International Scientist of the Year (2004)
by Cambridge University and Distinguished Member of the International Society of Poets.

HOLDING TIME BACK

Holding time back we humans have learned
By leaving our footprints on the mud of the Earth,
By making stone arrows,
By painting the walls of a cave.

Holding time back we humans have learned
By freezing time in a portrait with a solid frame,
By transforming marble in a figure of fame,
By making objects that forever remain.

Holding time back we humans have learned
By slowing some processes,
By restraining back change,
By deceiving with objects our final event.

Dr. Carlos Lavalle Montalvo
(1943-2017)

MORNING AFTER

by RYAN COOK

WITCH

by PAULINA DE LA PARRA

All the muses we invoked yesterday are hungover

strung out on the couch

Erato is popping TumsTM and calling an UberTM back

Calliope can’t find her fucking headband

The askew commotion doesn’t stop our loving
we just hear it through the tissue paper drywall

I cum for the stain on the ceiling- how it stands out

a Lily with a killer jawline

I find Klimpt’s gold leaf sprinkled in my morning coffee

you pee with the door open.

Last night I saw drunken sharks eat faceless men alive

this morning I panic buy more Swiffer wet jet fluid

We take our meds and watch contagion movies in our underwear

two pillars of salt trying to fill out the FAFSA

Oh, that I could feel something!
Oh, that you could tell me I’m feeling!

Then we could sell them for a new tattoo

Or at least some more libations.

Last night I used up all of my feelingsTM and all that is left is the

after- a husk of pumice and amazon boxes.

A dig site of all of the people who I snapped.

An arm 40 degrees north

50 degrees west

Her skull is only

Partly intact.

There is no Eros in the picking up
a transaction is at its root a sacrifice.

They say that every seven years all the cells in your body completely regenerate.
This means, in my deeply informed scientific estimation,

so far I’ve been 3 different people.

When I was 7 I used to think that if I chanted spells loudly enough all the cells in my body would finally react and I would become a witch; but instead every time I saw my reflexion in your tequila bottles I saw nothing but a girl with crooked teeth, hair as black as your eyes and a bruised heart crossing her fingers casting all sorts of spells to stop you from drinking our family away.

At age 14 I quickly learned that my spells and my chants were not to be mentioned in front of people, not at the dinner table, not at school, not at home, not even worth to be mentioned at all.
So I started practicing spells on myself like “shortening my tongue” “making myself so so so small that you could swear i wasn’t even there, I taught myself the ability to shape-shift in to whatever you needed from me. I even endowed myself with the magical art of becoming invisible in your eyes.

At 21 I was already able to teleport to the days when my knees didn’t feel weak around you.

I’m now 24 and I sit next to the bones of three different witches that Ive seen die seven years after seven years. And so now I have all the abilities in my me to cast the worst spell on you that I could possibly think of, but instead the only thing that comes flying through my mouth is “Thank you”. Thank you for making me fly to a much less painful reality, Thank you for making me supernatural, thank you for showing me that I’m everything without you. thank you for making me see all the beautiful, strong witches behind me.

I am baba Yaga. I am yemanya. I am Agnes Waterhouse. I am my mothers mother and and I am the granddaughter of the witches that men like you didn’t get to burn. I AM A WITCH.

ATTICS ARE EXPERTS IN HOLDING TIME BACK.