
Giovanni Mangiante, born on March 17th, 1996, is a bi-lingual writer from Lima, Peru. He has work published in Open Minds Quarterly, Ghost City Review, Panoply, The Anti-Languorous Project, Dream Noir, Punk Noir Magazine, Minute Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, Eunoia Review, Down in the Dirt, and has upcoming poems in Fearsome Critters, Three Rooms Press, and Cajun Mutt Press. In writing, he found a way to cope with Borderline Personality Disorder.
The writing of a memoir
I am still without a job, without motivation to even get out of bed. All I do is sleep, feed the dog, play catch, read, write, smoke cigarettes and drink—occasionally— the meds have made the drinking sort of unpleasant, and the hangovers ten times worse. I walk into the bathroom to wash my face, comb my hair, shave, and I stare at my reflection catching a glance of tiny wrinkles, a few pimple scars, dark circles, and hollow eyes. I am only 24 years old, but all of the youth I thought still belonged to me, has already begun to slip away.
Green moonlight, green silence
Crushed emerald green eyes, far away amongst Bristol autumn leaves, look at me from behind the glass pane of impossibility in a midnight green moonlight, midnight smoke, midnight plotting, midnight melting ice cubes, midnight deep cuts, midnight stories of memories burnt in the wars of time. I’ve got nothing else but butcher knives for wings, and as I watch you drag your sorrowful laughter to someone else’s luck, I sing and say goodnight to the wounded mockingbird fluttering above my head tonight, hoping to fall asleep at the bottom of your unknown, and dream about the secret we’ll never take part of in this wretched timeline.
Cluster B Man
throwing bloody bandages into the trashcan, cut and scarred, attempting to kill what's underneath my skin, my muscles, my bones, attempting to kill something I can not understand, attempting to kill a version of me I hate; buckshot brain, grenade tongue, the memories of the child I used to be have become rocks at the bottom of the sea; so far out of reach.