A black and white drawing of two women lying together in the foreground and one woman standing in the background, appearing to put on a her bra.

Madeline Berberian-Hutchinson is a 16-year-old poet and artist from Brooklyn, New York. Her work revolves around themes of queerness and nostalgia. She was a 2023 NYS and NYC Youth Poet Laureate Finalist. Her work has been published in Girls Write Now: On The Other Side Of Everything, and the NYPL Teen Voices Magazine. She has received awards for her poetry by The City College of New York, and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She is editor-in-chief of Noor Magazine. 

This month we offer a new scar and stories tucked in constellations.

Next month we

SPLINTER

Submission guidelines can be found here.

Rational Thoughts

I’ll agonize about my scar
until I fall again
and get a new scar
and then,
I will fixate
on that

Born in Pennsylvania and educated in New York and Wisconsin, Allison Whittenberg is an award-winning novelist and playwright. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, J Journal, and New Orleans Review. Whittenberg is a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee. They Were Horrible Cooks is her collection of poetry.

A black and white closeup of the bark of a tree with a scar in it
Fate. Or. / I want to peel the sunset like an orange & watch the pulp trickle onto skyscrapers as seagulls scuttle below Brooklyn Bridge, scavenging for moments of peace in the wet sand. Mom loved to tell the story of how she met Dad on a spring night like this, the air choked with storms clustering on the horizon. How the wind bit her cheeks & tangled her hair. How she found him wandering ankle deep in the waves, searching the skyline for stories tucked in constellations. How she asked him the way to 7 Old Fulton, & he looked & looked & looked at her, & never again at the stars because he’d known, in that moment, she was all the wishes he’d ever prayed for come true—at least, until he found another woman & another son instead of Mom & me. Fate, Dad said. Fate, he wouldn’t say if he knew I’m at the beach & have found Weston standing in the waves, water soaking his rolled-up jeans like ink stains. I half-expect him not to recognize the hollowed-out version of his childhood friend he hasn’t seen in three years. But he does. Fate laughs. // The first time I met Weston at the beach off Pier 3, we had a fight over pull tabs from pop cans—well, he would say soda. I would say pop. Cross-legged in the sand, we went back & forth with each breath of the waves. Soda, pop. Soda, pop.
His crisp, New York accent carved out the two syllables, while my single sound withered like cornstalks in winter, a southern-slanted Indiana tassel scraping the wind. We threw dried seaweed at each other, dug holes in the sea, scavenged for pennies, ratty shoelaces, romance. /// Three years & a lifetime later, Weston & I stain our jeans with sand, dig for words, scavenge for hope amid the fear. Secrets chisel his dimples, the last years replacing laugh lines with the memory of frowns. He calls me Sandpiper because I avoid my problems like those birds avoid water: in & out, back & forth, a game of tag with a reality I don’t want to drown in. He asks what I’ve been up to in the Midwest. I tell him Lana Del Rey had it right. Polaroids, short skirts with grass stains, cars driving too fast at night always leads to sadness. I don’t tell him my ex’s name. Instead, I call her Rose because she was as soft as petals on the outside but ribbed with thorns & winter frosted lies on the inside. I give Weston hesitant hope in my palms. He gives me a smile scarred with worry but doesn’t ask about college. Doesn’t ask about my parents’ divorce. Doesn’t ask why I never texted him back. I make sure there’s no quiet. Make sure he’s laughing or chattering, even though years stretch between us, a tightrope I don’t know how to tiptoe across but have to because silence is a knife, & I don’t want to be carved open anymore. I need his voice to stitch me up: pretend that undergrad never happened, & we’re still eighteen-year-olds with bruised knees & blistered feet from chasing each other across Coney Island sand. He says, You still say pop. As if to say, nothing’s changed. As if to say, you don’t have to explain. As if to say, yes, let’s pretend. & maybe someday, a boy & a boy will kiss again beneath Brooklyn Bridge. & maybe someday, I’ll be a little closer to okay.

