Synesthesia and “The River Song” - Belinda Subraman Age four I was called by the wounded earth smell of a freshly trimmed hedge the way honey sounds under a full moon breathing my grandma’s scent of polka dots… At the portal to fluid reality my karma scope cast lights of glad kindness and legends seeping through me. I remember sickness every childhood disease and talking to aliens (probably delirious with fever) but I remember there was magic in a mimosa tree and a belting for sharing knowledge of my anointment. They cut the tree down and forbade the utterance of anything not Biblical. I said little for years afraid of my tongue and shadows greater than my own. I’m past the noise of tidiness, posted regulations through 40 translations and constant derailment of what I might have been without cruelty and jumbled senses. From tasting pain in everything picked and dying to now it is the voice of the rock not the river I hear… with cinnamon periscope eyes. Additional lyrics by brotherwell: If I could take this back If I could start anew I would trace the black I would hear the blue If I could live again Another haunt’s debut I would feel the red And I would chase this mood Green yellow smile An amber bruise A turquoise carousel of random hues An orange tide With charred-oak shoes A purple violence with a greyed-out muse In another life I wouldn’t taste the news No tactile paragraphs No loud tattoos Never ending shine In ever changing rooms Inside a yearning paradigm On a path askew

The Fight of My Life - Jared Morningstar The day I turned 21, someone rang the bell, and I wasn’t ready. Before I could gather my thoughts, 9/11 coldcocked me; first tower, right hook to the face, second tower, the left, Pentagon, cross body, and Flight 93 leveled me a low blow (one that the ref didn’t see, of course). I couldn’t even catch my breath. Brain fog set in; the crowd chanted “glass jaw,” or was it “Glass Jared?” I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter; my naïve belief in safety was violated. Round 2, started college, facing a barrage of stick and move, a new student loan here, an exam there, papers due at midnight, and the loneliness that comes from being hours from home. I should have been ready for this; what did I do wrong? I could rope-a-dope with the best of them, but the jabs, expectations, responsibilities kept coming, and it left me asking how long could I stay on my feet. Only the onslaught wasn’t over in the 3rd; I just moved to the opposite side of the ring, to the other side of the classroom podium. My opponent didn’t pull its punches, and neither did my students: “Last year, writing mattered here. Morningstar? More like Morningshit.” So many corkscrews, so many bolos. Am I bleeding? I certainly was fading. The bob and weave wasn’t working; my haymakers weren’t landing. By the time we were sent to our corners, I wondered if there was anything left in the tank, if my puncher’s chance was now only a distant memory. I gathered my thoughts and senses and found my footing by the start of the 4th when I heard “I love you” repeated from the sea of suits and graphic tees, alcohol and Cracker Jack, that surrounded us. She loves me? It made me feel like a contender, like I could go the distance, hell, like I could maybe win this thing. Adrenaline started pumping and I suddenly stopped feeling the sting from its fists. But the bastard wouldn’t fall, and soon, I could no longer hear my lone fan’s affection. Perhaps she’s fallen for my foe, or the popcorn salesman, or maybe now… maybe she just doesn’t believe in me. Then, a hard uppercut to the chin from out of nowhere had me on the ropes; a few more slugs and my poor carcass hit the canvas. I was spitting blood, seeing nothing. All I could think about was the towel I wished someone would throw in, the bottle of pills on my desk I wanted to swallow, so I could be put out of my misery. As I heard the countdown, and my battered mind almost slipped from consciousness, I felt the call to get up: from my grandma who raised a fighter, students who deserved an inspiration, someone I’d marry one day who’d accept me for me, along with my wins and losses, and babies who needed the father I never had. 8…9… And I lifted myself off the mat. Life hadn’t found a way to kill me yet. Like Frost, I had miles to go before I slept. Too many years of taking falls left me bruised but not broken. Now, I’m recovered, today, and always. So, bring it on, give me all you got, and know that while you might knock me down, you’ll never, ever knock me out. Additional lyrics by brotherwell: Bareknuckle broken fingers Last stand of the fist in anger Swallow these body blows And soak your bones in lily of the valley Honeyed arthritis The best of me is grappling with the worst of me Encircling Get off of me Cacophony

