Issue 9 – Summer 2021
Welcome to ANGLES Issue 9! As the world continues to adjust to a new reality brought on by 2020, our submissions have never waned in quality, and here in 2021 we have featured several examples of the highest quality undergraduate writing from around the world. Our writers have shone through with their pieces filled with urgent, attentive, and innovative prose, proving yet again the power of words at work. We are excited to welcome Carol Auld as our featured artist, as her series “Art in a time of COVID19” showcases a stunning array of work inspired by the events of the past year.
In this issue, we see Zoe Lafontant’s powerful poems “King” and “Project” as excerpts from her series “Mind of a Black Girl”, as she highlights and encaptures the emotion felt by a young woman of color growing up in the climate of 2021.
Our mission always reminds us to display the best and brightest pieces from college-aged students. Tucker Bradley Sloan’s brilliant work of fiction, “Are You There, Cal?” is stunningly emotional, voicing the elements of ANGLES we will always strive for.
As we continue to adjust to the ever-evolving expectations of a pandemic-riddled world, we aim to maintain the standards of high-quality voices from our most talented emerging writers. We hope our featured works continue to bring beauty and joy to the world of literary art, all the while highlighting the voices and issues that matter.
Tatiana Colon and Valerie Morgans
ANGLES Managing Editors
MEDIOCRE MOMENT: A NARRATIVE HOMAGE TO ELISE COWEN by Daniel Gonzalez
He looks like every other doctor I've seen. Long white coat, to signify he’s above the other orderlies. He's more important, he’s more, he’s a man. He doesn’t have to wear the stiff skirt or smile of a nurse's uniform. I drown out the doctors scolding and look down at...
RICHMOND by Alexander Lazarus Wolff
Downtown Richmond was a knotted, muscular jungle of cement. Tangles of overpasses, thickets of freeways, and jutting skyscrapers obscured the afternoon’s bleak light. As we drove, my driver talked about his daughter’s exorbitant private high-school, and claimed he’d...
THE FISHEYE LENSES by Elena Aguilar
Elias sits in front of me on the soft, L-shaped couch, the scent of old marihuana puffing up into the air every time either one of us moves. He fingers a purple post-it note I´d given him not too long ago, a simple distraction while we wait to be called back into the...
BEAUTIFUL MIND by Nicolette van Kesteren
Clary sits on a park bench, and tries to remember what it feels like to be touched. The quick push of a stranger’s shoulder as they slide by you into the subway car beside you. The energetic hug from a friend you barely knew. The desperation for feeling the interlaced...
LOVE AFLAME by Matt Hsu
Their first date they played Jenga with lit matches and pick-up sticks with unthreaded needles. The corner of his napkin caught fire and he whipped it dead. A hole opened in his palm, outlined with black powder. They smiled at each other and kissed, passing a lemon...
ARE YOU THERE, CAL? by Tucker Bradley Sloan
I’m not a storyteller, a writer, or anything. I just like writing down the truth. As I see it. What thoughts come to me. That’s what Cal would’ve done. He would’ve done that for me. None of this was Cal’s fault. “Take the pills,” they said. “Take them just as...
CINDERELLA’S INHERITANCE by Emma Hill
Feet dash through the blood-red forest like tear drops down a gully. Lose him. Her blue breath is failing now and Daphne has to hide from Apollo. Sunshine burns her body. If he catches hold of her, she will break; so Daphne branches out. The god objects. ...
TWO POEMS by Zoe Lafontant
King “If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” ~Martin Luther...
TWO POEMS by Lalini Shanela Ranaraja
Flayed I am the thing with too many skins. I am the perforated grocery bag penetrated by all the other grocery bags crumpled and consumed by each other each one trying to blend into uncontested space charybdis of the ouroboros. I am daughter sister...
TWO POEMS by Annie Przypyszny
LAVENDER SOAP Don’t fall asleep in the bathtub. Your dreams will absorb the water and grow larger than your life. You’re so adept at imagining how things are supposed to be, you cannot see what is present before your eyes: a nest of prismatic...
AN EXORCISM OF HAPPINESS by Dante Novario
These days I'm afraid my joy may be breaking out Of the tiny box I’ve allowed it to live inside - It’s threatening possession - I tried ringing a prelate, more tequila, I hid Within a labyrinth of deep sadness but bliss was merciless, Caught my scent,...
ON GRIEVING by McKayla Anne Rockwell
Hand over hand over hand, carved bottom to top, we make this wound together. When the slice is tall enough to step through, He sends a good night to gently pry you away. ...
BULLY by Mehak Goyal
“Your boots are ugly- just like your face,” she snaps. I am drinking next to the cooler. My throat gulps. My heart protests. My lips part. Blinks later, I hear laughter from her audience. A week elapses. Their thunderous laughter...
THE THINGS THEY DID NOT MENTION by Danielle Meyer
.I. They never mentioned there would be sunshine during the apocalypse. They never mentioned that it would grow so quiet in the sleepy 2 o'clock hour and that the chirping of birds would grow so loud. They did not mention it because it was not something we were privy...
FROM THE WISDOMLESS, LABRUM-TORN, GALLBLADDERLESS WONDER by Jordyn Lutzow
Lila pranced her pink pony over the continents and seas on the globe in the kitchen. She began to imagine herself riding along a mountaintop that reached far into space. A mountain this size would make the world look like an ice cream cone; one she would surely visit...
GALLERY AND INTERVIEW
Carol Auld’s creative explosion began by studying and working at Atelier Pochinko, with the late Richard Pochinko. After that, she studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, Ontario, where she graduated with a Double Major in Intermedia/New Media....