FALL 2021

Haunt Me
BY AJ JOLISH

I hope you don't mind that I submitted the poem I wrote about your death to a literary magazine.
I hope you don't mind that I'll do it again, because I'm doing it again, and I wouldn't even listen to you...
​

said the child
​BY SASHA LEONARD

in awe, I stare at black silhouettes bathed in a pale, yellow haze,
dust of an unfamiliar scent, stinging and brazen,
                                              &silence
​

How to Become Faye Wong
BY CAROLYN TUNG

Sing & play. Perform Mandarin dream pop colors of the Cocteau Twins and the Cranberries. Nap on the moon. Pat on cosmic blush...
​

Prelude to Death
BY DEREK TALBOTT

Drunk with melancholy
and the smoke of oblivion,
I sit against the bed
to watch your face emerge in the mirror
broken, tainted,
​sick of you.

THINGS YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK AT
BY NICOLE SMITH

A solar eclipse. A once-in-a-lifetime event.
Your mother's yearbook photo. The mirror
in a haunted house. That envelope.
​

Hiraeth for the Highlands
BY SIMONE FLOURNOY

I remember Caledonia's shouting breath
Scarlet kisses across my face
Every bit of my surroundings
​

saltwater cherry cola
BY SUNNY JEONG-EIMER

1
on hot days like this, we, stock, pile into the backseat of the Prius and let the faux leather scald stick slick to the insides of our knees.
​

A poet's religion
BY VALERIE BRAYLOVSKIY

Every time I start a poem, I have an anxiety attack. Because what
if god decides he is tired of funding my poetic pilgrimage and cuts me off.

The Snake
​BY EVA MOLINA

written at the LA River

The grasses are combing the river.
​I sit on the concrete slope from which nothing grows,
​

American Airlines
​BY MADISON YARDUMIAN

buildings exist
independent of end

I breathe in
a skyline of squares
While California Breaks
​

Fire Season
BY SIMONE FLOURNOY

I am burned and built
and burned again
An orbit of fires
The venerated touch of flame to foliage
​

---

SPRING 2021

beleaguered by sickness 
​BY IPIFUS IPIFIO

/ beleaguered by sickness
​I resurrect for a moment
if only for one moment
to smell the light
see the scent
touch my sensibility

Cybersex
​BY SAM BOVARD

The neighbor’s Ring camera
Observes my body through the window.
I notice it after a shower, towel dropped,
Parts exposed. A perversion,
An invasion; a cyber-voyeur,
​

Scallion Pancakes
BY ALBANY BLACKBURN

I work the dough beneath my hands, 
familiarly. I am making myself dinner tonight.
​

On Correcting Pronouns Over Zoom
BY KENDALL PACKMAN

The sound cut out.
                   what did he say?
         //***// will hear more about this.
NoNoNonoNononoNonoNo
​

Bodies Like Mine in the Louvre
BY ANDIE SHERIDAN

There will be glory built in wide, dirty strokes on my canvas. Stretching cotton around the rigid wooden pectorals
​

After the Apocalypse, I Live in a Cabin in the Woods
BY SOPHIA CHANIN

One
In the cold morning dark I split wood
with the axe you taught me to use.
I will use it to light a fire, cook my oats
​

the electronic dictionary
​BY SARU POTTURI

utopias
uto-pious
uto-pieces
​uterine people
​

Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)
​BY SAM BOVARD

i.
Let me remember that all I am is imagined.
175 pounds of cellophane-wrapped candies sit in a corner like the man they are meant to replace
​

Whirlwind
BY ALBANY BLACKBURN

​Last summer, you broke a man’s heart,
and you broke the man too.
The skies turned a sickly green,
​

On the Verge of Graduation
BY ALISSA MARTINEZ

I' worried I broke my brain for nothing--
that the hollow space will never be filled,
nothing to reap in this soil I've long tilled

Cosmos Chemos
​BY THEODORA HELGASON

You invited the universe into your brownstone, the order and
Harmony of these cosmos circling your garden
​

