Blog Archives

Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine

a space for youth writing on mental health & identity

a gridironing by William Baska (17, Missouri)

12/31/2022

It was the inaugural practice of the season. It was always a slaughter, and this year particularly so. The line of scrimmage served as a drastic border. A demarcation of small and big, children and men, fear and excitement. The offense got into stance, and by natural instinct, almost all of them inched backward, thickening the line of scrimmage. They abandoned their athletic stance into an awkward cower, preparing themselves to meet a dazing blast of indomitable force. The coach noticed, and after a quick laugh to himself, yelled “Don’ be scared boys! It only hurts more when yer crouchin’ like a damn pansy! You hear me?! Sweet Jesus you boys better shape up or leave! It ain’ gonna sting if ya leave now!” All the while Pete stood anxious yet confident on the outside, preparing himself for the route he had engraved into his brain. He took every word the coach said to heart, and mustered up all the courage he had in him.

Opera Length: the aliens will see our nighttime planet by Isabelle Kim-Sherman (17, California)

12/30/2022

And they will think that the splatter of stars encrusting
the wine-dark bruising sea are painted
from the tears of gods The aliens will see

our nighttime planet and marvel at the natural
wonder of the fluorescence that latches on and grows
like lichen like a parasitic fungus like a shrimp’s
blood-black waste vein

They haunt me. Torture me. by Medumi Jindo (New York)

12/29/2022

They haunt me.
The dreams--
The memories--
The regrets--
you.

you showed up in my dreams today.
i think i was both happy but extremely sad.

because at the end of the dream,
i remember that i heard you whisper words of me, with your clique--
me and my sister.

Dryad by Natalie Volanto (17, Texas)

12/28/2022

the hero rests along my banks
of blue grass. Your chest rises with
each foxglove tide.
eyes a rapid rush
between the sweet touch of dawn’s tips
and the pressed forest floor.
your body, full like a dead weight
and holy, how must I believe you?

super human by Brian Lee (19, Singapore)

12/27/2022

for Hugh's birthday

it took a while for you
to spit out your first words:
daddy. mummy. and when
they did arrive, they were
few and far between,
the blooming of tanhuas,
shoots that desperately

the resolution by Brian Lee (19, Singapore)

12/26/2022

Sheraton Hotel

it has all come to this:
guests leaving in droves
in their sparkly limousines,
jostling lines at the front counter,
hollow, loaded echoes
of wheels on marbled granite.

the colour in which we love by Brian Lee (19, Singapore)

12/25/2022

The Straits Times, 4 Sep 2022: “Who of these two prospective suitors would most appeal to women here - a handsome man with little to no savings, or an average-looking chap who is savvy in managing money?”

paint the streets green—forget
about red. red on flags, red
of the setting sun, red of
our blood, red of saga seeds and
passion; you shall discard them

night comets, tumbling downward by Brian Lee (19, Singapore)

12/24/2022

[Content warning: traumatic event/death]

In memory of the Itaewon victims

they each had their own:
irises, shoe size, colourful clothes.
in spheres more invisible,
each to the neon clouds
of their dreams, flying westward
faster than the setting sun--
they did not run fast enough.

When We Finally Speak by Brian Lee (19, Singapore)

12/23/2022

Coming home to you,
I lapse comfortably into
our native tongue,
eddying in its lilts and lulls,
carousing in the famed crescendoes.

Meditations by Brian Lee (19, Singapore)

12/22/2022

It does not make sense
how we reluctantly found our
way here, mecca of hearts,
heir apparent to True North,
past the little brick hut, past
the pebbles in the rain, past
the scattered hoa mai, lying
downtrodden as youthful year

Therapy by Haze Fry (17, California)

12/21/2022

This maze was not made for someone
with feet.
I am running silently,
blisters on my toes,
as I remain frozen in a wooden chair.
Leather seat cracking from the moisture
of my nervous sweat.

For Better or For Worse by Hazel Thekkekara (16, Georgia)

12/20/2022

August
The sound of a squeaky pushcart echoed through the hallways, accompanied by the efficient click of heels striding across the tiles. The twenty-something woman glanced around the library as she pushed the cart, finally coming to a stop at the biography section. She began shelving books, pausing occasionally to read a few chapters of the more interesting ones.

Inauthentic by Preston Lim (16, Texas)

12/19/2022

July 7, 2015

Dear Applicant,

Thank you for your interest in joining San Francisco’s historic Chinatown. We hope you enjoyed your summer vacation and visit again soon.
Unfortunately, we can’t offer you a position at this time. Although you possess many great qualities, you’re not what we look for in an applicant. You would not mesh well with our work environment, but we hope you find success elsewhere.

South Indian Sapphics by Sahithi (15)

12/18/2022

Is it wrong to spend my nights thinking of her,
My love for her sun-kissed sepia skin makes me kinder to my own
The drape of the silk saree from her hips keeps me attentive during pooja and prayer
The glassy chimes of her bangles as she tucks hair behind my jhumka adorned ear,
Perfumed with jasmine and sandalwood incense, aromas of home

what they don't tell you about diets by Claire Li (Washington)*

12/17/2022

[Content warning: eating disorders]

At night my hands multiply. I shift through the kitchen, pantry to fridge to hidden nook and cranny with them bared into claws, and they grow eyes and minds and greedy hearts that desire indiscriminately. Anything goes. There’s no need for nitpicking because this freedom is my right through a day played by a numbers game: simple addition is grape by grape, nice linear plot that settles my nerves, never noodles or rice (God forbid a tablespoon of oil) because that is exponential and we’ll have to start over, fresh clean slate at zero, 0, tomorrow. Zero is nice because I can add it an infinite number of times, 0 to 00000000000000, and it will be the same. This equation I’ve got down to a tee, good old 0 + the free-for-all that is night, and my stomach. Rules begone (only until dawn) and I follow my multiplying hands, their greedy eyes and minds and hearts so ravenous, so eager to gorge it’ll all have been a dream by the time I wake, memories swallowed whole beneath the uncounted, unmeasured, unbound high of leftover dim sum takeout and unthawed ice cream.

Morning and these two hands steeple in prayer to the neat square of nutrition labels. I wait for nightfall.

​Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine

Categories

Archives

Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine