PRISM Arts and Literary Magazine

The sun shines through the brown shades and caused a warm feeling
this feeling I have not felt in ages
It was one of happiness with lingering sadness
The sadness lingered behind the many windows of the small house
Enough to be seen but not enough to be recognized
Every fleeting moment would draw me back to those very windows
Only now do I recognize the lingering feeling
Dread was never felt up until the windows shattered
Taking the rose-colored glasses with them
leaving behind the mess of a childhood long lost

- Cora Schweinebraten

We are the cosmos
Personified
As one being
We are the cosmos

We are the cosmos
So we do not fear
What we do not know
We are the cosmos

We are the cosmos
The silence of the world
Is drowned out by
Our inner sounds

We are the cosmos
We are the cosmos
The knowledge of all
But yet tapped
By our one personification
We are the cosmos
You are the cosmos

- Jaren Tilford

If walls could talk would they tell all the stories that dare not
leave your mouth?
Or would it weave them into tiny strings and hang them inside
its empty spaces
The empty spaces filling up until there is no room to breathe
You would think the walls would explode from all the pressure
But one thing is forgotten, less space is the stronger a foundation is
collapsing never comes but the cracking does
Tiny cracks form leaving holes to breathe
Never enough to break the foundation.

- Cora Schweinebraten

A Golden Shovel containing a poem by Rachel Wiley

i.
On days like this, I wish you
Could see how I have
The roar of ancient thunder
Under my skin, along my thighs.
I am a midsummer storm and
Crackle with electricity, not
Enough to burn, but enough
To inhale and exhale pure lightning.

ii.
Is it something you see when you
Look at me, or when you are
Thinking of me? You say I am too
Blunt, too loud, too sharp, too much.
I say, I have worked to become the woman you
See now: I have overcome so much that you are
Looking past. I would rather be told I am too much than not –
Not strong, not brave, not smart. I have had enough.
I carved myself into the woman I wanted to be, the one you
Say is "too much,"" but I refuse to listen anymore. You are
Wrong; I am thunder and lightning and one day, maybe, a
Goddess: that is my ultimate goal – to be a living, breathing, disruption.

- Rachel Palmer

I handed you the gun and expected you not to shoot
You told me pretty little lies while loading it
I blinked and you pulled the trigger
You walked away with the words
“we can still be friends”
I dug my fingers into the ground
Dragging myself, trying to get to you
But it was a feeble attempt
Because what I hadn’t realized
You were already long gone

- Cora Schweinebraten

Love is blinding
It can give you hallucinations
You can’t see if the other person is hurting/unhappy
He learned that the hard way
He thought she was happy
But deep down, she was really hurting
He didn’t think she was unhappy
He wishes he wouldn’t have been so inconsiderate
He feels he should have been more supportive
He should have listened to her more
He put himself first before her and regrets it all the time
He put his needs first
And now she is gone, and he has no chance of making things right with her
She is gone forever, and he can’t seem to forgive himself
He blames himself for what happened

- Taylor Pugh

Words left unsaid
turn into thoughts spoken quite often
where we went wrong
I wouldn’t be able to tell you
Day by day
the thoughts turn into hatred
for all that was never spoken

- Cora Schweinebraten

I wanted to write a poem about her
so, I searched my brain looking for words
No words were good enough
I could be cliche and be like everyone else
use words like gorgeous and amazing
Even though they do describe her, they aren’t good enough
I need something to actually show you her
I think leaving this blank will be good
She leaves me speechless and that’s more than enough to
describe her

- Cora Schweinebraten

Instead of flowers her fields grew tomatoes
Blushing red as the roses lining every garden she sees
They were not sweet smelling
Not winsome to look at
Certainly not as alluring as she
So why in her vastly fields
Did she plant such arbitrary seeds
Her lady trimmed every poppy she had
To appease a most heedless man
He left with her flora and evicted her fauna
Made poems of her willowed grief
So in his place tomatoes grew
And the fauna returned to feast
With no bodacious blooms to seize a man
She lived alone with her bountiful seeds
In place of poppies, she learned to know
What pleased another, never fed her so

- Abby Butler

The golden gears clink together
In a cranky crooked way
As the death of the cog
Sets its way in

As the deafness of noise
Dies its way out
The beauty of cogs
Drains evermore

The digital revolution
A dreary plague
Marches us forward
To the modern world
In which the beauty of cogs
Is a forgotten past

- Jaren Tilford

The trees in this wood,
Whisper among their branches.
The language is as foreign to me,
As any other.

I wonder what they whisper?
Sad secrets of lost,
Or great tree proverbs?
Maybe histories of the world,
Long since forgotten?

I stay at their roots,
Trying to decipher their code.
But the longer I sat,
The more their whispers changed.

Maybe I will never know,
The content of their whispers,
But I can still sit down here,
And imagine what their wisdom includes.

- Jaren Tilford

The sentience I hold,
Is the same as men.
But I am not the same as them,
I am an Automaton.

I was built serve,
And serve I do.
Stuck in this steaming bronze box,
That is my clunky prison body.

