Aquarius Rising

Blades of grass douse your socks

in cold, mud-filled water

 

Moonlight pours over the sea,

waves dancing in the spotlight

 

Your eyes follow the moonbeam

up to its origin and you stare, bewildered

 

Arm stretched, you trace Orion’s belt,

Cassiopeia and Ursa Minor too

 

You become entranced as you

piece together the story of the stars

 

Lungs fill with air but you stop,

unable to articulate the sensation

 

Shocked by the familiarity

you immerse your senses once more

 

The reminiscent feeling permeates

it bathes in each crevice of your fist

 

You begin sinking, submerging yourself in

what was believed to be unknown

 

And as ambiguity saturates your soul

the droplets caress your skin

 

Strung together by magic, by history

a story told by time

 

Kaylee Morris is an 18-year-old senior in high school at the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences who plans to study Environmental Analysis at Pitzer College next year. She is a passionate jazz vocalist, dancer, actress, and artist. Morris has always enjoyed creative writing but just began focusing on poetry this year while taking a Creative Writing class under the instruction of poet Lauri Conner.

Visual Art By: Cherry Guo 

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Mikrokosmos

I.

It was not a girl but a universe imploding 

on the thirteenth of April. 

Beneath the crushing gravity 

of her own weight, no one knew 

her fuel had been depleted 

as she conversed through the school halls, 

the convulsing core of life 

and light. After all, stars glitter 

on our retinas              millions of years 

after their deaths.

 

Ghost stars. Plato

wrote of humanity as a microcosm

which reflected meaning into the stars; 

thus it was a galaxy that unhinged 

when the girl shook too 

many white pills into 

her trembling youth: small, harmless, ovular, 

and expired. A star collapsed 

and the light 

flickered from the little girl’s eyes

 

although she was but a small screw 

lodged between the clockworks of the universe;

earth but a pebble in orbit ad infinitum¹

 

Adam Smith 

said as supply overcomes demand,

an object’s value plummets— 

But I say

the girl 

was a universe

as those around her

deemed it so.

 

II.

I gagged on your name

fed from strangers’ hands. Today I utter it

the speakers

are heavier once they crackle off, and the silence undulates i

palpable long after the moment of silence. I try  

and conjure your face

as you sink to the challenger deep:

 

_________________________________

¹ A Latin phrase meaning “to infinity” or “forevermore”

 

eloi eloi lama sabachthani²? Your skin is

swirled cookies-n-cream, black contrails

that dare anyone to try

and stop you. 

 

Funny 

 

how it’s only

after your hurt stopped

that I feel your presence.

 

Ariel Kim is a seventeen-year-old artist and writer. Through The Incandescent Review, she hopes to empower adolescents to express their honest, unapologetic identities as heirs to an uncertain world. Ariel’s work appears in or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, The National Poetry Quarterly, and The Apprentice Writer, among others. She is a finalist in the Virginia B. Ball Creative Writing Competition, a three-time runner-up for the New York Times Summer Reading Contest, and a double National Scholastic Medalist.

 

Art by Guo Cherry 

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