Category: 2023 – Spring

Categories
2023 - Spring

Of Shattered Stars

Image: © DanaTentis, Pixabay License, Source.

Author: Iris Low

And while my skin slowly soaks in the filth of my fragile human existence, my mind wanders off back to the night you ran your fingers across my body and through my hair, while telling me about the human race being nothing more but a mere creation of broken stars. That human life and bodies are so utterly meaningless, that they are nothing more but conjured up atoms from the remains of ancient stardust. Perhaps we aren’t even the stardust’s essence but most likely the dust blown off of it instead. Ironic how within this discourse of the pathetic status of my existence did I finally find some comfort within the unease I feel every morning when my body awakes, and I realize I am still alive. Perhaps it is natural for us to feel constant pain since we appear to be, at the end of the day, nothing more than shattered stars. We are the remains of some light gone out long, way too long ago, and somehow, it is this poetic meaninglessness of my existence that gives me the will to keep on living.

Categories
2023 - Spring

Faces

Image: © Kathryn Coppola

Author: Furaha Mujynya

They pass you by in the streets, inhaling and exhaling the same air, for a few seconds… They are stuck in the warm moving car of a crowded subway, following an identical itinerary for a couple of minutes, until one of you steps out of the underground. They visit the same pubs, restaurants, and clubs, sometimes subtly brushing against your back, arm, or hand, as they make their way through the crowd. They shop in the same grocery store, bakery, and drug store, crossing your path as you fail to recognize them as the perpetual faces hovering around your daily life. More than strangers, they partake in the narratives of your unconscious, stealthily appearing in your dreams and quietly disappearing the moment you awake. They undertake minor roles, blending in with all the other nameless figures in the crowd. Sometimes, however, they possess a larger role in the meanderings of your brain – engendering even more frustration as you regain consciousness only to realize you are missing a key component of the story: the Face. Defeated, you start yearning for the revelation of this unknown identity. As if your dream was a vision of another reality or the key towards a magnificent future – rather than an entertaining illusion – you obsess over every little detail you can remember regarding this oddly familiar figure. Reminiscing over the startling affinity and comfort you felt with this stranger, you let your mind wander about the significance hiding behind this sentiment. As the morning gives way to the day, you slowly forget about this anonymous figure hiding in the depths of your subconscious. You go about your life, unaware that, with every step you take, you get closer to encountering the very person that has preoccupied your mind this entire morning. As the fateful meeting finally takes place, you remain unreactive, not even stopping for a second to look back at them. Unable to recognize this missed opportunity, you continue your day in ignorance. 

They walk past you on campus, in the city, breathing for a moment the same air as you. They sit across from you during a couple of minutes in the unheated roaming bus, until one of you gets up to leave. They visit the same cafés, festivals, and malls, sometimes slightly brushing against your back, shoulder, or hair, as they get across the crowd. They shop in the same supermarket, hardware store, and pharmacy, passing you by as you fail to recognize them as the recurring faces of your daily routine. Much more than familiar strangers, they are the ghosts hiding behind a fog of electronic screens and apps. Concealed by a sea of notifications and suggestions, these faces are nonetheless present on your every social platform – as your aunt’s Facebook friend, your colleague’s Instagram follower, your Snapchat friend recommendation, your mom’s LinkedIn connection and more. When you open your dating app, there appear the very faces you have spent all day ignoring. This face you choose to discard a second time around, swiping left on this fateful but anonymous figure you have tried so hard to remember. Not even feeling a sentiment of déjà vu, they remain nothing but a stranger. The protagonists of your subconscious’s fiction have managed to invade every aspect of your awoken life, whilst their identity still remains a mystery to you. Everybody in the streets becomes an unknown face with the potential of slowly creeping their way into the wandering thoughts of your subconscious – transforming into an actor in the intimate creations of your imagination.

Furaha

Categories
2023 - Spring

A 7-Step Guide to Be Beautiful

Author: Mel A. Riverwood

1. Wake up joyful and refreshed

we rise and we walk.
no need to wake up when we haven’t slept.

we wander in the dark that we know,
without seeing,
to light the one candle we need.

a flame inhabited by our own ghost.

now the ghost in the lighthouse says
‘it’s stupid o’clock again.’
he sees a wreckage going out at sea.

a corpse rotten to the bone,
which unearthed itself alone;
somehow, it remembers how to stand.

flesh hanging from frame,
all organs exposed.
six times they buried us,
seven times we rose.



