Tag Archives: inkling writing

Poetry, Prosetry

dynamics – Karlee Sanders

a fortissimo recollection of memories floods my mind with thoughts

I remember your forte screams that directed everything I did

your mezzo forte demands at home for me to grab you a beer or to come to bed
my mezzo piano answers that you’d never hear because you were too busy thinking about the next move you’d make on me to make your wish my command
my piano voice under my breath uttering my hate for you
your pianissimo voice now over the phone from your jail cell
begging me for forgiveness and bail money
only to get a dial tone in return
k.s. 3:15 pm 12/7/14
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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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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, Prosetry

Heavy Breathing – Iman Messado

My siblings and I have the habit of breathing heavily.

We inhale the dirt, the foliage, the pebbles in the moor with a single exhale,

(never mind the pesky case of asthma that we all seem to share)

and exhale the North wind, the starry night and the cloudless summer sky.

Our lungs must take up at least 83% of our bodies,

stratocumulus clouds and bunches of hydrangeas were pressed up against

our tracheas and primary bronchi.

When my sister speaks,

it’s with rays of sunshine peeking between her teeth.

She tends to talk rather loudly,

but I attribute that to her trying to be heard over the chirping of North African black birds.

Her knees are as knobby as a giraffe’s and her eyes are as clear as a doe’s.

However, she walks with the gait of a lioness,

and would rather inhale your fear then exhale defeat.

I have two brothers,

both are thin and gangly with limbs like birch wood branches or

a new born gazelle with awkward limbs and an ambition that could rival

that of a bird learning to master the air underneath its wings.

The older one breathes slowly and deeply.

He would inhale a scarab beetle as carefully as he would a baleen whale.

His exhales would spread across West African deserts and European tundras,

kissing nightingales and billy goats to sleep.

He doesn’t know of frantic cries nor hyperventilating,

his lungs are made of the same stuff as the mountains in South America.

The younger one is reminiscent of a rabbit,

young and small and rapid.

He breathes in lilypads and peonies and sparks of ember.

He breathes in harried words and furrowed brows and nervous feet.

He breathes in flicking tails and hurricanes and lightning bolts.

He exhales the rushing waves of the Pacific ocean.

My lungs are weak and I can only breathe in as much as I can imagine.

Sometimes, my mind is too large for my lungs.

I’ve got daisies and marshes and valleys and wombats and thunderstorms in mind.

I’m ready to exhale Atlantis, Paradise lost and the Second Coming.

Let me a breathe a little heavier.

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Poetry

Our Own Fairy Tale – Brooke Safferman

snowflakes

or something like

i

c

i

c

l

e

s

Drip down my arms, clinging to my veins,

Like it’s only a matter of time before they melt away.

In a place where time doesn’t exist,

In a world where reality doesn’t conform,

We can be whomever we want.

Once upon a time,

I was the ice queen, but you were the fire-breathing dragon

Frozen walls melted, its blocks floating into

happy little puddles of Sunlight

before my very eyes.

You can be the Unicorn; I’ll be the Fairy.

Let the Wicked Witch say what She wants,

But we will always write

Our own fairy tale.

