MIKAYAH PARSONS
Broken Black heart. / Tattered Black heart. / Broken Black fish. / Battered Black fish. / Black fish out of water. // I offered my Black heart on a silver platter, / And they took it for the slaughter….Continue Reading Broken Black Heart
TIIA MCKINNEY
Sparkling dark blue waters violently crashed over my head, / They pinned me under their strong currents, forcefully grabbing me in a chokehold / I desperately inhaled, trying to taste the salty air on my tongue,…Continue Reading Sea of Sorrow
ZOE ALARCON
You would approach your mother’s bed / Afraid of an intruder / Now you approach it / Afraid of yourself / Hoping she can save you from eternal tinnitus / Drown it forever with a peaceful sonata …Continue Reading Ruminations
SOFIA HINCAPIE-RODRIGO
1. It’s a hot one, even for the South—the kind of summer where we are sticky with sunscreen and smelling like a flurry of coconuts and careless adolescence….Continue Reading Flashbulb Memory and the Things I Have to Remind Myself to Forget
SARAH WU
On the day my brother gets his college admissions, he picks his envelope up ever so gently, drags a finger across the edge of the flap, and peels back the white like he would peel back the skin of a banana. …Continue Reading my brother gets his college admissions letter
SAM SPRATFORD
before i learned to swerve down / narrow city streets— / i fell / i fell in love with the existentialists’ sooty prose / peering into an opium abyss and seeing my reflection in obsidian and…Continue Reading the breakfast date (break, fast!)
PRISCILLA LEE
Λόγος σάρξ ἐγένετο, scan my pinking flesh, / dented divots from my inky pen, no / 墨 to drink. Excuse me, I play with babbles, / singing your scribbles. // Draw it out. Pray, jazz with me. Pluck the hairy / strokes and Trace calligraphy.
…Continue Reading I Broke My English
CAROLYN THOMAS
The winds howl outside, and the rain smacks the ground with a heavenly force. Although it is nighttime, the lightning strikes illuminate the sky—the clapping sound of thunder echoes outside. …Continue Reading Pause and Break
PAULINE BISSELL
So, the will still bends / Beyond the sentimental / And you, still / Wielding the fissured, the fragmented, / The crumbling under and cracking apart….Continue Reading Hamadryad
GRACIE ROWLAND
I slammed the door in Hope’s face and told Her / I was better off alone, my pride too brazen to realize that good intentions / Matter more than harsh words spoken over late night calls. / I was too ashamed to apologize back then, too ashamed of the broken hinges I left. …Continue Reading Broken Hinges
GRACIE ROWLAND
I dance under the imagined warmth of the moonlight, / Twirl from one end of the rose garden to the other / Until my head is spinning, spinning, with the / Stars like a laughing tapestry above my head. / I forget about funerals and fallacies, / Genocide and god under the moonlight….Continue Reading Not Let Go of Hope
MARIANA RIVERA-DONSKY
She got in the car at half-past two in the morning. / It didn’t really matter to her where exactly she was going as long as it was away. There was only a certain amount of time that she could ignore the steadily growing pressure in her chest – right underneath her collarbone. Right above her lungs. She had lain in bed for hours doing absolutely nothing productive….Continue Reading Untitled
LELAND CULVER
Your face I thought your face I wished your face would long have left me, gone away, above. / Unharmed, although below I go, except for silent wishing, occasionally fishing for unhurried hypothetic love. / But glinting in the dark, your eyes espy my every dreaming thought like burning violet embers I remember once were blue….Continue Reading Lamplight
ROSS KILPATRICK
Sometimes I think about / Nietzsche scholar Rob Solomon / Who died of a hole in his heart / Just past security / In the Zürich Flughafen / Did he bless himself / And wish that he’d live over again…Continue Reading On Robert C. Solomon (1942 – 2007)
KEI LIM
A lifetime’s worth of spinning, / and all virtue stumbles, / enmity circling pupils like rings of ebony / ink the bark of the persimmon tree. / Branches beckon like the arms of / my mother, calloused by the abandonment / of men who knew her fragility …Continue Reading The Persimmon Tree
KALIDAS SHANTI
1) Another boy can throw his ass within the pocket of your hips in public. 2) It is a way to show off one’s new kicks, and say, “I got more after wearing these down,” even if that is far from the truth. 3) We battle with the ball, so the court is where we learn what it is to win, what it is to lose. We no longer have to jump a boy, mouth loaded with threats and a knife or hammer at our hips….Continue Reading Top Ten Reasons Why Black Boys Play Basketball
JOE SWEENEY
