Tag: poetry

Table of Contents: Cobblestones Spring 2025

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Fiction
Granma’s Dumbwaiter by Christopher Sloce
Squirrel Rain by Tilden Culver
Night Kitty by Christine Stoddard

Visual Art
Step One by Jean Barrie
In Your Dreams by Grace Oxley
Cobble, A Good Boy by Savannah McLaurin
Swimming by Gabba Heinz

Poetry
Digital Echoes by Sneha Rajan
A Townie’s Brush with the Bourgeoisie by Jena Salem
The Outside Sill by Kylie Grunsfeld
Three Poems by P.H.G.
The Cicadas Cry by Casey Kendle
Tourist by Jozlyn Basso


Editor’s Note: It is with profound gratitude that we present the Spring 2025 issue of Cobblestones. Our most sincere thanks go out to all the writers and artists who chose to share their work with us, whether or not they were selected to appear in this issue. Journals such as this could not exist without their hard work and their courage to share that work with the world. Readers, it is our fondest hope that you enjoy this inaugural issue of Cobblestones as much as we enjoyed producing it. Happy reading!

Digital Echoes

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By Sneha Rajan

Somewhere on the other side of the country, I
 taste ash
with fumbling fingers sliding palenumb across my screen.

My eyes skipbeat over my father’s name.
 I can’t delete the number because
 one day my car might break down
 and he’ll need to lilt faults at me while getting in his car to
get me.
Though his phone is crackeduseless, the car towed, mouth unpracticed again
But the number stays of course.
He’s not dead of course.

My friend isn’t dead either my phone speaks
 echoes of soot fingers and acrid lungs.
My breath forms fantasies while
 waiting for the next.


Biographical Statement: Owner of the stubbiest cat with the loudest scream on the East Coast.

A Townie’s Brush with the Bourgeoisie

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By Jena Salem

On this glorious Tuesday afternoon,
I will become the richest woman this
Backwoods town has ever seen.
It will be in the middle of my
Double, after a stocky middle-aged man
In his too-tight business suit and aviators
Hurls his boiling cappuccino square in my face
Because the steamed milk is not wet enough.
My manager, the one twice-divorced with a Monroe piercing,
Will soothe my aching burns with expired ointment
And dress my wounds in band-aids with sparkly butterflies on them.
I will take a well-deserved lunch break that’ll only last five minutes.
As I’m sinking my teeth into a half-rotted Red Delicious,
I’ll scoop up the quarter and scratch-off I packed as my dessert.
Absent-mindedly, I will scrape off each protective seal.

Gold pineapple.
Gold pineapple.
…Holy. Shit.

The beaten-up bar stool I’m perched on
Will clatter to the ground as I spring up
And let out an ear-piercing cheer.
The first thing I’ll do is make a beeline for
That cufflink-polishing prick.
Before he can berate me again,
My fist will ram into his jaw,
Sending a shiny gold molar skittering.
The crisp twenties he was shuffling
In his beefy fingers
will drift to the sticky floor.
I’ll gather up the fallen bills,
Stride over with the confidence he’s
Dedicated his whole life to mimicking,
and stuff them far down his engorged gullet.

“And keep the goddamn change!”

The joint will be stunned into silence.
So silent that you could hear my apron drop
after untying it and throwing it up in the air
like the graduation cap I never got to wear.
No one will dare stop me from swinging that door open,
Middle finger extended in place of a two-week notice,
And letting it slam shut.
The frigid autumn will chill the
Hot tears leaking down my cheeks,
trailing over my chipped teeth and drugstore lipstick.
Hysterical giggles will escape me,
Turning the heads of pedestrians,
who are clutching the pearls I could never afford.
Like a madwoman, I’ll gleefully skip towards my
Fifteen-year-old piece of junk
And jiggle the busted handle ‘til it gives.
I’ll careen down I-90 to the rhythm of a Madonna song,
Going wherever the wind takes me.
At long last, I’ll take a breath.
In, then out.
And I’ll breathe.


Biographical Statement: Jena Salem is an aspiring writer and a senior undergraduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). She is currently a copyediting intern at Blackbird Literary Journal and working as a student copywriter for VCU’s College of Engineering. Her work can be found on the College of Engineering’s website.

Artist’s Statement: This was written as an ode to all customer service workers alike. Please enjoy, and I hope this piece provides some emotional catharsis.

