Tag Archives: writing

Poetry

Capgras Delusions and You (The Body) – Matt Grydzuk

Degauss the stars like cathode ray tubes using only your hands

The body first thinks explicitly in omens, or foretelling the end of things

Sleep less than intended; corporeality was tailor-made for you.


The body is just a suggestion, though, like the outline of existing

Akin to the stars lacking crystal clear imagery yet making shapes

Yet causing images in the night

And I sat and watched them unfold, shaking mildly, how beautiful.


How beautiful, the suggestion of form;

The existence of existence

Like wisps of stardust off the tips of your fingers and the rest of your outline

You are a degaussed constellation.


How beautiful the burning sensation; the smell

How beautiful destroying the innards

Like dying stars or a comet moving faster and then it’s gone

Creating outlines creating memories making

Sentences with your movements but no words.


How beautiful linguistics; complete sentences with two independent clauses

Intertwined to make the sun rise.

Watch it leave you like blood from the mouth, like stardust from the nose and eyes.

All other things beautiful like the suggestion of an outline; like actually falling asleep.


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Poetry

The Positivity in Glass Jars – Brooke Safferman

Four jars made of glass, lined up on my window sill

The mint green, 

the pale rose, 

the totally clear, 

the almost-purple.

The way the light shines through them makes me giggle

Sort of like the way your smile shines through my emotional walls of glass

Once so strong, now I’m so fragile

Your delicate touch could crush me with too much force(accidentally)

“Stay positive”, they say

So I draw on a smile with my lipstick tube but

Before I leave my room to enter the world

I pause to look at the positivity in glass jars.

 

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Poetry

Meta-cognition explained in Lithuanian (The Head) – Matt Grydzuk

The head

Chiefly, where pre-calculus goes to die.

And truthfully I don’t know much else about it, but I do know,

Or remember, that my mother told me always to be grateful

For what you have.

And I can’t say I was

Because so many self-inflicted head traumas starts to pile up when nothing

You do is perfect and you have to blame SOMEONE and

Knowledge of chlorophyll is always dying and you’ve never had a green thumb

Next thing I know my head is a graveyard and sometimes I kick over eternal lights to watch

The information flowing out like candle wax like

This is grey matter flowing through eye sockets like this

Is the way they wanted you to be when they called you stupid

Like you can live up to one thing if you just try hard enough

And when it hardens; becomes crystalline

If you hurled it at a man how far would he go

I still haven’t forgotten Newton’s second law or anything about Schroedinger

But what does that even matter

The Head

Chiefly, a device to move the body.

To tell it what to do.

But for every move this way and that there’s an eyelid twitch or a muscle spasm

Bartering, the product of battery indentured to the head my body is never my own but

I wouldn’t know

I’m sorry.


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Poetry

I Reside Explicitly on Jackson Square – Matt Grydzuk

In the seventh grade I didn’t know I could like boys yet.

So when everyone else started dating

I spent my time idly liking this girl.

I asked her to dance once.

She was much taller than me and this altercation

dangled the notion of beauty overhead in every way like shitty dime store streamers scotch taped around the sistine chapel.

I stared into her eyes as the night fell apart and I was petrified to marble

Because there was pity in their dark recesses and in contrast

I was like

A monumental statue

Designed to fill

the negative space

in the worst possible way.

For the first time I felt ugly.


You never get called fat to your face anymore

it’s just particles of pollution

like acid rain eroding a statue.

So I am less afraid of being fat and more paranoid

because you cannot dodge glances and you cannot dodge concrete floors and statues don’t float

Thus I am not afraid of swimming, but I am afraid of the social implications of swimming pools.


What happened

To the era where “skinny” and “beautiful” were not synonyms

Where people like me were dashing and handsome and

Were depicted as

Grand marble statues that

reached up toward the sky in an air of grandeur

People have always implied

That I should take up less space but there is nothing authentic about me that

is not large and loud and in your face.

My body is no temple

It is a cathedral

Much too large for its initial purpose but it occupies the space it is given and it

extends infinitely toward the sky and

when people gaze upon it they are in awe of its beauty within and without

it occupies

the space

it

is

given.

I am constructed from stained glass and concrete and the bottoms of empty cartons of ice cream.

I don’t know what it’s like to not be fat.

But I do know what it’s like to be beautiful.


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Prose

the adventure I wish I could have – Elena Barrera-Waters

spring break, I’m flooded with everyone’s pictures.
all of their shots of the waves at the beach,
or of the castles or the food of the new country they’re visiting, 
or the ski lifts above those gorgeous green pines.

it’s a little bit hard,
to be able to submit my own to this
grand collection of memories when I know that you
won’t get yours.

it’s not my fault, i know that.
but more than anything, I wish you were here.
I wish you were my adventure, 
or at least a part of it.
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Poetry

Something Like Poetry – Brooke Safferman

 

Something like poetry,

Like magic,

You are the music that swells in the emptiness of my ears,

The spaces of my ribcage, and that of my fingers

 

You are the person who taught me that all I ever knew was incomplete

There is so much more to life than just drowning

I could be surviving, or more than that, even,

I could be living! I could be breathing!

