ˈaNG(k)SHəs

“Brain Traffic” by Shoshi Levenson

By Paul Veracka I wanted time apart from constant wrecks. From breaking waves resembling comely figures. From his smile, missing even when it’s there. From her love, coming from trenches far too deep. Away from mole crabs, burrowed into graves of sand when walls of home split open like the sunset. I wanted out. To search and walk the beach. The endless combing of the neon orange shore. The shells with scattered patterns crushed beneath one thousand toes. The endless combing.        My cellphone shining like a mirror.        I look at a reflective text,        “you could have had it all” it says.        I place the phone onto the sand        and grab a smashed and bloodied,        screwed up shell. Aligned with my scaphoid ear,        it echoes the faintest ocean spray,        and fainter, the sound a trench makes        when it’s enclosed in wooden walls.        I hear my own voice, too, deep inside.        I am the colossal sound made when continental plates collide. With a scream I build a melody of wonder. I build a structure I can burrow under.

Photo and text submitted anonymously

“Cynophobia” by Virginia Ingram

By Kaite Britt I want to throw my ideas in the air like a card deck and trip on the high as I fall from my life pedestal. I joke myself into thinking time will solve my problems as the best riddler known to man, but I refuse to believe that life will crawl back down to a week ago again: rock bottom, on the apartment floor eating artichoke hearts like candy, because someone was kind enough to flush every pill I own down the toilet when they heard that I had fallen prey to myself, I had told my lover to leave that he had been gone like his bags were already packed. This week is like butter spread too thin on toast, a harbinger that next week will leave me with an elastic feeling as I remind myself that whiplash and fairy tales can be bought by the bottle until 12 am at most gas stations. Who needs a faithful martyr lying next to them night after night when I can take a sacrificial virgin and a reminder with me to bed that come the morning holy water will never absolve me of the sins I’ve committed in the dark between the sheets, at home, fights that hurt my mother as if she were my worst enemy, games of chicken, throwing knives at each other’s feet to see who was braver, in my room cutting the weakness from my skin, soothing emotional pain with physical pain like a warrior defending selfish causes watching her friends rise like angels from the sides of highways, from the bathrooms they grew up in from the rooftops. Purgatory may be a garden of lost souls waiting to wilt up to heaven, beautiful irises and orchids fading with the seasons on earth regrowing as white lilies that exchange beauty for purity with enough prayers and time. I already have a fiery spot of orange clay marked with my name and required sunshine waiting for me deep below purgatory where flowers are planted based on what you’ve sinned rather than chancing how many people are left alive to pray for you, your luck of the draw. I am not a lost cause, only a woman trying to retie the knots between loved ones at an earthen table the way Satan called on his family after he fell from heaven and cried at  loss of his father’s love, his home. Loss that Satan’s comrades shared as the dust from the impact settled like armor in layers on skin. I am a woman fallen from grace, a survivor pulling my hair back into a pony tail and rebuilding my house of cards using tape to hold it together. Still, I have fallen in love with the idea of throwing my ideas in the air like cards and letting the mixed deck scatter waiting with the hope that the Queens will land face up, knowing the game will be disrupted for just long enough to take the upper hand.

And there we were on some still voyage When Time needed some moment to catch up So he could keep ahead. In my mind I could reach out And pluck at every connection, Tight metal strings we spun On a grand and soundless instrument. For in that breech of time I struck a chord. I strike a chord. Out come dusts of beaches, silver, Grounded clouds, and cedar dewed, All which once together Held our prettiest landscapes.

