“Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” - RBG
It Has Gone Extinct - Emily Montenegro.
They claim to have respect, love, and compassion in their hearts—hearts truly rotten, black, and
foul—but in my constant nightmares I still hear the cries, and in the darkness, I see the tears of
rabbits, cows, and calves. It disturbs me to live in a society whose first excuse is to defend
savagery against beings who also feel that their flesh is a delicacy for the palate. Reasoning has
gone extinct, because I’ve realized that, even when I offer solid arguments, most people prefer
to carry the weight of bones and blood on their backs; and in my heart, every particle that
makes me up melts in disappointment. Humanity has gone extinct, and it’s depressing and
heartbreaking that, even while claiming to possess intelligence, they think only of their
momentary pleasure… a pleasure that, when tasted enough, lets you feel the coldness of
cages, the savagery of collapsed bodies, and the stress of the isolated who beg to escape their
executioner’s hands.
The desire to accept one’s own mistakes has gone extinct; most people laugh out of discomfort
and annoyance, because when I speak of the pain those beings suffer—beings who still have
so much to live for—they realize for a second the abhorrence of their actions. The stench is so
vast that not even the scent of rain, nor that new incense, can mask the reek of the calf in your
freezer. The tears crowd at the edge of my eyes, because sadism and hatred against those who
aren’t human has been normalized. Humanity learned to close its eyes to the suffering of others,
because not closing them means accepting their complicity in the pain of millions of abused
lives. I’m unsettled by the calmness with which you eat your meat—your piece of roasted,
seasoned inanimate bodies—and I feel sick knowing that, if you didn’t do it… you would taste
and feel the coppery, raw flavor of those sacrificed for your disgusting selfishness.
It is terrifying to walk the streets and see millions of accomplices, even my own family, being
part of this atrocity so normalized. Being part of the problem is no longer my concern, because
my questioning of what “respect” means has resurfaced. I detach myself from cruelty, and from
my body has vanished any part of being complicit in a despicable society. The ability to
differentiate has gone extinct, because you say you love animals, but when you sit at your
monarch’s table, what you consume is the hypocrisy of your words. My proteins are cruelty-free,
my clothes are not stolen covers from someone else, and my hygiene products are not a
mixture of oils from another living being.
I am disgusted, and burning ice runs across my skin, because just thinking of the arrogant idea
that subjugating sentient beings for food or fashion is the repugnant truth of the
majority—makes me feel the raw, aching distance I no longer feel in the corners of my anatomy.
How cruel to read or hear the ignored truth of those you consume, and choose to keep pushing
your shopping cart forward, while the butchers sharpen their knives to seize and slice your oh-
so-desired prey. Will you react? Does your cynicism have limits? Or will you just take this as
another cheap speech and let the seconds pass until the stench of my words fades from your
deaf yet conscious ears? Guilt has gone extinct, because it’s so well hidden under the rug that,
when you want to feel remorse, the only thing you feel is indifference. The nightmares of a
dystopian society have gone extinct, because that world—where slavery has surpassed people
and reached the sentient—has become reality.
The Stick Poem - Neve Sirois
In plain sight.
Plain as we can see.
Your color is boring, yet we perceive it naturally.
Sharp edges yet cylindrical and refined.
Fine thin with your threads, bined.
You are the skeleton to the vines,
no swing,
only line.
To each their own, so different and wild as an unruly child.
Growing in every which way, as if the sky doesn’t have a say.
The fall is long with a crack and crunch, a dog picks you up as if you were its lunch.
A steady swordsman with a towel for a cape looks at his enemy for a grueling fate.
He raises you with such anger, only for you to break with one kiss.
Kicking you across the ground into an eternal abyss.
Knowing that we won’t be the ones to miss.
