The Preacher’s Daughter Who Fell In Love With A Girl

She was raised
to keep her eyes up.

Her father told her
to keep her knees straight
and her sexuality straighter.

But who was he
to tell her what was holy?
What was sacred?

She could see it everywhere.
In the flickering
streetlights,

in the crowds,
all the faces with
their own amens–
their own psalms.

She could hear it
just by listening
to the lonesome dog
bark at the darkened
nothing of night.

But most of all
she could see it in
a girl with an
achingly tender face
and small hands.

The soft laugh of God
lived in her mouth,
in her bones.

She could see it
there, just outside
of her vision.

Not up. But here.
In front of her.

By Shelby Asquith

on being a queer girl in a desi family

I line up my cousins, one by one
and knock them down, one by one:
Married. Married with a baby. Engaged.
Married with a baby on the way.
Married. Married. Going to be married.

Between them, they have four daughters
and I want to be there to show them how
to paint the colors of the sky instead of
their broken hearts; I wish that I could
teach them that it’s okay to be fire
instead of smoke; it’s okay to be a girl
it’s okay to be a girl and you are beautiful
and you don’t need to be a boy to matter.

One of my cousins broke her engagement,
said she wanted to study more, learn more,
be better, and I wanted to laugh. I wish I could
be that brave. Look my parents in the eye, say:
I don’t want a boy you have chosen for me.
I don’t want a life you have chosen for me.

I want so much: to feel air in my lungs instead
of fog; to smile at a girl and know I have her heart;
to raise a daughter who will understand that
no matter how the world tries to break her
she is worth it and she is worth everything.

Halfway across the world, my cousins
are three and four and five years old
and growing up and growing girls
and I wish they knew me. I wish they
really knew me. I wish I could tell them
that they live in a new age, that I live
in a world where I can marry anyone
I want in fifty states but I can’t tell
anyone in my family that I love girls.

There are poems you write and then
there are poems that write you.
I wish I was stronger. I wish I was
brave. I wish I knew how to love
girls and be loved at the same time.

I want to learn to be a hurricane,
be a flood, be a thunderstorm.
I want to teach my little cousins
that I’m okay, that I will be okay,
and that they will be okay, too.
That it’s okay to love girls and
it’s okay to want more and it’s okay
it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.

(But to teach something,
you first have to learn it.)

There’s a country on the other side
of the world and it’s beating in my heart
and I wish – I wish – I wish it loved me
as much as I want to be loved.

By M.J. Pearl

Biography:

M.J. Pearl is an aspiring writer, currently in her third year of college in California. She’s been writing poetry for three years and short stories for even longer.

Girls Don’t Owe You Shit, Dude: a polite reply to a post which inadvertently blames girls for distrusting the affections of a guy friend

when i was five, and romance didn’t exist for boys, it did exist for me. “she’s going to break hearts one day,” people said, speaking about me over my head. i smiled, because that is something little girls are supposed to be pleased to hear.

when i was six i was supposed to kiss my best friend because he was a boy, and when i wouldn’t, he pushed me down hard enough that my palms bled. he said if i told a teacher, he’d tell everyone i kissed him and i was bad at it. i washed off in the school’s bathroom sink and cried about it all through recess.

at eight, i stopped wearing dresses because i couldn’t turn cartwheels in them. “a tomboy,” somebody said about me, over my head, as if i couldn’t hear them. i said, “i don’t want to be a boy,” and they laughed. “we know, sweetness.” i said, “i’m not sweet, i’m serious,” and they laughed again. “you’re cute,” they said. i smiled at that, because that’s something little girls are supposed to be pleased to hear.

at nine, i had too many friends that were boys. “i don’t like it,” my father said, standing in the kitchen. i didn’t understand it. “your body is going to start changing soon, and i don’t want those boys looking at you. i don’t like it,” he’d repeat. we moved away that summer. i lost everybody.

