by Ollie Shane
but i can’t
My young self wants to fly in the skies
Tag: zine
The Last Time
by Louis Faber
The last time we spoke
his voice was thinner as if
it knew the end was approaching,
when it would be forever silenced
even if he had no idea it was happening.
Courtesy Never Dies
by P. A. Farrell
No one told me I would be using a walker, hunched over those curved aluminum handles and hoping the brakes on the wheels would hold, but that’s life. You never know what it’s going to throw at you, and you’ve got to be ready to catch it with both hands and draw it toward your chest so it doesn’t fall to the floor. But today, the bus jostled, slamming me into a pole. A man sneered at me, “They shouldn’t let people like you on the bus!” Yeah, people like me, with walkers.
A slow slog from the bus stop sends stabs of pain to my ankle, but I push on. Good thing my folding friend has wheels. I don’t think I could pick it up. Each slab of the sidewalk is daring me forward. The beast is waiting, and I’ve got to gather my strength, so I take it slow to save my breath and prepare.
Read More »Entrancing a New Season
by Chris Wardle
Praising, rising, raising
the spectral shimmering
of this wavering twilight,
misty thunderstorm remnants
lift reality’s fading vision
of a whole field moving
obscured, yearning
learning to dance, entranced
by this one evening’s mystical turning.
Concord Purple on the Sunrise
by Pran Phucharoenyos
The thunderhead is willing to break any and all windows because there’s no insurance around, and still, I take a blue car out West. The way I brought myself down to California— you would have been proud.
I leave Enchanted Wells adjacent to Rainbow Blvd and across from Wishing Coin Road and other counterfeit fairytale worlds Nevadan roads titled themselves after. The Santa Ana reports here that this boulevard I’m residing in contains steamed rainbows from kitchen sink dishwashers and the youthful and overly sentimental scent of a clean glass picked up from the cabinet reminds me to bring water when I leave to lie flat on backyard artificial grass as if I’m in wait for a high danger surgery as the southwest sticks on my sunscreened legs.
Read More »Firm Footing
by Emma-Jane Peterson
Your footprints melt away in tide-washed sand.
Enough of you remains to follow to the crevice
where you shrink, your mind confronting fear.
2 poems
by Kelly G. Wilson
Read More »leaving a perfect gleaming blade that cuts
through our lives so cleanly
The Day I Did Nothing
by Riley Shin
Winter mornings take a dismal form.
Except for today, when I roll over to face
The Sun too wonderfully warm
Not to sit and savor his gentle embrace.
So today, I do nothing.
Read More »I Could Be Modern Art
by Natalie Hunter
I used to care so much about my body hair. I remember the face-melting shame I felt when a boy at school announced loudly that I had hairy arms, while we coloured pictures at a table. But, when I think of it now, it is just a memory of a memory. I feel detached from the experience. I grew up with plenty of unconditional love at home. Therefore, I knew intrinsically that my value was inherent and unshakable … at home. Like so many people in this world, it took venturing out into the world for school, to initiate the confusing experience of being “othered.” Some years later, at the age of fourteen, I would stand in front of the mirror enumerating every single thing that was unacceptable about my beautiful, youthful body, as if identifying the offending aberrations could bring me closer to perfection. It amuses me to think of that fourteen-year-old seeing me now, two weeks from my fortieth birthday, thinking, “How could you let yourself become so ugly?”
Read More »This Morning
by Jeffrey Zable
Upon awakening, I had this hopeless feeling that nothing mattered—
mainly, that my life didn’t matter!
I have awakened with this feeling many times before and have just
made myself push through it—especially when I was working or had
something important to take care of.
The Amazine Community 