"It means a great deal to those who are oppressed to know that they are not alone. Never let anyone tell you that what you are doing is insignificant." - Desmond Tutu
prayer - avery lockwood
make me real, make me holy,
make me clean. make me
all bones and sharp angles
and white teeth. make me
tremble under the weight of
selfhood, sisyphean, and
make me climb still. make
me from my own rib, cut from
my chest like a strangler fig.
make me the way You made
Adam, before he learned
to be ashamed that his body
was crafted from breath and dust.
make me a garden. make me
a garden and let me tend to it.
“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.” - Nelson Mandela
Vienna Barnitt
I'm a Trans teenager. Why are we still
fighting for rights we just got? Why is it
always two steps forward one step
back? At the beginning of last year I
decided to start growing my hair out, to
start detransitioning. I looked in the mirror
and I didn't see me. I saw a stranger. I was
the kid who got strange looks when they
went into the bathroom. I didn't anymore.
In March I shaved my head. I was so mad
and scared at the time. But I finally saw
myself in the mirror. Why can't I be myself
without being scared? Why can't I be truly
happy without being threatened?
Sincerely, a Trans teenager.
Midas - Avery Lockwood
You were baptized in nectar on Pactolus shores.
Cigarettes on your breath while you whispered a prayer.
Now you’re molten, untouchable, begging for more
From a god that can’t hear you, or just doesn’t care.
Oh, you amber-eyed hedonist, burdened and cursed.
You’re part labyrinth, part man, the rest honeyed cologne,
King of swords from above, crowned with pyrite, reversed,
Empty bottles and love songs swept under your throne.
But tonight, in the sunset, you’re dripping with gold
Like your aureate skin has been sculpted by gods,
And I know you’ve a hand that no lover can hold,
That the vow on your tongue is a gilded facade,
But for one golden moment, you’re simply a man,
So we lie in the ashes of what could have been.
Introducing Issue Two:
Rights & Remedies
Introducing Issue One: The Blueprint
The Ballad of Billy Jones - Emma Jolise
Way down there in Colfax County—
Where the riv’r runs rich with fool’s gold,
There lies Contention mine
Its tunnels oft dark and cold.
This be the home of young Billy
With his tight suspenders in tow,
Billy, young Billy Jones
Mucking alone, under, below.
They gave Bill a brand new hole
And with eyes of pale yellow fev’r,
He dug down deep’r, did ol’ Bill Jones.
Down where darkness doomed the deceiv’r.
On a clear, hot, summer aft’rnoon,
Billy mucked alone, his hardtack tin
Waiting on the bench, abandoned.
Billy Jones mucked past lunch with a grin.
They forgot Billy down there,
But deep down, Jones forgot ‘em too
And no miner rememb’rd ol’ Bill
When their blasters lit charges through!
Billy’s body was ne’er recov’red—
But many a miner will say
Way in deep Contention mine, muckers
Hear the tommyknock’r bay:
Gold, yellow gold
Gold for good ol’ Billy Jones!
Remember You - Saiba Gutierrez
What is hope if not an escape
as the darkness closes in
and the light shuts out
the glimpse of hope will only get me out
I can’t move on, I can’t leave you
So instead I remember you
I miss your calls and candy runs
i miss your dog and excessive puns
I miss you
more than the sun misses the moon
I miss you
more than I loved you
I try to be happy
but it’s not the truth
life sucks and it always feels blue
I try to process but I can not forget
I’m angry
I’m mad it wasn’t me
I’m mad I couldn’t save you
I'm mad it happened
What could I have done?
Loved you’d more or held you close
you were already someone I loved most
So as grief piles up
and your old clothes do too
I’ll try my best to always remember you
Wisteria - Li Bai / Adapted from Li Bai's "Wisteria Tree" Ancient Poetry Collection
from The Tang Dynasty
紫藤挂云木，
花蔓宜阳春。
密叶隐歌鸟，
香风留美人。
Translation:
"Wisteria hangs on the cloud tree,
Flowers and vines are perfect for spring.