Cobblestones Deadline Reminder: March 31st

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Hello readers, writers, artists, and miscellaneous miscreants!

This is your reminder that the Cobblestones open submission period ends in two days, on March 31st. Submissions sent after March 31st will not be reviewed. Our submissions form can be found here and our editorial guidelines can be found here.

It has been a wonderful submissions season so far and we are elated with the quality of the work that all of you brilliant creatives have produced, but we still have room for more pieces! If you have been wondering whether or not you should send your work to us, take this as your sign that we would love to see it. If you have any questions, our editor will be monitoring comments on this post.

Happy reading!

The Outside Sill

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By Kylie Grunsfeld

To me you were Apollonian; I had some sense
that if you walked from this graveyard, all the sunlight,
all the order, would leave with you.
Now sometimes I wonder if there was some truth to that
because for a while I’ve felt as though
I’ve been searching around in the dark
for a switch or chain that will make me feel lit up again.
But I hate to attribute all of that to you—
you were no God at all, only a boy
who happened to block my view of the sky
at just the right time.

Still, I can’t shake each glaring contradiction:
the mossy acre of the dead and the sweet summer glow of the evening.
The corpse playground and the church playground, meant for
real, live children. You and me.
Perusing the aisles, you told me stories of you as a kid,
of this very church, this very playground,
and the productions they’d put on in the courtyard;
every iteration of you that had seen the dust motes
idling in this golden stream.
Sometimes you’d open the door to understanding and I’d enter gladly,
perpetually a first-time houseguest
walking slowly up to the skittish cat, no sudden movements,
hoping it could see the good intentions in my outstretched hand.
Other times it was like clutching onto the outside sill
of the church window, searching for solid enough footing
on the cobblestone wall to hoist myself up
to get the slightest glimpse inside.

What did I know about church, about death, about love?
Still I tried to find some meaning in it all,
None of which belonged to me.


Biographical Statement: My name is Kylie! I’m from Charlottesville, VA. I’m an English major in my freshman year, and I want to pursue a concentration in creative writing. I’ve been writing since I was a little kid; I’ve always known that I want to have a career as a writer in some respect, and I genuinely can’t imagine a world in which I’m not telling stories, whether that’s through the medium of poetry, novels, plays, films, songs, etc.

Artist’s Statement: This poem is a reflection on an evening spent (and really an entire relationship spent) with a person I’m no longer close to.

Three Poems

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By P.H.G.

The Latest Flame

I’m having an affair with a box of matches
But don’t tell anyone
Some of my more loyal friends know,
but my family would never understand 

Its sardonic rattle in my grip
Chaos scittering in fragile, uniform pieces
The rough shink
when it opens itself to me,
the cardboard playing a little hard to get

The coarse vibration of the phosphorus head 
dragging over the hexagons
of signature oxblood stripes
The colour of long lust and mayhem

We have our differences, sometimes
As with all passionate affairs, there is
Friction
But without it,
Well,
We wouldn’t have the chemistry we have
That spark of desire and need
That fire

Each strike hisses secrets
Telling me how it likes to have
its smoke held in my mouth
It whispers to me and only me
I burn
I pine 
I perish
So I burn too
Immolated
Until we are both reduced to nothing 
but ash


The Sick and the Citrus 

Let the lady with the needles do her work.
Place your heart in her hands,
still beating and bloody,
and hear your new heartstrings
Thrum to her rhythm

Let her pricking thumbs
weave patterns and webs
in your epidermis
Enjoy your new tight seams,
intricate and minuscule,
before she unravels you

In her girlhood, she practiced on oranges
As many aspiring pre-meds do
Oranges, mimicking the tension of
human skin
Were stitched and laced in her kitchen
With methods from thick textbooks
But something darker called to her
Something unseemly
A hunger to be sated
A thirst to be quenched
A feeling unfelt by healers
And her young dreams fell away,
as so many do

So here she is
And here you are
With your own hungers and thirsts
In this place where
we feel what is unfelt
by the sick and the citrus

Give in to the need
and the cunning craft
Let her pierce your rind,
bring your pain to the surface,
And drink deeply


An Acquired Taste

I have never eaten a mind before
Yet you offered me yours,
served in delicate china bowls
with cracks from crimes against the raw ceramic
outlined dark veins
You handed me a dessert spoon
and begged me to taste
With complete freedom to make substitutions
as I wished

It came away against the silver like a fine mousse
I had expected to need a steak knife
or at the very least something with bite
But it seems I have a talent
for cutting through you