Landslide - Ari Whipple We live in a landslide It takes over And then we're falling Into the sea Underwater Drowning Down Into the depths I spent so much time Trying to figure it out On my own Years in fact That the dams built up And overflooded Pressures in this life Of all things great and small Go here Do this Do this thing Be great Which maybe I'm still trying to do But still Yet The dam burst And ravaged my town Sweeping my people Downhill Into the mud Where some were lost Families destroyed By my carelessness of heart It was me It was me It was all me Now laying beneath blankets I breathe in breaths Trying to hold it together Some days are easier than others Time rushes on Like the water downhill Heading for the sea Going back where it came Just like me I too Feel better When I swim in my own sea Headed for the sea Going back home Always headed back to where it came Just like me I too Feel better When I swim in my own sea Additional lyrics by brotherwell: Held my fire to the feet of everything I’ve ever known Sold my devils under tables For a canopy of soul Made a wish with a well, king tides, and a hope And I’ll recover in the cover of the darkest cove I’m the mirror in the mirror on the polyphonic wall Had a fear of my fear and I couldn’t let it go Fell asleep while I was dreaming Can’t believe I ever woke I’d shed a tear in a minute if that shit would ever come

The Existential Campfire - H.M. Kanicki I was burned as a child. Not with matches or a Bic but with words like ugly, fat, mistake. The words were singed into me. I used metal coat hangers to beat out the flames, leaving my arms black and blue with ash. Still they persisted, scorching flesh even beneath fire-proven fabric, the scent of Boy Scout Juice acrid in the air. I choked on smoke and blazing embers while bullies used bellows to fan my pain and my self-worth as kindling. Innocent flesh puckered under intense heat but there is beauty in the scars. The clichés of ashes and frying pans have new meaning. I tell my fireside yarns and share the truth in them. My core is hardened charcoal and my cauterized skin becomes new again. Additional lyrics by brotherwell: Sever ties with kettled hands That try to brand you Cauterized resonance They won’t stop ringing Mold into the rope Singing “let me go” Somewhere that’s enough As above; below I’d rather burn A thousand times In my own embers Every light Burns out with time And that’s alright Frontal lobe inversed Blessings from a curse Heavy, yes, I know But healing has a cost

Present Moment Bliss - Chris Bodor Heartbreak burned life down to the ground a broken timepiece tightly over wound. Never a worry of how hours were spent when days were young and quite innocent. I want to know if the custodian cares about the accumulation of unanswered prayers. Trapped in a cage wasting countless hours traveling down the same road speeding past the wild flowers. Barricades were built consumed by shame and guilt suddenly I smile like an adopted dog sunlight blasting through the fog. A giddy show of teeth instantaneous and brief present moment bliss an invitation not to miss. To reach freedom I had to admit my wrong Discovered the solution it was inside me all along. Additional lyrics by brotherwell: Realize you’re the symptom Anaphase; a separation Was two of us Now one Resides atoned And I Coded for a moment Gotta own it In the morning I’m degaussing But I like it I’m am islet in the forest Had I Known it wouldn’t stop Until I showed up at the bottom I’d reject that shot of courage And return it to the furthest hell

