The first bath after leaving the institution was a baptism. 

I surrendered it all to the water like dark offerings to a dark god. 

In the swirls of warm water, I unfurled my armor, scraping it away 

with the razor blade over my fuzzy legs, secreted it to the soapy suds 

that clung to my skin until I rinsed it away, rinsed it all away 

as an offering, a surrender, a transmutation. I combed it all from my hair, 

the flying chairs in fits of rage, the sudden ranting at no one in particular.

only heard by uncaring ears whose solution was simply to 

let them tire themselves out, the endless empty hours hours hours. 

I combed it again and again from my hair, from root to tip, root to tip, root to tip 

until the dark god was satisfied, until I was empty once again, 

alone in my skin once again. 

I held myself in my own body. I held myself in the safety of home and

love and that which was invisible to me back when I was chasing ghosts. 

I held myself here, in this body, baptised and empty, 

the zen of void like a balm, like a bomb, like a boon, 

favored by the water for all of the dark gifts offered up that day. 

---

_{Seeking Damage}

I envy all the freaks

the careless

the risk-takers 

Particularly the vulnerable 

Those not debilitated by fear

If you wear your flaws well

You become interesting

It’s no fun 

to be the wallflower

the shadows are less engaging

the silence is too loud

I’m looking to be destroyed

by those who do not see me

If you wear your flaws well

You become interesting 

---

_{The hills}

the essence of dreams and disillusionment 

coated with brown vinyl seating

the aroma of rejection over diner coffee 

travels to my window 

every morning is a chance

to become someone else

stone walls greeted with a side of familiarity 

a running receipt of regrets

a night on the town alone

is a dance with the devil

why roll the dice

when we just end up back here again

meet a stranger at the counter

go home with your neighbor

the one who’s a writer

tip your waiter as you call your mother

time is running out to feed the meter

an eager observer

inhaling a dry city 

with all the smog and pollution

Its sadness and its thrill, the luster of a pearl

hoping she will acknowledge me

as I wait behind her patiently

walks through Beachwood Canyon

Hollywood appears much larger from here

her stature stares me down

throughout the romance of the bougainvillea

stands the ceaseless silence of the hills 

Vibrant red lights of Capitol Records 

shine through my window every evening

soon I cannot sleep 

without the sound of cars passing 

on the 101

---

_hazelnut

woke up to spider bites and his hand cupping my breast

the grind of fragrant coffee beans

makes anticipating a jester amusing

make sure to open up the kitchen windows

morning light hits differently in LA

off to the Farmers Market 

for fresh French baguettes 

we never travel for breakfast

we hardly ever leave the cottage, together

riding up Beverly in his vintage convertible 

catching a glimpse of my own bliss in the mirror

nihilism interrupts with its flawless timing 

the top isn’t down

fitful encounters, the rest disregarded 

behind those cottage gates in Koreatown

exists a reality where we both fell asleep 

next to someone

at the deli he stood, mesmerized

the limp shrimp on ice mocked my presence 

half a pound ordered

back to his urban chateau

my arm extended as to steady the wind 

just enough compression to stay present

“kill her, kill her” 

was the song stuck in his head

reopen the kitchen windows, savor the light

he broke and buttered my bread

a bowl of cold shrimp between us

“my French friend says buttered baguettes 

with shrimp taste just like hazelnut”

in these fleeting moments of delight

an obscure breakfast with a shadowy lover

hazelnut is heavenly 

even when it just tastes like shrimp

---

_{Reoccring dream}

I want to lean into the sun

And tell myself I’m free

Were you always on the run,

Or was it just when you saw me?

Is there any stronger love

than the one that’s in my head

It forever holds me down

like the stranger in my bed

clinging to every word

on this imaginary thread

the birds get lonely too

when you remove their beds

running back to sleep

to meet you in my dreams

the only place it seems

that you will never leave

---

---

---

---

two small watercolour paintings – based on photographs of Victorian girls, inmates of the workhouse.

JW Summerisle lives in the English East Midlands. Their poetry & artwork can be found in Catatonic Daughters, The Madrigal, SAND, & Re-Side. They may sometimes be found on twitter @jw_Summerisle

It was hard enough, so

I thought today I would

try being beautiful.

Scrounging through boxes

of long ago nonsense

I found keepsakes. I wore them.