Parfum
BY MIMI THOMPSON

Fumigators were the 16th-century version of salespeople on Valentines Day.
The role came from the Latin fumus, to smoke,
and pleasant-smelling smokes
​

a remedy
​BY SARU POTTURI

i haven't felt too well today.
its not my fault:
it never is.
​

​Care Crawls Down the Sky
​BY ANDIE SHERIDAN

I cannot be home where I am. I belong with the viscous sun. Swollen open
​

Retrans My Body
​BY ANDIE SHERIDAN

If I were to retrain my body, I would un-fondant the hills of my stomach. (Let's be real, a knife would be involved.) I would know what wisteria looked like

American Crown
BY THEODORA HELGASON

oh, you must feel majesty, in your coronacastle 
touchlessly transmitting your spell to me. who are you, 
​

From a Distance
​BY NATHANIEL BRASWELL

At times, staring out of a dirty window is like scorning at heaven.
Every night, I watch as low-hanging canopies of crowning amber
​

PRIMORDIAL
BY LAYLA ELQUTAMI

In desperation, a schoolboy plucks the wallet from a vendor’s pocket--
men lower their heads in prayer beyond the wall--

Stillness, part 2
BY LILY ROSS

The distance between 
us swims inside of 
itself, sighs bathwater 
onto the edges of
​

thinking in the aftershock
​BY ALISSA MARTINEZ

i've been the home wrecker the incoming storm
I don't know how many times my name has
passed through a spiteful wife's lips like a curse
​

Scopophilia
​BY JULIETTE JEFFERS

Tell me your dreams. I’m hardly ever bored by
Nineteen fifties perversions. Rocky river
beds and Hudson eerily caress my hair
​

From my windowsill on Jupiter
​BY MIMI THOMPSON

It rains diamonds here and still,
the real estate market is barren.
A few years ago, a red tornado raged through the town,
​

Lamplights
BY CYNTHIA LI

Insects
wear exoskeletons:
the infrastructure of their bodies in the air
​

---

FALL 2020

Laughter
BY ​PATRICK LEWIS

I'm picking the pieces of a broken mirror
​and scouring the bloodier corners of my room
...

Us Included
BY SOPHIA CLINE

You can ask us now
What you should do
But we cannot give the answer you want...

journey
BY LILLIAN AFF

there's great tranquility in traversing a

great...

​Hunger Below the World
​BY SOPHIA CHANIN

At the bottom of the canyon I dream of flowers,
I dream of yellow-studded daisies and​...
​
​

​Closet Camouflage
BY ETHAN WIDLANSKY

I put the straight jacket on inside-out,
holding my selves together.
You look back...

​

Purples in the sky
​ BY LILY ROSS

​The
mosquitoes
lick my hairy
legs with their...

​

i must, however, write
BY SARU POTTURI

these keys, those keys, press into the hardened
flesh of my fingers, rough from metal string and...

This Kingdom
BY MIMI THOMPSON

A shooting star sprinkles cocaine above the ravine where a sack lies.
The wind rustles an afternoon by while I am tightened in dainty lace​...
​

Stained Glass
​BY VICTORIA GOSSUM

TW: self-harm

there is suffering
sunken into each frail wall of his aching
house...​
​

Goat Gala!
BY SARU POTTURI

Hooked nose, broken back
The hag cuts up candy apples with a tack
​Gossip rag, and talking smack...

​

My first year of college I wasn't going home for Thanksgiving instead
BY ADDISON KAY

My first year of college I wasn't going home for Thanksgiving instead
...

​mind of smoke
BY TALYA KALTMAN-KRON

mind like the midnight sky 
thoughts shout out no sound surfaces 
eyes dry, sleeplessness reeks from the room...

Anniversary
BY TALIA R. IVRY

How troubling it is
That the leaves, scattering so...
​
​
​

Forgiveness is a hell of a drug
BY ADDISON KAY

Forgiveness is a hell of a drug

I'm too thin so the river runs icy...
​

relapse
BY ALISSA MARTINEZ

TW: self-harm

words have started to flow again
from unseemly places, forgotten corners
ones i hoped to abandon years ago
but now they’ve returned to focus...
​

i want to count time in the white black holes of my basketball
BY LILY ROSS

when my
mom talks
loudly
...

Sanctuary (On Revolution)
BY SARU POTTURI

Spurn me, and I will spur thee;
Smirch me, Besmirch me, unchurch me...

---

SPRING 2020

Venn Diagram
BY MIRABELLA MILLER

I habitually arrange my hoop earrings in a Venn diagram
...

