Rejected Lit

poetry and prose that doesn't fit in

[rejectedlit]

Photo: Fabrice B. Poussin

[rejectedlit]

The Weight That I Carry

I.  Be proud of your curves, they said. You are more fabulous than you realize, they said – but could you move a little to the left maybe stand in the back there behind everyone else – yes curves are a fabulous last place II.  And what about the stigmas attached to sizes and scales and choices at every single meal? Tell me you have never judged her for that doughnut or that salad. You know fat girl eating or just fat girl – unhealthy unappealing unwelcome fat girl. Look at me and tell me you have never used those words to scorn her III. You are not privy to the photograph on my I.D. some fifty pounds heavier, half-hearted smile and eyes glazed over anything but another picture – I was there dreading the skinny girl next to me, dreaming that I would be just as pretty – tell me when I walked up here did you know I lost so much weight? No. of course not. All anyone ever sees is the mass of me. Forget about asking if I show my success No – I am another fat girl on death row just like the rest IV. I had a boyfriend once and what he said to me should have ended that pretty quickly: “You would be so beautiful if you just lost a few more pounds.” Well fuck you sir. Have I not been struggling with my concept of self this entire time? Have you always objectified beauty as something tangible only for you only the way you see it? Have I been unclear with all my screaming? Tell me you weren't the one taping covers back on my torn Vogue magazines – tell me you weren't the one consoling the bruised egos of directors who cast me in the chorus with no lines and no spotlight when I walked off that stage – tell me you did not just undo all that I have fought for with those small yet venomous words –

V. You with your insults hidden in backhanded compliments do not worry or stress when you look in the mirror and get dressed for the day not like I do. You do not have to force yourself to smile. Life is easy for you – fit and thin and perfect. What I see is my extra chin and the way my midsection stretches way past this limit forced upon me – I see the scars and stretchmarks that I am expected to hide That is what it means to “dress for your body type.” VI. I want to believe my heavy frame is beautiful when the world deems it ugly – I want a world where I am seen as intelligent or funny instead of overweight and unworthy of any other opinion – I want an armor of more than just my thick skin to stop bullets which are your words and your media and your assumptions – I want to be free of the voices outside and in that tell me I am not enough; that I will never in all the world be loved for simply being me VII. I lie to my reflection so she believes she can go on. I tell her she is beautiful just the way she is, because if I let her know what I really think of her image staring back at me the tears will fall and I cannot reach through to wipe them from her eyes. She  is the truth behind the mask I wear for the world in this war we have been waging. VIII. I have fought long and hard and I am tired. Tired of lying. tired of constantly making up excuses when asked why I'm crying tired of hefting the world's opinion on my shoulders – I cannot see past the storm anymore. This war tries so hard to drown me in self consciousness to bury me in blame for the weight that I carry as if it is my fault I do not fit their idea of perfection. IX. I still did not make the choice to leave him for his ugly words. I was shocked that the man I loved did not find me good enough to be by his side. I would reason that he didn't mean it, that he thought I was beautiful because I needed his validation since I could not find it in myself – X. I waited until he told me he never loved me to stop telling myself otherwise. - K.M. Alleena

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There's always time for poorly drawn hearts The moon counts on it. I count on the moon for advice. 2 moons + 1 triangle = a heart. The neon density of poorly drawn muscles accentuate phosphorescent nonsense, this heart, a door knob rusted and stuck. I enter the assume. All I found was a need to draw poorly what we all claim beats inside. I lick an envelope, sealed, then I lick the wind with an agency of new. I mailed my poorly drawn heart to you. You replied. With perfectly drawn ones. Enchanted gold-silver-ocean- melted-crayon that seemed to consume the page. Your hearts were perfect. That is why I had to leave you. - Thomas Fucaloro

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I Am From

I am from every place, Where my heart has touched The roots and leaves. Where I ran my fingers through the grass, The garbage on the city sidewalks. And the manure which through the car windows, I only ever had my eyes pass by. I am from where my heart yearns ever to go. Where my practice in a 40 celcius heated room, Will turn into my prayers before the Ganges. I am where the radiation of battle has begun, Where he slept and his head hit a pillow. I am from the hills of the Italian peninsula, Where no one ever spoke English, And where ancestors learned that not being able to read, Was the gift to this orator. I am from many different homes, Over this lifetime. And even the life before that. - M. A. Mahadeo

