‘The Inviolable It’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

The Inviolable It

Her anger always boils over just before supper,
manifested in a single nonsensical utter.
She pricks and pries and searches and seeks
to articulate her innards before the words fretfully retreat.
Those words, however, are indeed very sneaky.
They scutter and hide and run like jumping mice, real squeaky.
Lingering just long enough to maintain the belief
that there’s an explanation for her inconsolable grief.
For if an explanation doesn’t exist,
some forgotten reason she’d somehow missed,
if there’s no seed for which this gnarled tree was sown,
how is the girl to untangle its rotted-out roots, it’s merrowed bone?
How is she meant to stomach it all,
the microwave meals, the sacrilegious sex, the quiet phone call
from the silent home where they all know
he's lying in wait, a broken pistol loaded with ammo?
The nights in which she cradles herself to sleep,
heaving with cries?
She does better than her mother ever could
and more than her father would even try.
How is she to stomach it all when it sits in her lungs and squeezes at her heart
and punishes her liver when she attempts to flush it out?
When it’s mixed into the blood that pours from her knees,
from being all-too-much in a stranger’s backseat?
When it weighs down her limbs and leaves her huddled up in the shower,
wishing to God that the one washing the sadness out of her scalp was not herself,
but her mother?
How is she to stomach it when It is herself,
It is who she is, It is her destiny laying dusty on the shelf?
When will the words come to her softly
and finally admit what they’ve been avoiding so awfully?
When will they admit that her language, her suffering, her YUCK,
is not a possession or extension that she keeps in her pocket,
but rather a facet of herself for which she has been sewn together?
By uncareful, rough, uneven hands, an awfully plain, old, cruel endeavor.

Hannah Messer is a current undergrad at the University of Southern California. She is studying Pre-law and English to eventually venture into politics and work as an attorney. A lover of words, Hannah will someday retire to the mountains to write.

‘Eclipse’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Eclipse

you awake in a bush
the road, deepening to a crisp orange around the cracked clay and gravel,
stretches its curving spine over the
heat-laden heaps of jaundiced grasses
hips and elbows and buttocks of fertile dirt
in it burrows mice and vole
you can hear their hearts pumping beneath
the substrate
timid feet skittering through veins of earth

you’re planted on the soil, toasting under an emptying sky
you’re naked, crescent flare boring into your drooping back
starting between stooped shoulders
your pores well with reflective beads
thousands of wet eyes to see the blackening hole
coils of smoke slither up from the sparse trees
that you can see, the vertebrae reaching for cloudless
cerulean that purples as it meets the dirt
rippling with warmth and sagebush
all these shadows trembling in foretaste

your fingers and toes are knotty branches
brittle from drought and hot shale
there’s a distance between you and them
a rift in your senses
swaying like the aspen and limber pine as you rise
an Almeh astray in ardent orange and dusty saffron
timber to singe and turn to skeletal ash
there is no white to your eyes
in the sand you scrape a garden of footprints towards
the water, a flat Shangri-La beyond the expanse
rainbows and redbands swim corridors and chasms
sparrows greet the steam writhing off the surface

you drag your sack of bones and muscle
weary under the might of a waning sun ligaments and sockets thrust and strain
such a machine, desperately following the valley road
so mortal, the gouge in the earth that plunges to her
swelling cobalt blood

your feet reach the shore
followed by knees and elbows and ribs
obedient soldiers to the fatigue
you watch the crescent grow atop the water
as rays descend like gallow branches
a hollow reckoning gapes in the sky
surrounded by glowing lips as the humps and canyons
begin to blue and cool
you scoop it into your florid palms
and drink the empty sun.

Autumn Farmer is an artist and writer studying Creative Media at Champlain College. Throughout her time on earth, she has used poetry as a coping mechanism and way of documenting every day life, however exciting or mundane. She has had several poems published in the Rutland Herald, as well as a creative nonfiction essay in the North Dakota Quarterly.

