Inhale

[box]

I have arrived.  I am home.

I am clay.  Shape me. Press me.

I arrive and feel thumbprints, a potter’s wheel spinning on its axis.  Meet a stone on the street, I will swallow it.  Smooth—weighted–past my lips.  Esophagus clenches.  Take it down.  You have pressed heavy gold coins deep into my firm.  I carry them.  I carry you.  I lift myself.

I am repulsive.  I am radiant.  Push your fingers into my body and out my buoyant heart.

I am clay.  Shape me.  Press me.

My self,  She  is box-shaped.  I am made to hold your treasure.  Place your ball of thread, your brass lungs, your purple-bruised eyelids into me.  I am the moment before a breath.  I am a glint of lemon sun.  Do not look at me.  I can only be tasted.  I carry these things within and surround.  I carry them.  I carry you.

I have arrived.  Shape me.

 

By: Alina Pontius[/box]

Tagged : /

Spring

[box]
I whisper at the growing spring,
where she was talking to a garden dog
and were she was seen wearing a blue hat,
when butterflies cried,
and one by one,
fell to the ground.

No joy is in this high western skies,
where the glowing blue moon went,
leaving us in darkness,
frozen.

Here,
as the morning sun sparkles upon I,
who never more thought of time,
thoughts flood my mind,
of the moments when I was restrained
by the unbeatable fact of death.

Funny,
how the summer noon star fast grows-up
as love flies in a little girl’s heart
like twirling music
that lives in the silent rain.
The rain that falls lightly on the blue hat;
that lays beside the owner
of the garden dog
in this whispering spring.

By: Eleonora Beran-Jahn
[/box]

Tagged : / /

Traveller

Have you ever driven your car—to the middle of nowhere, just

to see how lonely you could feel with your knuckles white

against the steering wheel? You don’t even think about it, you

only worry about how fast you’re going, and that even though

you’re going 80, you still can’t help but feel that

the world is

spinning

slower

than it

should.

 

It’s okay, you know, to feel like your lungs can’t find

the air you desire, or if your eyes sting back with hate, or

sometimes, as often as we wish, with love. It’s completely

fine to want to scream until you can’t remember what silence is.

 

It’s deafening.

Maybe you’ve never known the feeling of someone else

piecing out your every being, or telling your secrets until

you’re positive there’s nothing left to hide. Maybe you’ve

never heard another person cry like a poisonous drain, like

seeing someone’s heart break right in front of you.

 

About an hour and a half away from here, so far from here, I

fell in love with the toxic scent of being alive. An hour and

thirty fucking minutes from here, I fell in love with the

roughness of clenched fists, and the wind blowing against

my face like I never even stood a chance, like the world

wasn’t supposed to be spinning faster or slower, like

the world wasn’t even supposed to be spinning

at all.

 

By Caitlin Plathe

My name is Caitlin Plathe and I am a 17-year-old high school student at MOC-Floyd Valley High School in a small town in Iowa. I’ve been an avid reader and writer since I was a little kid, and I honestly can’t imagine doing anything else. Recently, this summer, I was accepted and went to a two-week writing and cultural exchange program at the University of Iowa, which to be quite honest, changed my life. I’m a better writer, and person, because of it. 

Tagged :

The Shanghai Excursion

Wreathed in white space,
I ask you
To stencil me in

 

(teach me the ways
of the modern woman)

..
…..
……….
……………….
……………………..
……………….
……….
…..
..

And you

All but refuse. for

futile is the woman
who cannot strut about
a crowded east-asian fish market
in six-inch stiletto heels.

hawkers may beckon,
but she remains a miserly vale.
no tip, no bag, no purchase:
you, seller. you clearly rigged the scale.

1,000% discount and counting,
she saunters away,
balances a tottering tray of dimsum
with a menagerie of goldfish:
polite curios for the little cousins.

(At the end of the New Year celebrations,
She’ll be in charge of clearing out
The fish tank in
Remarkably inauspicious
Black bags.)

in a city where six-hour grocery trips
are the norm,
more futile is the woman
who smells of fresh tilapia
at the end of said time interval.