It felt good. I felt like

I did when I had them—

happy, fun—before I 

became so worried, hurt.

For a moment, healed.

I keep them now, give them

energy, memory, hold it

there, draw on it keeping

myself sane, balanced. Closer

to being beautiful,

because it’s been too long,

it has been hard enough

lost and feeling ugly.

---

Daniel Casey has a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame. His debut poetry collection,” It’s Not About You,” is available from Atmosphere Press. He lives in Baltimore, MD and can be found on Twitter as @OnceMoreDaniel.

_Evolve

To evolve is to hurt

Shedding soft uncalloused 

skin, bruised and sunburnt,

in place of graphene 

armor, breaking brittle

bones in place of stainless 

steel, resilient, impregnable.  

An eagle, upon reaching maturity,

must mutilate its gnarled beak,

days of agony, excruciating pain,

or die of starvation. 

To evolve is to bleed

Purging the body of

toxins, pulping gashes

of raw skin as rancid 

blood drips out, reopening 

healed wounds, uncovering 

cancer still lingering, metastasis 

slowly eating away at 

your sanity, 

spitting in the face 

of personal growth,

diseases uncured, cauterizing 

the skin to stop the bleeding.

To evolve is to know pain

a steady surrender into 

one’s basest form, 

shovel and spade digging 

through mounds of 

dirt, exhumed 

skeletons, trauma clinging 

to your foundation 

like rotten roots. 

To evolve is to begin again

Starting from Zero, build 

anew, on the ground where

your stunted spine grew 

gnarled, contorted. 

To rip out overgrown 

weeds, fill the void that 

bore your addiction, discard 

rotted fruits, making 

space for new seeds.

Seeds to your salvation,

seeds to your evolution, 

seeds to your reincarnation,

seeds to another you.

---

_{A thin veil}

Sometimes,

you’re a gossamer caress

away from crossing over,

piercing the veil between

the physical and mystical

worlds, senses suspended, 

logic long dissolved in

pools of souls, worries

whisked away, doubts

dissolved, the taste of

bile and acid replaced

with sweet lifelessness.

Sometimes, 

whims of the void push 

you towards eternity, 

rules of life no longer 

valid, a misdiagnosis, 

a moment’s glance away 

from the road, a fish bone 

lodged in your throat, a cough 

you thought was a cold, a pinprick 

from an infected needle, a routine

traffic stop, a chest tightness 

you never got checked out, one 

too many cigarette breaks, a stray 

bullet, a child in the wrong place, a

premature delivery.

Sometimes, 

the velvety vail of death

is not merciful, no greater

reason that only God

understands, no rhyme in

a higher plan, no reason

other than sheer random

life extinguished, in a moment’s

blink. 

Sometimes, there are

no answers to your “Why?”

---

Matty Heimgartner is a California artist and writer whose surreal paintings and personal essays tend toward the introspective and reflective. Heimgartner often participates in art shows around the San Francisco Bay Area, and his art has been featured in the magazines CreativPaper, Beyond Words, Content, and Artist Portfolio. His nonfiction appears in Reed Magazine, Thanks Hun, and Beyond Queer Words. Matty holds a BA in art and is currently earning an MFA in creative writing. Twitter: fabulousmatty_ Website: MattyHeimgartner.com

^{Lines in the sand}

After watching you shatter         pink magic sand on bathroom tiles 

I search myself for a splinter        a shadow at the foot of her bed

We fell the same distance            in the night sometimes she dials 

yet only I remain whole.              breathing hard. all unsaid 

I possess a strange resistance.      behind the house the woods are thin  

Is it a loophole in my soul?          exposing                           within  

^{Purple prose}

This twilight is the colour of 

whipped berry pudding 

in a toilet bowl

a bruise diluted 

falling into a pile of snails 

on a midnight run – 

muddy blood rivulets. 

When hunger enters me I am a closed circuit.

The night is there and you standing under it,

words ringing into a vacuum of distraction.

How did it feel to make my body an abstraction? 

All I remember is the pale sated afterglow,

no synesthesia to make the sky a new embryo.

Count my blessings, mourning dove. 

^{Frozen objects}

I want to look out my window and see a car crash where nobody dies, just laugh it off. 

This year I’ve been such a cemetery-gazer.

Gravestones glitter in morning sun

lessons of the inexpressible 

the only mystery I’m nearing is

the human need for language. 

