I love Sundays. There’s nothing quite like driving in Charlie’s red convertible in a white linen shirt and high-rise jeans. We aren’t going anywhere and we don’t got anything else to do but drive. Through the mountain tops with the roads curling and weaving like a French girl’s braid. The streets are wider. Everything is shinier. I don’t get carsick when the top’s down.

There’s always a half empty cup of coffee in the car and I’m talking back to Charlie and my cigarette is stained with red lipstick and I’m wearing those big sunglasses that the movie stars wear and the only taste in my mouth is the banana pancakes we ate that morning at the little diner on 42nd street with the green and white striped awning.

And when I feel the wind blow through my whipping curls, I can only think that it could always be this way.

But it isn’t.

And I guess I sort of hate Sundays for that.

It’s not that I hate Sundays, but I hate what Sundays don’t tell you. They don’t tell you that you have to go home at some point. They don’t tell you that tomorrow you’ll have to trade in the red convertible for an apron and a pot roast. They don’t tell you that you’ll have to wipe off the red lipstick and lay down in a bed next to a stranger. They don’t tell you that the wind is fleeting. They don’t tell you that the sun that’s on your face is going to set and that the warmth is going to fade into night and that everything will get cold and dark again.

They don’t tell you that men like Charlie don’t like it when you talk back.

Cameron Katz

If, in accordance with the zero-sum
of game theory, a soldier lowering a rifle means
that Hitler presses one to his own throat,

does a seven-year-old Polish refugee
collect bullet casings or corn poppies
in the aftermath? 1948:

a camera coughs chalk-white light
onto Tereska’s frantic smorgasbord of lines
flung on blackboard like restructured neurons—

a turmoil of mortar-torn telephone
wires. Three years beyond ceasefire,
the girl ties a bow over barbed-wire

hair, wears her good stockings (just one
visible tear, over her left big toe), and scribbles
the answer to her class assignment. To jest dom.

Ilina Logani

In another timeline, I hear the catcall
of a siren & it’s Sunday again.
We are stumble drunk, small gods
in this orbit. I see a man looming
& don’t flinch. The best way to kill fear
is to confront it & so we stress
test our bodies harder
under the angular thrum of a bassline.
Which is to say this has happened before —
we are used to this.

Here, Christine death drops & I don’t

call it bad omen. A shot                                                                           is just a drink,                 a round, the way
. we celebrate how no men
are powerful enough unravel us.

This time,
we pray for love & it doesn’t end
in eulogy.

Jasmine Cui

Bad break-up? Leave the body out in the forest. Wedge it between the roots, if it feels right. Be gentle. The shadows of the tree canopy will trace over the face as the sun slips overhead, day after day, and soon decay sets in. It's not pretty. Bear it. Flies and beetles come first. The foxes and badgers and crows all take their pound of flesh. They carry off chunks at a time, surprisingly efficient, always in the half-light. The worst is over. Soon mushrooms nod their heads and spread lacy roots. Beetles scuttle. Worms wriggle. Perhaps a few emboldened vines twine around the ribs. The bones are so white, blinding at first, but like everything else out here, they will fade. A thrush lands on the eye socket and considers it for a nest. Voles gnaw on tibias and fibulas and grow strong from the calcium. Wait a year. Maybe two. One day there will be nothing but rich soil, perhaps a patch of sharp-green plant growth. A few residual beetles. A thistle nest. Nothing left that the Earth won’t use. Nothing too sharp to touch.

Anyway, all of this to say: you’ll get over him.

Maggie Weber

I clutched the shoe box to my chest and stared at the ground as I walked, careful not to trip over the protruding roots and stones that littered the path. Jack walked alongside me, always half a step ahead, though his legs were shorter than mine. We had walked this way a hundred times before, scraped our knees on every stone and broken branches off every tree playing knights and cowboys. We both knew where we were going, but he always wanted to lead. Jack was my best friend and had been for as long as I could remember, but since starting fourth grade things had changed between us. It was because the guidance counselor called me into her office during the first week over the loudspeaker and everyone heard. Nobody had ever been called to the guidance counselor before. After that, Jack pretended not to know me at school, even though he and the counselor both knew I only ever got in trouble at home. Still, on weekends Jack would sit on the tire swing in his front yard and wait for me to come play like always. And I did because I missed him just like he missed me.

We wove in and out of the trees, brown leaves cracking under our sneakers, until finally we could see a patch of blue sky ahead.

“Hurry up,” Jack said, breaking into a jog, arms pumping at his sides.

“Why are we in a hurry?” I asked, clutching the shoe box tighter to my chest.

“Just come on.”

I did as he said, struggling not to jostle the delicate contents of the box. We stopped when we reached an outcropping of twisted roots, their pale underbellies reflected in the murky lake water below like a nest of snakes. The sun was high in the sky, peeking between clouds and glinting off the center of the lake. Jack crouched on his knees and looked over the edge.

“The water is kind of far down,” he said.

“Not to me,” I replied. Jack made a face.

I held the box in front of me. It was white and shiny and had once housed a pair of silky red shoes with pointed toes and high heels. They were mom’s, but dad made her throw them in the trash before she had a chance to wear them because they were too expensive. Mom didn’t cry often, not even over me, but she cried over those shoes. On either side of the box, we had tethered two water bottle pontunes, their caps secured with scotch tape.

“Take the lid off,” Jack instructed.

“I don’t think we should,” I said. “I think he’d want to be covered.”

“I want to see him.”

