PLU Gazette - Spring Edition 2025

Editor’s Note

It’s been over a year since we published our inaugural edition of the Paris Lit Up Gazette and we are delighted to bring you its successor and sequel, the PLUG Spring 2025. Our editorial trio was thrilled with the incredible response to our call for submissions and wishes to give heartfelt thanks to everybody for their artistry and desire. From the 120-plus pieces received, as 2025 blossoms, fourteen have found a consensus of resonances.

The fourteen pieces will take you waltzing through the grubby grandeur of the city, its myths and mysteries, its surveillance and paranoia, its fears and fun. Then they will take you home into the tumult and trauma of childhood, the miasma of intimate relationships, and the love-lost misguidedness of parenthood. But you will also find temporary solace in spaces of recovery, in quiet conversations, Bavarian countryside scenes, and forgotten gardens. We hope this spring offering will suffuse you with its spirit of renewal and discovery as it has us.

Edited by Raija Heikkilä, Jonny Sly & Sebastian Cray

Part I

Who will buy me a city?

by Sue Burge

liminal November-born wanderer of thin places

I am threshold-crosser

uninvited conjurer of doorways between worlds

birthed from rising mist and turning leaf

a harvest of hagstones at my feet

I haunt the edges of uncertain sleep

Who will buy me a city?

Here’s my imaginary twin

let’s ride Black Shuck through the byways

our bare heels, calloused and sharp as spurs on his flanks

Know me

dip me in the water

sea-witch seal-nudger salt-sipper

There is always rain in the air here, even when the sky is blue

graffitiing my face with nostalgia

I say again, who will buy me a city?

My sting is waiting

smear me with dying samphire deafen me with the desolation of calling geese

Who will buy me a city to drink red wine in?

Sometimes I need to shake off the scales and stain my lips

with the ferment of soil and sunlight

Who will buy me a city where I can spray my blaze in high bright letters?

How much will you pay to know my name

to stroke the skin of my imaginary twin

to share this cold dark cup?

Oh who will buy me a city?

THE ART OF SURVIVAL

by Patrick Slevin

Depriving myself of sleep for sanity purposes, I alone am many third persons. I lose my own arguments. Trawl permanent graveyard shifts putting flesh on the bones from decaying corpses exhumed over and over in plots of my past. Delete myself again and again. Forget electrics, I’m hard-wired different. Ply all hours with measures of desperate thought. Fix a plain peak, angled down, to the top of my glare. Avoid eyes – there’ll be tears. No glasses please – it keeps the blur of purpose distant. Wear shirts off the backs of dead-priests. A dark coat covers soul. I don’t haunt my old haunts. Switch coffee shops daily, like I used to off-licenses. Insist on cash, it keeps this business faceless. Never check in or out. Remember, their opinion doesn’t count as much as mine doesn’t matter. I alternate entrances to the library. Use the backstairs. Accept security isn’t my friend. My demands are small – a desk without power or light. Under these conditions I can scrawl undisturbed illegible letters to ghosts I’ve forgotten the names of, I’ve no addresses for, but I spy them, outside my line of sight, behind smoke glasses doors, like warnings on a dashboard. If I am desperate to hear my own voice, I hide, two streets from the museum, apologise to lost tourists, this is my first day in the city.

Fun With Bigotry

by Jasmine Vegas

HOMO !

YA FUCKING HOMO

…sapien !

New York, 1991

Sugar

by Anja Ekelof

It’s hard to look like you’re walking with purpose when you are following someone.

The rhythm is off. Your footsteps set the pace for mine. I don’t know your destination or how your navigation works.

I don’t know.

But I’m learning.

I first spotted you at the bus stop. I saw your name on your ID badge that you had forgotten to tuck inside your suit pocket. You should have been briefed about this. Be careful with your personal information. But you didn’t even notice me.

I play with your name. I let it slip across my lips. I imagine whispering it in your ear. Your ears are slightly asymmetrical. That’s okay. No one is perfect.

You’re at the bakery now. You buy the dark brown heavily seeded bread. You don’t even look at the tarts or the pastries. Your digestive system must be as smooth as your skin.

