by Liliana Palermo Pure white azaleas sit on the table,
with firm bright green stems that glisten with nectar that keeps its cradle alive. The sweet aroma deep with the roots of soil, yet airy and lightly sun-stained, floats up from the milky petals and lingers at the bottom of my nose. I reckon the bouquet of air is dancing at her nose too. She sits at the opposite end of the faded table, an orange oversized shirt is vivid against the dull, dim picture around her. The rounded top of the chair climbs over her shoulders with the legs stood on the ivory-beige linoleum and have long, thin marks of white where the light brown-orange paint scratched off. Her legs hang off the seat, high above the dimmed floor. Her cerulean eyes look nowhere but ahead, never peering into the ghastly dim light. No letters are flicked off into the air, my teeth grind and grit, impeding the words on my gums. intertwining the grooves of the letters, rolling into amass stuck in the tunnel of my throat, hitching onto my jaw, clawing up the walls and scraping fleshy slivers. My cerulean has long waned to dull olive green, filmy and frosted with a glaze, outlining her smooth silhouette, locked dead in locus, steady and unflinching. Do I root myself with malice? Weave rope through the spindles and bind back her white skin, prick and draw rings flowing with rich carmine. Slice above the ankle, carve through bone, leaving her legs to dangle and drip overhead, pooling onto a bloodied footprintless floor? Or do I bare my chest with benignity? Graze over her wrists, bowed with silken lace, cup her slight face in the palms of my clean hands, cradle her fragile frame, and be shelter for her entity, drape over her with a warm white sheet and sow a field of daisies under her bare feet? Or do I lay my hands down and beg forgiveness? Bide here as the hour hand dizzies, watching the azaleas wilt and wither down, browned petals crawling with dark cleaves, crisp thin slivers break, pulverizing in the air. As the stems soak every last drop of nectar and frail with leathery skin, oozing bitter sap from its veins, it flows an aged putrid stench carving through the air, wallowing in the murky light. Do I lay my hands down, rest them atop the wasteland, and plead? Comments are closed.
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LRHS Literary Magazine StaffEditor-in-Chief:
Alejandra Jones Senior Editors: Sariah Meeker Lee McCormack (fall) Artistic Editor: Bryson I. White (senior) Instagram Editor: Rania Brown (senior/fall) Editors & Staff: Sophia George Blase Harriss Meaghan Kelly Chloe Meeker Adrian McCall Liliana Palermo Estefania Quintino(spring) Katelyn Ranheim Maria Rodriguez (spring) Mario Rodriguez (spring) Livia Weekley Faculty Advisor: Ms. Sarah White Spring 2024 Table of ContentsArtwork~"Beyond the Storm" by Kennedi Ward
~"Forest at Night" by Richard Bui ~"Dulce Tentasion" (Sweet Temptation)" by Maria Rodriguez ~"High Priestess" by Yamil Hernandez-Santiago ~"Echoes of the Mind" by Estefania Quintino ~"Tigre Real" by Mario Kelecic ~"A Glowy Night" by Richard Bui ~"Modern Musings" by Alejandra Jones ~"Maximum Efficiency Soul" by M.T. Foxtrot Poetry~"Trauma Loop in the Cradle of Life" by M.T. Foxtrot
~"I Am the Daughter of My Father" by Mary Boyce Williamson ~"Devout" by Belladonna ~"Line" by Mary Boyce Williamson ~"Tangled: A Villanelle" by Anonymous ~"The Last Nineteen Trumpets" by Sydney Giles ~"The Dryad and the Woodcutter" by Sariah Meeker ~"Void Awakening" by Zamir Ruck ~"It's Not the Ends, Just the Means" by Liliana Palermo ~"What You See When You See Me" by Kira Steverson ~"Deux ex Machina Moritur in Sola Cordis" by Kam H. ~"A Secret Society" by Sophia George ~"Fine" by Victoria Cook ~"Forgot My Watch" by Deniz Kara ~"Leaves" by Leo Marx ~"Paradox" by Leo Marx ~"The Pit" by Quinn Kelleher ~"The Freedom of a Jellyfish" by Kayla Ruffin-Winn ~"Platonic Nature" by Riley Butler ~"Life Imitates Love" by Claudia Wright ~"Towards Shore" by Caitlyn Kiefer ~"A Lover's Sun" by Anonymous ~"Bloody Halberd" by Zamir Ruck ~"To Know Me is to Know Them" by Reagan Rawls Fiction & Prose~"Fireworks" by Lemon Pepper
~"Twenty-Four Hours" by Lauren Williams ~"Fear" by Tiger Royal ~"A Soldier and a Nurse Share a Smile" by Walker Anderson ~"Mental Photography" by Heaven Robinson ~"Felled Crows" by Meaghan Kelly ~"A Few Thoughts on the Matter of Sign Writing: A Tribute to Creative Writing II" by Sariah Meeker and Benjamin Bradley ~"To Live for the Hope of It All" by Lily Fields ~"Two Sides and One Sun" by Ilya Kalinin Fall 2023 Table of ContentsArtwork~"Jellies" by William Lemaster
~"Mini Landscape" by Richard Bui ~"Leesville Lion" by Bryson White ~"Zuzus bday 4 skool" by Rose Van den Troost ~"A Study in Winter" by Chloe Meeker ~"Les Plaines Liminales et Étranges" by Bryson White ~"Night Sky" by Richard Bui ~"Sunrise" by Elizabeth Cawley Fiction & Prose~"Retribution Through Strife" by Nikholas Svajlenka
~"To a New Frontier" by Nikholas Svajlenka ~The Storm's Echo" by Meaghan Kelly ~"Lines" by Meaghan Kelly Poetry~"Sailor" by Caitlyn Kiefer
~"Walk-on" by Caitlyn Kiefer ~"Connection" by Riley Butler ~"The Sun Rises in the West for it Falls in The East on Many" by Nikholas Svajlenka ~"What if" by Sariah Meeker ~"Dark Cold Alone" by Jeanne Baker ~"Deceiving Heart" by Jayana Russell ~"The Life of a Wave" by Sophia George ~"The Melting Snow" by Sophia George |