By: Victoria DiMartino Bleach her tongue so she can learn the lilt of foreign languages. Ignore her kicking and screaming And show that there is a world far beyond her cream-colored walls And sugar coated cereal. Drop her off not at the airport, But at the docks. Where the men are hardened and dirty, With…Continue Reading Gospel of the Foreign
By: Victoria DiMartino i know why the caged bird sings, full of promise and hope, her feathers slowly and painfully plucked out of her one by one she stands naked in front of the world her pain reads like a newspaper headline bold and overlooked she sings a warbled and broken tune hoping that someone…Continue Reading Dove
By: Victoria DiMartino sitting on silhouettes is when whispers are most likely to be heard. faint voices are to be delicate for the shadows to hear the innocence of silence is too much for children listening to sound is like hearing the secrets in your cars made from telling stories to the mind relish ungoldly hours that free you from half of your soul as time went by and started to fade…Continue Reading Silence
By: Kaitlynn Yeager Grandmom buried 3 of her 5 children, but little does she know there’s a 4th who picked up the shovel. He’s out there digging, high on methamphetamines, his cheeks hollowed out. His hands are shaking from digging all of these years, but he hasn’t stopped yet to take a break. Sweat drips off his chin and that vein in his forehead is pulsating…Continue Reading A Mother’s Love
By: Jordyn Taylor my body / a glow stick, crack me open, click my colors into place. neck, knuckles, arms, ankles, try to release the tension built up in my twisted body. feel my plastic skin break and start to glow. what color is it? Blue, like the veins inside me leading to a heart that’s beating, beating, beating, a neon sign blinks ‘we’re open’ but…Continue Reading Diagram of Color: My Body as a Glowstick
By: Phineas Penzo int. police station – day A pile of folders filled with documents sits on a desk. A layer of dust covers the top folder. Each folder is dated on its tab. The dates go back a few years. The office is messy with boxes, and the desk is cluttered. One folder sits…Continue Reading Confess
By: Miles R. De Rosa Jonah and Layla were washing dishes in strained silence. Maddy had finally been put down to sleep a little under an hour ago. The two were exhausted from watching Nemo for the fifth consecutive night. Jonah lazily scrubbed off leftovers from the night’s dinner, leaving Layla to then rescrubbed, rinse,…Continue Reading Marriage – It’s All A Grand Illusion (You’ll Probably Be Divorced)
By: Miles R. De Rosa Sunday, May 29, 10:00 AM “Do you believe in God?” the priest asks through the partition. Apollo sits there in the box, sweating profusely. He rubs his clammy hands together and thinks to himself. There is a nervousness in the way he moves, scuttling around, shuffling in the confessional. Despite the…Continue Reading In The Light
By: Sydney Vincent I’ve traveled these roads countless times. I’ve seen a million faces, kissed thousands of lips, stayed the night with hundreds of strangers. On the east coast, many people spurn my ways. The west coast embraces it. I’ve never been fond of the middle. The ocean draws me in too heavily. I’ve often enjoyed…Continue Reading Dedicated to Carter Diggs
By: Grace Crouthamel Once there was a rich man who lived happily with his wife for a long time, they had one little girl. The wife became ill, deathly ill, and called upon her daughter and said, “Dear I must leave you now.” And she did, as one did in these hard times. Soon the little girl’s…Continue Reading Aschenputtel: A Cinderella Retelling