GenY
by Alexandra Ciola
art by James Ciola

 

An entire generation was born without instruction manuals while laziness collected interest. We built
musty sanctuaries in the little space between peeling linoleum floors and the force that provokes you to
leave more room for the shadows. They called it melatonin deprivation.

We were entitled because we wanted to grow up to be just like the camel crickets. Intoxicated by the
fluorescent poison, we couldn’t feel the subtle vibration of platonic plate tectonics. Too busy searching
for something we hadn’t lost yet.

Like your name on the bottom of the swing, and that overgrown hedge at the edge of our childhood.
The new owners unscrewed my lottery numbers from your address, and they trampled the ground that
our bare feet worshiped. But she was still gone even back then… and even after the street lights came on.

 

 

The Paragraph Grows
by Benjamin Niespodziany

 

I turned you into a paragraph and told you that I would trim you down later. Much later. I waited six months and when I opened you up to inspect your guts, I felt that you needed more fluff, more blubber to help you expand into something more than a paragraph. A lover. Now you walk around with a half smirk in a pair of panda fur sunglasses some store gave you just for smiling as you passed by their window display. Now you shake hands around town saying, Please, Paragraph was my father’s name, call me Full Page.

 

–

 

Alexandra is a Baltimore native, mother of two, and a graduate student. To keep her sanity she writes poetry, prose, and advocates for millennials.

Benjamin Niespodziany works at a library and runs an art blog known as neonpajamas. He self-released a chapbook of poems in December known as Dress Code Aquarium. He’s had work published all around town.