2. Have yourself a healthy breakfast, baby <3

they don’t expect us to eat.
to eat is to live, to live is to think.
they think we don’t think, and therefore we don’t eat.

but the longer the sleep, the bigger the hunger;
we’ll show them we can devour as much as they did.

come now, lovelies, prepare the feast.
feed the fire and warm the pot,
gnash your teeth and unleash your beast,
tie the roast with a delicate knot.

bring the loveliest ones to the front.
vultures don’t expect a decaying corpse to rise again and hunt.



3. Shower time :)

‘here’s the wreckage again,’ says the ghost in the lighthouse.
‘it’s coming to port, afloat, adrift,
it will sink. it’s torn by a rift.

what storms has it seen, what maelstroms, what tides?
what warmth has it lacked to stand silent and slack
in the falls?
does it wish it weren’t cold?

well, it still hasn’t sunk, gotta keep a cool head.
after all, it’s not drunk yet, nor is it dead.

it’s high tide, the waves flow over the corpse.
come low tide, it rises and walks.’



4. The BEST skincare routine ever, you will be glowing after this

stretch your new skin dress over your broken bones
to hide the strange angles;
stitch up all the wounds that were caused by their stones
at the single light of your candle.

then look at it, stare at it, count the imperfections
think, think again, about all the corrections.
strangle the words, your lips are sealed over.
you hear your reflection scream bloody murder.

the smoother the better, each flaw makes it worse;
but the blessed today will choose to be cursed.
they want us brighter, six windows of shame,
but we want it darker; we kill the flame.



5. Time for makeup! you’re bold and beautiful and I love you

they don’t want to see it, only we’re supposed to know,
our perfect must be invisible, the everyday normal.
be the pearl, but god forbid you be the one to shine;
they will be the first to see you’re stepping out of line.

we refuse to be the grace
to their self-sufficient decadence;
if they deserve our beauty, then we deserve our truth:
they will see, soon; we are ugly too.

they sew the wind, it will be our pleasure to see them reap the storm.
play the role, control the shape so that we fit their form,
sing, ensiren, ensnare, enchant, unhinge the jaw, go for the throat,
strike, drown them in their own sea and sail on their own boats.



6. Walk out there and SLAY my darling

angels now are worshipped; but at first they were feared.
we got the shame, we took the blame, our name was rhymed with villain,
so be it. if we are evil, if we are vile,
why do they still want us down the aisle?

they drew blood first. smile; let’s bare our teeth
and bite the hand that held us beneath.

we polished our anger, we made it a knife
and now we will use it to walk safely at night.
we cannot sing until we tear their hands from our necks.
we will unlearn the art of staying dead.



7. Don’t forget self-care!

tie yourself to your pyre, to that kitchen chair
break your throne, your pride, your hands, cut your hair
and from your bleeding lips, draw the broken, the scarred, the whole, the monstrous
hallelujah.

be the tear falling in heaven,
the laughter in the storm;
and when we will have triumphed,
we will all walk home.

find your voice again. use it to the extreme
you were born a whole being; one ready to scream.




Bonus: a playlist for my witches to fill the silence while you do all this

  1. Waking Up (Acoustic) –– PVRIS
  2. Blood in the Wine –– AURORA
  3. Silk –– Wolf Alice
  4. You Want It Darker –– Anita Lester (Leonard Cohen cover)
  5. 25 –– The Pretty Reckless
  6. Dream Girl Evil –– Florence + the Machine
  7. Amen –– Halestorm
Categories
2023 - Spring

Potassium Chlorate

Author: JJ

What about a match burns?
What about a match catches?

Keepsakes in backpack pockets left there to
Crack spines and crumble skulls,
levigated reds cling to surrounding cottons.
Open hands damaged by powdered glass;
Omitted is their visible scarring. Chemicals never to
Oxidize; never to fulfil. Render me purposeless.