‘Tchaikovsky’s Click’, ‘When Does a Boy Become a Snarling Canine?’, & ‘You’re Officially A Woman’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Tchaikovsky’s Click

Fifty-fifth of Swan Lake, Op.20, Act II

Realization settles in the pit of the stomach

                        caressing in a searching manner

                                    in a dreadful spirit —

mix it carefully with two fingers

                        gouge them into the eyes

                                    staring into the mirror.

“Who is he?”

He tries to recall the features that held his gaze mere seconds ago

                                                                                    “I cannot recall my own face.”

He recognizes himself enough times to hold them in the palm of his hand.

“I recognize myself

            I slam a door

chunk a remote

            yell a profanity.

the click in my stomach.

I recognize myself

            I stare at a wreck on the highway

                        pick raw at a hangnail

                                    fantasize about choking—

                        the click in my stomach.

I recognize myself

            in my hands                not my face.

                        They had just gotten into a fight.

                                    That’s what I hope it was.

                        the click in my stomach.

I recognize myself

                        in the carmine and the wine;

            they dance, battered in holy matrimony.

                        the click in my stomach.

I recognize myself and I don’t know if I like it or not.

I recognize myself

                                    in the pupil reflection,

                        a heart to heart

                                    a knife and a hand connection.

                        the click in my stomach.

I recognize myself

                        the weight of me sinking me deeper.

                                                I wouldn’t find a love like this ever again.

                        the click in my stomach.

I recognize myself and I don’t know if I like it or not.

Before I know it,

the click is gone.

I recognize myself

            yearning for return

                                    realization that time stood between the next click.

            whether I like it or not.”

You Are Bare, Let Me Dress You

You can search your home

for something you will not find,

in your full cupboards,

in your wedding beds,

in the palms of your neighbor.

You are bare. Let me dress you.

Without me,

you will find slashes

in every which way upon your back.

It’s your fault for not letting me dress you.

I will gift you soothing rain to rinse your skin

because I am kind and you are bare.

You will pick your scabs,

keep yourself raw and willing

so I may cover them with my own flesh

until you have to pry the skin from yours.

You are bare. Let me dress you.

Will you tense up

or will you not be able to stop yourself from squirming from my grasp?

Why are you shaking?

Stop squirming.

You are bare. Let. Me. Dress. You.

You yearn to be seen.

You yearn to be consumed.

Let. Me. See. You.

Let. Me. Consume. You.

You are bruised and you are battered.

You. Are. Bare. Let. Me. Dress. You.

I will come for you when the time is right,

when you least expect it,

when you least deserve it,

when you don’t even have grey hair yet,

when I need you,

because I’m me and I can do whatever I want.

But for now,

let me dress you.

When Does a Boy Become a Snarling Canine?

When a boy become so hungry

he can’t help but bare his teeth

and threaten the throat of his mother

When a boy no longer quivers

in the face of danger and discernment

and runs to hide behind his father’s leg

When a boy begins to use his pinky nail

to scrap out the muscle of his mates

from the cracks of his bleeding gums

When a boy’s stomach is filled

with any who let him sink his teeth

but time goes on

When does hunger return and only his mother remains?

“You’re Officially A Woman”

I can’t go into that store anymore,

walk in like it’s no big deal,

grab femininity by the twenty-count

and pay an absurd $10.49 just to feel like shit.

Mountains upon mountains of lost opportunity will drown,

and I’ll be left with “a simple stomach ache”

and a craving for something I know isn’t good for me.

Why couldn’t He have just put me in the right one in the first place?

Blood will pour down my leg,

seep and stain into my skin.

Boyhood is slipping through my fingers

and is caught by a heavy flow cotton.

Heat will make me rip off my clothes in the middle of the night,

Your divine creation stranded,           searching for cool relief.

Tears will fill my ears as I am reminded

of what You chose not to give me.

No matter how my clothes hang from my body,

no matter how flat I can get my chest,

no matter how many times he calls me his darling boy,

the blood still remains.

