Daniella Deutsch is a 25 year old originally from Los Angeles. She is a preschool teacher at Beginnings Nursery School in New York City. Her publications include: Ink and Voices, Little Death Lit, and 5×5 Literary Magazine. Another piece of hers is set to run in this summer’s print issue of Gargoyle Magazine.
February is Freezing
1:01am
I battle myself for the role of puppeteer
the referee begins to mock us
because the prize is the heaviest heart
I do not think we particularly mind if we lose
so, go
swing the bat until it splits a skull
perhaps we aim for the occipital lobe this time, what fun!
and I cry
do you cry?
let us spin an invisible, ironic bottle
I whine as I chew a hangnail for pleasure
only part way, of course
as if someone else is going to rip the final bit off
how does one ever really know how they arrived at the doorstep of being so broken?
1:38am
I empty out excuses
expose myself to me
ration out apologies as loud as a muted tv program
and whine some more
I swear if you listen closely
silence will begin to sound
like something you cannot unhear
it will eat up your sanity
and wash it down with ice
1:53am
help could be on the way
but we love to point it in the other direction, don’t we?
as if it stupidly had the wrong address
so sorry for the inconvenience, my hemispheres are busy chatting to death
2:04am
I am finished
for today
haven’t you all heard?
self-sabotage is painfully quick.
April
I am sedated
as the world lights itself on fire
early this morning, I rise to scrub myself
cleaner than my skin has ever sat
I embark on a pilgrimage to
wipe and rip
away
my most tantalizing phantoms
this practice follows me twice a day
a companion to nod to my compulsions
pools of yolk
swim
in the holes I am told I
should wake up and look through
between the drops of my wet and deeper breath
my insides chant as
I purify
I will not leave myself covered in my own brutality
for it will tip my axis
drunkenly
and with malice
I watch us all take candid bites of one another
to nourish our connected pits, preparing
yet there will be no singular attack
leave me
I am quietly at war with my own heartbeat
From the Editor:
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Founded in late 2011, In Parentheses prides itself upon analysis of the current condition of intelligence in the minds of these young people, and building a hypothesis for one looming question: what comes after Post-Modernism?
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By In Parentheses in IP Volume 7
32 pages, published 1/15/2022
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IP Volume 5: In Parentheses Magazine (Spring 2020-Crowds Edition)
The SPRING 2020 issue of In Parentheses Literary Magazine. Published by In Parentheses (Volume 5, Issue 3)
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