(six times sixty
is three-sixty, did you know that?)

and – and –
in case you’ve forgotten:

most futile
is the woman
who cannot taste a rhetorical question

at the tip of her own tongue

 

Tagged : /

Ekphrasis (The Portrait)

Visual art by Sana Liu

The portrait is done. I eat
A sandwich, down a coffee,
Break my fast.

Halfway through the third croissant,
The girl in the painting –
She’s a striking girl, with wry lips
And gray eyes –
Suddenly parts her lips
And speaks.

I don’t remember my childhood,
She murmurs. I have lanky arms
And a moony face and all I do

All day long is sit in an oil painting
And grimace at this paltry flower.
I must’ve lost my memories
After someone pushed me
Down a gorge.

Did you fish me out?
To which I reply,

No. I down another coffee,
Grab my paintbrush,
Blot her lips.

She faces the sky now,
A wayward diverge,
The long and unbroken dirge.

 

 

Tagged : /

Apocalypse

Visual art by Jahaira Anaya 
There is an earthquake
in her chest
every time she exhales and you can feel it
ruining you.
You are slowly
falling apart
the gale force wind of each of her breaths
widening cracks in your skull
behind your ears
And every time you
hear her voice
the aching in your chest
can’t mean anything but
your imminent demise
and no one ever said it would hurt so much.
But these are
end times
and all the rules are changing
the beat of your heart is a
	time	bomb and nothing
is making
contact
clutching fingers
	and searching lips
and there is no more
air in your lungs
or maybe we’re running out of oxygen.
She digs her
	fingers into your hips as if
she’s gonna tear you
in
two
and you could almost believe it
so maybe the thing to do
is
	curl your fingers
around the
		curve of her
	jaw
and hold on
	until the	tremors
			stop.
Tagged :

D Minus 39

Visual Art by Austin Starr King

[box]
Dante Yardas is student at Idyllwild Arts Academy. His poem was selected as a winner in the Parallax-Online Apocalypse writing contest.[/box]

— Dad?
— Yeah, buddy?
— How many stars are there?
— Eight hundred thirty-two.
— That’s a lot of stars.
— The people at the star factory put them there.
— The star factory?
— Remember how there’s the food factory, and the clothes factory, and the water factory, well, there’s also a star factory.
— How do they make them so bright?
— Just like how they make fireworks.

— Dad?
— Yeah, buddy?
— What makes the grass green?
— Pixie dust. Magical pixies sprinkle shiny dust on the grass to make it green.
— How come I haven’t seen them before?
— They always do it in the nighttime, when everyone’s sleeping.
— Well then, why is the grass so brown then?
— They’re on vacation.

— Dad?
— Yeah?
— How come we always eat food out of cans?
— Because the best kind of food comes out of cans.
— How come we used to eat food from the market, but now we don’t?
— Because the market closed down.
— How come we didn’t eat food that came out of cans before the market closed down, but now we do?
— …
— How come we aren’t magical?
— We are magical. We are very, very magical.

— Dad?
— Yeah?
— Why don’t you work any more?
— I don’t need to.
— Were you fired?
— No, the boss decided to shut the whole thing down.
— I don’t understand.
— You don’t need to understand, it’s adult things.
— Well, then why don’t you work any more?
— Because I wanted to spend more time with you.

— Dad?
— Yeah?
— Where’s Mom?
— She left. She couldn’t take it anymore.
— Where did she go?
— We don’t know.
— Why don’t we know?
— Because she hasn’t contacted us since she left.
— Will we ever see her again?
— Yes.

— Dad?
— What?
— What’s the day today?
— D minus 39.
— D minus 39? That’s as old as you are!
— Tomorrow it will be D minus 38.
— And the next day it will be D minus 37, and then D minus 36, and then D minus 35…
— Yes.
— What does the D stand for again?
— It stands for days.
— But days don’t go backwards. They go forwards!
— It depends on how you look at it.