​

Sunday Poem
BY TALIA R. IVRY

Some Sundays slog by alongside
the road, clogged up with dread.
So dreadfully commonplace, that...
​
​

lineage
BY NATASHA VHUGEN

at the tip of the day, the moon was
almost full, just a sliver shy. silver
sliver. i picked blood from my ear...
​

Broca's Area
​BY LILLIAN AFF

is, and, the, but
stroke of bad luck...
​

Anthropophagi
BY LUCAS CUNNINGHAM

I felt my head - with wings of silk
From off my shoulders fly
It chirped - but once - before the Dusk...

Allergy Season
BY SAM BOVARD

ions of emotion posit themselves in my body
clogging my sinuses
creeping down my throat
​...

call me I was looking at a car on fire
​BY SCHUYLER MITCHELL 

call it fiction then lean in and give 
me the sweetness of your breath, and
I will unfold...
​

Body Poem
BY SAM BOVARD

I peel my blackened toenail 
Back and
It opens like an oyster...
​

This is Poetry
BY LILY ROSS

This is
​Poetry.
​

Last Lament of a SoundCloud Artist
​BY LUCAS CUNNINGHAM

Upon my waist a Gucci belt
Upon my hips a Glock
And likewise on my RAFs...

view
BY NATASHA VHUGEN

if you’re looking hard enough,
you’ll see the yellow, the reckless
sunshine of...​
​
​

alphabet soup
​​BY EMILY LU GAO

​today my mama called me her zìdiǎn
and it made me realize how
words have always bloomed from me...
​
​

King's Speech
​BY BRYNN PARKINSON

How do I explain
in the most playground fashion...
​
​

At The End Of The Day
BY SCHUYLER MITCHELL

She reaches into the weary sky            
Plucks clouds like figs
And rolls them, supple..​.

---

FALL 2019

Growing Up
​BY ELEANOR FURNESS​

Family gatherings include
         Swallowed by comments like
                   Baby shrimp which...
​

A Hymn
BY MADISON YARDUMIAN

Fragrance drifts
through the air
like worship...

A Spell for the Living
BY EMMA DUGGLEBY

Sip blood like honey
from the wells of deer teeth,
age stained into streaks...
​

Boggy
BY JAMARQUISE HUSTON

Look, o’er the fog, 
Salvation is a slog, 
Soft, we shall, we will...​

Grocery Store
BY ELEANOR FURNESS

I'm up next in line at the grocery store
I start laying down my items on the small conveyor belt...
​

In Memory of Paul Ehrenfest
BY J.J. SHANKAR

Time is a blanket dragged through grass
smeared with ever-longer streaks...

---

SPRING 2019

Signpost
BY TIFFANY MI

When folks drive past they read, COUNTY LINE.
Sometimes they read,         CITY LIMIT.
Other times,                KEEP OUT.
​

I Would
BY TALIA R. IVRY

If I could reach inside my chest
and part the pinkish pulp within,
I’d crack pale arcs and toss aside...
​

The Moon
BY ALEXANDRA FISCHER

​You and Earth
have been best friends
for billions of years...
​

​

Lemon Tree
BY CHAELEE DALTON

Out behind your house
there is a lemon tree. It sags
with yellow bulbs. I think of the tree...
​
​

the airplane didn’t crash but she landed in a graveyard anyway
BY ANDIE SHERIDAN

the air draws her  
in as she was born...
​

Noise
BY COLIN ADAMS

​Restaurants are funny places...

Christina's World
BY AYA BURTON

What makes a body
this tired, this removed...
​

​

Reclaimed Witch
BY ADDISON KAY

When she talks to plants, cottonwoods to succulents,
their fibrous stereocilia relax. She...
​

Gut Flora
BY SELENA SPIER

Stars in their bedsheets struggle to breathe.
My dreams have been keeping me awake.
Down the stairs and through the hall...

there will come a time
BY EMILY DIAMOND

sometimes
there is nothing you can do to stop it
it stands there in the doorway...
​
​

On re-tethering
BY CHARLOTTE MORRISSEY

Slaughterhouse in an earthquake,
The threads grow too weak to cage the flesh.
Carcasses come untethered, uncorked...

Bookmarking the Hate
BY ELENA DYPIANGCO

As I went in for the killshot I decided instead to go in for a nightcap...