Max Fischer is a trans Pushcart Prize nominated poet and MFA graduate. Originally from the Midwest, he now lives in Brooklyn, writing poems at the pier.

Rose bushes with red roses refracted and reflected through a window
A black and white drawing of two women lying together in the foreground and one woman standing in the background, appearing to put on a her bra.

This month we offer a new scar and stories tucked in constellations.

Next month we

SPLINTER

Submission guidelines can be found here.

Rational Thoughts

I’ll agonize about my scar
until I fall again
and get a new scar
and then,
I will fixate
on that

Born in Pennsylvania and educated in New York and Wisconsin, Allison Whittenberg is an award-winning novelist and playwright. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, J Journal, and New Orleans Review. Whittenberg is a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee. They Were Horrible Cooks is her collection of poetry.

A black and white closeup of the bark of a tree with a scar in it
Fate. Or. / I want to peel the sunset like an orange & watch the pulp trickle onto skyscrapers as seagulls scuttle below Brooklyn Bridge, scavenging for moments of peace in the wet sand. Mom loved to tell the story of how she met Dad on a spring night like this, the air choked with storms clustering on the horizon. How the wind bit her cheeks & tangled her hair. How she found him wandering ankle deep in the waves, searching the skyline for stories tucked in constellations. How she asked him the way to 7 Old Fulton, & he looked & looked & looked at her, & never again at the stars because he’d known, in that moment, she was all the wishes he’d ever prayed for come true—at least, until he found another woman & another son instead of Mom & me. Fate, Dad said. Fate, he wouldn’t say if he knew I’m at the beach & have found Weston standing in the waves, water soaking his rolled-up jeans like ink stains. I half-expect him not to recognize the hollowed-out version of his childhood friend he hasn’t seen in three years. But he does. Fate laughs. // The first time I met Weston at the beach off Pier 3, we had a fight over pull tabs from pop cans—well, he would say soda. I would say pop. Cross-legged in the sand, we went back & forth with each breath of the waves. Soda, pop. Soda, pop.
His crisp, New York accent carved out the two syllables, while my single sound withered like cornstalks in winter, a southern-slanted Indiana tassel scraping the wind. We threw dried seaweed at each other, dug holes in the sea, scavenged for pennies, ratty shoelaces, romance. /// Three years & a lifetime later, Weston & I stain our jeans with sand, dig for words, scavenge for hope amid the fear. Secrets chisel his dimples, the last years replacing laugh lines with the memory of frowns. He calls me Sandpiper because I avoid my problems like those birds avoid water: in & out, back & forth, a game of tag with a reality I don’t want to drown in. He asks what I’ve been up to in the Midwest. I tell him Lana Del Rey had it right. Polaroids, short skirts with grass stains, cars driving too fast at night always leads to sadness. I don’t tell him my ex’s name. Instead, I call her Rose because she was as soft as petals on the outside but ribbed with thorns & winter frosted lies on the inside. I give Weston hesitant hope in my palms. He gives me a smile scarred with worry but doesn’t ask about college. Doesn’t ask about my parents’ divorce. Doesn’t ask why I never texted him back. I make sure there’s no quiet. Make sure he’s laughing or chattering, even though years stretch between us, a tightrope I don’t know how to tiptoe across but have to because silence is a knife, & I don’t want to be carved open anymore. I need his voice to stitch me up: pretend that undergrad never happened, & we’re still eighteen-year-olds with bruised knees & blistered feet from chasing each other across Coney Island sand. He says, You still say pop. As if to say, nothing’s changed. As if to say, you don’t have to explain. As if to say, yes, let’s pretend. & maybe someday, a boy & a boy will kiss again beneath Brooklyn Bridge. & maybe someday, I’ll be a little closer to okay.

Max Fischer is a trans Pushcart Prize nominated poet and MFA graduate. Originally from the Midwest, he now lives in Brooklyn, writing poems at the pier.

Rose bushes with red roses refracted and reflected through a window

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