I know that you will sometimes buy a baguette. I’ve seen you tucking it under your arm. Break off the tip and stuff it in your mouth before you sweep your scarf around your neck in a fluid motion.

You hold the door open for an old woman. You smile, bend down to catch what she says to you. Your eyes crease when you smile. Your hand briefly touches her shoulder. I mirror the movement.

You tap your watch to wake it up. You frown. Blow air through your pursed lips. Then you cross the road without really looking, weaving through bikes and cars. My path is blocked by the number 80 bus, bent around the corner. I’ve lost you.

***

At night we’re at the self-service check out. You’re buying shaving foam, wholewheat pasta and a jar of pesto. The own brand stuff. You lift a four pack of cherry clafoutis from the basket. Scan it. You don’t have a Monoprix loyalty card. You punch the screen with your long fingers. I want them in my mouth.

You don’t have a bag. You pile your shopping into an armful. You’re not going very far after all.

Another morning. We bump into each other on the corner. You smile and apologise. I smile and apologise. Search your eyes for recognition. You’re already gone. You smell delicious. I follow your scent. It’s sweet but musky. I imagine my face in your armpit, you’re gripping the back of my head in your hands. I imagine crumpled linen sheets.

The cafe terrasse is busy. Two Japanese girls dressed in Chanel wear berets. They take selfies with their croissants. You stir sugar into your crème. Your boy in the buggy is looking at you. His eyes are your blue. He chews the corner of a book. You smile at him. He’s Théo. It’s written on his bag.

I wave to him under the table. Mouth “Coucou Théo”.

You stand up and push the buggy forward. I slip into your seat. I pick up the cup you’ve left. I press my red lips to the rim. It’s still warm. I tongue the grains of sugar out of the bottom of the cup.

Then I follow.

Go back home

by AD Capili

if I’m not vigilant on the train

on the way to work, after biking

through the dark and cutting cold

as a diminutive beam of light

I’d sink into the anthracite seat

shrunk like a corpse oblivious to

the unholy wagging of tongues

hugging myself and dreaming

of hoops on every street corner

threatened by hordes of metal beasts:

motley jeeps, soot-smeared buses,

parts of the bodies they devoured

dangling casually on their sides,

of torrents that crash upon tiled roofs,

fortress walls and shivering shanties alike

of the adamant sun that demands

homage from its conquered people

of the candles that burn in churches

humming with the murmurs of devout

con artists and everlasting supplicants

of twinkling lights hanging over

vermicelli, honeyed ham, a red ball of cheese

–then I’d unfortunately miss my stop in Brussels

–a small tragedy compared to people

wondering out loud where I come from,

their tone commanding I return home.

I want to to tell them I wish

I could, I really wish I could–but

that remains a moonshot

–an implausible dream that visits only

in moments of suspended reality

like a warm day deep in winter

or a perfect stranger’s kind gesture

Part II

Suburban Poem of Disparate Parts

by Meghan Miraglia

One summer, the dentist diagnoses the entire neighborhood with cavities.

Our mothers collectively ban juice. We spend June drinking water

from hoses and faucets. Desperate.

Before we play together, my neighbor makes me kiss the small, granite

head of a Buddha statue. Grayed with moss, Buddha smiles. From

the moment he was carved from a much larger stone, his legs have been crossed.

My other neighbor insists she has a friend who lives in her closet.

Her closet floor is strewn with pink beads and hand-me-downs. She’s sitting right there,

my neighbor says, can’t you see her? She looks just like you.

Each night, I lay on my mother’s lap so she can turn the key on my palate

expander. For months, I dream of swallowing my own teeth.

Our hammock flips on its belly: a perfect, burned circle. Saturn’s lost ring,

fallen straight through the fabric. No. The butt-end of our neighbor’s joint,

flicked over the fence, narrowly missing a trellising grapevine. I tell

my father that I can fit my pinky through the burn-mark. He throws the hammock away.

Behind our house, an insulation company clatters its green-and-white trucks.

A worker befriends our neighbor, who lets the worker feed his chickens during

his lunch break. I picture him hunched in other people’s attics, breathing

fiberglass and wool, his gloved hands punctured by beaks.

