Author Archives: reilly

Poetry

Out of Control Like This. – Brooke Safferman

Sinking into darkness,

How did we spiral out of control like this?

We were the best of friends

How did we get so damn out of control like this?

 

All priorities go out the window

You are the only to-do on my checklist

Smoke screen blinding our eyes from the truth

Whoever said ignorance is bliss never tried the alternative.

 

Except when the alternative is the thing that gains power

It overcomes;

It overwhelms;

It makes you lose yourself.

 

I’ve lost myself, for sure,

But far more importantly –

I’ve lost you,

Now that we’ve become

Out of control like this.

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Poetry

Dancing by The Moon – Serene Jansen

As expected, you died.

No mysterious tragedy.

I promised I wouldn’t cry.

Vivaciously intertwined with

the untamed, the souls who are alive;

body carried out

with the songs of your life, leaving doubt.

They expected you would die

But you showed me the Moon when I was three.

And you told me to dance for her

because she often felt lonely.

You revealed other things—

how to make mud pies

and why some creatures have wings.

You own some too, they tell me.

They kept saying it was expected.

Even if I can’t accept it,

you died.

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Uncategorized

Mother – Alexandra Mayer

Slurred words

and slowed movements

like water.

 

She’s a swift tide of

 

the lyrical.

and pale.

the graceful.

and stale.

 

And her fingers

lean from years of piano

fumble

 

to light the last cigarette.

 

She wants

a body

of fire.

 

Or just

a quick burst

of anything.

 

But she’ll settle for the smoke

pouring from her lips.

 

Floating.

 

And her eyes

match the twilight-

A subtle shift

from blue to grey.

 

Faded.

 

And she’s convinced

that if you tore her open

you’d find a drowning symphony.

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Poetry, Prose, Prosetry

Ending – Haley Ingram

December 23 1888:

Vincent Van Gogh takes a sharp edge against his head Successfully cutting off his ear.

On May 8 1889,

He admits himself into the Saint Paul de Mausole lunatic asylum.

It is here,

In the catacombs of his wax coated, pressed-to-package heart

Where his blood streams the will of his hand creating his most famous, and beautiful masterpieces.

My darling, you are not the dried up paint

Cracked off to flake into the air

Particle by particle

Being inhaled by those unworthy of your scent.

Don’t you ever feel like the symptoms of death-

The left over, missed nibbles of creation.

He ate yellow Paint

We eat yellow Paint

You are my yellow Paint.

The only reason my body has not fallen victim to toxins in my bloodstream

As he did

Is because

You have a direct biological correlation to my happiness

The fumes of paint mix and dance with the fumes of my despair

Organs made canvas

Premature shapes

Colors splattered

Product is you.

You don’t just coat my stomach with prosthetic beauty

You are the irises

You are MY irises

My darling,

I can see the starry view from my asylum window.

I am having my first out of body experience

That will not scar me physically as I shove my hand through the window

Just to try and touch the fire of night.

I look so,

Desperate.

Gasping for a single breath hoping I finally reach the passion

Every time I try to paint starry night it comes out as your face.

I carved it into my skin

Melted my flesh and bone

Molding myself into what beauty could be

But I am a 2D appreciating enthusiast.

I notice the fluorescent lights

pulsating

I think of your eyes and the way they retract and grow as you go from crying to

Discussing the way the flowers in your brain

Tickle the inside of your ears.

May whoever try to rip them from the pores of your skin

Rot in Hell.

Even I in all my idiocy know how

It feels to get lost in the

Tranquil trance of fragrance.

To be completely fine with disarray.

My darling,

You are my music.

I’m chugging gallons of paint closing my ears shut.

Whatever Van Gogh tried to silence

Will not infest my brain

Not while you remain a pesticide.

Not while you’re here.

Whispering. Humming. Kissing.

Breathing

The oxygen from your own plants

Giving me CPR

trying to clean out my lungs hoping my ears pop

But my hands stop you.

You’d make it too easy.

I want to make sure every word that falls into the cavern of my aching body

Leaves a seed that can only be watered by the paint that I feed on.

Insanity for a being.

Insanity for being.

I’ll admit myself.

The view is so nice here.

The view is so pretty here.

Self designed, molded by Pygmalion.

The view is so beautiful here.

July 29, 1890:

Van Gogh dies from two gunshot wounds to the chest from 2 days earlier.

The package, has been opened.

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Poetry

we are not your maids anymore – Alex Esterline

We are not your maids anymore
we are not why you lock up your store
Not your gardeners
not your mechanics
Not your border-hopping, job-stealing fanatics,
Not your microagressions
or your racist misconceptions,
your oppressive lies
or your stereotypes
We are not
The color of our skin
or our “inherited sin”
Your compliance with violence
Will not lead us to silence
For this will be the last time you can take what’s mine
For this will be the last time you can tell me “I’m fine”
“Post-racial America” yet there goes another
Matando Armando, your sister, your brother
Shot dead to the ground, Locked up in the pound
You look all around yet only our love is to be found

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Poetry

Never Be Completed – Brooke Safferman

Somewhere between

The spaces of my fingers

And the regions of my heart that

You and I like to pretend do not exist

Are filled up by the emotions that

I never knew a person could possibly

Feel.

