Can’t You See? – Victoria Rios
“This piece is about how people seem to look at you differently when you are less than the status quo. It makes life increasingly difficult when you don’t know you seem different or that being different and being an individual is shunned. Especially when aesthetics and trends are constantly telling people to be this way or that way. The piece is about judgment.” -V.R
Submarine – Brynn Gardner
Enter: a tiny thing, roaming around the floor of the ocean. What all does she know?
Through her window she sees: nothing. Paint, poured lazily over a canvas. Space, as pure as the space above or the space between particles of an atom.
Through her engine she feels: sand, maybe. Or maybe everything. The dust from the corners of your eye and the crumbs from a child’s granola bars and the shards of a submarine that just couldn’t make it and the lingering heavyset smoke of an asteroid that first touched our planet sixty-six million years ago.
Through her sensors she hears: life. Quiet and immovable. Someone mutters to her right, someone lashes around a prey. Someone worms around the sand and someone exhales a deep, rattling sigh of sulfide. Even here, she decides, even here where the abyssopelagic zone meets the nothing, someone lives.
Us – Juniper Ramirez
She really never knew what hate was
fragments in her effort
soggy skull, dry skin wrapped around a personality
stare at her eyes, parallel to me
soft fingers mismatch her lips
pretty and confused, make it worse
Her body, my museum of life
acceptance a panting puppy
Her protest, repetitive and mortal
rejection an old friend
leave her memory behind
misplaced it a long while ago, even so
a young star won’t be new
lay her head on my pillow
covet your conduction system,
drown her in thick hair
Make her climb her mind
I’ll bathe her and dress her
I’ll hold her in our arms
The Last Straw
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To find more creative pieces like these, explore the pages below.
Ink & Venom 