Into the Abyss
2024-2025
Entomophily
By Emma Keany
By Emma Keany
the closeness of a pollinating bee
finding herself deep, gentle, sweet-smelling
too much honey leaves our mouths dry
hungry for more, so we tear at it
don’t care if we’re stung
you can coat my wounds in your tongue’s nectar
find sugar in the folds of my flesh
does the bee want the flower?
does the flower want the bee?
mutualistic symbiosis: when both desires are fulfilled
the bee, fat and happy and lonely
the flower, soft and glowing and alone
the perfection of their union touted by nature herself
orchids calling to an extinct lover
a monogamy created by evolution
but wasps are pollinators, too.
In Place of Identity
By Emma Keany
Emma Keany
I have:
A few stray words—
Sitto, jiddo, sahha, kaak bi halib.
A single recipe I eat every morning.
A few stray hand-me-downs—
A golden cross I never wear, a stuffed bear, a plush snake.
My nose, my leg hair, my bad attitude.
A few stray memories—
A blurry fireplace, a house in the snow, a dusty garage.
The smell of my aunt’s house.
A few stray connections—
A piece of wordplay, an occasional jolt of recognition, a distant mourning.
The familiar sound of lesbian, the similar face we wear, the similar tears we shed.
Is it enough to identify? Is it enough to speak with my father’s family a few times a year? Is it enough to love them from a distance? Is it enough to see a banquet of song and dance and recognize my nose, my brows, my sideburns? Is it enough to see my father’s face in a martyr’s and feel I could cry? Is it enough to bake? Is it enough to butcher my few words? Is it enough to stay where I am?
What a filthy walk
By Sam Ferland
By Sam Ferland
Sometimes I climb up a tree and find that my hands get covered in bird-shit and sap
I can’t clean it off so I just leave it there
When it starts to rain I take a shower and use the shit-sap as shampoo
Shower with shit-sap shampoo
Shit-sap shampoo shower
Shower-shit, shampoo sap
Shower, sap-shampoo … shit
1. Shit 2. shower 3. shampoo 4. zap
That’s when the lightning strikes and the tree sets a-blaze
A torch in the storm growing and breathing
The rain is a mere breath in the winter
The wind is a monster paying the trees their debt
Pushing the acorns into the dirt to be reborn one day
And I am a human
Watching on with nothing to do but stand with shit and sap in my hair
How typical
Candled Soul
By Emily Clairmont
By Emily Clairmont
A spark catches on the wick
and it grows as the heat travels down
and the air caresses the small flame
until it is stoked into a roaring blaze
that dances its shadows across the walls
reaching for the ceiling
limited only by the wax its attached to
The accompanying scent of sandalwood
mimics that which followed you to Heaven
as your flame grew above the
safe confines of the tempered glass
and was snuffed out
glass-bound
By Erin Winship
By Erin Winship
in front of me a blue abyss
quiet tranquil
anemones their delicate arms waving
beckoning
putting on a show with
their vibrant and prismatic colors
fish dashing scales glittering
like jewels in sunlight
each species has a role in their
elaborate ballet
clear water magic dancing
my mesmerized eyes meet the manta’s smiling nostrils
as she gracefully glides past
wings gently moving her
forward
if i lean in and look up
i can see an old sea turtle
she takes her time
traversing
from
one side to another
of the tank
it’s as though they have their
own language
just them and the the gentle motion of water
swirling and twirling around
eachother
circling this big loop
that they call home
do they know?
that they’re sentenced to stay here
g l a s s b o u n d
until they die
they will never see the sea
do they know?
there’s no point in brushing away the tears on my cheeks
they’d only be replaced with more
Soundings
By Jacqueline Modungo
By Jacqueline Modungo
Is this tranquility?
I laughed to myself through the reverberations in a way that no one could hear me, and for a few minutes I stopped believing there was always someone on the outskirts of my field of vision. There is something so poisoning about sound, about how you don’t hear it, about how you taste it, about how it takes you all at once. And so I save it for a rainy day. It was November when I reconvened, or at the very least, it was one of the -embers. Someone kept putting back the leaves so that we could watch them fall. They must have heard me complain that it was all over too soon. I didn’t question the lack of need for a jacket, but there were times when I almost wanted to pull the cold back over myself so that I had a reason to withdraw. But there I was, on who knows how many of the last adirondack afternoons when the sun hadn’t been cut from its string, waiting for the floor to fall through.
Eyes Glazed Over the Screen (A Failed Economics Paper)
By Jacqueline Modungo
By Jacqueline Modungo
Fingers poised over the keys and they stumble on the poison of staying up until 3:18 each night just to “get time back” in the day, half freedom half flimsy punishment for everything I decide to delay eyes glazed over the screen and suddenly I imagine confections, confessions, and lips I have never kissed and lips I’ll never kiss again . I was born to scribble in the margins and I’ll be paid to study economics after trying to reinvent the wheel after running away from it after having it run over me and I’ll tell you another secret- I just like listening to the press of the keys, like any good american I can’t stand more than six seconds of silence so I fill it all with gentle observation like the oil from my fingers smudged over a phone camera lens like the empty can of high noon you walk past everyday at two pm like the bird nests you don’t realize are high rises like the cursor that blinks on the screen, begging you to keep going but will wait with you anyway; my hands are still poised over pages that haven’t been born but really I have set them down for a destination without work, time, or sets of 2,500 word counts, in between the pursuit of folding a thousand paper cranes, and they have settled somewhere where we work and rest with dignity, and they have settled somewhere where we take turns making each other cups of tea
The Ghost
By Anson Wang
By Anson Wang
Time is in passing, notice the way it seeps and drips
Never quicker than it should, I wonder why
We are shocked seeing its accumulation Perhaps it’s the proof
Of what we’ve already forgotten Or perhaps the time was more
Precious than realized But Truthfully, I’m caught
Valuing everything before and after it passes Perhaps it is the present
That doesn’t exist at all.
I wanted to be yours when I wanted to be good
I wanted to make you proud
It seems I want too much, I want everything I’ve ever dreamed
Even if my dreams will hollow me one day Such is the streak
That runs through me: I’m falling off this world
And I wanted to save you By becoming yours
To catch myself in Your Life and
Follow you out wherever you’re going I am
Never failing to find What I already know here
Under every layer I probe into
Even at their Depths
It’s like decimals, the further you go
The less significant it all is
But now, You’re in my way
And I’m marching straight through you
I know this feeling, I’ve been here before
If you are still intact in the end Who was
The ghost?
When I’m up late at night
Getting lost in temporary ordeals
This old feeling of wanting to read life
Before it happens, I can’t keep up the pace Anymore
Maybe it will be good To get away from this framing
Hundreds of miles ahead Maybe I’ll be wrapped up once again
In something Excruciating And this moment would
Be a chore to summon And I’d forget the living past
As something gratuitous.