I am too afraid to pull my baby teeth, so we let the dentist do it. Sometimes,

the new canine is already there, pushing through the space where the gum

has bruised. Other times, the canine hangs on by a single root, which refuses to break.

My father buys drums to collect rainwater, and a composting bin for the garden.

We throw orange peels into the bin and count worms when they surface,

ringed and dirt-damp.

When I graduate preschool, our teachers give us saplings to plant

in our backyards. After the fifth year, my sapling bows, its spine not strong

enough. Our neighbor, a landscaper, says its roots have not grown.

His eyes are red. I take him at his word.

One of my adult teeth isn’t growing back. The tooth lies supine in my skull.

The orthodontist cuts a small hole in my gum, and adds a chain to my braces.

There is a chance it never will come in. Hearing this, my mother almost faints.

On every family outing, I pack too much, convinced our house

will catch fire while we are away. My mother, frustrated, says

I can bring one thing. I choose the Bible and don’t read a word.

I stare out the window, blurring the trees with unfocused eyes.

Until I was twelve, I could fit my tongue through the gap in my front teeth.

None of my neighbors remember when I fell off my scooter,

scraping my knee so deep you could see bone: but only

if you looked hard enough, and believed there could be something beyond blood.

Trigger Warning

by Gilberto Lee Escobedo

“Don’t squeeze too tight,” he

says to me, two seconds too late—

the BB bursting through the egg,

yellow blood staining the dirt.

It’s the first time he remembers

something so perfectly white,

so pure, being destroyed.

It was his father’s idea—

using eggs.

A reminder of Mom,

in different ways.

She would never have let

this happen.

Not under her watch.

But that’s the point—

“just us boys here now,”

Dad says, holding my hand,

fingers curling around mine.

Together, we squeeze the trigger,

shattering another shell.

More blood.

“This is yours,” he whispers,

soft, almost tender,

“If you treat it right.”

I can’t remember him ever being this soft—

so gentle,

about a gun.

I am all he has left

after Mom,

who he squeezed too tight—

and she fired back,

flooring him with recoil.

Barbecue Chips

by Emily Gift

My mom has a special talent for being obnoxious.

I look at her with snake eyes, trying to figure out how she doesn’t know. She stays focused on the road in front of her, while her right hand reaches into the middle console for the bag of chips.

She feels me staring and turns her head towards me briefly, then faces the wheel.

“What?”, she says, smiling, irritating me.

I face forward with my arms crossed against my chest.

She looks at me with her big, obnoxious eyes. “What?”

“Nothing.” Our blue minivan continues to swallow the road ahead.

She reaches in for the chips again. I hear her jaw unlocking as she puts another handful in her mouth, like a snake preparing to swallow a mouse whole. I watch in amazement. She’d put her whole fist in her mouth if she could.

We lock eyes. She’s studying me, trying to figure me out. Me, on the other hand, I don’t need to study. I know everything about her.

She’s uncomfortable so she turns the radio on. Top 40 hits. She thinks pop music will drown out my disdain. It won’t. I turn it down.

The car’s AC is no match for the relentless Texas heat. The fans are giving it their all, and they will die trying. As they did last summer. And the summer before. As they always do. Her steering wavers as she goes in for another handful. The car fills with a sweet, stinky odor from the artificial flavoring. While my shins rest on the burning dashboard, the air vents bluster, making me nauseous. Antifreeze and barbecue chips, my mother’s signature scent.

She puckers as she sucks off the orange coloring from each finger. First the thumb, then all the way to the pinky. I thought she’d stop there, but there she goes, licking the side of her hand. She reaches back into the bag that rests between us. Her eyes are on the road, despite her deep obsession with the chips. I stare at her, unrelenting. The grease on her lips glimmers so brightly it could blind another driver, cause an accident even. A chip flake hangs off her bottom lip, the lone survivor.

She feels my relentlessness and chuckles. “What?” She asks as she goes in for another handful, briefly glancing back at me.

“Nothing,” I grunt and face forward again, letting the sunlight burn me directly.

“What’s got you in a mood?”

The way you eat chips, Mom. That’s what’s got me in this fucking mood.

“Did something happen at school today?”

I dig in my backpack looking for help.

