Tag Archives: writer

Poetry

Human Nature – Ivy Juniper Manchester

“Even the mighty succumb to human nature.
There is no beating the beating of our hearts,
No defeating the monsters we bred,
The demons we define as thoughts,
The poisonous lies dipped in honey
Which we so arrogantly accept as honesty.
We cannot overcome that which makes us strong,
Simply because we believe it makes us weak.
There is no denying emotion that we feel so fervently,
Simply because we fear its strength.
We cannot run from ourselves,
And we cannot be brave if we fear ourselves.
Despite the notion that we are invincible,
We cannot defeat ourselves.”

Standard
Poetry

on space junk and stars – Ivy Junpier Manchester

“If the universe was more celestial than theory and technicality, 

you would be the Sun, 

and I? 

the moon, 

mere space rubble, 

waiting to be illuminated by your presence. 

A collection of asteroids clash, 

Showering meteorites, 

And even Halley’s heart melts. 

You make Earth, Pluto, 

Billions of people 

deprived of you, 

Stuck in winter, 

missing what they never knew, 

forever craving the idea of you. 

you swear 

on Jupiter or whatever god you believe in, 

I’m different, 

but I’m no one, 

another fan, 93 million miles away, 

still imagining our fates intertwined, 

like every constellation, 

spelling out your name. 

And there goes the story 

of nobody’s star.

Standard
Poetry

Search for Equilibrium – Haley Ingram

Keep calm.

Remain vigilant.
The throbbing in your lungs means nothing
To the gasping breath
Of your heart.
Each cracked burn on your
undead fingertips
Kiss the surface of heated glass
Inflaming your throat
Neck bent at exactly 45 degrees
You cringe and smile.
Your teeth eroded from the love I thought you carried in every undefined
Empty space in your body.
The acid creeping up the outside of your veins.
Vexation and tribulation scratching, crying, screaming, kicking.
Providing you with enough fluidity to drown,
But they are just holding hands.
Just as we used to when we were content with confinement.
When we were young. Foolish. We grew like the grass we whispered our dreams into and the dandelions I caressed against my cheeks to show you how gentle life can be.
And the kisses we’d exchanged like a currency of requited endearment meant nothing by the time I was meant to be maintained while you,
You just never grew.
You haven’t grown anything since the day I gave you the seed
I planted it in your heart,
See, its just for you please let my
Blooms nip at the disease you clog
Their stems with.
You hopeless tyrant.
You water them with the distaste of alcohol.
Keep calm.
Remain vigilant.
Our hands may have branched off
But my lungs never stopped beating for you
And every exhale my heart takes
Prepares me for an inhale of you captivation.
Petals may shatter like the shards of glass
You insist on gardening with
But you’ve never had the greenest thumbs
In fact you’re irately purple
Go outside
Take a moment
Breathe.
Lift your hands to the clouds reach for the time escaping us at every given second-
I can’t comprehend never being there on time
To hold you.
Pill popping may be just as sweet as the innocence you once had or the sanity I protected but that was stolen from us
And you’ve never felt more violated
From me grabbing your hips,
Or Tasting your body.
Because I don’t even have a tongue to say the words I’ve never thought.
Mouth sewn shut
Remain vexed
Calm keepings
You molested my smile and gave it a new name
You called it beauty.
You dismantled the arbitrary seclusion
Of my sanity
Your cold lifeless hands
Choking me
Oxygen is a privilege
To my skin
And you try to hold my hand
But I just can’t give this trepidation
A fair shot.
I kiss my own hands better than anyone
Who has ever held them
I’m rotting at your touch
The abyss of your fingerprints
You burn my flesh
You stunt my growth
I drown in ignorance
So blissful
I tend to my flowers with broken glass
Cut the stems
Force the alcohol into their system
The bitter taste on my lips are not the words I’ve never said
Rather than the words I regret to have ever spoken
Pills sprout a new flower they help me
I am slitting my airways and drowning my veins.
Keep calm.
Remain vigilant.
Standard
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.

Standard
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

Standard
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.

Standard
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.

Standard
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.

Standard
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.

Standard
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

Standard