— Dad?
— Now what?
— How many stars are there?
— I just told you. Eight hundred forty-two.
— You said there were eight hundred thirty-two. Where do they come from? They don’t come from the star factory, do they?
— Who knows.
— Have you been lying to me the whole time?
— Not the whole time.

— Dad?
— Yeah, buddy?
— Will I ever become a star?
— Soon. Very soon.

Tagged : / /

He Who is Birthed from Suicide’s Loins

 Visual art by Yulia Kuan

VIGNETTE ONE

 

Dear Mom and Dad,

Please pardon the smudges, as writing this is making me tremble.  In a few hours from now, you will walk into the house like always.  “Honey”- you will call- “Darling we’re home.”  Without my response, you will tip-toe around the house, assuming I’m already asleep.  However, No-Doz has put me in an eternal slumber.  I know this news will bring you great misfortune.  Please recognize that this is not your fault, but his.  You have always been the happiness in my life.  Let my ashes swim with the dolphins.

Love Eternally,

J

 

THE PILLS

She looks at us with her lusty eyes.  Lightning tears make war with us, melting us into her.  Slowly, we become her, one by one.  As we individually make our way down her larynx, we are greeted by the residues of her dinner.  And like sugar cubes, we dissolve into her hot lava blood stream.  We float through her, changing her, polluting her.  We graffiti our chemical identities in her brain.  In her, we exceed maximum occupancy of “one every three hours”.  Our colony over-populates her adolescent form.  Slowly, we kill her.

 

No-Doz

Mom’s overdose

Hospitalized

Pumped clean

Saved from her ghost

The hospital- where she met my dad

Alchohol- induced psycophrenic

Tragic

Iliad

Dad’s disease made him call himself Jehova

Mom and Dad fuck

Backseat

Toyota

Positive test

Deciding what’s best

Mother torn

Adoption, abortion, life

Baby me born

VIGNETTE TWO

 

Please refrain from judging my following words, as exposing my soul to a stranger comes with great reluctance.  I pray your promises of confidentiality are legitimate, as only the night sky knows my secrets.  I am writing this in the solace of my four-walled bedroom. I would have no need to write this if not for he, the cause of my recent metamorphosis from lover to single mother.  Looking out my window, I can see the leaves are turning that venom piss color, not unlike the hue of his booze.

Seasons change with love’s rolling tides.

And within my soul, a lost identity hides.

Unwillingly Yours,

J

 

MARAJUANA

We are the shit that turns fathers into criminals.  We tempt the youth generation with our promises of social acceptance and popularity.  We produce burnouts, high school drop-outs, addicts, abusers.  We produce users.  We live in their lung lobes and modify their brains.  We are the writers of tragedy and the murderers of identity.  We bomb their brains with false imagery.  We develop synthetic serenity and plastic euphoria.  Encripting dream-like visions.  Phantasmagoria.

Dad chooses drugs.

The real one he loves.

Paper wrapped green.

Crumbled love dream.

Scream.

Dark.

Moon beam.

 

VIGNETTE THREE

 

Every day, I disappear deeper into my bed of petunias and daffodils.  My tattered comforter provides no comfort at all, as these feelings of inadequacy are becoming me.  These feelings are engulfing me.  Perhaps even killing me.  My caccoon is inhibiting my true-nature as a butterfly. This sorrowed bedroom of lavender and gold suppresses my identity with the passing days.  My son’s eyes are searching for his inadequate mother trapped in hybernation.  And my little boy fears that he’s the cause of my tears.

Unwillingly Yours,

J

PROZAC

We inhabit the bodies of mental hospital patients and housewives.  We create mannequins out of men and fabricated females.  We are the craze of the crazy.  We are guilty murderers with innocent labels.

Tin-foil wrapped wishes

Hershey’s Kisses

Codependent candy dishes

It’s daddy she misses

Diamond tears

I fear those diamond tears

 

VIGNETTE FOUR

 

     Perfect specimen

Absent father, bound with aggression

Bed-trapped mother, lost in depression

Shit births obsession

Compulsion

Disorder

Whorish hands

OCD demands

Tapping

Brain trapping

Checking the lock on the door

“Go do God a favor”

“Die”

“Gay whore”

Peace no more

Afraid of loss

Tap the possession

Anxious obsession leads to depression

Meditation versus medication

Prozac

Remeron

Abilify

Chemical shit gets me by

 

 

 

Now, I’m becoming what’s prescribed to me.  Truth be told, the apple doesn’t fall far from the family tree.

