Woah – more art. Thank you students of PSU, for being so artistically talented. Have you seen our bright blue submission call posters around the halls of PSU? Submit your poems, your short stories, your paintings, your drawings, your photos, your graphic designs – any and all art is welcome – at pathoslitmag.com/submit by May 6th. The weather is perfect for a photo-shoot amongst the blooming flowers or a work session under the sun in the grass of the Park Blocks! Stay gold, PSU.
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Two Suns
by Zaji Cox
The city is rain-dampened, its sun sodden. The amber light, when it peers between the clouds, is rare, but welcome and yearned for. We worship it when it arrives, as we would a god. The concrete receives its heat and steam rises, tangy chemical evaporation permeating clothes, skin, and hair; this sun tastes like mist and evergreens.
When its rays touch my skin, I can imagine I’m in the southwest. There, I am closer to it: elevation is higher and the star’s rays press on scalp and skin, a brazen presence even in winter. It smells of wild sage and mountain dust, of warmed adobe and coyote pelts. After it sets, it finds a way to linger: violets and magentas, deep azures and bright oranges remain until the very last minute when overtaken by the blue-black wing of night. This sun tastes of clear winds and rich southwestern spices.
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Falling in Love in Coffee Shops
by Zach Messinger
The first time I fell in love was at a Starbucks.
2:58pm, February twenty-eight, two-thousand-sixteen.
The sun illuminated her through a stained glass window
“You okay?” she asked seeing that I had hardly touched my mocha.
“Yeah, sorry, I’ll tell you later,” was all I could muster to say
I wrote it in my phone and returned to my homework waiting for later to come.
Since then I keep falling in love in coffee shops
Ambient music softly playing in the background
The smell of espresso
The look on your face as you laugh at all my bad jokes.
Maybe its the caffeine kickstarting my heart
Maybe it’s the hipster aesthetic of some indie-movie future I’ve been dying to live,
Maybe it’s the pathos of every poem ever composed-
In every coffee shop in the history of the world-
Hanging in the air like ghosts.
Whatever it is, I can’t get a cup of joe without taking the risk of having my heart broken.
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Revolutionary Love
by Caitlin Strickland
Be the Perón to my Evita.
You make the clouds
Shake when you speak.
Be my Revolutionary love
May the ground quake beneath our feet.
Be the Hades to my Persephone.
My great warrior, my King,
Kiss my lips and fulfill this longing in me
Make sense of me,
make love to me
Build a new life, a new world with me.
Be the Antony to my Cleopatra.
Fight with me,
Die with me. For the love of God,
Stay close to me.
Fall asleep holding me.
