Into the Abyss
2024-2025
On having a shape but finding it too
By Charlie Black
By Charlie Black
I think it has to do with air
color has pedagogies
but shape is open
open
open
open your mind to EXPLOSION
open your mind to space and molecule and philote
open to expansion
to tessellation
to fractals
to spaces
filled and unfilled
Shape is space
or a reaction to space or the relation of space
to space
I am drawn to open spacein
6th grade I could not resist an open field
still can’t
want to spin and fall and roll
scrape elbows and knees
bloody me up
grass in mouth and shirt
masochistic itch
dirt mingle sweat
create HEAT create ENERGY
energy begets energy
warm aura expounding
if I get hot enough could I glow
space becoming light
shape becoming
The Skandhas
By Charlie Black
By Anson Wang
When a person falls out of love with someone, do they cease to exist? Yes, they shed into a new existence, a new self.
The children are making their own adjustments
Cynicism tapered back down to a blankness
Just by being present,
They’ve made me forget my own indictments
And now, I’m only afraid that we’re all a bit too blank
Even when we aren’t, because it’s what we once were
And all we can pretend to be is what we find
Stuck to ourselves, like an advertisement slid under the door
Giving in to depths we’re not responsible for
_
They write and write and fill in the blanks and do what’s asked
And sometimes more, this one is blooming beyond what she can even comprehend
I wonder what comprehension would do for her
Would she cash out early?
Has she even learned to think in terms of cash?
The enduring self is an enveloping of the person’s skandhas. It is a perception of all a person’s constituents.
The eye can’t see itself, the tongue can’t taste itself
Can skin touch itself?
I’m not sure that I can perceive myself
My only experience is what gets fed to me
I process it all and then log it, in the center behind my eyes
Have I even seen myself? I’m not so sure I exist
All I’m composed of is getting to the next thing,
But when I think I’ve got it
It disintegrates in my hands.
just like heaven
By Charlie Black
By Charlie Black
i think my hips might be trapped within my mattress
i think i started to sink
and phased through the top layers by mistake
topographical love
pushing upwards
in discs and planes
and i guess now we’re in a realm of colored pencil plateaus
and i wonder how often you think about me
and i wonder if things are going to go back
i imagine a dreamscape replica of my school
only it's not a replica but its still my school
i walk past suites that are endless expanses behind doors
that should probably be closed
and find myself in a lavish room filled with so many vases and everything is blue and green and velvet
and it was like heaven
like when the leaves are all the shades of leather
like limerence
like the want just bleeds into the air
like it should be illegal the way i wanted to touch your skin
electricity percolating
entropy takes hold
energy does not rearrange itself like matter does
but everything needs it
all the time
my therapist says
there are a lot of sweet people out there that you cannot morph yourself into to provide what they
need
i think it fizzles out eventually
i think it has to
Still Water
By Vincent Triveri
By Vincent Triveri
I sauntered along the derelict beachfront, bereft of any life that had once inhabited it. A discarded soda can crunched underneath my foot, a familiar sound that has continuously crossed my ears every time I came to this place. Scattered across the sand was a carpet of unkempt and unusable deposits of filth left here to further rot as the years slowly passed by. The ocean laid still, aside from the melancholy sound of benign waves crashing against the shore, waves that took on a sanguine shade of red, unfit for any living creature other than the invasive algae that had made itself manifest here. But who’s fault was that?
In the past, I remember when this place was beautiful. Dark clouds never perpetually blanketed the skies, and the waters were always a pristine blue whenever I visited. Happy memories were made here, making sandcastles using the rich sand, to picking up scuttling Hermit Crabs during low-tide. Those were pleasurable days, but this place has been robbed of those effervescent memories.
I gazed upon the endless sea, multiple large rigs out in the horizon, squeezing out any last modicum of oil that they can get their hands on. They never held a shred of care for these seas, for the people and animals that relied on them to survive. I felt another weak wave hit my feet, washing up a half-fish skeleton as it rested on shore, the tide not even able to pull it back in. At that moment, I felt a strange conviction take over me.
“..Go into the water…dive underneath the surface, see what lays below..”
Against better judgement, I would let myself be subsumed by the sanguine sea, not even bothering to change into more fitting raiment for it. It was like I was entranced by an outside force, but I knew that deep down it was my own curiosity getting the better of me.
“What did I expect to find down here?”
The water was warm, a gross, muggy warmth that was not at all pleasing to take in. Even when submerged, my body felt like sweating as I bobbed up and down, routinely plunging myself below the surface. I was so keen on trying to find something, that I hardly noticed that I was going way-out, more than I expected. I saw no sand beneath my feet, there was only an abyss resting below me. My consciousness continued to ring out.
“..Go deeper..GO deeper..”
I had nothing to lose anyway, I took a deep breath, and would dive back down, this time descending further than I have before. I could barely see where I was going, all I could spot in front of me was a murky mix of red and orange swirling around my vision. Rationale was out the window, my mind was screaming at me to just keep swimming lower and lower
“..lower…Lower…LOWER!”
