Category: Issue 4 (Spring 2025)

By Bracken Valentine

red string of fate wraps around
my hand my wrist my finger pulls tight
presses against the heart line on my palm creates
a dent makes a valley leaves a bruise
pulls and pulls and pulls and starts
to burn to tear to bite into my skin makes itself
inextricable makes itself unbearable makes me
watch my hand go red go purple go blue
watch it pull tighter tighter watch blood
as it finally tears open skin. red string of fate
rubs skin raw leaves marks. circles tight enough
to cut. leads nowhere. leads nowhere. leads nowhere at all.

Author Bio

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By Micaela Olsen

These hills loom large ahead
and sneer with snobbish eyes.
For such gaze does antagonize
and shake my soul with dread.

Their silent stares deafen my ears
and bruise my heart of desire.
Their goal is to rob all things that inspire.
The longer I stay, they seize my life and free my fears

Barren brown cracks of dusty earth serve to remind me;
Life does not grow here.
My own broken body below proves I did not persevere.
For there is no tree or sanctuary among thee

Every day I walk to the base where they lay.
My hands stretch in gowpen to catch showers of dreams,
but these hills dried up all hopeful streams.
Now below I lay with these hands on a path to decay.

Oh hills, you are a cage!
Such malicious immovable mountains!
At every attempt to venture beyond, they seal this prison. I’m certain
this constant war I am too weak to wage.

My crusted lips sometimes slip through the bars to shout my woes,
but my stolen voice is caught in dusty winds
With the rusted gates closed, I stay trapped within.
My head bows to my rocky foe.

Beyond these hills, I cannot see,
but of the world blocked by them far in the distance;
I know of its existence.
and tall they stand to shield me from that place without mercy.

In times past, I once believed they welcomed me
to one day venture beyond their slopes to places unknown
and leave my current place which I had outgrown.
Their ridges are the gates of heaven that conceal new scenery.

But now with menacing looks, they mock my failures
These hills an unholy judge, certain to damn me
to this place that I shall never leave.
These hills forever hide my future.

Author Bio

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By Micaela Olsen

A conversation is a cup of tea
It passes through lips of women as they speak of years-old news, clutch their Bibles,
and mourn their unwrinkled hands
It drips off of tongues into pools of the glistening past to ease the pain inflicted on old bones
It speaks of life’s pleasures and woes on its hot breath to shroud its participants in blankets of contentment
But as these women trade words, their voices echo names of those they put on trial
And punished like Desdemona
To drink up the women’s discourse would be to partake in their sacrament
Those who indulge in the satisfaction of this ritual must drown their remorse in the blistering brew

Author Bio

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By Jonas Mufson

I am learning about things
I am learning about the meaninglessness
of words-
that the particles of realness are
smaller than our capacity for understanding

I am learning about things
Hearing words like
system and model and projection
Words like graphite gray lines
on blank yellowed pages.
Words like shapes and numbers and directions

I am learning to embrace
the comforting lies of my five senses
Like a traveler in space
embracing the heavy, spiraling love
of their birthplace. The very thing,
their once definitive rejection, now
a warm inexorability, which pulls them
towards matter that can be
felt.

And what a small price to pay.
How glad the traveler is to touch
the Earth, when all it costs them
is the bonds of their body.
How joyous the pilgrim will be
to finally evaporate.
To leave behind the void of model
To once again become
blissfully unaware of projection
as the system that is capable
of knowing itself becomes, once more,
a part of the system that is not.
A part of the system that only is
and never knows.

I am learning fear
Acidic and sharp and awake.
Fear that encompasses knowledge,
consumes it like a sheet consumes
a child in a room full of monsters.
I am learning that fear can keep you
on Earth, tether you deadly,
away from the void.

I am learning the meaninglessness of words
Words like void and real and fear
I am learning to live stratospherically,
to hold the void in the same hand
that holds the powder dirt and
the squelch-live soil and
the delicate yellow parchment.

By Lexy Morrow

The familiarity of your face on my screen
invites me to break this curse of silence
between you and me.

Can I skip past the niceties to ask
if you remember warm days diving under
crystalline pools, pretending our feet
were as pearlescent as mermaid fins?

Or how we made castles out of twigs
in the bushes of backyards where
we feared the parental invasion
that was the call of bedtime?

We soared above our suburban kingdom
on rusty bikes and sailed through
the storm of sprinklers hand in hand.

Do I cross your mind
like the strands of hair
you braided down my back?

I followed your voice like a well-charted map
through the thick of unmowed lawns
where we defeated the dragons that
were only our own shadows.