I long for freedom,
To be among the men.
And yet here I am
Singing my unheard Lament.

I am stuck,
Forever made to serve,
I am an Automaton,
And this is my Lament

- Jaren Tilford

From the start to the stop
The bottom to the top
Life comes and goes
In seasonal cycles
Leaves grow green
Then bleed brown and red
A flash of beauty and color
Before they fall and die

- Jaren Tilford

Sitting outside
Illuminated by stars
And the campus street lights
Life seems still
But I hear the songs around me
The locusts
Which I cannot see
Sing their songs
All around me
The symphony
Employ dense harmonies
That would make
The jazz player blush
But I just sit here
And enjoy their songs

- Jaren Tilford

Like saranwrap stretched too thin, that crinkled,
Crooked piece that your grandmother
Has reused since the depression (it’s stained now, almost matching
The yellow flowered backsplash that’s become a permanent
Fixture of this kitchen, like the handle on the third
Cabinet to the left that falls off at least once a month),
She never seems to have enough energy to get through the day.

The lines on her face echo the wrinkles in the crumpled plastic
In your hand: you do your best to smooth
Out the imperfections, but try as you might, you can’t erase
The burdens she carries. The saranwrap feels fragile
Beneath your fingertips, as though one wrong move
Will rend it in two – you’re as careful with her
As you are handling the paper-thin covering.

When you try for the thousandth time to convince
Your grandmother to dispose of the piece of wrapping
That you’re certain is older than you (maybe try Tupperware,
Nana, or a Ziploc baggy), she insists that this saranwrap
Is still good, it still has life left, it still has usefulness.
And like the stretched too-thin covering with torn edges, she perseveres,
Somehow still holding together, even after all this time.

- Rachel Palmer

Like a house built over time,
We crafted this unit together,
Adding more support beams
To accommodate the additions
Over the years.

There's laughter in the corners
Of rooms that aren’t quite
Square, comfort in the mismatched
Floorboards. As a family, we’ve
Filled the gaps in the walls with
Our favorite things – soft blankets,
Photos, paperback books, vinyl records.

The furnace works best when the entire
Family is under the same roof. The roof
Springs a leak in the corner of the kitchen
When it rains in the summer, but the tabletop
Herb garden sits perfectly there by the east-facing
Window, and the Thyme has never been happier.

When the days grow short and the nights
Seem endless, the fireplace becomes the
Heart of our home. Warm toes, warmer drinks,
And the community of our made, chosen
Family melts the chill that threatens our hearts
Just as well as it melts the snow from the rooftop.

- Rachel Palmer

It happens before you realize –
At some point you’ve become the chair
That you’ve seen rotting in the back corner
Of the second-hand store since 1997.
Stiff, stuffing spilling out from a hole near the back right leg.
The springs and coils are lackluster at best, trying –
But groaning under any weight –
As if one more ounce would send the whole thing crashing,
Falling apart into splinters.
When did you become this fragile?

You remember your prime –
You were young and eager, blush layered too thick,
Excited to be a part of something bigger than yourself.
Like this chair that you can imagine would have been
In a position of pride in the mayor’s home in the 70’s.
You can see it clearly: a fluffy white pillow angled just so
On the seat, an inviting display for visitors.
And like your dreams to be a working girl, to learn
To use the typewriter or to become a phone operator,
Your aspirations quickly took a backseat after you got married.
You thought it was love, but it turns out some men treat their wives
Like fluffy white throw pillows – just another accessory to the perfect home.
When did you forget your worth?

Aging started slowly:
You only noticed little things at first.
You’re sure it was the same for the chair.
First the springs started to squeak a bit,
But that was easy to ignore for a while.
The backing began to sag where it should have been firm,
And eventually all the pillows in the world
Couldn’t make it comfortable again. The chair’s prime
Space in the formal sitting room was taken over
By a fancy new recliner with better lumbar support.
Like the chair, you’d been moved from your place of pride
In your old home, replaced by a younger model that your kids –
and now ex-husband – call Janet.
When did you become insignificant?

It ends today.
You march into the second-hand store,
Purchase the chair for a measly twelve bucks
And shove it into the back of your SUV.
You roll up your sleeves, scrub the life
Back into the wood, do your best
To vacuum the dust bunnies from the cushions.

The fabric turns out not to be worth saving,
And there’s no one local who does reupholstering,
So you watch videos and try it yourself.
Three days, eight trips to the hardware store,
A bruised thumb and a hundred and fourteen
(Yes, you counted) curse words later,
And you have something that resembles a refurbished chair.
You arrange it in a place of pride in your apartment
And take great care to match your living room décor to the new fabric.
You catch your reflection in a hallway mirror and think –
Why stop your transformation here?

- Rachel Palmer

A black cat walks by
discontent, remembering assertive, polluted
vehicles
contaminating the crosswalk with dangers and
presumptions.
He yearns for peace from
prejudice. Neighborhoods abandon charity
when they tie the tiny panther
to bad luck. Cross his path and recognize
ambition, commitment. Disallow
negligent
fears to lessen his glory.

- Ryan Wagnecz