Emma O’Neill-Dietel

Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA

When did this ocean become a fishbowl?

I didn’t notice the glass around me until it started pressing in 

The bad thing about glass is that it’s breakable

I tried standing in the center, pulling in my limbs

I didn’t notice the glass around me until it started pressing in 

I pushed against it, hoping it would give way

I tried standing in the center, pulling in my limbs

The good thing about glass is that it’s breakable

I pushed against it, hoping it would give way

The pressure proved too strong, so I punched from within

The good thing about glass is that it’s breakable

As the fishbowl shattered I reached out both hands

The pressure proved too strong, so I punched from within

I found myself ankle-deep in the ocean, broken shards floating around me

As the fishbowl shattered I reached out both hands

The unbroken line of the horizon revealed I was alone

I found myself ankle-deep in the ocean, broken shards floating around me

All there was to hold onto was my own form

The unbroken line of the horizon revealed I was alone

I followed the water trickling down the lines of my body into the shallows

All there was to hold onto was my own form

The water that had covered me was slowly making me anew

I followed the water trickling down the lines of my body into the shallows

What I had assumed was broken glass wasn’t sharp at all

The water that had covered me was slowly making me anew

The shallows thrummed with life, tiny creatures growing and shifting

What I had assumed was broken glass wasn’t sharp at all

The creatures glowed in the sunlight, colors changing like prisms

The shallows thrummed with life, tiny creatures growing and shifting

Each time the movement seemed to still, a ripple sent the world into motion again

The creatures glowed in the sunlight, colors changing like prisms

I looked at my feet and witnessed my own transformation

Each time the movement seemed to still, a ripple sent the world into motion again

The creatures expanded around me, refracting light in every direction 

I looked at my feet and witnessed my own transformation

When I looked up from myself, I saw I was no longer alone

The creatures expanded around me, refracting light in every direction 

The shallows were full of prism-people, weaving color from light and water

When I looked up from myself, I saw I was no longer alone

I was a prism-person too

The shallows were full of prism-people, weaving color from light and water

The good thing about glass is that it’s breakable

I am a prism-person too

Emily Judkins

Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA

kneel into the knell shaped out of salable 

solipsism, the mimicry bells emerging with ersatz 

emergency melted into tolls in tombs and tolls, 

tolling up the toiling sounds of telling peace 

but piercing ears, all cracked crooked cosmetology of cosmogony of

spreading all the sound that fit into the

dark sun of preeminence, of how little permanence

can permeate in this permissiveness of light, how

permissible missed notes can be when Your body 

is the universe and You swing between untenable winds

touched by never being and holding all this Tenderness as

You let it all ring out, ringing around the roses as

wilting waits for the embodiment of all of You to shutter out of

opuses and into the final forgiveness, the dipping moonlight,

Your graceless hand grinning as You paint over the shadows

with the Earth’s own speckled star, where all that is left to teach

is “this is how you return your legs to bend without warship.

and this is how you

return to the stars. and this is how you return home,” before pealing back into laughter back into the

universe, where

death cannot be disgraced in church bells any longer, but instead

kneels in the tintinnabulation of Your tinny fairies, these tiny

Thanatoses carrying you off into the wind, as all the people emerge

running out dreams to rub out of their eyes as they’re gulping in

Your air without care, miming out their time, and this is how i

make my faith, how i piece my daybreak back together, how i

know You are already everywhere, not making a scene but

becoming it.