GABBY AVENA
A child is a fruit, I am told. Time carves / my center: two bodies twine inside / like aphids around bark. Harvested / fruit, your flesh emerges peach-soft & fuzzy, / sweetness suckling upon release. I shudder: / the taste is fear, or relief. A child is a fruit: from which / a new world is born. A child is a fruit: dropped & bruised / & poisoned….Continue Reading Self-Portrait Axed & Open
By MEL ARTHUR, SARAH WU, and GABBY AVENA Mel Arthur:Once the theme of Thing Theory was suggested, I could hear everyone’s (including myself) mind go blank. The collective question of what even is Thing Theory permeated almost every meeting. Sarah even asked me to do a mock Q&A where I attempted, using my muse, Toni…Continue Reading Spring 2025
GABBY AVENA
A hold unto our- / selves, hidden under blankets / that color the air // red is the evening cupped in / eggnog and projector light…Continue Reading Forticus, the Blanket Fort
By MEL ARTHUR, SARAH WU, and GABBY AVENA The theme of Snack Time feels like a theme that needs to be shouted at the top of one’s lungs. Imagine if we all collectively went: SNACK TIME! SNACK TIME! SNACK TIME! over and over again, how disruptive that may seem but also how joyous. I like…Continue Reading Fall 2024
By MEL ARTHUR, SARAH WU, and GABBY AVENA Mel Arthur:Once the theme of Thing Theory was suggested, I could hear everyone’s (including myself) mind go blank. The collective question of what even is Thing Theory permeated almost every meeting. Sarah even asked me to do a mock Q&A where I attempted, using my muse, Toni…Continue Reading Spring 2024
GABBY AVENA
If it’s okay, I would like to start with the tree, / tenderlined and vanishing. / Focus your eyes on the leaves / which are not leaves as much as / they are bushels which are not bushels / as much as they are clots of cotton fiber…Continue Reading Slow Death of the Generic Tree Drawing
By SARAH WU, MEL ARTHUR, and GABBY AVENA Mel Arthur:Rot, in simultaneous existence with crumble, disintegrate, stain, decompose, corrupt, sink, worsen, wither, descend, fester, and spoil. To inhabit the space of terrible beauty where the world and the bodies that exist within it circle around what has been made absent. Rotted as an attempt to…Continue Reading Fall 2023
GABBY AVENA
I mean — I need a moment to move through — an image to see with — an orange on an altar, rotting on speedlapse…Continue Reading I’m Sorry, I Need A Moment —
By SARAH WU, MEL ARTHUR, and GABBY AVENA Mel Arthur:I advocated for this theme within small circles of conversation partly because I know what it is like to feel reverence so profoundly, it becomes part of everyday existence. In reverence lies the essence of awe, of wonder, and as the dictionary adds, of respect. But…Continue Reading Spring 2023
GABBY AVENA
the tree kneels / at the pond the tree / kneels to touch the / pond touch neither the / tree nor the pond / which the tree wants / touching your fingers / which cannot touch…Continue Reading stuplimity
GABBY AVENA
we had to learn to share, my sister-and-i. / older by a year, she laid claim to the color purple. there was only one color left for little girls. i hated pink, but it was mine: my-pink, her-purple….Continue Reading WHAT’S YOURS IS MINE
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
GABBY AVENA
Ever since the Nabisco factory closed, you can no longer smell the cookies in the air. My Lola keeps telling me this, once as we pass through colorful concrete tunnels on our way from the Newark Airport, again as they are replaced by the tall trees that tower over the road, and a final time as we pass the empty corpse of the factory, its darkened neon lights welcoming me to my hometown: Glen Rock, New Jersey. She tells me that when she first arrived from the Philippines, she wondered how the neighbors could have so much time for baking, day-in and day-out. …Continue Reading Homecoming