when i was eleven, my teacher took me out of the classroom and asked me to put on another layer because even though it was hot in there, all of the boys were staring at the little forming bumps on my chest. i remember embarrassment spiking down my spine like lightning. i begged my mother to take me bra shopping. it was terrible there, in those bright stores with bright lights and beautiful women with tight thighs. it was terrible and embarrassing to touch or look at or even think about these things.

at thirteen, my best guy friend wrestled me to the ground and covered me in kisses no matter how much i asked him to stop it. “it’s supposed to be like this,” he kept repeating, “just stop struggling.” he told me i was pretty and lovely and that boys and girls can’t be friends. he told me to stop being so mad at him, that little girls are supposed to be pleased about these things.

the same winter, i was catcalled for the first time in my whole life. i jumped when the car pulled up by my side. they said “baby” over my head as if i wasn’t who they were discussing. i didn’t smile about it. i had to sit down to stop myself from vomiting.

when i was fifteen, half of my friends were boys. my best friend was in love with me. he told me i was breaking his heart. he said that if i didn’t love him back, he’d have nothing to live for anymore. the story with the rest of them is all the same. either they left me or they thought they fell in love with the idea of somebody i wasn’t.

that summer when i was sad – and i was sad categorically, always – i tried reaching out. when i turned to the boys, all i heard was, “don’t cut, you’re beautiful,” “don’t kill yourself, you’re so pretty,” “think of the scars, sweetie,” “when you cut yourself, i’m the one who starts bleeding.” i didn’t smile, although i think girls are supposed to be pleased to hear these things. i didn’t know how to say: i don’t feel beautiful, and even if i did, what i’m doing to myself has nothing to do with you, or what i look like, or how fuckable i am to you. instead i told them i was fine, and fixed, and nothing bad was happening.

when he broke my heart, it was because i told him no. when he left, i cried because it hurt to watch my best friend go. when he left, he said that he’d never liked me for my soul: only for my curves, the only real way to measure worth in a girl.

at sixteen, i had only girl friends. they were gentle, and different, and walked me through things. they held my hand when classes got too loud for me, and it meant friendship. they kissed me on the cheeks when i was crying, and it meant friendship. they slept next to me and it was friendship in the way i wasn’t used to. i was used to “stop being a tease,” to “why are you doing this to me.” it was just friendship, and it was excellent.

i was called a dyke, a lesbian, a man-hater. i thought of the men who had hurt me, who had spoken over my head, who had given me their full opinion even though i never asked for it. i was hated by basically everyone. i was sad and lonely so often that i often thought i’d never feel happy again.

at nineteen, in college, i had friends who were boys again, because college boys are supposed to be old enough to see you as a person. they all called me Steve, short for Steven. at first i thought it was some kind of inside joke, that it was cute, that it meant they loved me the way i loved them all. one day while we were both drunk, i asked one of them why they wouldn’t just say my name. he laughed. he said, “god, you’re going to hate me when i explain.” he said that they’d all formed an agreement behind my back that none of them would fuck me, that if i was going to be one of the bros, i couldn’t be a girl to them. i could only be seen as a boy if i wanted to be their friend. he said this all while staring at a point over my head, and tried to kiss me at the end. when i pushed him away, he said, “sorry, steve,” took a breath, “but if i start seeing you as a girl, i’m gonna try to kiss you again.”

i said, “i don’t want to be a boy, though,” and he laughed again.

he said, “i know, sweetie.”

at twenty-two, i am sick of boys who are “nice,” who are “not like other boys,” who are offended when i don’t immediately trust their intentions. i have been hurt over and over and over again. i only talk to about three of my boy friends and the rest i lost because i dared not to fuck them.

at the same time, i kept most of my girl friends. i have had crushes on most of them. it never impacted our relationships. even girls who are gay like i am know that being friends doesn’t mean i owe them. they hold my eyes when i talk to them.

