The Sky Unclenches A Mouth Or Two —  Water Trips Out Of The Night  With The Same Sort Of Muscle Your

Here's another photo from my great grandfather Axel's fishing trip out west in 1928. I'll probably put a few more up before I'm through.

Writing game: How about a phone number scribbled on a bit of paper, two dollars in change, a pen, a receipt for a restaurant, and a pack of cigarettes?

Sure thing, thank you. 

Inventory:1. A phone number scribbled on bit of paper2. Two dollars in change3. A pen4. A receipt for a restaurant 5. A pack of cigarettes

There is a piece of paper in my pocket, folded twice over, like pigeon’s wings, or my tongue in a fight, or how I sleep when I’m sad. It’s white with black print and it says that I should be full by now. There’s also receipt from my dinner. After eating through six truffle mushrooms curled in oil and laid over pasta, I left with some coins in my pocket and not much else, my mouth ringing with salt and linguini and fungi I can’t afford but swallowed anyway. 

I’m not full yet despite the seven digits that sit like a brand by my left thigh, so I take out ink and cross them into black hashes. There is being bloated and there is being starving and I’d rather fit in one of those places than be left alone in the middle, a stranger’s affection listed to me in numbers. 

I light something and watch it dwindle, a white column of paper singing in orange and going grey. I think that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing too. It’s not great, I’m still hungry and aching and made of willow leaves and molars, but I can stand upright in my name and store my grievances on the dark sides of my quarters and breathe like I love it, but don’t really have a reason for it all the time.  

           - C. Essington

Thank you for this and your support,

If you want to play this writing game, send me a theoretical inventory of five items in an ask and I’ll try to write a person for it. 

Andromeda in a Skillet

it is early, there’s an egg in the oil-slicked frying pan, frying.

you are somewhere tossing off sleep, rolling over, taking the morning like a prescription

the stairs will wait for you to come down, hunger lining your sock-armored heels.

the night played a game of purple with your eyes and drew violet moons above your cheeks, gibbous.

my love sizzles on the stove-top over butter; it has 92 calories today.

we aren’t really going anywhere, we flex open in the kitchen, stretching our humanities in a honeyed 6 AM

fast is how the egg gets taken, going from shelled to food to some piece of the personhood you’ll call yourself if you had the time.

but we’re still here after the dancing and walking and staining and bills and words and teeth of it, living.

it’s you, the stairs, the night in blood below your eyelids, an egg, the sink. that’s it.

that’s the world.

                                    - C. Essington 

I wake up in my wetsuit as the dark wakes up in its cold— some things are like this, as unavoidable as a body swept across a brain.

I start early and hungry, all my cells feeling new and round but crushed: the shapes a church bell makes when it halves the air.

the pond sits in the morning like an ache pooling across an old joint, a leg unbends, the water throws one sore and jagged gleam up the hill side.

I follow the path of glow down to where it throbs, the leaf-patched shoreline gone blue like snow in a long evening or veins trailing home.

it’s steep, the oxygen tank is heavy with metal and wind pressed on itself like a dried flower compacted to paper. I tap the tank it rings its dull voice, full of pages where my breath will write me down.

I step in and secure the mask to my mouth, the light kiss of other air bleeds in and I walk until the ground is gone and the water asks for my body to melt into strokes; a church bell.

the middle is not far and I get there, cold and like the light: tracing the air for home. the below is dark. the above only has its one moon.

the dive involves going headfirst, breathing. the black is around me like an eyelid closing, I turn on a flashlight, scrape the dreamed landscape for an iris and pupil.

I rove and slip and feel my skin starting to become the same cold as the cold. I hug my name into my ribs and try to keep my body inside sensation.

and then I catch it, the white gathered haze of my flashlight wakes up across the desk chair which, last week, you sunk to the bottom with rocks tied to its legs. you’ve always been like that— lovely, impossible, inexplicable— I sit and read the morning’s paper as it flowers out to snow inside the numb water; my body does the same.

