Picture me six feet up,
feet swinging as I peered down, jeering
and praying you’d climb the tree trunk I clutched.
I’m sorry for hopping beyond the hopscotch
we etched in chalk on the driveway,
for standing five inches taller than you—
just tall enough to hoist myself up
over that branch and holler down.
The oak had always towered over the front yard,
but just then it beckoned me,
and I hadn’t scraped my knee in at least a week.
It was time for a new band-aid,
for a view over the neighbors’ roof
and through the leaves before they fell,
but I’m still sorry.
Once I’d pressed my cheeks against the bark
and found the last foothold,
as close to the sky as I’d ever been,
I just wished you were there,
giggling with me.
So I taunted and peered down at you
when I could’ve been more than six feet up.
The Regenerative Abilities of Earthworms and Teenage Girls by Angelina Scarlotta
When we were small, my best friend once tore an earthworm in
two
just because she could.
Five hearts pumped warm worm blood onto the sidewalk.
The end with the head took a slow beat
and got right to moving, right to forgetting about the other half.
It turns out earthworms can regrow their
tails —
granted it’s the right kind of worm, granted enough of it’s left.
After we stopped being friends, after she said we grew apart,
it felt like that, like part of myself was lost to careless hands.
I took a breath to heal, to cut bangs and find a new lunch table.
Until, right on time,
I grew.
You've Made My Own Name Taste Sour on My Tongue by Brendilou Armstrong
There used to be three syllables in my first name.
When I noticed the last was missing,
the fingers of your left hand
had entwined themselves in my curls,
while the fingers of your right hand
had prodded the back of my throat for it
before I could tell you no
I swallow blood and black ink now–
You can find the missing parts of me
in your nail beds,
between the creases of your sheets
scattered across the pages in the wind
fluttering, slightly crinkled,
what used to be my name smudged on it
in your handwriting
You are still thinking of me,
but no need to be cautious anymore
Say my name, the part you stole, say it loudly
Do you taste the ink?
Has it stained your teeth yet?
When the last three letters of my name
begin to rot on your tongue,
I will finally say your first name
without blood dripping from my mouth
things I don't miss about California by Brooke Nind
I don’t miss the relentless sun hitting my face,
the perpetual squinting because I refuse
to wear sunglasses & I don’t miss driving on the 101
with my hands clenching the steering wheel,
turning up the music to drown out the noise
of hundreds of cars whizzing past, sliding across lanes &
I don’t miss the man who slammed the door of my favorite
Mexican restaurant in my face that one time
& I don’t miss tiptoeing up the stairs or shutting
doors quietly & I don’t miss that it barely ever rains
but when it does it floods and everybody complains
and can’t figure out how to drive & I don’t miss
my neighbor’s dog that barked every morning
& I don’t miss sitting in traffic to then sit
in the 45 minute In-N-Out line & I don’t miss
Los Angeles because why build a city that’s not walkable
& I don’t miss the heat, how it hangs in the air and
never leaves, wrapping tightly around pinking skin &
I don’t miss the ocean because I’m scared of it
and maybe I want to be landlocked & I don’t miss
my father because we only communicate on a loop
in the language of insults and screaming matches,
& I don’t miss the brown hills surrounding us for miles,
always in the foreground overlapping as if I’d never leave
or see anything green again.
ALL MIRRORS IN THE METAL CITY by Anonymous
On Saturday afternoons I dive into stims
and puffers puffing marijuana and porn,
electric films of red-hot and flaming-hot and ice-hot evenings,
the glow of neon coils in the alley of twenty-one,
and professors and peaches and prissy women and galettes,
the jesus caught in my hair, the juice between my hips,
the cold blue lake in the steel forest, the open vein,
the gushing and the dribble and the hypnotic spice,
I mean running and fucking in the saccharine city, the New New York,
dripping vague honey, blinking black lights,
lost souls parking garage, I mean wasted freaking out above the boulevard,
hoarse peeling off layers of wisdom at the cars below,
fingers blue on the January railing,
I mean (say it!), write me something. Tell me you hear it too.
the saxophone duck and other stories of times gone by Hannah Brooks
Post-It notes in the library book
that I picked off the shelf
like the prize peach off the tree,
finally ripe and ready:
graphite jottings that stuck to the Vonnegut
without much adhesive,
easily torn away and tossed
(that is their business model, after all)
but somehow still tucked in the pages,
phantom traces of a reader once upon a time
or perhaps just yesterday.
The book is mine for a month
but I’ll return it before the week is up –
before I leave again –
and for my part
I will not touch the Post-It notes
but I will not add my own.
The book slides down into the drop bin
and I watch from the parking lot as it is reshelved
and I drive away
and maybe the Post-Its are mine, now, too
or maybe I was never meant to see them.
There was a box in the kitchen
red,
paper-mached,
fragile from the start
in which I held my lollipops,
small fingers grabbing one out every so often and hiding the wrapper back inside,
a clandestine treat
and I do not like lollipops anymore
but I kept them there all the same
in case I changed my mind one day.
I came home to find
my mother had thrown it out
because
you never used it anyhow
(true)
and there are lollipops in the drawer if you want them
(I don’t)
and it was falling apart
(I know)
and I haven’t opened it in years
so I don’t care
but it’s gone
so I do.
My favorite road sign, I always said,
was the one by the pond
that signaled duck crossings
only,
long ago and before I can remember,
someone painted a saxophone onto it
so that the duck became an instrumentalist.
To the supermarket,
to ballet lessons,
to work I went,
gazing out the passenger seat window,
smiling as we passed the duck,
years of my life spent to and fro
without ever taking a photograph of it
for why would I?
It was a fixture.
I went away three months ago
and today I learned
the sign has been replaced
with a plain old duck,
restored to what must have been its
original state.
I wanted to cry right then,
to mourn the saxophone
and the music
and the duck’s way of life
and mine
but I was driving
(I can do that now)
so I had to keep my eyes forward
and keep on.
Come here, my dear,
and let me soothe the worries away.
Let me fix it all.
Let me stay on the phone
and sit with you a while
and let us pretend that I am not growing
and that it is not over
and that we are not scared
and that all is well.
Let us turn around
and drive home
and return the Post-It notes to their rightful owners
and recapture those safe, sugary days of
who knows when.
Let us find that bygone saxophone
and join it, the poor lost thing,
wherever it may be.
If I Die in Chi Gam by Scott Sorenson
If I die in Chi Gam tonight,
And there is every chance that I will,
Tell your mom I tried.
Bodies are crashing,
Flying out like their orbits are crunching underfoot,
And I’m doing all the defensive shimmying
That slick tennis shoes will allow.
My hand’s on the small of your back and I’m trying to
Shove out a path for you,
Poke some holes in these walls of bodies but chivalry
Seems frivolous when I’m getting more intimate with half the crowd
Than I ever have with you.
But that’s okay.
Because I remember walking you home and checking to see
If your roommate was there,
Twirling my hair on the staircase waiting
For something wonderful.
I remember when you pressed your arm to mine at that Shakespeare play,
When we matched the swell of our chests,
Stuttering every down beat to breathe together.
I don’t know how many more breaths we’ll get
With drunk boys wheeling like asteroids and that dancer
In steel-toed boots remembering how to high-kick,
But I’m happy that we’re here.
Text me when you get home.
Scott Sorensen ‘26 died later that night of an airborne pong paddle to the forehead. The save
was good.