November 17, 2022 - “Lace Up” by Elizabeth Lerman
They tell her to forget the blades beneath her feet, tell her to lace up and forget about the fear, and she wants to, would love to, really, but something about the way the skates scrape the ice makes her blood go cold, and she’s at the rink, she knows it is supposed to be cold, but she is seeing something she cannot describe, feeling something strange that does not belong in her body, and she has been here before, so many times, in fact, that she could walk the length of it with her eyes closed but then, she knows, the bright lights would be gone and she would hear only the blades as they slice through slick and sprawling ground.
November 16, 2022 - “The Couple” by Rahil Najafabadi
I would never draw a couple. I would never think of it. I never thought so much about romantic feelings in drawings and figures, but somehow they appeared in my abstract interpretation of my surroundings. I wonder if trees perceive the tree next to them positively. I appreciate our ability to move, and I’m afraid of when we don’t. Trees grow in one place, we grow in plenty. They grow alone, standing with their shadow. Sometimes we’re the same, sometimes we have our other person. Sometimes we have no shadow.
November 15, 2022 - “What fear feels like” by Elizabeth Lerman
I check the locks because I have to, and even though they’re right where they should be, and even though the dog is waiting for me at the top of the stairs, where the light is still living, my heart is beating faster now than it was before, and my head feels light in a way I know very well, because it is what fear feels like to me, and it makes me wonder if I will get dizzy in the face of danger, if the blood will drain from my body and brain and I will reach, frantically, for the wrong thing, turn the wrong way then fall, slip and scream, maybe, before waking up in another world.
November 12, 2022 - “A red blinking light from Roosevelt Island” by Jordan Myers
This morning a mist hovers above the East River. A few moments before dawn, the Queensboro looks like a bridge to another world. A red blinking light from Roosevelt Island blends and keeps time with a few yellow glows that flicker on and then off, then on again from Long Island City windows. The weather’s still a balmy sixty degrees; a summer that refuses to relent.
November 11, 2022 - “Writing a Letter About Myself” by Rahil Najafabadi
WRITING A LETTER ABOUT MYSELF
To you. The recipient of all my letters
that never make it to your home, the nightstand,
to be held in your hands as you read
everything you already know about me.
There are things I wanted to write––Secrets.
Moments of my life that drift away, like my hair
covering the shower drain in a black circle.
My tears wash the strained gaze of the long day,
the night appears as a blanket pulling me to the next.
I wanted to write of my adoration for you,
coming from me. I miss you the moment
I let go. I wish I could start our night again,
and be more gentle unlike the wind, the rain,
the dark afternoons of November that pass,
and the days become fragments of our stories.
I never knew the smog would cover my sky,
when I am without you, trying to write alone.
But I am with the regret of small situations,
and the pollution of thought without our touch.
November 10, 2022 - “What is Wild and What is Not” by Elizabeth Lerman
I am alone here, with all this land and the lake behind it, I am alone here, save for the dog, and she’ll bark at some things, perk her ears up at others, but she is scared, like I am, of the creaking wood, and the wind is so strong tonight I worry the walls will fall in, and it is hard to hear, with all this wailing, what is wild and what is not.
November 9, 2022 - “The Moment” by Rahil Najafabadi
THE MOMENT
I took a few steps and saw something following me.
I’m not afraid of the dark, I don’t need the lights––
The shadows make me flinch. I can’t trust the night
when I know that is when the past becomes free.
I’m not ready to give myself to the wind, and my sleep
to the cold. The air opens slowly midday for my dream,
this is the moment I wake up and feel the day wear me.
November 8, 2022 - “Uncanny Sounds Like Of Course” by Elizabeth Lerman
I have a headache because all of this has happened before, and I don’t know how many times, exactly, but it must have or else the thoughts would not come, or else deja-vu would not exist, and we would all have a better name for the feeling that takes over when we don’t know what to feel, and we aren’t supposed to know it all or else, I think, we would go crazy, in a very certain way, in a way where all of us decide that, really, we don’t know the half off it, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We are so human it hurts and sometimes I wonder who else sees the door opening, who else catches a peak into that place where the raw rests on top and uncanny sounds like of course.
November 7, 2022 - “Everything is New Again” by Jordan Myers
The new starts with enough is enough. Haven’t you been there before? Sick and tired of being sick and tired. One thing I like about this city is right away. If you want to change up your life any moment, you can. Once you change your mind, walk around the block and knock on a few doors and there you go, the next step. Another chance. Everything is new again.
November 5, 2022 by Jordan Myers
Outside the smoothie shop on Second Avenue & 61st
a woman in white waits beneath grey clouds for a bus
downtown. She does not carry an umbrella / not even
a flinch as she looks up toward the sky: daring the rain
November 4, 2022 - “Part Two” by Rahil Najafabadi
Part Two: Distance
After the bonding becomes a habit and the drunk affections become sober decisions, there is something between each kiss. A distance; a thought.
Does it hurt?
Is it voluntary?
Does it matter?
I think the distance is necessary. I think that the thought must be there, between two lovers. Separate; not spoken. This is the way we are driven to become each other’s secrets. Isn’t it?
November 3, 2022 - Elizabeth Lerman’s “Until grass grew out of me”
I had not yet galloped, had not fallen from a horse’s back, had not lived or learned at all, really, but it would come, I knew, by summer’s end, and I would find out so much more about things like soreness, satisfaction and shame. I would know how sweat smells on saddles, how to love something and let it go. I would learn, from strong legged women, who grew their hair long, what I was meant to be this time around, and I did fall hard one day, wanting so badly then to dig a hole in the dirt and stay there until grass grew out of me, but the girls, gorgeous and godly in the way women who worship the moon usually are, gathered around, stood so their shadows fell over me and said stop crying, this was always going to happen.
November 2, 2022 - “The Kiss” by Rahil Najafabadi
“The Kiss” is an ink drawing by Rahil Najafabadi. This piece was tied to her periodical way of understanding different aspects of the human condition, some of which are crucial for giving meaning to concepts such as “love.” In this piece, her intention is to focus on the aftereffect of bonding, something beyond the physical.
November 1, 2022 - Iggy Shuler’s “How To Be Endangered”
Everything is an exercise in abstinence, in waiting:
Not to check my phone, not to spend, not to eat.
To keep empty. I write my mantras. I starve and roll.
I discipline myself so the world doesn’t have to,
Knowing the chestnuts fall and go unpunished,
Hard by the time they hit the ground.
October 29, 2022 by Nic Anselmo
An image from Nic Anselmo’s photo essay, Neeses, South Carolina, from Issue No. 9