I wedged the box between my arm and hip and used my free hand to wriggle the lid free. Harry was nestled on his side in a bed of tissues, tiny paws curled into his shrunken chest, bald tail wound up the front of his body. His eyes were open, two dark peppercorns embedded in graying fur.

“His eyes are still open,” Jack said.

“I didn’t know how to close them.”

Jack reached into the box and nudged the mouse’s face with his thumb. “There,” he said.

“Do I say something now?”

Jack looked at me, squinting. His cheeks were heavily freckled and his baby canines were pointed like fangs. “Like what?”

“Like a funeral.”

He shrugged.

I looked down at Harry and took a long breath. “You were a good mouse,” I said. “You were there for me. Even when mom and dad were fighting.” I bought Harry for twenty five cents at the pet store with mom’s grocery change and kept him hidden in my room. He was one of the mice they fed to snakes and lizards. He was born just to be eaten. So I brought him home and whenever I needed someone, I took him into my lap and ran my finger up and down his back. And when I needed to hide from dad, he hid with me.

“You were a feeder mouse, destined for a snake’s belly,” I said, ignoring Jack’s rolling eyes. “I saved you so you wouldn’t get eaten. I guess that makes me like your dad.”

“Why?”

“Because I saved him and brought him home.”

“When has your dad ever saved you?” Jack lived next door. He knew what dad was like.

“I’m just saying, I saved Harry.”

“You’re no hero. Your dad didn’t save you and you didn’t save the mouse. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

My heart tightened. I fiddled the lid back onto the box then got down on my knees. Jack held my legs as I leaned over the outcropping and extended my arms down towards the water. Finally, the box touched down and sent a stream of ripples into the lake. It floated. With Jack’s help, I pulled myself upright and sat beside him on the uneven roots.

“It’s not going anywhere,” Jack said. The box lingered along the muddy edge of the lake below the roots.

“There’s no current.”

“It’s supposed to go to the middle.” He got onto his stomach and suspended his upper body over the edge of the roots, reaching for the box to nudge it in the right direction.

“You’re too small,” I said.

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. You can’t reach.”

He scooted further down and swung wildly.

“Jack, you can’t.”

With one more swing, his hips departed from the roots and he slid forward. Without so much as a cry, Jack disappeared over the edge and splashed into the lake.

“Jack!” I called, scrambling to my feet. He thrashed, spraying my trousers with dirty water, then sunk. A cloud of murk closed over his head, obscuring the sharp whites of his eyes. The water was deep. Jack didn’t know how to swim. The air became eerily silent, his ripples disappearing into the open water. I looked behind me at the path that led home. My eyes traced the winding, leaf strewn trail.

I need help, I thought.

For a moment longer, I considered running home to my dad. His reaction hit me like a slap. I took a gulp of air, and flung my body into the water.

Cold enveloped me. I sunk until my sneakers met the gooey bottom, then I reached out and felt the roughness of his shirt. Lunging forward, I hooked my arm around his chest and kicked. We moved towards the surface with torturous slowness. Pressure built in my lungs until our heads broke the surface. I towed Jack’s limp body along the shoreline, grasping roots and branches for support, until the incline leveled and I pulled him to land.

Exhausted, my arm still wrapped around his chest, I lay prone on the soil. Water gushed from either side of his mouth and finally his chest heaved. He rolled onto his side and coughed. I waited for him to push me away, but he didn’t. His body trembled.

“We’re okay,” I whispered.

He did not speak.

“We’re okay,” I repeated, and he pulled me closer.

Kelly Doyle

I’ve tried to write a poem about
love but it’s come out like this:

I can only heave my heart into my mouth
so many times before what I’ve been trying
to say gets lost,
turned to acid as I vomit.                                                                                                               This is for you, because
I’ve been thinking about the comfort that
I experience while feeling your gaze rest upon me,
the softness in your eyes.

This is for you,
because you were under me,
your cheeks flushed,
your mouth open in a small “o.”
You looked surprised even with
your heavy-lidded gaze, and
with every touch you shivered
like you did when I bit your earlobe.

I did not expect a you to be so much softer.
Not because of your breasts, or your soft perfect curves,
but because your mouth was soft
and gentle even when we
were kissing hard enough to shake the earth,
teeth clashing hard enough to startle me
each time with the small jolt
of pain.

Olivia McKnight

I’ve been treading these moments                                                                                               The way a spider zip-lines                                                                                                       Across its thread –

I hold steadfast to my silk
– Swaying in the breeze –                                                                                                      Humming like fiddle strings                                                                                                             In vibration –

Talia Green

 

Completely surrounded by rows of purple flowers,
She walks swiftly down marble floors for hours.
Lips pressed in a sly inviting smile,

I had only to walk one mile.
A quiet saxophone plays nearby,
Maybe this one will prove worth my time.
“Hello, how do you do?”
“I am fine, it is nice to meet you too.”

She whisks away in a wave of red,
And I follow her to the bed.
The lady of the night,
She put up quite a fight.

Tamar Sidi

Today I tread the hem
of Ireland’s summer dress.

Inch Beach
billowing in breeze, brisk by seaside –
sly peaks beside a timid tide –
beige sand iridescent under
layers of saltwater and sun.

I ride on the hills of her overskirt,
fabric patched with emerald and brown,
spattered with a pattern of wildflowers
and herds of grazing sheep,
and hostels for the wanderers to sleep –
polka dotted along patches of jade tweed.

I breathe her in
and her crisp perfume
river-runs across me,
threads through my skin
until I’ve become stitched
in her fabric, countryside.

Talia Green

Jordan Henry