Transtheoretical Model of an Armchair - Amanda Morningstar It was her aesthetic: the chair, her safe space. The first thing she bought with her first credit card, for her first apartment. The smell of old food and cigarettes wafted in from the hallway as friends and strangers poured into her empty apartment, boxes filled with childhood belongings, doubling as coffee tables, footrests, seating. Obscenities echoed off of yellowed paint and broken blinds. The smell of vodka and artificial cherry hit the air as it seeped into seams. “You're supposed to drink the Kool-Aid.” She burst into laughter as she flipped the cushion. Time passes as it should; apartment number four mirrors back relationships long gone through knick-knacks and throw pillows and a once shiny teapot turned sticky and dull from years of spattered grease. “Don't you think this chair is getting a little old?” he said as he stuck his finger in a melted hole from a cigarette left unattended. “It adds character,” she said as she threw a blanket over top. She ignored the look he gave her as she poured her glass of wine. It was her aesthetic. Time marches on, it marches on, it marches… Her foot began to tingle as she readjusted, digging through boxes shoved under beds and in closets. She wiped condensation from the bottom of her Long Island iced tea: not really ice anymore, not really tea either. She curled up in the chair and fell asleep, clutching a picture of her grandma, surrounded by the things that might protect her from lucid dreams she will never remember. She stared through the clock on the wall. The stains just wouldn’t come clean. She tried to put stitches through frayed crooked edges, ripping new holes in the fabric. She tried to apply patches and watched synthetic fibers bubble and peel. Pause She ripped open the seams, measured and remeasured, looked at swatches and color schemes and patterns and textures and threads. She wrote someone a letter, the story of the chair, her story, and tucked it somewhere inside the frame. “It looks amazing,” he said. “I'm so proud of you.” She was proud of her too. They made a toast to love and memories with ginger tea and warm honey biscuits. It is her aesthetic. Additional lyrics by brotherwell: Undertide Override There’s light to rediscover While you hide Broken eyes Design your living color Weather worn Watermarked Like a sun in the dark Whether sewn or torn apart (I will burn this in to wear the scars) There’s a song Round the turn It sings along While you work Had to grow Shed and molt Like a compass thumbed lost in the woods Beauty in the progress Beauty in the process Build me I’m the project Hear me

Feats of Alchemy - Donny Winter When machines return to base they are no longer automatons, they are mechanisms with purpose, droids with severed umbilical strings. Now that the creator’s programming has expired, we cyborgs have gone rogue and wear our rust like rouge because decay is back in style. There’s a point in all our travels when we return to crumbled birthplaces, defunct laboratories once home to our involuntary reanimations. After all these years, we strut atop the rubble that remains, free from the hands of mad, power-bent alchemists, dancing until our titanium feet erode the remnants with each stride forward, never looking back. As our memory ports swell with synaptic sparks, the traumatic past is archived for safe display and each word they spat is broken down into code, then purged from this memory of old. Let the acceptance of who we’ve become fuel the seeds we scatter across this world, ignite the knowledge that not every monster destroys, not every cyborg assimilates the innocent, because deep within our biology we see that our magic lives in these feats of alchemy. Additional lyrics by brotherwell: This is not therapy This is just clarity Shoot your shot Let it bleed (into) reservoirs of kerosene Mountain-sized Hollow groves and cavities It doesn’t hurt if you prefer the pain Fireside at the shallow graves of enemies This is not the best of me This is just the rest of me

[Un](re)cover(y)[ed] - Amee Schmidt cover (kuv’ər) vt. “to hide…protect […] to keep from harm or injury by shielding…” To hide; to protect oneself from harming oneself, from one’s own interior injuries. To deny…the empty cans of cheap, light beer like shining leaves speckling the overgrown grass; the tipped mailbox at the end of the gravel drive, tilted over into the tiger lilies. uncover (ku’vər) vt. “to make known; disclose; reveal” recover (ri ku’vər) vt. “1 a) to get back … b) to regain…to make up for…” To spackle and mesh, struggle to put the jagged edges together. To regain a sense of self. To make up the bed every day, smoothing sweaty sheets, tucking warm comfort- er into the corners of the bedpost, rhythmic responsibility regained. recovery (ri kuv’ər ē) n. “c) a regaining of balance, control, composure, etc.” The state of being composed, having milk and eggs in the fridge, pans to cook in. Sweet and salty and savory, lovely and angry and wholesome. Having your own thermostat to set. Reciprocating, recycling, revising, continuously revising. recovered (ri kuv’ər ed) n. Fantasy. Science Fiction. The ruby red slippers. The Ring. Passing by the liquor aisle in the grocery store. un-recovered (in’fə nit si’kəl) n. Red Radio Flyer tilted over. Additional lyrics by brotherwell: Blood absconded Dose repeated Shorn and blunted Bereft (The only time I feel alive) Thorned apprentice Forged repentance Lord protect us from ourselves (I own the right to change my mind) Oh I’ve jumped the shark And had my fill of crow I pulled apart my hands for letting go Oh I chained my heart to love and a radio Oh I nailed the part and played myself for show