You have an intricately seasoned subconscious
It seems it has been waiting a long time
for an epicurean like me
Its flavours simmering
blending
and steeping into something
rich and strange

With my first taste,
I knew the meaning of gluttony

Your brain pleads for an elegant wine pairing
Suggested by a sommelier
in hushed tones and a pressed suit
Perhaps a merlot, to bring out the flavour of obedience
Or a fine chianti

And now I cannot have enough
My hunger grows
I hide little snacks in dishes with lids
I sneak into the kitchen with a ladle,
Adding new spices with crazed abandon
I pick out stuck scraps from between my teeth
and under my fingernails
To savour you all over again

It is never enough
I am never sated
I am never satisfied
I find myself eating grey matter over the sink,
thoughts dripping from my elbows into the porcelain
with a soft think


Biographical Statement: P.H.G is a writer with a background in Shakespearean theatre living in England. Although she has a diverse range of interests, her writing frequently features a unique blend of sensuality and darker kink themes. Previously only writing for personal expression, she is now seeking publication for the first time after ten years of scribbling.

Artist’s Statement: These works were not originally written to be grouped together and were written at very different times. However when reviewing pieces to submit, their compatibility was very evident. All three have very specific and intertwined subjects which personally I have not come across in other poetry.

The Latest Flame is about my own feelings towards kitchen matches, an object-based fetish I have had since I was 17 and one which is so rare, I had to make the tag for it myself on popular kink websites.

The Sick and The Citrus is a poem I wrote as a character study, but really the subject is an amalgamation of myself, other wonderful ‘vampires’ I have met on the kink scene, and the young pre-med girl who first told me that oranges have the same thickness and resistance as human skin. Hence why budding surgeons practice stitches on them.

An Acquired Taste is the real reason I wanted to write an Artist’s statement. The other two could stand on their own without explanation, however I would be fascinated to hear from readers how they interpret this piece. Art is meant to be subjective and poetry is always open to interpretation, so this one is ripe for projecting the reader’s thoughts and personal focuses on. However, what this piece is truly about is hypnosis. Specifically, erotic hypnosis done within a dominant/submissive dynamic. A very special submissive introduced this to me, and previously I hadn’t ever given much thought to hypnosis other than stage tricks and tv. In case you don’t know, allow me to tell you; it is real. It is powerful. It is addictive. It is dangerous. And it is one of the best things about being alive.

A special thank you to the Editor for indulging me.

The Cicadas Cry

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By Casey Kendle

Summer is full of lust and
I am full of grief. My body aches,
still not used to the pain

it now has to carry. The world
feels heavy, and regret trudges
alongside me on the scorching asphalt.
My mother will ask me what’s wrong

and I’ll smile, unwilling to share
the burden of my boyfriend’s love.
At night I open my windows,
close my eyes and sit in the

thick, humid air with a blanket
wrapped around me—
I pretend that if I don’t move,
nothing will ever hurt me again.


Biographical Statement: Casey Kendle is an up and coming poet who’s from Virginia. They were born in rural China, and brought to Virginia at a young age, and have stayed there ever since. Their work was published in Pwatem, as well as in several fanzines.

Artist’s Statement: “The Cicadas Cry” is a poem I hold dear to my heart, and is about struggling to accept the cards you’re given in life.

Tourist

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By Jozlyn Basso

There are landmines in our backyard,
and I carefully jump around
them while Dad takes apart
his Smith & Wesson and drenches
the porch with molten black oil.
The sticky stains coat a ringing shadow
of Mom’s fallen
windchimes, their bells tolling
in the voice of God,
and Dad can’t tell if they’re damning him or not.
Today, the sun shines hotter
than it did in Iraq,
and Dad warns me to get back in the house
before my skin is burned.
Through the tan curtains, I see
Dad cup his head in his hands.
From far away, his knuckles look less calloused
and sometimes I imagine them, all soft
and rosy, before they learned
to slide delicately
between trigger and soul.


-In memory of SPC Timothy Gresham, walk tall young man.


Biographical Statement: Hello! My name is Jozlyn Basso, and I am a sophomore at VCU. A teacher introduced me to poetry in elementary school, and since then, I have been compelled to write. Poetry has been a dominant force in my life, and I hate it almost as much as I am infatuated with it. Beyond writing, I find great joy in relaxing in nature and being surrounded by family and friends.