Opening Statement 

Another month and another issue with so many wonderful contributions! 

I genuinely get so much happiness from reading all of the contributions each month, and even more to be able to share them with you, reader. I hope you find refuge in the world these writers build and the thoughts they explore within them. The end of the semester is approaching and a lot of people, myself included, are feeling stressed and overwhelmed. I hope that these works, in all their magnificence, can offer you the same solace from suffering that they offer me. 

Sal Francis,
Creative Writing Editor

Our misguided hope for lonely lordly little lamps

Luca O’Neill

Contributor

A foggy night, dusk with little light. The fog was so feeble it could be repelled by the simple streetlamp. Along the road there was nothing ahead, nothing behind, desolate save for the solitary glow.

The fluorescent orange bulbs carried a certain beauty, a warmth, a guide for the forlorn. It was placed there to light the way, that was its singular, faithful purpose. Its light reached for the sky, ever dimly mind you, but nonetheless it shone.

The heavens above lay dead and dark. The sky had been coated a dreary blue and a milky black and it was void of any stars. In their absence this lamppost claimed a greater duty. It pierced the caliginous cloak of fog and shadow alike. It seemed to usurp the cowardly stars whom we believed had abandoned us to this cold and killing eternal night.

But we were terribly mistaken, the stars were no cowards, they had not left, they were murdered, blotted out by the foul, fiendish, and forsaking lamppost’s light, it polluted the sky. In its poisoning of our stars, we were foolish enough to believe that it was a lamppost that could ever replace a star, the great inferno of which burns forever and from far in the perfect heavens we could not touch.

Alone and forsaken, we had chosen to gallivant on the black steed of our perilous pride, to dance ourselves forever into this eternally noxious, and numbing night. All things made by people are tainted by our impermanence, and diminished with our insignificance, and oppressed by our hate, and envenomed by our hubris.

Never again should we pour our misguided hopes into the terrible,

Into the awful, into the malignant, the depraved.

Into our lonely, lordly, little lamps.

Escaping Escapism

Illia Yevseienkov

Contributor

I find my mind in this empty space

I am all alone I like it this way

I walk on my tears I walk away

Escaping myself, I cannot Escape.

I see my reflection, I can’t see myself.

Who is this person who calls me himself?

He asks me if I am “okay” Are you serious? What do you say?

Look what you made me become

Look, I am broken, cold, and numb

“I am trying to help you” oh yeah?

HOW? by giving me an “escape” right now?

“You are tired, and weak, and need of a break”

No, This has to be a mistake.

No, There is another way.

I will burn you down I believe what I say

“Hm, how curious, you said this before”

burning your tears

building your clouds

Just for all of it to come raining down?

“Pathetic”

it’s raining now.

everyone knows.

You made them read this “Why?”

I have no fears to hide.

— Ilya Yevs

Snowdrop

Simon MacLaren

Contributor

“To think of me, this whole time, with no clue you existed

and here you are, existing!” A sweet preserved line,

from my Dad’s mum to my mother when they met;

my parents newly dating, in the spring of their lives.

Mother, now in her August, is surprised

that I found white flowers on a walk today, March sixteenth.

Premature. Tomorrow they will wink out in a snow

– but I know one I picked

is pressed between two pages in the twenties

of Emily of New Moon, existing

for some future daughter, who will

smell its pickled bloom and watch

expired spring blow into a missing, dusty kingdom

with an odd feeling in her white throat.

Puddling

Simon Jaffary Osowski

Contributor

Puddle like a face stares skyward bound 

Water understood by the ground all around

Earth recreates itself, nutrition impound 

Carbon rearranged until human form found 

Face like a puddle stares earthward bound 

Rishikesh (as Heard from Fables)

Colm Griffin

Contributor

Should I Fall asleep to dream

Of Rishikesh, the lie

Pay no attention to me Dear

Oh, do not let me die

Dreaming of Dark Moons at dawn

Of half-crossed, dreary bridges

Connected eyes made red with fear

And skin all racked with ridges

Tell me truly, Other Half

A Truth which is a lie

Wicked Moons are made to walk

The bridge seen through the eye

But      I’ve     none,  so  I   never    saw

The  Truth  seemingly  long ago set.

I’ve got a bad habit of 

Placing bets

On blind horses

And featherless Chickens 

Without                               feet

Going                  out                    kickin’

Walk then is what I will do

To fabled Rishikesh

Rounded by the ancient bridge

And waters running fresh

Dream or not, my Truth is lost

In jungles made of flesh

Willing or not, I’m made to walk

The Road to Rishikesh