A rock carved with dates is still a rock,

a cemetery a memory.

Death inhuman in all things,

soft morning skies.

The birds stay high up, crying out

with no after-images 

of their own falling 

to follow.

For one more time I watch the black teeth of the buried.

I have nothing to learn from the birds.

_{Lockmeup diary}

This might be a ghost story.

You look into the mirror to think 

‘Did I ever have a face before’,

with a decoloured dread. 

Now, there is a liquid pair of eyes 

fixed upon the soft planes of a face.

Everything that happens to you happens in the present. 

A continuum of days led here

a syrupy darkness spilt over them.   

Now, you stand in a bright bathroom with a black hole inside you, 

and touching the surface of the mirror feels like a natural thing to do. 

It is what people do in films, 

after some abject personal realisation. 

(It does nothing.) 

A hungry cold seeps through the soles of bare feet, 

circulating within this alien body. There is a half-memory 

of the brush of thin fabric against tile seams, 

of white cotton socks caressing skin.

You look down to see blue veins.  

You know you must have been breathing, before. 

So you continue to breathe.

It doesn’t matter if you close your eyes. 

If I could choose something to focus on in this world, it would be your face. 

Oh, but you keep changing too. 

Maybe we can hold hands and fall back into it, whatever it is. 

If you keep falling then just breathe. 

You know how to cling to the world.   

^{There was a warning}

A white mist rises in the valley of electric wires.

My windchime mind cries out at every touch 

a bright sound, a broken glass.

But I’m a dirty window. 

Can you see anything through me – 

anything at all? This fever

keeps dragging me under

the yellowed wallpaper

seeped with cigarette smoke.

I stopped playing with the ashes

only after their silvery soot buried me.

Breathing in and out

every day the same episode unfolds.

Give the TV a little kicking. 

All there is to life

a dull knife that won’t kill me quick

hanging overhead

with its own strange force field. 

Pixels of snowfall ink black sludge

I want to be shocked by your touch.

You take this blood-heeled waltz 

through the witching hour,

pull me closer like a smiling cat drags 

roadkill through the door.

I’m not a lazy dancer, I’m 

being strangled by a veil you can’t see,

wedded to a lucid uncertainty. 

The last chapter closes in 

and I don’t know the ending 

but I feel it in my bones.

Won’t you tell me the breaking order?

Your embrace fills me with a sincere dread.

Let me go limp in the machine arms  

of a visionary angel looking at the mirror

incandescent with sorrow.

Let me be the vessel, 

run through my pale blue veins

a thick prescription of revelations. 

Kaisa Saarinen grew up in the Finnish countryside, studied environmental politics and now works as a research analyst in London. Her work is published or forthcoming in The Hungry Ghost, Expat Press, Superfroot, and elsewhere. Her debut book of prose and poetry is forthcoming from Feral Dove. @kuuhulluutta

_{THE REDWOODS} 

“There are Redwoods in Oakland”
I tell him as we smoke the trees from our fingers to the sky. 
He laughs. 
And laughs and laughs,
until all that is left of us is leaves and branches. 

There are Redwoods in Oakland. 
He doesn’t believe me. 
His voice carries louder than lighting. 
I sit and feel my fingers tingle with anger,
and watch as my sadness scatters to different parts of the room. 
Where the smoke from my lungs rises out of me. 
Filtering through the air in tiny particles, 
from the branches of my lungs through the leaves.

There are Redwoods in Oakland. 
With their red bark raised high,
and their branches soaring toward the Sun.
Where the light falls on the tips of the trees.
High on the hills where we can’t reach them.
Bigger than the trees we smoke between us
But he just laughs and laughs.
As the smoke rises to the clouds.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Ellie Lopez is a writer, photographer and full-time chismosa from Tracy, CA. You can find all her latest chisme on the socials; IG: @missellielopez, Twitter: @missellielopez

_Being

It is never
not enough—

that feeling
of being held,

an icicle melting
in the sun, a child smelling
a wild forest

for the first time
and feeling home

away from home.

I suppose I have
finally grown up
and am ready to

be the rock and not
the wind.

But here we are
witness to
certain change.

---

• 

• 

• 

• 

Joanna C. Valente is an alien from Saturn’s rings. They have written, illustrated, and edited a few books. Sometimes they take photos and bake ugly desserts.