By Shalini Rana While running to first base, I might get one of those heart attacks young people get.        why everyone’s on the same page about things They’ll put me on a Medical Mysteries show I’ll never live that down.        i’ll never understand. Like who taught you this growing up My pants would fall down. I’d fall flat on my face.        did everyone have a white dad who had a classic rock I would be last. The least athletic.        collection and pitched with them on the manicured lawn Who do you think you are, he said, a ninety-five year old with a beer gut.        that’s a very, like, stupid thing to say I’d take out someone’s eye pitching the ball. Game would be over.        i know, but, I was on the GOODDAMN ground I’d pitch with all my puny might and the ball would only go two feet in front of me.        the fat boy winded me with the ball aimed at my tummy They’d make fun of my run, me being quirky and all that.        seeing worried expressions hovering over me, that poor girl Someone might find out I don’t know what an inning is.        she sure is a broken thing, they probably said My nervous fart might come out when I’m not playing the outfield.        but things are quieter down here, rather stay for awhile The high school sport-playing kids will say, you’re bad at this sport, you have to quit.        they pull me up, sympathy-punched faces asking if I’m OK I can just nerd out at home watching true crime documentaries instead.        aw shaddup someone clasped a hand on my shoulder What would I do when the ball comes to me on the outfield.        aw shaddup let me be a benchwarmer and suck the lollipop he gave me I stood that far away for a reason. They’d know I’m a fake.        wow I really am the old beer gut man I’d die from a freak accident. What would the headline say.        but I sit and like it that way shit sounds ringing in my ears “Maybe it was better that way.”        it’s better this way, it’s better this way, thank you fat boy good-bye, no thanks, America, you sport-crazed hooligan, go to hell.

“Deep End” by Alec Masella

I think I’ll just cross the street before she sees me

Artwork by Shoshi Levenson

By Rachel Paige Moore You're there next to me, I'm curling up on your chest and crying about nothing and you're soothing me. You tell me I'm beautiful. You tell me everything is going to be okay. You tell me you love me. Oh, God, those words. I cling to you and beg you to say them over and over until they echo inside my head like the sound of a broken record. My fingers reach out to touch your face and they meet my pillow. My cheek slides against my sheets. You're not there. You don't exist. I'm reeling, staring at the ceiling. I can imagine you so vividly but still I've never met you. And so you take the form of those I've loved and lost or those who currently occupy my daydreams. But you're just a figment of my imagination. A side effect of the condition that pills try to contain. But oh no, this side effect is to ingrained. Too hideously rooted in my psyche for it to ever be squelched by modern science. So I'll talk to you like you're lying next to me, and beg you to tell me the words over and over again. And I'll hear them in a hundred different voices, trying my damn hardest not to go insane. Because you're all I've ever wanted. But you don't exist. So I'm reeling, the world is spinning and I'm trying so hard to convince myself that I'll be fine on my own. But I'll never be fine on my own. Because I need you. You're like a drug, and my imagination is only a feeble imitation of your true ecstasy. I relentlessly stop myself from every vice I know is wrong, but I know that they helped. They would help still. They would stop me from going insane. They would stop me from wanting you here. Because they help me to realize that you don't exist. And you never will. They help me realize that I'll always be alone. So what's a drunken stupor or a cloud of smoke going to do? Destroy me from the inside? I don't need a vice for that. I have you.

I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party. The night fucks up the day and the day tries to patch up the night. I believe that soon I won’t be able to tell the difference.

By Mary Rose Lunde I want a president who knows how it feels to be broken, to truly feel fear, to know what agonizing loneliness is. I want a president who knows what having no one around feels like, when people don’t answer their calls, when they lie about being sick but are really at a party, when they choose other friends than you. I want a president who knows what a trigger is, be it a word, a smell, a sight, a noise, an experience, even getting out of bed in the morning. I want a president who knows what it’s like to not feel anything, to feel the pressure of gravity on your body holding you down to earth, the constant desire for comfort of some sort, the desire to eat and throw up at the same time. I want a president who knows what it’s like to want to give in but to keep fighting, to know what the difference between being strong and being weak is. I want a president who understand what it’s like to get caught with a razor in your hand, to be lectured by someone who you love, to be overwhelmed by a friend’s constant texting, messaging, calls asking if you’re okay every few minutes, receive a call of concern every time you send them a text message or won’t respond instantly to one of theirs. I want a president who knows what it’s like to constantly lie to the people closest to you, who knows what it’s like saying that you’re okay when you’re really not. I want a president who knows what wearing a mask is like, who knows the dangers of wearing another identity too long, of losing who you are to the false truths you tell others, who know what losing yourself to the lies feels like. I want a president who hates themselves for being too weak to hold everything in, who goes to others and tells them they need help, who always has to have their phones charged and ready to go. I want a president who has answered a call at three a.m. because of a panic attack, a depressive episode, or an accident. I want a president who knows what it’s like to say goodbye to someone you love, to not say goodbye to someone because they left without telling you. I want a president who knows what it’s like to wish their life away, who want to pretend that tomorrow brings hope, that losing the battle doesn’t mean that things won’t get better. I want a president who knows what it’s like to stay…