Seth Leamer

Inspiration Piece

Learning to Sleep Alone

Brenna Crotty

Response Piece

We are haunted by the living.
They drift among the trees
when the moonlight’s unforgiving
of our clinging memories.

They drift among the trees,
shiv’ring ghosts made out of night;
of our clinging memories;
of our wrongs not yet made right.

Shiv’ring ghosts made out of night,
they’re reminding us anew
of our wrongs not yet made right,
of what we’ll never, ever do.

They’re reminding us anew,
when the moonlight’s unforgiving,
of what we’ll never, ever do.
We are haunted by the living.

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Brian Herrera, “Becoming”

Inspiration Piece

Brenna Crotty, “Becoming”

Response Piece

During the long, difficult hours of dying,
The weeks and months it took her,
As the white mice of cancer nibbled at her bones,
We gave my mother a big, black sharpie,
To write out her last wishes in letters large enough to be legible.
What did we want from these final words?
Love and hope and assurance that there would be more,
A bright light, a better place for her to rest?
Or did we just want done with it, waiting with the secret impatience
Of grown children
For death to come and claim her
And then leave us alone again?
She shrank into small staleness like a sponge
Left too long on a hot sidewalk.
She threw away the heavy white paper we gave her on the first day
And took to drawing on her arms,
Tracing the delicate paths of bones that jutted from her skin,
Outlining her ribs in thick, pungent streaks,
Her dry, papery skin thirstily sucking up the moisture.
“Mom,” I said, gently rubbing at the spidery black marks with a wet cloth.
“This stuff is permanent.”
She looked at me with pity. “It was always there,” she said,
“Waiting to come out.”

After she died we cleared out the little room, ready to
Close it up,
Burn down the house,
And salt the earth.
We wanted to go home and hug our children and tell ourselves
That we could still run a marathon if we decided to try.
Picking up framed pictures from the nightstand,
I found that her morbid artistry had spread to a photo of herself,
When she was 10 years younger
Than I am right now.
Over the firm, clear skin and pomegranate lips
She’d drawn a death-head’s smile.
The bright eyes she had blackened into empty sockets.
And the bones, all the bones were outlined in loving detail,
Drawn over the arms and clothes and breasts and hips,
A skeleton being teased out of its suit of skin.
Around the edges of the picture, one word, in her fierce and shaking script:
“Becoming.”

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying
or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or
artist is strictly prohibited.

Brian MacDonald
Inspiration piece

Spark
By Brenna Crotty
Response

Because he didn’t leave any Personal Belongings at the flat,

We have no hairbrushes or notebooks, or soccer jerseys from university,

Or love letters to burn.

Just some used condoms, still in the bin,

But it doesn’t feel terribly symbolic to burn those.

We could burn him in effigy,

But Charlene doesn’t want to do that

And Laurie says it’s Satanic

And Karen says the whole thing is stupid anyway

And nobody asks me what I want to do,

Because I’m The Victim

And therefore obviously filled with the big Useless Relationship Items

And Feelings that need to be burned away

With grand, symbolic gestures.

But mostly I feel nothing, like a spark going out,

And I have so little of his to assign meaning to.

Just the time I lost one of the earrings he gave me

And refused to wear just one because of the whole

Looking Like a Twat issue

So he asked me to swallow the lonely one

And I did.

Which leaves self-immolation, I suppose.

He used to tell me that he got this feeling, the need to get out.

When four walls were the same every day

It was like putting his head in a plastic bag and inhaling.

Itchy Feet is what he called it.

But we were naked in bed at the time

With the sheets like scraps of confetti,

Just barely touching our skin

And both his arms were on my back

And I couldn’t imagine him ever moving again

So I made a joke about Athlete’s Foot

And that was that.

We finally collect a pen he used to chew on,

His favorite football mug,

And the toothbrush he sometimes used.

All of them are mine

But they touched him, I suppose.

They were in his mouth, he sucked on them,

Contaminated them,

Made them unusable for others.

My friends fail to make the comparison between

The Objects and me.

We take them out to the backyard to burn them

But ceramic mugs don’t catch fire easily,

And a pen and a toothbrush are small, paltry things.

So my friends bring me their own fuel:

Solid cords of oak from the wood shed

That still smell like a

Green, Living Thing,

And their own anger, and loneliness and outrage

On my behalf

That burns so much better than what I have to offer.

Karen, with her husband who cannot help but fuck

The Secretary

But who doesn’t have the decency to leave her for good.

Laurie, who hasn’t slept in the same bed as her boyfriend

Since the baby was born.

Charlene, who watches too many Goddamn Chick Flicks

For her own good.

They build a pyre, three feet tall and stacked like

Jenga blocks so the wood won’t roll away.

Loosen one and it goes from towering blaze

To a smoky pile of dust and ashes.

So I leave it be.

They cluster the items in the middle and rim the center

With grass and branches.

Nature’s lighter fluid.

When they finally get the wood to catch,

I wait

And feel nothing.

He left without a word, but he used to tell me that he would do someday,

And just knowing that he might be gone,

It would make me breathe him in differently.

I never took him for granted.

The branches crackle and burn with a hearty,

Hefty weight to them.

Half of me is cold from the October wind

And half is warm from the fire on my face and arms,

The red comfort of it.

I blink smoke out of my eyes and wait for the feeling of him to leave me.

He was always already gone and yet he never left,

All in one.

All in one.

The sparks drift up from the pyre and disappear into the bowl of the sky

And are more beautiful for it.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.