Category: Volume X

Bright Nights City Lights, Jackie Phuong Ta   I can’t find the words  that won’t escape my lips to reach paper.  Setting up equipment feels unreal,  even creating content doesn’t feel natural enough  with all the chaos in the world.  A break is needed and that’s okay,  mentally you don’t want to be here in this…

Midnight Blossoms, Sydney Walker pandemic – (of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world. I.this year the cherry blossom trees bloom later than they ever have.what does that mean except that we are holding our breath? II.the woman in Food City coughs when she passes and I light a candle somewhere,that blue center, deep lungs. we don’t love…

Phoenicopteridae Urbana, Jaxon Ke’anoi Bonsack The Atlantic Surfers sprawled on their backs waiting for the sun to dry them out. Layers peeling in long strips. Just like sun-dried tomatoes. Stringy hair caught in the drain of the outdoor shower. Slinking into the pipes below them. Seagulls picking off their next victims in this summer of…

ano nakikita Mo?, harana On Monday the carrots mom packed me were soggy and grey where their shoes should’ve been. I threw them to seagulls and Ms. Villin kept me after class, telling me I was ungrateful. I looked for God in the classroom ceiling, but he didn’t show up. On Tuesday I gave my…

Late Onset Adolescence, Breck Hickman you’re cutting beets grownin someone else’s garden andyou look at your hands, staineda deep magenta, and you knowthe shadow will remainafter your attempts to wash it off. is this what it meansto fall out of love? is this what it meansto be afraid of death,the real one, the oneof forgetting? you…

Untitled, Julia Sub for Lola Tita and another to water the three potted plantson the shoe rack, stalk of baby bamboopricked by cactus and shaded by heartleaf,all of it garden enough. it is one thing to eat and another to feast,my Lola always our savior,erasing the thin of our wrists withpizza on paper plates and…

Eclipsed, Scott Gathright Because we drove pastThat crack in the highwayWhere a glimpse, a bone-clenchedFistful of pennies, of locked doors,Pressed hard, thumbed insistentlyInto who I thought I am.Was gone before I could winkAway flares it leftOn my sight, Implications.Violet, vindictive spotsThat will never leave:That is a promise.Because that crackIn the highwayHid waste Hid guiltHid sin-Hid uglyHid hungryHid rottenHid…

Little Architect, Natasha Hirt Solemn willow, sole witness to tea party stragglers left under a leaking sky. Cups of porcelain dribble coffee childishly mimed as sweet nectar and tea laden with nonexistent ripples of honey. Copper spoons morph to peeling brown and teal, corroding under the dripping ceiling of draped foliage. A soggy lion and…

Pink Creek, Louise Rossiter The wind      that daywas an irate infantan infant beset with colic tempestuous and tyrannical raging and wailing displeasure grasping and pulling and pushingup, then down, then sidewayshowling for attention a terror, to be sure especially for anyone who had yet to encountersuch voracious and single-minded determinationto be inconsolable  …

Rust Rorschach, Timothy Embertson   if i put my foot to the floor or take the turn just rightthe horizon will swallow this ought-to-be-ghost town. watch: i slip out through the teeth of that mawand chase the stars in the endless wide out-there,dodging leering eyes at desert rest stopsand waking stiff-necked in the backseat.  watch:…

War is Over, Ernest Volynec Today’s spent echoing the beagleas I keep watch from the window,assessing each speck of land of thisplace called home or territory ormemory, each plot of maple, juniper,japanese plum, the latest implant thatnever took and the wisest, sickest trunkof them all. When she’s inside, shetries to dig. When she’s outside,she digs and…

Rome is the City of Echoes, Gabe Montesanti You hated the flowers. I tried to hate them too. Can you see decay entering the frameof our picturesque domestic landscape? I am a creature of images, brief appearances.I try to save myself from second sight. Living this way is a small matterof deferring and deferringrecognition, which means…

A Very Long Party In Green, Li Anne Liew  Lives in a clear plastic bin below my childhood bed, neighbors with decades-old stuffed teddies and virgin candles gifted to me for my Confirmation, because I could never bear to throw them away. I’d scribble over the pages of collaged bible verses if I could, pressure the…

Monochrome, Emma Lassiter Anyways, I’ve been thinking about going for a swim. I have been researching lakes and bodies of water. I am uncompromising and precise in my analysis of them from 3000 miles away. There is a way it ought to be: a crystal perpetually stuck in the moment it is turned to liquid. It…

A Slow Decay, Ashley Webster My substitute mom massaged her threading hands As substitute dad typed religiously on his Blackberry She claimed I was finally ready for my soccer game and even asked me how I liked it I dragged myself over the hotel counter to stare into the mirror  At the heart protruding out of…

Whispers, Emily Bryn Author’s note: In CMSCI  449: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, students were assigned to write a natural language processing program that would generate commencement speeches. The result was authentic English, and although some sentences did not portray logical thought, others were rather profound. After playing around with different seeds and generating different speeches, the…