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Moss grows from the speakers. It comes out like ten lies to reach my ears, grabbing at me and pulling me in closer. I can feel the warmth in the harmonic waves. Forest green, the type that is built out of emerald and garnet, grow. It ebbs and flows toward me at a rapid pace, constantly coming and receding like seaweed in the current. I have heard the resonance. As I move around the room rolling and flailing the sounds change, louder then softer the shape of my room is not meant for these acoustics. I play the music loud. The rhythms encroach and fill my mattress like custard. I have spent years perfecting the landscape of my room waiting for this moment. For the perfect spatial sounds. I cannot hear; the music cannot reach me. It is trying, and I allowed myself to be pulled in by it but something is wrong. Maybe I cannot hear. It is only later that I learn that the volume was well below my normal standards. The light carries the space it creates it, it is the medium for the music to exist. It can only move through the thick pink paste that envelopes me. I am alone here with the sounds that have followed me from the womb. This moment was determined decades ago in a bathroom not far from here. I came this far only to hear the dog bark at the right time. Decades ago before there was a bathroom to meet in, the dog felt the beat and let himself go, now, today, his deep voice echoes in my music to complete the composition.

Abbi Kenny

#spring zine #vault #llitmag #csw #collage

Caroline Coolidge

#drawing #art

Liliana Wolheim-Martinez

#photography #black and white #film

Package it up ship it out the door kick up the dust with your heels. Wrap the oranges in plastic till you're not sure if they're orange anymore. Dust off the simple beauty and shine it up with floor polish. Lick the organic fruit off your fingers and taste the sharp sting of plastic on your tongue.

Claire Louise Bunn

#writing #creative writing #high school #school

Alexandra Kahn

The Spring zine is here!

#zine #litmag #drawing #charcoal #karl

(about shoes)

Tongue lapping as y

ou run into fields, be tter than a best friend a twin stuck to me, a s econd layer of skin Endl essly chivalrous Laying fle sh in the muck to protect me Other footwear fades, flowers trampled by nature, by time You were a labor of love, dear boot, I ha d to bend your leather heart back, back, back until you loosened your grip, walked t hrough mud and grime until you memorized my walk, my sway, my particular swagger Dust and paint caked your face and sun weathered your skin If I had a particle of sand for every time I’ve tied your heartstrings I would not need to break my piggy bank for a trip to the beach this summer Oh boot, my sweet and glorious boot, apple of mine eye and knower of my phalange, I I love thee as only a dedicated boot-trodder can! I have walked through forest s with you Through patches of sand and snow You have seen me tapdance in the rain My dear, my heart, my love, my sugarplum, my eve rything, my best boot, you have t w o s o l e s

Natalie Good

The Lateness of the Hour

i live in a state of perpetual smoke and confusion

lonely in contentment

a chicken in chicken stock

im a happy little so and so

so happy to be so

he’s always late

lobster and asparagus, wordlessly understood

Marisa Matho

Greek Tragedy

It’s hard to snuggle during a Greek Tragedy.

My eyes are closed and I’m half listening to the sounds of dysfunctional families and betrayal

Weaving my fingers with yours, better than Arachne

Better than Athena

I press my cheek against your shoulder and I can hear your heartbeat

Rhythmic and repeating

Like the endless crashing of the Mediterranean sea

The thrashing of sea monsters

Of something raw and constant, something alive

Feeling you breathe against me is like a prayer to the Gods--

Breathe in,

Dear Eros

Breathe out,

Thank you

I want to preserve this moment

Press my dress between the pages of a book

and hang it next to Sapphic violets on my wall

Unchanging and immortal

You try to kiss me as a crooked oracle onstage describes decaying flesh

I vow never again to have a first date

where Sophocles is the third wheel

–Natalie Good

The Zephyrs

The zephyrs started early–

earlier each year,

Long before their time,

they bring with them neither rain nor snow but

savage gusts that knock out our knees,

raw passion ravages us

like a hungry wolf looking for its next meal,

like a junkie looking for his next fix.

Intestines rot inside our cold bodies,

as we fight–

sweating and panting–

limbs flailing and bare skin pressed.

The wind lies in tongues.

Only I can translate their twisted prose.

When I sit here

in our sticky dark room

you tell me,

I have no power over the winds.

And you’re right.

The tempests use my naked soul

to power time.

Nobody knows when the end will come,

except the fungus growing inside me.

It is is my dirty secret.

When the sky crumbles

like an old parking garage

and bodies lay strewn on the sidewalks,

You will know

they ignored my desperate pleas.

–Abbi Kenny

Wait

“Sit right here you understand me?” She said removing her purse from her shoulder and crouching down and maintaining momentum towards the stairs.

“I’ll be back in no more than 20 minutes.”

Across from the boy hung a framed photograph of a man in a powdered wig. The boy thought the man looked unsettlingly discontent. But the boy didn't know those words.

The boy ran his finger in the ridges of the armrests, it felt smooth but resistant. The boy was confused by this, he then ran his hairless and perfectly smooth wrists along the curled wooden ridges. They glided like an ice cube on something flat. The boy then understood, his fingers were resistant. The boy licked the armrest, that wasn't the greatest idea. The boy tasted salt.

This was the sweat of an overweight gentleman on his first date with a woman way out of his league. The man sat and sweated in the chair for a half an hour while the woman prepared herself. In reality she had a child upstairs and she was figuring out how to lock a door from the outside so the kid couldn't get out.

The boy hated salt.

The boy moved a bit and the chair creaked. He got up and turned around to the clock hanging crooked on the wall behind him. “She's taking forever!” The boy thought as he made his eyes trace the cracks in the paint that led to the floor. The boy couldn't tell time.

–Joseph Hille

a (very) short story about henry nye

it’s a saturday morning, maybe around 9:42. you just woke up, you think maybe you’ll pour yourself a bowl of cereal, maybe do a sudoku. the sky is inky and wilted. you always say that saturdays are accidents. you slide the sheets off your naked skin and hear a noise unlike anything your ears have ever tasted. it hurts you but you like it, kind of like your first fuck. you open your window and the sound grows closer and closer to your ear drum. it bounces. it’s glowing you’re glowing. the sound climbs up your body like silk. the sound defies all physical laws. it travels faster than you can understand. it boils, it sparkles it hurts you but you like it. it makes its way to your ear and knocks you over completely. you’re on the floor gasping. if a sound could swallow your body whole, this sound would. this sound does. it snakes around you and tightens like christmas lights, it almost breaks you. it almost breaks you but you like it.

–Lena Christakis

I feel like a very heterosexual spider ninja male shadow with a huge penis today

–Jessica Cumberbatch

Last night, I cried myself to sleep for the first time in 7 years. I had forgotten what emotion felt like, and I unknowingly reminded myself too rapidly.

I slept well.

Now it's a Monday.

I came home and I left home.

My arms started to salt their black peacoat as I biked up Gray St. for the second time.

"I don't think I protect myself well enough" echoed, but I lay down in the sand ready to indulge for the second time in 7 years.

The sky lifted me up.

The sky is why people make art.

The pink sky forced tangled headphones back into my ears.

I woke up while emailing someone I love.

She asked me why the "serve and protectors" were throwing an old woman onto the street on an internet livestream.

I had no answer.

–Anonymous

It's like god said give them textiles and then suddenly we had textiles and nowhe let us build up this whole really world and its all a

It's like god said give them hornets and then suddenly we had hornets and nowhe