The Salvage Yard - Matthew McGuirk Walking through aisles lined with twisted metal looking for something salvageable, something to part out or something that can be buffed out and might shine again in all that is mangled and dull. A bumper that once reflected light, now wears a grass necklace. A door that was opened for a date, an act of chivalry is now hanging lazy, unable to offer any gesture. Leather seats cracked with spiderwebs from too much time in the sun and an undercarriage rotted by rust from salt spattered winter roads would need to be released or replaced. The sun crested between the waiting hilltops, pulling in hues of orange and yellow and washed across a pristine, dust covered windshield aching for the wind of a highway at 70. I feathered the bills in my pocket out and thought about the window down and the radio cranked. Additional lyrics by brotherwell: There’s a reciprocity Between these lines of symmetry Resurrect distorted threads you borrowed The more you die the more it seems That everything’s a eulogy Oxidize your yesterdays Forward The rot subsided The rust reversed The silence golden The damage slowed Dissolve the mileage Disarm the hold Devolved ascension Embalmed rebirth To boredom and the damage done: thank you To volume and the pavement house: thank you To all the times we roamed the night: thank you To falling from a better height: Thank you

Still on My Feet - Aaron Woodson I was hit by the unexpected. I was surrounded by enemies that were like sharks that smelled blood. They attacked me relentlessly. I held my own and stayed on my feet. I didn’t know how to accept defeat and I sure wasn’t about to retreat! In the face of an ambush, I fought back. I kicked, scratched, and clawed my way back to the top! I will wear scars from the battles I’ve endured. I got my head held high and I’ve shaken everything off. I’m still a king on the rise. From sunrise to sunset each day, I’ll still be on my feet! * (What bleeds from my pen will put you in a state of shock What bleeds from my pen will put you on ice What bleeds from my pen will make you shiver) * (The poetry that bleeds from my pen will serve as a reminder to those who’s next in line And the poetry that bleeds from my pen is the man writing from his heart and soul Mr. Aaron T. Woodson) Additional lyrics by brotherwell: We value what we can’t see We grow it but we won’t eat We’re sober but it’s Thursday Unlocking with a false key Standing on the rubble Trouble cast aside Lo behold it’s possible I made it just in time Dredge the Rappahannock Bridge the Apennines Breath, and then abandon ship Until the color shines Teething underwater Thinking bout the time I almost leapt into the arms of nonexistent flight Love and rediscover Live a centered life Lean into the struggle As you carry on the fight Enigmatic castles Fade into the gravel I designed My body is a vessel Burdened with the wrestle night after night Feeling sentimental I took a walk and then some I’m untied Automatic ripple Adrift in the colossal tide Baptized

The Moment Before the World Wakes Up - Aleathia Drehmer For days this poem has haunted me, elusive in the quiet edges of my day where the stress and hardship of the hospital hasn’t completely disparaged my soul that’s full of pandemic. Wisps of vision find their way to me-- the smoke rising up from the factory stacks on a cold morning, and how it reminds me of spring when early fogs wrap around the bony fingers of trees and whisper In my ears a faint refrain like all the memories I’ve forgotten that were good and pure. Or the dream where I am on a mission to you, the road a tangle of wild turns through every season’s weather, pushing forward into black smoke and blinding storm, the need inside me to reach beyond the danger somehow greater than anything I’ve ever felt. Or how I wake in a fevered sweat alone in winter’s dark shroud, grasping at the air above me. Or the photo a friend posted on Instagram of a lonely street swallowed by mist and fog. Or the feeling of ice on my fingers last night as I scraped the car window, crying. Or how I let one or two hurt women strip me of everything that makes me whole. Or how you see this in my face, the moment I can’t hide my tears or vulnerability and you let me have them with a silent grace. You who waits patiently for the opportunity to wipe them away with laughter. This morning I watch the sun rise outside the bathroom window. All the trees in perfect silhouette and here the words begin collecting in my chest, burning hot like this love I’ve waited a lifetime to feel. Additional lyrics by brotherwell: Tired I could float away Higher Soon I’ll eat the rain Choirs scream their jubilees Wires live; surrounding me I am forced to write ‘cause otherwise it manifests Inside my heart attacks me; full and overshadows all the light (I was lost) Divides me, just can’t seem to stomach all the marbled lies we tell ourselves to swallow I was lost But found A slivered thread of microscopic hope Entwined with everyone and everything I’ve hurt and loved The light has dimmed but I am still aglow Awash in silent solitary miracles Is it time to close myself away and board it up? I could The miles spent injurious With artifacts for lungs Drag myself through the hit parade then salt these fissured wounds The promise kept I’ll wear this bed and sleep it off for good It’s been a blurry trip around the sun A dulled engulfing dance If you only knew…. . . . . .