 

Give me a smile,

A nod of approval,

And I will give you

Anything you want.

 

A touch, a glance, a sign of encouragement

You are the unattainable dieting goal;

So insatiable, yet I know I must cut back.

 

Back away,

Somewhere off into the distant land of

Pretend

We used to know the things about each other

That most people would deny but

Let’s be honest – cutting the crap was always your style.

 

Without you,

I am a piece to a puzzle that will

Never be completed.

And without you,

I am always left

wanting more.

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Short Story

An End to a Moose – Esteban Mayorga

“Damn Mooses. Wait. Meese? No, but it’s definitely not Mooses. Moosen? Oh, what the hell am I doing? This is not a time for grammatically correct Meese.”

 

My increasingly nonsensical internal dialogue comes to an end as the moose thing glares at me. “Never again”, the words echo through my head as I assess my current situation. My torso, my arms, my thighs, they all ache with the gathered efforts required to climb my way up this damnable mountain, I can’t feel what raw skin hasn’t been scrapped off hands, my lungs burn, and my body is on it’s last legs. The thing continues it’s glare, it’s gaze that of a predator, hungry for a quick meal. I only have one way out.

 

My hand slowly reaches for my weapon, a desperate attempt not to startle the moose thing. It doesn’t work.

 

Caution is thrown to the wind as the moose charges, fangs bared, all seven nostrils flaring. I dive out of the way, and the moose plows straight through one of the walls of the already rickety wooden shack we’re fighting in, bringing new meaning to “architecturally questionable”.  I unload 3 shots from my oversized revolver which all miss their mark due to the massive inaccuracy of a weapon this size.

 

The sound angers the moose further, adding to my already growing list of problems as it turns and charges again. My sword leaves its sheath and embeds itself in the Moose thing’s antlers with a dull thunk, just in time for the thing to toss its head, snapping the sword in two at the hilt. The Moose thing rears back before charging with renewed vigor and an new cutting edge embedded between its aggressively pointy antlers. I am going to ruin whoever designed my gear for this assignment.

 

Trapped between a Moose and a not so hard wooden shack wall, I opt to go through the wall rather than the moose. I drive what’s left of my sword through a brittle plank, then tug and yank with my entire upper body to try and get the damnable thing back out. I look over my shoulder, my vision shaky and blurred, my arms and shoulders burning from my continuous attempts to retrieve the shitty sword, and I see that my time’s up. The moose thing is practically on top of me, it’s 7 eyes now up to 14 as far as my vision is concerned.

 

I can either try and go through the wall with just my own weight, or I could use the moose’s force to help me through, If I can manage that without being impaled or otherwise maimed.

 

I hop and curl into a ball, twisting in the air so my feet meet the moose’s head. Time slows down as I kick with every ounce of energy left in my body, my heels shuddering with the impact, the force traveling through my body, jostling my bones violently, vibrating my jaw, the sounds reverberating throughout my head.

 

I feel something break as I get launched straight through the annoyingly sturdy shack wall, time still crawling past at a fraction of what it should be. A glorious sunrise hits me like a brick thrown at 60 miles an hour, my eyes unaccustomed to the dancing rays and deep purple-orange sky after such a long night. My body hits the ground, rolls, and is thrown into the air again, snow cascading in waves around me, shards and planks of what used to be the shed cutting through the waves like unassuming sharks thrown into the sky by some sadistic force. I bounce twice more, each time bringing less snow up with me and allowing for more light to refract brilliantly off the partially melted waves, if only for a fraction of a moment.

 

After a painfully long time, the world returns to normal. Well. As normal as a world with mutated predatory moosen is want to be. I start feeling the impact from the wall, from the ground, from the moose. It hurts. Bad. My ankle is broken, no doubt, I have at least three cracked ribs, a punctured lung if i’m unlucky, and a spine that’s seen better days, like that time Jill pushed me off the roof of her house and I landed on my neck. Good memories.

 

I slowly, very slowly, pick myself up off the ground, applying as little pressure as possible to my left arm and right ankle. It’s then that I see the blood.

 

A trail of it, little drizzles upon the snow, punctuated by craters and pools of the stuff, leading all the way to my right foot.

 

A river of blood is running from where I stand, the snow steaming and diluting the blood with clear, clean water. The coppery stench of it reaches my nostrils, nauseating and warm.

 

I double over, my body feeling the sharp, stinging pain of a wound that went straight through military grade combat boots, feeling the life drain out of it and into the snow. I don’t know how long I lie there, shaking, shuddering, before I realize what i’m doing. I realize i’m giving up. I’m letting my life flow away into the snow, to be used by some woodland creature. Maybe a moose.

