Opening Creative

The semester’s already over! I honestly can’t believe we’re already 4 issues into 2026. With summer finally coming around the corner, I invite everyone reading to do the things they wish they could’ve done during the school year. Maybe it’s practicing a new hobby or revisiting an old one, maybe it’s making a new friend, cultivating more memories, or maybe contributing to The Plant next semester… I don’t know… Just a thought…

However, in the little time left before summer does finally come, I hope you enjoy the last few weeks of school. Whether you’re graduating or staying for a few more semesters, I hope these wonderful submissions can brighten up your day. HAGS readers! 🙂

– Sal Francis, Creative Writing Editor

Handsome Boy

Theo Simons

Contributor

Handsome.boy____ of Hyderabad

packs his bowl in the horn

with hands and

fingernails and sets it down,

pulls out twin tinfoils

cut to rectangles

and wraps

Tinfoil Two

around a

Ten Rupee Bill.

Tin Foil One

gets an initial round with the match

and, smudging off the fingernail,

there comes the smack.

And here’s the trick he’s been

mastering:

Match Two,

Tin One

held in his hands—

two awkward objects ungivingly squished

between fingerpads

which had long evolved for grasping at branches

or sticks.

Tin Two

rolled around

Rupee Ten,

limp in his lips. The

bivalve instrument constricts

it tight as the fire of

Match Two

brings the hidden droplet in the powder bouldering

to life to run down

Tin One,

held acute.

With the running moves the straw and

Match Two

too.

And the smoke stays coming out and

Tin One

is safe. Hurray!

And in the haze he sees

The Image

of one of those human eyed monkeys

welling with tears.

He almost thinks about it as he finishes the hit.

Behold this mastered human act you animal

who has long evolved for grasping

at branches

or sticks.

he sputters out a cough and is past

The Image

and animal scorn.

With an echo of an exhale lighting up

Match Three.

He

chases

it, hits

the handpipe of the horn.

Pandora’s box

Kaya Yepes Collao

Contributor

The ringing in the room,

The ringing in my ear

A place no seed can bloom,

The space the petals fear

There is no wind

There is no air

Green will rescind

Our skin is fair

We’ll suffocate among the trees

Half-drunk tea

With stagnant lees

What of Passion?

What of Color

Now grey plagues all reflection

In its wake, I grow duller

– Kaya Yepes Collao

The Bricklayer

Paul-Eliot Uzel

Contributor

Last night, on the other side of the glass.

I met the bricklayer singing with delight

What was the price of capricious respite.

He moved in unsure stumbling, lacked a little class.

But anything goes to climb out of your crevasse.

Said he wasn’t the one to blame, so easy to feel light.

That those joyous nights helped him forget his plight,

Tired of this labor, of this mass.

So muffle this lullaby,

And feel what seems far away.

You know now’s not a time to bawl,

You’re here, in the new Versailles.

Stop sipping away this grey,

There’s solace behind this wall.

Chelsea boots

Joey Scozzari

Contributor

totally,

you can do your thirties and forties

limp-wristing red solo cups

with girls bumped up on the ether,

until the ravine trembles and croaks,

burping up bile and scratching its gut,

asking to see pictures and videos

of them crawling and laughing and crying

and you haven’t a clue in your

immaculate chelsea boots.

Out of ink

Anonymous

Contributor

The words that crawled out from my pen

To bite the pulp of my journal

Escaped my grip, once thought to be eternal.

I was pushed into the lion’s den

And hugged by the copper bricks

My dominant hand itched to fix.

My dilated pupils danced with my collarbones,

The sandpaper in my mouth

Weighed my words down like stones.

Vitriol coursed through the vein of my pen,

Idle, with my past fingerprints

As its only shield against being forgotten.

The writings I dressed in ink

Fell on shallow pupils

Whose retinas crumpled before they could blink.

My pen and I aren’t sorry

For we spoke our truth

Against the ringmaster of this country.

My body begins to falter,

My pen runs dry

Until it fails at laying down the ashes

Of my soul as it mumbles “goodbye”.