Handmade Curtains
by Caroline Carpenter
Central Michigan University
by Caroline Carpenter
Central Michigan University
I stitched together our peach colored
beach days with every canary yellow afternoon that we picnicked in the park then hung them across the French doors. Come, my dreary girl, and bask in the same sun that shone on those days when we loved openly, and in the warmth that we created on our own. |
Caroline Carpenter is a fourth-year student at Central Michigan University. During her free time, she loves to travel and spend time with her pugs.
Tom Garback
Emerson College
Imperfect Purple
Emerson College
Imperfect Purple
Don’t look to my eyes, or into them. Look below
them, at these folds of skin. The philosophers said purple was the most perfect color. But maybe all they meant was “perfectly hideous.” And if I wear my glasses while I sleep, will I see my nightmares more clearly? Or will I shatter them and slice my eyelids off? To Get a Grip I wish I could have a mental breakdown instead of dancing on its lurid surface. How can one stand out when the ocean is wide, each wave so tall, each drop so vivid? How does one begin to rise? Where is the moon, its tidal seduction? Pull me, lift me, save me. No. I will do it myself. But I feel entirely incapable of communicating. What’s an artist if not a translator for private information? Skye, Versailles, don’t you see my silhouette over the surf? Don’t leave me here alone, unheard, unseen. For is not introversion the sensitive man’s perversion? I used to relish my loneliness. It was my protection. But now the rapids have run red. I am crawling for the distant, eroding banks. The water is only a mirror is only a window is only a portal to the other side. Am I stable? I scarcely think it. But I will sustain, and this is enough. A life of stability is hardly one at all. I wish to go mad. Vanity owns the sleepless nights, believe, believe, until you wake with all poise flattened. “Get a grip,” they say, but I don’t want to. I cannot bear to lose any more feeling, even be it thunder. I wish to bear the acrimonious emotions, for while they darken me, they assert, “You are alive.” How did I enter this crisis? Was it the floodgates of a day’s finish? Climax, self-evaluation? I guess my most harmful decision was opening myself to suggestions. We could spend lifetimes with a single thought. Success is a matter of economy, time of luck. So go and give the world a war and artists shall be fed for fifty years. It is in light of our ability to habituate that we are more blissfully emphatic in the changing of the seasons rather than in the midst of them. Forget it, forget it. I wish to sleep, but dread to, a momentary death, as much as I fear dying. Lying in bed, pretending there’s someone next to you, and you speak, embrace, and fall asleep so quickly. |
Tom Garback is pursuing a B.A. in Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College, where he is a reader, copy editor, staff writer, and blogger at various on-campus magazines. His fiction, poems, and essays have been featured in Teen Ink and Oddball Magazine and printed in Generic and Gauge magazines. Tom has been recognized by the National Committee of Teachers of English and has received several accolades through the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.
Tyler Jacobs
University of Nebraska at Kearney
A Portrait of My Mother
i.
My mind wanders back to what we learned on the first day of preschool, discovering who we were by writing our names between the lines. I practiced this every night under the covers with a flashlight so she wouldn’t hear me writing my name between them until there were no more lines to write between. Holding it, arms stretched out, I looked at who I was and it was perfect. ii. I presented her these papers full of my name in pencil and watched her trace every letter with her finger, feeling every indentation of my hard work. She stuck them to the door of the refrigerator, which told me she understood. iii. We had to bring a photo of ourselves to class in third grade and paint a self-portrait. I tucked it inside my copy of Alice in Wonderland to keep the corners from bending because my mom said I had to be careful with it as if it weren't plucked from a pile of me. She said: You have to take care of the memories you have. She said that carrying a photo of yourself was like carrying an image of God. iv. Mrs. Goldfish explained that running paint lines do not suggest flaws within ourselves. But how do I get the hair just right? I asked. Maybe you don’t. v. I would one day paint a portrait of my mother standing in the kitchen of our blue corner house as she complained of numb fingertips. She asked me: Is it all done yet? I stood brushing her invisible locks and let the paint lines run so she would know. Scenes from a Marriage About Which I Know Absolutely Nothing i. We have plenty of sugar packets in the house The white flimsy paper with the blue or pink print Some just read: Sugar They collect in the unused ashtray pocketed from some dinky diner in Utah where beer is rented, not bought She had been the one to teach me that Don’t ask me why we have all these sugar packets in the house Always unused and unmoved until another one is added into the pile from another diner or that coffee place she used to like I once found a salt packet