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.