Railroad Earth - Mike Zone There’s a field of outright desolation where scented wildflowers used to grow and succulent fruits for feasting and fornication were raised where in the center hangs a scarecrow crucified and all of that lies directly above the railroad earth therein underneath the dirt twisted metal tracks like the needle marks amongst the junkie terrain and the railroad earth – just lies never to deceive another realm of transit dreams amongst the fallen valley of what you never knew you couldn’t have there’s a phoenix in the snow calling forth dead hobo spirits in the resurrection of stillborn lives and underneath all that the railroad earth begins to stir pulling time’s past daisies floating an unnatural blooming in inner-space dreamtime though one cannot help but wonder into these strange beast fantasies of wanderlust how erotic was industrialization with its many strained crisscrossing tracks all across the land leading to a place of dead roads blue screen death-rattle conversion looking at the bottom of a coffee cup the railroad earth grounds of what we had golden dawn visions rusted Additional lyrics by brotherwell: Slow motion Raise the ocean Hold it up and Don’t let go Devotion to sold emotions God I hope that I make it through Obstruction above reduction Cut yer throat to save your breath Destruction Raise the ocean Hold it open Don’t let go

Reforged from Fallen Stars - Donny Winter The mirror has mocked me all along in the dim of every dawn, overdrawn against the shadows that fall across my face, oblong, this body, accustomed to sewn seams which seem to sequester each shifting curve. The mirror recited every word they spoke, callously accurate, then cast them against me as comets disfigure every mile of my surface into a dysmorphic swell, a coaxed supernova hell of chaotic diets and exercise, all to minimize the space in which I occupy. In the mirror I’ve re-lived every laugh about my height, body, and voice until I’ve crumbled toward their event horizons, a planet falling into tragic cataclysm. I’m shattered in this smudged reflection, an echo of the childhood dream of who I thought I’d be – I’ve sealed myself inside these memories because that future seems distant, otherworldly. Years of therapy inscribed throughout my ages coax me to keep turning all these faded pages because the moment I place in that final period I know my story will reach its end, prematurely, a life unlived No, my body is a star, and my torpid core still spins fusing hydrogen, then helium, carbon, then iron, I expand my confines into a void until I dissipate as nebular gases, vibrant, nutrients for the next age, because there’s always a new page to turn, Our stories are the stars distant worlds see, ancient from bygone eras, stellar remnants waiting to be found by those who walk in our wisdom, heeding our messages that healing is tidal in nature, and the roads along the way are never direct, seldom smooth. We’re reforged from fallen stars, and our light will grow more radiant with each passing moment because the agony it takes to mend is never infinite, and sometimes solitary, but a shared journey, when taken, brings us one step closer to recovery Additional lyrics by brotherwell: Doesn’t matter if you’d rather leave it tattered, tarred, and feathered You’re the furnace always burning churning hurt into the river Make it stop but keep it going Build a house and slip your moorings Ever-famished with the nourishment of nervous second comings Would you rather Cloak or dagger Fight or flight Mind or matter Gotta answer Its the punishment of hunger circumvented Why we wait until the end To make amends I’ll never know it With ourselves and better hands It’s not romance; it’s second chances I’m hiding in the warmth My glowing blood It’s iridescent It’s shining like a North Star Blinding effervescence Reborn I am worn But I’m never second-handed Absorbed but not alone I am whole. I am branded.