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< Table of Contents Avarice Grin by Max Watt About the Artist... Max is a high school senior at Savannah Arts Academy planning on attending Georgia Southern University. He enjoys working with a variety of mediums but specializes in acrylic paint and chalk pastels.

784437cd-4e6f-4020-bff7-08e80d205b06 Tangled in Transformation by Camille Faustino A Tribute to Mitski’s “Class of 2013” by Hollis Ackiss my mother makes separate noodles for me in a big pot of chicken noodle soup because she’s been on a diet ever since she got out of jail, and she still loves me yet she doesn’t know my name and when i wake up at eleven pm to feel the bowl is still warm, sitting in the fridge, labeled with a name i remember she called me by, i realize why my brother and i stayed up so late that one night ambling in the kitchen to see her make spaghetti at one am in her denim and name tag when she only got home from work an hour before, and she never saw any new dishes in the sink. now i stand on my tiptoes to reach the opaque glasses on the top shelf as i pour a drink, every light off in the house except for the fridge, filled with soda again even though now it’s all diet. i know i should sleep soon when i have work tomorrow, and my back hurts but i can only let her hold me as many times as i can allow myself a moment of reprieve; the first night we moved into this house we watched a movie in silence and with my head hovering over her shoulder she says she waited for this moment. Return to Table of Contents

The Fish Kaysyn Jones False Prophet Vera Caldwell I forgot to buy water at the convenience store. My feet are curling and cramping in my rubber-soled boots with it, and the ache’s grounding. All the cigarette smoke feels like it’s staining my eyes grey, filling my head with air till it floats all the way out of the car, above the clouds, where the sun is hiding. God’s hands are white, like what peels off the skin after a sunburn. White like plaster. I wonder what happens when you peel it? Is He like a hollow statue? And then we’re at the lake. The snow fell hard here. I feel small, drifting, wrapped in my hoodie and my coat, cut by the ice in the air. Everything is white: the cooler for the fish and the beer cans, the sky, my gloves. Everything is white but the trees holding up the snow and the mismatched red-and-black folding chairs I carry out onto the ice. My father cracks a hole in the ice. It sounds like a breaking bone. The bait goes on the end of the fishing hook, and then the drop, and then the waiting. My vision darkens, then fades. I dream that I am alone on the lake. I’m holding my little fishing pole tight in my hands when something pulls on the string, delicate, then harder. I yank back. I strain against a red sky, ripping at the water, trying to drag absolution from the endlessly dark hole in the ice. Instead, I draw a hand. A limp, colorless hand with my silver fishing hook through the palm, dripping red blood onto the snow. The colorless hand is connected to a colorless arm, which is connected to a colorless head on a long neck and the thing has the largest, most beautiful eyes. I’m looking at my angel. The angel crawls from the hole in the ice. It scrabbles and heaves with fingers that have no nails. Its breath is a wreath of steam in the air that floats towards the red sun to kiss it. Drip. Drip. Drip. Every vein in its translucent body, I can see. There is no heart, only blue lines that pulse in the center of the angel. But there are eyes, and those eyes don’t move from mine. Those eyes are mine. It was like meeting a bear in the woods. I knew that it could rip me apart, and it knew that I would let it. But that’s why we both knew it wouldn’t hurt right. The violence would be meaningless. The viscera wouldn’t be fit for marble any more than a whore for the altar. Spoiled goods. What would be taken is already gone. I move first. I break the spell. I take off my glove, and bare my palm to the angel. The heart-line is the love-line and I want something to love me. Anything to love me. “Please.” And the angel raises its bleeding palm, and it gives me a taste of salt. And the angel turns and the angel walks away. Its steps melt the snow and make the ice see-through, showing all the minnows still swimming under all of the powder. The hook stays in its palm, and the fishing line catches aflame and lights the sky. The angel leaves red footprints across the lake, and I realize that the lake is not a lake, but a river, covered in thousands of red prints, all of them melting the ice, burning, underneath a shining sky. I wake up. The sky is hidden under a gray front, but the shadows of the trees have turned violet and blue. I can’t feel my hands or my face. Next to me, my father is sprawled in his folding-out chair. The lid of the cooler is tilted off, a collection of tails hanging halfway out of it, next to a hollow gallery of beer cans. The tails drip blood onto the thick snow. My father casts an eye to me and back again. He takes a long draw of beer, smacks his lips, and takes another. There is a tug at my line. “Well?” My father says. “Reel it in.” Return to Table of Contents