                   - c.essington

in a bite of lamplight, he stands up to say I love you. he says it slow so he can feel it in his mouth, rolling like a marble with no glass to put its body in. no one is there to take it, but it is still true. It is snow falling, looking for concrete. 

              - c. essington

Joan of Arc’s Area Code

I have kept the fire on hold for eight months now- the dial tone is burning my left ear into decibels of charcoal.

I have re-recorded my answering message to say that I am out of town (and also newly made of ash and second-story window exits.)

I have slept next to the receiver, receiving, as the blips of flame came at me like candle light.

I know that, on the other side of the spiraling teal cord, there is an orange and a yellow and a red all gnawing through the same heated throat, all of its light just waiting to get to the talking.

But I do not want to start with the hellos or the incinerations; I would like to skip the going down and get right to the coming up for air- as though this were water, as though all the ocean’s burning salts were synonymous to a lit stove.

I want the after photo — the stale, post-noise sound of nothing happening. That saw-tooth quiet coming in like a wave.

I want the lost-conversation hum of the house being suddenly empty and the me being suddenly not on fire —

the phone cradled in a soft, home-dialed, plastic-blue.

                             - C. Essingotn

Your writing is gorgeous. I don't understand, and I do, and it doesn't matter because your lines make me ache. Thanks for spilling.

ahhhhh thank you so much. That’s what I do it for largely, the validation and transmitting of emotion from one body to others. Writing belongs to interpretation, and I may have made it, but it does not belong to me. It belongs to its readers’ thoughts and reactions. I just put my name at the bottom so people can know where it came from. 

your writing is honestly amazing you have a lot of talent wow

Thank you so much for taking a look, I really appreciate it. Having people who care about words make it all worth while. 

Advice for someone wanting to get published?

Okay, here are my top 3 tips based purely on my experience on both the submitting and accepting/ rejecting side of publications.

1. Proofread - nothing sets your piece back more if it’s on the fence of being accepted than grammatical errors that are easy to remedy.

2. Research publications before submitting - Databases for publishers like the one offered by Poets and writer’s (http://www.pw.org/literary_magazines) are really helpful for finding publications that may be looking for your style/ genre of writing.

3. Look for small, maybe even local publishers at first - They are more likely to have the time to really look at your work if you’re submitting for the first time and are much more likely, if they give you a rejection letter, to reject with reasons saying why and explaining what they also may have liked in the piece.

*Also know that rejection happens to everyone!! Keep writing and trying and researching. Sometimes thorough and kind rejection letters are even more helpful in the long-run than acceptance letters that tell you nothing of why you were accepted.

I hope this helps! 

Please feel free to send in any more college/ kenyon/ writing/ publishing questions! I have a lot of time today.

Those were people. They were targeted for belonging to the LGBTQ community. This was an attack on LGBTQ people, not an attack on “anyone trying to have a night out” or “anyone who’s offended by the shooting”.  

Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34.

Stanley Almodovar III, 23.

Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20.

Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22.

Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36.

Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22.

Luis S. Vielma, 22.

Kimberly Morris, 37.

Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30.

Darryl Roman Burt II, 29.

Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32.

Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21.

Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25.

Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35.

Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50.

Amanda Alvear, 25.

Martin Benitez Torres, 33.

Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37.

Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26.

Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35.

Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25.

Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31.

Oscar A. Aracena-Montero, 26.

Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25 years old.

Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 years old.

Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40 years old.

Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 years old

Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 years old

Cory James Connell, 21 years old

Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37 years old

Luis Daniel Conde, 39 years old

Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 years old

Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25 years old

Jerald Arthur Wright, 31

Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25

Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25

Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24

Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27

Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33

Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49

Yilmary Rodriguez Sulivan, 24

Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32

Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28

Frank Hernandez, 27

Paul Terrell Henry, 41

You will not be forgotten.