Category: Crystalline (Issue No. XVII)

the prophecy is pink when I open it

A. K. Shakour

some may say the future is Rosé
bottled from the south of France,
but i just care about how the grapes feel
when they hit my heart. truthfully,
i really don’t know what i want out of life
i wish i could uncork the answers to my questions
scream HAPPY NEW YEAR every single morning
because each day has 1440 minutes for my use,
lifetimes exist in the dirt under my fingernails,
how can i just pour this hope into my mouth?
i want it all, the big beautiful house and the babies
that i breast feed with the ease of a soldier.
i crave a wrap-a-around porch, purely for the aesthetic
since it’s the prettiest place to sit during the sunset,
but more than that i want to pack all my belongings
drive across the border to Vancouver, become
a nomad with a pen, scribble until i stop breathing.
i want to spend every last penny i have on plane tickets,
i’d be the main character in the movie, just for a second.
maybe i could be a baker in Europe, kneading bread
in a quaint cobblestone town. i want more experiences than
what will fit within the tight glass neck of a wine bottle.
meanwhile, i do nothing.
i sip the prophecy out of a sunflower mug given to me
as a gift on my birthday. i wish i could be reborn each day,
live in a mutant ninja turtle shell. be invincible,
or perhaps invisible. what is the difference?
the lines are fuzzy, pink panther mysteries,
do i want a diamond or a cat? i could explode.
i don’t want red or white, i want to bleed bubblegum pink

A. K. Shakour

Opal Tide

Emma Atkins

You took an opal ring from your pocket the second time we met.
It sparkled in the sunlight like ice-cream frost.
Secretive and sombre, you launched it into the water
and watched it sink ‘til it was lost.

We’d waved at two boys floating past,
buoyant with youth and taken by the tide.
As it had them, the sea would steal away that past lover’s ring:
another opal pebble for the ocean to hide.

Emma Atkins

Smoke and Optimysticism

R Hamilton

This time’ll be different, you’ll see.
This time, in the future I’ve laid out
for us together, the icicles are thicker
and colder and the snow much more
firmly packed as we retreat messily
before the burgeoning, hot-breathed
Spring. It will all work out fine, I know
now, if we can only unhear the squeals
and cracks of our self-absorbed footsteps
splintering the bright veneer of blinding,
frozen crust stretching out endlessly to the
North, South, West and East, and elsewhere.

R Hamilton

Hardened Clarity

Danny Fantom

In the hands of desperation
crystals are transaction pieces
for a mystical barter, between
our spirits and Our Gods/Ancestors/Selves

Rose Quartz to love myself once more,
as I once did long ago in a threadbare memory,
Angelite to pretend I was pure, untainted,
by smog and existential despair,
Volcanic Rock to protect myself from the
demons I flirt with in inexorable pitch black

I collect them like credit, at first pleading, earnest
ceremonies and rituals, devoted
to their secrets, their powers, their cures

Then patient, grim, anxious, I demand from them
things I have no true ability to give, nor did they,
the sum of all my hopes, delusions, crashing
into the shining, popular illusion of comfort

Shattered, I lock them away, the sensation of
nostalgia bundled in orange silk, patiently waiting,
abundantly forgiving even choked by
shadows and frankincense

I pull them out one day and lay them all out,
arranged by type, shape, richness of memory,
and realize their true power comes from me

Danny Fantom

Equestria

Sarah Beck Mather

In the eyes of your surfaces
The cartoon pink collection
I see my face –
On the periphery
Dropped in puddles.
When he read the story to me,
I dreamt of twinkling lights
Eyes shaped like oranges
Honied surfaces
Sparkling beams.
As his hand held mine,
I looked at the Smokey light
Beaming from crystal –
Jagged edges, (split)
Hard corners
But soft lines
And felt at
Home (for a day).

Sarah Beck Mather

The American Style

Jesse Breite

When color comes through
the windows—red, green, blue,
the picture pieced together
is always a shattered scene.

Even revived, cathedral glass
is never quite healed by the light.
But this—no brittle crazy glass,
this—the brushless milky opalescent

plating of Louis C. Tiffany
who knew, unlike his father,
that the only jewel was
light breaking through light,

that glass could be the paint,
that it could feather, ripple,
flash with every dimension
of distance: Louis Comfort

who knew the Hudson River,
heeded Ruskin’s call to return,
brought back the Golden Age
with pursed lips on colorless faces,

made his name a brand—his brand
a promise that we would never
be alone in steepled buildings
of cherrywood and Gothic stone.

Jesse Breite