Art: Untitled Images

Images submitted by Lauren Culbreth.

Poetry: Relics

Relics

Spine/I am shattered pieces of memory
Unwilling to part from each other
Compressing and extending in curves
Perhaps never straight

Shoulder/an endless possibility
A radius of a sphere
Everything and thus nothing
Almost insignificant

Fingers/we lock into each other
Each one of us flexes and extends
To create a knitted surface
Its dimensions always morphing

Elbow/who are you faceless creature
Who resembles something of everything else
An element too simple
Whose footsteps only exist in a single plane

Knee/whatever happens
whatever its complexity
It all comes down
To flexion and extensions


And Marrow/your invasive warmth
Crawled into my emptiness in silence and
You stood up slowly
And you became me


- Hilary H.

Poetry: The Talkies

The Talkies

When I was twelve

my mom enrolled me in an acting class at the Westfield Y.

We pretended we were mirrors and starfished ourselves on the marble floor.

I sat next to Weird Meghan,

who licked the flat backs of toy gems and

pasted them to her forehead.

She smelled like spit.

Filtered into groups of four, we practiced skits

for the showcase. I was in a bit

about the talkies, waving lacy hands

and saying things like

“Marvelous!” and “Darling!”

I focused on making my words slow and breathy, like the sigh of air

as it escapes a pinpricked balloon.

Weird Meghan's voice scuttled at the bottom of her register

and her jokes didn't make sense.

Our teacher moaned “Higher,

higher!” as Weird Meghan stared

pale-face blank, plastic jewels peeling from her skin

with the sticky resistance of tape on a wall.

During breaks, Weird Meghan sat on a broken radiator in the girl's bathroom.

I listened to her guttural voice curl around her words—

phelgmy stories about Sailor Moon and vampires.

Once she wrote the name of an Egyptian pharaoh on a square

of toilet paper and made me promise not to say it out loud.

It was cursed; whoever said it would go deaf.

I imagined sound being replaced by that mute

ring my ears make when I'm underwater.

That class, I watched my teacher's coral lips shape air, words

floating like smoke signals.

I still remember the way my lines

lifted like heat off the ground.

The way my voice rose with

Where ever you turn

all you hear is sound!


- Maryrose Mullen

Poetry: Coney Island

Coney Island

I smoke in the backseat and he does not mind.

She is still beautiful.

Breathe in and what kills me is she is ecstatic.

She uses language to open doors.

The sidewalks all face the wrong direction

so we use our feet to find the sand.

I first fall asleep from where they guard,

but she wakes me up and is perfect against the waves.

Perfect against the roller coaster backdrop

and I don't know how much a cyclone costs.

I don't know how to climb ladders

so she takes me to the dock after we link arms.

I pull her out to the edge

and hope that she does not jump unless I do.

On the way home we take turns falling asleep

in our metal car.

We check to see if something is left behind

and I can see she sleeps with her eyes open.

Remember on the dock she asked what perfect meant

after telling all the sky's different colors.


- Laura Radcliffe