Categories
2023 - Spring

At Night

Author: RK

[Content Warning: Suicide]

At night
When you listen to the moon breathe
When your life is worth throwing into the fire
And your veins are worth being sliced open to see the light of stars
Honour them

Honour those who walk dead, still fighting to live
Those with gold in their eyes
Those who died and were absorbed by the soil
Those who live inside your mind
Those you killed to become who you are

Honour those whose tears never reached the ground
Honour those who fell
Into crying arms of a never opened heart

For everything that is and all that will be
Honour them

Take it all in
the tears, the absurdity
the loyals, the sad ones
the lost enemies
the friends
the brothers
the Love
the eternal

Feel it all
in every bone and breath.
It takes more than life to kill you

Categories
2023 - Spring

“Tradition Bound but Translation Bent” Living on the Hyphen of Being a Swiss-Brazilian

“Tradition Bound but Translation Bent”1
Living on the Hyphen of Being a Swiss-Brazilian

Author: Aline Romy

i

It is one thing to be a Swiss child in Brazil and quite another to be Brazilian woman in Switzerland.2 As a Swiss child, words like jacaré refused to leave my mouth in the appropriate way.
The professor tells me gently
/ʒa.kaˈɾɛ/
I frown as
/ˈʃa kaˈɾɛ /
leaves my mouth.
The professor repeats /ʒa.kaˈɾɛ/
“What’s the difference?”
As a 12-year-old, somehow the palato-alveolar ejective fricative sounds exactly the same as the voiced postalveolar fricative.

ii

As a Brazilian woman in Switzerland, I am confronted to gross stereotypes that some European males have about Latinas. As soon as my Brazilianness is mentioned I can feel a tone shift. I am perplexed for some time, before I realize why I suddenly feel icky.
“Take your sticky hands away from me.”
Their slimy head associates Latinas with promiscuity. We are all sluts on tinder looking for a Swiss passport.
“I don’t need your Swiss passport. I have my own.”
I am Brazilian and you will not make me feel ashamed. I am also Swiss, and you will not make me feel lesser for being both. But sometimes it is hard to negotiate between my two cultures, to be constantly translation bent, perpetually betraying one language or the other.

iii

“Do you feel more Swiss or Brazilian?”
I try to put it on a scale, to allocate certain traits to each of my cultures. I have had Swiss punctuality drilled into me, but my sense of humor is Brazilian. While being Swiss means precision, Brazil taught me how to improvise, to loosen up at the edges and be less rigid. Some of this is easy, but most of it is a tangled mess, blurred lines, no clear distinction.

iv

If Gustavo Pérez Firmat is a “one-and-halfer” I am an “in-betweener”.
Inhabiting the “in between” space between both countries means I am somewhere, but also nowhere.3 Maybe I’m floating in the middle of the Atlantic. However, I cannot samba to save my life. Too social, too open, too sunny to be fully Swiss. But too antisocial and quiet to be fully Brazilian. I like to mix bright yellow lemons with my green limes when I make my Swiss friends discover the sweetness of caipirinhas made with golden cachaça. The amber liquid aged in balsam barrel’s is a mixture of flavors. Nuts, cedar, honey, tobacco, vanilla.
As a Swiss-Brazilian, Suisse-Brésilienne, Suíça-Brasileira I am always treading on the tightrope of the hyphen that connects my heritages, my cities, my languages. I don’t know where one ends and where the other starts. My two cultures are blindly held on a balancing scale within my heart. Sometimes it tips one way or the other, but it is impossible to know which culture is the dominant and which is the subordinate.4

Image: © by padoriot via Pixabay Source

Image: © by jjandson via Pixabay Source



Works cited

Firmat, Gustavo Pérez. “Introduction: The Desi Chain.” Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban- American Way, University of Texas Press, 2012, pp. 1–19. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7560/735989.4.




1 From Gustavo Pérez Firmat’s, Life on the Hyphen, 2012, p. 4

2 “But it is one thing to be Cuban in America, and quite another to be Cuban-American” (Firmat, p. 3)

3 Inspired by the quote: “Spiritually and psychologically you are neither aquí nor allá, neither Cuban nor Anglo. You’re “cubanglo,” a word that has the advantage of imprecision, since one can’t tell where the “Cuban” ends and the “Anglo” begins. Having two cultures, you belong wholly to neither one. You are both, you are neither: cuba-no/america-no.” (Firmat, 6)

4 Inspired by the quote: “biculturation designates not only contact of cultures; in addition, it describes a situation where the two cultures achieve a balance that makes it difficult to distinguish between the dominant and the subordinate culture.” (Firmat, p. 5)

Categories
2023 - Spring

The Bee’s Thorn

Image: © edmondlafoto, Pixabay, source.

Author: Lyra Willows

The bee’s thorn stings me
Like the Rose’s on the Nightingale’s bosom
And my song, once melodious,
Has spiraled into a dreadful scream
As my shrinking throat
Feels as though it were scraped
By a razor blade.