 

 

 

 

 

Tagged : / / / / / / / /

The Rebellion

Visual art by Caine Wong.

The nurse closed the hatch and sped away. You aren’t supposed to touch things in museums. But she had. Rebellion. A psychologist would say that it’s because she didn’t do drugs in high school and she lost her virginity on her twenty-fourth birthday. But she knew why, it was because things made by humans were meant to be touched and used. In a thousand years, the scale in the ER she worked in, that hundreds of people stepped on everyday, would be placed behind glass as a valuable untouchable thing. The old footprints on it were history and the new ones would be destruction. And yes, ruining that fifth century BCE artifact even just a little bit made her feel bad. Who knows what she might do next? She smirked and wondered if she could get a way with masturbating while lying down on a sarcophagus.

Tagged : / / / /

No Place Like Home

Visual art by Jing Li

People have a tendency to forget things. They forget things they learn, they forget things they say, and they forget the friends they’ve made. In a world where materialism is the norm, the more we have, the easier it is to forget.

Lately this thought had been rambling around my head a lot. It’s funny, how when you think about something for a long time you start seeing it everywhere you go. In reality, that something has always been there, but it’s not until you think about it that you actually start acknowledging its existence.

Lately I have been noticing people forget. Sometimes they forget who they are, or where they come from. They forget about their true friends and end up abandoning them. Other times they forget about a nonsensical love, or a broken heart. A myriad of people have told me about the feeling one gets when one finally forgets someone who has caused pain, of someone who has harmed. They said they had finally realized how idiotic they were, how, if given the choice somehow, they would never repeat their actions. I nod and agree; only really interested in the landscape passing by the window. Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy stories passionately, but after a while of hearing the same things over and over again, even the most interesting fables can turn into tedious sermons. People, for some reason, have a tendency to trust me, which I do not understand. Is it that they pity me? Is my face a trustworthy one? I don’t know. All I know is I’ve been a runaway for about 5 months now. I have hitchhiked about 1,200 miles, and every time I get into a car, or van, or truck, I have had to listen to someone’s story. I haven’t shaved, but thanks to my wondrous age of 15, my facial hair can easily be mistaken for the dirt on my face. I guess people aren’t used to seeing someone as young as me hitchhiking, so they feel sorry for me. I believe they use pity as an excuse to unburden themselves onto someone, anyone, even this dirty 15-year-old kid.

This last ride has left me in the middle of a highway right before a road division, somewhere in the state of Nevada. The sun’s heat has made me regret taking my fur-lined leather jacket. But it has served me well. After all, when I left Milwaukee it was still winter, and the snow and cold would have been a problem if it hadn’t been for this jacket. And to be honest, it wasn’t like I had any other type of clothing I could have packed. But now my long-sleeved shirt smells of sweat, and I finally decide to take it off, not giving much importance to sunburn.

A car drives by, the driver ignoring my signal for him to pick me up. As I walk, I think about the last person that let me hop in.

She was a middle aged woman, with skin as white as milk, like an angel. She drove a green pick-up and spoke with a beautiful southern accent. If I hadn’t been in a different place mentally, I could have had a crush on her. She told me the story of her life, of how her two boys grew tired of her and abandoned her. She told me, with light in her eyes, how she used to play with them when they were younger and all the fun they had. She told me how on stormy days, they would stay inside watching movies, putting quilts over the windows, making forts out of pillows, pretending they were in a theatre. But it all changed when her husband left them. He had grown tired of his daily routine. He thought that if he managed to escape his boring life, he would be happier. She told me how later she would walk with them to the town square in a futile effort to forget what had happened, and she began crying when she remembered how they could escape their reality on those afternoons as they ate ice cream on Main Street. But her boys had grown up to be very independent and had moved away. Although they had kept in touch with her for a while, they eventually stopped talking to her. According to her sons, she was the reason their father had left. She would never be forgiven. But something had come up, and her first son had called her. She was ecstatic to hear her son’s voice, but the happiness didn’t last long. Her smaller boy was in the hospital, and from what she told me, it was really bad. Pneumonia or something like that. Real sad. I had a cousin who once died of pneumonia. Her death shocked me; I had never had anyone close to me die.

