Letter From The Editors
Dear Readers,
Please enjoy this faithful retelling of the origin of our first issue of the year:
“Ow! I can’t get this stupid goddamn candle lit!” Alissa says as she draws her hand away from the candle’s wick.
Joshua reaches out for the candle. “Here, let me try.”
“No, it’s okay, I can — OW! FUCK!” She burns her finger again. “There’s something wrong with this candle.”
“I’m sure it’s fine, I’ll just do it.” Joshua takes the candle from Alissa’s hands and strikes a match. Like all matches do, it easily catches fire. But, as he goes to light the candle, the entire match—the head, the tinder substance, the handle—bursts into flames. Joshua drops both the flaming matchstick and the candle, and they watch in horror as fire spreads across the floor.
Alissa rushes to the door but Joshua stops her. “Wait, look. The fire says ‘quarterlife’.”
“It says quarterlife is: candlelit.”
They open their email and cancel the theme meeting scheduled for the next day.
Be careful lighting your candles,
Joshua & Alissa
Contents
Ariella Ruben
Earthworm
Alissa Berman
Soleil Ponce de Leon
Emerson Voss
Sofia Blair
Juliana France
Angela Froming
Anonymous
Aidan Jimenez-Ekman
Carl Dennis
Clara Fletcher
Rio Burk
Sepulvado Gutrich
Bethany Stimac
Tail Hastings
Jonah Rosen-Bloom
Helios Santoro
Joshua Cox
Anonymous
candleliteral
Ariella Ruben
Companion for Long Nights
Earthworm
Come inside, old friend
You’ve been standing in the yard too long,
Out in the forests, in a ring of stones upon those mountains high
It's gotten awfully cold.
Come inside
I have made a bed for you, of wood and of paper,
I will sit beside you on the hearth,
And feed you pinecones and old, dead leaves.
Come inside
The sky threatens gray
Soon snow will fall from pale, silent clouds
To snuff out your light,
The freezing mist is coming soon,
Coming down from the north to seek your warmth,
To drown it out.
Come inside, take your rest,
Burn brightly in my fire box, jewel of my evenings
I will sing you songs of Summer and tell you strange stories
Of the dark world dressed in wooly white,
We can sit together a long time in those long, long nights
And remember
What company we once kept,
Immortalized in ashes
In the soft song of your cinders cracking apart,
Some thread of laughter haunts us still
In the memory of that golden glow,
How bright your embers burn.
Old friend, don’t go yet, have another round
I’ve got an ax to grind and wood to cut
And only you to keep me warm.
I’ll leave the flue open,
Send your smoke far, far up into the skies
Let the gods of Winter know I'm praying.
People of Candles
Alissa Berman
Us Jews have all sorts of candles for all sorts of days. We have the delicately braided Havdalah candle for the closing of the week that we put out with a sizzle in wine. We have the stubby Yahrzeit candle that burns for 24 hours that we only light for the death of a loved one. There are, of course, the twin Shabbat candles we burn each week, and the eternal flame that watches over every synagogue. Hanukkah has seemingly endless options and the flames grow every night.
I am sure my rabbis could tell me why we have so many candles, recount stories of Biblical proportions that flicker in and out of the room as if the words themselves were written in flame. For once, I think, I don't care to know. Instead, I care that my sibling and I learned how to light matches together and that I will be lighting my own Hanukkiah in my own house in just a couple of months.
Whenever I light a candle, I wait for the little exhale of smoke right when the flame goes out. I wonder how many little girls have watched the Shabbat candles until they burned to the last bit of wick and noticed the breath of the candle in the new dark.
Walking with Bernadetter
Soleil Ponce de Leon
Dancing over my head — nestled into the damp soil,
Leaf with leave, branch brushing branch, arms reaching for the Other, the trees did the tango
Right over my cold damp head
That’s when I first saw it
First a sliver
Then bigger
The tree tipped the arched back of the other down in a crescendo of snaps, uprooting its lengthy limb
from the soil like a foot kicked up to dance
Spinning out of the first tree’s arms, tree number two shook its twigs above me
I — head still in soil — welcomed the twigs over my body in warm embrace
So warmly did I greet them that they burst into flame on contact with my skin
The last thing I saw was the tree bodies bent over me, peering at my twig body — burst into candlelight
for their nightly romance
Candle
Emerson Voss
Bedside Candle
Sofia Blair
I look down and fidget, pick, twist at the sleeve of your favorite red sweater, rotate the burn mark away from seeing eyes, recognize the nervous habit, stop.
Rewind, replay, remember a dark room, a single bedside candle lit.
Remember sitting up and leaning, straining, reaching over a flame to grab something, something forgotten.
Remember noticing the heat, pulling away, assessing the damage, your heart dropping.
Remember blowing out the traitorous candle, tossing your sweater to the floor.
Mourn your once unburnt sleeve.
I resume: fidget, pick, twist.
Too Hot to Handle
Juliana France
Witchcraft in the Kitchen
Angela Froming
The ancient spell of herbs and spices mix over a crackling flame, whispering voices travel on the air above. Women, young and old, congregate in this sacred meeting place, forced here by those who love and hate them in equal measure. A hushed voice tells the story of a local girl who fell on hard times, harsh judgements and wishes of good fortune spew from the mouths surrounding the flame, mixing into the spell.
The fragrant smell prompts the entrance of an outsider, a man, breaking the unspoken quiet of the atmosphere. Lips barely disguise their curls of disgust as the man asks what is taking so long, and if dinner is ready yet. The matriarch raises a hand, dispelling the glares directed at the outsider, as she tells her son that dinner will be ready when it is done. The outsider leaves in a huff, feet stomping on the ground, a last ditch effort to disrupt the magic in the making.