Existing is far more than just going through the motions

Undulation, Premeditation

Acting on impulse, you said, can be a healthy thing

 

So I put down my books and searched for my smiles

Reached deep down within to find something I would have sworn

Was never there to begin with

But you proved me wrong –

Somewhere hidden under the treasure chest of the past

The heartaches more foreign than I’d care to admit made me feel more Guilty than Self-Reliant and the memories,

too painful to remember, yet too intoxicating to forget

I had a another treasure chest

One full of joy, one that the shadows of history could never wrap up as the fog rolls in

 

 

Previous loves, hopefulness turned sour, like a slice of lemon curdling the last few drops of sweet milk

I close my eyes and imagine your fingertips dancing upon the lace of my undergarments

I inhale with equal parts vulnerability and ultimate control and its like you’re right here all over again

Whispering the things in my ear that could bring any cold soul back to life

From a state of permafrost to that of permanent bliss

And as I wrap the scrunchie around my wrist

I think of all the ways I could tell you that I love you

But none of the words could do it right, other than “ineffable” 

So the best way I could describe the way I feel about you

Is that to me you mean

Something like poetry.

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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.

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Prose

the back of a book I will never write – Karlee Sanders

you know that feeling when you step outside for the first time on a snowy morning? that awe-striking moment when you can’t breathe because of the intensely fresh air flooding into your lungs? well, that’s what he was to me. he was my breath of fresh air. he was my new start. and honestly, nothing else mattered

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Prosetry, Short Story

The Time You Set Your House on Fire – Samantha Forsyth 

Put off by the smell of gasoline. It was hard to ask yourself to abhor your senses. To walk out of the front door without saying goodbye and disregard the dizziness when you smelt the petrol. It’s the feeling of breaking your own nose with movements quick and uncontrolled when you were running through the hallways, and now you’re pouring a trail that starts and ends out the front door. You’re unsatisfied just being happy. 

It’s not enough until it’s burnt. Until you can see a fire consume itself in real time. Your mother makes you breakfast everyday in that house and your father shares the paper with you. You won’t ever have to worry about losing them again because you know you’ll be able to keep the ashes if you decide you want to. Now you can run your fingers through every memory of early childhood and bathe in the question of permanence. Stand before the destruction you’ve created. 

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Prose

Don’t Look at That Boy From Across The Room – Alex Esterline

Don’t look at that boy from across the room. I don’t care how many times you tell yourself that you’re just curious, or that you just want to take a glance, because a glance will always ruin you.

Don’t stare at that boy from across the room. Because that boy’s eyes might be a little too different from anything you’ve seen before, and you might look for too long. You’ll start to notice the color of his eyes, and the shape of his lips. And if you look for too long, you might see more than his eyes.

Don’t smile back at that boy from across the room. He’s going to flash you that smile. The one you don’t quite know yet, but still the one that will cause you to throw your head back and laugh alongside him. It’ll be the one that makes everything around him seem dull. Because that smile is when you ride the biggest roller coaster first, and then everything else becomes tame.

Don’t talk to that boy from across the room. Because that boy is going to talk to you. And his voice is going to be that feeling you get when you hear a great song on the radio, but you never can quite figure out what it is. His voice is going to be a constant chorus stuck in your head in the middle of class. And you’ll be begging for more.

Don’t let that boy from across the room get close to you. He’s going to sit next to you one day, and move his leg so it just barely touches yours. He’s going to ask you for high fives after he makes his stupid jokes that are going to make you smile. You’ll high five him and feel the warmth of his hand for just a little longer than what would seem normal. You’ll then both pull away slowly out of fear. This time, you won’t be able to forget about the way his hand felt and the feelings that lead up to it. And you’re going to start noticing his smile, and when he’s laughing at something that’s so stupid and doesn’t make any sense, you’ll notice his smile. And when you notice his smile, you’re just going to give in and start cracking up alongside him. You’ll both look like complete idiots but you will not care. 

Don’t go to the movies with that boy from across the room. Soon, you’ll both sit down, almost late to the movie, because he was so confident he could win that stuffed animal- if he could “just have one more shot at it”. You’re going to sit down with him and laugh and make jokes at the previews for movies to come. You’re going to realize that this movie is a little scarier than he led you to believe. Soon, you’ll find out that this was his plan all along. You’ll probably find out when he takes your hand, or when he gently places his hand on your leg, rubbing his thumb back and forth. When you realize that he didn’t put anything on the cup holder in between you two, he’ll pull you close to him. 

Don’t go to that boy’s house after the movie. He’ll take your hand and lead you through the house. You’ll pass his mom, who’s going to love you like your own mother. But he’ll leave no time for introductions, he tells her that you two are tired. You’ll walk into his room, looking around. You’ll have no time to sightsee, however, because he’ll turn off the lights quickly, and the room will be just slightly brighter than the movie theater. He’ll tell you to sit on your bed and he’ll get you some clothes to sleep in, he says. He gets you the clothes which you put on. You’ll notice they’re baggy, but they feel comfortable. He’s going to sit you down on the bed and hold your hands. You’ll look at each other and see the pattern of the moonlight from the blinds dividing his pale skin into glowing lines.

Don’t let that boy kiss you. Because he will kiss you. You’re going to notice his face coming closer. He’s going to use his hand to push back your hair. And he’s going to lean in fast, and kiss you softly. And then you’ll both get that feeling in your back, sending alarms throughout your entire body. He’s going to keep kissing you, his lips growing stronger and more secure as every second passes. Eventually, he’ll lay you down without taking his lips off of you. The kissing will die down as you both try and suppress your laughter. He’s going to lust after you and keep leaning in, but you’ll be smiling so widely he’s going to have no option but to laugh at you. And you’ll think to yourself “thank god I looked at this boy from across the room.”

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