Prose
“Who is supposed to give me the answer but the one person who happens to be oceans away in some small flat, chipping away at time as time chips at her?”
Peter Aupperlee
“Because, in the end, it hadn’t been the mad scientists or the thousand-foot robots or the meteors hurling towards Earth that were the real danger. It had been humanity; just plain people.”
Matthew Thompsen
“Toby knows everything, Nyx can’t do this, can’t escape.”
Jenin Hamdan
“All we can do is prey on the masters of this game; those who think they rule the world from above. But what they don’t know is that my sister makes monsters. And what they don’t know could kill them.”
Rosalyn Gardner
“She opened her hands and saw her misshapen fingers, and wished once again for a little sweetness.”
Sophia Li
Poetry
love, or whatever you call it in some words or less
“the act of seeing, really seeing all the imperfections, and only seeing beauty /
the act of (not) putting me on a pedestal”
Weyinmi Barrow
The Beautiful Things She Will Do
“For you have taken me, / shaken me by the hair, / mistaken me for a prayer”
Peter Aupperlee
“and you disappeared / in no time, / with memories, / with chunks of memories”
Pradnya Gaikwad
“It tasted like oil stains on the wall, / And stew stains on the stove”
Weyinmi Barrow
“Can’t I pluck my own flower?”
Nisha Wagh
“It may be invisible and silent, / but it is known around the globe”
Yilin Xia
“Empty in his head and heart / Hollow in his soul and bones”
Caitlyn Chalmers
“Trapped. / Broken. / Everything, I feel.”
Nisha Wagh
“invisible flashbacks hitting me harder”
Amruta Ashok Dhuke
“Somebody ratted to the Pinkertons, / and Hosea and Lenny died because of it.”
Joseph Petruno
“I am dying from inside / thinking about the things / that should not / matter to me much.”
Runali Vijay Helwade