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“red”

photo: Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

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The Golden Leaf

~for Sara “What’s that you got there?” people would always ask the boy.  “My heart,” he’d say, staring at the heart-shaped yellow leaf in his cupped hands. “I carry it everywhere.”  “Why?” they’d ask.  “I’m not just going to leave it lying around,” he’d say.  One evening a gust of wind stole it from his hands and whipped it away over the rooftops. Day after day the boy searched every street, every yard, but it was gone. Until the blonde girl from three houses down knocked on his door. In her hands was his leaf, suspended now in a solid glass cube. “Where’d you find it?” he said, overjoyed.  “It blew in through my window,” she said. “I knew right away it was yours. I’ve seen you carry it around. I would’ve brought it to you sooner, but I had it sealed inside this cube first. Now the wind can’t ever take it from you, and it won’t crumble away or turn to dust.” She held out the encased leaf. “Here.” The boy reached for it, then dropped his hands. “You keep it.”  “I can’t. It’s yours.”  “You saved it, so it’s yours now. Besides, it looks brighter when you hold it. It shines like gold—like your hair.”  “Well, whenever you want to see it, you know exactly where to find it.”  “With you,” he said.  “With me,” said the girl from three houses down.     - Scott Hughes

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Sometimes

Then, in some nights like these, I feel cold and lonely in rooms engulfed By frost and colds lost on their way to the mountain. I dream of running to the station sometimes With a train ticket and passport in hand To board one back to the grave Where all my brothers and sisters gather Rich and poor, slave and master, preacher or sinner Without hope or courage in light and darkness. I want to fly over the hills and oceans again Thinking, if the caves of the Himalayas and Andes Swallow us from the glimpse of man’s radar Will the sins I committed when I was guilty Before my blood tainted the wrecks and rocks Count before the good Lord man extorted divinity from? Only if I could swim or float on the blue ocean waters I would wash away the dirt I see in my mind sometimes Entering a parlour of racists, welcomed by monkeys and Babies hanging on walls; marble glittering beneath Poor black ladies paid to scream and exalt racist feudalists Creeping into our forests in foggy nights, Maiming and disfiguring mothers and babies Even animals when man’s blood alone can’t wash Nubba Mountain and the hot dry soils of Darfur clean. - Beaton Galafa

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MY EYES ARE SWIMMING LIKE FISH

After years of suffering, I felt better standing up. I can’t deny it!  All those humdrum days of patient whimpering were like so much sweat beneath the bed covers. But now I am walking about, and… There is no escaping our practical natures. Like the skyscrapers’ blank, ordered windows in the sky, in the clouds, in the blue. What basically is a matter of stuff is a question of limitlessness… of infinities… of billions in billings of it, all adding up; heavy office furniture and equipment hundreds of feet up, and floors of vast hovering carpets. Staring upwards beyond the trees, I imagine those tenants - their aerial knees - straightening their ties and adjusting their sleeves. The glossy tops of their work-a-day shoes hide soles reverent as butlers. And yet, power has its purposes… Of what use is a penniless King? - Carl Nelson

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St. Peters Cemetery, Poughkeepsie NY, 2014

Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, but no one wants to remember that. My dad and his five siblings all grew up Catholic, and he doesn’t want to remember that either. In the car, he tells me he’s forgotten the Lord’s Prayer. My dad asks me if I remember it, and I ask, how can I remember something you never even taught me? Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and before we bury him his nephew asks what liquor will be available at the reception, and it’s like we all forget how to speak for three minutes. My father does not remember the Lord’s Prayer. I know the first seventeen words of it, and close my mouth for the rest of it. I hum along to it like it’s a hymn I have known my entire life. I don’t fool anybody. Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and now Aunt Margaret is asking me if I think the same will happen to my father. Before I can answer, she asks me why I don’t go to Mass. She says, prayer is the best antidepressant I know of, and scoffs when I say nobody ever taught me how to pray. I say, a book did teach me the beginning of a prayer in Latin once, and she scoffs again. Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and was buried next to his father, who also drank himself to death. Aunt Margaret hasn’t spoken to me since I flew back home to my godless poetry and Zoloft prescription. She’ll never know that I have never felt more Catholic than I did in that cemetery: answering for my father’s sins. Mourning a man’s tragic death, but doing nothing to stop it from happening to another member of the family. Being rejected from the religion that may have never been mine to begin with. Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and so did Grandpa Larry, and my dad calls me after finishing off three bottles of wine at least once a month. Each time, he recites the Lord’s Prayer for me, and he always does it flawlessly. - Lydia Havens

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Woolly Mammoth

Dear Maura,

Do not resurrect the woolly mammoth.