Eye Can See by Adrian Gibson allegory deferred by Lynn Kong Elderly white thread, teeth and strands of soul: Grandmother’s hands are crumpled like youth’s pink silk dress, like the roof of my mouth when I was born as a lump of clay, virgin to bruise and doubt’s edge— gums bared to verity. She ties a slender noose— milky and knitted with exile— and drapes it around my tooth, where frailty clasps earth and rustles somewhat. How is it that I wish so much to be unscathed? I clutch at violation, sucking rue and the dross of parched mirrors. But I cannot give it up, that tooth. I am still so infantile. Someday, when bubonic fragility melds with grace unmired, there will be a wonder akin to that graveyard odyssey wherein all false selves are discarded like the teeth of one’s childhood. Tongue prods void and rests.

How Lucky we Are Meredith Anglin How lucky we are to be alive. How lucky we are to exist, and to comprehend, and to feel love and sorrow and hatred and peace, and to experience. How lucky to walk the earth and feel the grass under our feet and to hear the sweet music of life surrounding us. And how beautiful it is to cry. How beautiful for us to feel so much emotion that we simply cannot contain it within our bodies. For us to instead place a bit of that emotion within a droplet of water and release it from ourselves. How powerful that is, that we can feel so deeply and so fully that we simply overflow. That we cannot hold it in any longer. How beautiful it is to live. And how rare. How impossible it is that we are in a seemingly infinite universe and that we just happen to be on the one planet we know of that can host life. Have you ever thought of that? We are on the one planet that has art on it. We are on the one planet where people can dance. The one planet that holds nature and food and children and joy and dreams. And how lucky we are. How lucky. That we may have hearts among us that fill with love for every other heart, that hurt and bleed and burn and go beyond the point that you would expect to empty them of any feeling at all, yet still love tremendously and blindly. Hearts that can see a beautiful picture or read a beautiful line of poetry and be filled with love and sorrow and yearning and care, deep genuine care for everything that breathes, oh, how lucky we are indeed! Return to Piece Selection

20 Ant Town by Jeremy Hall Roadkill by Marlo Herndon Leaking out against stiff black pavement, oozing chunks of red out his pale stomach -the body blocking the way to every love to ever be mine. Abhorrent, his limbs stretch out as if trying to grab & pin me- the indent in his chest the only fresh thing for miles. The sight of the carcass flares my eyes creating crisp tears that only cling to burn -why else would this body not turn to ash. Simply swerving to steer clear of his memory fails me, the antlers pierce the tires, my head thrashes with the fallen glass, a shard seeps through & buries itself in my beating heart- it refuses to stay away, births hands of red but not eyes -in protest, longing for the gentle love I knew. The newborn hands steer back towards the vile memory -that refuses to die -that violation he committed between my thighs. He gave me life some days, which in the after is what kills me, what made the hands ignore the road signs, the memory of the good guy I saw before, with a smile brighter than streetlights, who’d put my hand on the stick shift to show me we were safe to give me an allusion of control, before he took me for that spin, that forced collision – his keys in my ignition against that bedframe- he ignored the red lights I gave him. What remains of him can be found on every road & every passenger I welcome for as long as my skin burns & the organ in my chest remains & tries to learn – to live with the buried on the way. About the Writer... Marlo Herndon is a local poet & author. Currently they are invested in learning from their community & creating more art. About the Artist... Jeremy Hall has been going to Savnnah Arts Academy for 4 years and this is one of the pieces he's most proud. He finished this while I had covid in 2021 and believes it shows his best abilities in his most confident areas of expertise.

