Tiny dancer, 
teach me to be like you,
with tick legs not very good for carrying weight
but perfect for spinning in circles,
and feet that are as light as feathers
even while they bleed.
I want to know how you carry so much sorrow in your little shoulders,
wrapping the pain around you like a ribbon and
stripping it again like paint, toe by toe, one twinkle at a time.
Tiny dancer
I want to live in a music box
where the music plays so loud I won’t be able to hear my own voice.
Barely remembering to breathe until
the rhythm stops
and I don’t have to anymore.
I can see it now, the key winding to a halt as I finish my last show.
It’s the glimpse of a gravestone,
an epitaph that reads
she was nothing if not nice to look at.
I would like to be beautiful,
If I cannot be real.


Author Bio:
Taylor Yarns is a sixteen-year-old writer from Buffalo, New York. After reading Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh in fourth grade, she realized that she wanted to write for a living, and has been hoarding notebooks ever since. She recently joined her local writing community by becoming a Youth Ambassador at the Just Buffalo Writing Center. Her work is a mix of prose and poetry that incorporates some of the elements of the fairytales that she holds near and dear to her heart, such as magic, love, found families, and characters that beat unlikely odds. She wants to double major in English and Psychology.

Naps, kinks, curls 
Clogin’ up the drain 

10 am shampoo and condition
Suds and curls run down my back 

10:45 am deep conditioning
Pillow soft curls 
Get stuck in between the teeth of the comb
Detangling is the worst 
Can’t forget the shower cap

12:00 pm twist beyond compare 
This is gonna take a minute 
Let me find a good show on Netflix

12:45 pm one section at a time 
Two down three to go 
These twist gone be FYREEEE
Just about half way there 

1:25 pm I CANT FEEL MY ARMS
One section left 
The pain almost over

2:00 pm Victory Is Mine !!
Ugh 
My neck is wet


Author Bio:
Rukaya Williams is a student at Truman State University. She wrote this poem using Rupi Kaur style to describe a typical wash day for someone like her with naturally curly hair. "Having thick natural hair can be a pain, almost feels like a second job. But at least I have toned muscles." ~ Rukaya Williams 

Words hit the wheel 
Slapped down soil
Grounded centre
Quality tested 
Strained as
Spinning out 
To impress
But will these mud walls 
Hold all 
I want to say

Kiln dried and glazed
Hues to please
Consenting eye
But all too brittle 
Too small
To contain 
Truth’s edge
Baked out earth losing
The voice 
Entrusted me

Yet arching forms
Draw me in
To living clay
Beyond the vessel
For love
For freedom
Brokenness
Binds shards in gold
Our tears 
Will mould

Our story


Author Bio:
Born in London, U.K., Ann van Wijgerden has spent most of her life in the Netherlands and the Philippines. She has had nonfiction published in The Lady and Orion, poetry and fiction in Slamchop Journal, Pulp Poets Press, Collective Unrest and Spadina Literary Review. Ann works with an NGO providing education for children living in Manila’s slums. www.youngfocus.org

Don’t you wonder what they might think?
Hide your body 
Which you have sculpted all season
From the greasy tar of pavement 
Thickening the soles of your warm sneakers
You pasted tendons into muscles from the sweat of a thousand runs. And yet you must hide the features
That grace you with animation 
So you can lunge, stride, swirl
Across the galaxy
with hundreds, millions, trillions, of roads, lovers embraces, nations to explore. 
How do you think your scold trodden torso 
Responds to being hidden beneath a cotton cage, day and night, for nothing more than existing? 
One day animation will leave your limbs 
And as your spirit reflects
From a translucent daydream 
you will remember that the very thing that tried to teach you the meaning of love, femininity, and spirit 
you chose 
to cover up. 


Author Bio:
Lindsey Schaffer is a current undergraduate student at the College of Saint Benedict. When she is not reading or writing she enjoys perusing through museums, going on a long run, analyzing film, or listening to podcasts.She has a poem published in the literary magazine Surfaced as well as three articles published in The Mankato Free Press. 

If one day all the ice from the Himalayas to the Alps melt
Even then you are mine.
If one day Niagara Falls goes away to the Sahara
Yet you are mine.
If one day, there is not a drop of water left 
From the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean 
Still, then you are mine.
If one day the Ganges-the Danube-The Rhine-the Nile
Parch themselves,
Hitherto you are mine.
If one day, the Vesuvius and the Etna
Get the singed while burning continuously
Then, still, you are mine.
If one day, the third world war initiates to destroy the world,
Still, you are mine.
If one day, all the light forsakes the sun and the moon 
Then you are mine. 
If the snow in the Siberia ever nurtures green crops,
Yet, you are mine, and, still, you are mine.

Note: The Poem is influenced by the one line “You are mine” from the poem “In My Sky at Twilight” By Pablo Neruda. The farfetched imagery and the hyperboles are inspired by the poem “The Definition of Love” by Andrew Marvell. The poem presents a reverse view of Andrew Marvell which is pessimistic and platonic.


Author Bio:
Tabassum Tahmina Shagufta Hussein lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Born in Chittagong, Bangladesh, she was influenced by the natural beauty of Chittagong. Her liberal family background played a vital role in modern thinking. In her both SSC and HSC, she secured Position in the Merit list. But instead of pursuing traditional subjects to secure a lucrative career, she studied English Literature. After getting her MA in British and American Literature, she served as a faculty in the department of English in Private Universities. She likes a challenge and joined the corporate world later. And became head of training of HR Division. Now she is a freelance writer. She is aesthetic. She loves and breathes literature. She has an interest in art, painting, history, philosophy, theology, and psychology. She loves recitation and takes part in recitation programs regularly. Reading and traveling are her hobbies. She strongly supports equal rights, human rights, and intellectual property rights. She strongly believes in humility and civility. As a philanthropist, she tries to improve the educational system by serving as a member of the governing body of her hometown college. She is currently doing her second Masters in Human Resources Management. She loves to interpret literature and art with the colours of her mind. She regularly reads poetry and tries to write poems. She sees the beauty in everything. From twinkling stars to the blade of grass. Aestheticism is the essence of her existence. Some of her poems are published in online literary journals.