I keep track of you, I keep track of the news, and I know that you conceivably could do so soon, but for your own sake: do not resurrect the woolly mammoth.

I understand that scientists are more aware of the ethics of these sorts of things than English teachers, and I understand that career advice is best received from someone in the same line of work, and I understand that even then, advice is best received when solicited (which this is not), but even so, here I am.

Given that this is your line of work, I’m sure you know more than I do what a woolly mammoth’s life might have been like, and that in all reality the only thing I am qualified to know about them is how many L’s are in woolly.

But even so.

In general, I am in favor of cloning and the like—we’ve talked about this. We talked, at John’s that night after organic chemistry, about cloning and progress, but this is a different animal entirely. Because Maura, you forget that I know you.

I remember your mother on the phone, telling you that you would always be unloved and alone because of what you chose to be. I remember the stares that followed you even in a liberal college, and I remember the way I walked into your room with Chinese takeout one night to find you crying. You asked me if it was ever possible to stop feeling guilty for being yourself.

And for all of those reasons, I ask you not to resurrect the woolly mammoth.

I’m sure you know this already, but we killed them. Their environment was dying as the glaciers did, and we hunted them to extinction. And perhaps now we would not, perhaps humanity would value their un-extinction as too valuable to hunt.

But I think we both know that is too much to hope for.

I think we both know that the nature of humanity has not changed, that without an environment safe from us, they would be gone again soon.

Because Maura, when we bring to life the things we know cannot live, all we are trying to do is prove that we can. You are trying to prove that a woman like yourself can be beloved as a scientist, by bringing to life a species you know full well is doomed to fail.

I am not saying your quest to be loved is a doomed one, no. But the battles you are choosing to win that war are doomed ones, ones you will fail no matter your immediate success.

What I have seen though, what I have watched through twenty years and thousands of students, is that anyone trying to prove their right to exist wants to bring doomed beings into creation. They are Frankenstein, trying to survive and being twisted into monsters by anyone who watches. An English teacher knows this much.

And perhaps this is too pessimistic, but I am exhausted of watching people create and then see their creations destroyed. Maura, I cannot bear that for you too.

I do not want you to have to prove that a woolly mammoth can exist to know that you can too, and because I know it cannot, I beg you not to try. I do not want you to have to bear its second extinction, I do not want you to have to bear watching your own hope die in proxy.

It is of course, possible that I am wrong. Mammoths would be kept in captivity, protected, but I know this is not your dream for them. I know you will look into their eyes and see failure reflected back, and I do not want that for you.

Maura, we have scorched the earth on which woolly mammoths walked, they have gone. Bringing them back will not mean that was not done, it will only mean that eventually, it will happen again. But you are still here, brilliant and queer and beautiful, walking scorched earth as if it were lush grass.

You are existing, you are not extinct. That is all the proof you need of your own worthiness.

Your friend, Harry - Andy Stowers

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Rejected Zine

Rejected Lit is putting together a zine for the Orlando Zine Fest. 

The theme is (naturally) REJECTION. 

Send us poems, arts, tiny stories (<150 words), memes, jokes, etc etc etc. Black and white only for visual arts. We will take previously published things, but otherwise follow the Rejected Lit submission guidelines.

We can’t pay you up front but if the zine makes any money after print costs, we will divide up profits evenly between contributors via paypal. tbh that’s pretty unlikely to happen. 

Deadline December 1. 