Now I only follow you online.

But the treasure is still buried beneath my bed—
bejeweled bracelets etched with your name
and long-kept secrets scribbled on
scrap papers for only our eyes.

I could type how I never meant to banish you,
even though the palace gates are now rusted shut.

But your freckles have faded and
Band-Aid battle wounds are healed.

So, I’ll write well wishes
and hope you haven’t lost the
golden key we held those magic years.

Author Bio

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By Gigi Krembs

a spelling mistake. reciting my ABCs with a bright green lunch box in my right hand and stuttering my lmnop’s. eating peanut butter jelly sandwiches with the crust cut off. a spelling mistake. learning how to play piano. tying my shoelaces the wrong way. kids laughing and pointing their dirty index fingers like lollipops towards my stumped face. my teacher asking me to stick behind to “talk”. another spelling mistake. taking the green minibus home and wondering if the towering mountains could just fall down! sitting down at my wooden table with my father who does not understand my math problem. yelling at me. not knowing my lefts from my rights. embarrassing. playing four square at recess and never winning. hiding in the bathroom eating my lunch and sinking into the grey dirty floor. isolating. growing up with tiger moms who live in the jungle and feast on their children’s shards of homework for breakfast. waking up. brushing my teeth. looking in the mirror. laughing and knowing that if I were in a dectionary I would be a speling mistake.

Author Bio

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By Gigi Krembs

Looking down into summer,
And all I can remember is how my

skin stitched into yours like a knitted blanket,
Or how we would dance under ripples of orange light
leaving only my shadow.
Or how your checks blossomed with red cherries,
that I longed to eat.
Or how green grass grew out of the hallows of your
back sprouting with new life.
Or how we would brush our teeth together,
And imagine our mouths were at sea, struggling to stay afloat.
Or how you made the world spin and stop like a record player.
Or how you kissed me with thorns between your lips,
like you wanted it to sting.
You mistook my hand for a blade.
You folded me up like a lawn chair,
And hit me like a hiccup.
Now your teeth are made of butted cigarettes.
Now you are just a body that never deserved my shadow.
Soon will come winter. Soon you will freeze.

Author Bio

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By Gigi Krembs

What is this salt on the tip of my tongue?
It stings with the wound filled with sand, each grain scalped into my skin Is it this heart, confined in my rib cage
Or maybe it’s this uneasy fly, wandering around in the glass you left.

What is this sugar sitting on top of my lips?
Could it be the blue goosebumps of a pig
I guess it is the glaciers that melts with milk
Or my reflection in your dark round pupil.

What is this honey that sprouts from my teeth?
Intertwined yarn wrapped around our hands
Or maybe it is the joy of celebrating a candle that has never been lit Is it the haunted mouths filled with dahlias.

Could it be snow on snow.
Or ice on ice.
Is it your sugar on mine
And my honey on yours
Or maybe it’s the dream of salt on salt.

Author Bio

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By Gigi Krembs

For Babaji.

My hands disappear.
In my burnt jean pocket.
I find the Taj Mahal.
It lays in my wrinkled hand.
Cool to the touch. Dimples of light seep through. The white marble holds me.
Among the trees with windows of waffles.
My Babaji is playing hide and seek.
With a girl whose cheeks are filled with pollen. She is wearing a dress made of fluttering hummingbird wings. She has golden maple syrups for hair.
And an orchestra for a brain.
Prelude in C Major.
The white piano keys are still.
Indented with Babaji’s frail fingers.
Headlines of newspaper say.
Pigeons waddle like him.

Babaji?
After you go,
Will we still play hide and seek?

I’ll look

I’ll seek

I’ll wait

With an orchestra for a brain,
Pigeons play violin.
Trees hum.
Waffles sing.
And even the Taj Mahal dances.

Author Bio

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By Sahn Khanpour

would the mundanity of a peeled mandarin nestle in those hallowed walls,
the way those settled words seem to have settled,
the way those unspoken thoughts seem to have sunk, still sink
and the supposed scream of a kettle, better to be belittled than be that little,
steams its way through open ears–
sticky and sickly you’ve been left, wipe those hands clean before you touch
their pristine glass, fingertips that stain everything you seem to glance at–
is that what you think?
their sledgehammer touch won’t slight you,
let those pastel words and the stench of comfort back in, again,
you’re so good, again,
you feel so good, again,
laid at their convenience,
used for their convenience,
this rotten hand has hurt so sour but what are you if not convenient?

Author Bio

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