No matter if manhood presents itself on my face,

no matter if I change my name,

no matter if they finally call me their son,

I’ll still have blood stains on my legs.

Jesus Christ,

I CAN’T FUCKING BREATHE IN THIS THING.

Richie Magnia is a student at the University of North Texas, studying Creative Writing and Media Arts. While primarily working as a screenwriter, he got his start in short fiction and poetry. Working in various genres, he is able to meld them together to create cinematic prose and poetic cinema. Themes prominent in his work include: violence in men, cycles within families, and the connection between art and violence. Acting as president, he is the founder of UNT's Screenwriting Camp and has been featured in the North Texas Review, Mantis, and Wingless Dreamer. He can be found on Instagram @richiemagnia.

‘Laundry Manifesto, Unspoken’

Photographic - Tobi Brun

Laundry Manifesto, Unspoken

What comes of a button front shirt

Fluttering in the wind

            On a line

            Dancing like a porcelain

            Girl

            Shining legs exposed

            Brazen in this fertile

            Sun

Taken

            Polished finger

            Tips

            Spreading

            The wooden

            Mouths

Send the

Sheets

Falling

Layed flat

Across warm board

            Fabric touching

            Fabric

Dusting white

Snow

            Shatter to the

            Lapelled

            Collar

            Broken tails

            Of a bombshell

The act of

            So lovingly

Plucking paper

Boxes

Full of the

            Fatal

Powders

To be adorned

            The dressing

            Table

Despise the

Inequity

            Maroon sweater

            Lying

            Unalive

            In the arm chair

            Killed maybe

            By its own

            Cotton membrane?

Spoon the iron

            Killing machine

Burning seams

Flat

To stretch again

            Be pressed level

            Once more

            By another set of

            Of noonly

            Hands

Finally

In my last ditch

Attempt

            Thwarted

            Always

            By the impenetrable

            Steam

            The choking

            Starch

I throw limp

Dusted

man 

            Body absent

Into the

Dryer

Heat up

            Wait patiently

            For it

            To Shrink

Costello Keene is an undergraduate student at Slippery Rock University, where she majors in secondary education English and minors in writing. She has been previously published in multiple young writers' anthologies and acts as the assistant editor for The Slab magazine. Costello has been writing ever since she can remember and could not imagine a world without it.

‘Golden Torus’, ‘The Ceramic Tiger’, & ‘I, Sequoias’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Golden Torus

Juice in the teeth,
eyes concave and dry
Sunday, just before seven
just before the rainstorm ends
industrial cable, color of oil
mixes with the wet leafy green
threaded with the brown of vine
early evening, damp city light
on the shelf, the hole becomes the curve.

The Ceramic Tiger

this moveable statue was already here
when I move in to the place,
this lovely little apartment in New York
she faces the window, and shows her fangs
to the passing weather, seasons and passions
frozen in a rictus growl
my girlfriend had bought it at a bazaar
how bizarre, a reasonable facsimile
that I was here with it now, sharing space
hey eyes are open, set back
so it looks a little sad, a little tired
you would be too – snarling forever
the least I can do, for the soul of the thing
is opening the shades each morning
so the day can move across it, lending motion
I moved in last October, it’s my home too
I’ve found my own station, in comfort
my own poses in which I arrive
and stay awhile, in silent familiarity
the plants, more alive, have less character
candles and forks are useful but not citizens
ultimately, I remain the newcomer
seniority is earned in afternoons
and hierarchy’s color is true
orange and smudges black
white belly and tan
guarding our Brooklyn view forever.

I, Sequoias

Ancient sprouts,
structures looming in glen.
What will they think on me
when I press these temporary
limbs on them?

Matt Gulley is a poet, playwright and fiction writer. He attended Wayne State University in Detroit and currently resides in Brooklyn with his partner Jenna. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Moon City Review, The Madrigal, The Minnesota Review and Consequence Forum. Find him @selfawareroomba on Twitter or @mattgulley.bsky.social on Bluesky.