Until, things became less opaque. I was girdled by a pronounced void, how far had I swam down..? I tried for a moment to take in this sight, before something else caught my attention. A gargantuan jellyfish idly passed by. Its Bell alone was larger than me, as the creature's long tentacles extended far behind it, being cast by the darkness of the abyss. It was the first sign of life that I’ve seen in ages. Somehow, someway, this organism was able to outlast the others; suppose it wasn’t surprising.
Before long, I got the sudden urge to take another breath. Trying to take one last look at the jellyfish, I realized that it had vanished into the darkness. I began to rise back up towards the surface, kicking my legs as fast as I could to expedite my ascent upwards. I opened my mouth, air bubbles came pouring out as I was met with a nauseating taste hitting my tongue. My mind was screaming at me to stay down there, but my instincts told me otherwise. I finally breached the surface, taking in one deep breath, as it was followed by a subsequent coughing fit, as I tried to fruitlessly spit out any salty aftertaste that I felt festering inside my mouth.
Turning back to shore, I saw that there was no shoreline to return to. I was encircled by a never-ending seascape, even if I swore to myself I didn’t venture that far out. My mind however had remained traced back onto the massive jellyfish. Was it truly there? Or a byproduct of my deep descent?
I floated haplessly in an ocean of blood, the waves that had weakly struck the shores had disappeared completely. No life, no energy, nothing at all. Suspended in still water.
String in a Pocket
By Sam Ferland
By Sam Ferland
There is a string in your pocket
With lint among other things
There the same way anything gets anywhere
It happens, happened, is yet too,
Different from a current
on the river bed we watch it
There was a naked person who jumped in
A red sign said not too
as well as the teacher
One that taught what matters –
A spark in your mind follow it
into a pocket
Next to the lint
from the scrape of a cramped hand
rubbing off
dark shades of fabric
Accumulating
reaching downwards a hole
walking towards
the dull pencil told to sharpen,
that never did it’s hard to see
through the trees –
The situation of walking or not it happens to us
The space between a trailhead
and the car
The person who jumped in the current
is there I couldn’t say
where their string is now
Womanhood
By Caroline Schwartzbeck
By Caroline Schwartzbeck
Why is it that so many shoes look like knives?
Pointy, unnatural, inhuman
and presentable, according to the department store employee
who insists it's bad enough that you won't consider heels.
Look past the inhumanness and you can see, for an instant, what she does;
sleekness. Beauty.
But underneath beauty lies hunger,
not peckish musings but bloody hunger.
Stomach growling, teeth gnawing,
this shoe, no, this knife, is a predator on the horizon
slinking closer, flaunting itself.
You've fallen into its trap the moment you look and think
just how fashionable it would appear
with its jaws around your ankle.
Fall into the trap. Slide it on and regret it,
stumble-run down the aisle because you might as well give it a try,
but you cannot flee an enemy that's already twisting into you.
You can only fight it as it whispers in your ear
in the language of pain
saying, Sit down. You know it hurts too much to walk like this.
Sit down. It's not your place to be up and about.
You made this bargain with your unfortunate birth.
Now hold up your end of it. Sit down.
A decision lies before you now.
You can give into its agonizing demands,
take a seat and let the others do the doing.
Or you can pry the thing away from you
and stand, bare and proud.
Why is it that so many knives look like shoes?
The Gorilla Artist
By Teddy Girouard
By Teddy Girouard
I don’t trust the gorilla at the zoo. Since birth he’s been observed by this gorilla researcher and gets special treatment. He has books and paints, he knows sign language, and I don’t trust it. He’s not much of a reader but he paints like he’s running out of time. The local news did a story on him. “The Great Gorilla Artist” they called him. His name is Adrian. He started out just painting handprints and squiggles, but he’s gotten very good, on a technical level. The shading, the realism, the symbolism, it’s frighteningly good. Too good for a gorilla. He’s entirely self-taught and now he’s painting the world from his point of view. Then the zoo sells these paintings for a mint. They used to just be knick-knacks you could buy at the gift shop, but now private collectors are coming just to buy work of the Gorilla Artist. Zoo management is thinking about making a whole new building as a gallery for his work.
The thing about the zoo is that it’s really the only place to go in town, so whenever I go on a date or need to blow off steam, I head over there to either show my date all the cute little animals and tell her she’s cuter, or walk around and clear my head. And every time I go there’s that damn gorilla, right by the front gate, painting something or other. The other day something caught my eye though.
I took my latest girl, Lea, and of course she wanted to see the famous gorilla. Out-of-towners always want to see him, they don’t believe it. We looked down and, like everyone, she waved and shouted for his attention. He looked up at her, but his eyes grew wider when he saw me. He stopped painting and grabbed a completed work from his stack, and it was a painting of me. It was unmistakably me. I had these sunken in cheekbones and these dead eyes, but it was me. Right behind me in the painting was Adrian, rendered as a golden god, holding the big rock from his enclosure… ready to strike. He stood like a statue, staring into my eyes a look that could kill, holding his painting up to the sky for all to see. I told Lea he was threatening me but she said I was overreacting, that it didn’t look like me in the slightest. But I knew. At first we had words but then we started shouting at each other over this painting, right at the entrance of the zoo. I’m not seeing her anymore.