“Was it Naomi?”

I can’t find my headphones anywhere. I swear to god if I lost another pair I’m going to kill –

“You shouldn’t be hanging out with a girl like Naomi anyway. She’ll get you into trouble.”

I let out a loud groan as I continue to dig for safety from this awful conversation.

In between crunches and smacks and gobs of saliva breaking down fried spuds she perseveres, “It’s those breasts that are the cause of it!”

I stop my search immediately because it seems that my heart has fallen down, deep down into the empty pit of my stomach.

“If you don’t get out now, her breasts are going to drag you down with her as well.” She laughs. She laughs like she always does, with no concern for others.

“You’re being gross.” Sometimes I try to look at my mom with so much disgust, I hope that it’ll make her drop to the floor with shame. “And misogynistic,” I added.

“I was joking.” Her sly smile moves the grease all across her mouth now, making her look like one big orange potato.

“You can’t say that kind of stuff about teenagers!”

“I was joking!” She put her hands up in defense.

“You’re never joking.”

“No, you’re never joking.” Her stare is cold now and callous. “Seriously, you never really joke around. You’re very serious. My serious daughter.”

And you’re my Potato-Chip-Mom. “I’m not always serious.” When I swallow I can feel my heart wading around down there in the acids of my stomach.

“Hah!” She laughs. “That’s a good one!”

I want her to know I hate her so I show it with my eyes. She looks back at me the same way. I look down at my hands.

“Okay. Who in your life do you joke around with? Because it sure as hell ain’t me.”

“Lots of people.” I pick at my nail beds, distracted, cut off course. “My friends.”

She doesn’t say anything. Silence fills the car, adding to the heat and the spicy odor, creating a perfect recipe for suffocation.

“My friends all say I’m really funny.” I tug rhythmically at a chunk of hair in the back of my head.

A deep rumble erupts from her gut and she curls over from laughter.

My posture straightens and I prepare myself for battle. “They do! They think I’m really funny!”

“It must be amazing to be your friend,” the remains of laughter still linger on her face as she runs her clammy hand through my hair. “I’m so jealous.”

I jerk away from her touch, reclaiming my hair to my head with disgust. I take a whiff and cringe. I only just washed it this morning.

Her eyes glaze over. “I’ll never get to see you in that light.”

I turn up the car’s stereo and let the pop beats drown everything out. She turns the knob to the right to play the music even louder. By the second verse, I forget where I am, and I sing along quietly with the lyrics. My mom begins to sing along too. She’s singing loud and proud, wanting the whole world to hear her. Doing an absolutely horrible job, fumbling words, slurring them together, she persists even louder.

“Those aren’t the words!” I scream over the music.

“What?” Her eyebrows furrow, cartoon-like.

“You’re not singing the right words!”

She turns the knob even more, making the music boom and rattle my teeth. “Sorry, I can’t hear you!”

She can’t help herself. I shake my head, then laugh. Initially, at her. But then she looks at me and begins laughing too. At a red light a father and son are stopped in the car next to us. If they were to turn and look at us now, they’d think we were laughing together. My shoulders tense, seized from the laughter or maybe from embarrassment. But my mother carries on as she always does.

a few words to life

by Renée McAleer

whether our connection be

malnourished

flavorless & frigid or

pregnant, rich & oily,

we go to sleep together

comforted & loved

full-bellies and empty minds

worries are tucked away

as our legs interlace

sometimes i linger in the doorway

watching you cook

a round bouquet of aromas

bombards my mind

stale & aching as

you continue to stir your daily broth

mechanically

my arms will find your back

wrap around your waist

and hold on tight

when the scents push me down

i am once again the young child on the floor

sitting on your foot

lacing my hands around your calf

once a lover

become a dependent youth

overwhelmed by

oily sunflowers & weathered-down boots

boisterous rainbows and moldy docks

serene parks and chaotic streets

senses become anile

cares dodder between art and disgrace

& you creak down the stairs at midnight, gone

Part III

LEAVING MONTAIGNE

by Linette Marie Allen

Losing to regain is not my philosophy. My rulebook

is not an essay, a skeleton; I am the pain outside.