i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m sorry. i love so many people, and many boys are wonderful and charming and excellent. i’m sorry i flinch away from a friendship. i’m sorry i will be cold and unaffectionate and scared of getting too close

it’s just that, since i was five, i was told i break hearts

By Raquel Isabelle de Alderete

Coral Sands, Myrtle Beach

hotel rooms swallow up your secrets,
spit them out to bones cleaned, raw
content with no age restrictions- if
you can fake it, you can stay-

something about the salt has faded
years of paint from broken walls,
made tired faces out of waitresses,
bartenders speak with no words
at all, just a twisted pull that could be
a smile; you breathe in at night and it’s
just the sea filling heavy your briny
lungs with all the places
you’ll never
be-

don’t heed to the hurricane warnings;
we’re better off getting ripped away from
the luster stolen through the sunlight;
this is an ugly place by day and you
might paint paradise, like Dante whisper
to your long-lost love but first you’re
on your tour of hell and it’s a far
hard climb to up above all paved with
plastic chipped-paint palm trees, neon
spun in lurid frames, pastel hotels
with rusted railing-

where no one has to know your
name where no one has to know
you came.

By Lindsay Maruska

Biography:

Lindsay Maruska is a thirty-year-old forever student who is pursuing a second MA degree while raising one child and five dogs. She is interested in modern mythology and the intersection of regional gothic and social commentary on industrial ruin.

Symphony

christmas fills
the memory black holes
with dusty red ribbon, with pictures
of a different childhood,
with shortbread cookie
tins full of peppermint bark

like the kind my father ripped
from my mouth at age seven
swearing that it had been poisoned
that the ones we loved wanted us dead

while in the kitchen
my mother stood alone
oven-burns searing, a
colorless flash seeping
from the wound
of another holiday, one way
before i was born

she tells me that i screamed
the first time i heard
the nutcracker–
a child’s intuition
soon after choked
then soothed

By Zoe Blue 

Biography:

Zoe Blue writes about hope and the many colors childhood takes on in memory. Her work has been published in Little River and Electric Cereal. In June she put her first e-book, Redemption Center, out into the world. More of her work is forthcoming on her portfolio blog, byzoeblue.tumblr.com.

Ruido

Esperanza’s pelo buena es
no más. (No more good hair.)
She gets it chopped off at Mira’s.

It is sewed and donated,
to elsewhere, for Nina,
for the less fortunate?

For Zhang Wei to sell at the
shāng diàn. Hanging on hooks,
emulating the deer heads on mounts.

He fondles it in a corner, the strong
black straightness between his finger
webs, a stirring inside him. It’s familiar.

He recalls the brush
strokes of Pete Teo,
of wifely beauty.

Father told her “Yo no hablo
Español no more.” So therefore she
doesn’t and it is now Inglés.

Mao destroyed the four olds
so Zhang Wei is no más. (He
doesn’t remember anything.)

Destroy the olds to bring
in the new. And paint
a smiley face on Pu Yi.

Devouring the past,
swishing it around
and then spitting out

certain small portions
to rearrange into a
desirable formation.

Dying over and over
in last words that are
never heard.

By Maria Ng

Biography:

Maria Ng is a New Yorker living in New Jersey. She spends her days writing, blogging about books and zines, and going to college. She often writes about mixed identity (Afro-Latina and Chinese), memories of family, living in New York, fearing of what’s going to happen in the future, relearning and forgetting languages, and lonely fictional people that are merely reflections of herself. She has an existential crisis every few months or so and is still unsure of what to do now.

She considers writing a form of healing, protest, and sometimes a violence towards your own self. She writes poetry but wishes to be a novelist. She doesn’t like to remember high school, especially the horrendous fiction and poetry she wrote for her creative writing class.

She has previously been published in Rasasvada, Paper Crown Magazine and some other zines.

To Your Health

Blood gets thicker in the mouth, mixed
with all the spit and the salt and the lies.
In my sink, blood tells lies:

This is from when I got into a fist-fight
with my serotonin. My serotonin won.

This is from when I swallowed every shattered
secret I am still keeping to this day.

