Illustrator
Year: 2025
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Sibel Boonman Morales
Digital Collage
Screenshot -
Caroline Peitler
Digital Illustration
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Grace Hutchinson
Charcoal
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Eliana Duarte
Sculpture
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Macie Middleton
Charcoal
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Willow Jacovini
Ink
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Seaside Sonder
November’s first dawn,
no one has yet decided to walk the foreshore.
The Sun teases his arrival behind the horizon
with an assortment of vapor:
gold and silver rings
so the Ocean may don her favorites.
Amidst this proposal
from behind sand dunes, shadowy bodies emerge—
was this the Mist’s trick?
Two men pulling a rowboat
laugh as their feet stomp over to the coast—
they bear brittle oars the Ocean will use to pick her teeth.
The bow cuts into her flowing flesh,
paves a jagged path across her breasts.
In the distance, a young girl approaches the tide.
No one else is here for fear the Ocean
will take her rage out on them.
Before the frigid water can claw at her ankles,
she dives in, swims hard.
Her head buoys above the Ocean’s meniscus.
Treading water—
a primordial world below her kicking feet:
ashamed experiments, ill-formed bastards—
barely time to breathe between
crest after crest washing over her head,
drowning in the Ocean’s anguish.
She dives, twists, and contorts in the callous embrace
until she reaches shifting sands.
The Ocean is the Moon’s disciple.
She made her in her image.
Yet while the Moon is offered poetry and prose,
the Ocean receives piss and plastic.
The girl brings her prayer,
bows down at her feet,
offers herself.
Seagulls scurry across damp sand recently revealed
after the Ocean pulled her skirt back in.
One takes off over the crowd.
None follow.
The lone gull’s wings beat currents
that move the restive Ocean.
In turn, the waves gyre beyond control—
where’s that girl in the undertow?
A morning angel made anew—
baptized in icy, boiling blood—
breaks through thick floes,
soars over the Atlantic.
Finally, the Sun has risen. -
The Rain
The sky was cloudy and unilluminated. Trees danced in their own rhythm and rustled as endless leaves fluttered down, indicating that the summer’s warmth was gone and the season was yet again changing. It was midday, but nightfall was rapidly approaching, like a predator looming over its prey. The familiar smell of rain lingered heavily in the air, threatening to make the atmosphere open up and let the miserable emotions of the world ripple onto the broken pavement.
I stood in the midst of it, a rather solemn look resting on my face as I stared upwards. The sky felt as though it was looking down on me, the smoky gray clouds just ready to devour me whole. It was intimidating. It felt like an inescapable force plotting my downfall. My shaking hands were stuffed into the pockets of my jeans and the image of my mother came to me.
I recalled her loving gloomy days like these and how she often mentioned there was such beauty in the world when it wasn’t just the sun shining all of the time. Most people hated dark and rainy days, but my mother loved them. She practically craved them, as if she was a child desperate for her toy.
When I was younger, I would watch from the old window. Brief clouds of fog from my breath would appear as I saw my mother stand out on the porch and gaze up at the sky with a far, distant look. Her hazel eyes would stare off and then gleam with excitement as the rain began to drop one by one and then all at once. Every wrinkle in her face showed as she broke out into a wide smile and opened her arms, happily welcoming the rain. She would be drenched in seconds, her baggy clothes clutching to her thin body. I shivered, the sight frightening, yet remarkably breathtaking.
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The Odds
I hit the lottery on my birthday.
Two-dollar ticket
four-dollar payout.
I laughed.
I finally had the upper hand
on the devil.It wasn’t until that billion-dollar jackpot came around.
I was freshly twenty
despite feeling broken in.
Craving more,
my mother sent me into the convenience store—
taxed lung cancer,
canned heart failure,
shiny, money-wasting cards
you have to scratch with raw fingernails—
and I found myself in a line,
listening to stories of what people are gonna do with it.I used to do that.
I was six years old
my parents fantasizing about fortune,
so we could all have a little more convenience
a little more privacy.
If we could be a little more fortunate.I bought the tickets my mom wanted
and something for me too;
A two-dollar scratch off—
A fantasy that I could beat the devil
who hypnotized those I love—
My stubby nails screamed
as latex ink compounded underneath them
that would not come off for a few washes.There it was: nothing.
I’d lost my leg-up
and down to my knees I fell.
Held in a chokehold of dreams,
I thought I could beat him once more.
To thumb pennies into his eyes,
break glass,
burst eardrums
with the shrill of my victory.This will be the last time I meet him
I dare not break our tie, whatever the odds.