It is a kind of magic, as one woman adds a pinch of salt to a pot of water and brings potatoes to a boil, an act of subservience and love, creation and destruction. A whistling kettle pierces the blanket of silence. Girls giggle about stories of books read years before and whisper innocent childhood confessions, connecting the threads of years long past to the tapestry of the present.
There is a magic in the friendship, in the sisterhood of the kitchen, the love of each action imbuing the spirit with courage, safety, tying souls together in continuous knots. Cold hands cup mugs of warm tea, soft voices create a melody, the song of connection and love.
My hands do not cup my mug at this moment. My hands create and destroy with the intention of joy, purposefully pouring my heart into each nook and cranny of the counters and cabinets. The flavor of the food bursts on tongues and tells stories of comfort and selfless kindness. My love has been translated in each step, the history of each giggle and whisper of the kitchen guiding my hands.
There is magic in the kitchen; it is undoubtedly true. Those who wish to quell the voice of a witch should look in the kitchen. There they would find me whispering to my sourdough and sprinkling spells in my tea.
Blackout
Anonymous
I fill my home with fake candles
And the tamed colors of the flame
Such a wild thing to accentuate the shadows
My family fills our rooms with emergency candles
In the true dark we congregate, lighting the odd ends we find
My favorite is the dead man's Christmas candles, untouched for decades
I fill my home with fake candles
And enjoy the flames
Such a wild thing how it reveals the shadows
British Numbskulls Burning Alive
Aidan Jimenez-Ekman
Candle Poem
Carl Dennis
Can dull-lit rooms see our prancing figures?
Can Dell laptops feel our pressing fingers?
Can you be candid, Mr. Candyman!
Can I, or can I not, be a Ken doll?
Kendall, like Jenner? — Roy? from HBO!?
Kenn'dy had candor, shot in his car though.
Limbs all akimbo, read it on my Kindle.
Feeling kinda ill now. Welp, off to Can'da.
But not first class, second'll get it done.
Then after Canada, off to Cannes — deal?
If you're hungry, canned eel, if not, canned dill.
Feed eels cantaloupe so they can't elope.
I love sandal vandals and love handles.
I hate FanDuel ads and panhandle dads.
Everything but the Candle (because they are lit)
Clara Fletcher
Moth to a Flame
Rio Burk
For Mom
Anna Sepulvado Gutrich
I don’t think my mom believes in god,
strikes me now that I do not know
she is Choctaw Apache and crosses arms over her chest during communion,
people in pews beside her are the type to ask her, “what are you?”
my mother’s mother believes in god, hard, too much,
but Mom?
I don’t know, I don’t think so
I didn’t understand that at 7,
thinking everyone believed in god, scared I might not,
making my Sunday school teacher bend at the waist for my sip.
I don't remember communion, church memories are a line of identical twins.
instead I remember Sundays, taught the body-bread, the blood-wine,
making a candle.
cut-up tissue -paper Mod-Podged to a Dollar-Store Vanilla-Spice, meant to glow like
Stained-Glass.
they glue a slip with my full name on it while I'm washing glue off my hands.
Mom’s last name is not on the slip,
not in my name.
Mod-Podge Kid-Masterpieces half-glow on a sea of white dresses and black ties
who don’t notice anyway.
I get a sip and a cracker / Mom gets a capital-B Blessing!
Vanilla-Spice burning as the priest
says that we are god’s children.
no
I am my mom’s child.
she named me
hers is not even on my candle
yet who do I run to when the ceremony is over?
her arms are not crossed when she opens them to me
there’s a windowsill at home with our Love-Things.
pinecones, rocks and leaves, a bonsai,
my sister and I’s little-faces pressed together in a frame saying “Big sister!”
the Vanilla-Spice sat next to it,
a spider’s house now.
my mom keeps my candle there, on the Love-Sill
from a religion she is not a part of,
from when a man said I was someone else’s child.
a child of someone I do not believe in,
someone who lets my cat get hurt and my sister get sick,
lets my dad watch his childhood dog get hit by a car.
not real or very evil.
how could he know me?
he’s only ever seen me in white, with glue on my hands.
i believe in my mom,
in her love that keeps a candle from something she doesn’t believe in
just because HER child made it
soggy with brains
Bethany Stimac
sleep stays in
the other room
and i’m soggy here with brains
i cannot boast
i cannot drift
i cannot even rain
my mood is just
as muggy as
this humid tropical air
that hugs my room
and lays with me
a clammy rotting pear
i look for logic
i look for love
but this damp and soiled light
likes not the moon
likes not the sun
and sits sad with me tonight
Playing Footsie (or Handsie) with Flame
Tali Hastings
Fire in the Hole (Head)
Jonah Rosen-Bloom
Untitled
Helios Santoro
BIC
Joshua Cox
A flicker, and the air alights!
My midnight oil's burned again
to start your candles, cigarettes,
and all manner of unholy things
you choose to burn.
How sick - my blood is oxidized -
how sick I feel from all this fire.
Blood-iron rusts in you, in time,
eating you up as you respire,
my naphtha friend.
You don't deserve this use of me;
Prometheus, I spit at you.
Drawn up by antigravity -
if I could reach against the pull
and touch you, I
would kiss your finger, gently, so
you'd taste me in your skin and know
the flame's true pain.
Snuffed
Anonymous
He thrust a flaming candle
Into my twice-burned hands
And my hope flickered out slowly
But her passing was marked only
By the soft noise of a candle going dark.
And somehow it’s better
This bearer was kinder
This love was safer
Old paths filled with danger
Now built up stronger
Can’t wait much longer
What am I supposed to do
With all of this wax?
Perhaps
I must build my own candle
Take love as a gamble
Fuel my own fire
And hold myself higher
Than ever before.
Thank you
For minimizing the damage.