Birds and their bones have nothing to do with this, pal.

I am heads aglobe, my brokenness like wail-flowers sweeping teeth,

tears, giving lectures on why Spanish gardens are better than

American asylums. Recovery can be found in a poem

penned by Dickinson, if you’re into that sort of thing—engorgé,

pap smears the way crows love congregating in trees

just before sunset. The sky in a room, a black hole

swallowing light, a marvel my doctor tells me with a stethoscope

to my ribs. “This won’t hurt,” ze promises. Mom and Dad

on the bugger’s capture: He died smothering your books, his

thin apology ruining a dinner napkin, his pom-poms rifling

Carolines as if, as though, like—the shadows of a life

that was never mine, just a ghostly echo of what remains

The Line

by Julia Daye

I absorb your peace

through the telephone receiver.

Your voice’s soft impression

on my voice blooms

in pauses between answers.

The meter of your word-thoughts sounds

like a wise child descending the stairs,

taking each step slowly;

down-step, pause—

down-step, pause.

This foreign okay-ness

settles in me too

and becomes

mine.

I remember Bissingen

by Alex Manthei

I learnt to whistle in that church

the girl whose father lost his hand

laughed at how I made my mouth

like an ö

he thought I was trying to kiss her

under the Queen of Heaven

Franzi

that was her name

Na, Baba, i bring eam’s Pfeifa bei!

she said grinning with her eyes

Kuck her, Bazi

he leaned in close

his hand missing on my shoulder

like an ü

he showed me

kicher kicher kicher-cher

Franzi and I would whistle

Rosamunde

gathering kindle for the baker’s fire

he always wanted a tune

in return

he gave us our daily milk and Kipferl

if you soaked it

it didn’t taste like yesterday’s bread

This German dialect is a blend of Alemannic (Swabian) and Austro-Bavarian, as spoken in rural western Bavaria in the 1950s. i bring eam’s pfeifa bei! (“I'm teaching him to whistle!”) features i for ich (“I”), eam for ihm (“him”), and bei as part of beibringen (“to teach”). Kuck her in Kuck her, Bazi (“Look here, you rascal”) is a regional variant of schau her (“look here”), while Bazi is a cheeky, semi-teasing term for a boy or rascal, common in the region.

untitled

by Paul Lobo Portugés

petals

drift onto

fallen that

trees block greening

my begins ‘tis

path song another

birds season

return of

breathing

words

The Exit

by Polina Kouzminova

It was dark in the womb. Warm. And yet, you came out wounded. Like a sparrow, lost in the screams of gust, whom the nurse had rescued and brought over to the hospital bed, half-gasping. Mother was frantically breathing, asking for new sheets. You didn’t mind all the red. It was your first colour.

Outside, in the heavy folds of evaporating blue, a little white Moon watched you grimly, cascading its reflective light upon your forehead. Moon mother was careful not to snatch you too quickly, as the earth breathed you in.

Acquaintances, learning the present tense, the breath of all the living. And sharp angles of the sun, underneath – seas filled with worry. The eerie sounds of birds, locomotion of wings in a hurry. You, the growing, the living, - you too, hurried along. You hurried along, because you were scared. Scared to fall. It was your heart that fell too many times. Pieces from your soul, like cobblestones scattered into desolate water, taken in by the angry sea. The water mutated, as your many names were changed. It was enough, but always, ever daily, Moon mother asked you to keep breathing.

You wonder why everything is so beautiful all the time, as if the end is near. You hear God is generous with time, and that he brings you closer, back into the mud. The muddy earth with all its accidents. The pain you feel is camouflaged by a reddening confusion in the sunset.

But on the hospital bed, you were only aware of mother, patting your ruffled head with her tired fingers, singing her earth song about some forgotten garden, dispersed neglectfully across the land.

