oh, constellate

young writers' work from around the web, curated by christina im & brought to you by tumblr.

[ohconstellate]

life was not a creation myth, but it read like one.

Lyrik Courtney, “Malone, Florida,” published in The Blueshift Journal

[ohconstellate]

that night i tell god, forehead to sheetless mattress: i promise to stop using dead things in my poems. i promise to stop imagining girls together, skin hoisted and slung and lifted like fog, breast-to-breast, breathless with bright black light.

Elisa Luna-Ady, “Photo with Faceless, 2006,” published in TRACK//FOUR

[ohconstellate]

I will never know what it means to be afraid. As in compressing a body into a bruise & praying it will never be unclenched. As in boxing a mouth into a sound- proof oven, lungs scattering into a crooked ellipsis.

Helli Fang, “Pulse,” published in The Adroit Journal

[ohconstellate]

This blood is a waltz at dawn. A soul splinters on the ground, a thousand red vessels smashing to pieces. The doctors take pictures instead of putting it back together.

Ruohan Miao, “Heart-Song,” published in Burningword Literary Journal

[ohconstellate]

Some nights, I go to sleep with another language behind my teeth. Let me teach you how to speak with lightning, it pleads. Let me show you the vowels of river against rock.

AnQi Yu, “Middle Kingdom,” published in Canvas Literary Journal

[ohconstellate]

He scowls when salt spills over dawn and nobody tells him to smile instead. He likes hips like a question, like clean-gutted fish, like a cherry mouth.

Rona Wang, “spilling,” published in Textploit

[ohconstellate]

Search for soil, search for land. For sky. Search for blades. For wedding rings promised to the earth, and bibles written in the open curve of a river.

Lindsay Emi, “Plateau,” published by the Young Poets Network

[ohconstellate]

We wound ourselves like power lines over fields sun-soaked and stained gold, lips curled halos in screams, howling hoarse into the pit of adulthood.

Audrey Spensley, “Cusp,” published in The Cadaverine Magazine

[ohconstellate]

My body – holy, ocean-like, and the world: walls, blood, hands. The single eye twitching in the corner, and my bones coming loose at odd angles.

Smriti Verma, “When Spring,” published in Inklette

[ohconstellate]

1. Someone told you all the best fairytales involve strange wooded houses and autumn nights. In September, the forest is a knotted green ribbon with neatly tucked tails, just waiting for a hero to ensnare.

Aline Dolinh, “Twelve Temporal Directions to a Home,” published by the Academy of American Poets

[ohconstellate]

What I know about the body comes from the rhythm of flickering pupils, suburban streetlamps, dying insects. From the girls on street corners wearing nothing but a sign saying Don’t touch.

Audrey Spensley, “Dissection,” published in The Blue Pencil Online

[ohconstellate]

Imagine a tale of boy-flesh and betrayal, transmitted through a fist, a bodily instant. Imagine treating bruised cheekbones like historical documents.

Lucy Wainger, “The story is kicking up dust,” published in The James Franco Review

[ohconstellate]

I told my mother I was fine. It wasn’t a lie, I was damn fine, with the legs, the hair, the eyes, I was a forest fire.

A. Davida Jane, “Nothing Red,” published in The Rising Phoenix Review

[ohconstellate]

my mother says there is only one way out of china and that is through god. god opens her mouth & rivers patter out like children in the night. children in the night spotting the street like a skin. children in the night & our veins neon & opened longways, our hands shuttered over our chests.

Kristin Chang, “Guanyin,” published in HIV Here and Now

[ohconstellate]

All of it soft, bruises flush with light, open and glowing, blooming and unblooming the way it is impossible to grow into something unstill.

Emily Zhang, “Creation Myth,” published in The Adroit Journal

[ohconstellate]

When you start wearing makeup again, you realize you’re vain. When you start holding the door open each evening before your walks, you realize you’re caring. When you start debating with him about abortion and stem cell research and the incontrovertible importance of the serial comma in achieving clarity, you realize you’re strong. When you start hoping for the future, you realize you’re weak. When the sun shines brighter and the time passes faster, you realize you’re foolish. When you stop surviving and start living, you realize you’re in too deep.

Elaine Tang, “Ashes Where a House Should Stand,” published in Textploit

[ohconstellate]

The slate sky turned the color of breaking, and I wondered how much longer we would hold until starlight no longer hit our faces simultaneously.

Margaret Zhang, “Sestina for Devils and Sandpaper Braille,” published in Words Dance