Molded
You create a mold, carefully handbuilding each part and wedging it to remove imperfections until it is bone dry and leather-hard. The clay body you created, thinking it will hold, thinking it is glazed to perfection. But it isn’t. Someone sees a crack, the greenware to your design that you claimed was scored and slipped to your liking— to their liking. A mold once keenly crafted has begun to come apart. But why? It was made with such careful planning— burnishing each pa
Kevin Hernandez
Feb 18
Two Hundred and Fifty Two Horsepower
The chassis is my body, tires my feet, axles my arms, and the engine my heart. This is it, flying as if I were a bird, trees become blurs. Nothing else on the mind but controlling my body. the combination of a million tiny metal pieces coming together is my peace. Like the car I have become, peace can go just as fast as it comes. Incapable of permanence in one spot.
Ever Hernandez Chavez
Feb 16
The path of your fate
The circuit is closed— the path has all loops, loops with the incandescent light, the light of your foreseeable truth. Plans that have no thought. Why does the lumens not shine my way? The constant flicker — the gleam of uncertainty dimming the glass envelope to let the objective flow like the measure of wattage to get to where you want to be. The voltage in a human to succeed. The constant reminder— do not fail.
Sarah Goldberg
Feb 13
Burn time
Even when I am unlit, I promise patient light. Strike me— I steadily shine for everyone I brighten rooms. I soften corners. I make myself useful. The flame flickers higher the harder I try. A melt pool forms at my feet like a quiet surrender, warm and easy to ignore. I tell myself, this is what shining feels like. But the more I glow, the deeper I sink— melting middle walls weakening inward. The tunneling begins. I burn. I forget the rest of myself. The room is now radiant an
Sarah Bruzual
Feb 12
Snowflake
Crystals dancing with glistening beauty and unique angles. So much to offer, yet easily overlooked. As they descend, they disappear not lost, but they become a whole. Laying there, hidden in the crowd, getting covered by millions, unless you try to understand the intricate pieces, that shapes its elegance.
Angelina Lorente
Feb 12
Stargazer
Stargazers watch you, twinkling in the sky; they see a tiny point in a deep, vast ocean, just like all the other bright dots on that dark canvas. They don’t see the millions of years you have lived— the life now long behind you. Perhaps you have already gone, your life extinguished in a bright supernova. Perhaps you collapsed until you extinguished yourself, hydrogen becoming helium becoming carbon— Dying the death of a dwarf star. They cannot know, from their safe earthly
Emily Butterfield
Feb 12
Purple Scarf
My color is vibrant, hours of work housed within my stitches and chains. Soft and delicate yarn, warming the tender skin underneath my surface. A stitch rips, my creation being reversed one stitch at a time. I am powerless unable to defend my intricate design. My yarn unravels, chains coming undone. Ditched in the dumpster, the skin I once warmed now eerily cold. My colors have been coated, drowned in suffering. I hold on to the few strings left, trying to piece together
Ella Brenner
Feb 12
LogicWing: Star Lab / Space Haiku
Mars Stephanie Gomez Like a god of war still feeling vulnerable – I fight for my life. Stars Matthew Santamaria Raindrops tapping glass like the rhythmic beat of jazz swinging through the stars. Hades Camora McKay Just a pour of peace when I drink from the darkness– at home in Hades. Rising Fire Finn Brown Woke up this morning sun on the horizon–that big ball of fire. Night Jamarra Pazchica I look to the stars when I feel angry or dark– healed by the night’s light. Unansw
Xanadu Literary Magazine
Feb 12
Being your body
I want to be the legs you walk on- to take you in the right direction. I want to be your warm leather eyes to show the beauty in the world, then the eyelashes to protect you from its dangers. I want to be your pair of dark washed out cherry lips… for nothing more than just to truly feel and taste them to their fullest. I want to be your swirling curly hair so I can connect to your head, to truly understand you. Be the ears on your head to disclose these true words of love. Be
Christopher Guevara
Feb 6
Tobacco
Tobacco is still tobacco Whether it's a single mothers coping mechanism, or a cheap old woman's perfume. Magnificent mint flavoring escapes from adolescence. Tobacco is still tobacco permeating the respiratory system slowly. Growing on tropical cultivation. Lead and arsenic in the bloodstream. Brown stained teeth, bloody gums. Cleaver sharped pains hit the chest. Whether it's once a day or all the time— tobacco is still tobacco.
Natalia Morales
Feb 4