A few days later, the gorilla researcher was replenishing his art supplies and took his latest paintings for study, and she found the threatening one he did of me fascinating. It ended up not just on the local news but made national news, as, quote, “an animal’s piece of art symbolizing the creature’s unique relationship to the humans keeping it in captivity”. But that’s not true. It was a threat, directed at me. Adrian, the Gorilla Artist, is going to bash my skull in with a giant rock. He wants to kill me. I tried to phone the zoo, I even sent the researcher a picture, and they laughed off my concerns. But I wasn’t laughing. Today, things came to a head.
With all the fervor about that threatening painting, Adrian was supposed to be making a television appearance with the researcher, but when they opened his dressing room door for the taping of the program he was gone. We were put on lockdown. Everyone was to stay indoors, gorilla on the loose! Do not approach, but if you have any idea where he is going, call the hotline. I know where he’s going. He’s coming to get me. I just know he is. I went out and bought myself a revolver I’m so sure. Now I’m sitting, facing the door. Waiting. Every rustling leaf, every crack of lightning and crash of thunder could be his hideous fist bursting down my door. The gun shakes in my hands, it’s heavy. He is going to burst through the door and bring down his fists through my skull. He is going to kill me.
I am going to die tonight, yet I stand resolute. I cock the gun. Whether I use it on him or myself is the question.
SANTA INQUISICIÓN / HOLY INQUISITION
By Johann Klassen
By Johann Klassen
SANTA INQUISICIÓN
Me arrastro por la niebla de un futuro que me
consume. El eco del juicio
se quema en mi garganta, y la piel se hace carne,
se hace sombra,
se hace grito.
Santa Inquisición,
¿dónde está mi alma?
Soy solo un reflejo
en tus ojos rotos.
Arráncame el miedo,
pero no la fe.
Mi cuerpo es el altar,
mi dolor, el sacrificio.
El peso del silencio
cae como un golpe de plomo, y el cielo se
hunde
en mis venas,
corren ríos de fuego
en mi pecho desnudo.
No hay redención
cuando la culpa es un perfume que no se puede escapar.
Santa Inquisición,
¿dónde está mi alma?
Soy solo un reflejo
en tus ojos rotos.
Arráncame el miedo,
pero no la fe.
Mi cuerpo es el altar,
mi dolor, el sacrificio.
La carne se disuelve
en la voz de un dios moribundo. Todo lo que fui,
todo lo que seré,
se pierde en la niebla de tu condena.
Santa Inquisición,
me abrazas y me destruyes. Soy el cordero,
soy el fuego,
no sé si morir
o renacer en tu olvido
HOLY INQUISITION
I crawl through the fog
of a future that consumes me. The echo of judgment
burns in my throat,
and my skin becomes flesh,
becomes shadow,
becomes a scream.
Holy Inquisition,
where is my soul?
I am only a reflection
in your broken eyes.
Tear away my fear,
but not my faith.
My body is the altar,
my pain, the sacrifice.
The weight of silence
falls like a leaden blow,
and the sky sinks
into my veins.
Rivers of fire run
through my bare chest.
There is no redemption
when guilt is a perfume
you cannot escape.
Holy Inquisition,
where is my soul?
I am only a reflection
in your broken eyes.
Tear away my fear,
but not my faith.
My body is the altar,
my pain, the sacrifice.
The flesh dissolves
in the voice of a dying god.
All that I was,
all that I will be,
is lost in the fog of your condemnation.
Holy Inquisition,
you embrace me and destroy me.
I am the lamb,
I am the fire,
I do not know whether to die or be reborn in your oblivion.
a paradoxical warmth
By Caroline Schwartzbeck
By Caroline Schwartzbeck
the snowflakes drifting
soothe my aches
with their soft presence
and chillness pristine
their much-needed quiet
washing over me like a ripple
to a mere grain of sand
if only for a fleeting day
i trip on air and fall into
a paradoxical warmth
that stings of youthful excitement
not so long gone
of surprise freedom
sledding downhill like a whirlwind
and crackling fire on brick
hot chocolate with whipped cream
eventually exchanged for
muted cameras
and dull bliss
stolen glances away from the screen of the laptop
and to the screen of the window
where i can almost touch
yearn to embrace
the drifting snowflakes
Black Water
By Emily Clairmont
By Emily Clairmont
Inky pitch surrounds me
soft like satin
bending like cotton
suffocating to look at
I step into the water
a reflection of my soul
as imperfect and burdened
as my physical being
It envelops my body
as waterlogged wool
submerges muscle
tendon and bone
and as water returns to water
I find a shade staring back
Transfixed I do nothing
as the water rises
and two become one
The news that night says
“Another has drowned in Pitch Lake…”