This is from when I lost any wisdom I had,
and my wisdom teeth.

Blood never wants to tell the truth, not even
in the mouth. You cannot tell the truth with
just your mouth. You cannot beg for forgiveness
with just your mouth. I am begging for
forgiveness with driftwood teeth, a swollen
pink roof, a tongue like a land mine, hands
that wring too much decay into the world,
a spine that has so much in common with
barbed wire. I am begging for forgiveness
with everything I’ve got attached to me
and it’s still not enough.

But please, forgive me. Forgive me for not
treating my mouth like a cathedral the way
I should have. My mouth is so busted down
these days; in not taking care of it I have
vandalized myself. I have taken the can
of spray paint and written DO NOT ENTER
for every potential lover to read as they
lean in for the first kiss. I have been talking
to myself in a blood language. I have
been lying about everything. So here is the truth:

My mouth never gets a second chance.
My body never gets a second chance.

Depression baptizes you in negligence.
The aftermath of this is full of swamp and marsh.
This is not me begging for forgiveness from the world.
This is me begging for forgiveness from myself.

By Lydia Havens

Biography:

Lydia Havens writes and lives in Tucson, Arizona. A part of the literary non-profit Spoken Futures, her work has previously been published in Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Words Dance, and Textploit, among other places. In March 2015, she was named the Women of the World Poetry Slam Youth Champion. You can find more of her work on Tumblr, southwestwitch.tumblr.com, or on her website, lydiahavens.weebly.com.

Ascension

from my melted pink bedroom
a world of shade and lemonade and rain
lies bathed in all that is august
just beyond the fence

and my father the carpenter
he keeps the pickets straight
while my mother plants ivy designed to slip
lithe tongue into the honey
of the other side

the place for whose promise we pray
and from whose leakage we subsist
as we sit
scrubbing old batteries
of their own acid

as we watch
the ceiling tiles rot
counting spots of wet decay as blessings
miracles of motion on a dead-end road

and as my imagined sister
the pressure-treated angel
dreams of a life
where the ice cream truck
will come around
someday

By Zoe Blue

Biography:

Zoe Blue writes about hope and the many colors childhood takes on in memory. Her work has been published in Little River and Electric Cereal. In June she put her first e-book, Redemption Center, out into the world. More of her work is forthcoming on her portfolio blog, byzoeblue.tumblr.com.

Small Town 

from the white-bone city to the
blue-smoke hills you’ve got mud
on your brand-new suits and you
were never meant for a place
so bathed in blood and dirt-

but here are mysteries in copses
slender trees turned toward the sun
and when all the marble’s been
overturned there’s nowhere else
that’s left to run but for the outlying

demotic counties, soft swing of
words, winds whispered low and
you do not belong inside the
furnace ruins left to rot in hungry

shadowed woods-

the girls who work in the diner all
have matching tattoos on their
wrists and the woman on the corner
watches you close- you swear you saw
her last in Washington Circle Park,
gnarled hands around a dripping bag-

there are no secrets had without
some sinew in return-

these hills are pockmarked with
caves, with runs of water drunk in
the dark- the high school girls in
oversized sweaters stand in a circle
in the memorial park where the bronze

soldier’s face watches you walk down
these streets; no marble here but
natural stone worn down to see what’s
underneath the older temples tied
to wood, to seasons standing head to head
and the earth has spun its magnetic
wreathe-

“don’t be here when the winter comes”
the waitress whispers when she passes
“it’s all fun and games when the summer
dances but wait until the green’s all gone
and we’re forced to do what must be done-

you think it’s some symbolic play
but it’s just the way we live, what we’ve
been born to- and I would run if I were
you”

you  doesn’t listen
but she didn’t expect you
to.

By Lindsay Maruska

Biography:

Lindsay Maruska is a thirty-year-old forever student who is pursuing a second MA degree while raising one child and five dogs. She is interested in modern mythology and the intersection of regional gothic and social commentary on industrial ruin.