<3

-your uneditor

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Today

Today It's my last day in this city Tomorrow this city would be clean of my every trace Today is the last day I will hold you in my arms Tomorrow this last embrace will haunt me like a slow death Today I am walking beside you holding hands Torn insides and screaming heart Tears concealed with only happy songs on my playlist Tactless words spilled and avoiding silences which now are awkward Talking is nothing but a waste of time Take off your clothes Take off mine too Testifying terrifying technicalities of humans Taste and devour what's only yours Tension rushing up in veins and replacing the blood in them Thick layers of grief and unbounded time Thigh on Thigh Tongues entwined with stranger once known Thirsty throats and hungry of last thread of belongingness Thunderstorms reflects in your eyes Transitioning into calmness of the next day morning showers, Toxic touches transcriptional of whatever we have lost, Time out Thinking and drowning and living but never leaving. - Aishwarya Shrivastav

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In the Dust of This Planet

The bandleader has found his glasses! I can see everything — Central Park all the way down to the World Trade Center. I prefer to look at people working in the office than me working in the office. My face shows nothing of what I’m feeling. I have never had a day when someone doesn’t look at me with an openly questioning gaze. I call it a cross between archaeology and surgery. Draw as many different lines as you can. This will be a terrifying time for the 100,000 people still trapped.

*

Are you fucking kidding me? A fly can't land on a fruit tree without permission first from the Mafia. Time is burning. It isn’t really me doing it. That’s the new thing. Don’t you think NASA should hide this? Behind the bookcase there’s a wall, and after that a door. A woman shouts, and dozens of us hear her and ask her questions, but she can only use a stone to tap in response. I just keep thinking that it’s so easy to run in a dream without getting out of breath.

*

So much is coming at us that we jump, turn clockwise, and cut with the kitchen knife through the beer belly of the Republic. My daughter could be in there bleeding. This place is very dangerous. There are countless dead rabbits. There might be someone with a gun. People send us their children to get healthy but they leave in ambulances and body bags. One accidental martyr screams, “Open that door and let me out! Right now! It’s a travesty! Open that door!” You suddenly become the protagonist of crime scene photos. Why cry about it? We have always lived with fire.

*

A man’s dead. The gunmen got on the bus and shot people point-blank. What else could you have expected? They autopsied him as you would an ordinary body, took out his intestines, said, “Yup, it’s all there,” and put it back. We were standing outside, staring, just trying to see. I prayed so hard my knuckles were white. Today we go about things entirely differently. But the process, we can’t control it. There’s a silver Audi in the parking lot with the lights left on, and the tracks of gulls on beaches, and somebody who’s going to jump out of the ambulance, and we feel like it’s all in our heads. - Howie Good

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Toilets

I’m in love with a homeless man. Listen, we’ve got a lot in common, H.U.D. lawyers politicians. We have heated discussions about the face fucking activity in D. C. toilets. But when he grabs my dick & licks my nipples it’s just me & him. -Sergio Ortiz

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anxiety teeth

the teeth of anxiety gnawing through me when you said we needed to talk nearly paralyzed me into insanity must have been plastered on my face like a statues easily read expressions for you told me not to worry which naturally only stirred up my nightmares more i really needed to know then what was going on it was the waiting that killed me always does, but you refused to give my anxiety the swift death instead stretching it out and prolonging it the way a sadistic hunter tortures their quarry for hours; finally the fangs of your hounds pierced the flesh of my rabbits until i bled openly into your palm and you said nothing. - linda m. crate

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Cantus Firmus

So empty, so phantom empty I am the dog, you hold the leash I am the slave, you are the master I am the graduate, you are the degree No, a revolver has a drum that revolves In the throats of love, I was weak, no match for her But, the goodbye was sad, strangely unforgiven I understood that society had no room for me, and I had no room for society, I never have To go to the dreamy like society, to the nocturnal side Was like changing sides in a war It's like the blind leading the blind -Darrell Herbert

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Aaliyah: Song Titles in Shadormas

I can be more than a woman come over come over I need you tonight your body’s calling try again age ain’t nothing but a number enough said at your best you are love, back in one piece the one I gave my heart to, hot like fire. don’t think they know I care for you at your best are ya feeling me? John Blaze man undercover turn the page we need a resolution, are you that somebody? She crazy don’t know what to tell ya, she crazy.I am music, one in a million, shakin. if your girl only knew 90s night riders up jumps da boogie shakin she crazy hot like fire ain’t never the one I gave my heart too -Elizabeth Upshur