I wasn’t thirsty anymore, so when I heard him calling from over the belts it was ok. Part of it, too, was his voice, which sounded like it had finally decided being exhausted wasn’t worthwhile. TSA workers (agents?) don’t seem to have time for anything. But really that’s only true about the ones behind the belts–at the gates they’re always waving me through. Go on ahead. For some people it’s easier to imagine behind their mask than it is to see, their smile….Continue Reading “Till Some Blind Hand Shall Brush My Wing”
RACHEL HENDRICKSON
Amongst the curved cutlery, puzzles missing pieces, and books with yellowed pages, a vase held a collection of costume jewelry. When the sun hit it just right, the glint seemed to capture the attention of every customer who entered the front lawn of the Church. Lou was no different. Unable to ever resist a good sale, Lou turned off Route 11 as soon as he saw the posterboard scrawled in sharpie on the side of the road….Continue Reading Untitled
GABBY AVENA
When I am thinking of what to write, I pick at the skin on my lips. I hold the cracked bits between my nails, pinch, and pull transparent flecks of thoughts as a snake peels off its skin, exposing soft flesh underneath. This, too, is an act of translation. I wonder–if I picked, and picked, and picked, maybe I would have a story for you. Maybe I could trade my mouth for the fullness of the world. Maybe this is what the world would say:…Continue Reading Doe, a Deer
DUSTIN COPELAND
The process of choosing a favorite of anything is fraught with contradiction. A “favorite” thing one moment is secondary the next, and even enduring preferences are (however momentarily) superseded by new obsessions every once in a while….Continue Reading Of Choosing a Favorite
CAELEN MCQUILKIN
In order to break, something once had to be whole / in a mosaic // Sharp cracked edges bring one another to light, make themselves cohesive not in spite of but because of the splits and gaps and shattered spaces between, an art form beautiful because it is broken and put back together…Continue Reading On Concrete and Basketball
ARI DENGLER
Liza is awake, lying in bed, listening to the intent scratching of pencil across paper. Lukas hasn’t slept for more than three hours a single night this week. Instead, he’s spent all day and night hunched over his desk, lamp basking him in light as he scribbles down his new book. …Continue Reading Smudged
A’CORA HICKSON
red button / bloodshot / blood’s hot / stinging of the eye / burning sensation / a very familiar sensation…Continue Reading There is no stopping Her
JACKELINE FERNANDES
6:38 p.m. She finds herself on the platform dialing the number at about the same time she began to think about pulling out her phone from the front pocket of her jeans. In fact, he has already declined her call. She’s probably thinking he won’t show, he thinks, as she rolls her eyes and angrily shoves her phone back into her pocket, thinking he won’t show….Continue Reading 6:43 PM
Editor’s Note Dear Readers, Another semester, another issue! The writers, editors, and artists of The Indicator have worked so hard to create the issue you have now, and we are so proud of all the work they have done over the last few months. Having been members of The Indicator all four years of college,…Continue Reading Spring 2022
Editor’s Note The term “passing” implies movement – shifts from one state to another. Whether that movement is temporal, spatial, emotional, or psychical, our lives are constituted by these transformative moments. Sometimes, the experiences of passing are subtle and elusive, occurring secretly or even subconsciously. Other times, the shifts are immediately recognized, felt intensely and…Continue Reading Fall 2021
Quincy Smith ’25 is a staff artistqsmith25@amherst.edu…Continue Reading Untitled
RACHEL HENDRICKSON
It’s quieter than it used to be. The scientists on the television are talking about how over the summer, everyone started noticing how loud the birds were. The crumpled man and overly-polished woman debated on whether or not it was the climate, lack of people, or just an increased noticing …Continue Reading It’s Quieter Than It Used To Be
DUSTIN COPELAND
Death removed from his mount, and spoke: To remove thee I am come, and send thee from the garden forth, to till the ground whence thou wast taken, fitter soil. And it was certain that she did not want to die. But she knew, more certainly still, that she did not want to step down the mountain. To Death, therefore, she replied: How shall we breathe in other air less pure, accustom’d to immortal fruits?…Continue Reading Doom Creek, AZ
ROSS KILPATRICK
Honecker gave the order / To shoot on the inner wall / So comrades died, piled up / Under the American red and whites / Of western Coca-Cola signs // But before the BDR Richter, / Honekcer pleaded / ohne juristische oder / moralische Schuld / For humane end / And to Chile he fled…Continue Reading Staat und Mauer