Songbirds hide among the dense foliage,
The fragrant wind leaves a beautiful woman."
Susuru Ramen - Elizabeth Bae
Crisp metal jingled
In the tawdry aperture
I had never seen one in person, never smelled the halo glow
That hummed with rosemary and distilled honey.
Inside, a reckoning of mystique
Only three bountiful tables,
Rocking wood clicking with pleated fabric, joy luck rimming the edges,
Guards with barons and streaks of novelty in the wollen night.
Cotton stuffed my ears, drums full of hollow cider and crimson spice,
Nose blushed and swelled, fingers grasping, pinching at the relentless honey glow.
It was much more beautiful than daylight,
I couldn’t have reckoned on Chrysler,
But the magnitude of foreseen strength bent my will
With each power-hungry, delirious slurp.
No lazy souls remain once they trek here.
On the outskirts of the parade, circumference and drowning,
The edge of the pool of great fortitude.
Watching from afar, though, that was something else.
Echoes of remedy and bibliophilia drank up my wine,
Whispered serenely, solace capsized by her wandering might.
She smiled up through the saltiness, fingers greased,
Lips bountiful and alive.
Bells clicked on teeth, pearls blinding cotton,
Vocals muffled with each
Metal jingle.
Dog Walk - Chenyi Wu
In the dandelion window, Bruiser,
Formaldehyde frosting, which your waxed tongue searches,
Illuminated by the never-ending foreclosure, New Yorker and Chrysler, tipped hat perched
By such an endowing owner.
No pistol echoes blaringly, in one’s blatant lexicon of pleasure,
Mildred, who swings beneath train carts and latches empty junctures
Up atop stickered, rusting poles,
Whistles when you chuck near it, paws eerily placed, blanched naked across the pavement.
No more fitting than for rats, you say, sniff, drip in the alabaster sunrise.
Sunshine, baby, as he tips down, down, once more, guns ablazing, dried, fastened sneakers
Running, plowing, scattered amongst dreaded termite loads and clustered beetles of envy
For which you must surpass.
It shall eternally remain inevitable.
A lampshaded pull, adjacent to the rolls of the neck, flamboyant in their efforts to conceal
With sparkles secluded in every daunting, pasted-on letter.
He’s running, now, beckoning with intrepid fingers, convergence launching out in static waves, Unformidable spider legs adjourning as the devil snarls for that pink tongue.
A suffocated glance spurs me on. Mildred’s jauntiness withdrawals.
Faces mobilize as I tip, unfazed knees knocking out past templates of baked concrete,
Shadows haughtily ablaze in the crimson mist of July. They all whistle me on
Behind the ceased, dandelion window.
Pick up the pace,
Pick up the pace.
A Constellation Unravels - Emma Jolise
Deep amidst a Summer’s night, warm,
Over the dusty paths we strayed,
Beneath thin pines, into a rue-dappled field
Where a campfire’s golden blaze played.
Others sat there, the grass flattened by chairs
And up we stared, at Summer’s night
Into a dark expanse of twinkling, swirling stars
Winking wordlessly in our sight.
Together we watched a wonder
play out across the inky sky:
Eternity danced to the wind’s soft chimes,
Tapping out a tearful good-bye.
Yet still the universe unfolds,
and still we stare, our reverence full
At holy grandeur, the divine plan
Woven through the hearts of all.
Welcome to The Conscious Narrative
The Conscious Narrative cultivates a supportive literary community where emerging voices can flourish, focusing on fresh perspectives that might otherwise go unheard in traditional publishing spaces. By creating meaningful connections between emerging young writers, the magazine fosters artistic growth and mutual inspiration across different backgrounds and experiences. The publication's inclusive approach represents a thoughtful evolution in literary culture, honoring both innovative expression and the authentic emotional landscapes of a new generation of poets. We are dedicated to nurturing and promoting the work of young poets, offering a glimpse into the evolving landscape of contemporary poetry.