Grandma Hilda & The American Hostage

By Brianna-Christine Alicea

She is happiest on sunniest days
Her pale, supple skin
Her bright, antimony shirt
Her coconut eyes
Sluggish drag of violaceous slippers
Soprano Spanish springing from wall to wall
16 mint green plaster walls made her apartment
Broken beer bottles, ambulance sirens, police wails, 3 am shrills: a city-banshee
Her husband the brutal police officer
Seclusion was the crime
America the cell
Her frailty confines her to bed at twilight
Puerto Rican flags tucked away in sullen brown drawers
Sunset sets permanently

“Moonshine”

by Cherish Pierre-Louis

The clouds shroud it

Cover it to give it this

Iridescent gleam

My vision is foggy

my words a slur

I sway in my chair

The floor creeks remind me

I’m a person

not an object

The moon is claustrophobic

With all those clouds

It glows to get away

I get away

I stay away from the crowd

I want to see the moon’s

Opalescent glow

I want to see it change

Watch as it moves closer

And as it moves away

I love it truly

I love you

Like the moon in a nutshell

With your mirror transparency

Your clear comfort

With your glass cover

Your liquid warmth

With all your changes

Your phases

Your craters

Your layer is tough

Your gravity is

greater

Your illuminance

Your exuberance

The moon in my sky

LEVELS

By Aricelys Turay

I wanted to think you were

different,

Yet I knew you were the same.

Since our first conversation,

I knew the game we were playing

But I still leveled up to 1

Level 2 came around,

Where I stood my ground and you liked it.

Level 3. We stopped talking

Level 4. You reached out

as if nothing had happened.

I told you what I wanted.

You said you respected that.

Yet you started your manipulation

I ignored. But you were my temptation.

Level 5. You broke me, made me

Abandon my dignity.

Level 6. We went back to Level 1. With a twist

Of reality, Level 7.

Game Over

Sweet Treat Foodie

By Catherine Jones

I want the caramel taste from a Haagen-Daz

ice cream bar, with a chocolate nutty shell.

To let the caramel linger on my bottom lip

for a long while before licking it off

slowly with my tongue, undressing,

removing the shell piece by piece with my teeth.

Let me see the true beauty of white snow on a stick.

Let me inhale this treat’s cooling air

that shivers my spine, make my teeth chatter

when I bite down on the sugary pure white cream

going slow and steady

I want to let some melt down my throat

to cool my throat while the rest can leave

a white sticky trail out of my mouth

run down the corner of my chin

Let me nibble and suck

on your remains that might be left

on the hard wooden stick.

#Hashtag Pantoum

By Kira Ollivierra

The biography of #Hashtag

A normal boy who died

What killed him was his bag

For that his mother cried

A normal boy who died

Forgot to play a role

For that his mother cried

In turn his life it stole

Forgot to play a role

Or remember the talk

In turn his life it stole

He’s an outline of chalk

Or remember the talk

For his license and registration

He’s an outline of chalk

5 o pulls no hesitation

For his license and registration

#Hashtag reaches and pow

5 o pulls no hesitation

Social media’s response, “how?”

#Hashtag reaches and pow

Don’t go into your bag

Social media’s response, “how?”