 

Well screw meese.

 

I look around me, and assess my situation again. I’m lying on the cold, hard, snow covered rock of a mountaintop, ribs broken, ankle shattered, god knows what the hell happened to my arm, and i’m bleeding out while wondering why I haven’t been maimed to death by a demon moose.

 

I smile when I see why.

 

My right foot, while having been shattered and flayed a fair bit, broke the shitty sword a second time, and drove the fragments straight into the moose’s stupid shitty brain.

 

I cannot emphasise the passion with which I detest the very existence of meese at this moment. No, really. Fuck meese.

 

With a sense of relief, I reach into my coat, and pull out the school mandated emergency beacon, a bulky rectangular device, just big enough to be uncomfortable in a pocket. I will kiss whichever brilliant moron made me take it with me when I get back.

 

My arm burning with the effort, I weekly flip open the reinforced steel-plate cover on the front of the device, and with all the force I can draw from my aching body, I slam my fist into the big red button underneath. It’s the most satisfying thing i’ve ever felt.

 

I tear off my boot and gingerly wrap my mangled foot in a tourniquet, before crawling over to the moose and propping my head up on its warm belly.

 

I start drifting into a comfortable sleep, my body slowly waning itself off adrenaline as a last thought passes through my head before I pass into peaceful blackness.

 

Fuck Meese.

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Poetry

Overdose – Alexandra Mayer

The sun drizzled into the sea–

a meeting like butterfly kisses.

 

Soaked in gold,

you curled your fingers into mine

and we wandered into the sky.

 

And I remembered when

Apollo stole turquoise from the swell

to craft your aster eyes

 

And promised me

a life like Spanish guitar

and raspberries.

 

I’ll smear them on my lips

So I can taste like summertime.

And I’ll let my heels char by the stars.

Or maybe, I’ll fall into your soul

And find

Unkempt hair and dandelions.

 

I love you.

Atleast, I think, I could.

 

Now, Sleep won’t follow, so

I walk on words.

The moon carves into my chest.

I’m nothing, but hummingbirds.

 

I feel like 2:00 am

Crumbling into morning,

Laughing at all the tragedy that makes you cry.

 

Light leaks in through the blinds.
The stale and yellowing map sighs.
The universe swells in the gap between your teeth.

 

And I believe in feeling.
Like cigarette burns and crimson.
Like fuck yes, I’m conscious.
Like atoms dripping from your aster eyes.

I used to dance on tombstones.
Now, I’m almost alive.

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Poetry

Overdose – Alexandra Mayer

The sun drizzled into the sea–

a meeting like butterfly kisses.

 

Soaked in gold,

you curled your fingers into mine

and we wandered into the sky.

 

And I remembered when

Apollo stole turquoise from the swell

to craft your aster eyes

 

And promised me

a life like Spanish guitar

and raspberries.

 

I’ll smear them on my lips

So I can taste like summertime.

And I’ll let my heels char by the stars.

Or maybe, I’ll fall into your soul

And find

Unkempt hair and dandelions.

 

I love you.

Atleast, I think, I could.

 

Now, Sleep won’t follow, so

I walk on words.

The moon carves into my chest.

I’m nothing, but hummingbirds.

 

I feel like 2:00 am

Crumbling into morning,

Laughing at all the tragedy that makes you cry.

 

Light leaks in through the blinds.
The stale and yellowing map sighs.
The universe swells in the gap between your teeth.

 

And I believe in feeling.
Like cigarette burns and crimson.
Like fuck yes, I’m conscious.
Like atoms dripping from your aster eyes.

I used to dance on tombstones.
Now, I’m almost alive.

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Poetry

Overdose – Alexandra Mayer

The sun drizzled into the sea–

a meeting like butterfly kisses.

 

Soaked in gold,

you curled your fingers into mine

and we wandered into the sky.

 

And I remembered when

Apollo stole turquoise from the swell

to craft your aster eyes

 

And promised me

a life like Spanish guitar

and raspberries.

 

I’ll smear them on my lips

So I can taste like summertime.

And I’ll let my heels char by the stars.

Or maybe, I’ll fall into your soul

And find

Unkempt hair and dandelions.

 

I love you.

Atleast, I think, I could.

 

Now, Sleep won’t follow, so

I walk on words.

The moon carves into my chest.

I’m nothing, but hummingbirds.

 

I feel like 2:00 am

Crumbling into morning,

Laughing at all the tragedy that makes you cry.

 

Light leaks in through the blinds.
The stale and yellowing map sighs.
The universe swells in the gap between your teeth.

 

And I believe in feeling.
Like cigarette burns and crimson.
Like fuck yes, I’m conscious.
Like atoms dripping from your aster eyes.

I used to dance on tombstones.
Now, I’m almost alive.

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