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Poetry

The Story of a Girl – Ugonma Ubani-Ebere

Look forward, don’t be a distraction.
Pull down your skirt, you’ll be a fatal attraction.
Don’t eat too much, your waist will show satisfaction
Don’t be aggressive, be gentle and meek.
Don’t be too ambitious, because the men will freak.
Don’t look up to Mrs. Clinton or Mrs. Obama, because they are anomalies
Look up to Kim Kardashian, that’s a female prodigy
You will always be smart, but don’t appear intelligent
Act like you need a man, don’t act negligent
Remember to act feminine, but don’t be a feminist.
Be a lady, don’t do too much.
Shhhh….don’t be so loud. Bring your voice down to a hush.
Use your body, don’t use your brain?
You want to be a CEO? Have you gone insane?
Never stand up to a man.
Your goal is to be married, do you understand?
See that girl over there? Size her up, that’s your competition.
You can never be as good as a man, because the world made that decision.
Hair, nails, makeup must be done to precision.
Find a man with money, so you don’t have to work
Just take care of the kids, and know the difference between a dinner and salad fork.
Be careful and don’t have too many male partners.
1 or 2 will do, but after that you can’t go any farther.
Only men can have sexual conquests, but if you did prepare to face the consequence.
Slut, whore, home-wrecker just to name a few.
Now you know, so don’t say I never warned you.
Be submissive, let a man be a man.
Let him take charge, weaken yourself as much as you can.
Know your place in society, because you got it made
You could be living in a country where women’s rights are a blockade.
Ever since we have been little girls, this has been etched into our psyche
That this is a man’s world, and we are just renting the space, ever so lightly.
But forget what you just read, and remember that a man’s world would not have been possible without a woman’s womb.
There used to be great rulers like Queen Elizabeth, and Nefertiti and Cleopatra who are still etched fabulously in their tombs.
Forget the rules of society, and be who you want to be
Don’t feed into the patriarchal negativity.
Run with the boys, leave your hair a mess.
Wear shorts or jeans, if you don’t feel like wearing a skirt or a dress
Study harder, then graduate top of your class as the very best
Show the world that you can!
And never apologize for not being a man
Always keep striving, and never ever stop.
Surpass all the boys and men, and do what you can to reach the top.
Never apologize for wanting to be seen as an equal.
If they tell you that your story will end because you are too ambitious, too feminist, too independent, or too unstoppable.
Remind them that you are a girl, then write your own sequel.
The story will never end, no matter how hard society tries to break you down.
So sit up straight, or slouch, cross or open your legs, do as you please
But never forget your invisible crown.
You are a queen, but this is not a fairy tale, or some romantic movie to make your toes curl.
This is the true life story of being a girl.
Mother, sister, girlfriend, wife, or daughter
No matter the title, it is up to you to be the author.

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Essay

So You Think You’re a “Meninist” – Alex Esterline

Before you read this article, if you have a problem with feminism (equality of the sexes), then you should probably just leave.

If you keep up with the feminist movement on any forms of social media, you’ve probably heard of the men who denounce the activism in the community by redirecting the issue on the challenges men face in society. Now, I’d like to make clear that their issues do exist. As a feminist, I clearly don’t hate men- as I identify as one- and I benefit from feminism as well. (All genders do). However, anti-feminist movements usually spend so much more time telling us why feminism is the root of all evil than they do helping the men that are discriminated against in society.

The movement I’m referring to is, of course, “Meninism”.

Meninism started as a patriarchal joke on twitter that was backed by a few problematic white boys. They eventually started growing a fanbase and shortly afterwards and turned into a serious movement.

When looking into the foreign world of meninism, it seems their main goal is to completely disregard the patriarchy while perpetuating inequality of the sexes. They also like to complain about issues that may or may not effect them- without actually doing anything about it. Meninists have attempted to re-invent the wheel as they ignore the positive effects feminism has on all genders. This metaphorical wheel, of course, is extremely bumpy.

Meninism’s main issues seem to be body-positivity in men and the unjust expectations of “masculinity”. Both of which are extremely valid points. However, meninism segregates those who could be fighting patriarchal notions (those of which are the source of sexism) alongside each other. Feminism aims to promote equality of the sexes, which is why it benefits other genders as well as women- the oppressed gender.

When meninists come along and turn the issue on themselves (which they will inevitably do), they are removing the focus from the issues that matter increasingly to oppressed women. Meninism would be a wonderful movement if they actually worked towards equality for all genders- the main point they attempt to make, since they immediately equate feminism with misandry.

Meninism as a movement should be rejected on its face because of its misogynistic roots and innate dismissal of structural violence towards women. Remember that feminism is a movement for equality, and distracting from that hurts yourself and others. Misandristic feminism is not feminism, and

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