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Working: Volume 2, Number 3 - Issue 7 Autumn 2023
 

​September New Moon Special

Autumn Nights
Bethany Rider
Rolling out of summer
Like rolling out of bed
​So easy
Yet so uncomfortable
 
Waving away the warm breezes
to watch the chill sweep in
Goodbyes to late evenings
Hello to early nights
 
It's not the same after summer
The whole world seems to know it
 
Knows how the wind blows
and chills to the bone
 

​August New Moon Special

Black & White
Darian Miller
Is it ever so easy?
So clear?
So natural?
So black and white?

To me, it's always been grey.
A mix of right and wrong,
Assurances and uncertainties.
But nothing truly clear.

Nothing black and white.

Nothing obvious.

Am I murder for trying to save my family?
A thief for taking back what is mine?
A monster for continuing to walk by?

Nothing is black and white.
Nothing is so clear.

Maybe I should I have stop.
Maybe I would be dead too.
Maybe I should have screamed for someone stronger.
But I called the police.

Maybe I should I have stop.
But nothing is black and white.
 

​July New Moon Special

deep purple breaths
C.W. Bryan
Yesterday I unscrewed the top of the
homemade huckleberry jam you gave
me before you left for Lisbon.
I took deep purple breaths to fill
my light pink lungs.
 
It was such a necessary experience;
I tense with shame at the possibility that
the vision of you in my mind’s eye
atrophies each day, the Atlantic
between us casts foggy shades on
my eyes and the crystal clear memory
muddles like a lake after heavy rain
 
The anxiety of asking a question
when you have no idea what the answer
will be, but have every notion of what
you wish it to be: it’s a 60 pound backpack
4 hours into an uphill hike, so I resign
my curiosity and just tap the Portuguese
postcard nailed to the wall beneath
the light switch every time I leave the house
 
and hope that’s enough.
 

​July Full Moon Special

Vices
Hannah Elliott
I bite my lips when I’m nervous or when I’m thinking.
 
Especially when I’m trying not to think about you, and how with your lips pressed against mine, you would mumble, “your lips are so soft,” a snug smile tugging at the corners of my mouth that was fighting for dominance with yours.
 
My lips are chapped from me trying to forget the way you would kiss my hand in the car without taking your eyes off the road - it was second nature at that point, just like driving was.
The red stain isn’t from the lipstick shade you decided was your favorite. Instead, a bloody lip gloss covers my mouth and it aches and throbs as I remember the last time you kissed me when it was out of love rather than lust.
 
In the moment it was just you and I, and I was almost convinced that we would make it despite the frequent snide comments and sub-tweeting our relationship had become. You kissed me with desperation between your lips, but when you sent me home crying you proved to me otherwise that you didn’t need me like I thought I needed you.
 
Now I’m alone, with cracks in my lips as my finger hovers over the search bar of Instagram. My heats sinks into my chest seeing you with just another version of me and hot tears form without warning. Maybe the anger will replace the sadness and I won’t reminisce on a time that was unhealthy looking back, but my judgement is clouded by nostalgia and a longing to be yours- be someone’s- and feel loved like you made me feel just
    one
          more
                 time.
 

​June New Moon Special

Running
Adele Dummermuth
Choice: to run away
Effect: ends up 8 miles from home
            family and friends walking, driving, searching
            family crying
Choice: walks into a hotel 6 hours later
             turns himself in
Reason: he wants to go home
 
Thought: he must be a good runner
 
Effect: runs cross country the next year
Choice: doesn’t try
Cause: he doesn’t like the pain
 
Effect: family is frustrated
Reminder: the night he ran away
Fear: they’re losing him
         they’ve lost him
 
Choice: to continue to run
Reason:
Effect: painful track meets
            family confusion over his choices
 

​June Full Moon Special

Like a Wrong Meal
Victoria James
Good ole’ country boy, Ethan.
Wearing camo 24/7, planning
to take me hunting someday.
Drawing attention
to every hand hold, every kiss.
Do you feel that? Drawing my focus
on him rubbing my arm,
as if I couldn’t
feel his hand on my skin.
Ethan tried. But, he’s not what I ordered.
 
Sweaty hands Corbin. Small sweaty hands
grasped tightly to my larger hand
as if my taller figure would float
away as soon as I got outside.
Not even dating, yet all day,
making plans for the next.
What started with hello,
how are you, became his potential marriage.
Corbin tried too hard. I didn’t order that.
 
Professional manipulator, Steven.
A long three years playing pretend
as if make believe was your profession.
Better luck winning Where’s Waldo than nailing
you down to one person. My best friend,
turned your sex buddy, turned ex-best friend.
3am text breakup disintegrates wasted years,
an involuntary, welcomed freedom.
Steven, no way, that’s what I ordered.
 