< Table of Contents Star II by England Townsend "You can almost chart income inequality over the years by measuring the height of New York's ceilings." By Angelina Avelino I. the day we run out of bread striding through the market around the corner, hand in hand with Sammy. Lucia waits at home, perched amongst deteriorating skylines outlining the inequality of our jagged lives. gripping onto balcony rails, she leans far enough to catch glimpses of the philanthropic monuments of America. envisioning an epoch, Lucia will dispel misery as a skyscraper. “trudging past the frozen aisle, Sammy believes he’ll morph into a glacier.” hand in hand with Sammy, trudging past the frozen aisle, Sammy believes he’ll morph into a glacier. adjusting instead to an aerial craft across Alaska, he waits for me on the other end. i’m frigid in thought, unable to unravel anything other than the stinging silence of the apartment we share. II. i left the loaves of bread on a platter a slight creak, a single ray. the room reeks of glue and varnish when he comes home, a kiss on each of our foreheads. loaves of bread on a platter serve as centerpiece, while mother obliquely imparts breaking news. wrapping the bread into its pertaining bag, stuck in cyclical failed attempts of unemployment, she's perched amongst skylines, a state of inner turmoil that’ll never resurface. molding the insignificant into celestial lyrics meant for me and the pearl of the gods above, i’m just a prolific poet against our barren room wall. under tidal currents of auroral pages, placing poems in a cache, never finished. i’m cognizant of the life we seem to be irrevocably meshed into. tomorrow morning we’ll split the loaves of bread into fifths. About the Writer... Angelina Tang is a writer currently studying at Williamsville East High School. She is the self-published author of Birds Playing God, and her work has previously appeared in Cathartic Youth Lit and Polyphony Lit. She would like to learn how to design planners, and her favorite flower is the wisteria. About the Artist... England Townsend is a junior at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. She specializes in drawing and painting, but enjoys other forms of art such as printmaking and photography. With each creation, Townsend strives to push her boundaries and explore different ways of producing art. She is excited to keep creating to learn and share her progress with the world.

< Table of Contents Lurking by Sophia Gapuz the disease called home. By Anayelli Andrews-Nieves The machinery hums its familiar tones. Lyrical stories and medicinal lies Course through my veins, And yet, even with that saccharine anesthetic, I can’t get it out of my sight— the way everything in the house seemed to live , how each system pulsed and breathed, and my survival hinged on all of it. “Bougainvillea petals are floating in my IV.” Bougainvillea petals are floating in my IV. i can see the tree from that hospital bed’s window. i picked the petals from the concrete and mixed them in myself. Their memories leak out and The color seeps in. My skin is colored a shade that looks so wrong, Blooming from blemished skin. it’s a shade that once meant i was home. I’m dyed down to my bones In the colors of a dead man. they were supposed to save me. the systems have already stopped sending signals. the house became pallor and cold a long time ago, and yet the curtain hasn’t been pulled over it. “allow me,” and “i wouldn’t dare,” the heart monitor screams as my fingers run along white fabric. sometimes i think i must be a corpse still attached to life support, endless wires connected jaggedly to my veins. they stretch and tear and dig into my rotting, festering flesh. when (if) it ends, will these marks be burned away? there is no remedy for what isn’t a disease, and a decayed heart cannot beat again, so what am i to do? sweetening my senses until there’s nothing left, swallowing down falsities, i’ve changed nothing. that place is still so very far, so far that i shouldn’t be able to say “i still, i still, i still,” but the words form the sound of my pulse, and the words stab into my heart. i still hear birds chirping in a cage on the front porch, i still find myself in sync with the whirring of an oxygen machine, and i have such a weak heart that it will beat in a different rhythm if it believes its going at the wrong pace. But for my own sake Even with my weakened body, I can stand At the gravestone of a memory. About the Writer... Anayelli Andrews-Nieves is a student at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in the Creative Writing department and a member of the Black Arts club. She is a biracial, queer writer and was born and raised in Florida. She enjoys writing and reading fantasy stories that have a balance of character and plot focus. A side from fiction, she also has an interest in free verse poetry that uses visceral descriptions to get across intense emotional ideas. About the Artist... Sophia Gapuz is a visual artist at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts in Jacksonville, Florida. She majors in drawing and painting, and explores the world in an emotionally abstract lens, continually searching to create something new.