​A bus form and sunscreen
Hairbrush and hair ties
Tissues and detangling spray
Snacks and a charge cord
Hoodie, windbreaker, uniform
Ankle socks and sweatpants
Running shoes in a grocery sack
Spikes in a yellow bag.
I have everything I need
But I’m still not ready to run.


Author Bio:
Sadie DuBois is a 9th grader who enjoys playing soccer, running track, and playing the guitar. She leads a busy life, but in her free time, Sadie writes poetry and prose. She has many friends and loves the outdoors. Her friends and family describe her as intelligent and humorous.

Manifold murmurs occur 
In the backyards of the facades
That we take to be real and to be everything
Grasping the surface but not its hinterlands
Its vast spaces tucked away like mountains in the fog
Not needing to hide because they are unseen anyway

Landscapes that long linger
In the wind and in mind and the imagination
In the land, the country at large, a constellation of places
Are not as common as we think
For they may be isolated from a place called ‘elsewhere’

Landscapes that do not escape but stay
So we do not get lost all the way but only a little bit
May only survive in disconnected, distorted form
With their leftovers buried in ruins and pieces 

Lost-scapes then, are the landscapes we cannot remember 
Or those we have to give up, escape from
Though the land itself, if it could speak
Might urge us to stay, at least from time to time
Especially from one time to another
So we can look elsewhere in the meantime
Not to be confined but to move within the landscape
As far as it can take us

Landflight, then, making lostscapes from landscapes
Drowned worlds endangering memories of migraton
We are all migrants, but we forgot all about it
Considering borders rather than memories
As measurements, dividing lines, imaginary walls
Failing to find forms that would
Accommodate a way of thinking
That does not stop at the horizon

Landscapes no longer
Held within consciousness, no
Longer heard of, listened to or understood
Explanations are needed now, as to how
We have grown apart, where
One-ness is at best beyond belief for all involved
In an inverted way, with regard to all of us
And in relation to each other
We are too used to being strangers now. © Ursula Troche, 4.17


Author Bio:
Ursula Troche is a poet and artist who has lived and worked most of her life in London, England, and before London there was Germany and after there is (now) the north-west of England: the seaside by Cumbria - facing Ireland, thereafter America. She has appeared in various magazines and some of her poetry is inspired by Illinois, where she stayed in 2012.

On the margins of hill country
where the stripped quarries stand
men uniform their boys

and push with a hardened hand
their souls to glory.
Where the stripped quarries stand,

each man lays his story,
last checks on the bar, lifting
their souls to glory.

To their boys they are gifting 
all that they know,
last checks on the bar, lifting

half glasses as school jerseys flow
in this trace of a town, where
all that they know

is that grown dreams are rare
on the margins of hill country
in this trace of a town where
men uniform their boys.

Previously published in Glassworks, Fall 2015.


Author Bio:
On her first grade report card, Tina Tocco’s teacher wrote, “Tina always has very individual and creative ideas when she writes.” The editors at some journals, including New Ohio Review, Roanoke Review, River Styx, Crab Creek Review, Harpur Palate, Passages North, Potomac Review, and Italian Americana, must have felt the same way because they decided to publish Tina’s work. When Tina gets bored writing for grown-ups, she writes for kids, and is looking forward to having her children’s poetry collection The Hungry Snowman and Other Poems (Kelsay Books) published in Fall 2019. When she isn’t typing away at her day job creating K-12 materials, Tina likes to paint ceramics, listen to peculiar podcasts, and daydream about living in rural New England. Tina earned her MFA in creative writing from Manhattanville College, where she was editor-in-chief of Inkwell. Some of her favorite things are cats, popcorn, and the Lois Lowry book The Giver.

My father was far short of 5-10,
but I thought he was tall enough
to take a slingshot to the sun if
it was too hot. That didn’t begin
to explain the blooming sweat spots
in the pits of his short-sleeved shirts
that moored paisley ties and pen clips.
 
My father could shoot down anything--
the stars, the sky, the whole Mason-Dixon
line with his Willy Loman Ball mason jar
in Grandmother’s backyard, seeking solace
in arguments about Gubner George Wallace
and upping the Blue Book value of school
busing for his audience under that pin oak.
 
He turned down a Miata deal, bought Renault,
and went broke. He bought Kaiser aluminum
cars made in Chile and Li’l Abner amusement
parks. But to the end of his salesman’s days
he remembered the hot haze of an Alabama
September night, not the inquisitions into
his business decisions. He remembers the gasped
derision of his peers that one time, that one time
with the pass blooming into a clear interception
that he batted down instead. He argued it out
for 40 years with himself, replaying his blown shot,
hearing the jeers at this lost chance, the whole field
his for a quick catch and a sauntering prance. This
looming regret in the air made him​
taller than he was.

​
​Author Bio:
Pamela Sumners is a constitutional and civil rights lawyer from Alabama. Her special interest in religion cases has given her an unwholesome familiarity with the hairlines of Judge Roy Moore, Bill Pryor, Jay Sekulow, and Alabama governors who dispute that the Bill of Rights applies to Alabama. She now lives in St. Louis with her wife, their son, and three rescue hounds who think eyeglasses are a food group.