love so much keeps me up at night. With the banging of cupboards and drawers and the opening and closing of the fridge, with quiet footsteps on carpeted stairs and the sharp squeak of the third stair from the bottom floor. I heard her last Thursday and then I slept out on Saturday but she’s fumbled down the stairs every night this week, too petrified to turn on a light. ..
Grey Bird
A.W. Lion-Cleaver
The grey bird beckons me to join him
Follow me! he says
Follow me!
A nest sprinkled with
Crumbles of ash
Built upon marlboro sticks
and poisonous leaves
Follow me!
Feathers grey, turn grey, turning grey
Feathers with knotted ends
Dipped in black
Feathers rough, turn rough, turning rough
Follow me!
Grey Bird
A.W. Lion-Cleaver
The grey bird beckons me to join him
Follow me! he says
Follow me!
A nest sprinkled with
Crumbles of ash
Built upon marlboro sticks
and poisonous leaves
Follow me!
Feathers grey, turn grey, turning grey
Feathers with knotted ends
Dipped in black
Feathers rough, turn rough, turning rough
Follow me!

Grey Bird
Sarah Flynn
The grey bird beckons me to join him
Follow me! he says
Follow me!
A nest sprinkled with
Crumbles of ash
Built upon marlboro sticks
and poisonous leaves
Follow me!
Feathers grey, turn grey, turning grey
Feathers with knotted ends
Dipped in black
Feathers rough, turn rough, turning rough
Follow me!
...

Phoebe Zheng



Violet Bordin

Violet Bordin
Written Ever After
Jean Pineapple
In the dream to own,
In the thrill of dominance,
In the cooling of the blood
There can be pleasure.
As black as the Saharan night,
As pale as the moon
Of the Southern Hemisphere,
Was the paint God used—
For Africa.
In the spirit of Europe
There is written a story:
Of loss without mourning;
In the spirit of Africa,
There is only the morning—
Oh, civilization is so cruel a master:
Your boot is on a brother’s neck
As you crush him,
You cannot say to yourself,
“I’m an evil Machiavellian motherfucker,”
It is sweet to dream of philanthropy
As you beat that bitch with a bat;
And blood is less bright on blackness.
Some humans crave heroine,
All humans crave pain,
And the canyon between now and then.
Between twisted, poisonous civility,
And beautiful, sweet, perfect barbarity;
“Child, we need never be ashamed of our tears
For they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth;”
It beckons from the jungle; screams Kilimanjaro;
So we rise up in our pride and we sing:
“If God took a form:
The limp body of a squirrel,
Drowned in acid rain—”
Is tender;
Tender is the African night.
why i write
Melanie Kessinger
My world is a web of bedtime stories and English class revelations and essays written late into the night, of well-worn novels lining my bookshelves, of sticky notes haphazardly stuck to my bedside table filled with middle-of-the-night scribblings, and of the sound of my fingers striking my computer keyboard. Literature, storytelling, writing: all are the elements of my world. All are woven into the core of my identity.
When I was younger, I was was extremely reluctant to face the impending transition from the naive little girl that I was to the empowered woman whom I aspired to be. I found that books, from the likes of Ella Enchanted to Sense and Sensibility, allowed me to pretend that I was a brave, self-assured heroine with indomitable strength of character. In books, I became confident. I became tenacious. The reality of my cowardly seventh grade self could be cast aside. Books were a reprieve from the mostly mundane, occasionally daunting parts of my life; they were the foundation of my ambitions and dreams for the future. I aspire to craft these lands of heroism and fearlessness -- to interweave tales of love with those of hardship...

Olivia Marwell


Abigail Stover
Renee Ferguson
Crazy Girlfriend
A.W. Lion-Cleaver
I want you to spread your magic touch
across my shoulders
and transfer your black energy into me
and touch my internal black
I want you to light me into flames and
drench my tongue with your hurricane
and breathe your hell down my neck
I want you to falter at my rhythm and
go down on your knees at my beat
and feel me like I wish I felt you
I want your dreams to be my dreams and
I want your thoughts to be my thoughts and
I want you to recognize me
...

Violet Bordin
The Diversity Question
Aidan Niles
In your search
Your quest
For flesh
There are some things that do not mesh
Your vaunted objective
Your lofty goal
Hoping the answer might make you whole
The truth is somewhere in between
Flesh matters
We haven’t forgotten
Past so darkened
Lore so shameful
...

Pierce Sanderson

Sophie Devincenti
The Distance a Table Takes Up
Jill Roberts
this way—
no that;
(you always had such sad eyes, you know)
and i’m so, so sorry
for the tears in your coffee---
I had seen my partial reflection
and I suppose cognizance is a terrifying rumination,
but you merely laughed at the skeletons
hanging in my closet
and opened my clenched fist, finger by finger
before placing your esoteric love within me
how sad I was to have such faith,
and how sad you were to have none at all
naked hands clutching stained, white sheets
and my palms,
so heavy,
have no release
so instead I leave them on the stained sheets,
and
like you,
release what burdens so heavily.
Every Wed. Thurs. Fri.
Melanie Kessinger
The girl drives to school and she glances at her bleary eyes in the rearview mirror. Her hair is long and often slips in front of her face. She looks at the road, at her reflection, at the road and at her reflection. Her boots click on the pavement as she listens to passerby students recite words they do not understand, memorizing stories and existences that are not their own. The girl tucks a headphone into her left ear, hoping the beat of the music will drown out the clanging of car keys and swishing of ponytails. Everyone else sees bright sunshine and emerald mountains, but the girl sees fifty-one days. She bickers with her sister about blue jeans and turns up the volume of the music. The classroom is awash in snow-colored light, but the sky is aegean blue. Puppets and porcelain dolls sit at desks: a pretense of purpose. The girl watches a young couple outside the window. He reaches for her hand; she pulls away. He looks through her and she looks at the ground, his fists clenched and her knees wobbling. The girl fiddles with her bracelet and imagines she had seen something else. Chipped nail polish and bare feet on grass and a plastic crown. The man at the front of the room wears detachment and a burgundy sweater. He instructs. The girl listens. She brushes past a stranger in the hallway. Pencils tumble to the floor. Smiling faces approach her, but she turns away from them and clutches her cell phone close to her side.
...

Violet Bordin

Green Days, Green Daze
Sarah Flynn
She picks me up in her grey acura, calls me baby, gives me a kiss on the cheek. She says dude, I have the most insane story to tell you. Cars and sunsets and weed and cops. Bob Weir and Jim Morrison and rhythmic psychedelics. Scarlet begonias, Pablo the Blowfish, vomit, paranoia.
She wears a tie-dyed Led Zeppelin shirt, can’t name many Led Zeppelin songs, thinks that Led Zeppelin is just one man. If it was bought in the Haight, it’s authentic. Sweatpants, birkenstocks, toe ring, extra large hoodie- it’s more than an aesthetic, it’s an identity.
Her car smells like flowers and old milkshakes. Crumpled homework assignments and empty nicotine containers and half-eaten burgers obscure the floor- not much to look at but so much to see. A dreamcatcher hangs from her mirror.
She drives along Ocean Beach, singing to the Rolling Stones, pausing only to imagine what the world would look life if it really was painted black. And who was Angie? Mick Jagger sure did have some sick bars. And Jerry Garcia played guitar, right? No, wait, he was part of the Beatles… right?
On the rare occasion that I correct her, she blushes slightly and whispers under her breath that she knew that, the Grateful Dead and the Beatles just sound pretty similar.
...