Kamayan by Camille Faustino

< Back Under the Rain by Jason Galub North-East FL By Brianna Clark Waves crash into the sand like a parent gives a child a little slap on the wrist, isn’t this how all kids are punished now? Pulling and pushing against the solid, soaked substrate. Taking more and more until eventually there will be no more to take. *** Recently, someone in my writing class—someone who lives closer to the beach than me—did a creative nonfiction piece about the beach connecting to her family. But when I gave her feedback for it, I never really saw her connect herself. Only her family. Personally, I’m not a fan of the beach. • I don’t like how the sand invites itself onto my skin and into my clothes. Who gave it permission to do that in the first place? After it gets all cozy into my pockets, it intrudes into my home and I have to not only rid my body of it, but also my home. How rude. • Or how the sun turns my fair skin into something similar to a tomato. I know it’s not trying to do it on purpose, but it’s just so painful. It leaves me restless and in pain. Again, who gave it permission to do it in the first place? Plus, I don't recall you being this hot a few years ago, so why decide to switch up now? How rude. • Or how the large body of saline water is always too rough. I get that you’re known for your waves, but there's always a time and place for everything, and that's when I'm not around. I'm just trying to get used to the freezing water, and then you decide to start crashing into me and getting me wetter faster than I wanted. Now, while my lower body is finally starting to get used to things, you force me to soak my body fully in your murky, salty water. How rude. • Or how you can never keep yourself clean. No matter when I come, you never fail to keep yourself dirty. You're always covered in litter. Don't you know how rude it is to have guests over in a dirty home, let lone have them there all the time? Even if they leave a mess behind, it's your job to clean up after them. No matter how many times I come, you never fail to shove more garbage into my face. How rude. No matter what, you never fail to disappoint me. *** When I try to leave the beach, I’m always stuck in such large lines of traffic just to go home. Cars and cars are stacked up for miles sometimes even, fossil fuels slowly peeling away at the layers of the atmosphere. That can ’t be my problem though . I can’t even drive yet. I won't even be alive anymore once the planet caves in on itself, so why should it matter what I do to help? I mean, that is how everyone else thinks, so what's one person helping gonna do? It’s not like there's other people worried and helping out the environment as well or anything. Or like there's entire countries that have whole plans and customs for what they follow to help the environment. I mean yeah, climate change is melting ice caps and stranding some of the animals in the Arctic, but it's not my problem. Right? Totally not like it's causing sea levels to rise. I mean, eventually there won't be a beach to complain about, so it's only helping me , right? None of this is my problem, right? About the Author... Brianna Clark, a writer for The Teen Magazine and the Video Production Manager of The Artisan, is a creative writing student from Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. She has been published in Folk Riot Literary Magazine, Hannah Book Designs Anthology, “Fragments of an Unquiet Mind,” and has had her short play, “Reset,” featured in the Red Moon Theater Festival. She has won the Remedy Poetry New Years Poetry contest and has hosted, not only an open mic, but a Lit Chat with New York Times Bestselling Author, Shannon Messenger . About the Artist... Jason Galub is an 11th grade Drawing and Painting major at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. They like to experiment with acrylic paint to create fluidity, movement, and texture. Previous Next

< Table of Contents Gilded Embrace by Isabella Woods Wax-Feathered Heart By Izzy Falgas In a prison trapped by way of sea and land, watching as your fingers run through soft wax, I’ve seen gentle smiles and calloused hands; father deftly lining quills up from the smallest. They took him forty-two days to construct which left me forty-three to gaze down at you. “I reached out to you, to cup your honey in my hands. / All I could grasp was dripping wax.” You soared, wings brushing my sky as I perch on my own chariot of ignorance. I reached out to you, to cup your honey in my hands. All I could grasp was dripping wax. Your eyes were on the sky, counting the stars of Orion— why did they never lock onto me? Too far to hold you, near enough to hurt you; is arm's length still too close? Cupped in my hands is your ambrosia I never had. You were never vain; I was the selfish one. Washed up on the white sands of Icaria, death held close as the sun fell in love with a dead man. About the Writer... Izzy Falgas is a freshman in Harrison School for the Arts and is in the Creative Writing department. She enjoys writing poetry and flash fiction in her free time, as well as creating other forms of visual art. She has won many awards and accolades for her visual art, including FAEA’s Award of Distinction and a gold ribbon in SSYRA’s visual category. She has a novel in the works, but is mainly occupied by piles of homework and playing with her four-month-old puppy. About the Artist... Isabella Woods is a junior at Savannah Arts Academy. She knew at a young age that she was interested in doing art. Some of her influences have come from her grandmother, mom, and teachers who have all inspired her with their own art. Now attending Savannah Arts Academy, she is able to be creative everyday with multiple different kinds of art.

My Tears are the Ocean and the Weight of them drags me Down by Dashea Reed Sea of Stars by Sam Howell I look up to the sky and no one stares back. Only harsh stars glaring, burning like fluorescent lights. It’s the confidence of millennia backing up those arrogant smiles. We have so little time to glow, to be seen from galaxies away. No time to stand out among endless seas of rolling purple. So, what to do with this century? How to burn like the Sun? How to make this moment matter before imploding to leave no trace? To blink is to become dust, to wink out of existence. The stars won’t dull with the weight of their grief when I disappear. They just carry on with the assurance of tomorrow, for it is a given to those timeless beings who know they have centuries left to burn. All I have is the hope that someone may carry my flame. But my torch will burn out until all that is left is charred memory: Ashes of yesterday, embers for tomorrow. But even embers can be stamped out. The stars won’t end. Some explode, others fade into obscurity. Yet they all leave something behind. When I am gone, only my shadow will remain.