2/23 Haiku
BY HANNAH ORRAHOOD

Today I am clothed 
In conversation starters
And a bit of hope
​
​

Event
BY J.J.SHANKAR

The pigeon ate the candle.
The candles tipped over
and caused the tip jar to hit the floor...
​

​(an) on (ymo) us
BY CHAELEE DALTON

“if you could write to any historical figure who would you write to?”
                                “I would rather write to...
​
​

WORK MAN SHIP
BY CHAELEE DALTON

bits become
                        your reality
                                               removed and...
​​

Objects in Mirror
BY AYA BURTON

Something quiet now
             parked car in the cul-de-sac
metal glinting silver in the cold...

---

FALL 2018

smallness or starness
BY .jhh

​coming out of a part of my own life 
like taking off a tight shirt:
too happy breathing to lament it...
​
​

The Mind of a Writer
BY ALICE GIUFFREDI

Devotion.
​From the early 13th century, old French
Devocion, meaning "devotion, piety" ...
​
​

House Dress Day
BY ANNA MITCHELL

I call it House Dress Day because today
I wear a house dress
and I think of all the...
​

The wood shed
BY ELLA BOYD

for a minute, he thinks, this is it,
the start of a conversation with God, or something

​

emergencies
BY JAY SCOTT

maybe black baby
skin
at age ten...
​

America
BY ELLA BOYD

Our malls scream we sell heaven--cutting edge, as new and
expensive as your last body...

​

Hometown
BY MADISON YARDUMIAN

Dear Hometown,
 
I started writing this...
​

In a bowl of seize yeux
BY TRINITY CHAPA

I encounter
a militia of cynics
who hate...
​
​

Elegy
BY CARMIN SHERLOCK

Father, tell me about the taste of sweet corn.
Tell me about the sky in 1999, on the pier, at the lake...
​

Incense
BY MALCOLM YEARY

Lazy relentless chaos flows from the origin.
Their mysterious beginnings release, 
Rising rivers from falling bits of time...
​

Don't speak to me of iridescence
BY copper rain

Don’t speak to me of iridescence
When talking of the sea
You and I both know it’s not...
​

Tumbling blues
BY .jhh

two blue birds tumbled
                          through the bright sun-thickened breeze...
​

"@" lymnal #2
BY .jhh

"isn't this pretty & calming & relaxing"
mother asks
                                         father & 2 girls don't...
​

The City
BY CASEY GOODWIN

All the good boys carry empty little coffins
As they walk across the town...
​

Wilting
BY COLIN ADAMS

He must have felt like a flower in a forest of clothes,
surrounded by peacoats, jackets, ties, belts...
​

Tender
BY ALISSA MARTINEZ

my momma warned me about this
told me to quit the nicotine boys
never let them rot my godly lungs...
​

A Generation
BY VIVIENNE SHI

A carpenter builds scaffoldings around
A piece of handwriting. He waits patiently 
Until rosemary, lavender and garlic sprout...
​

Burnout
BY NHI PHAN

a candle and i
feverish, mad flames flicking atop
as the fire of our ire burns...
​

The Garden
BY AYA BURTON

This is what I have to give you:
two blistered hands and a garden undone.
Japanese beetles with soft blue shells...
​

The Orange Tree
BY MALCOLM YEARY

A feeling of knowing, without knowing why,
Drops down from flowers
And hangs from fragrant skies...
​

Thinking on a Summer Day
BY PASKALINA BOURBON

The sun reaches down an arm of light--
an octopus
beating the earth from its celestial cave...
​

Milk Teeth and Dentures
BY VIBHA ROHILLA

It popped out of my mouth
like a jagged pearl from an oyster, 
into the palm of my hand. Shredder...
​

The Odyssey
BY e.feleke

​my quiet confidence,
has turned into a quiet sense of apathy and consequence...
​

Animating the corpus
BY TRINITY CHAPA

the meat of my heart says no.
but you shook me from quiet
and my sexuality...
​
​

One Year Later
BY AYA BURTON

Even after forgetting their names
she can peel a plum with a paring knife
and sit on the little circle rug...
​

The Morning After
BY ANONYMOUS

​It will always be the morning after
And there will never be enough soap
And there will never be enough water
And there will never be enough
To wash away the morning after.