amongst the sugar and wondered if that was the kind of people we were They’re beginning to spill over the thick glass sides of the ashtray with notches where one might rest a cigarette if one wanted to The note she left this morning read: “I was conceived in a cardboard box.” I responded: “Your mother called from the Frigid-Air Inn, no message.” She wrote: “I’ll never know what it’s like to raise a child.” We have plenty of sugar packets in the house and nowhere to ash our cigarettes. ii. I put an address on all the Polaroids of you just to have somewhere to know You’ve left the flowers in the vase way too long that the water is a murky green like those old and empty grocery store neon lights you like so much Reclaimed and restored above a tap house that can’t spell I vomit outside of it I watch the bartender hose off the sidewalk as I collect my car the next morning She isn’t pleased and I feel bad It rains here infrequently and the leaves crunch under our feet And stick to our backs when we would lie down in the browning fall grass and I would rest my head upon your lap as you read out loud from On the Road by Jack Kerouac The Original Scroll and not the novel because it showed the true love that they had for living “The only people that changed the world were the ones that never yawned,” I said. You then looked down at me and asked what my favorite part of Nebraska was I responded: “Leaving it behind.” I found all that somewhere I wanted to know in a shoebox on the closet floor and you were still the address written so long ago Suspended in some forgotten moment in time I wondered if that broken watch really did have powers. From the voice in the radio that played like ghosts when the records stopped spinning I heard a midwestern resemblance of a forgotten son and I thought of Neal Cassady and the father he never knew That one memory As if the rest of our lives didn’t need to be there. iii. Our ancient selves said to one another: “What will we do?” “Sit on sorrow, I think.” He snuck cigarettes in the stairwell having known she would never descend to the cold dark depth that is the basement Where dripping had been heard without sign of sight of leaks--euphoria That perturbed her. He came to the same conclusion towards the end of every Benson and Hedges cigarette he smoked: “There are no bridges here.” He would turn off his cigarette in the ashtray and proceed back up the stairs covered in yellowing linoleum And he folded the towel he used to block the smell of smoke neatly and set it long ways at the top step In the kitchen he poured himself a cup of coffee and sprinkled some yellow dust over top, where it settled and was mixed by sloshing about He sat on the living room floor with his back braced against the sofa where he sometimes thought about going out for a pack of smokes in the middle of the night But she knew he didn’t smoke anymore The romance of that gesture a waste He awoke to the sound of sitcom laugh tracks and cheap jokes and then went back to enjoying his meltdown into oblivion The 21st Century junkies are not the same as yesterday’s junkies They sleep with their wallets under their beds. Poking Holes in Butter Dish Lids In the way back tippy-toe corner of the cupboards next to the plastic cups is a childhood version of myself The empty butter dish containers that I wash and, without thought, place in those cupboards above the plates are habits inherited from my father In his cupboard, among the unused bakeware, I find myself tucked away inside a sealed butter dish—like the ones that line his countertops There are remnants of me all over his house Bookshelves full of outgrown books about sharks and dinosaurs and insects, photos taken with disposable cameras of my brother and me, and dry Wilson leather catching only spiderwebs The hole in the plaster of the kitchen ceiling where I lit fireworks is the only memory not found hidden in the dark corners of the kitchen cupboards and under envelopes held together by rubber bands that fill the junk drawer This year, I tell my brother, I’m going to learn to be patient with our father With little left to say, we return to our own lives We were young once, licking leaves and sticking them to our skin as if we could absorb their powers We chased our shadows to the playground where my father explained all the swear words that were written in black marker on the inside of the spiral tube slide I asked if we could call the number, as if we weren’t having a good enough time He said: "No" “Why?” I asked And it was left at that. Next year, I negotiate with myself, I’m going to learn what his silence means For now, I check the cupboards of every single father for a glimpse at what they keep in the way-back poking holes in butter dish lids just to breathe |
Tyler Michael Jacobs lives in central Nebraska and attends the University of Nebraska at Kearney where he is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English Writing, with a minor in Creative Writing. “Scenes from a Marriage About Which I Know Absolutely Nothing” received the award for Outstanding Poetry in the 2019 Student Conference on Language and Literature for the Department of English at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. His poetry has appeared in The Carillon (2019) and Poached Hare and is also forthcoming in The Carillon (2020).