​May New Moon Special

Krill Phenomenology
Terry Trowbridge
Unremarkable redirected light:
commonplace prisms such as
the feathery organs on the bodies of krill,
legions of chromatic peasants refracting flares
dappled through whitecaps and mirrored by plankton,
bright enough to outshine bioluminescent languages in the epipelagic daylight;
at least until the horizon scatters dusk’s acute angle.
 
Unremarkable light:
that light which is seen,
but seen by the creatures who redefine sentience.
Cognizant? Yes, but perhaps pointlessly so.
They swim, but have no control to overpower the currents,
swept along, incapable of stillness, incapable of choice.
Fluttering mindfully at one with the brine, all is arbitrary.
 
Under these conditions:
thought has no purpose either in planning or the present tense.
Only two domains are certain –
one is pure abstraction,
the other is the light.
 
The abstract we cannot know
            unless the featherlike flutters
            ​communicate those thoughts
The light we cannot know until we see it
            from the krill’s perspective,
            light through water, light through body,
            the philosophies of being a prism
            adrift.
 

​May Full Moon Special

May Flowers
James Cepheus
April Showers really bring
Big May Flowers

Bright and Blooming
Welcoming 

May begins
a brand-new start

run towards it
with an open heart

forget the clouds
forget the rain

know now 
nothing will be the same
 

​April New Moon Special

April Showers
James Cepheus
April Showers bring
Stormy nights
And windy days
Don't work too hard
It will fail anyway

April Showers
Soak the soul
Wreck my life
And soil the world

Yes, April Showers
are hard, I know I know
You think stop and think
You're broken and low

But the rain will stop 
The clouds will part
The sun will shine
You will get a new start

Maybe now you're guessing
What April Showers really bring...
 

​March New Moon Special

Blades of Grass
Hailey James
I was a kid that had a lot of allergies / I couldn’t go swimming because the chlorine / Most fruits were off limits / Don’t get me started on nuts / And then there was grass / I was allergic to grass / Whenever I was in contact with it my skin would blister up / Almost immediately / So I wouldn’t touch the grass / I would look at it / I would smell it / I would linger above it / Standing on the sidewalk / There weren’t many things that I wanted to do / That I was told I couldn’t / I never wanted to play with knives / Or run with scissors / I never wanted to stand on tables / Or walk around naked / I never wanted to drink coffee / Or climb on bookshelves / But I really wanted to lay in the grass / So instead, I would lay on the concrete and watch the little blades / As they danced in the wind
 

​March Full Moon Special

Lily Pads
A. L. Celdon
A​ frog hops
From pad to pad
Like a ballerina dancing
Across the pond
 
Life is like that frog
Born beneath the surface
Blind to life
And light
 
Slowly springing to the exterior
To jump and jump
And run and run
And forever moving
 
Until we slip from the lily pad
And sink again
 

​February New Moon Special

Sentience
Emily Moon
A noun and a verb walk into a bar 
seeking an object.
Adjectives and adverbs mill around,
anxious thoughts of Choose me!
visible on their expressive faces.
Particles orbit in a cloud
of uhs, try to fit in.
 
Nouns gossip in groups
about the verbs
conjugating in the back room.
 
Punctuation marks sit in dark booths,
long necks and shot glasses on the table.
We wonder if they'll stagger
to their proper places
after they finish their drinks.
 
A cute object with a killer smile
and fabulous hair struts in. 
Heads turn to watch them swagger
to the bar, lift a cowboy boot
to the brass rail, hook a thumb
on a belt loop of their tight jeans,
and turn to survey the crowd.
 
The noun tilts their head,                
levels a flirtatious smile, 
says Hellooo there, beautiful.
Everyone pretends
they are not watching.
The punctuation marks --
order another round.
 

​January New Moon Special

Parasite
Harriet Sanders
Oh, hey, it's you,
Again.
Yeah, I missed you too,
I guess.
Not really,
I don't have have time.
No, 
I'm sorry. I don't think so.
I told you:
I'm busy.
Listen, 
I should probably go.

Hey, it's me!
Again!
I missed you!
A lot.
Could you come see me
Later today?
What about tomorrow,
are you free?
Not even
For just a while?
But I was...
I was only...
Okay, I get it.
​Goodbye.
 

​January Full Moon Special

Cacophony
Les Epstein
One damned flake descends
From a hasty spoonful
Scraping my wind pipe
Into atonal fits

All through tooth brushing
Its jagged edge
Now long gone to who knows where

Nags me on
In hack and sneeze--
Tears in waves--
I’m my own Vaudeville
Making a highway merge
Between oil tankers
Bolting out of the Blue Ridge
Into our bowl shaped city
​
And I reaching school halls
Enter a shaken cubist work
“Oppressed Hacker Descends a Staircase”
Then yak and yak about Massachusetts bards
With fourteen fourteen-year-olds
Honking, blowing, picking at nasal nuisance
All engaged in Transcendental wheezing
Group debris to Thoreau.
Copyright © 2023 Empyrean Literary Magazine, L.L.C.
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