     A sudden breeze of cool air snaps me back from my wandering thoughts. Drivers keep passing me by, but my arm aches so I stop making signs. As if they would actually stop to pick me up again. As if anyone really cares I am here. As if anyone really cares for me. Is that reason enough to run away? I don’t know. It was for me, but someone else might swallow it and learn to live with it. But I refuse. I want to live somewhere where people care. Where they care about what happens to me. I want to matter. I wanted to matter. To make a difference. I don’t care now. Things change, people forget, people forgive, and people die. People find a way, or they lose themselves. People have a way of making things different.

My friends all vanished, disappeared under a thin veil of nothingness. Some found a passion in underage drinking. The adrenaline of being above the law combined with alcohol filled them with euphoria. Others moved. They wanted to become rock stars and photographers, but I knew, as everyone did, that it was just a waste of time and that their trip to Hollywood was nothing but misused money. My dad vanished too. He got a promotion, and stopped coming home for weeks at a time. Since it was just me at home, I had to survive on Mac ‘n Cheese and Cocoa Puffs. I started skipping school, and the more I got away with it, the more I enjoyed my new freedom. My mom died when I was very young. I can’t quite remember her, but my dad used to say she was wonderful, so I just believed him. Suddenly, I wished I had known her. A feeling of loneliness began to soak me, but the paradoxical thought that this might get me attention from someone somehow, made me not want to dry it off. After a while I grew tired of this, and figured that if I could make it here, without a father, I could make it anywhere else. And I had made it all the way to this hot, wild, tomb-like desert.

The heat is overbearing. Sweat falls to the road and quickly disappears. Cars do not pass by anymore. Or at least that’s what I think. I have stopped paying attention to the road. The rock I was sitting by lent me her shadow, but it’s noon, and all the shade is gone. I put my sweaty shirt over my head, hoping it will ease my heat. My shoes are destroyed. The only reason I have kept them is because the ground would cook my feet. “Oh well, I’ll take them off when I’m hungry.” I say out loud, and surprise myself. Am I really going crazy? I must be. I must find a car. I have lost the strength to get up, and honestly I don’t think I would get picked up anyway. Maybe I should put my shirt back on. I traveled 1,200 miles with my shirt on. But the heat is suffocating, so I decide I’ll put it on later. For now, I’ll just stay here, next to this rock. A loud car passes by, it’s roaring engine driving my attention back to the road. But the more attention that I give the driver, the more he seems to ignore me. Drivers probably think I’m dead by now. Abandonment. The story of the milk-skinned woman hits me, and I suddenly realize my situation. The human body can only stand a number of days without water. My sweating like a pig will only make dehydration quicker. I only hope death will be brief.  All motionless, all beat up. I made it all the way to this desert but what has changed? Why has luck suddenly flown away from me? Or have these past six months been only a dream? Could this be just a nightmare? I wish it were. I wish I were still home, with the people I loved. What have I done?

People have a tendency to forget things. We forget things we learn, we forget things we say, and we forget friends we’ve make. We forget the love others feel for us, and we forget the love we feel for others. We forget the good times, but we keep the bad times, as if they were an excuse to justify our actions. People forget. I forgot. I forgot all the warmth of my home. I forgot about my dad, and how he always called me when he was away. I forgot my friends, how they phoned me worried when I skipped school and how they cried when they had to move.  I forgot how they wrote home every day. I forgot about all the parties I attended myself. All the fun I had had with my friends. I forgot about my place on earth, and now it’s too late. I forgot about home. I forgot that there’s no place like home.

Tagged : / / / /