Biographies

Sue Burge is a freelance writer, mentor and editor based in North Norfolk, UK. Her most recent poetry collection is The Artificial Parisienne (Live Canon 2024). Her eco-angst collection, watch it slowly fade, is forthcoming with Yaffle Press.
Patrick Slevin has appeared in Parabola,The Broken Spine, Poetry Ireland Review, New Isles Press, Manchester Review, Spellbinder, The Cormorant, Skylight 47, The Poets' Republic, High Window, Wells Street Journal, Drawn to the Light, An Aituil volume 3 and others, and has been featured on RTE's Poem of the Day.
Jasmine Vegas, NYC, transformed from clothing designer to chanteuse/accordionist early 90's, migrating to Paris for love but staying for the cheese. She's released multiple albums and singles of original tunes on Bandcamp and been performing unique in-your-face poetry and prose since the 1980's, the Poetry Project NYC hailing her "genius"!
Anja Ekelof is a writer based in Paris. Born in Sweden she has worked in Dublin and Edinburgh for over thirty years. She is currently studying for a master's degree in creative writing and is editing a novel.
Originally from the Philippines, A.D. Capili currently teaches philosophy and history at a European School in Brussels. His poems have appeared in publications like Little Fish, Amaranth, Ley Lines, and New Croton Review; some of his short stories can be found in The Brussels Review and The Quiet Reader.
Meghan Miraglia is a poet-artist living in Boston, Massachusetts. An MFA student at Boston University, Meghan's work appears in Up the Staircase Quarterly, the Southern Florida Poetry Journal, and others. Her poem “Jockey” won an Editor’s Choice award at Arkana. Follow her on Instagram @meghan.gets.lit.
Gilberto Lee Escobedo is a poet and curator whose work weaves memory, identity, and landscape into lyrical fragments. Rooted in blue-collar poverty and ghetto horror, their writing explores survival, inheritance, and tenderness. Their work has appeared in Artforum, The Guardian, VICE, and Berlin Art Link.
Emily Gift is an American short story writer and screenwriter. She holds a B.S. in Radio-Television-Film and Creative Writing from The University of Texas at Austin. She moved to Paris in the summer of 2023 where she spends her mornings working on new stories and evenings being a nanny.
Renée McAleer is an itinerant student, formerly in Paris and now based in Melbourne. She might believe tomorrow, or any given day, that Jupitor has become a dandelion or that her socks withhold the secret of life.
Linette Marie Allen is an award-winning poet whose work appears in Poetry Salzburg Review, Boulevard, The Rialto, and others. A two-time Best of the Net nominee, she explores identity, memory, and existential angst. Allen holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore and won the 2021 Kay Murphy Prize.
Julia Daye is a poet and writer riveted by sound and simplicity. Author of The Edge of Waking (A Freedom Books, 2017), she has been featured, among others, by Open Book NYC, Philadelphia Contemporary, and the PASEO Project. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and journals.
Alex Manthei is an American designer living in London. Originally from Tucson, Arizona, Alex has also lived in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Paris. While in Paris he was an active part of Spoken Word Paris, Paris Lit Up, and the Belleville Park Pages.
Paul Lobo Portugés. Books: Sorrow and Hope, Breaking Bread, Saving Grace, Hands Across the Earth, The Flower Vendor, Paper Song, Aztec Birth, The Body Electric Journal, The Bullet Had His Face in the Soul of His Blood, The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson, Witness, Falling Short, Land of Sorrow (forthcoming).
Polina Kouzminova was born in Siberia and grew up in New Zealand. She released a poetry collection An Echo Where You Lie, and a memoir My Little Ship, Forever at Sea. She holds university degrees in English Literature and teaching English, and has spent a year in France teaching languages.

PLU Gazette - Spring Edition 2025

Editor’s Note

Table of Contents:

Part I

Who will buy me a city?

THE ART OF SURVIVAL

Fun With Bigotry

Sugar

Go back home

Part II

Suburban Poem of Disparate Parts

Trigger Warning

Barbecue Chips

a few words to life

Part III

LEAVING MONTAIGNE

The Line

I remember Bissingen

untitled

The Exit

Biographies

Sue Burge

Patrick Slevin

Jasmine Vegas

Anja Ekelof

AD Capili

Meghan Miraglia

Gilberto Lee Escobedo

Emily Gift

Renée McAleer

Linette Marie Allen

Julia Daye

Alex Manthei

Paul Lobo Portugés

Polina Kouzminova

PLU Gazette - Winter Edition 2024

Paris Lit Up