Cameron Monteith
Carnegie Mellon University
North Dakota
Carnegie Mellon University
North Dakota
the long and lonely pastures
of grass and wheat and grain with the occasional jut from mountains of sediment or canyons the color of melted crayons there lies my friend who knows more brands of whiskey than the names of his grandkids we went hiking to get outside and away for a while trekking through these cold Black Hills hills my friend said he'd wandered through before in these hills he now got us lost in we went looking for a path back to where we were before sparse spruce and ponderosa pine blossoming chartreuse among the rock yarrow and wormwood shouting out and empty gopher holes carving the ground like constellations and when searching there came a distant buffalo five feet of brown fur six inches of horn and four hooves approaching breathing heavy and hard clouds into the chilled air with small steps I met the buffalo as did the creature with me until we were six feet from each other from underneath the dirt standing still intoxicated staring deep my friend yelled at me some hundred feet back ignoring the buffalo saying he found the road and then proceeding to lose it again later telling me six bottles in that he had lied about finding the road creating the lie out of fright The Creek the soft rush the biting cold toes upon the iridescent pebbles underneath it all comes back to me steadily the leg hairs waving down below the algae breathing squished and then resounding collecting upon the shore the trickling of the gentle stream the chirps above tiny minnows nibbling carrying along and the fur of tender beast meeting, touching the banks so far granting me the shore i bend down to feel the freeze between the webs of my fingers and the soft rush, the biting cold soars towards me leaving me again |
Cameron Monteith is an undergraduate studying at Carnegie Mellon University. He is native to Texas and likes to write underneath the dry winter sun. His legs hurt from being a runner-up in local poetry competitions. He also prefers cats to dogs and fish to cats
Camryn Myers
East Carolina University
Breathing Dirt and Drowning in Mud
East Carolina University
Breathing Dirt and Drowning in Mud
I feel it in the static spaces between my bones
And there are words crawling up my throat I swallow them with another pill My body is growing slower and The freezing bits in my shoulders unthaw But I feel the thump in my chest It taunts me “You’re alive.” Am I really, though? I can feel the ground pulling at me, I can feel my breaths mingle with dirt And I can taste what it feels like to be losing It tastes like milky mud and another pill. Are You Listening to Me? Do you ever feel like a fraud? Telling pieces of stories and chunks of nothings Because every night I’m wrapped too tight In this feeling that I’ll never get out the truth Sputtering half-wholes and pretty, bow-adorned almost-lies Never sure what to tell because do I even believe it myself? Trying not to scream too loud inside my head And asking myself to please let it go again But these things always resurface And I don’t want anyone to notice When I’m thinking here in crimson-dried blood And stinging with feeling going numb And I don’t know how to tell anyone that I’m choking on my own words Collecting them like used lighters in the bottom of my purse |
Camryn Myers is a bisexual poet from North Carolina, where she attends East Carolina University. She is an English and English Education major and plans to minor in Creative Writing
Maddie Rhodes
Le Moyne College
Mixed Personalities
(a Diptych)
Le Moyne College
Mixed Personalities
(a Diptych)
Playground
I can feel you looking me up and down my legs as slides, my chest monkey bars. Your hands greet me assuming people play here often. You act as if we are familiar but what distorted funhouse mirror of chivalry are you looking into? My mother didn’t raise me as yours did. Treating people the way I want to be treated won’t stop you from groping my hips when you hold the door for me. I hope you don’t receive a participation award for the recreational sport you are desperately trying to be involved in. You dismiss my disdain like a child does when her mother calls her back inside for dinner. Did I interrupt your game? I was taught I don’t have to include everyone or play nice with others, especially catcalling strangers the age of my father. My body was not built for your entertainment. Your mother won’t bandage your dignity when wood chips under my swings leave splinters. |
Cleaning Myself has Become a Chore
I take my clothes off once I’m behind the curtain. The water asks what I want to wash away. I say everything. On the tile I watch water hit my lower stomach. My back talks to the floor. The tile tells me water can’t wash away that. The nozzle utters it’s my face’s turn. I beg, I shriek not my makeup but relentless drops undress me to the core. I turn the dial to boil parts I don’t like. What vanishes is the reflection in the mirror. My towel wraps twice around, mumbles you used to be proud. I try plugging my ears with water. Still, I overhear the figure in the mirror. She confidently echos my faults, but I can’t remember the last time I looked myself in the eye. |
Maddie Rhodes is an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing at Le Moyne College. Being in college has transformed her emotionally (not always for the better) so that she empathizes with others as she never did before. She hopes these poems speak to readers as much as they express her deepest self.
Madison Whatley
Saint Leo University
The Last Cup of Vegan Ramen
Saint Leo University
The Last Cup of Vegan Ramen
I want to juice
my body down to the pulp. This vegan miso soup tastes like bathwater, but it’s all that’s left. What will I do when the oodles run dry? Probably dye my hair indigo, and forget to eat again for a while-- forget while I dance to Sorority Noise at Revolution Live. Acid scorches the back of my throat. I skip meals, hop on the treadmill, like this is fine! My magnolia branch arms are fine! My desiccated hair and nails are fine! I am a recovering HHH cheerleader. I am told the "H" stands for "ho." Self-Portrait as a Spider I create my own beauty, working for myself. Spectators only react by the screeching of their primitive hearts. With all my eyes, I miss not the hateful glares, balled fists, white knuckles. They see my carnage-- zero in on me but miss the details. They do not find my beauty to be worth the risk. I am a threat to their comfortable evenings spent watching college football, slurping Blizzards. My friends in the dark will surely surprise them. They cower at the truth buried in their consciousness: I am taking what I need. |
A native of Hollywood, Florida, Madison Whatley is a Saint Leo University undergraduate specializing in Literary Study. Her poetry has been published in Furrow, Chomp, Shelia-Na-Gig Under 30, and 30 N.